The House of the Dead (1978).

Review #2438: The House of the Dead (1978).

Cast: 

John Ericson (Talmudge), Ivor Francis (The Mortician / A Good Feller), Leslie Paxton (Marie), John King (Marie's Husband)

First segment: Judith Novgrod (Miss Sibiler)

Second segment: Burr DeBenning (Growski), Elizabeth MacRae (Mrs. Lumquist), Linda Gibboney (Julie), 

Third segment: Charles Aidman (Detective Malcolm Toliver), Bernard Fox (Inspector McDowal)

Fourth segment: Richard Gates (Cantwell)

Directed by Sharron Miller.

Review: 

Okay, I do have a curiosity for anthology movies. This is one of the movies that popped up when searching for stuff that have a few stories to make up a movie...and it does so with probably the thinnest of premises. A man gets lost in a rainstorm and winds up in a mortician's place with a bunch of caskets with people embalmed due to a strange death. Four of them, in fact. It may interest you to know this is actually the only movie directed by Sharron Miller. She was born and raised in Oklahoma and started directing and writing short films from a young age. She went to both Oklahoma State University and Northwestern University to study in theater and film and soon became a director in Hollywood with work on the TV show The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams in 1976. Miller continued to direct for television and short films into the early 2000s, which included a few Emmy Awards for her work, most notably for "ABC Afterschool Special: The Woman Who Willed a Miracle" (1983). Apparently, the movie was shot in Oklahoma with a budget of barely over $650,000 that had non-unionized broadcasting students from Oklahoma State University. The movie was almost known as "Alien Zone" for some weird reason. At least the movie has had a restored release on home video.

 

The song that plays at the start of the song is probably the highlight. So, let's judge the four segments with the bodies one by one. The first segment involves a woman coming home from her school that has a disdain for children. She comes home and tries to relax by herself only to encounter strange noises. Take a guess what seems to be the problem. It isn't even worth wondering how children can just maul an adult to death. The second segment involves a guy who has a thing for cameras and photography. Okay, and killing women in front of the camera, since he is seen being escorted from court. You see the killing of three women because, well, guy, camera, woman, yea. The segment doesn't even show his execution, the mortician is the one who tells us this, as if saying that the killer was rejected in asking for his execution to be captured on film is ironic. I suppose one is supposed to be unsettled by the segment, but we already know the character is dead from the moment we see him, you couldn't find an ironic way for him to die (what, a camera falls on him making him blindly fall into a fireplace?) rather than just have it be court-ordered execution? The third segment is the best one, mostly because it actually has two people talking to each other. It involves two egotistical detectives trying to assert their status as the great criminologist. One gets a note telling him that someone he knows will die in three days. Technically this is an interesting little duel of the minds, because at least there is something worthwhile in seeing Aidman try to assert himself against Fox in detective work. Of course, since the story only has two characters, I think you can tell what is going to go down for the climax to a point, but at least this one sounds like it could've been its own movie. The fourth segment flat out doesn't even bother to figure things out, since it is just about some rude guy getting trapped in a building that suffers anguish mentally and physically and he only has beer to drink. Then he gets out, sees a person headed towards the building (who insults him just like he did to some hobo...minutes ago, because none of these stories are particularly long to remember anyway) and...later dies of a rotted liver. I guess taking a shower and refreshing oneself after getting out of a "mysterious" building was out of the question, time to start the road to die of alcoholism, I guess. Not explaining what's up with the building in being trapped is one thing, having a guy die off-screen is beyond lame. These stories (as written by David O'Malley) seem more like a collection of short ideas that needed a second draft more than anything, but at least the movie has easy to see action rather than looking like a bad 60s cheapie.

The movie starts and ends with Ericson, who is depicted to be an adulterer. He confronts the fact that there is a fifth coffin and the fact that the four coffins depict people who were victims of their own frail foibles. Yea man, a guy dying of alcoholism after escaping a weird building, really frailty thing right there. The adulterer refuses to believe it is for him, runs off...and is shot by the cuckold. Real open and shut thing, just like the rest of the movie. And then the mortician is seen in the ambulance because ooooh. I think you can tell what I think of the movie: it stinks. Anthology movies do have a problem with having consistent quality within story to story, but this movie manages to sink down to the lousy zone early and never lets up for 80 minutes. You could say there are a few moments here and there when it comes to staging the idea of a scare (or, well, the third segment for an actual pairing), but for the most part, it just comes off as disjointed and not really that interesting to actually see play out. In a sea of horror movies, anthology or otherwise, you probably could do better than this one, but you at least won't hate the whole experience.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 10 stars.

Friday the 13th Part III.

Review #2437: Friday the 13th Part III.

Cast: 

Dana Kimmell (Chris Higgins), Paul Kratka (Rick Bombay), Tracie Savage (Debbie Klein), Jeffrey Rogers (Andy Beltrami), Catherine Parks (Vera Sanchez), Larry Zerner (Shelly), David Katims (Chuck Garth), Rachel Howard (Chili Jachson), Richard Brooker (Jason Voorhees), Nick Savage (Ali), Gloria Charles (Fox), and Kevin O'Brien (Loco) Directed by Steve Miner (#761 - Friday the 13th Part 2, #1148 - Halloween H20: 20 Years Later)

Review: 

Maybe someday I will be generous to the Friday the 13th series. Honestly, it has been so long since I saw the first movie that I only remember the lack of interest I had in the characters before they got killed in various ways involving blades and other things, although at least the first movie had Betsy Palmer for some sort of chance at respectability. No I don't care, the movie is not a quality slasher in enjoyment for me. Sorry. Of course, the second movie now was a Jason movie, complete with rushing it like it was a conveyor belt, with the first three movies coming out within a year of each other. There were a few changes from the second movie. There were a few changes from the second movie. Sure, Steve Miner would return to direct, but they could not recall the services of (final girl) Amy Steel due to an apparent issue with her agents. Scriptwriter Ron Kurz also turned down the project. Apparently there were ideas floated around about setting it in a psychiatric hospital or involving a final confrontation. Instead, Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson were hired to write for the movie; Petru Popescu provided significant re-writes that ended up in the final script, but he was not given credit. Apparently, the real focus of the film was to make sure the 3D (as assisted with 3-Depix cameras from Marks Polarized Corporation) would look good on screen, with Popescu claiming that the casting sessions were targeting actors for their looks rather than their acting ability and David Katims was once quoted as saying "the writing and the acting didn't matter at all." With a budget of $2.2 million, the movie was a substantial success, making fifteen times its budget with audiences. In 1984, the intended final film of the series was released by Paramount. It may interest you to know that this is the first movie of the series to feature its killer with a hockey mask, since you might remember the last movie had a sack over his head.

Sure, you could watch a character play with a yo-yo that could make you remember the days of 3D. Or you could watch something that is not so needlessly padded. Sorry (not sorry), this movie sucks. I don't care if someone finds it goofy, this is just a boring film in the long run, and it isn't even because of the violence. It is as paper thin as the other two movies, and if I don't care one iota about the people in the film before they get turned into eye-popping targets for death, why should I care about the movie as a whole? What, is seeing an annoying character like Shelly get bounced supposed to be a highlight? (he starts out by faking that he is dead only to later on in the film actually get killed only for no one to believe him HAHAHAHA GET IT?). The final girl setup is unbelievably stupid, mainly because it lacks definition. You're supposed to believe that two years prior, the character ran into the woods, was attacked by Jason, had a struggle...and woke up right in her bedroom with no memory of what happened after being in the woods. Yes, Jason Vorhees, famously remembered for attacking folks in the woods without killing them (apparently, one idea floated by Popescu was that actually Jason raped her, which makes even less sense). Kimmell just can't sell it anyway, because everyone just seems to be on autopilot mode, where you just hear the lines and then you forget about it just as quickly. In general, there is nothing particularly appealing about the characters that makes me want to stick with them besides wondering what stupid 3D thing is going to happen next, but Jason is just going around killing people just...because. You could see that done better with Halloween II (1981), for crying out loud. As a whole, with middling characters that pad out a 95-minute runtime with lazy ambition and lame 3D ideas, the third movie manages to do exactly nothing fresh or interesting with a series that had little innovation in the first place.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

The Tingler.

Review #2436: The Tingler.

Cast: 

Vincent Price (Dr. Warren Chapin), Judith Evelyn (Mrs. Martha Ryerson Higgins), Darryl Hickman (Dave Morris), Patricia Cutts (Isabel Stevens Chapin), Pamela Lincoln (Lucy Stevens), Philip Coolidge (Oliver 'Ollie' Higgins)

Produced and Directed by William Castle (#369 - House on Haunted Hill (1959), #1071 - 13 Ghosts, #1418 - The Night Walker, #1703 - Undertow, #2261 - Macabre, #2300 - Homicidal, #2301 - Strait-Jacket)

Review: 

Well, if you are going to try and give audiences a bit of a scare, you might as well try to make it a whole show of gimmicks to grab attention, I suppose. William Castle's Macabre (1958) had the life insurance policy for anyone dying of fright while House on Haunted Hill (released in January 1959) had an "Emergo" gimmick where a pulley system was rigged so a plastic skeleton could be flown over the audience at a certain point in the film.* Anyway, with The Tingler, released in July of 1959, Castle came up with a couple of ideas: Percepto, in which the underside of select seats would have electrical buzzers attached to try and provide a tingling sensation for moments (as one does when having surplus airplane wing dicing motors from the World War II days). As noted in the opening, said by none other than Castle himself, only certain members would get the shock because "some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others." And then of course there is the other idea, which involves planted members of the audience for a certain moment in the climax. As with Castle's two previous horror movies, it was written by Robb White, who did two further scripts for him. It was the second and last time that Vincent Price was the star of a William Castle movie. Obviously, the movie was enough of a hit for Castle to continue on with gimmicks: his next film in 13 Ghosts had a gimmick where you could see the ghosts in "Illusion-O" (a trick involving red and blue filters applied to the footage when dealing with the ghosts).

Really if you accept the premise as, well, with tingling curiosity, you already are half-way to having some enjoyment with the film. You've got a guy thinking he can find a creature that looks like a (big) centipede all in the name of science, at least if one doesn't scream about it first. I suppose the real thing about the tingler is that it could be represented as anything that makes us shudder and how we try to cope with apparent fears ahead of us. It has a small cast that naturally is highlighted by Price, who glides through the movie in making you go for the material in a movie that is actually kind of weird. You have a small ensemble, a few weird relationship dynamics being explored for a bit and the use of lysergic acid, or, well, LSD. Since Price looks committed to the material (as opposed to eyerolling it or just playing to scream scream scream), we find ourselves gravitating to the 82-minute runtime as well. The most interesting sequence could be the bathtub sequence (as acted by Evelyn in her final film role - she actually was brought in at the request of Price, who worked with her on Broadway), since it was shot in color that saw the set painted white/black/gray to go along with gray makeup so that way you could see the blood stick out from an otherwise monochrome background. What is particularly strange is that it comes not too long after Price's character tries out some LSD (in an attempt to spook himself without screaming), but one really wonders if he also gave it to someone else, because where else would a scene of red blood in otherwise monochrome stuff come into play? The movie just plays it as he just gave someone barbiturates for a prescription and then they just happen to see weird stuff but really if this had been made a few years later, it probably could've actually implied more that it was really LSD that did her in more than "oh, scared to death" for a trigger to die. Of course, the mystery of the film is where the tingler is going to end up, since it only can reside in folks that are alive. This is where the climax aims for the astounding: the movie actually stops in the guise of the tingler "being loose" and you have to wonder just how it felt with audience plants being around to pretend the thing was around them, although it should be mentioned that for most of the film, all it really does is get set to choke just one person, and the end goal for our hero is...to sew it back into a dead body. Yep, the thing is just going to go right back in, one can't just shoot it but it will slip right in a corpse fine. At any rate, it is an interesting experience to get wrapped in, if you allow it to do so. I don't think it is better than say, House on Haunted Hill, but you can see where Castle could take showmanship a bit further down the road. As a whole, The Tingler is moderately interesting when it truly kicks into gear for the fun that comes out in remembering just what it means to scream, which may or may not make for one heck of a climax if one finds themselves in the mood for what it is selling in the overall experience. If you like the Castle strategy of playing to the horror audience, you've got a winner here.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*Evidently, Alfred Hitchcock certainly took notice of the low-budget success of Castle's films prior to making Psycho (1960).

Chopping Mall.

Review #2435: Chopping Mall.

Cast: 

Kelli Maroney (Allison Parks). Tony O'Dell (Ferdy Meisel), Russell Todd (Rick Stanton), Karrie Emerson (Linda Stanton), Barbara Crampton (Suzie Lynn), Nick Segal (Greg Williams), Suzee Slater (Leslie Todd), John Terlesky (Mike Brennan), Paul Bartel (Paul Bland), Mary Woronov (Mary Bland), Angela Aames (Miss Vanders), and Dick Miller (Walter Paisley) Directed by Jim Wynorski.

Review: 

You have to know that the movie was going to be called "Killbots". Apparently, Vestron Video had a deal with Julie Corman (working with Roger with Concorde Pictures) to do a movie set in a mall. Who better to make a pitch but Jim Wynorski, who already had done writing work for the Cormans in writing and publicity before debuting as a director with The Lost Empire (1984). Wynorski and Steve Mitchell took inspiration taken from the 1954 movie Gog. With the setting in mind, they actually first came up with a "Phantom of the Mall" type of idea before Wynorski came up with just doing it with robots; they wrote the idea in about 24 hours that was soon approved. The effects for the robots (as envisoned by Robert Short) are interesting as the things (all five of them, as one does when preparing for an emergency) had construction from wheelchair frames and conveyor belt pieces, complete with remote control operation or using cables to move them around (you can read more about it here). The movie was shot at the Sherman Oaks Galleria in Los Angeles (with exterior shots being of the Beverly Center), and it only makes sense that it was done when the mall was closed at night; you can recognize the Galleria from its use in Commando (1985) and uh, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). The film was shot over the course of roughly three weeks. Apparently, the movie had a regional release with the Killbots title in Spring of 1986 and tested poorly* but was later reissued months later as Chopping Mall, complete with nearly 20 minutes cut out that resulted in the 76-minute runtime (there apparently is a bit of extra footage that was included on TV, but its not easy to find it). While the movie was a mild hit on release, it found a better life with release on VHS and cable. Wynorski made a litany of movies (some for the video market) that ranged from parodies to "erotic" ones, but Chopping Mall is likely the one people know best. 

Admittedly, it is a bubblegum type of horror movie, one that delivers most of the goods in having a neat adversary and a few interesting moments in mayhem (coincidentally, this was the other 1986 movie about robots being changed due to lightning strikes next to Short Circuit). Admittedly, the ensemble presented here is mostly just fine*, serving more as fodder for strangely paired death after death (seriously, most of the body count is delivered like that, because if your significant other dies, logic goes out the window I guess). They go around doing the type of thing you expect in lounging around in a mall by oneself (so a notch around Dawn of the Dead [1978]) for the setup that at least makes these folks useful enough to go with the ever-changing flow from partying to running (honestly it almost feels more favorable to try and hide in the store for several hours rather than trying to attack the three killbots, since even blowing it up with propane isn't favorable). The killbots look cool and even prove to be equal opportunity killers, whether in staging head explosions (okay maybe the effect isn't the most accurate thing ever but just look at it) or stabbing folks or, uh, throwing people off of railings that make them formidable and interesting to see play out. While I wish the excised material was available to compare the two movies, you could at least say the version we have today is serviceable in pacing and mayhem. As a whole, Chopping Mall is the kind of movie you encounter in the middle of the night (for the horror season, ideally*) and put on for a pretty refreshing time, mostly because of the mayhem you get to see from the bots that leads to a few bits of humor within the effects. It is a neat average little gem.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*Honestly, Killbots is the better title. Pun or no pun, the bots don't chop anybody up in the movie. What, did someone think it was a Transformers thing with the old title?

*It was nice to see Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov from Eating Raoul for about three minutes, admittedly, most to remind me of that movie for a tiny bit. Or Dick Miller, mostly because he really could just pop up in a horror movie again and again.

*Honestly, the horror season is what, 38 days for me? It seems far better than encountering horror movies in the winter or spring, that's for sure.

The Premature Burial.

Review #2434: The Premature Burial.

Cast:  

Ray Milland (Guy Carrell), Heather Angel (Kate Carrell, Guy's Sister), Hazel Court (Emily Gault, Guy's Wife), Alan Napier (Dr. Gideon Gault), Richard Ney (Miles Archer), John Dierkes (Sweeney), Dick Miller ("Mole"), Clive Halliday (Judson), and Brendan Dillon (Clergyman)

Produced and Directed by Roger Corman (#368 - The Little Shop of Horrors, #684 - It Conquered the World, #852 - The Terror, #931 - Not of This Earth, #1007 - Attack of the Crab Monsters, #1039 - Five Guns West, #1042 - War of the Satellites, #1136 - Gas-s-s-s, #1147 - X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes, #1186 - A Bucket of Blood, #1423 - The Wild Angels, #1425 - The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, #1674 - Machine-Gun Kelly, #1684 - Creature from the Haunted Sea, #1918 - House of Usher, #2030 - The Trip, #2113 - The Undead, #2211 - The Intruder, #2275 - The Wasp Woman, #2295 - The Pit and the Pendulum)

Review: 

Apparently, when Roger Corman was making films for American International Pictures, there came a time to settle differences of his fee with a coin toss. He and Samuel Z. Arkoff would flip a coin...and Arkoff won a handful of times that made Corman interested to venture for himself. He went to Pathe Lab to try and finance a film, since they did their own print work and financed a few AIP movies. He got Charles Beaumont and Ray Russell to do the script but had to go with Ray Milland for the lead due to Vincent Price being in an exclusive AIP contract. And then...AIP arrived on the first day of production to say that they were now partners on this film, as they leveraged the position of not having any more lab work to become partners on what became this film. While the movie made some money with audiences, Corman reflected later that the response meant that the formula "had to be varied." The next "Poe Cycle" movie was Tales of Terror (1962), released four months later that was an anthology feature with Price and other noted names. The movie is inspired by the short story of the same name, as written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1844 that had an unnamed narrator with fears of being buried alive with "catalepsy" that tries to cope with the phobia...although that story ends with one ending their obsession with death.

It isn't a forgettable movie, but it definitely is one that shows strain. It may interest you to know that Milland was an Academy Award winning actor, having previously won it for The Lost Weekend (1945). The Welsh actor had a lengthy career, and he was more than happy to be a character actor in his later years with the occasional lead or two, as one might recognize him from AIP's 1963 classic (at least that's how I remember it) X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963); Milland acted until shortly before his death in 1986 at the age of 79. Unfortunately, The Premature Burial is not among his highlights, mainly because the movie does not give him to really do. It isn't merely a case of the movie needing the services of Price (four years younger than Milland, although each was already in their fifties by 1962), it just seems like a movie that is trying to coast on what you already saw from the last two Poe AIP movies and flailing. You want to see a worthy tragedy, you want to see something that could inspire anxiety and curiosity, but Milland can only do so much for a movie that doesn't really have a mystery or tragedy to it. You could almost pick a random actor from Milland's heyday to do this and possibly still have the same effect. It does not help that Court and Ney have absolutely nothing to contribute for what is meant to be a curiosity: a woman who wants to associate with a guy who believes he is doomed and a doctor in the middle of looking at his mental state. But they don't really stick in your mind for anything other than "okay". The sense of doom just seems like the previous two Poe movies but with diminishing returns besides the cemetary maybe being a different angle to look at this time. The dream sequence might be the most noted sequence in the whole film (which only runs at 81 minutes anyway) because it seems lurid and eerie in ways that actually makes one wonder where the rest of the energy went. The movie just isn't as fun as it really could be, managing to be a bit too cozy to really make anyone get chills for something that could've been a fun mystery or a look at a strange person. As it stands, it isn't a bad movie, but it just isn't accomplished enough to really recommend when there are better things elsewhere.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

The Brain Eaters.

Review #2433: The Brain Eaters.

Cast: 

Ed Nelson (Dr. Paul Kettering), Alan Jay Factor (Glenn Cameron), Cornelius Keefe (Sen. Walter K. Powers), Joanna Lee (Alice Summers), Jody Fair (Elaine Cameron), David Hughes (Dr. Wyler), Robert Ball (Dan Walker), Phil Posner (the Sheriff), Orville Sherman (Mayor Cameron), and Leonard Nimoy (Professor Cole) Directed by Bruno VeSota (#1202 - Invasion of the Star Creatures)

Review: 

Okay, I wanted to pick a movie a bit out of left field that happened to have a catchy title. It isn't exactly a movie filled with noted names (save for one very brief appearance) or even a big director, but sometimes you get lucky. This was a production that had oversight by who else but Roger Corman, who left himself uncredited as executive producer, but not to worry for this American International Pictures movie, you've got a credit for producer and also lead star in Ed Nelson, who for whatever reason is billed as "Edwin Jackson". Two other key actors must've loved the credit game, they also have alternate names with "Alan Frost" (Alan Jay Factor) and "Jack Hill" (Cornelius Keefe). The movie was directed by Bruno VeSota, who actually had been involved in Chicago television in writing and directing since the late 1940s. He did a variety of acting parts (small or not) in the 1950s, most notably with Dementia [1955] (which may have had co-direction and writing from VeSota, as he later claimed), but he got to direct his first feature film with Female Jungle (1955), which had been distributed by AIP in its "American Releasing Corporation" days after they basically rescued it from being stuck in limbo. VeSota directed one further film with Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962). The movie was written by Gordon Urquhart, although the resulting script seemed a bit similar to the 1951 novel The Puppet Masters (which also dealt with slugs and mind control), as written by Robert A. Heinlein. He sued for plagiarism and got a settlement, although he did not want a screen credit in any shape or form.  

This was a movie that was the B-side of double features with Earth vs. the Spider, if you want to use that as a barometer for the quality. Of course, this is a movie that has a creature made of wind-up toys, fur, and pipe cleaner. For a movie that has a character at one point shoot a gun into a giant metal cone to go along with trying to use the telegraph (hey, at least they didn't try pigeons), it sure is one hell of a boring time. It lacks polish that seems particularly amusing given a runtime of a mere 60 minutes. It has a few tiny eerie moments, mostly in the sequence where the mayor is engaged in a tense standoff with some of the key characters because it actually feels like a movie is going to actually break out before one eventually sinks back into narration (worries over needing the plot to be clear to John Q. Public, 60 Year Old At Large or a trick to get over having poor sound quality - you be the judge) and a general malaise that seems to only move forward when it feels like doing so. You get the yammering from Keefe ("action!"), a middling cast*, the shambling around from doctors about doctor doctor things and the eventual rundown of what the beastly things plan to do. Well, I take that back, they aren't alien, they actually came from underground that want to make a utopia even with the whole putting toxins in the nervous system thing, (as explained by Nimoy and his voice, because he doesn't actually stand up for the one scene he is in). As a whole, it is quite an accomplishment to make Earth vs. the Spider look better on a double feature but it is almost as interesting to have a poster that exceeds the quality of the movie. If you really need to watch something from the old days that you haven't seen yet, you might get something out of it. Or not.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

*At least some of the cast saw better days. Joanna Lee changed course after appearing in four movies to become a television writer, even winning an Emmy Award for writing an episode of The Waltons. Of course, Nelson later became noted for his role on Peyton Place and taught acting in his later days. Keefe was in his last film after plenty of roles in silent films and such. And Nemoy, well....

Saw IV.

Review #2432: Saw IV.

Cast: 

Tobin Bell (Jigsaw / John Kramer), Costas Mandylor (Detective Hoffman), Scott Patterson (Agent Strahm), Betsy Russell (Jill), Lyriq Bent (Rigg), Athena Karkanis (Agent Perez), Justin Louis (Art), Donnie Wahlberg (Eric Matthews), Angus Macfadyen (Jeff), Bahar Soomekh (Lynn), Dina Meyer (Kerry), Mike Realba (Fisk), and Marty Adams (Ivan) Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (#2102 - Saw II, #2269 - Saw III)

Review: 

Maybe there was an initial idea that seemed interesting in theory when trying to branch the franchise further from the inevitable trap that started this franchise. From the beginning, you had a series with a main focus on killer traps and a guy doomed to die from terminal cancer at some point that had a curiosity for what people would do for their lives. Sure, the first two sequels probably teetered on the verge of mediocrity, but at least they had a bit of Shawnee Smith to pair with Tobin Bell...until III decided to kill both of them off. But here we are with a fourth film that has a few returning characters (as played by Wahlberg, Bent, Mandylor, and very brief time spent with Macfadyen and Meyer) and the gimmick of having recordings and flashbacks for Bell to try and hold up an attempt at doing more of the same. This was the first script of the series to not have involvement from Leigh Whannell, with Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan taking over; the duo would write Saw IV all the way to Saw 3D (2010), and apparently a handful of ideas they didn't do in IV were recycled for Saw V (2008). This was the third of four Saw movies directed by Bousman (David Hackl had to bow out due to an immediate family issue), who returned to the series with Spiral in 2021.

If you really think about it, this is basically the Star Trek Generations of the series. It tries to bridge the adversary and main focus of the past with the intended successor...and it doesn't do either particularly well. Don't even try to get me on the autopsy scene, I just kept thinking how everything looked so white. You get some killer traps with a bit of terror and the inevitable twist that arises in the ending to set up the inevitable next movie because hey, we can't take more than a year off (2004-2010 saw seven Saw movies), time is money. 92 minutes is at least a compliment in that any more time spent in such a meandering universe that is a sequel really would be like torture, particularly since Saw IV in fact runs parallel to Saw III. Even the violence seems to be on autopilot, although it may very well be a case that a movie like this just can't be as shocking the fourth time around. It isn't unsettling in the parts that matter, and the fact that the twist of the movie borders on a character that we barely hear that much from (i.e. the one set to be the villain for the next couple of movies) really makes this a bummer to actually try and watch. Its attempts at reminding you about John Kramer (i.e. he had a wife and a would-be son) makes this seem more of an epilogue than a real movie. The missing kid from the last movie is, well, not exactly mentioned, so I guess the journey (mentally, anyway) of the guy from the last movie ending suddenly means nothing either. It doesn't feel mean to reveal that IV plays parallel to III, mainly it has to play with the fact that yes, a cop would be missing for six months because...uh, games to play. The game that ties the whole movie together (one in which obviously the way to approach each room with a clue is to just brute-force it) might as well be constructed of straw, because it basically tries to fudge the riddle so that way the audience will be confused (if they weren't already befuddled by the grungy look of the movie, complete with editing choices) for as long as possible. Nobody really shines in the movie, unless you count Bell's half-voiceover half-standing performance in a sea of listless stuff. I suppose it is a positive the series isn't trying for comedy or self-parody, but it really just feels like the work by committee rather than a consistently interesting movie. The ride only works for those with time to kill but it just disappoints me more than anything. As a whole, Saw IV is a low point of a series that clearly shows signs of needing rest but instead lands on a precarious position of dubious ideas to spook people with tired execution and middling promises that cannot possibly go lower from here (oh who are we kidding). 

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

The Seventh Victim.

Review #2431: The Seventh Victim.

Cast: 

Tom Conway (Doctor Louis Judd), Jean Brooks (Jacqueline Gibson), Isabel Jewell (Frances Fallon), Kim Hunter (Mary Gibson), Evelyn Brent (Natalie Cortez), Erford Gage (Jason Hoag), Ben Bard (Mr. Brun), Hugh Beaumont (Gregory Ward), Chef Milani (Mr. Jacob), and Marguerita Sylva (Mrs. Bella Romari) Directed by Mark Robson (#1797 - Home of the Brave and #1931 - Valley of the Dolls)

Review: 

"It had a rather sinister quality, of something intangible but horribly real; it had an atmosphere. I think the actors and the director had to believe very strongly in the possibilities of disaster: that something was there. We believed it ourselves. We talked ourselves into believing it. We had a kind of fidelity to that feeling. We had the characters speak throughout in a deliberately quiet, polite and subdued manner, engendering a very calculated undercurrent of possible disaster."

This was the fourth of nine movies produced by Val Lewton in what you might call his horror cycle, all for RKO. The movie was written by Charles O'Neal and DeWitt Bodeen. The movie was to be directed by Jacques Tourneur, but he had other plans that saw the promotion of Mark Robson to direct. The Montreal native had actually studied at UCLA and Pacific Coast University School of Law but found his first work in film with the prop department at 20th Century Fox. But he did not settle there, later going to RKO Pictures that saw him start training in film editing. It was here that Robson served as an assistant to Robert Wise on the editing of Citizen Kane (1941), among other things. He then became a main editor for RKO that saw him work on, well, the Lewton features you probably would guess with Cat People (it was Robson who accidentally came up with that one particular sequence involving a bus) and so on. Robson would direct a handful of movies for RKO (which included four for Lewton) before going to various studios for a career that ultimately spanned over three decades. You can probably guess that this movie had a few phases before becoming what you see today: for one, there was initially a pitch involving a murder plot in oil wells before Lewton's supervision saw it go to, well, a cult in the Village, with Bodeen claiming to have based it on a real thing he saw in New York (the movie title refers to Jacqueline, as she is the seventh person condemned for betrayal in the history of the cult-although the cult does not go around killing people, they goad them instead). This was the third of four Lewton-connected movies released in 1943 (with this being released in August), with the others being I Walked with a Zombie (April), The Leopard Man (May), and The Ghost Ship (December). The movie was a flop with audiences at the time, with one cinema worker joking that they must've been the eighth victim. Of course, time has treated it differently (according to Robson, he was asked about the movie by the Boulting brothers who used to bicycle around London a print of the film, which was thought to be "an advanced, weird form of film-making").

I really wished I liked the movie more. But if you are into movies that might tangentially remind you of the dread found in later movies involving cults in one's wake such as, well, Rosemary's Baby (1968), this may be up your alley. The movie was shot in the course of 24 days, but the editing process (as overseen by Robson and John Lockert) was probably more crucial to, well, how things play out. A handful of scenes were cut from the film that relate to certain events in the film and the ending itself was trimmed to basically just end right after one certain sound is heard. It is a slow web to untangle for 71 minutes that probably is akin to actual life in not exactly going the way you think it will unfold for some sort of eerie feeling. That or basically one is watching a noir more than a straight horror film, but I suppose your taste (or patience) may vary. People come and go in the movie, since Hunter (in her film debut) probably is in the movie more than Brooks, although each do pretty well with what the movie shades out in wayward people looking for the way back (okay one is looking to die, but at least she knows where everybody goes anyway). The movie only really seems to gel into fascination in its latter half for me, mostly because it actually stops introducing people and shows what I guess is something about cults that claim to be big on the Devil (notice how they aren't actually stopped at the end, you just see some folks recite the Lord's Prayer at them - good thing they weren't doing anything like killing goats or evading their taxes, oooh!). I guess what I want to say is that it only vaguely holds my fascination because it has that same problem that I ended up having with Rosemary's Baby: get to the damn point, although at least you could almost watch this movie (71 minutes) twice in the time it takes to finish Rosemary. I want to feel like there is more of a looming threat than just a bunch of folks playing house because heaven forbid they go to a church or a bar to find "worship". At least the ending does do one thing right: it simply just ends, because even a thud works for effect. As a whole, it follows along the line of the prior Lewton-connected movies in fine quality with eye-catching titles and interesting imagination with the eerie things that come to lurk in everyday life, whether that involves loneliness or cults or the unknown.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll.

Review #2430: The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll.

Cast: 

Paul Massie (Dr. Henry Jekyll/Mr. Edward Hyde), Dawn Addams (Kitty Jekyll), Christopher Lee (Paul Allen), David Kossoff (Dr. Littauer), Francis de Wolff (Inspector), Norma Marla (Maria), Magda Miller (Sphinx Girl), Oliver Reed (nightclub bouncer), and William Kendall (clubman)

Directed by Terence Fisher (#257 - The Curse of Frankenstein, #258 - Dracula [1958], #272 - The Hound of the Baskervilles [1959], #469 - The Revenge of Frankenstein, #833 - Spaceways, #857 - Frankenstein Created Woman, #858 - Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, #859 - Dracula: Prince of Darkness, #1280 - The Brides of Dracula, #2096 - The Mummy [1959], #2263 - Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, #2307 - The Curse of the Werewolf)

Review: 

I guess Terence Fisher really was the everyman for anything related to horror or mystery. From Frankenstein to Dracula to mummies to werewolves to black magic to Sherlock Holmes to, well, I guess it makes sense to say Hammer went with Fisher for their attempt at Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde......okay actually it was their second attempt. For whatever reason, in 1959, Hammer did a comic adaptation of the book and called it The Ugly Duckling with Bernard Breeslaw playing the key Jekyll (tough luck clouded the movie anyway, it apparently is not available on home video and may very well be lost). Now, here we are with a serious attempt at it for 1960. It had been a while since there was a serious attempt at it anyway, as the previous decade had a litany of variations on the story (whether it be a Son in 1951, a comedy parody in 1953, a Daughter in 1957, or, well, comedy stuff: previously, I watched two adaptations of the material with 1920 and 1931). The movie was written by Wolf Mankowitz (a writer of novels and films probably best known for A Kid for Two Farhings [1953]), and the distribution was two-fold: Columbia Pictures released it in the United Kingdom while American International Pictures distributed it in the States in 1961 as "House of Fright" that cut out eight minutes (which defeats the whole damn point of watching a horror movie, particularly one that runs at only 88 minutes for the modern age anyway); neither release was particularly successful (also good god that US title is horrible), but well, people kept making Hyde films: Hammer themselves did a variation with Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde in 1971 while the current rendition of Hammer distributed Doctor Jekyll in 2023. And, well, Christopher Lee ended up playing a rendition of the Jekyll tale with I, Monster (1971) a few years later.

It didn't get much interest six decades ago, but it would fit pretty well for those who are willing to watch a lurid slow-burn. Sure, it isn't much of an adaptation of the material (hell, most of them aren't going to use the framing device of the novella that one doesn't know if Jekyll is actually Hyde for a time), most notably that Jekyll is depicted with a beard while Hyde is the "handsome" one with no beard (I guess the hair just retracts like clicking a pen over and over). So you get a movie that plays the Victorian times against each other to justify someone deciding to explore just what the "id" and the man is. Sure, he may not go around getting into fights, but Hyde sets up a person to get killed by a snake and basically leads to the death of two women (one by lovely fall and the other by straight up murder) while Jekyll just ages. It may interest you to know that Massie was more of a teacher than an actor. The Canadian (from St. Catharines, Ontario) acted in the late 1950s but changed his attention to being a theater professor for the University of South Florida that dealt with productions for over two decades. His performance here might be a bit too artificial to really accomplish the mental duel of someone who really should've not tried to touch matters of the soul, but he does at least maneuver some entertainment in making the differences between Hyde and Jekyll clear (Hyde isn't exactly unstoppable, for one). Fundamentally though, Lee does shine well in a role that he apparently thought was one of his favorites. Playing a cad that requires him to just be suave without needing to lurch in makeup does sound entertaining, and he does make an interesting partner to Addams in dastardly things (gasp: an affair). You get the spiel of authority stuff from Kossoff and de Wolff while Marla slithers through a bit of material standardly enough. In general, the movie having little gruesome content likely didn't give it many favors, but there are those who might find an interesting movie to be had here, one that has plenty of color and artificial nature to maybe get over the finish line for casual interest. I think it is fine enough to serve well for a Hammer marathon, so inquire for yourself.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly.

Review #2429: Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly.

Cast: 

Michael Bryant (New Friend), Ursula Howells (Mumsy), Pat Heywood (Nanny), Howard Trevor (Sonny), Vanessa Howard (Girly), Robert Swann (Soldier), and Imogen Hassall (Girlfriend)

Directed by Freddie Francis (#854 - They Came from Beyond Space, #856 - The Evil of Frankenstein, #860 - Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, #1145 - Tales from the Crypt, #1419 - Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, #2143 - Trog)

Review: 

Apparently, Freddie Francis wanted to just do a movie on his own without studio assignments in his way, and this is the end result. Francis enlisted the services of Brian Comport, who had provided written material for the 1968 documentary The London Nobody Knows. The adaptation material to freely crib little from was a play called The Happy Family, which had been written by Maisie Mosco that apparently was quite weird. All Francis wanted was to make sure that the film could be set and shot in Oakley Court, a castle that overlooks the River Thames in Bray, Berkshire, England that had been used for a handful of movies for exterior shooting. Comport wrote just three more screenplays: Moon (1970), Beware My Bretheren (1972) and The Asphynx (1972). He later moved to Australia to become a journalist and did corporate videos before he died in 2013. Reportedly, this was the movie that Francis admired best among the movies he directed as a filmmaker. The movie was released on VHS but not on DVD until 2010. An event to honor the film at the Court was done in 2015 and it may very well be possible to call this a cult favorite. While the movie had an opening in the States in early 1970 and a premiere in the United Kingdom in April, it only was released in its native country for theater showings in September, which as it turned out was just a few weeks before the release of Goodbye Gemini, a movie involving a pair of close siblings and its own implications of their closeness together. Apparently, the fact that a horror movie daring to show or hint at something controversial was shocking to media watchdogs (read: losers but are they the biggest losers imaginable?) that led to backlash and led to theaters not being big on wanting to screen the film. For whatever reason, the movie was called "Girly" outside the United Kingdom, which seems like a foolish thing to do.

Admittedly, it is a pretty British type of movie, dangling bits of humor in the fuss it has in manners in the same breath that sees quite a few people get hacked off. Sure, it isn't a bloody affair, but it has an unusually chipper attitude that I can't help but appreciate in the slow burn for 101 minutes. It is a cheery type of film for people that like macabre things with a worthwhile group to play the game in characterization. Mostly, it is up to the viewer to consider just how anybody goes around calling themselves Mumsy or if these folks are even related to each other at all. They just go around with devilish whimsy that happens to resonate well with the interesting choice of setting in such beautiful isolation. There is a morbid elegance to people trying to play house while corpses are around the place (don't forget that in one instance Sonny goes and records one of the murders to show as a snuff film later on) that I imagine would be extremely deserving for a following or at least recognition. Francis may not have been big on doing horror film after horror film as a director, but he at least had an eye for trying to make the best out of what could've easily just been silly British stuff. Howells and Heywood were the among most experienced actors in the film (i.e. more than a few) and they do a pretty good job in establishing the unsettling nature of play-acting in roles of alleged authority, one that has them more concerned about who finishes knitting first than the business of disposed bodies. Howard Trevor (not to be confused with Trevor Howard, as one might find when trying to Google) apparently made just one film as an actor and it was this one, while Howard had a handful of horror films and that was it, since she retired from acting not too long after getting married, doing just three more movies after Mumsy (All the Way Up [1970], The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer [1970], What Became of Jack and Jill? [1972]); she died in 2010 at the age of 62. Incidentally, a bench in her memory was dedicated at Oakley Court in 2015. She does a pretty unnerving job in making it more than just with a detached commitment that is more than just being a bit. It all collides with Bryant, who plays the lone detached force with clever interest, managing to maneuver around the strange order of things without just being a bland would-be final "guy" (well, at least by how the ending may, or may not, go in the long run...). As a whole, Mumsy is a strange piece of macabre amusement, one that plays with its environment and expectations for a few enjoyable moments within the horror of people bound to structure and the ones who have the misfortune to have to try and adjust to it without losing their head. If you like seeing movies that deserved better from the time it was made, this one may be up your alley.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

I Married a Monster from Outer Space.

Review #2428: I Married a Monster from Outer Space.

Cast: 

Tom Tryon (Bill Farrell), Gloria Talbott (Marge Bradley Farrell), Peter Baldwin (Officer Frank Swanson), Robert Ivers (Harry Phillips), Chuck Wassil (Ted Hanks), Valerie Allen (Francine, a Hooker), Ty Hardin (Mac Brody), Ken Lynch (Dr. Wayne), John Eldredge (Police Captain H.B. Collins), Alan Dexter (Sam Benson), James Anderson (Weldon), Jean Carson (Helen Alexander Benson), Jack Orrison (Officer Schultz), Steve London (Charles Mason), and Max "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenbloom (Max Grad) Produced and Directed by Gene Fowler Jr (#1912 - I Was a Teenage Werewolf)

Review: 

"This was strictly an exploitation picture. But there again I tried to put characterization into the monsters. The so-called monsters, the aliens, were very sad people. One of the things I've always found is that you've got to accept the premise, regardless of how ridiculous it is. If you accept the thing as very realistic and very honest, then you can come up with very honest performances and make a fairly honest picture out of it."

Sometimes audiences just don't know what they are missing. Released from Paramount Pictures, the movie ended up as being the second movie on a double feature with the independent acquisition that happened to be in color: The Blob (1958). The script was done by Louis Vittes, and it was Fowler who suggested coming up with an eye-catching title, although he stated in later years of hating the final title (he was interviewed for the film a bit in this book here). As producer and director, Fowler noted that the studio heads insisted that the monsters have a glowing effect, for which he would serve as a designer. It is the kind of movie that could be done with a bit of foliage and wire on a budget of $125,000, but somehow, when compared to The Blob in audience screenings, that movie tested better and therefore was slotted to be the "A" film on the double feature circuit. It may interest you to know that the movie featured the services of John P. Fulton for its special effects: he did movies that could range from The Invisible Man Returns (1940) to Wonder Man (1945) to The Ten Commandments (1956) (in total he was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three times). This was the second and last horror film Fowler Jr made (he mostly made crime dramas, although he spent far more time as an editor), as you might remember he directed I Was a Teenage Werewolf the previous year. I don't understand the hubbub that arose about the title. 1949 had a movie called I Married a Communist, what is so weird about a movie title like this that is wholly accurate? The movie basically seems like a cousin of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (well okay that movie was a bit different, since the invasion involved emotionless copies and plenty of pods whereas this movie has a spaceship...somewhere) so what exactly did one expect, "Husbands From Space" as a title? 

Honestly, I found this to be a curious little movie to see play out in paranoia but also in tragedy, since you could construe it as such depending on who you find to be the true lead. On the one hand, you have a woman who has a sinking realization that the "honeymoon period" really can just evaporate quickly when being with someone because the real guy they fell in love is in a slab somewhere. But, perhaps most importantly on the other hand, you have a movie with a being who is desperate to keep their race alive and in the process of that desperation finds something shocking: the capability to feel love rather than simply trying to breed (there are probably some guys who might treat a woman like they were stock, incidentally). Tryon was a Paramount contract man since 1955, although he mostly was known for television work more than say, his work as a star, and he apparently was not too keen on starring in this film. Years later, he became a horror/mystery writer with works such as The Other (1971).* You could contend that his performance is a bit wooden (Fowler discussed that assessment, for example), but I would argue that seems to fit the movie to a T if you really get down to it: this is a person who goes around at strange times to meet people rather than be around his wife. Sure, the one scene he has before being taken by the beings (as represented in a composite shot) probably doesn't help this argument, but most of the time you are watching someone that is slowly less inhibited by who they are. It works well with Talbott in that awkward sense of tension and paranoia, because who among us hasn't had a sinking feeling that the people you know are just a bit too strange today? The 78-minute runtime is fairly adept at getting to the point of having one get growing paranoia as the tension becomes more and more clear not only of a burgeoning invasion but of what could happen to folks having to be human longer and longer. There is a body count, with probably one of the odder deaths in quite a while coming from someone looking at a doll in a window before getting spooked to kill some scared passerby. The ending wraps everything up a bit conveniently (the woman who helped spur a posse of new fathers is told to go back home, but the big enemy of the aliens is dogs ripping out tubes), but at least it leaves folks to pause with the fact that a bunch of sexless dudes had been living in town for months. In that sense, what you have is a fairly honest and interesting movie, far better than just being the "B" side of a double feature and worth actual consideration of your time, having a few decent visuals for the time to go with a monster that is far more interesting than what you might expect in perspective for a worthwhile time.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

*Tryon died in 1991 as a result of stomach cancer, although he apparently had HIV at the time he died, per the executor of his estate, who disagreed with Tyron's partner about being quiet about the HIV part.

October begins. We'll try to have plenty of interesting horror films all throughout the month that has one hell of time for Halloween night and, well, Halloween The Week After: Year VII.

Dragnet (1987).

Review #2427: Dragnet (1987).

Cast: 

Dan Aykroyd (Detective Sergeant Joe Friday), Tom Hanks (Detective Pep Streebek), Christopher Plummer (the Reverend Jonathan Whirley), Harry Morgan (Captain Bill Gannon), Alexandra Paul ("the Virgin" Connie Swail), Jack O'Halloran (Emil Muzz), Elizabeth Ashley (Commissioner Jane Kirkpatrick), and Dabney Coleman (Jerry Caesar) Directed by Tom Mankiewicz.

Review: 

Maybe you know what Dragnet is, but your dad or grandfather probably know it quite well in some way or form. Apparently, Webb was inspired by what he saw when filming his role in He Walked by Night (1948), specifically what he heard from technical consultant Marty Wynn involving the actual procedures and activities of police officers that he got Wynn to cooperate on what became one of the big procedurals of its time. In 1949, Dragnet was born on radio with the NBC radio network, as featuring Jack Webb and a handful of partners. Two years later went by before it went to television (now with Webb and Ben Alexander), running for eight years and also having a film version in 1954. And then of course there was the new thing for its time: a revival years later, with Webb now starring with Harry Morgan that ran from 1967 to 1970. There were plenty of routines to be had in those shows, whether that involved LSD or other types of rackets. Webb would continue to busy with making television shows involving authority such as Adam-12 (1968-75), O'Hara, U.S. Treasury (1971-72), and Emergency! (1972-77) before he died in 1982 at the age of 62.*  Apparently, Tom Mankiewicz was brought in to work on a re-write of a film script that had been done by Dan Aykroyd and Alan Zweibel (who had worked together on Saturday Night Live) involving Dragnet and was then asked to direct it himself, which was his directing debut, having famously done work as just a writer with Superman and an assortment of James Bond movies; he directed just one other movie with Delirious (1991)

I do remember, very vaguely, seeing my dad watch this movie on a VHS tape once, specifically the part where the name P.A.G.A.N is revealed (People Against Goodness and Normalcy, ha, get it). That was what, nearly 15 years ago, so I suppose it is better late than never to actually watch this movie. You get a buddy cop movie (complete with a tank and jet) that happens to have a very by-the-book person at the helm that is sometimes funny and altogether a bit stuffed at 106 minutes long. As a semi-spoof, it at least looks like it cared about the original material, although it definitely shows a bit too much willingness for the "let's put a pop song in it" idea. You can probably tell that Aykroyd had a fascination with Jack Webb in actually getting the jargon down with the calm and collected feel of someone who rolls with the punches. Of course, Aykroyd actually did work as a reserve officer with multiple police departments (no I'm not joking), so this isn't merely just a case of a long-winded bit, he just thought it would be an honor to do a Jack Webb homage, to a certain type of mixed result. According to Aykroyd, Hanks (who was cast in the film because Albert Brooks said no and Jim Belushi wasn't available) was not big on the final result of the film. Hanks (in the period between Splash [1984] and, well, Big [1989]) does fine here, maneuvering through the proceedings with a good dose of charm and you do eventually get a sense of connection between him and Aykroyd as hard (okay, maybe sometimes hardly) working cops on the beat as a team. Morgan might have been winding down in his seventies (this was his penultimate film appearance), but at least he looks happy to be around for a few scenes in experiencing some jargon said at him again. Plummer is calm enough to work as the wolf in sheep's clothing, for the most part. The rest is here and there, mainly because the movie comes up with a few softball ideas to corral the procedural (so a Playboy knockoff and a totally not evil Reverend to go with uniting them for a common goal) that probably came out of at least one too many re-writes. Sure, you can't make it all a sketch, but the movie does have most of its steam in the first half when trying to play setup rather than the inevitable sequences of action, for better or worse. I enjoyed it just enough to roll with its general pacing. As a whole, Dragnet (1987) is a fine little movie that at least doesn't come off as merely an overextended sketch idea and has a few moments worth watching. It definitely is hit-or-miss, but if you are looking for a bit of fun, you might find it here.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*To tie this to movies a tiny bit, Webb was actually approached about playing Dean Wormer in Animal House (1979). Go figure, he turned it down.

Tomorrow: the horror season begins.

One Battle After Another.

Review #2426: One Battle After Another.

Cast: 

Leonardo DiCaprio (Bob Ferguson / "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun), Sean Penn (Col. Steven J. Lockjaw), Benicio del Toro (Sergio St. Carlos), Regina Hall (Deandra), Teyana Taylor (Perfidia Beverly Hills), Chase Infiniti (Willa Ferguson / Charlene Calhoun), Alana Haim (Mae West), Wood Harris (Laredo), Shayna McHayle (Junglepussy), Paul Grimstad (Howard Sommerville), Dijon Duenas (Talleyrand), Tony Goldwyn (Virgil Throckmorton), Starletta DuPois (Grandma Jennie), John Hoogenakker (Tim Smith), and Eric Schweig (Avanti) Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (#1546 - There Will Be Blood)

Review: 

"I think even before I had kids, I kind of felt a connection to how this father felt about his daughter. And it only grew deeper and stronger as I have had kids to understand what he was writing about in that way. And I’m trying to take from the book what I needed and pursue my own path and let it move in directions that it seemed that it wanted to go.”

I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised to encounter this in the proper place for a new film: a movie theater*. Apparently, Paul Thomas Anderson had wanted to do a movie based on Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland for many years. He loved the book so much that he struggled with how to adapt it and set it aside. He found later that when he wrote a series of separate stories, he found it worked to combine those with certain elements of Vineland (a book set in 1984 dealing with a burnt-out hippie, a traitorous revolutionary and a DEA agent dealing with a secret that also features "like death, but different" Thanatoids, to provide an example of what the book sounds like) for what became this film; previously, he made an adaptation of Pynchon's Inherent Vice in 2014 and had taken slight inspiration from Pynchon's V. for The Master in 2012. You may or may not know that the title of the movie is shared with a statement put out by Weather Underground, the far-left militant organization (and described as "domestic terrorist" by the FBI) that had run for a good deal of the 1970s (with targeted bombing of government buildings and banks, with a good chunk having warnings set out beforehand) before it splintered off into other organizations.

It is an interesting movie, that's for sure. It probably goes without saying that it rises above just being termed an "action thriller", mostly in the strange places that it mines for screwy moments of humor without straining into parody or sanctimonious hokum. It manages to cycle through 162 minutes with such energy and charm that reminds one of the enthusiasm that can be found with letting movies flow on their own terms. The ensemble does work out for captivating interest in seeing where the wind blows in would-be revolutionaries in the eternal battle that comes not just from trying to challenge the system but also the battle of seeing what the world will look like for the next generation. It works out well for DiCaprio, who gets to play the role in all of its burned-out flaws that come with people that may or may not be ready for what lies ahead in real danger, whether that involves a gun or, well, being a person in someone's life. It is bleakly amusing to see how one sees him from the first thirty minutes (where he, alongside Taylor in her own path of self-serving nature, is depicted as in and later out of the French 75 lifestyle) to him for most of the film as the hazy chaser in a strange world around him. Consider how he looks when paired with del Toro (who just glides through the movie like a pro) in certain sequences of what you might as well call revolution with ideas of, well, responsibility. It befuddles me to note I had seen exactly one movie with Sean Penn in it before this one. At any rate, this is a movie with a real standout performance by Penn, who makes for a compelling adversary that actually does inspire the tiniest bit of humor from an aspiring fascist club member. There is plenty of menace to be found even within the growing absurdities that come with a character that really, really wants approval in all of the strange ways possible (as one does when starting out by being forced to get an erection before ending with, well, a pitch-black moment very fitting for him). He isn't too different from Taylor when it comes to self-serving people that love the sound of their own voice when it comes to force - really, he could be anybody who ever managed to make it to a certain position of privilege and still crave affection (notice how we never see if Lockjaw has a spouse or other kids) in such seething contempt because they can't just admit it. Likely the best representation of how Taylor (who does pretty well with a role that is only in the aforementioned first part but basically haunts the entire narrative) is similar is the robbery sequence where you might think the group is going to assert their identity of being able to move along freely (one does that by being on the counter without a mask, for example), loud and proud right up until Taylor's character just shoots a guard because he dared to move.

People come and go with one hell of a tempo behind it, and Infiniti (in her film debut) does a worthy job keeping up with the proceedings with patience and a presence to match the growing insanity. The sequence with her and Penn meeting for the first time to basically size each other up is especially enthralling in the display of two people displaying just how much hatred (and, dark humor) can be found in a test of DNA. As a whole, the movie finds one thing above all in its chase of the frontier (namely with one hell of a car sequence): there are many battles to be had in life, but the ideal one to really, madly, deeply want to win is to raise a good person to walk in your footsteps. You are not your parents, you are the choices that come from what you learn from the people around you, for better or worse. The dueling groups of people that seek to fight for a different future (whether by bomb or incinerating false hopes) will come and go, but the plight of people around us will be clear as day to those who actually take the time to look and listen with their own eyes and ears. Basically, it is a movie that moves with enough of a jolt to remind you what love can be about in the face of bubbling dread for what the world might look like for the next people. In that sense, it is a timely movie to check out and see for yourself what the fuss is about.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

*Is it a bias against Netflix? Meh, who knows I just hate the idea of streaming anything new.

*I do kind of wonder for the record about one little plot thing, so scroll at your risk: how exactly do Bob and Willa get back home with the safety of having a cell phone now? Did the government just say "fuck it, these guys aren't worth the trouble". Does him having a phone mean that he is less paranoid, and how does one get to that point when you basically went through hell? Also I totally wonder if it was picked at random that the person presented to be gender neutral is the one that ends up ratting to the troops that Willa does in fact have a phone to track.

Club Dread.

Review #2425: Club Dread.

Cast: 

Broken Lizard [Kevin Heffernan (Lars Bronkhorst), Erik Stolhanske (Sam), Steve Lemme (Juan Castillo), Jay Chandrasekhar (Putman Livingston), Paul Soter (Dave "DJ Dave/DJ Drugs" Conable)], Brittany Daniel (Jenny), Bill Paxton (Pete "Coconut Pete" Wabash), M. C. Gainey (Hank), Lindsay Price (Yu), Julio Bekhor (Carlos), Dan Montgomery Jr (Rollo), Elena Lyons (Stacy), Tanja Reichert (Kellie), Richard Perello (Cliff), Ryan Falkner (Marcel), Greg Cipes (Trevor), Michael Weaver (Roy), Nat Faxon (Manny), Samm Levine (Dirk), and Jordan Ladd (Penelope) Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar (#1121 - Super Troopers, #1122 - Beerfest)

Review: 

"Yeah, I think the key was to try to keep the tone consistent...Often with comedies you kind of drift off into things that couldn't happen, so we tried to sort of keep a cap on things and make sure they all fit in the same movie."

A comedy horror movie might as well have had a lightning rod attached to it for folks to not exactly gravitate to it. This was the third film from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, which you might remember had done two previous films: Puddle Cruiser (1996) and, well, Super Troopers (2001), which like this film was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Sure, maybe there was something already familiar with "referential" horror like Scream or with "parody" in Scary Movie [2000] (or Student Bodies [1981], a movie I totally didn't pull out of my-*). But since I didn't care to actually see Scary Movie, Club Dread doesn't exactly have the problem of being pale in comparison to some other comedy horror movie. But I guess some people might wonder if it actually is a horror movie with comedic elements - oh who cares? The important part is having fun with a movie that tries to ride with the hit-or-miss elements that come with its ensemble. Either you go with the schtick in its various characters that come and go (as one does when slashed) or you just don't because, oh no, a movie with thin characters is a hell of a thing to swallow: horror, comedy, or whatever. Made on a budget of just under $10 million, the movie was not a major success at the time of release in February of 2004. There apparently was an unrated cut of the movie released on DVD that made the movie run nearly two hours long (118 minutes) that basically is just there to extend scenes without being a "director's cut". Chandrasekhar was brought in to direct the film adaptation of The Dukes of Hazzard in 2005 for his next film, while Broken Lizard returned together for Beerfest (2006).

Sure, the jokes can be hit or miss, and sure, it does have a bit of a problem in actually getting to where it wants to go for a 103-minute runtime that isn't quite a whodunit. Compared to what the troupe did before and after this film, Dread is firmly in the middle between Troopers and Beerfest, but I would call this one a winner over the latter mainly because it proved a charming enough ride in goofy slasher meandering. This time, the lead presence is mostly in the hands of Heffernan, who makes for an affable presence to try and carry a movie that tries to hold up on a few one-note jokes (hey, everybody gets one accent try) and mostly gets away with it. Stolhanske plays it straight enough that being the one behind the whodunit isn't too far of a stretch to goof it up. Hit-or-miss stuff needs at least one fun presence, and Paxton basically makes it a ride worth being on for as long as he plays the schtick of basically doing a riff off Jimmy Buffett (apparently, at Paxton's request, they showed the movie to Buffett, who got a kick out of it). There is an infectious charm that comes out in playing a washout that you might wish made it to the end. If you dig the routine that it sets out in goofy slasher hokum (a sequence involving costumes comes to mind alongside the climax in splitting ridiculousness), you can roll with the movie just fine, but I totally get that it won't exactly inspire the pants to be scared or laughing at every nook and cranny.  As a whole, it won't be for everyone, but I dug the end result of having a goofy R-rated time with just enough chuckles with at least some enthusiasm for the slasher genre that might make for a worthy recommendation if you're up for a casual time.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*butt. Well, if it make you feel better, October will give me plenty of chances to look for horror movies out of the blue.