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.

War Hunt.

Review #2421: War Hunt.

 

Cast: 

John Saxon (Private Raymond Endore), Robert Redford (Private Roy Loomis), Charles Aidman (Captain Wallace Pratt), Sydney Pollack (Master Sergeant Owen Van Horn), Tommy Matsuda (Charlie), Gavin MacLeod (Private Crotty), Anthony Ray (Private Joshua Fresno), Tom Skerritt (Sergeant Stan Showalter), and William Challee (Lieutenant Colonel) Directed by Denis Sanders.

Review: 

Yes, there are plenty of starts to highlight when talking about a film. This was a breakthrough of sorts for three people: this was the first credited role for Robert Redford, and it was also the film debuts for Sydney Pollack and Tom Skerritt. Now, who directed it? Well, this was the second feature film directed by Denis Sanders, who had done a handful of short films, which included A Time Out of War (1955), which not only served as his master's degree thesis at UCLA but also won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject. That movie got the attention of Charles Laughton, who hired them to work on The Night of the Hunter [1955] (Terry as a second unit director, Denis as a dialogue director). The brothers worked on further films such as Crime and Punishment U.S.A. With War Hunt, it was made as part of a deal between United Artists and the Sanders brothers. The two did a handful of documentaries over the next few decades, with Denis winning an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject with Czechoslovakia 1968 (1969) while Terry co-produced the Academy Award winning Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1994). The writer of the film was Stanford Whitmire, a regular writer on television shows and TV movies for many years. I suppose it might be interesting to note that Francis Ford Coppola drove a truck in the film.

Sure, a war movie can be pretty dour, and it probably isn't up to the level of say, The Steel Helmet (1951), but War Hunt is a curious movie to engage with, one that wonders aloud just what the hell is one going to do after it isn't so easy to go around killing the enemy in war. Well, as one does when set near the armistice of the Korea War. Sure, it is evident to see where it is more "low budget" than just being a "carefully composed drama" that happens to be a bit light on the action side. But it is a solid film of the soul, crafting itself well with an offbeat sense of patience and a worthy ensemble that you could at least call a solid find to maybe check out in long odds, complete with having a resourceful look from (prior Academy Award nominee) Ted McCord. At this point, Saxon had been a "teen idol" with films such as Rock, Pretty Baby (1956) and The Happy Feeling (1958) before doing other sorts of roles with The Unforgiven (1960). Here he gets to play an offbeat soldier that manages to give off an unnerving vibe without having to say many words that is weirdly fascinating, even when considering the stilted nature of what really drives his dynamic with Matsuda (an orphan reminds him of old times?). Redford had attended (and was expelled from) the University of Colorado in Boulder and soon traveled a bit before taking up work in the stage in the late 1950s. He did a handful of television appearances, but this is the first film he did in what was a long career before his death just this month. The toils of idealism in the face of actual combat are probably a bit obvious for anyone to portray, but Redford at least shows some promise that obviously would get meatier material to really sink in. In general, it is a movie that comes and goes for 83 minutes with familiar routines that look upon the people fated to kill or be killed and finds that some really will just wander into their own world even when the target is soon to be washed away. In a sea of movies dwelling in the action of war, sometimes you might find something in the low-key type of movie pile here.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*I couldnt make the whole review about the actor debuts, so here is a note. Sydney Pollack actually started as an actor in the 1950s with theater work while dabbling in truck driving before he became influenced to direct when working as a dialogue coach on The Young Savages (1961) but dabbled in acting for films here. Then you've got Skerritt being noticed for a production of The Rainmaker (when at UCLA) by Sanders. But I suppose the reason this movie was picked was for Redford. RIP.