One Dark Night (1982)

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (SHUDDER)

I couldn't have picked a better movie to celebrate the return of HMAD proper than One Dark Night, because not only was it good (more on that soon, obviously), but it was a blind spot that lasted for the entirety of the site's run. As a huge fan of Jason Lives, I obviously wanted to see the movie that got Tom McLoughlin the gig, but it was never available at any of my video stores growing up, and was also going out of print a lot thanks to the bungling of ownership that accompanies far too many indie horror films of yore. But when I started HMAD back in 2007 and replaced my Blockbuster DVD queue (!) with just about every horror title I could find, One Dark Night was currently "long wait", so I put it at the very top... and it remained there until the company went out of business. Somewhere in the world, some horror fan has a copy in that little blue mailing sleeve, and he has no idea how much I loathe him.

At least it was worth the wait! It's an entry in an unheralded but mostly enjoyable sub-sub-genre of horror: the "have to spend all night in a _____" movie. Like Hell Night (shot around the same time), our heroine has to prove her bravery by staying all night in a spooky place, and the people who put her up to it plan to make it harder by scaring her with masks and pranks, only for all of them to discover that there's a genuine threat. In this case, it's the corpse of a recently deceased psychic vampire (not Colin Robinson), who isn't fully dead and still has enough juice to make crypts explode and corpses walk around, using them to terrorize the three girls and, presumably, suck in enough of their energy to fully revive himself.

Interestingly, lead Meg Tilly and the other girls don't know anything about that guy. All of the exposition about him occurs in a series of otherwise unrelated scenes where the daughter of the vampire is told about her father's powers by an old friend of his, and she starts to suspect maybe she has some of his abilities as well, despite total skepticism from her husband (Adam West! In a totally straight, non-campy performance! It's like when you see Leslie Nielsen in a pre-Airplane movie). Once the woman understands the full breadth of her father's powers, and what he was up to, she realizes that he isn't fully stopped yet and heads to the mausoleum to finish him off. Normally, she'd show up earlier and explain this to the girls/the audience, but that's not how it happens here. From the girls' POV, they go into a mausoleum, creepy shit happens for no reason whatsoever, and then some lady shows up out of nowhere to save them.

It's an unusual way to dish out the exposition, but it works. Since Tilly or the others never stop to read an old book or stand a few feet away from where they were just attacked to listen to someone yammer about what's going on, the tension for their scenes rarely lets up once it starts. Also, McLoughlin sidesteps a common problem in horror movies, which is that the characters have no reason to be afraid but WE know there's a legit danger. By the time the two other girls show up to start pranking her, we're already clued into that something is afoot, so we get to worry about them a bit. The leader of the group is a typical mean girl, so whatever for her, but the other is just tentatively going along with the ride in order to remain on the mean one's good side, so we can root for her and also not consider their actions to be stupid, as they're both sure that the only "haunting" stuff is coming from them. And it's all because the low budget probably meant McLoughlin had to film all the exposition stuff - largely delivered via cassette tape played by the woman, alone in a nondescript room - in one day.

The budget clearly wasn't skimpy for the FX heavy finale though, where the corpses shamble around, faces falling off, as crypts explode all around them. It's a PG movie thanks to the lack of direct violence, but man, the girls being smothered by the corpses is some terrifying stuff, and probably totally f-ed up any kid who may have seen it on cable during the daytime due to its unrestricted rating. It kind of reminded me of the scene in Tourist Trap where the one girl was covered with (also telekinetic-controlled!) mannequins; as if McLoughlin saw that scene and wanted to top it with real bodies (if so: success!). There's also a pretty great/gross payoff; one of the mean girls' pranks on Tilly is to throw some joke store goop on her, only for them to get legit corpse goop all over their own faces later - heh. The main villain himself doesn't do much, just stays pretty much still while his eyes emit little electricity sparks, but the sudden onslaught of what seems like half of the mausoleum's populace more than makes up for it.

That said, you do have to be a bit patient to get to it. It's 30 minutes in before Tilly even arrives at the mausoleum, and another 20 before the girls return i.e. when things ramp up. The time isn't wasted; it's spent on developing everyone (even the mean girl, whose boyfriend left her for Tilly, explaining her reasons for disliking her) and filling in the backstory so that the final 25 minutes or so can be almost nonstop, but modern audiences might be thrown off by the "wait" (hopefully the PG rating will tell them right off the bat that this isn't a body count kind of film). Things start kind of awkwardly too; some ambulances pull up to what seems like a massacre site, with the bodies of the villain and his last batch of victims, but we learn about all of this through a radio conversation over footage of no one speaking - it's very odd. It recovers from that sort of thing quickly enough, I should stress, but as I said, it's not a roller coaster paced movie.

I'm glad it's on Shudder now (along with The Evil, which it reminded me of at times in that "late night horror movie" kind of way), as it's kind of a perfect movie for the season, a mix of harmless spooky pranks and genuine terror, but without the violence and disturbing nature of a lot of horror films that, while I obviously love, don't seem particularly suited to the holiday. I associate Halloween with fun and "light" terror as opposed to things like The Shining (not this year obviously, but usually Kubrick's film plays every October at the Arclight, and I do not understand how they zeroed in on THAT as a Halloween tradition), and One Dark Night - even that title! - checks all those seasonal boxes. And it looks good too; I understand at least one of those previous releases looked like crap due to using poor elements, but I thought it looked quite good on Shudder's stream. Enjoy!

What say you?

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Sweetheart (2019)

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

GENRE: MONSTER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX)

One of my favorite little bits of movie trivia is that Paramount re-edited Another 48 Hrs so severely that they managed to excise the part explaining the title, which is that Jack only had 48 hours to clear his name (a snippet is left in the trailer). I thought of that during Sweetheart when the movie's title finally makes sense, as it's a (clearly patronizing) nickname for the protagonist delivered from her boyfriend, a character whose arrival dilutes the film's best asset and is played by a pretty bad actor to boot. I'd rather be writing "Why is this movie called Sweetheart?" right now and finding out later that they wisely cut the guy out of it to strengthen the film.

Of course then it'd be even shorter, since it's only like 82 minutes as is. The plot is simple: our hero (Kiersey Clemons) washes up on an island shore after her boat sinks, with everyone else seemingly dead (one friend washes up with her and dies almost instantly), and goes about doing the Cast Away thing of taking stock of her supplies, finding shelter/food, and trying to figure out how to get back to the mainland. But unlike Tom Hanks, she also has to contend with a monster who comes out at night and, after devouring her friend's corpse, has its sights set on her. Repetitive and slightly hamstrung in the suspense department (though it'd be funny if they pulled a Psycho and killed her off halfway through, focusing on the monster for the rest), sure, but it works just fine for a while.

But then her boyfriend and another friend show up, having survived on a life raft for the past couple days. Their presence does explain a few things (with Clemons arriving on the island in the first shot of the film and having no one to talk to, exposition isn't exactly plentiful), but it also kickstarts an unresolved mystery involving their other friend. Clemons borrows her boyfriend's swiss army knife and discovers some blood on it, and later she sees blood in the raft as well, suggesting that they killed the guy, not the monster, but it's never clarified. Worse, it's never necessary - even if we assume the pair murdered him in order to improve their supply ration, or even give them some privacy to pass the time on the raft by screwing each others' brains out, there's no payoff or retribution for it. I was thinking perhaps Clemons would realize her jerk boyfriend was planning to off her as well and maybe use him as bait for the creature as payback, but nope. The monster just gets him normally, and the movie goes back to being more or less silent.

Which is fine, because that's when the movie's at its best anyway. Clemons is always a scene stealer so it's great, and fun, to have her in every frame by herself, as if her reward for being the best thing about other movies where she was in a supporting role (obligatory time to mention that Neighbors 2 is way underrated). I kind of wish that her character wasn't such a survival expert though; apparently she also saw Cast Away because she's only on the island for about 90 seconds before she retrieves a coconut and also a sharp rock to split it open, with zero other attempts to open it first. Later she seemingly spears a fish on her first time out trying, which again seems like something that would take some trial and error for the city girl we're told she is. The best parts of these kind of survival movies, at least to me, is seeing them figure out those basics, but it's like she already had some training earlier.

And the monster is pretty awesome too. The first time we see it, silhouetted against a setting sun, is a pretty great reveal, and it looks good in closeups as well. WETA did it, so you can be assured it's of high quality in terms of looking real (and not all CGI), but it's also got a better design than I'd expect for a modern movie monster. I might even recognize it out of context someday, which isn't something I could say for most (looking at you, JJ Abrams). I also liked that even though it's set on an island and the open water around it, the two best attack scenes were of the claustrophobic variety: one inside a log she'd hidden in (he rolls it around) and the other on her enclosed lifeboat, where he's attacking from below. Things open up for their big showdown though, which feels swiped from a Predator movie, but I guess there's not much else they can do with the established limited means.

On that note, some of her supplies come from an old/deserted campsite, owned by people who were most assuredly eaten by the monster. We don't know too much about them, but I like how they use an old Game Boy (the green/white screen kind!) to establish how long ago they were there (at least 25 years, ballpark). That's the kind of visual storytelling I enjoy most, so it's kind of amusing to see it deployed in a movie that keeps going out of its way to suggest human on human murder has occurred and then do nothing with it. Oh well. Like You Should Have Left, it's a movie that lucked out by going VOD (though in this case it was always the plan, I believe, not something COVID caused) as its faults are easier to shrug off and enjoy the movie for what it is. Plus since she's by herself 75% of the time I never felt that momentary "Hey, be careful!" feeling I get when I see other recent movies where people are just going to the store without a mask or sitting down at a restaurant. So that's nice.

What say you?

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HMAD is Back! Yes, The "A Day" Part!

Crazy trivia: the "daily" part of HMAD ran for six years and change, but ended almost *seven* and a half years ago! It's been "Horror Movie A Week, Maybe" for longer than I delivered on the promise of the name! Time flies when you have a kid and also suffer through a global pandemic.

Then again, said pandemic is why I'm happy to report that for September and October, I'll be reviving the "A Day" part of the site, to celebrate a Halloween season where so many of us (including me, obviously) won't be able to do much else. Unlike before, thanks to the aforementioned kid (who still needs to be convinced to watch the likes of Hotel Transylvania, let alone the genuine horror I was watching at his age) I'll have to take the weekends off, but M-F I'll be posting with the regularity that has escaped me for seven years. Now that I'm stuck at home all day (and, sigh, have no other writing outlet) there's no excuse. Plus I need the 12 cents I get from Amazon sales, so there's some incentive beyond my need to be more productive.

On that note, I looked into a Patreon thing, but ultimately couldn't bring myself to do it - the site's been free (and ad-free!) for 13 years, so it felt wrong to lock off random reviews behind a paywall. Instead, I will just humbly request that if you do indeed need to use Amazon, that you use my referral link, and/or if you have the extra cash, donate to my Ko-fi. Between BMD shutting down and my work greatly reducing my hours (better than the alternative, of course), money is very tight these days, so every little bit helps. Also, not sure how long BMD will be online now that it's dead, so I'm trying to collect my "Collins Crypt" articles and perhaps cherry pick the best and add a few new ones for a cheap eBook, so keep an eye out for that!

Viva la HMAD, a site never owned by a scumbag! Just my dumb ass.

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Pandemonium (1982)

AUGUST 30, 2020

GENRE: COMEDIC, SLASHER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I first learned about the slasher spoof Pandemonium in the mid-'90s, thanks to John Stanley's Creature Features, where he gave it a three star review - generous for the extremely picky author. I was only halfway through A (yes, I read the entire thing like it was a regular book) when I realized his tastes and mine were not exactly in sync, but in these pre-internet days (at least, in my house) the book was invaluable, alerting me to the existence of movies like this; titles that would rattle around in my head for years (decades, now) until they randomly show up at my door someday thanks to the likes of Vinegar Syndrome.

Stanley's writeup mentioned Friday the 13th as a source of inspiration, but I just assumed it was shorthand for "it's making fun of slasher movies". However, while other horror films (particularly Carrie) are clear influences, the movie is indeed very much in line with F13's plot - it even has an opening set in the 1950s before flashing forward to the present day, where a camp is set to reopen after some tragedies, now populated by three young men and three young women (and their boss). The killer reveal also kind of comes out of nowhere, though the culprit is at least established/seen in the prologue - they just aren't ever shown again until the closing moments, when they reveal themselves.

I'm sure this is why I found myself more amused by it than Student Bodies or (blech) Class Reunion, laughing or at least mildly chuckling throughout and only groaning a few times. Of course the hit/miss ratio isn't exactly up to Airplane standards, but come on - Airplane II standards would be a minor miracle for a horror spoof. The problem with all of these things is that they are parodying a genre that demands death and chases, and there's only so much one can do to keep the jokes coming in such moments but not going overboard so that there's nothing to invest yourself in. But Pandemonium, unlike the others, is directed by someone who actually knows how to make a horror movie: Alfred "Alice Sweet Alice" Sole, so he is able to stage the final girl's chase around the school as if it was a real one, instead of just cramming gags in the frame because they don't know how to wrap it up and serve both masters (which is what ultimately sunk Student Bodies for me; the ending is awful).

No, Sole knows to keep it brief, refusing to let the movie wear out its welcome, and the script actually has a decent foundation to build its jokes on - I remember hearing that Airplane was basically just a copied script of a movie called Zero Hour, except they added jokes, and it's not too hard to imagine that this was similarly a straight slasher script (a quickie ripoff of F13, no doubt) that got a rewrite with some gags, as opposed to something that was designed from the ground up as a spoof. Indeed, some of the best jokes are totally extraneous; one in particular could have been added during post-production - a scene where one red herring picks up another red herring (there's an escaped prisoner AND an escaped lunatic) and they start discussing forming a club. It's hilarious and random, and it's just overheard dialogue over a simple shot of a car driving off that could have been in any movie.

This "less is more" approach kind of extends to the production design (incidentally, Sole's original line of work before moving into directing). Having seen countless spoofs over the years my eyes are trained to look at the backgrounds for jokey signs, background players doing silly things, etc, but there's not a lot of that sort of thing. There are sight gags, of course, but they're never of the "blink and you'll miss" type; watching the movie a second time probably won't reveal anything you may have missed the first time around. The payoff is that, sure, it isn't as uproarious as it could have been, but you'll never get a whiff of desperation, either. The "more jokes!" approach can kill a movie like this; better to have three gags a minute where one is good than thirty gags a minute where ten are good - the same success rate, but less time rolling your eyes.

It's also got a pretty fun cast, starting with Carol Kane in one of the most normal roles I've seen her play (second only to When A Stranger Calls). She's the Final Girl, but also has some (very sparingly used) Carrie-like powers, so they get some mileage out of that (including a "stupid but funny" dirty pillows gag featuring Sydney Lassick, who was actually IN Carrie). Judge Reinhold plays one of the victims (they're all introduced as "Victim #_), and Paul Reubens plays the deputy to head cop (and top-billed, though more of an "and" appearance) Tom Smothers, displaying some of the manic energy he'd become known for (this was 1982, so Pee-Wee was still relatively obscure). Also, not to be a buzzkill, but I started watching on Friday night, a couple hours after hearing that Chadwick Boseman had passed away, so I got upset again when Phil Hartman showed up for a quick (very funny, deadpan) line in the prologue, as he too was taken from us far too early and - as I'm sure Boseman's will be - a celebrity death it took a long time for me to really wrap my head around and accept (I STILL haven't gotten there with Bill Paxton, for the record). He was so goddamn good, standing out with just a single throwaway line in a junky comedy - there aren't too many others that can pull that off. I miss him so much.

Your mileage will vary, of course, but for my money it's one of the better slasher spoofs - not exactly a must-see, but the only one I could imagine myself watching again someday. And it's accessible; none of the jokes require you to have seen this or that movie to appreciate (outside of the dirty pillows thing, which is given context anyway, the closest thing to a specific reference is that it takes place on Thursday the 12th, which requires only to be aware of a famous horror movie called Friday the 13th), so that's probably helped its longevity - I could show this to Will in a year or two and he'd probably find it funny without having seen any of the movies that inspired it. Not sure if that would work for the likes of Scary Movie, where your familiarity with specific titles is doing some of the heavy lifting. It was more or less worth the 25 year wait!

What say you?

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Blu-Ray Review: Tales From The Darkside: The Movie (1990)

AUGUST 26, 2020

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Confession: As a total viewing experience, I think I actually prefer Tales from the Darkside: The Movie to any of the Creepshows (at best, it's a tie with the original). The pacing of Romero's original movie is awkward thanks to the uneven length and ordering of the tales, and the sequel has a big ol' dud kicking things off that it never fully recovers from*. Darkside's framing story, on the other hand, has the rather fun idea of utilizing an old Grimm's fairy tale (Hansel and Gretel, sort of) as a vehicle to tell its other stories, which come from the likes of Stephen King and Arthur Conan Doyle. The celebration of storytelling is evident on both sides of the camera, and that unifying thread makes the film more fully satisfying to me.

It doesn't hurt that there are no dud segments, which is something that can really hurt an anthology film's shelf life - how excited can you get about watching something you already saw when there's a full chunk of it you dislike? Not the case here; the wraparound is fun and each of the three stories are both entertaining and different from each other, with no obvious, standard go-to monsters like vampires or zombies. Nope, we get a mummy (in "Lot 249"), a vengeful cat (in "Cat From Hell") and - whoa - a gargoyle (in "Lover's Vow"), and the best I can say about each one is that I could conceivably watch an entire movie about any of them, or at least something longer like, well, an anthology TV show (albeit an hourlong one like Masters of Horror; the Darkside show was 30 minutes, roughly the length of the segments here). On that note, in my original/more traditional review of the film I said the 3rd story didn't quite work for me because it wasn't long enough, but I've come around on it. The time-jump still feels a little awkward, but (maybe because I'm now a father?) the heartbreaking reveal makes up for it.

But while we're on the subject of how long things should run, I want to bring up - and praise - the full length documentary that's presented on the disc and makes up the majority of its bonus features. This used to be more common on Scream Factory's discs; sometimes they only ran 35 minutes or so, other times they'd be full length, but either way I always preferred them to the solo interviews that they have gravitated toward over the past few years. I know that it's probably more enticing to see a long list of extra features than a single/simple "retrospective documentary", but here's the thing: you'll probably end up skipping some of them unless you have all the time in the world and/or it happens to be one of your all time favorite movies. I got their Escape From LA disc a few months back, a special edition I've been hoping to exist for literal decades (the film was one of the first DVDs I ever got, and I never upgraded it even though it's non-anamorphic), and I probably only watched half the interviews, if that.

However, if they were all edited together into a retrospective doc, I would have dove right in. And in turn, if they took the usual route with this one, I can guarantee I wouldn't have been too excited about listening to the production designer talk for 15 minutes straight, but when she is adding more context to the things that director John Harrison and the KNB guys (all three of them, though Kurtzman is separate from Nicotero and Berger) are discussing, it remained interesting to hear her talk. That said, if you only like listening to actors or writers, don't bother; it's a very directorial/production-focused piece, as very few of the actors are on hand (basically only the two leads from "Lover's Vow", James Remar and Rae Dawn Chong) and except for Stephen King, who almost never does these things, all of the writers (Doyle, Romero, and Michael McDowell) are dead.

But even with those absences, it's still a very thorough look at the film's inception, production, and release. The doc is broken up into six chapters: origins, one for each of the segments, the post production, and final thoughts (sadly, SF neglected to offer a "Play All" function, but as their disc programming continues to be the low point of all their releases this wasn't a surprise. GIVE US RESUME PLAY YOU MONSTERS!), each running about 15 minutes or so and leaving few stones unturned. That said, don't look for any dirt - by all accounts it was a pretty easygoing shoot; the film was produced independently so there was no studio interference, the actors were all happy to do the work (this was Julianne Moore's first movie, and she is said to still be proud of it), and the budget, while hardly astronomical, didn't make them cut short their ambitions. The DP (who also shot Halloween 5!) and Harrison worked hard to give each segment its own style (particularly "Cat from Hell", with its crazy in-camera transitions), and hearing them break down their work alongside the clips just clarifies how fantastic the movie really looks, and makes me lament Harrison never got to do another big movie (everything else was TV).

They also break down the history of swapping the order of the segments, which was alluded to in the old commentary by Harrison and Romero (brought back here) but never fully explained. "Lover's Vow" was originally first, and "Lot 249" would be last, but test screenings showed that the audiences felt the film was peaking early, so they were reversed (with "Cat" remaining in the middle). However this resulted in some minor continuity issues with the framing segment, since Debbie Harry (!) and the kid comment on the stories that the latter is telling, so their footage had to be rearranged as well. I never noticed them, but now I know what they are - she lays down some flowers that disappear a second later, replaced with the full table of food (as she would be well along in her meal prep by the time that footage was originally meant to appear). Cue the "the more you know" gif!

The other bonus features are the aforementioned commentary (which is peppered with long stretches of silence, alas) and a new one by a co-producer that I haven't listened to yet. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you'd know I've been building a giant Lego haunted house while going through my Universal Monsters set, and I'm a few days late with this review as is (thanks also in part to this *other* Universal horror set, which came out the same day) so I had to skip it in order to finally get this up. But it gives me something to look forward to the next time I watch the movie and want to keep the night going!

What say you?

*There are only two Creepshow movies.

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Unhinged (2020)

AUGUST 23, 2020

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (DRIVE-IN SCREENING)

After Relic I swore off seeing new movies at the drive-in, but I made an exception for Unhinged, because it just seemed too fitting. To recap, in addition to what I feel is subpar presentation for the films themselves, the people around me at the drive-in are far too obnoxious with their headlights and late arrivals, making it hard to focus on the movie. Of course, these "villains" are (let's hope) not TRYING to be distracting, and apparently it's just too much to ask people to figure out how their headlights work (or whether or not they can be entirely turned off at all as long as the car is turned on for the radio), and I know they - like me - are only there because it's the only option.

So it just made sense to watch Unhinged there, because it's about a guy (Russell Crowe) who loses his shit when the driver behind him (Caren Pistorius) leans on her horn after he neglects to notice the light turn green, and decides to teach her a lesson. It's the same kind of situation at the drive-in - are these people jerks, as I see them, and need to be yelled at? Or innocently just trying to find some amusement in this shithole world and not even aware that their headlights are the ones making the already shitty screen look worse? Do they deserve my scorn, or should I cut them a break?

Had the movie dealt with that gray area, it might have been more interesting, something more along the lines of Changing Lanes. But the situation as presented makes it clear who is in the wrong. In real life, we've all been on both sides of this equation, and it's the same thing every time - when we are honking, we know how long the light has been on before they looked up from their phone or whatever. But when we're the one being honked at, we have no idea, and since we're all the heroes in our own stories, always assume the driver behind us was just being an impatient ass and it had been less than a second. That's not the case here, as we get to see that Pistorius' Rachel actually gave him plenty of time (ten seconds, I think?) before honking, and then he STILL doesn't move, so there's no gray area - after the first honk, we know he's just being an ass by not moving. Team Rachel!

Oh and also the opening scene has him murder two people and blow their house up, so it's not like a Falling Down kinda thing where the guy just snapped after too many aggrievances - he was already nuts. I had to wonder if this opening was a late decision, because it doesn't really fit much else about the movie and is only referenced in a few news reports. We don't see Crowe in the truck when she honks at him, and when he catches up to her at the next light, it seems like it's supposed to be a grand reveal for the Academy Award winning actor, as opposed to seeing him right off the bat, killing people in a crazed rage before apparently calming down and driving around the Louisiana suburbs.

Plus it's a sub-90 minute film with three credited editors, so it's not totally out of the question that there was some tinkering. Indeed, there is a curious lack of police involvement throughout the movie, as if someone said "Hey, cops aren't "in" right now and we're trying to make this the first movie people go see when theaters reopen - let's limit their involvement!" At one point Crowe murders a guy in broad daylight, in a cafe, and yet somehow no cops show up? The amount of chaos he causes during the day suggests huge manhunts would be ongoing, but we don't even see a cruiser parked outside of Rachel's own house, long after her involvement has been made clear (due to a threat to her son's school and an attack on her brother and his girlfriend). I don't think these filmmakers are that dumb (they would presumably set the film in the outskirts somewhere to explain the lack of police, not a traffic-addled New Orleans), so I'd be very curious to see if there was a longer/alternate cut at one point before real world events forced some retooling.

All that said, what's left is a total riot if you're of the right mind for B-movie trash fare. I laughed out loud several times at Crowe's carnage, finding it very much in tune with the sort of '70s exploitation fare I'd be cheering for at the New Beverly if it was open. There are two fairly impressive car chase/battle scenes with a respectable amount of flipped/crushed cars, offering the sort of vehicular mayhem we used to take for granted but rarely see anymore (and when we do, it's far more CGI-"enhanced" than the largely practical work we get here). There's even some gore, including a pretty gnarly scissors to the eye gag that would make Jason Voorhees proud (incidentally, Rachel's son is played by the kid from that terrific Wolfie's Just Fine video that was homaging the hedge trimmer scene from New Beginning).

Plus, Crowe barely ever plays a full on villain like this, so it was a hoot to watch him growl and chew the scenery. Almost nothing about the role required his talents or even his intensity - the diner scene is pretty much the only time he has full on dialogue, with the rest just being incidental, "Now you're gonna get it!" kinda stuff. But in a way that just made it all the better - on the page, it could have been played by some lunkhead from the WWE or whatever, but instead they got an acclaimed actor - and didn't class it up for him! I love that! Here's hoping he can get a meaty villain role in a major film again someday (I'm pretty sure this would have gone VOD had there been any competition for them to worry about).

I also love that the movie has what I instantly dubbed as "Fortniteshadowing". Rachel's kid is a fan of the game, and her, trying to feign interest in her son's hobbies, listens to him talk about his new strategy that involves distracting the opponent with what seems like an easy kill only to have a partner come at him from a hidden spot behind. There is, of course, no question that this will be exactly what she does later, but as I spent half the day trying to understand my kid's new obsession with Minecraft (and calm him down when he corrupted his save file and thus lost the house he had made), I was charmed by this kind of plotting. Plus, as always, I am happy when they reference a real world game instead of making one up that would mean nothing. Fortnite is good shorthand as "something kids do", and adds that sort of real world connection that these things often lack.

So it's a pretty fun "turn your brain off and laugh at the silliness" kinda movie, but if drive-ins aren't an option I implore you to stay home and wait for VOD, where you can also add alcohol to the mix if you so choose (only your passengers can do that at the drive-in!). Solstice's touting of being the first movie back, and even encouraging traditional theater-going, is pretty gross in my opinion, not to mention irresponsible. No movie (certainly not this, or Tenet) is worth risking your health or anyone else's if you happen to be an asymptomatic unknowing carrier, though given 45's continued approval I guess I shouldn't assume that people who know full well that they have the virus would care enough about anyone else to stay home instead of infecting them. At least you'll know which ones they are at the screening - they will be the ones who assume Crowe's character is the hero of the film. And if you CAN hit up a drive-in, please - bring a portable FM radio! You don't have to worry about your headlights OR your battery dying, and in turn will not have to worry about a real life road rage incident from the guy in front of you who kept being blinded by your ignorance.

What say you?

P.S. I listened to In Utero on the way in honor of this strings version of "Heart Shaped Box" - can they do the whole album like that?

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Universal Horror Collection Volume 6

AUGUST 18, 2020

GENRE: CLASSIC, REVENGE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Whenever I get a collection of movies in a set, I tend to watch them randomly instead of the order they're presented, depending on my mood (and also runtimes; an 80 minute movie is more likely to get picked than a 90 minute one). Of course, since I am basing my viewing order on personal preference, that means the set might peak early for me, and be a slog to finish up as all that will be left is a title that sounded the least appealing. However, in the case of Scream Factory's newest collection of old Universal films, the exact opposite happened - each movie was better than the one before it, so what started as a somewhat lackluster entry in this ongoing series of collections ended up producing one of my favorite of the 24 movies it's brought into my life since it began last year.

Or, in some cases, brought BACK into my life. The first one I watched was The Thing That Couldn't Die, which I had sort of already seen thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000. Of course, as is often the case, my memory of the film is much murkier than my memory of certain quips levied at it; I couldn't remember much of the plot beyond something about a head, but I can probably rattle off a dozen lines if asked ("He might as well turn it into a den!" is a particular fave, in response to a character digging a hole that was shown to be a perfect cubed hollow). As it turns out, I kind of missed Mike and the 'bots, as the movie is kind of a snooze despite only being 69 (don't) minutes long. The "greed destroys everyone" plot that you can find in any number of Coen Brothers movies (or even better, their buddy Sam Raimi's underrated Simple Plan) doesn't quite blend well with a horror film involving possession, as it's hard to tell who has been put under the influence of the disembodied head that serves as the "monster" and who is simply just an asshole.

Plus, the heroine (Carolyn Kearney) spends half the movie with a divining rod, which is an even more ridiculous concept than the aforementioned villain and is in no way interesting to watch play out on screen. The most interesting character is a conniving ranch hand who wants the treasure they find, assuming it has gold or something (anything but a living head, I imagine), so naturally he's killed off by the halfway point, leaving just the dull folks and a lengthy, confusing flashback about how the villain came to be separated from his body in the first place. It's got a handful of fun moments, but for the most part, stick with the MST3k version.

Things picked up a bit with my next pick, The Black Castle, which was from 1952 - the oldest film on the set (which is, overall, the "newest" of the sets so far, as the other ones focused on '30s and '40s fare). So old that its flash forward intro actually works for a change; I tend to hate this device, but here it sets up an interesting scenario (a guy is believed to be dead but is merely paralyzed and about to be buried - very Short Night of Glass Dolls!) instead of merely telling us who will be left alive at the end. The guy is Ronald Burton, whose friends were seemingly killed by a count (Stephen McNally). He wants revenge, and thus he does what anyone would do - makes up a fake name and gets himself on the list to join the count's annual hunt (of a panther, no less) so that he can snoop around the grounds and also take down the count.

He also ends up falling in love with the count's wife, the scoundrel, so that adds a wrinkle to the proceedings. The plot machinations are fun enough, but the attempts to sell this as a horror movie are misguided, to say the least. It's a straight revenge drama, with the only horror elements (besides the panther fight, which lasts about 19 seconds) coming from a few establishing shots of the castle and some brief turns by Karloff (as the count's doctor, who may be an ally for Burton) and Lon Chaney Jr as Gargon, a sort of early model Hodor who does the grunt work for the count. Apparently this was his last film for Universal; it's hardly a great one to go out on but it's not without its charms, and in today's world where the haves treat the have nots like shit, I quite enjoyed that Burton is constantly looking out for working people - he insists his page ride in the warm coach with him during the ride to the castle, arranges for their driver to enjoy a hot meal with them, etc. We need more guys like this in the real world! And if they steal some asshole's wife in the process, so be it.

I then moved on to The Shadow of the Cat, which was way more my speed from the getgo as it featured a meanspirited murder in its first few minutes. As is usually the case, the person was murdered by folks after her inheritance, but what they didn't count on was her cat witnessing it and taking revenge. The conspirators wrangle in some family members to help them murder the cat, but one by one it manages to cause the deaths of the guilty ones. Yes, it's goofy, but I found it delightful, and the cat itself was pretty cute, which was nice since many of them in these kind of things are hissing/ugly jerks.

What's even more interesting about this one is that it's actually an uncredited Hammer production, which historian Bruce G. Hallenbeck explains on his commentary track. Funnily enough, I suspected something was "off" about it right away, as it just didn't have that typical Universal feel, though when I saw Andre Morrell (as the murderous patriarch) and Barbara Shelley (as the only person the cat likes) in the cast I actually thought "did I miss a Hammer credit?", so it was fun to have Hallenbeck confirm that (because of various rights/producer nonsense that's too boring to explain here) the Hammer name didn't appear even though it was clearly one of their productions, in the vein of Scream of Fear or Paranoiac, albeit coming about a decade earlier.

And then finally I reached Cult of the Cobra, which sounded like the sort of thing I'd barely be able to focus on, but as you might have guessed from the intro paragraph, turned out to be what might be my personal favorite film in any of these sets so far. It's basically a Cat People knockoff, except with (big surprise incoming) a lady who can turn into a cobra instead of a panther and - more importantly, at least to me - working under the basic template of a revenge slasher! In 1955! At the beginning of the film, set in "Asia" (that's as specific as it gets! Way to narrow it down), a group of six GI's about to be shipped back home decide to infiltrate a cult meeting because they want one last spectacle before returning to the States. When one of them takes a picture (complete with flash, even though they were told not to take pictures - way to be discreet, jackass) and causes chaos, the cult leader puts a curse on them - one by one they will all die!

Shockingly, they come close to finishing the job (spoilers for 65 year old movie ahead!). Only two of the guys are left at the end - a 66% success rate is nothing to scoff at in these days, when body counts tended to be low. Also, because of its Cat People-y ways, the ending is a real bummer, as our hero - who already lost his girlfriend to the only other GI to live - had fallen in love with the lady, and is now alone again now that she's dead. Most old horror movies end with the monster perishing ("The End" coming up over a shot of the burning castle or whatever) or the hero couple embracing, but this ends on the poor heartbroken sod walking off, alone once again. Such a bummer, and not at all what I would expect from this kind of movie from this era. I kinda loved it?

Tom Weaver provides commentaries on all of the movies (save Cat, covered by Hallenbeck), and he's occasionally joined by others who will talk about the music or something (none seem to be actually WITH him - just brief monologues that were edited in) to break up his usual dad jokes and fulfillment of his historian duties (listing production dates, locations, etc). As always, I find these things more fun when they're with someone instead of the solo tracks, but his dedication to tracking down things like early casting choices (John Saxon was up for a role in Cult of the Cobra!) and where now long-gone locations were is second to none, and on The Thing That Couldn't Die's case he thankfully doesn't try to sell it as anything more than what it is, so that's refreshing.

I'm going to start celebrating the Halloween season a bit early this year, because I'm miserable and stuck inside so I'm hoping it will offer a much needed spirit boost, and I definitely plan to revisit some of these (actually I never finished volume 3, so I can start there) and mix them up with the more traditional classics (Drac, Frank, Wolfie, etc) and Vincent Price stuff that Scream Factory also covered a while back. Now that I don't have to go to work and won't be going to any festivals, I'll certainly have the time to rewatch more than I have in years' past, and these sets make for an excellent option since the films have that old school spooky charm I associate with the holiday. Some folks love to watch the scariest/bloodiest movies for the occasion, but not me - I want lighter fare like this!

What say you?

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You Should Have Left (2020)

AUGUST 5, 2020

GENRE: HAUNTED HOUSE
SOURCE: STREAMING (REVIEW CODE)

In an alternate 2020, where life is relatively normal, I use my AMC A-List to get a ticket for a Friday morning (or Thursday night if I'm feeling adventurous) screening of You Should Have Left and wonder why they released such a small movie in theaters, where it was likely to be torn apart by critics and ignored by audiences. Instead, in the real 2020, Universal and Blumhouse seemingly saw the same scenario I did and realized that it wasn't worth saving for theatrical release whenever theaters can open again, and instead gave it the same VOD fate it probably should have been destined for in the first place.

Don't get me wrong - it's actually pretty good! But it's not a "multiplex" kind of movie, even by the already smaller standards for Blumhouse fare. Their formula (one big star, an interesting concept, and a tiny budget) has yielded several smash hits and solid additions to the genre over the past decade, but even they seemingly know that a few of them don't have that extra bit of oomph that can turn them into Insidious type successes. They even distinguished some of them for a while with "BH Tilt", where the films would get smaller theatrical releases or just go DTV entirely, though it seems that moniker has been retired as I can't recall having seen it for a while now.

One such film was The Darkness, another low-key spooker starring Kevin Bacon, which seemingly suffered from some hasty re-editing and what was, at its core, a fairly dull Poltergeist knockoff. You Should Have Left, however, inches into Shining territory, with a family trio (Bacon, Amanda Seyfried as his second wife, and their six year old daughter Ella) living in an unfamiliar, isolated place that seems to harvest some kind of supernatural energy. The nature of the house reveals itself over time, with only the usual cryptic hints from locals to go on, so writer/director David Koepp (reteaming with Bacon for the first time since Stir of Echoes, an underrated entry in both of their filmographies) opts to have Bacon suffer a few nightmares in order to keep the scares coming while teasing out the "We have to leave this place NOW!" kind of proactive behavior until the third act.

He also gets a lot of mileage out of two mysteries involving his protagonists. One is that Bacon's previous wife is dead, and we're told that she accidentally drowned in the tub after taking too much of her meds, but Bacon's anger issues (he listens to self-help tapes and writes in a journal as therapy) suggests perhaps it wasn't just an accident - will Seyfried suffer the same fate? And that leads to the other mystery, which is that she may be having an affair, but is Bacon just paranoid and jealous? She is obviously much younger than him, something that comes up a few times early on ("Are you her dad?" a PA asks when Bacon visits her on her film set - on the day she is filming a sex scene) and never stops being an issue with regards to their physical needs, as she teases him more than once about his lack of stamina. Is she getting her needs fulfilled elsewhere?

SPOILERS AHEAD! SKIP NEXT PARAGRAPH IF NECESSARY!!!

Surprisingly, she is. And she doesn't even try to deny it when he finally confronts her directly about it. It's refreshing; far too many of these "is the dad going nuts?" kind of movies rely on pure paranoia, so to have it not only be a legit concern, but also just rip the band-aid off instead of trying to deny it and make him think he's crazy, was a nice change of pace. Plus, he gets in a line almost as good/biting as Closer's "Thank you for your honesty, now f**k off and die", so that's something. And the truth about his wife doesn't even make him all that villainous - turns out she really did OD and drown accidentally, but he could have saved her in time and just opted not to, as he wanted out of the marriage anyway and he hints she was terrible to him. Sure, this probably denies him a spot in heaven, but at least he's not a psycho ready to snap, which again is something we've seen many times before. As a result, Bacon's final scenes and actions come across almost heartbreaking, as opposed to yet another climax where a mother has to protect her child from a totally unhinged father.

Many people have noted that the film is ripping off House of Leaves, the 2000 novel from Mark Z. Danielewski, but that's - as usual - social media ignorance, because the movie is based on a different book (novella, technically) by Daniel Kehlmann. I haven't read either of them myself, but the things people were commenting on (from the trailer, because why watch something and get context?), such as the fact that the house is bigger outside than it is inside, were taken from his novel. If Kehlmann himself was cribbing from Danielewski, then fine, but blame him, not David Koepp. Anyway, these elements don't take up as much of the movie as you might have expected from the trailer - it's not until the third act that Bacon even notices things like "this room is 21 feet long when measured outside but 25 feet when measured inside". The novella, best as I can tell from the wiki synopsis* is more or less the same, though the previous dead wife stuff seems to be invented for the film, and their age difference isn't mentioned either which suggests it wasn't an issue there if it even existed at all.

Otherwise it seems pretty similar, with even small details in the film (such as the local shopkeeper being slow to retrieve items from Bacon's grocery list) coming from Kehlmann's text. I've always said that short stories/novellas should be more frequently adapted than full length novels, since there's often no need to excise so much material that makes the original as memorable as it is, not to mention room for the filmmakers to add their own ideas without angering the existing fanbase. Shorter works such as this can be filmed word for word without having to sacrifice much, and when the text is shorter, the filmmakers can use it as a foundation to create something closer to an original, like the Poe/Corman/Price films that use the story for a climax, basically, and add in an hour of exclusive backstory.

Long story short, it's a perfect fit for VOD. It's only 90 minutes long, has a few solid scares (Bacon waking himself out of a dream by jabbing himself with a broken bottle is pretty choice), some decent story turns, plus - vague spoiler that you can see on the trailer anyway - a particular wardrobe choice that should please anyone who has been a fan of Bacon's genre movies for forty years. And the man is aging nicely; in The Darkness he had his hair darkened and it looked weird, but here he's leaning into it with some gray showing, and I (far more grayer albeit younger) say go for it, sir. It's not a total 180 from what you've seen before, but the riffs on the formula held my interest more than the initial reviews had me believing I would, and for the first time in five months I didn't wish I was at a movie theater instead. Perfect couch movie.

What say you?

*I would have read it since it's only 110 pages, but they're charging 12 bucks for it on Kindle! As the author of a 600+ page ebook that costs five bucks, I can say with some authority that the publisher can eat shit. Call me when it's $1.99 at most.

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Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

JULY 26, 2020

GENRE: GHOST, HAUNTED HOUSE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

As any astute moviegoer can attest, there are times where you see a movie you don't particularly want to see due to circumstances beyond your control: your vote got overruled by your date or friends, your first pick was sold out, etc. And on those occasions, you're not likely to enjoy the film as much as you would have if it was what you wanted to see all along, which sucks because it might be pretty good or even great if you were watching it under more desirable circumstances. In some cases I tend to wait a while and revisit it to give it a fair shake - sometimes it pays off, sometimes it turns out I was right the first time. But I usually REMEMBER the movie, which isn't the case with Thirteen Ghosts - it's now been close to twenty years since my one, unwanted viewing.

And it wasn't a case of the other movie being sold out or whatever - it was in fact the "consolation prize" after a soul crushing disappointment. One Saturday night in October of 2001 my buddy Joe called me up in my dorm room to let me know that Halloween was showing at a little indie theater about an hour away. I couldn't believe it! This was pre-Fathom Events and what not - I had never seen my all time favorite movie on the big screen. The showtime was 10pm, and this was just before 9 - he said he was coming to get me and we'd have just enough time to get there if he drove fast. And drove fast he did, hitting the upper 80s during safer stretches of the highway. We get to the theater at like 10:02, praying they had trailers and such, running into the lobby with a breathless "Two for Halloween, please!"

The box office lady looked very confused. "We're not showing Halloween?" she said. We panicked, thinking we had the wrong theater, and this was 2001 so we couldn't exactly double check on our cell phones. Luckily I had called the theater earlier to verify Joe's claims, so I just hit redial in the lobby and listened to their recording. "Yep, we're at the right theater, OK, now here are the showtimes... (whatever non-horror stuff they were showing), Rocky Horror every Saturday at midnight, Halloween 10pm." I look at the lady confused again, "Why is your phone line saying Halloween 10pm?"

Then I look at their marquee/calendar above her, and it all suddenly made sense. They weren't showing Halloween at 10pm that or any other night - on Halloween *night*, they'd be showing Rocky Horror again, except at 10pm instead of the usual midnight. It was just a weird phrasing on the phone line that got misinterpreted by whatever service supplied showtimes to movietickets.com or whatever we were using at the time. So we left, dejected as any horror fans could be, and drove back toward our school, assuming the night was over. Halfway there Joe suggested hitting the usual multiplex to see if anything was starting, and that's how I ended up watching Thirteen Ghosts instead of finally seeing my favorite movie on the big screen.

Needless to say, I wasn't exactly keeping an open mind, and didn't like it all that much. Down the road a bit I penciled in the idea of renting (or buying cheap) the DVD to give it another chance, but never got around to it until now, when Scream Factory added it to their library. And now that I'm watching it when I *want* to, I can report that... well, it's better than my angry self thought in 2001, but not exactly good. The main problem is that it's too cramped, both on a technical level and a narrative one. After a solid prologue showcasing the capture of one of the titular ghosts, and then a fine credit sequence that tracks over time to show how a happy family fell apart after a tragic fire, the seams start to show. First we get proper introductions to our heroes: Tony Shaloub (whose wife died in that fire) and his children, a teenage (?) daughter (27 year old Shannon Elizabeth) and a little boy who has become obsessed with death. But they also have a live-in nanny, which is confusing because the nanny is played by Rah Digga, who is *younger* than Shannon Elizabeth (who is seen doing half the nanny kind of work anyway) and also their financial problems keep coming up, so how the hell do they pay for this woman when they don't even seem to need her services in the first place?

But all their problems seem to be solved when F. Murray Abraham - the ghost hunter killed in the opening scene - leaves them his house, because Shaloub is his distant nephew/only living family. They instantly go check the house out and almost as quickly, the kids get lost, which is where the movie's problems really start. While the glass house with all its clockwork gears and moving walls is very cool looking and well designed, it was also built on a single floor set, which means we never get a really good look at it (even when they arrive, it's hard to get a sense of how big it is). So when the kids get "lost", it leaves you at a disconnect, because there's no sense of how far they could possibly be, and Steve Beck directs almost everything in closeup too, so even basic geography of a single room isn't always clear, let alone how far anyone is from one another. It ultimately feels like someone trying to pass off getting lost in one of those cheap haunted houses they have in traveling carnivals, i.e. a large trailer that sets you in a single zig-zag path from entrance to exit.

And that's pretty much all the plot! I think it's actually told in real time from the time they arrive; Shaloub goes to sign some papers with the lawyer (the film's sole kill in between the first and last ten minutes) and the kids are instantly lost, at which point Matthew Lillard's psychic character (posing as a power company guy to get into the house and find some money he is owed) repeats most of what we learned in the opening sequence. It's at this point you might assume that the opening was added (or at least heavily reworked) to give the movie some action up front, and in order to make sense out of it they had to instantly explain some of the things that were supposed to be revealed later (even Lillard's re-introduction as a power guy seems like we're supposed to just think he's a power guy at first, as we see it from the family's POV).

Then it's just an endless "let's find the kids" sequence, which is somewhat hampered by Shaloub's strange lack of concern (he calls his own son "the kid" constantly, as if he was just some random) but thankfully peppered by brief appearances from the woefully underdeveloped title characters. On the DVD (and possibly the film's website at the time?) and this Blu there's a special feature where Abraham's character explains their backstories, and while we don't need as much info as he offers here, it might have been nice to at least have some of it in the film so it wouldn't feel so random. The only one we get any real explanation for is the Juggernaut, because he's the one in the opening sequence and someone has to give the "how evil is this guy" speech that there is no time for in the house section of the film. Some of the ghosts are actually benevolent, such as a kid who (the bonus features tell us) got killed by a real arrow while playing Cowboys and Indians with a pal, but there is no payoff for this within the film - the only one who directly helps them is their mom's ghost, and the real villain (Abraham, who wasn't really dead, shocking) is dispatched by the Juggernaut and the others instead of the human heroes.

The ghosts are well designed though, so at least they leave an impression during their brief, largely random appearances. In a fun nod to the original film (where Castle's obligatory gimmick was a pair of 3D glasses that would let you see the ghosts during those scenes), Lillard has spectral glasses that allow him to see where the ghosts are, though there aren't enough pairs to go around. So this means a handful of fun "I know you can't see the ghost but I can and you're the one about to get hit, duck now!" kinda moments, though by the end everyone either has a pair (Embeth Davitz' completely nonsensical character stops by with extras) or is so worked up by the house moving around and/or the human villains wreaking havoc that it doesn't really matter where "The Jackal" is or whatever. When the title characters are afterthoughts and it's a haunted house movie that never gives you a good look at the house... it's kind of a problem!

Ultimately the only thing really keeping it from sinking is Lillard, who is dialed up to 11 in nearly every scene and lands some good jokes ("Yes, the ghosts are in THIS house - if they were next door, I wouldn't give a shit!"), plus (spoiler for 20 year old movie ahead) gets a great death when he sacrifices himself to save Shaloub, in yet another scene that Beck's claustrophobic direction prevents from landing as well as it should. It seems like there was plenty of room for them to get away from the approaching ghost, and also Lillard's sacrifice didn't exactly get Shaloub out of their shared predicament (he's still trapped in a hallway with the ghost), but hey. Thought that counts and all that.

Scream Factory's blu-ray has the usual new interviews (including one that runs fourteen minutes for a guy who only appears for about 30 seconds in the opening scene) and two commentary tracks, one with Beck and the other with the crew. I listened to Beck's, but his constantly fuzzy memory (for example, he says Silver didn't pay much attention to Ghosts because he was working on the first Matrix, which is impossible - they shot nearly two years after Matrix came out in theaters, and months before the sequels started their own productions) had me wondering how many things I didn't know were wrong were, well, also wrong. The old making of is kind of fun though, since it's the only time you hear from Shaloub and Lillard (neither of them appear in new features, alas), as is the aforementioned explanation for the ghosts, so once again I want to give props to SF for always carrying over old features when creating new ones.

Oh well. I tried! It just isn't that great of a movie. It's watchable and has some good bits here and there (and the sound design, if nothing else, is a good way to scare off neighbors if you wish), and it thankfully isn't dated (the FX are largely practical, so no CGI blemishes that tend to sink a lot of films from this era, including Bones which was released the same day) but it's just too compressed in both its story and its vision to really come to life. House of Wax is and always will be the crown jewel of the company's offerings - hopefully Scream Factory gets that one down the road.

What say you?

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The Police Are Blundering In The Dark (1975)

JULY 7, 2020

GENRE: GIALLO
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

It's interesting that only one of the three films on Vinegar Syndrome's Forgotten Gialli collection is actually from Italy, since they're the ones who were responsible for the sub-genre (some even say if it's not Italian it's not even a giallo, which I don't agree with, but I guess they will be furious about this). The Police Are Blundering In The Dark is that one exception, a true Italian production (the other two were Spanish films) and, of the three, the one where Dario Argento's influence was most apparent. It's also the fastest paced of the lot, offering a murder in the first few minutes while the other two on the set took their time getting to the black gloved shenanigans.

It also has the best title, though it sadly has little to do with the movie, as the police don't really factor into it at all. The line comes from a newspaper headline about a handful of murders that have occurred over the past 18 months (the one in the opening sequence being the latest), and surfaces again when one of the film's heroes explains why he was trying to solve the case, but that's it. Since so many gialli feature heavy police activity (in Argento's films, where they were often co-leads with the innocent hero whose name had to be cleared) it's kind of funny that one of the few to use "Police" in their title has about as much police activity as a later Friday the 13th sequel, i.e. none.

Instead, it has one of the horniest heroes ever, which meant I spent most of the movie laughing at his caddish ways. His girlfriend is the movie's second victim, who is using his car to travel to a modeling shoot (all of the victims are models) and has to stop somewhere along the way when the car breaks down. She calls him to let him know and ask him to come help, but he's already in bed with another woman! When he finally decides to come help her (she's already dead, alas) he ends up at the artist's home, at which point the artist's maid throws herself at him. This leads to a hilarious sequence where they get interrupted and she tells him to come to her room, which he can't find so he is kind of just wandering around the house looking for yet another woman to cheat on his girlfriend with. He never manages to find her, but as a consolation prize he ends up sleeping with the artist's niece for good measure. All while trying to find his girlfriend! It's amazing.

As for the mystery, it's inadvertently made "difficult" by what I assume was a mistake in the opening kill. As is often the case, we only see the arm for the most part, swinging into frame toward the victim, but at one point the stuntman/camera operator/whoever playing the arm lunged a little too far and offered three frames of the side of his face. Later on, when we meet the artist, one could conceivably think they were the same person, and since he is confined to a wheelchair, it seems like it could be setting up a twist (he's faking his invalid state!). But no, it's just a bad mistake from the director/editor, and my (very close) second pick was the guy it turned out to be anyway.

It's also not particularly complicated or involved - he just wants to kill women, I guess. No lengthy childhood flashbacks to explain the trauma is offered, nor is the particular hatred toward models explained. Just a crazy guy, and that's that. And the camerawork is equally rudimentary - apart from a few long (still) shots where an entire scene plays out without a cut, there's nothing notable about any of it, no flourishes during the murders or vivid imagery. That said, the screenwriter goes for some mild Four Flies on Grey Velvet-esque silliness with the late reveal that the artist is working on a device that can produce an image of what someone is thinking about, which of course helps identify the killer. The hero ultimately doesn't really do anything himself, amusingly; you can cut him out of the movie entirely and it would play out pretty much the same way.

But then you'd be denied what might be my favorite scene! He goes to the hotel where his girlfriend was staying, and asks for the clerk to go wake her up. We know she's dead already, so watching the guy go check the empty room then come back would be pointless. Instead, we stick with the hero, who sits down in the lobby and watches the hotel's maid endlessly wipe down a table, rolling her eyes at this guy's intrusion. It's like a full 60 seconds that offers absolutely nothing, but I found it delightful - it kind of reminded me of the bit in The Prowler where the bored deputy just pretends to go look for the sheriff until enough time has passed to tell the caller he isn't in. So pointless/random, but so good.

Unlike the other films on the set, there's no historian commentary for this one - which makes sense given how obscure the movie is (this is apparently its first official home video release, on any format, ever). Instead, there's an audio essay that runs about 10 minutes, quickly covering the highlights of its participants' careers and offering some perspective on the film's merits and placement within the genre. It's nothing particularly essential, but worth a listen to get your money's worth, and I took extra enjoyment since the writer shares my opinion that the film is enjoyable without doing anything notable. It came out in 1975, so the sub-genre had already been well established (and if you include that year's Deep Red, gone through most of its most well known classics, in retrospect), but feels kind of underwhelming, so it kind of reminded me of those later '80s slashers like Iced and Berserker where they were just going through the expected motions for a sub-genre that was already losing its appeal. That said I still enjoyed it, perhaps because The Killer is One of Thirteen (the second film from the set that I watched) was kind of a snooze so it just looked good in comparison? Either way, I had a good time with this set and look forward to Volume 2, though all of them are definitely "for completists only" as opposed to must-see entries.

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Below (2002)

JULY 21, 2020

GENRE: GHOST, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

It never got properly released in the US, but Below has had a much longer shelf life than most Dimension movies, thanks to its stacked cast of character actors who you'll recognize (seriously, there's like, two guys in the movie I can't name) and unusual development process. The WWII submarine setting never changed, but it began life as Proteus, an "alien monster" movie that was to be directed by Darren Aronofsky (who co-wrote the script with Lucas Sussman), but eventually Aronofsky handed directorial duties to David Twohy, who rewrote the script to be a straight up psychological/ghost movie. Given the two filmmakers' careers, you'd think it would be the other way around, and the Pi guy had his psychological thriller turned into a monster movie by the Pitch Black guy, right?

Perhaps the lack of a monster (or any visually appealing antagonist at all; even the enemy sub that causes a lot of their problems is only glimpsed) is why Dimension buried the movie? It's very much unlike the rest of their fare, in that it appeals to adults and has nary a Creed song on the soundtrack, but I can see how it would be hard for them to sell people on seeing it since it's kind of a weird movie. It kicks off with our American heroes picking up a few survivors from a British ship (a nice inversion of the usual horror movie approach of having the protagonists board an unknown ship and get trapped there, i.e. Death Ship, Ghost Ship, Virus), after which odd things begin happening as they try to make their way out of dangerous territory. Could it be gh-gh-gh-ghosts?

Unfortunately it's one of those movies where something really big that kicks off the plot happens offscreen, which tips off astute viewers that there's a big twist coming, and while it's a pretty good one (spoiler for 18 year old movie ahead!!!), I wish Twohy and Aronofsky (who remained on as producer) didn't tease it out as long as they did. There's only about 20 minutes left by the time they tell us what we probably already knew, that our heroes were the ones who accidentally blew up that other boat in the first place (mistaking it for a German vessel), at a point where most of the characters had already perished thanks to an off-screen gas explosion. So it's basically a Tell-Tale Heart kind of deal, with the captain (Bruce Greenwood) and the other two guys who know the truth letting their guilt get the best of them, but instead of leaning into that they try to make it seem like it's the ghosts of the dead getting some kind of revenge.

So it leaves the movie in a weird kind of middle where it's not scary enough to be a good ghost movie because the "ghosts" are just figments of their guilty consciences, and not actual vengeful spirits that can cause major havoc. But by trying to get us to think it is, it reduces how much time we can spend knowing what several main characters already know and why they're acting the way they are (not to mention they know damn well there's no "evil Nazi ghost" or whatever), so whenever it feels like it's about to really escalate, it... well, it doesn't, because it can't, really. Everything needs to have a real world explanation, limiting what can happen, and even half of that stuff occurs off-screen. And several others - like a pretty solid mirror bit - occur with no one else present, keeping tension to a minimum as well.

Luckily, with so much of the horror stuff underplayed, the movie is (perhaps inadvertently) able to succeed as a standard submarine thriller; not exactly Crimson Tide level tense, but engaging all the same. There are some terrific set-pieces throughout, such as when an enemy ship drops depth charges all around and one possible dud bounces its way across the length of the sub's (submerged) deck, or when the ship's wheel gets stuck and ultimately shatters into pieces as they try to get back on course. You can't go wrong with a "we are running out of oxygen" ticking clock, and the looming threat of the enemy ship actually produces more stress than the ghost plot - the scene where they all have to be very quiet, only for a record player to go off and tell the enemy where they are, yields the movie's best scare.

And the cast! The biggest "before they were famous" type is Zach Galifianakis (who isn't exactly "funny" but stands out as a bit of a goofy dude), but Mindhunter's Holt McCallany, and a baby faced Andrew Howard also pop up, plus Dexter Fletcher in his pre-directorial days. And then you got the guys who were already established (Greenwood, Nick Chinlund, Jason Flemyng, Scott Foley, etc) and the always welcome Olivia Williams as the film's sole female character. Oh and the lead is Matthew Davis, who was one of those handsome but uninteresting guys they were trying to push on us at the time (Urban Legends: Final Cut represent!) before he found his true calling on TV. I wouldn't say his appearance is a perk of the movie, but it does offer a kind of time capsule-y kind of appeal for a bygone era when these kind of guys would get to star in big budget theatrical releases. All VOD now, gents, even before Covid-19 (and presumably after, if there is such a thing).

I've had the DVD forever but hadn't seen the movie since like 2003 or 2004, when it came to DVD. In my memory it was a little more Session 9-esque with regards to the "ghost" stuff, so I was kind of surprised to see how not only was the horror element kind of minimal, the movie might have even been better without it. The deleted scenes have two exciting sequences that Twohy (via optional commentary) says they cut because it was putting the movie into action movie territory (I believe he specifically mentions U-571), and I couldn't help but think that it might have been easier to go the other way and cut the low-key horror stuff and just make it a straight action/suspense film, with Davis and Williams working to try to get the crew on their side as Greenwood goes to greater lengths to protect his secret, as all of them are in danger. OR they could have just filmed the alien monster script. Either way, it's a movie that held my interest, but ultimately never really kicks into high gear. Probably why the blurb on the cover just says "Suspense and horror!" instead of anything more insightful.

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