Phantom Of The Opera (1943)

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

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

When I got the Universal Monsters Blu-ray collection a couple years ago during an Amazon sale, it was mostly out of a space-saving desire: my DVD versions (those green "book" types released in 2004) took up almost twice as much space as the boxed version, so I could get some shelf space back and improved transfers to boot. But when I took a look at its contents, I realized it also had a sort of bonus disc in the form of Phantom of the Opera, the 1943 version starring Claude "Invisible Man" Rains (or Claude "Wolf Man's Dad" Rains, if you wish). I don't think of him as one of the traditional Monsters, and I'm not a big fan of the Phantom story anyway, so I had never got around to seeing it before. But hey, it's in my collection permanently, might as well give it a look, right?

Instantly after hitting play I again bemoaned the film's inclusion in the set: it was in color! The only movie here that is, I think, making it stick out even more. I assume the fact that Rains was in two of their other films (the best two, IMO) gave it some connective tissue, but apart from the Robert Englund one none of these movies are full blown horror, and I kind of wish they used up that other disc (if one had to exist at all) to offer something like James Whale's Old Dark House or the 1932 Murders in the Rue Morgue. But oh well. The disc had a lovely bonus feature about the Universal Lot, which is the most fitting to put on a Phantom disc since the stage they used for the opera house was still there as of the supplement's production (ironically, after standing for almost 90 years, it ended up being demolished a year later).

As for the movie itself: eh. Again, not a big Phantom guy, though I must say that this one started off more intriguing than the others, as we meet the villain before he's the Phantom, which is unusual - the concept of his presence in the opera house is usually established at the beginning, filling in his history as we go. No, here we meet Erique Claudin (Rains), a violinist in the orchestra who is extremely gifted, but "not a good fit" or whatever. He is fired after working there for twenty years (part of his severance is a season pass, hahaha) and begins looking for new work, including trying to get his own composition published. And he comes close to realizing that dream, but a misunderstanding sends him into a fit of rage and he starts choking a guy who he thinks was trying to steal it. The man's wife picks up a handy tray of acid and throws it in his face, the choked guy dies, Claudin takes off into the sewers, and thirty minutes in, we have our Phantom!

From then on it's the usual stuff: Christine is too good to be in the chorus, gets a promotion when the headliner star falls ill, and becomes a sensation while the Phantom continues pulling the strings (some literal!) to keep her successful because of his obsession with her. A chandelier falls, a sewer rescue is mounted, a mask is torn away to reveal a hideous face... it's all the same, never that interesting to me story. And it's not even the lack of horror elements, because I've known about those for as long as I've been attempting to enjoy this particular story (my mom, when renting the Englund one when I was 10, told me they "turned it into a horror"); it's just a kind of thin story with a heroine that rarely does much, so there's no "in" really. And here, it weirdly gives us a reason to sympathize with him right off the bat and then doesn't use it to their advantage - he's just a murder-y jerk for the rest, and doesn't even go after the people he believes stole his music.

Rains is pretty engaging when he's on screen though; after he turns into the Phantom he's mostly seen in shadows (via cutaways that are never clearly defined with regards to their location in relation to the other people in the scene) for a while, and we only see the burn makeup for about nine seconds before (spoiler for 77 year old movie ahead) he is killed by dueling heroes Raoul and Anatole. Speaking of them, that's probably my favorite part of the movie besides Rains' performance - they're both smitten with Christine, for a usual love triangle kind of thing (the Phantom is not in love with her in this version - he was actually supposed to be her father but they dropped it), but the actors look alike as well, and as the movie goes on they play up the fact that they seem to be interchangeable. They both bring her the same flowers, they say the same responses to her simultaneously, etc. The final scene is downright wonderful as she turns them both down for a date, choosing option C (meeting up with adoring fans in the opera house), prompting the two men - bickering the entire movie - to become friends and enjoy the dinner together without her. Bros!

Back to the "Darth Phantom" thing though - even though they excised the reveal that Claudin was Christine's father who she never knew, there's a remnant left about how they both knew the same melody that was specific to their obscure small town, so it's a sort of sloppy removal and also makes the movie even less compelling than usual, since there's no reason for Phantom to be obsessed with her. And it's not the only "we changed something but not entirely" bit of confusion, as the opera staff begin talking about the Phantom as if he's already this urban legend in the place, in the VERY NEXT SCENE after Rains takes the acid bath! Someone even says something like "Oh, not those ghost stories again!", even though it's not only the first we've heard of it, but going by this adaptation's version of the story, the thing they're talking about (a missing mask) would clearly be the first thing he ever did there. My man wasn't going to start selecting his seat or prepping the chandelier to drop before getting the damn mask to hide his two-face.

Long story short, I appreciate the wrinkles they added to the basic narrative - honestly, this might be my favorite straight adaptation, for what it's worth - but this tale is just not for me, and I think at this point that will never change. I can maybe see myself giving the Schumacher one another look someday, if only for the now strange sight of seeing Gerard Butler in a "Handsome leading romantic role" to contrast with the glorified (and oft-AWESOME!) action junk he makes today, where he probably was second in line for Unhinged if Russell Crowe was unavailable. But otherwise, I think from now on I will insist on sticking to the ones that take the basic concept and move it into a mall or a rock venue (p.s. the Phantom's mask here was clearly an influence on De Palma's take) or something. The more they get away from Gaston Leroux's story, the more I seem to enjoy it. No offense, Gaston.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Ruin Me (2017)

SEPTEMBER 7, 2020

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: STREAMING (SHUDDER)

Having seen a few now, the "horror fans take part in a staged horror thing that turns out to be real" sub-sub genre has never produced any true knockouts that I can recall; the likes of Mimesis, Blood Fest, Haunt, etc are enjoyable enough but lack that extra bit of oomph that keeps them from being anything I would highly recommend. And now we can add Ruin Me to that group; the film isn't bad at all, but I kept waiting for it to kick into a higher gear than what it was offering. And to be fair, it did, but only in its final scene, which is, obviously, too late to change its status from "Yeah it was OK."

It starts off promisingly, and the plot was fine - a group of six strangers (two couples, two lone dudes) take part in a "Slasher Sleepout", where they're taken into the woods and menaced by a typical backwoods slasher type, having to solve puzzles in order to stay ahead of him and... win, I guess? Part of the problem is that the game is hazily described with unclear rules, so I was never sure if people were supposed to be offed or if it was more like an escape room setup where the group had to work together and win as a unit. Seems like having a bunch of strangers get together to solve puzzles as the "body count" rises would be a fine way to set up a whodunit slasher (with one person knowing they're the killer) and leave clues around to help them figure out who it was, but instead they have this confusing mix of slasher and adventure game puzzle solving that never really complement each other.

The thing they miss is that part of the fun should be trying to solve the puzzles along with them, and that seems impossible since they are so abstract (and honestly, probably wouldn't be solved by a group of newcomers as quickly as they are). For example, the very first one they come across has them find a random word on a board, then they figure out that they need to look at three trees from a precise angle to form words out of the various letters imprinted on them and adding the sound "tree" into the middle (so like there would be a S on one tree and a T on the other, so add "tree" to get "STREET" - not a real example, the movie's versions are all five dollar vocabulary words). Each word had a number on it, and the one they needed was of course a synonym for the word they found earlier - that word's number would open a combination lock elsewhere. Later, a puzzle is only solved by chance because one character happened to pee next to the tree that held the clue, as there was no other marker for them. Later they just go full blown Saw and force someone to risk drowning by attaching a length of chain to a block at the bottom of the ocean, so that one person has to be fully submerged in order to give the other enough slack on their tether to reach the key, which is further inland.

Expert I am not, but I've done enough escape rooms to be baffled at the idea of being asked to do these kind of things. See, for such a plot to really work, one has to easily imagine how things happen when the game (established as running for a bit, it's not a "grand opening" or whatever) is operating smoothly, so we can see how things are going off the rails. Here, I was never even sure how the game worked at all, so when something goes awry I was held at arm's length, wondering if that was supposed to happen. And that'd be fine if the characters weren't either, but they have veteran players in the mix! The two obligatory gothy horror fans who are obsessed with gore and laugh at the idea of people watching normal movies (you know, the type that only exist in movies featuring horror fans; pretty much all of the ones I know have well rounded tastes in cinema) are playing again because they didn't win last time, and get angry at the main girl when she solves a puzzle because... it ruins their chances, I guess? Is it like a Weakest Link kind of scenario where the gamemasters will come and kill off the players who aren't contributing to deciphering their complicated nonsense puzzles?

Now as far as the slasher element goes, well, unfortunately everything has to be plausibly waved away as part of the game, which means it's not particularly satisfying. One thing I really loved about Hell Fest, which has some of that "they wanted horror experience and now they have it" flair (but set against a normally functioning amusement park where only our handful of leads are in danger) is that they make it abundantly clear with the first kill that this is not staged, allowing us to settle into the reality and enjoy the slasher mayhem for precisely what it is. Here we are always kept wondering, distracting away from the scares and suspense - as do the characters themselves. At one point a character is killed (or "killed") in plain sight of the others, and they stand there wondering if it's real. If they're not scared, why should I be?

So it's not scary, but... well, it's not a particularly funny movie, either. There's a virginal Randy type guy who contributes the occasional chuckle but otherwise it's free of levity of any sort. Our lead is a recovering (or... still?) addict with some secrets to hide from her boyfriend, the two goth people are always angry, and the other lone guy is practically mute - not exactly a wacky group of folks who can be counted on to get us through this situation with some humor (which kept Blood Fest afloat despite suffering from some of these same issues). To be fair, the film's climax, where the lead's secrets come out, are pretty dark and upsetting, so the tonal shift would be jarring if we were laughing up until then, but a more gradual decline into that territory instead of basically starting there wouldn't have been the worst thing.

Nevertheless, if you're not too concerned with that sort of thing and just want a timekiller, it's, as I said, "OK." I didn't recognize any of the actors, which is always a plus, and given the obsession with modern trappings in recent genre films, it was kind of refreshing to watch a bunch of people run around in the woods again. Apart from some expected bickering the group gets along fairly well for a bunch of strangers, so while the two goth people annoyed me personally I didn't hate spending time with the cast in general the way I do with some other motley crews of this type. And, again (and without spoiling things) the ending kind of makes it all worthwhile, not only because of its bravado, but also because it could have easily veered into bad twist territory that we've seen before (specific examples would spoil things, but in this movie's honor I hid a hard to find clue somewhere in the review!) and refrained, keeping it grounded. I appreciate that.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Mikey (1992)

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

GENRE: KILLER KID
SOURCE: STREAMING (AMAZON PRIME)

I remember reading about Mikey in Fangoria (Dr Cyclops, if memory serves) when it came out in the early '90s, but despite my affinity for the evil child sub-genre I never got around to seeing it until now. But I'm kind of glad; after seeing so many underwhelming ones over the nearly thirty years in between, I could fully appreciate how trashy and demented it was. Given the respectable cast I figured it would be something more like The Good Son (i.e. violence-free) or, at best, maybe a Bad Seed kinda deal where only one or two minor characters are offed, but nope! Our boy (Brian Bonsall) racks up an impressive body count of seven, including those among the top billed performers!

And one of his weapons of choice is a bow and arrow, so it would pair nicely with the equally sublime Bloody Birthday, another one where the makers were too crass to allow for those aforementioned films' lack of carnage. In the first five minutes, Mikey has wiped out his entire family (including a younger sister), already topping those other kids' entire body counts just in the damn prologue! That said, as the movie proceeded I couldn't help but wonder if the opening was a late addition, because he gets a new family and acts like a normal kid for a while after, having fun with his new bestie (Whit Hertford from Elm Street 5) and being a good son, while Ashley Laurence's character spends a chunk of the movie trying to find out what happened to his previous family as if it was something we were supposed to be discovering as well?

If so I'm glad they did, because it told me right off the bat that he wasn't messing around, buying the movie some goodwill as it went through the routine: meeting the new family, trying to adjust, showing the occasional cracks, finally snapping. The plot is said to be about Mikey falling in love with the neighbor girl (Josie Bissett), but she doesn't even enter the movie for over a half hour and then they have to bond for a bit, so a little patience is required. That said, the final 20-25 minutes are just kind of insane as he wipes out a chunk of the cast, including a character I didn't think would get as much as a scratch, so if the middle sags a bit, the bookends more than make up for it.

It's got a pretty interesting cast, starting with the unusual distinction of John Diehl playing the most normal and wholesome character. He's one of those character actors that excels at playing hardasses and/or weirdos, but he's basically Ward Cleaver here, constantly being optimistic and smiling and trying to quell his wife's growing concerns that "something isn't right with Mikey" (one parent always has to be more aware than the other, it's evil kid movie law). And the wife is Mimi Craven, another Elm Street vet (the nurse in the original), as is Lyman Ward (Elm Street 2), which made me laugh when Mikey explains (to Ward, in fact) that Freddy is his favorite horror character. Well shit, if that's the case aren't you weirded out by how many people in your life resemble the characters from those movies?

(As a bonus, screenwriter Jonathan Glassner wrote a few episodes of the Freddy's Nightmares TV show.)

Another good thing about waiting so long to watch it was that it functioned as a fine time capsule. A character owns one of those clear phones that were so popular in the late 80s/early 90s, Mikey is able to kill someone with a boom box tossed into a pool (nowadays it'd be a portable bluetooth speaker that wouldn't harm anyone), and when a character gives another one a gun, they both take great pains to hide it from the other people around, because once upon a time having a gun in America wasn't so normal (indeed, the film's Arizona setting makes it even more ironic - as of 2010 you don't even need a permit there). It also displays some of the stranger home design choices of the era; at one point Mikey approaches his adoptive mother as she bathes in what seems to be a tub that is placed in the middle of the living room, with carpeting all around it for good measure. She scolds him for not knocking, but I can't for the life of me figure out what he was supposed to knock on since there was no door or sectioning of any kind. The '80s!

No matter when I saw it I'm sure I would have laughed at one of the death scenes due to what appears to be a miscommunication between the filmmakers and the actors. Mikey fires a ball bearing from a slingshot, and the ball flies toward the camera like a shot of one of the Phantasm spheres. I'm thinking it'll hit the victim and he/she will be momentarily stunned enough for Mikey to rush over and finish the job with a deadlier weapon, but nope! They cut to the actor slamming full force into a wall and then dropping to the ground, leaving a huge blood smear on the wall.If you were to just watch this shot on its own, you'd assume at the very least they were pummeled by a 50 lb weight or something, but when it's the result of a damn slingshot pellet it becomes high comedy.

Let's face it: the sub-genre is one where a bit of schlock is a requirement. Some are made with more class than others, of course (Joshua comes to mind as an example), but at the end of the day you have to have a twisted sense of humor to enjoy them. And with that in mind, there's nothing wrong with just going for broke in that department and making them as gonzo as you wish. When the 11ish Mikey drags an adult body across a room, you're either gonna be the kind of person who says "Oh come on, no kid could do that, this is stupid", or the the kind of person who is possibly still laughing from how ridiculous the murder was in the first place. I am, obviously, the latter, and if you are too then there's no reason to think you won't enjoy this B-grade junk.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Little Monsters (2019)

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020

GENRE: COMEDIC, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: STREAMING (HULU)

I just finished making fun of the existence of yet another horror movie called Spiral that is coming (not the Saw sequel, nor is it a remake of Adam Green's or the two (2) Asian horror movies that go by that moniker in the US), and now I'm back here to write up Little Monsters, which is NOT the Fred Savage comedy but a very R rated zom-com, co-starring Josh Gad from Frozen, the Disney one, not (again!) Adam Green's Frozen. You know, there are over 160,000 words in the English language, so it seems this shouldn't happen so often, especially when you consider all the movies using made up words like Shakma or feardotcom or eXistenZ. Spread the wealth! It's so obnoxious to have to include a disclaimer every time you mention a movie title, especially nowadays since many people are so goddamn ignorant that even the year won't help much (and in this new Spiral's case, it's one of two this year anyway).

Anyway, THIS Little Monsters is a pretty fun zom-com that benefited from a somewhat misleading trailer that focused entirely on Lupita Nyong'O's character, a kindergarten teacher named Miss Caroline who had to protect her class from a horde of zombies during a field trip to a petting zoo. And it makes sense - not only does she rule, but she was also one of the main stars of Black Panther, i.e. one of the most successful films of all time, and the star of Us, which would lure in the horror crowds that made that film such a hit. But she's actually the co-lead and doesn't even really enter the story for a bit - she has a co-protagonist in the form of Dave (Alexander England), a typical go-nowhere slacker who is now living on his sister's couch after breaking up with his girlfriend. Will this crisis have him learn to be a man and care about others?

It's not the most original role in the world, of course, but it was continually surprising to see how big of a presence he was in the movie considering that he is barely glimpsed in the trailer, coming off as some random dude who was just adding to the problems of sole lead Miss Caroline. Even though the movie starts from his perspective (had I not seen Lupita's credit, I might have thought I was watching the wrong movie) I kept thinking he was going to be offed early on so that she could take over as the lone hero, but no! I won't spoil his fate here, but he is certainly around for far more of the movie than the trailer made it appear, making the movie more suspenseful to me had the trailer been a little more balanced, or if I had simply never seen it at all since, as mentioned, he's the one we start the story with anyway.

But the real appeal is how damn funny it is, but with heart and a lot of great payoffs that make it a journey worth taking as a whole as opposed to something that generates a few empty laughs and little else. The film's R rating is mostly earned through profanity, and you can call me childish or stupid or whatever, but I don't care: adults using the F-word around or even at children will never not be funny to me. When Gad shows up as a lame children's performer named Teddy McGiggle, you know it's only a matter of time before he's revealed to be a child-hating asshole, but even though it's a bit of a cliche at this point, there's something about friggin Olaf suggesting eating a child or letting a disabled one be used as bait that made me chuckle or even downright guffaw every time. And England's character is too laid back to care about things like tact, so he will call another child a douchebag and then explain what a douchebag actually is to his five year old nephew.

(Side note: I honestly think this is the first movie I've seen that bothers to explain the term.)

The joke would wear thin after a while though, and thus I'm happy to report that the script isn't just a springboard for a bunch of unnecessary gags strung together to reach a runtime. The payoffs aren't exactly on the level of Shaun of the Dead, but they're in that kind of ballpark where nearly everything that gets set up early on has a payoff later. There's one kid who just keeps asking when they can play mini golf, even as zombies swarm around them - and he finally gets his wish near the end, using a little putter to whack zombies as they make their escape. The nephew dresses as Darth Vader and keeps trying to use the force, making it a wonderful little moment when he finally does (you'll see). Even the music selections have payoffs; knowing the lyrics to (of all things) "Shake It Off" helps sell a sight gag, and in turn, the introduction of an affinity for Taylor Swift yields another joke later about a different Taylor. It's just really well constructed, which more than makes up for the slightly stock character beats (does Gad's character selfishly lock another character out of a vehicle and leave him to die, even though the zombies are far enough away for there to be no threat? You bet!).

As for the zombie action, it's fine. They're slow zombies, thankfully (though fast ones seem to exist in this world as well; the characters refreshingly seem to be aware of the concept of zombies, which speeds things along), and given the remote locale there's a manageable number of them, so we're spared ugly CGI hordes. They cheat a big moment where Lupita takes on a bunch (cutting past it to her being covered in blood), but otherwise there's about as much as I expected - it's a comedy with kids at the center, so only a total moron would expect Romero levels of carnage. Basically, if you watch this for an "R rated zombie movie", you'll be disappointed - if you watch it for the "R rated comedy" that it actually is, you'll find there's a respectable amount of undead violence as a sort of bonus. Furthermore, except for Gad's selfish actions, there are no evil humans or anything like that - the threat is always coming from the zombies, nothing else. That always wins points with me.

I do wish they had shown the parents a little earlier though. These are five year olds who get trapped during a school trip, but it's not until it's already their bedtime (which is around six hours past the end of a school day), nearly an hour into the movie, that they cut to the worried adults, held outside by the military who has contained the area. First off, they're pretty chill considering the age of their kids (also, only the kindergarten parents are shown; other kids are there and aren't so lucky - where are THEIR parents?), but it was a distracting question for me for longer than necessary. A quick scene of them arriving at school to pick them up for the day and finding that they hadn't returned would have helped matters.

But that's just me getting into dad mode - seven years ago I wouldn't have thought twice about it, I suspect. The real draw of the movie are the jokes (I'm still laughing at a few choice bits of profanity, as well as the opening montage showing how toxic Dave and his girlfriend's relationship was) and the sweetness of how Lupita keeps the kids safe and calm. It's kind of like those bits in Life is Beautiful where Benigni hides the true nature of the situation from his son, except for a whole movie (telling them it's a game, telling them the blood is jam, etc). AND it makes the annoying "Shake it Off" (I love folklore for the record; I'm no hater) endearing, so it's got that going for it.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

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?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

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?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

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.

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

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?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

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.

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

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?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

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?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

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.

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...