Halloween Horror Marathon 2021

[AndyDursin]

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH
7/10



I picked up Shout's 4K Halloween remasters and started with this one because it's just so strange and should've lead to a series of self-contained Halloween anthology movies -- films that would've been FAR more potentially interesting than the Michael Myers retreads we received for decades thereafter. Alas, this movie's commercial failure squashed what producer John Carpenter wanted to do, which is unfortunate since there are engaging elements in this wacky outing that finds doc Tom Atkins investigating a mysterious, hugely popular Halloween mask maker (the delightfully ghoulish Dan O'Herilhy from Last Starfighter/Robocop fame) along with the daughter (Stacey Nelkin, "Serial") of a man killed under suspicious circumstances.

Dean Cundey's elegant lensing sizzles in this 4K remaster, which I picked up this week (for reasons only they can explain, Shout will send review copies of "Elvira's Haunted Hills" to outlets like ours but not major titles like this). The location shooting and Atkins' performance are entertaining, and it helps that Carpenter and Alan Howarth's moody synth score is their best of the series. The plot by an uncredited Nigel Kneale is promising but director Tommy Lee Wallace's rewrite, and his final product, is mostly a silly, pedestrian affair that waters down the concept into something of a clumsy retread of a hundred other genre films, including "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". As a parent I also found the nasty death of the family in the film to be incredibly mean spirited, more so than I did before, though it's also "part of the plot" -- it just could've been handled in a different, slightly more tasteful manner (under the circumstances!).

Still the film is fun for buffs and exists as a good-looking early '80s studio horror movie that was trying to do something off the standard slasher path of its era.

[Paul MacLean]

[AndyDursin]

Still wish I saw Gene Siskel reviewing this!

[Monterey Jack]

Hey, don't lose heart, Gill-Man, there are plenty of fish in the sea, and sometimes you need to get your face slapped a handful of times before finding The One...

-Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954): 9/10

-The Shape Of Water (2017): 10/10





Took in an amphibious double-feature of slimy, primordial fish-men, and the women who love them (or don't) today. In 1954's Creature From The Black Lagoon, an archeological expedition travels upriver in the Amazon in order to find the fossilized remains of what appears to be a major stepping stone in the evolutionary chain between fish and human beings, and find themselves at the mercy of the Gill-Man, a humanoid monster with webbed hands and toes, sharp-clawed fingers...and nursing a serious, unrequited crush on the lone female of the expedition (ripely gorgeous Julia Adams, the Jennifer Connelly of the 50s).

Tautly directed by B-movie specialist Jack Arnold, Creature From The Black Lagoon is one of the best-crafted of the classic Universal Monster flicks, boasting genuine suspense, a brisk pace and one neat monster design. And it's obvious that a young Steven Spielberg was taking notes when he saw it as a kid...a sequence with Adams -- clad in a spectacular, white one-piece bathing suit -- takes a dip in the titular Lagoon whilst the Gill-Man keeps pace below the surface was an obvious influence on Jaws, not to mention a sequence where it gets tangled in the fishing net of the expedition's tugboat and nearly pulls the entire vessel over. Set to an appropriately shrill score by the uncredited trio of Hans J. Salter, Herman Stein and Henry Mancini (which would become oft-reused stock music in the Universal library...the three-note "stinger" that accompanies almost every sighting of the Gill-Man would later herald the emergence of the Big G from the inside of a crumbling iceberg in the U.S. edit of King Kong vs. Godzilla), Creature is superior monster-movie fun, and holds up beautifully today.

The Gill-Man's legacy would be a scattershot one over the decades that followed, with a pair of quickie sequels (the fair-to-middling duo of Revenge Of The Creature - -sporting the film debut of Clint Eastwood! -- and The Creature Walks Among Us, an appearance in the terrific 1987 monster mash The Monster Squad, and an obvious influence on the character of "Abe Sapien" in the two Hellboy movies from director Guillermo Del Toro. Del Toro's love of misunderstood monsters has been a staple of his filmography over the last three decades, and he returned to the Gill-Man idea again with his romantic fantasy/horror hybrid The Shape Of Water, which earned him the Best Picture and Director Oscars in 2017. Sally Hawkins delivers an emphatic performance as Elisa Esposito, a mute woman working as a janitor in an early-1960s science lab who becomes entranced by the lab's latest acquisition, an "Amphibian Man" with soulful eyes and a hankering for hard-boiled eggs. She finds herself falling in love with the soggy lothario, even as the cruel Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon) wants to vivisect it to help with the U.S. space race and a kindly scientist --who is also a Russian sleeper agent (Michael Stuhlbarg) -- finds himself conflicted over his covert duties to his native country and his sincere desire to help the creature escape.

I may be cheating a little including The Shape Of Water in a Halloween horror marathon, as it's more of a sensual/emotional fantasy with glimmers of Del Toro's trademark blunt-force trauma (nastiest bit? Either one character ripping his own festering fingers off or another having a finger stuck in a freshly-made cheek wound and getting dragged down the street), but hey, it's one one hell of a "monster", and after being roundly rejected by his would-be paramour in '54, it's a pleasure to finally see him find the true love he always craved. Like a lot of Del Toro's movies, The Shape of Water is a film that balances the sacred and the profane -- fairy-tale innocence with irregular spurts of wince-inducing violence -- and its one that a viewer has to be in a particular mood to enjoy on its intended level of heightened whimsy (like a musical interior fantasy with Hawkins and the creature tripping the light fantastic), but if you're as big a fan of the filmmaker as I am, then this is truly a wondrous and remarkable experience, my favorite film of 2017.

-Kiss Of The Damned (2013): 3/10



A Hollywood screenwriter, Paolo (Milo Ventimiglia), Meets Cute with an attractive woman named Djuna (Josephine de la Baume) in a video store (a well-stocked video store? In 2013?), gets bit on the tongue during an impromptu make-out session through a chained door(!) , and soon becomes a member of the undead, the new couple slaking their sanguinary thirst with the blood of animals and a new, synthetic blood substitute provided by Djuna's actress mother (Anna Mouglais). meanwhile, Djuna's kid sister, Mimi (Roxanne Mesquida, who suggests a young Eva Green) moves into Paolo and Djuna's house and makes a nuisance of herself, offing house guests with little thoughts as to the consequences.

Directed by Xan Cassavettes (daughter of actor/director John Cassavettes and Gena Rowland), Kiss Of The Damned is somewhat stylish...and also slow, torpid and gives fans of vampire movies nothing new to sink their teeth into. It seems more into coming up with excuses for softcore sex scenes than any sort of interesting or unique additions to the vampire mythos. A very dull, uneventful film.

[Monterey Jack]

Virgins vs. Vamps in '85...

-Once Bitten (1985): 5/10

-Fright Night (1985): 8.5/10





Vampires stalk unwary virgins in the era of breakdancing and Reaganomics in this pair of vampire flicks. In Once Bitten, an inexperienced L.A. teen named Mark Kendall (a pre-In Living Color Jim Carrey, in his leading-man debut) finds himself frustrated that his long-term girlfriend, Robin (Karen Kopins), won't let him go all the way, but finds that his virginity makes him a prime target for an older woman -- much older -- in the alluring form of The Countess (Lauren Hutton), a 400-year-old vampire who needs the blood of virgins to keep herself perpetually youthful, and who finds that chastity has become all-too-rare amongst mid-80s teens. After getting a preparatory nip on the inner thigh (the first of three needed for the Countess to complete her spell), Mark finds himself sleeping odd hours, preferring his hamburgers very rare, and having his affections split between his high-school sweetie and the vampiric seductress who wants to take him away and turn him into the latest in her collection of undead boytoys (Cleavon Little, from Blazing Saddles, minces it up as The Countess' droll, out-of-the-closet manservant).

Given the 1980s obsession with horny teens gunning to get laid -- preferably with an experienced "older woman" -- there's a germ of an amusing idea in Once Bitten, but the anemic PG-13 shenanigans fail to take full, lewd advantage of the concept, and Carrey doesn't have much to do, honestly. He's wanly likable in the lead, but lacks the kind of masochistic malleability that would make him a comedic superstar a decade later. Had the movie pushed harder into making Carrey's transformation from noodly nerd to goth stud more pronounced, it would have worked better both comedically and dramatically. The movie, mainly, just isn't very funny, with some wince-inducing "gay panic" jokes involving Carrey's two wingman buddies (Thomas Ballatore, Skip Lackey) trying to sneak a peek at his private area to ascertain if there's any evidence of vampire bite marks that haven't aged well. There's one legitimately fun scene...a spirited dance-off between Hutton and Kopins at a high school Halloween dance for Carrey's conflicted affections, which boasts some great choreography and showcases Carrey's rubber-limbed elasticity that would make him famous a few years later. Other than that, though, the movie is mainly dull, needing a harder, raunchier edge.

Interestingly, while cruising looking for some action, Carrey and his buddies drive by a movie theater marquee advertising the same year's Fright Night, a far superior example of updating ancient vampire mythology to a decade that had put the corny rubber-bats-on-strings stylings of decades past on the shelf in favor of "Maniacs in ski masks hacking up virgins!" William Ragsdale makes for a winning lead as Charley Brewster, a teen with a loving -- if sexually reticent -- girlfriend, Amy (a pre-Married...WIth Children Amanda Bearse), and an obsession with a TV program dubbed "Fright Night", hosted by past-his-prime horror movie star Peter Vincent (a wonderful Roddy MacDowell). When new neighbors move into the crumbling mansion next door, Charley starts to notice odd things about them, like how they're taking what appears to be a coffin into the basement, or how that piercing scream in the middle of the night is connected to the disappearance of a high-end prostitute he witnessed entering the abode the day before. Soon, the new owner of the house makes his acquaintance...Jerry Dandridge (a suave Chris Sarandon), an ancient vampire who, like Raymond Burr in Rear WIndow, doesn't take lightly to Charley poking his nose into his business. Now, with the help of Amy and best friend "Evil" Ed (Stephen Geoffreys), they must convince a nervous Peter Vincent to take up his stakes, crucifixes and holy water and enact "Fright Night"...for real.

Written and directed by Tom Holland (who had previously penned the satisfying twisty Psycho II and went on to direct the original Child's Play), Fright Night is a movie that presents its vampiric tropes with ghoulish panache, and boasts a cast that plays the material with the right mixture of genuine belief tempered with a dash of 80s-era knowledge of just how all of the usual gothic cliches work, or don't (yes, it pulls out the old "hero's girlfriend is the reincarnation of the vampire's long-lost love" bit). It boasts top-notch makeup and visual F/X and is full of memorable scenes, especially one where Sarandon seduces Bearse on the dance floor of the obligatory neon-tinged 80s nightclub. Additionally, it knows when to play the material for laughs, and when to just allow scenes to be presented straight, giving the film a nice mixture of laughs and shocks (there's a terrific, bloody transformation sequence towards the end). It would be followed by a decent -- if little-seen -- sequel in 1989, and a surprisingly good remake in 2011, but the original Fright Night remains the best of the batch, and a highlight of mid-80s genre cinema.

[Monterey Jack]

-Halloween (1978): 9.5/10

-Halloween (2018): 7/10





I've written extensively about the original, and at least twice about the "second" Halloween II, so I'll keep this short and sweet...

The original, 1978 Halloween is one of those lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenons that nothing in the last 40+ years has never even close to matching, not the official sequels, certainly not the horrible Rob Zombie remakes, and not the myriad of slasher clones and rip-offs that littered multiplexes throughout the 80s and 90s. by now, it's so familiar that it's become a Golden Oldie, one that's been spun so many times that the grooves in the vinyl are beginning to wear through. In short, we need a new copy.

The 2018 Halloween (the second "direct sequel" after 1998's Halloween: Water, albeit this one discounting the events of the first Halloween II...is your head spinning yet?) is as good as any of the sequels has been...it's reasonably tense, well-directed and acted, and "gives the fans what they want", but the continued obsession with a movie that was so campfire-story simple is akin to a 50-year-old dude who has a wife and kids, yet continues to pine after the high school sweetie who popped his cherry decades earlier. Halloween '18 is fine, but does not do a thing that's unique or surprising. Is that "good enough" for series fans? I suppose, but as someone who never saw the original movie until 1998, this is not a franchise I "grew up with", and as such, this seemingly endless parade of sequels just comes across as middle-aged dudes trying to cling to stuff that scared them when they were twelve.

[Monterey Jack]

Whuh-HA, whuh-HA, whuh-HA...!

-It (1990): 7.5/10



A spree of child murders and disappearances has swept the small Maine town of Derry...and it's connected to a similar spree that occurred exactly thirty years earlier. Now, the concerned local librarian (Tim Reid) is tasked with contacting the other six members of the "Losers Club" that formed in the summer of 1960, who have scattered to the four winds in the three decades since. Seems like the seven children (played in the 1960 segments by the likes of the late Jonathan Brandis, a young Seth Green and Emily Perkins, who would later appear in the terrific werewolf movie Ginger Snaps) had to do battle with the evil force that pervaded the very core of Derry since its inception centuries earlier...one that most often manifests itself in the former of a deceptively jovial clown who calls himself Pennywise (a fantastic Tim Curry), but can also present itself as the deepest, darkest fear in each of their hearts. Now, the fortysomething Losers Club (including the likes of Richard Thomas, Annette O'Toole and the late 80s sitcom duo of John Ritter and Harry Anderson) has to return to their old childhood stomping grounds in order to stomp their old phobias into the ground once and for all, and put an end to Pennywise's centuries' worth of death and terror.

Effectively condensed from the gargantuan doorstop of a novel by Stephen King by screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen (Carrie), It is a Cliff's Notes take on King's dense, event-crammed text, and being a network television miniseries from the early 90s can only offer a hint of the R-rated EC Comics grue that suffused the novel. And yet it still works very well as a "training wheels" intro into King's story for younger viewers, who will certainly attach themselves to the film's kid protagonists (played by a talented cast of youngsters) in the first half. It's in the second half that things get a bit sketchy. Oh, the adult cast acquit themselves perfectly well, selling their belief in the frequent absurdity coughed up by King's fertile but occasionally bonkers imagination and convincing their viewer that they are old friends happy to get re-acquainted despite the grave nature of their reunion. But what should be the slam-bang climax -- with past and future colliding in a last-time-pays-for-all confrontation with the true form that Pennywise takes -- is hampered severely by the seriously substandard F/X. The design of "It"'s final form is lame, and the articulation of It is stiff and unconvincing. It's not even a case of the F/X "not holding up"...they looked like garbage even thirty+ years ago. It's a shame, as the rest of the film still works well. A pair of recent big-screen movies (released in 2017 and '19) managed to deliver the modernized F/X goods far better, even if those films have their own narrative flaws. Still, whenever Curry is on-screen -- all gnashing teeth and thick, guttural chuckles -- the film snaps to life, and the overall three+ hour spread goes by surprisingly fast.

[Monterey Jack]

Just watchin' a Coppola horror flicks, here...

-Dementia 13 (1963): 6/10

-Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992): 7.5/10





Like most great directorial talents, Francis Ford Coppola had to start somewhere, and like a lot of his peers, his humble beginnings were through the auspices of schlock horror producer/director Roger Corman. Coppola's debut feature, 1963's Dementia 13 (which he also scripted), is a tawdry example of post-Psycho early-60s horror, a B&W chiller about a woman, Louise Halloran (Luana Anders) determined not to get get cut out of the will of her husband John's (Peter Read) domineering mother (Eithne Dunne), even after he suffers a fatal heart attack in a rowboat. She dumps the body in the drink, concocts a fake letter to explain his absence, and starts to worm her way into the family's good graces and stumbles into a mystery involving the mysterious drowning death of the family's youngest daughter years earlier. Oh, and there's an ax murderer running around...

Modest piece of suspense filmmaking is technically crude (check out the blatant boom mike shadow crossing the chests of the actors during one lakeside conversation), but it's not half-bad, as far as these kinds of things go. You won't see much of Coppola's future genius from his 70s and 80s prime here, but it's an agreeably nasty piece of work. The new Blu-Ray premieres a new director's cut shorn of graphic additional sequences shot by director Jack Hill, meaning the final running time comes down to a scant 68 minutes(!). This is little more than seeing a great director's testing grounds, but it's worth a look.

On the other end of the budgetary scale, 1992's lavish Bram Stoker's Dracula represents Coppola at the peak of his technical prowess, aided by some of the best technicians that money could buy at the time. This studiously overwrought take on the Stoker novel offers a more romantic view of the ancient vampire (played, in a variety of physical guises, by a terrific Gary Oldman, from a wizened, cackling Emperor Palpatine-esque crone to a courtly Victorian gentleman to hideous wolf and bat creatures). Here, he's a Transylvanian nobleman circa 1462 who comes home from war to find her beloved young wife (WInona Ryder) has taken her own life, believing him dead on the battlefield. Enraged, he proclaims to live through his own death and let his hatred burn down through the centuries. Now, in 1897 London, he has come home to roost, purchasing land from Jonathan Harker (a riotously stilted Keanu Reeves) even as he becomes enraptured by the portrait of Harker's young betrothed, Mina (Ryder again), knowing in his blackened heart that he's found his lost love after centuries' worth of torment.

Working from a screenplay by James V. Hart (Hook), Bram Stoker's Dracula is a film brimming over with surface pleasures, a sumptuous feast of opulent production design, cinematography, costuming, makeup and music (by Wojciech Kilar) that's a consistent bath for the eyes and ears and that copped three Oscars. Yet, the plot is scattershot and murky, a melange of shock horror effects, florid romanticism, slam-bang action (there's a climatic carriage chase through the Carpathian mountains that's right out of Raiders Of The Lost Ark) and arch, often unintentional humor that's never once boring, yet never allows the audience to settle into proper groove. The centerpiece of the film -- Drac's courting and seduction of Mina -- is the best element of the film, with Oldman and Ryder generating palpable tragic/erotic chemistry. Less satisfying is Anthony Hopkins' performance as Drac's old rival, Abraham Van Helsing, who generates the film's biggest laughs with his hilarious lack of tact in delivering grim news. You can sense Coppola -- coming off a string of costly box office failures throughout the 80s -- was determined to "give the people what they want", and thus threw in everything and the kitchen sink in order to appease every member of the audience. There's literal geysers of gore, a sexually charged scene with Reeves accosted by Drac's trio of voluptuous vampire brides (including a young Monica Bellucci), whiz-bang F/X and astonishing makeup appliances by Greg Cannom, all rammed together like Lego bricks that don't quite fit, but pounded into place by an impatient toddler. I can't think of a movie with so much admirable craftsmanship that I can;t quite love, or one with such good performances (Oldman, Ryder) buttressed by over-and-underacting that runs the gamut from logy to hysterically over-the-top. It's lustrous eye candy, but it glances off the greatness it aspires to.

-Edge Of The Ax (1989): 4/10



A rash of ax murders plagues a small California mountain community (committed by a figure concealed by a bone-white mask that's like Michael Myers sans hair and mouth) in this thoroughly routine late-period exercise in 80s slasher cinema. There's absolutely nothing to discuss about this one, which is far from the worst of its genre (there are some good makeup/gore effects, especially a nicely-done cadaver discovered hanging in the attic of the local tavern), but offers no real scares, no atmosphere, and ends with a wearyingly obvious "surprise" revelation. The only amusing aspect is the primitive depiction of the connectivity of late-80s computer technology (accompanied by an intrusive voiceover, as if the producers thought the audience couldn't read simple one-sentence questions and answers).

[AndyDursin]

HALLOWEEN KILLS
4/10

Less a movie than a 105-minute trailer for the third (and presumably final) entry in this contemporary trilogy, director-writer David Gordon Green gives us a real "pffft" of a feature here that spends 2/3 of its running time introducing us to a variety of characters -- only to kill them off -- while leads Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer and Andi Matichak sit in a hospital room. Eventually the stars of this movie do show up to do something -- well, at least 2 of them -- while Curtis literally spends THE ENTIRE FILM in that hospital bed, opposite a recovering Will Patton, who I assume will recover enough to get out of bed and play a role in HALLOWEEN ENDS.

That leaves the rest of this wholly unnecessary film to be comprised of Myers murder sequences, mostly played so broadly (with comics like Lenny Clarke and MadTV alumnus Michael McDonald on the death list) that the scenes start comically before becoming gory -- yet at no point are they ever scary or suspenseful.

There are numerous cameos and reasonably fun digital recreations of Donald Pleasence to go around, but the story is non-existent, with the entire movie one big set-up for the third sequel. And one can easily stay home (as I did), watch this on Peacock and still feel the groans from viewers when the movie's title flashes on-screen at the end -- a veritable middle finger to people who paid to see a functioning film with a beginning, middle and end.

[Monterey Jack]

Disco-era dementia...

-Eyes Of Laura Mars (1978): 7.5/10

-Dressed To Kill (1980): 9/10





A pair of lurid depictions of the Big Apple at its late-70s wormiest were on tap today. In Eyes Of Laura Mars, Faye Dunaway portrays the titular character, a controversial photographer who specializes in stylized depictions of murder who starts to see hazy psychic flashes through the viewpoint of a killer...one who seems to be working his way through a list of people close to her. With the help of a shaggy NYC detective (a monobrowed Tommy Lee Jones), can Laura stay one step ahead of the murderer who has his sights on -- and in -- her?

Directed by Irvin Kerschner (whose next film would be The Empire Strikes Back!), Eyes Of Laura Mars -- adapted from a story treatment by John Carpenter by David Zelag Goodman -- is a film with a clever premise that leads to some well-staged suspense sequences, like one where Laura, pursued by the killer through a warehouse, sees herself from the back as she flees blindly. There's also a terrific supporting cast, like Rene Auberjonois as Laura's bitter pill of a talent agent (his split-second "impersonation" of Lloyd Bridges provided the movie's biggest laugh), Brad Dourif as Laura's ex-con chauffeur, and Raul Julia (underutilized) as her cad of an ex-husband. While not great, its flavorful depiction of a grimy, dangerous New York that hasn't existed for decades makes for a fascinating time capsule.

Mining a similar NYC stalker vein, Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill represents the auteur as his most feverishly suspenseful and technically adroit. The tale of a sexually-frustrated housewife (Angie Dickinson), her brainiac son (Keith Gordon), a street-smart streetwalker (Nancy Allen) and a droll psychiatrist (Michael Caine) -- all of whom find themselves threatened by a razor-wielding blonde with wraparound shades and a slick trenchcoat -- Dressed To Kill is a film brimming over with De Palma's usual technical trickery and narrative obsessions (doubling of characters and events, split-screens, voyeurism, a mixture of sadism and sexuality). While not perhaps his very best film, no other movie in his filmography offers up a better slice of all of his recurring tics (it's the movie I would show to someone who had never seen a De Palma movie, just as the perfect example of what to generally expect from the rest of his filmography). It's violent, stylish, and mordantly funny, set to the strains of a lilting Pino Donaggio score.

-Halloween Kills (2021): 5/10



The only thing the latest Halloween film kills is time between sequels. Oh, it's technically as well-made as the first in this new "trilogy" of sequels to John Carpenter's original, and the flashbacks to Halloween of '78 offer some fun digital recreations of a series icon no longer with us, but the majority of it just basically rehashes 1981's Halloween II, right down to top-billed Jamie Lee Curtis given nothing to do but recuperate from the wounds she received in the last movie while the concerned Haddonfield citizens (led by Anthony Michael Hall as a grown-up Tommy Doyle, Laurie Strode's babysitting charge four decades earlier) are incensed into a mob determined to deliver some Frontier Justice and end Michael Myer's reign of terror once and for all.

The film also sends some mixed messages, like the mob leading to the death of an "innocent" escaped lunatic being treated as a sobering "What have we become...?" moment...when the reappearance of said mob at a critical moment at the climax in clearly intended to make the audience cheer! Mainly, this is a sadistic chore of a move, only existing to movie chess pieces across a board while stuffing the frame with "awesome kills" that become more ornate -- and tedious -- as the film progresses. Thank goodness the 2018 movie functions perfectly well as a stand-alone experience, as I doubt most fans will be satisfied with this meat grinder of a middle (finger) chapter.

-Slaughter High (1986): 3/10



An act of ritualistic sexual humiliation -- and subsequent scarring -- of a science nerd (Simon Scuddamore) leads to the group of mean-spirited April Fool's pranksters (including gorgeous 70s Hammer favorite Caroline Munro) responsible being offed one by one at a high school reunion five years later in the crumbling hallways and moldering classrooms of their long-since-abandoned alma mater.

Typical 80s slasher junk, with a couple of amusingly conceived deaths (including the ultimate example of mid-coitus "rocking the headboard"), but no likable characters, poor acting, and yet another dumb, unnecessary twist ending.

[Monterey Jack]

No theme today...it's all random as hell.

-What Lies Beneath (2000): 8/10



Stylish supernatural mystery about a middle-aged couple, Norman and Claire Spencer (Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer), who have successfully seen off their daughter to college. STruck with an acute case of Empty Nest Syndrome, Claire putters around their currently mid-renovation house located next to a picturesque Vermont lake, attempting to raise herself out of her funk, when the new neighbors (James Remar and Miranda Otto) catch her eye. The two engage in heated arguments in the front yard...and even more heated make-up sex after dark. But when Claire witnesses the husband packing a mysterious bundle into the trunk of his car one night, and the wife goes mysteriously missing, she starts to suspect foul play, despite the increasingly irate protestations by Norman, currently embroiled in a scientific paper that could make or break his career and who finds Claire's claims to be not only ludicrous, but distracting. Meanwhile, Claire is also being beset by visions of specters, like how the bathroom keeps filling up with ominous clouds of steam, or the barely-glimpsed face in the lake...

Directed by Robert Zemeckis and scripted by actor Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson...!), What Lies Beneath is a pitched homage to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, with bits cribbed from Rear WIndow, Vertigo and Psycho (Alan Silvestri's insistent score taking a page from Bernard Herrmann), and stands, over twenty years after its release, as the kind of classy, star-driven studio thriller that's become all-but-extinct in the era of megabuck F/X spectacle. It all comes down to casting...Pfeiffer, with her porcelain loveliness, makes for an ideal heroine, sussing out the bones of a mysterious disappearance from the past and how it connects to her current hauntings and working up a convincingly fragile sense of mounting hysteria. Ford, in one of the last fully-awake performances of his career, makes Norman's increasing exasperation over his wife's deteriorating state of mind palpable. It all culminates in a wham-bang climax, Zemeckis shooting the works with one of his trademark Rube Goldberg finales that, frankly, mucks up the film's slow & steady build to reach for shockaroo effects, but he's a wizard at this sort of thing, and the film's lauded bathtub climax induces genuine squirms of anxiety. It's ultimately not a great movie (the Rear WIndow portion of the screenplay just seems to be there to mark time), but it's the kind of well-made meat & potatoes thriller they just don't make anymore, at least with this level of star power and craftsmanship.

-Ready Or Not (2019): 8/10



Fiendishly amusing horror/comedy about a young woman, Grace (Samara Weaving), who, upon her wedding day to Alex (Mark O'Brien), meets the rest of the Le Domas clan (including doting mater and pater Andie MacDowell and Henry Czerny) at their luxe mansion, wherein, in a tradition carries down for decades, she must play a game picked at random from a deck of cards. Grace gets "Hide & Seek"...and finds herself hunted down mercilessly by the Le Domas family, in order to appease a curse that will purportedly strike them all down at sunrise.

Co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (who also took the reins of the Scream franchise from the late Wes Craven for the forthcoming Scream 5), Ready Or Not is a film with a vicious edge, but also brimming with off-center humor, and Weaving holds the film together, progressing from I-can't-believe-this terror to take-charge gumption, trading in her heels for high-top sneakers as she takes the fight to her tormentors (she's the most badass bride since Uma Thurman). What really makes the film, though, is the bonkers climax, capped by one of the funniest final lines in recent memory. Gory, stylish and consistently amusing, Ready Or Not is big time fun.

-When A Stranger Calls (2006): 4/10



Hey, let's take the best part of a semi-classic horror movie, and stretch it to feature length! That's the premise of this weak remake of the 1979 favorite, which is not a great film, but pretty much everyone agrees that the white-knuckle opening 15 minutes is worth the price of admission. In this blah retelling, Cute Camilla Belle plays high school student Jill Johnson, who, as punishment for going over her allotted number of cell phone minutes, is assigned by her disapproving father (Clark Gregg) to babysit for an affluent couple in their lavishly-designed if remote lakeside home. But, soon after she arrives, Jill starts receiving a series of ominous phone calls, some consisting of nothing but heavy breathing, others asking if she's "checked the children" lately...

Directed by beer-commercial hack Simon West, When A Stranger Calls is great Architecture Porn, with the cavernous, isolated abode a great setting for suspense, and the elaborate sound design works overtime to keep the audience in a state of anxiety, and yet it's logy and padded, proving that the sheer brevity of that opening sequence from the original (which also inspired the classic opening sequence from Wes Craven's Scream) was intrinsic to its effectiveness. By stretching it out over (barely) feature-length, the film's tension keeps flatlining, with West introducing elements like Jill's high school BFF (a pre-Arrow Katie Cassidy), who's only there to get PG-13'ed to death off-screen. The film looks slick, but it's empty, drawn-out and fairly boring.

[Monterey Jack]

There are numerous cameos and reasonably fun digital recreations of Donald Pleasence to go around

Incredibly, that isn't some CGI "deepfake" recreation of Pleasance...it was an actual actor with makeup. Could have fooled me...

[AndyDursin]

Looked digital to me, like they did something to the guy's face even though he obviously looks like him. Either way it was one of the few things in that movie I found amusing!

[Edmund Kattak]

Maybe they did something similar to this.

[Monterey Jack]

So bad...so good...

-Eegah (1963): 1.5/10

-Lifeforce (1985): 5/10





Took in a pair of notoriously bad "horror" movies today, that illustrate the pitfalls of low and high budget filmmaking. 1963's Eegah tells the tale of a pair of hot-rodding teens, Roxy and Tom (Marilyn Manning and Arch Hall. Jr.) who run across a prehistoric man (7'2'' Richard Kiel, fifteen years before he first threatened Roger Moore's 007 as the metal-mawed villain Jaws) in the hills near their California home. Roxy's doting dad, Mr. Miller (Arch Hall, Sr., who also directed, billed under the pseudonyms "Nicholas Merriwether" for directing and "William Waters" for acting) hoofs it into the hells hoping to make the archeological find of the era, but runs afoul of the hulking lug, meaning Roxy and Tom must stage a rescue attempt, even as the grunting "Eegah" finds himself smitten with Roxy's charms.

One of the more notorious drive-in cheapies ever made, Eegah (the name written in blood...!) is, even by the standards of low-budget teen-oriented "horror" fare of the era, notably, amusingly inept. It's a series of painfully protracted sequences of meandering through the desert, dragging around in a dune buggy ("My tires are filled with water...!"), and Kiel trying manfully to suggest a gentle soul inside of his hulking frame. It's all broken up with horrendous musical numbers by Arch Hall, Jr., which are equally side-and-ear-splitting (the highlight being the warbly poolside love ballad "Vicky"). Immortalized by one of the funniest episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 ever produced (which described pug-nosed Arch Hall, Jr. as resembling everything from a "Cabbage-patch Elvis" to "A cyst with teeth and hair"), Eegah is still pretty funny even by itself, and the recent 4K(!) Blu-Ray transfer allows one to "savor" each and every tacky frame that blows away decades' worth of worn-out public domain TV prints.

If Eegah was a film with a production budget of approximately fifty dollars, 1985's Lifeforce, with a luxe-for-the-day budget of $25 million, is proof positive that money can't buy talent. Astronauts tasked with a flyby of Halley's Comet discover a derelict 150-mile long spacecraft hidden in the comet's tail. They enter to discover the ship's long-dead occupants -- batlike alien beings left dessicated husks by decades' worth of exposure to outer space -- as well as three crystalline chambers, each containing what appears to be a nude humanoid figure. They take the three specimens of apparent humanity back to Earth, only to discover the lone female amongst the trio (stunning Mathilda May, acting in large part in her birthday suit) is a soul-sucking space vampire! Soon, the "Space Girl" is Hoovering up souls left and right from (rightfully!) bedazzled males as she spreads a contagion that reduces her victims to dried-out corpses and the entirety of London to a burned-out shell.

Directed by Tobe Hooper (in the first of his 80s Golan-Globus "Cocaine Trilogy"), Lifeforce is, by any rational appreciation, utterly ridiculous and awful, full of risible acting (especially Overacter's Hall Of Fame member Steve Railsback as the leader on the space mission that brought the vampire plage from beyond the stars home), overproduced F/X nonsense and a decided lack of coherence. And yet...this is the kind of "bad movie" that a specific type of horror fan will savor. WHere else can you see a gorgeous, nude space vampire French Kissing victims to death, Railsback making out with a young Patrick Stewart, London erupting into riot-driven chaos, and all set to a rousing, propulsive orchestral score by Henry Mancini? You would never see a movie this interestingly bad made in this day and age -- at least with this level of genuinely lavish production value -- and it's a shame.

-The Stepfather (2009): 5/10



A serial killer (Dylan Walsh) -- whose gimmick is marrying into a new family, murdering the lot, re-inventing himself and moving onto the next set of victims, has found his latest targets, a freshly-divorced mother (sexy Sela Ward), and her three children, including her oldest son (Penn Badgley), recently returned from a stint in military school and who eyes his mom's new beau with a mixture of resentment and suspicion.

A tepid remake of the juicy, suspenseful 1987 B-movie (with a terrific performance by Terry O'Quinn as the titular killer), The Stepfather offers up a weary set of well-worn domestic thriller cliches, and Walsh simply does not plumb any interesting psychological depths of his character. You never believe his blandly ingratiating visage disguises the calculating soul of a killer, and the family unit buys into his presence with too much ease. The only pleasurable aspect of the film is the presence of a young , easy-on-the-eyes Amber Heard as Badgley's girlfriend, spending about 90% of her screentime either lounging poolside in a bikini or in her room holding phone conversations with Badgeley wearing the skimpiest of undergarments. The resulting film is competent on a technical level, but delivers nothing you haven't seen a million times before. Stick with the original.