Man, Thor’s Dad has some issues…

-Magic (1978): 8/10

-The Silence Of The Lambs (1991): 10/10





A double-dose of Anthony Hopkins insanity today. 1978’s Magic was billed as “A Terrifying Love Story”, and stars Hopkins as an aspiring magician, Corky Withers, who has little luck on the amateur circuit with the usual card tricks…until he introduces “Fats” into his act, a Howdy Doody-style puppet who engages him on the stage in frequently profane patter. Corky’s agent, Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith), is thrilled with how many sold-out shows he’s been getting, and wants to sign him onto a lucrative network contract…but Corky balks at the required physical examination, and retreats to his childhood home town in a fit of panic, renting a cabin from his unrequited childhood crush, Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margret) and wooing her with the help of his bag tricks. But Corky isn’t well, and “Fats” keeps insinuating himself into Corky’s life and mind, twisting it into fits of mania…and possibly murder. Directed by Richard Attenborough and adapted from his own novel by screenwriter William Goldman, Magic is a superior psychological thriller, with Hopkins doing a superb double act as the meek, hesitant Corky and as the jovial and sinister “Fats” and with composer Jerry Goldsmith providing one of his classiest scores (including an incredibly disturbing use of a harmonica).

And as for The Silence Of The Lambs…what else could be written about it at this point? One of the greatest and most iconic thrillers ever made, Director Jonathan Demme keeps the tension at full-throttle throughout in this adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel. Both Jodie Foster and Hopkins won well-deserved Oscars for their portrayals of rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling and imprisoned madman Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, respectfully, in this wildly suspenseful account of the hunt for a serial killer, Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), and how Starling elicits Lecter’s assistance from inside his maximum security cell in sussing out the killer’s true nature and motivations before he strikes again. The film has its share of ghoulish shocks, and yet it’s the mind games between Foster (with her woeful physical delicacy and shining inner strength) and Hopkins (all feral, grinning intelligence) that linger the longest in the viewer’s imagination. Set to a mournful , powerful score by Howard Shore, Silence remains the high water mark in Demme’s career (earning huge box office and the Best Picture award at the Oscars, back in the day when commerce and quality could walk hand-in-hand), and not even the franchise-ization of the Lecter character (leading to an awful 2001 sequel, Hannibal, a so-so 2002 prequel, Red Dragon – both with Hopkins reprising his role to diminishing returns -- and the surprisingly excellent NBC series Hannibal, with a suave Mads Mikkelsen making the role of Lecter his own) can diminish this film’s power to unsettle and disturb. Enjoy with a plate of fava beans and a nice chianti.

More animated "horrors"...
Claws for Alarm (1953)
Basically a remake of Scaredy Cat but this time the "haunting" is not so obviously mice. Porky and Sylvester check into a haunted looking hotel at their peril. This version ending with Sylvester and Porky making a hasty retreat instead of driving away the mice.

A-Haunting We Will Go (1966)
Another retread, this time lifting elements from Broom-Stick Bunny. Daffy and nephew and Speedy Gonzales each interact with Witch Hazel but this is noticeably not nearly as clever as it's inspiration.

I actually got out to see a movie! I'm actually going to buy the CD too! First soundtrack purchase of '18...better late than never.

HALLOWEEN (2018)
8/10



After too many sequels and imitators to count, the smartest thing the filmmakers behind the much-anticipated HALLOWEEN revival did is forget everything that came after John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic. Goodbye “Halloween II,” throw out vague memories of the late ‘80s sequels, toss out the “Miramax years” and happily discard Rob Zombie’s putrid reboots – this straight-ahead follow-through to Carpenter’s original is a smart, savvy and suspenseful continuation that’s appealing and fun. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel – but what film in the hack 'n slash genre possibly could at this point?

Utilizing humor in natural ways as opposed to snarky in-jokes (for the most part), keeping the gore mostly confined to “reaction shots” of murders that take place primarily off-camera, and offering a truly suspenseful climax, the 2018 “Halloween” is as assured and satisfying as any in today’s run of recycled franchises and prefab brands. Refreshingly, it’s not a remake in the guise of a sequel – this truly does feel, look and behave like a believable extension of Carpenter’s sole entry in the series, from elegantly composed long takes to an effective (and more textured) score from Carpenter, his son Cody and Daniel Davies that reworks familiar themes in a likewise fresh manner.

The script from director David Gordon Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley wastes little time in establishing its premise: it’s 40 years later, and Michael Myers is being transported to a new prison. Cue Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), still haunted by Myers’ murders and trying to impress her hardened worldview upon her estranged daughter (Judy Greer) and high school-aged granddaughter (Andi Matichak) who, you just know, will soon be in Myers’ deadly path. Of course, Myers breaks free and causes havoc, forcing Laurie to confront her past and her fragmented family, all the while the local sheriff (Will Patton) and Myers’ doctor (Haluk Bilginer) likewise follow in pursuit of the masked killer.

There’s a bit of character development here but it would’ve been nice to have even more scenes between Curtis, Greer and young heroine Matichak, whose relationship with her not-so-crazy grandma is, intriguingly, warmer than her relationship with her suburbanite mom. It’s an interesting component that should’ve been given more time to develop, but given the parameters of the genre, it’s gratifying that there are any attempts at all to craft believable protagonists. In that regard Green – working along with exec producers Carpenter and Curtis herself – should be commended for making a film that’s filled with surprisingly likeable characters. The teens that populate this Haddonfield are more relatable and less obnoxious than most genre sacrificial lambs (that includes its 1978 namesake), while the visual style is clean and natural – again creating a convincing continuation of the original “Halloween.”

Unlike the first appearance of Myers opposite Curtis and Donald Pleasence, the new “Halloween” isn’t a classic but by this point in the annals of masked killers and crazed horror bad guys, it would be nearly impossible to create one. There’s a weak attempt to throw a twist into the mix near the climax that doesn’t quite work (and one major character’s entire presence, regrettably, is essentially a red herring), but Green gets it together for an ending that’s less horrifying than it is exciting and truly suspenseful. There’s also a brilliant flip on one of Carpenter’s classic shots from the first film, but it’s done in such a way that it doesn’t call too much attention to itself, making for a most entertaining film of its kind – and a veritable treat in this day and age.

The night(s) HE came home!

-Halloween (1978): 9.5/10

-Halloween II (1981): 7/10





With the latest “for reals” sequel to Halloween dropping today, it was time to revisit the film that created its own horror subgenre (the “slasher movie”) and the one decent follow-up of the dozen or do sequels and remakes its generated over the last 40(!) years. Writer/director John Carpenter put his name on the map with his beautifully-constructed spook show about a madman, Michael Myers – confined to a mental hospital for fifteen years after murdering his big sister on Halloween night in 1963 – who escapes from incarceration on the day before Halloween in 1978 and heads back to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois for a little seasonal slicing and dicing, with a meek, virginal babysitter (Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut) his prime target. Essentially a filmed variation of that old campfire standard that ends with the line, “…and there, on the car door handle, was this razor..sharp…hook!”, Halloween has a plot as spare and stripped-down as possible, with none of the red herrings and subplots that would confuse and bloat latter entries in the franchise (not to mention the countless imitators that would spring up like weeds in the wake of its spectacular box-office success). Carpenter also keeps the film’s violence surprisingly restrained, with none of the ooky, gross-out gags that would become commonplace in the Rob Bottin/Rick Baker/Tom Savini era where the makeup designer would become one of the key F/X artists that genre fans would keep an eye out for in the credits of movie posters. Instead, he favors drawing the suspense out with elegantly-constructed camera setups, with the specter of Myers hovering around in the margins and goosed along with his own spooky electronic score until he finally strikes. While the film’s wave of sequels and rip-offs has dulled the edge of Myers’ butcher knife a tad over the decades, the original is still a film that works like gangbusters.

As for those sequels, the only one I find tolerable is the belated 1981 entry Halloween II, a more luxe production (produced by Universal, and with a significantly larger budget) that retains the services of Carpenter as producer, co-screenwriter (with producer Debra Hill) and co-composer (with Alan Howarth), not to mention Dean Cundey as cinematographer. It picks up literally where the first movie concluded, with Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis in a particularly manic state of mind as he tries to contain Myers’ reign of murder as he makes his way inexorably to the local hospital, where Curtis’ Laurie Strode has been admitted due to the injuries she received in the previous film. Director Rick Rosenthal does an adequate job aping Carpenter’s Panaglide sleekness (Carpenter stepped in for significant reshoots to up the levels of graphic violence to appease horror audiences used to sterner stuff at that point in time. A later TV edit of the film comes closer to the more steady, measured pace Rosenthal originally intended), and the film “works” for the most part, delivering enough jolts to send the viewer home sated. That said, the Return Of The Jedi-style retcon revolving around why Myers is so hell-bent on hunting Laurie down brings the proceedings down a peg, adding a pesky motive to what was previously a disturbingly random, it-could-happen-to-YOU spate of homicidal bloodlust. Still, considering how bad the later sequels got (I bailed after the fifth entry, because I couldn’t take it anymore), this is as reasonably good as can be expected. With the new film ignoring all of the sequels and acting as a “direct” sequel to the original (the Halloween series has become the Choose Your Own Adventure of horror franchises, with endless continuity options), it’ll be interesting to see if there’s any gas left in the tank, but, as always, I hope for the best.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…

-Halloween (2018): 7/10



Well…that’s a Halloween movie all right.

I’m pleased that fans are going ape for this, really, I am, and it’s certainly the best-crafted film in the series since Halloween II, but at this point, getting this excited about a new Halloween movie is akin to being THRILLED to go out and buy a Big Mac. Yeah, if you haven’t eaten one in the better part of two decades, it’ll be a nostalgic treat for the taste buds, and this one has all of the condiments and sauces applied in just the right portions, and yet…it’s still a frickin’ Big Mac. Trying to capture the same pop-culture frisson as the original Halloween at this point is kind of like trying to get the toothpaste back into the tube, and while director David Gordon Green generates adequate amounts of tension, and while it’s nice to see Jamie Lee Curtis let out her inner Sarah Connor as a paranoid, survivalist Laurie Strode, I can’t get especially jazzed seeing the usual bunch of paper-thin teens and cops getting run through with a butcher knife for the umpteenth time. If you’re a hardcore Michael Myers junkie, I can understand enjoying a really well-prepared sequel like this, and I don’t begrudge those major franchise fans their fun, but I found this every bit as competent and yet disposable as Halloween II, and – of course! – it leaves itself wide open for another installment in a couple of years. It’s good! But also forgettable.

-Starry Eyes (2014): 8.5/10



Gruesome slow-burn shocker about as aspiring actress (Alexandra Essoe) who takes a screen test for a leading role in a low-budget horror flick, gets skeeved out by the producer’s unwanted advances, then swallows her disgust and shame for another shot because she REALLY wants to be a celebrity, only to find her psyche and body begin to gradually break down due to her. Like a #MeToo-era nightmare crossed with a David Cronenberg body-horror freakout, Starry Eyes is eerie, gross and incredibly unnerving, and writers and co-directors Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer (whose remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary is due out early next year) keep the tension percolating nicely right up to the surreal ending. A real obscure gem.

-Rabid (1977): 7/10



A young woman (70’s porn star Marilyn Chambers) survives a terrible motorcycle wreck and has reconstructive surgery to fix the worst of her scars…only to end up with a phallic stinger that protrudes out of a vaginal orifice in her armpit(!!), and becomes a Typhoid Mary, spreading a rabies-like virus amongst those she uses said stinger to drink the blood of that results in a wave of ravening madness with the infected spreading the virus further through their green-tinged saliva as they bite everyone in sight. An early effort from writer/director David Cronenberg that mixes his usual cerebral iciness with stomach-churning gore and overall ickiness, it’s cruder than his later, more polished work in the 80’s and beyond, but certainly worth a look for his fans, with plenty of tense and mordantly funny moments (like a mall Santa getting caught in the crossfire when one infected madman it put down by the police).

I disagree a bit that this new movie is 'as disposable' as HALLOWEEN II, which has never been talked about as a great or even a good movie. IMO its a pretty weak sequel (well shot as it is) and this new film is a far more entertaining and suspenseful picture, and for me outclasses it by a good margin.

Hey, I don't begrudge anyone for liking it, and it is very well-shot and has some tense moments, but...it's just another movie with Michal Myers walking around VERY. SLOWLY while stabbing people with a butcher knife. It's "well-made", but to what point? So sick of aging horror auteurs just cashing the check to supervise a "chilling new vision!" of their classics from decades past instead of trying to fashion something NEW and FRESH. If I had truly grown up with these movies, the nostalgia would probably override these complaints, but I saw the original for the first time in 1998 (when I was twenty-four), so I can only really appreciate them clinically, and not from the perspective of someone who saw the original when they were eight or something and honestly had the crap scared out of them. Yeah, the original is a beautifully-crafted and highly influential film, but you can never capture that same feeling again, so to get THIS excited about the prospect of seeing Michael Myers again is like pining away for your high-school sweetheart forty years after you graduated. The movie is GOOD, but it's also overlong, meandering, has some ill-placed comedy, and does nothing to END Laurie Strode's story. I'm glad fans are going ape for it, but I just can't get very enthused about it.

It's not just fans though -- there aren't enough of them out there to propel a Halloween movie to that kind of gross in its first weekend.

We def have divergent takes on horror movies -- but I certainly enjoy reading the reviews nevertheless!

Two final horror shorts,
Transylvania 6-5000 (1963)
Among the last of the Merrie Melodies but still very clever as Bugs matches wits with vampire, Count Bloodcount.


Bewitched Bunny (1953)
A version of the Hansel and Gretel tale has the children lured into Witch Hazel's home for roasting. Of course they escape with help from Bugs. This first appearance of Witch Hazel is OK but not her best appearance. Very interesting (weird) backgrounds...

Some obscure vintage TV that falls in this category.

Way Out

-This was a short-lived TV series in early 1961 hosted by Roald Dahl that CBS hurriedly slotted into its schedule after the infamous Jackie Gleason "You're In The Picture" debacle. The show was videotaped and featured a lot of more macabre oriented horror tales more suited to "Thriller" than "Twilight Zone" or "Outer Limits". Among such tales we got:

"The Croaker"-John McGiver as an eccentric frog enthusiast who is ultimately transforming his annoying neighbors.

"Side Show"-Murray Hamilton becomes obsessed with a sideshow attraction featuring a woman with no head.

"False Face"-Alfred Ryder is an actor who uses the deformed face of a bum for his Quasimodo performance and then gets an unexpected (if predictable) shock.

The show has enjoyed a cult following for many years but frankly its more than a bit overrated (10 of the 14 episodes are on YouTube) IMO. It doesn't help that it was a videotaped show (extant only as kinescopes) which means it has an overly stagy quality that is just not as effective as a filmed drama piece IMO. And Roald Dahl is no Hitchcock when it comes to being a host as he's fixated only on mostly unfunny macabre intros centered on spousal murder (that's another flaw of the series as we get an overdose of episodes involving henpecked husbands with shrewish wives. In marathon viewing it starts to produce an eye roll after a bit)


Bus Stop-"I Kiss Your Shadow"

-This was the last episode of the 1961-62 ABC anthology series based on the 1956 movie. The series had undergone a number of difficulties that saw its format altered from focusing on the bus stop diner to the surrounding town about it (which caused original series lead Marilyn Maxwell, playing the diner owner, to quit mid-season) and also had a controversial episode that had pop star Fabian as a violent murderer and a drawn out depiction of on-screen violence and frank sexual discussion that was quite unusual for 1962 and which prompted Congressional hearings about violence on TV and led to a number of boycotts and even the forced resignation of ABC's President. Roy Huggins, the show's producer was fired and the very last episode, this one was produced by John Newland of "One Step Beyond" fame and represented a total deviation into the horror/supernatural realm in an episode based on a Robert Bloch short story, where George Grizzard is being haunted by the possessive ghost of his dead wife (Joanne LInville). It ends on an atmospherically chilling note more worthy of "Thriller" and other horror shows and represents an unusual case of a show that had been grounded in reality going out on a supernatural/horror note.

If you snatch my body / and you think I’m scary / come on baby, let me know…!

-Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956): 9/10

-Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978): 10/10

-Body Snatchers (1994): 7/10







Took in a threnody of alien-invasion thrillers today, all sprung from the 1954 novel by Jack Finney (originally serialized in the pages of Collier’s Magazine). In 1956’s classic Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (tautly directed by Dirty Harry’s Don Siegel), the small California town of Santa Mira finds itself overrun with a plague of paranoia as the citizens begin to suspect that loved ones and close acquaintances re no longer who they appear to be. A levelheaded doctor, Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), is stymied by this inexplicable psychological phenomenon…but soon he finds himself face-to-face with a nightmarish scenario where alien spores have drifted down from somewhere “out there” and have taken seed, sprouting into giant “seed pods” that replicate human beings down to the last mole and hair follicle, and have begin replacing the town’s populace with a wave of emotionless drones. This is a scenario rife with disturbing implications that can be melded into a metaphor for whatever the particular social or political ills of the era are, and while Siegel’s film can be viewed as a dissection of the “Red Scare” panic of the 50’s…it’s also a cracking science fiction thriller. Set to an appropriately alarming score by Carmen Dragon, and boasting a terrific performance by McCarthy as a rational man driven to madness.

The 1978 remake directed by Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) is that rarest of beasts…a remake of an established classic that not only manages to live up to those high expectations, but surpass them. A deviously clever updating of the material moves the action to San Francisco, as an unpopular Health Department investigator, Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) gets embroiled in another wave of mass hysteria, with his increasingly rattled co-worker (lovely Brooke Adams), his close friend (a very young, very skinny Jeff Goldblum) and his wife (Veronica Cartwright, a year away from getting terrorized again in Alien) along for the ride as the “Pod People” start taking over the city one insidiously imperceptible step at a time until the cries of panic recede into the calming bliss of conformity. Scripted by W.D. Richter (The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai, Big Trouble In Little China), the ’78 Snatchers takes a bitingly satirical swipe at the “Me Generation”, with the witty casting of Mr. Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy, as a pop psychiatrist delivering sage advice while those around him get swallowed up by their paranoia a particular highlight. Kaufman, aided by cinematographer Michael Chapman and composer Denny Zeitlin, takes the naturally-skewed San Francisco settings and pushes them even further with disorienting camera angles, stark, film noir lighting and a discordant musical soundscape that suffuses the material with skillfully accelerating dread, which is capped by one of the most ghoulishly memorable finales in genre history. It’s the high water mark of Snatcher cinema.

As for 1994’s Body Snatchers, this barely-released entry in the series, from the 1978 film’s producer, Robert H. Solo and directed by grimy B-movie specialist Abel Ferrara (Ms. 45, King Of New York, Bad Lieutenant), it’s a effective take that relocates the action to a military base in Florida, where an EPA man (Terry Kinney) has arrived with his surly teenage daughter (beautiful Gabrielle Anwar, who danced the tango with Al Pacino in Scent Of A Woman), his second wife (Meg Tilly) and her son from a previous marriage (Reilly Murphy) to check the grounds for potentially hazardous chemical spillages. Once there, it becomes rapidly obvious that the soldiers stationed there aren’t merely held to a rigid military code, but that they’ve sworn allegiance to a far more sinister hive mind mentality, one that originates from the alien pods they harvest lovingly from the nearby swamp. It’s an ideal setting for comparing how the aliens’ wish for a world where everyone is equal and works mindlessly towards the greater good to the military’s conditioning of its soldiers (“It’s the species that’s important, not the individual”), and for the first hour or so, it’s an effectively accelerating nightmare, well-shot and with many quietly disturbing moments. Tilly Pods Out early in the proceedings, and with her doll-like features and glassy stare she makes for an ideal face for the aliens in general (which culminates in a hair-raising homage to the Kaufman film), and there are ooky scenes of the Pods extruding worm-like tentacles that work their way into every available orifice and suck the life essence of their victims out, leaving their dried-out husks to break apart into piles of crumbly dander. That said, the film’s conclusion is rushed and unsatisfying, with a moment near the end that’s intended to be the film’s “big shock” that’s utterly ruined by one of the worst greenscreen shots in cinema history (a character falling away from the camera literally has no legs just before the shot cuts! ). It’s a shame, because with a stronger finale, this could have been a very, very good addition to the Body Snatcher canon. Still, it’s far better than the clumsy, badly-reshot 2007 film The Invasion (if they make a fifth version, I’m sure it will be titled Of The), and the three films form a “franchise” that will no doubt be revisited for many decades to come in one guise or another. And remember…they get you when you sleep.

The pen is mightier than the sword….

-The Dark Half (1993): 7/10

-Secret Window (2004): 7.5/10





A pair of cinematic twins that illustrate author Stephen King’s favorite pet subject, the torments – both mental and physical – of the American novelist. The Dark Half (adapted from King’s 1989 novel by writer/director George A. Romero) features Timothy Hutton as Thad Beaumont, a bright, productive young writer who pens sensitive, literary books that please highbrow critics but sell few copies…and puts food on the table with a series of lurid, wildly popular crime thrillers under the pen name “Richard Stark”. When a skeevy stranger (Robert Joy, from Romero’s later Land Of The Dead) arrives at a teaching seminar and threatens Thad with exposing his dirty secret unless he receives a hefty payoff, Thad and his wife Liz (Amy Madigan) decide together to beat him to the punch and “kill” Stark for good with a magazine article and photo shoot publicly laying his pseudonym to rest. But then people around Thad (his agent, his agent’s wife, the photographer) start ending up dead, gruesomely slashed to death with a straight razor or beaten to death with their own wooden leg(!). The local Sheriff, Alan Pangborn (Michael Rooker) finds strong evidence at the crime scenes that links Thad to the killings, and Thad knows that the real culprit is that “High-toned son of a bitch” Richard Stark himself (Hutton again, with slicked-back hair, subtle facial prosthetics and a jovially mean Southern drawl), given physical form via a dark secret from Thad’s childhood and demanding that Thad write a new novel under his name, or else George will “lose cohesion” and start rotting away into the nothingness from whence he sprang. The Dark Half is a handsomely-crafted film, with horror legend Romero getting a good deal of mileage out of a fairly absurd premise with some artfully-staged shocks and set to a mournful score by Christopher Young (the main theme, incidentally, sounds very similar to one of the primary themes from John Williams’ later score to Schindler’s List!). And Hutton has a great time playing the duality of the meek Thad and his grinning doppelganger George. That’s aid, the climax of the film is sabotaged to a degree by some very poor special effects (which Romero grouses about looking “like garbage” on the bracingly honest Blu-Ray commentary), which robs the film of its intended punch. A decade or more later, and the technology would have existed to depict the elaborate and gruesome finale as King intended on the page, but here it’s a mess of pixelated, primitive early CGI that looked bad even then and, today, looks even worse. Shame, as the film’s setup and middle section are so strong.

In the film’s quasi-companion piece, 2004’s Secret Window (adapted from King’s novella Secret Window, Secret Garden from his 1990 collection Four Past Midnight by writer/director David Koepp), Johnny Depp plays Mort Rainey, a novelist whose wife, Amy (Maria Bello) has been carrying on an affair with a local stud (played by -- hey, whaddaya know? – Timothy Hutton). Six months after discovering this unsavory fact, Mort is ensconced in his summer house by Tashmore Lake, waffling about signing the divorce papers, sleeping too much, and with a raging case of writer’s block. His sour mood isn’t helped any by the sudden appearance of John Shooter (John Turturro), an angry Southern farmer with a tombstone-like black hat and a tightly-rolled manuscript that he waves in Mort’s face, claiming that “Yew stole mah STOH-ree!” Mort doesn’t take kindly to the accusations of plagiarism, but when he skims through the crudely typewritten pages, he discovers, to his dismay and confusion, the story does bear an uncomfortable resemblance to a story Mort had published years earlier, and that Shooter will burn all that he owns “like a cane field in a high wind” unless Mort can prove the story’s true ownership. David Koepp’s career as a screenwriter has been, shall we be charitable, “spotty” over the last 30 years (he’s like the real-life version of a “Alan Smithee” nom de plume embarrassed screenwriters paste onto a troubled screenplay, usually just stitching together bits and pieces of earlier drafts until they sort of fit together), but Secret Window is probably his best work as a director, a fairly clever potboiler from that post-Sixth Sense “What a tweest!” period where screenwriters tried to get their own M Night Shyamalan career boost with contorted plot gymnastics trying to pull the wool over the eyes of audiences who have never seen a Twilight Zone episode. Astute viewers of such fare will probably deduce what’s going on before the big reveal, but it’s fun getting there, with skillfully eccentric turns by Depp (just before he went Full Quirk 24/7) and Turturro (as a kind of hayseed Max Cady) and stylish direction from Koepp, plus a humorously dark concluding punchline that recalls the kind of 1950’s EC horror comics that have always influenced King’s fiction. A minor but winning effort in the King pantheon.

The ghosts with the most…

-The Haunting (1963): 9/10

-Crimson Peak (2015): 9.5/10





A pair of superior haunted-house fright flicks today. In 1963’s The Haunting (adapted from the famed novel The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, which would later inspire a godawful 1999 remake and a current, excellent Netflix miniseries from Mike Flanagan) about a quartet of paranormal investigators (Richard Johnson, Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn) who spend a wild weekend in the creaky old Hill House, built nearly seventy years earlier and “born evil”, causing nothing but pain and misery for all those who have lived there over the decades. Director Robert Wise barely shows the audience any physical manifestations of the spirits that may or may not be dwelling within the maze of corridors and rooms within (basically one shot of an ominously bulging doorframe and visible puffs of frozen breath in a specific “cold spot”), instead suggesting the characters’ increasingly rattled states of mind with off-kilter framing and excellent use of sound design (plus an evocative score by Humphrey Searle). As far as “old-school” haunted house movies go, The Haunting (shot in crisp Panavision B&W) is pretty top-drawer stuff.

As for Crimson Peak, it’s one of the most overlooked and underrated films in the past five or so years, especially as “scary movies” go. Director/co-writer Guillermo Del Toro crafts a dizzying romantic homage to classic Hitchcock thrillers of the 1940s, as Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), a proper young New York lady of the early 20th century, finds herself whisked away by a dashing suitor, Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston, his fine, hawklike features recalling Hammer veteran Peter Cushing), and his severe sister, Lucille (a brunette Jessica Chastain), to their grand yet crumbling estate, Allerdale Hall, in England, where Edith’s initial happiness soon gives way to a mounting sense of dread as the ghastly, rotting specters that inhabit the grounds make themselves known. But, to they intend to harm…or warn? This is an impeccably gorgeous production, with the cinematography, costumes, music and (especially) set design all polished to a high gloss, and the cast throws themselves into the melodramatic proceedings with a bracing abandon. This is closer to Merchant-Ivory or Jane Austen than a typical rattling-chains potboiler, which is probably why it failed at the box office in the era of Blumhouse jack-in-the-box scare shows, but I have no idea why critics were fairly dismissive of it. I think it’s one of Del Toro’s best films, passionate and skillfully eerie in equal measure, and I consider a Halloween season without it to be incomplete now.

Love means never having to say you’re ugly.

-The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971): 7.5/10

-Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972): 6.5/10





Entertainingly gimmicky fare from the early-70’s AIP horror cycle features Vincent Price as Anton Phibes, a doctor from the mid-1920s who loses his beloved wife on the operating table…at the same time he loses his face during a car crash in his mad dash to the hospital. Left horribly disfigured (applying latex facial appliances to restore a vague intimation of his former appearance and a voice enhancer in order to speak), he swears vengeance upon the nine doctors and nurses who assisted in the failed surgery, meting out upon them a series of elaborately gruesome fates inspired by the Biblical plagues of Egypt (plague of locusts, Slaying of the Firstborn, etc.). The first Phibes is one of Price’s better films from this period, filled with memorably ghoulish touches and great sense of morbid humor. The 1971 quickie sequel finds the doctor emerging from suspended animation after a three-year rest, and looking to resurrect his wife by finding a “river of life” in Egypt, while striking out at those who stand in his way with more imaginatively sick methods that look forward a few decades to the Saw movies (one victim – his arms pinned in the jaws of a statue – has to break open a dog statue to find a key that will free him…only to find it’s full of scorpions). It’s still fun, although stretched a bit thin, and it’s probably for the good that this was the last time Phibes rose on the silver screen.

Took in a horror double feature at the Alamo last Sunday, one old and one new movie.

DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE
7/10

I liked this entertaining twist on the classic Jekyll and Hyde formula in which 19th century scientist Henry Jekyll, played by Ralph Bates, experiments with female hormones in order to produce an “elixir of life” with unexpected results: he transforms into a woman! The female Hyde is played by Martine Beswick, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Bates. They could easily pass for brother and sister.
This gender bending production from Hammer mixes in elements of Jack the Ripper and a dash of Frankenstein. The supporting cast is very good and, as is typical with many Hammer productions, there’s plenty of Gothic atmosphere. The biggest problem with the movie is Jekyll’s flexible morality. He starts out as a nice guy but very quickly turns to unethical means to create his formula. It’s also unclear exactly what’s going on in Jekyll’s head. Does he like turning into a woman? Or is it actually Hyde who is gradually taking over? By the end, Hyde is clearly the villain but Jekyll’s last minute repentance is a bit late.

HALLOWEEN (2018)
6.5/10
While well directed and produced, the new Halloween is still just another slasher movie. It’s nice that they played it straight and it had some effective moments but I can’t help thinking that this is basically as good as it’s ever going to get.