Classic Movie Review: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) 

Directed by: Jack Arnold.

Written by: Harry Essex and Arthur A. Ross and Maurice Zimm. 

Starring: Richard Carlson (David Reed), Julie Adams (Kay Lawrence), Richard Denning (Mark Williams), Antonio Moreno (Carl Maia), Nestor Paiva (Lucas), Whit Bissell (Dr. Thompson), Bernie Gozier (Zee), Henry A. Escalante (Chico), Ricou Browning (The Gill Man - in water), Ben Chapman (The Gill Man - on land), Art Gilmore (Narrator), Perry Lopez (Tomas), Sydney Mason (Dr. Matos), Rodd Redwing (Louis - Expedition Foreman).

 

There are a few reasons why Creature from the Black Lagoon has survived so many years – and is still watched nearly 70 years after it came out, even as its special effects now look amateurish, and the acting and writing probably always did. The Creature aka Gill Man was the last addition to Universal Monsters – the lineup from the 1930s that including Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Mummy and The Invisible Man – coming out decades after those films, which at the time, were being rediscovered by newer audiences on TV. So perhaps, the movie was in part a cynical ploy to cash in on some intellectual property that Universal already owned. But that doesn’t explain why the film continues to be watched – and enjoyed all these years later.

 

For that, you have to watch the brilliant underwater sequences in the film – which remain stunning all these later. A group of researchers head deeper into the amazon, searching for more fossils of a creature once a fossil of its hands was found – never dreaming that a still living, breathing example was still alive down here. The lone woman in the group – Kay (Julie Adams) decides, stupidly, to go from a swim in the black lagoon. As she glides along the surface, we see the creature swimming beneath her. The camera cuts back and forth between her on the surface, him underneath – and most beautifully, with the two of them swimming together – the creature knowing it, Kay not. It’s a sequence that is incredibly creepy of course – the monster could attack at any moment. But it’s also beautiful – almost serene. You can see how someone like Guillermo Del Toro could watch this movie, and be inspired to make The Shape of Water – essentially turning it into a love story. That underwater sequence is brilliant – and most of the rest of them are as well. They remain stunning to look at all these years later.

 

The film was directed by Jack Arnold, and in addition to those underwater sequences – the biggest thing the direction does here is slowly increase the tension and sense of dread in the movie. It is a movie that builds slowly for a 78-minute creature feature, but that tension serves the movie well. The creature only gradually reveals himself – and then still moves slowly, deliberately. For a movie about a man in a giant rubber suit, it is amazing how much tension the film generates.

 

When the movie isn’t underwater, or isn’t deliberately building tension – meaning when it focuses on its human characters, its nowhere near as good. The characters are basically stale archetypes – and even if Julie Adams’ Kay is supposed to be a researcher herself, she is basically spoken to as if she was a child, by everyone on board the ship. The dialogue is wooden and stale – and you really don’t care about the various people other than a Gill Man fodder.

 

Still, its remarkable how well this film works all these years later. Yes, its easy to snicker at the special effects – or lack thereof – here. But taken on its own terms, the film works remarkably well. It’s still tension filled and beautiful all these years later.

Classic Movie Review: Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) 

Directed by: Bryan Forbes.

Written by: Bryan Forbes based on the novel by Mark McShane.

Starring: Kim Stanley (Myra Savage), Richard Attenborough (William Henry 'Bill' Savage), Judith Donner (Amanda Clayton - The Child), Mark Eden (Mr. Charles Clayton), Nanette Newman (Mrs. Clayton), Gerald Sim (Det. Sgt. Beedle), Patrick Magee (Superintendent Walsh).

 

There are a pair of exceptional performances at the heart of Bryan Forbes Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough play a married couple, who have responded to the death of their baby in differing ways – for her, it has deepened whatever mental illness she has already has, and for him, it has stricken him with grief. Stanley plays Myra, who makes her living as a psychic, and she is the domineering and controlling one in the relationship. Attenborough is William, her long-suffering husband, who is better able to interact in the real world, but powerless to stand up to his wife. She has an idea on how to advance her career. All he needs to do is kidnap the child of a wealthy couple – Amanda Clayton (Judith Donner) – and she can step in and “find” her, safe and sound, and become the famous psychic who cracked the case. No one is going to get to hurt – at least, that is what Myra assures William.

 

The film was directed by Bryan Forbes – not much remembered today, but he certainly has a few gems on his filmography – none better than this. This is a slow-burn thriller – it lacks the kind of action you often get in these sorts of stories, because it doesn’t need them. It is all about the psychology of these two damaged people. It all builds to that title séance – which will, of course, bring everything crashing down.

 

Stanley received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her role here. Stanley was always a fine actress – but she often got her roles after others turned them down – in this case Deborah Kerr, Anne Bancroft, Shelley Winters and Simone Signoret all passed, before it fell to Stanley. Those are all great actresses – you can argue all had better careers than Stanley – but she was the right choice for this role. It is a role that is chilly, domineering, and yet fragile – Myra is teetering on the edge of her own sanity, any slight push will be too much for her. William knows this, of course, and he goes along with what she wants. He has tried to leave her in the past – but needs her. She is perhaps her only connection to anything. Attenborough was a fine actor – and I’m not sure he’s ever been better than he is here. He is quiet man, one who has mainly been beaten into submission. He will do anything for Myra – but this may just be the push he needs to grow a spine.

 

Forbes shoots the film is chilly black and white – and the action cuts between the countryside in England, where the couple live, and London – where William travels to kidnap the child, and do other things involved in the ransom, etc. His direction here isn’t flashy – he allows scenes to play out minute by minute, and for Stanley and Attenborough to have stretches of silence. Heightening the realism is the location shooting on the streets of London. The closest thing the film has to an action set piece is the money exchange, and the fallout, in a crowded subway platform.

 

For the most part, they don’t make thrillers like this anymore. The film deliberately lacks action – there are no shootouts, no murder, no blood, and really only that one chase in the subway. It is a thriller grounded in the reality of its two leading characters – their psychological underpinnings, their perverse attachment to each other – that co-dependence deepening into something dangerous. It’s a movie you cannot look away from, for fear of missing something subtle, dark and disturbing. And it is all the more thrilling because of it.

Classic Movie Review: The Haunting (1963)

The Haunting (1963) 

Directed by: Robert Wise.

Written by: Nelson Gidding based on the novel by Shirley Jackson.

Starring: Julie Harris (Eleanor Lance), Claire Bloom (Theodora), Richard Johnson (Dr. John Markway), Russ Tamblyn (Luke Sanderson), Fay Compton (Mrs. Sanderson), Rosalie Crutchley (Mrs. Dudley), Lois Maxwell (Grace Markway), Valentine Dyall (Mr. Dudley), Diane Clare (Carrie Fredericks), Ronald Adam (Eldridge Harper). 

 

I’ve said before that I’ve never been one for ghost stories – I don’t believe in ghosts, and for the most part, ghost story movies don’t much scare me, because it’s the same thing again and again – and unlike the horror movies that really do scare me, I can never project myself into those situations – never really feel that fear, so it all becomes an exercise. That’s probably why it took me so long to watch The Haunting from 1963 – considering my many to be the greatest ghost story movie of all time. And now, having seen it, I can only agree with that assessment – but with a caveat. It’s certainly one of the greatest of its kind ever made – but it works that well because it may not be a ghost story at all.

 

The movie is based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and is about a group of four people, who go to the damned house to “study” it for a few days. The house is already old, but has been cursed ever since it was built – its owners die mysteriously, or are driven mad, etc. The leader is Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson), who is a real doctor, who sometimes indulges his interest in the paranormal, much to the chagrin of his wife and those around him. He is joined at the house by Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn) – who will one day inherit Hill House, and more important two women. Theodora (Claire Bloom) is a psychic. Eleanor (Julie Harris), the real protagonist of the movie, doesn’t have any special skills – but is sensitive herself, believing she has already had contact with ghosts in her childhood.

 

The movie is about these four people in the house together, as strange things start happening. All of those things feed into Eleanor’s already shaky psyche – so much so that the movie can be read in two very different ways – one that the house is legitimately haunted, and the other being that it is all a projection of Eleanor’s increasing mental breakdown. It is also quite possible that Hill house isn’t haunted – that Eleanor is – and she brings those ghosts along with her.

 

The film was directed by Robert Wise – who made it between two films for which he’d win Best Director Oscars – West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965) – although this film couldn’t be more different than those big budget, all singing, all dancing epics. This is a pared down horror movie, shot in beautiful, spooky black-and-white, almost all in that house, with just these four people. The “ghosts” in the film are nothing but sounds – persistent knocking, perhaps a door handle jiggling, and cold spots in rooms. The film could easily have been made on the cheap.

 

All of those tricks that Wise and his crew work – and wonderfully so, even if they have become a cliché in the decades since. They work in part because they are at the service of a story that is less concerned with ghosts, than in its characters. Russ Tamblyn is in fine form as the cynical, rich playboy who wants to dismiss everything. Johnson gives off the right air of fatherly concern and intelligence. But it’s Bloom and Harris are particularly great. Bloom barely tries to hide the fact that she is playing Theodora as a lesbian – it is what drew her to role in the first place, and it’s perhaps another example of people not taking horror films seriously, so you can sneak in things you wouldn’t get away with elsewhere. It isn’t a judgmental performance either – but one in which Bloom is very in tune with her character. All of these characters, and how they act though, end up feeding into Harris’ increasing breakdown – sneaking up on her. Harris and Bloom are truly great in the film.

 

That is what I will remember about The Haunting. Yes, Wise and company devise brilliant strategies to keep the tension up, and to scare you with nothing more than some clanging pipes. But like all great horror films, there is more here than that – it digs deep into Eleanor’s fractured, repressed psyche – which may be worse than the ghosts.

Movie Review: The Lodge

The Lodge **** / *****

Directed by: Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz.

Written by: Sergio Casci and Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala.

Starring: Riley Keough (Grace), Jaeden Martell (Aidan), Lia McHugh (Mia Hall), Richard Armitage (Richard), Alicia Silverstone (Laura), Danny Keough (Aaron Marshall), Lola Reid (Young Grace), Philippe Ménard (Boy), Jarred Atkin (Priest at Funeral).

 

If you can get through some fairly jarring plot twists and leaps in logic, The Lodge is about as good as horror movies these days get. Directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, whose last film Goodnight Mommy, became a cult hit, allowing them this opportunity to make their English language debut, know what they’re doing in constructing a slow-burn horror movie. Both movies are about children, and the lengths they go to torment a parent – or potential stepparent, as in The Lodge. And both movie are slow burn horror films, gradually building the tension up and up and up, until it needs to be released. Goodnight Mommy became more violent as it went along – but I think The Lodge does it one better, by becoming more disturbing.

 

In the film, Grace (Riley Keough) is the new girlfriend of Richard (Richard Armitage) – who was in the process of divorcing Laura (Alicia Silverstone) when she committed suicide, shortly after he tells her he wants to get remarried. Their two kids, Aidan (Jarden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh) aren’t thrilled to be getting a new stepmother so soon, are fiercely protective of their mother even in death, and want to show Grace who she’s dealing with. They know a little about her past – her father was a cult leader, the rest of the cult killed themselves when Grace was just a child, but they don’t really know how deep her trauma is – or the extent of her mental illness.

 

The Lodge of the title is the family lodge – way up north somewhere which Richard, making one of the dumbest parental decisions in cinema history, decides would be a good place to spend Christmas – allowing the kids to get to know Grace. And what better way to accelerate the process than to leave the two kids and Grace alone together, so he can go back to work. A storm hits, the road become impassable, and communication with the outside world is pretty much cut off. None of this seems to worry Richard very much – who waits day after day before attempting to get up there, or ahold of anyone. Really, Richard is responsible for everything that happens.

 

So yeah, you do have to cut the film some slack. Clearly, what the filmmakers wanted is to get the kids and Grace together, and not give them room for escape – and even if they contrive an unbelievable way to do that, once they are trapped, the movie is really effective. Much of the reason belongs to Keough – who has quickly become one of the more interesting actresses working. Here, she is given a juicy role as a woman who means well – she wants to bond with Richard’s children – but for whom isolation, her past, and her mental illness makes her descend deeper and deeper, closer to madness.

 

The film has a clip of the trio watching The Thing (1982) – and will likely remind viewers of Kubrick’s The Shining as well, perhaps crossed with Hereditary. It isn’t a particularly original concept – people trapped in a snowbound, isolated house go insane – but it’s one handled well here. The film is a slow creep of the insanity – with three very effective performances.

 

So, yes, the movie is more contrived than I would have liked – but that contrivance is necessary to put these three characters – a would-be stepmother, and the two children who don’t want her, isolated together. From there, the filmmakers make a wonderful, creepy, disturbing – and at times scary movie – that ends perhaps the only way it could.

Classic Movie Review: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) 

Directed by: Tobe Hooper.

Written by: L.M. Kit Carson based on the film by Tobe Hooper.

Starring: Dennis Hopper (Lieutenant 'Lefty' Enright), Caroline Williams (Vanita 'Stretch' Brock), Jim Siedow (Cook), Bill Moseley (Chop-Top), Bill Johnson (Leatherface), Ken Evert (Grandpa).

 

In retrospect, it’s very odd that it took 12 years to make a sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) – one of the greatest of all American horror films, and one of the first that could be described as a slasher film. By this point, there had already been multiple Halloweens and Nightmare on Elm Streets and Friday the 13ths – all series that started after Texas Chainsaw, not to mention all the other series that we have forgotten over the years. It’s surprising then that the studio didn’t either push director Tobe Hooper to make a sequel, or simply gotten someone else to do one. When Hooper finally did make a sequel, we got this – a crazed satire of the Reagan-era that is as over the top as the original was realistic. It feels like Hooper felt he couldn’t top the original film if he tried to repeat himself – so he decided to do precisely the opposite with the sequel. It didn’t sit right at the time – but it has gained a cult following over the years. As is often the case when this happens, the truth lies somewhere in between – as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is neither the disaster people thought it was at the time, nor the classic some seem to think it is now.

 

The original film was very much a product of its time and place – a story about ignorant teenagers, who feel entitled to go wherever they want, who don’t really understand what they’re walking into or why. They’re being cut down and slaughtered but are ignorant of their own sins. It has been read as an allegory to Vietnam and many other facets of the 1970s, when cynicism started running high as Watergate broke. By 1986, that era was over – and Hooper correctly sensed that. He could no longer make a verité style horror film about naïve teenagers – so instead he makes a film about the go-go ‘80s, and corporate excess. The cannibalistic family at its core of the first film have no become entrepreneurs – and successful ones at that with their chili business – no points for guessing the meat they are using.

 

Instead of teenagers this time around, the families has two nemesis. The first is Stretch (Caroline Williams), a local DJ who draws the attention of the family when she plays a recording on the radio station that could get them into trouble, and the second is Lefty (Dennis Hopper) – a former Texas ranger, who was related to some of the victims from the first film, hellbent on revenge – even if most people think that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was just a myth.

 

The film lets you know right from the start that this isn’t going to be a repeat of the original film. The opening sequence involves two high school seniors – jackasses both, entitled, spoiled rich brats, racing down the highway, destroying everything in their path. They call into Stretch’s radio show – that’s when she gets the recording – but will run afoul of Leatherface, and his family, and when you do that, you don’t last long. From there, the film is basically made up of very long sequences – first in the radio station, where Leatherface and Chop Top (Bill Moseley, basically doing what Moseley does in all those Rob Zombie films)- harass Stretch, and then at the family “home” – an abandoned amusement park, littered with corpses and bones, where Stretch will again wind up, this time with Lefty right behind her.

 

There are interesting ideas throughout The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2- but many of them feel half formed. Chop Top has a metal plate in his head, and the lasting image you will undoubtedly take away from the film, and never forget no matter how hard you try, is him picking at his scalp with a heated up closed hanger, and then eating what on it. He is a Vietnam vet, and brings up many different battles and massacres throughout the film – which connects it to the original, but I’m not sure is ever really explored enough. The most fascinating sequence is undoubtedly when Leatherface has Stretch cornered – and has been ordered to kill her – but she charms him out of doing so, resulting in a moment you won’t forget, when basically Leatherface uses his chainsaw as a phallic stand-in, in a show of pure impotence. Again, this is a fascinating idea – one that could be used to deconstruct many slasher movies – but here is abandoned before it is fully explored (I think the scene later with Grandpa and Stretch is supposed to explore it further – but it’s so weirdly over the top and deliberately comical, that I don’t think it works).

 

Much of the time is over-the-top in the extreme. This is a film that makes great use of Tom Savini’s special effects makeup – blood flows in geysers throughout the film. It’s hard to tell if Hooper was really making a satire here, or maybe just a film that was supposed to be pure camp. Perhaps had the film marketed itself that way – like have they used Hooper’s original title, Beyond the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, critics and audiences would have better seen what Hooper was doing at the time (at the very least, you’d think Roger Ebert – who hated this film, but of course was also the screenwriter for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) would have seen what it was doing.

 

In a way, I admire what Hooper does here. The first film was a very serious attempt to not just scare you, but also delve into some issues of the time revolving around death and violence, and how people are dying without understanding why. It was a serious film. This film is anything but serious – it goes over the top well before it has Dennis Hopper and Leatherface engage is a chainsaw duel, and just keeps on going further and further throughout. You have to admire Hooper’s gumption here – his willingness to go for it, to not repeat himself, to try and make a film for the 1980s that commented on the time much like the original did for the 1970s – and recognizing that in order to do so, he had to make a completely different film tonally. It’s a valiant effort, and there are things about it that work wonderfully. And yet, for a film that is as wildly over the top, and trying to so hard to be comical, you would think that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 would be more fun to watch. But it really isn’t – it leaves a sick taste in your mouth somewhat. What Hooper was intending here was a tight rope walk tonally, and he doesn’t nail it. You can admire the effort though.

Movie Review: Swallow

Swallow **** / *****

Directed by: Carlo Mirabella-Davis.

Written by: Carlo Mirabella-Davis.

Starring: Haley Bennett (Hunter Conrad), Austin Stowell (Richie Conrad), Denis O'Hare (Erwin), Elizabeth Marvel (Katherine Conrad), David Rasche (Michael Conrad), Luna Lauren Velez (Lucy), Zabryna Guevara (Alice), Laith Nakli (Luay), Babak Tafti (Aaron), Nicole Kang (Bev), Olivia Perez (Nim), Kristi Kirk (Lillian), Alyssa Bresnahan (Jill), Maya Days (Dr. Santos), Elise Santora (Dr. Reyes), Myra Lucretia Taylor (Nurse), Kathleen Butler (Lydia).

 

Swallow is hardly the first horror film to use pregnancy as a metaphor for the everyday horror of being a woman. Pregnancy makes an easy metaphor here – you now have something growing inside you, feeding off your body, your body is no longer your own, but a vessel for something else, etc. But it is, perhaps, the first horror movie to approach the subject from quite this angle. This isn’t a horror film about a woman whose body slowly becomes not her own – but rather, a horror film about a woman whose body has never been her own, and her gradual reclamation of it. It is a fascinating, subdued, horror film – not full of body or jump scares, of monsters, ghosts or serial killers – but about the everyday horror of having your body controlled.

 

In the film, Haley Bennett stars as Hunter – the beautiful, young, submissive wife of Richie (Austin Stowell), the son of a wealthy family. Hunter comes from a poor, abusive background – we get into some of the reasons for that as the film progresses – and never had control over her life. Now, she’s the wife of a rich dude – living in a beautiful, modernist house. Her husband seems nice – as do his parents – at least as long as they are not crossed. They are rich, and used to people doing what they tell them to. They’re polite to Hunter as long as she continues to act as she should. She gets pregnant – and everyone is happy. But Hunter has a secret – and that secret is she likes to swallow things. She started with a marble, then it expands to more and more strange, even dangerous, objects. Had she not been pregnant, perhaps she could have gotten away with it for a while – but an ultrasound reveals them. Soon, her husband and her family is clamping down more and more on her, controlling her more and more.

 

There is a certain degree in which Swallow resembles the other great horror film of 2020 so far – The Invisible Man, including the fact that eventually, the submissive wife decides to leave – which reveals just how awful her rich controlling husband is. But The Invisible Man is a more traditional horror film – with a more traditional villain, with more traditional beats – but handled pretty much to perfection. Swallow is a quieter film – one that sneaks up on you, and gets under your skin. Part of that is the art direction – that beautiful house, which is also cold and sterile, the sound design, which lulls you into a sense of surreal sleep. The pink hues of the art direction evoke an earlier time. And Bennett’s wonderful, subdued performance – that gives you the sense that at first, even she doesn’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing. It all adds up to evoking a waking nightmare.

 

If I have a problem with the movie, it comes in the last act – where Hunter’s past is laid probably a little too bare, in ways I didn’t find overly convincing. I’m not sure why the person she goes to see is the one she needs to get some sort of closure from – it seems kind of backwards. Yet, the scene unto itself, with Bennett’s increasingly forceful performance, and another wonderful piece of work by character actor Dennis O’Hare sells the scene, at least in the moment.

 

And the very end of the movie works wonderfully well – it may in fact be the only ending that really makes sense. The whole movie is a metaphor for how women have their bodies controlled by the patriarchal society they inhabit. Whatever other way then could the movie end?

Movie Review: Blood Quantum

Blood Quantum *** / *****

Directed by: Jeff Barnaby.

Written by: Jeff Barnaby.

Starring: Michael Greyeyes (Traylor), Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Joss), Forrest Goodluck (Joseph), Kiowa Gordon (Lysol), Olivia Scriven (Charlie), Stonehorse Lone Goeman (Gisigu), Brandon Oakes (Bumper), William Belleau (Shooker), Devery Jacobs (James), Gary Farmer (Moon), Felicia Shulman (Doris), Natalie Liconti (Lilith).

 

Jeff Barnaby’s debut film – Rhymes for Young Ghouls – announced a major new voice in Indigenous filmmaking in Canada – and a refreshing. That film wasn’t afraid to take on important, weighty subject matter – it’s plot dealt directly with Residential schools – but also wrapped in up in genre trapping, making it an entertaining film instead of a lecture of straight history lesson. He attempts something similar with his long awaited for follow-up – Blood Quantum – putting an Indigenous spin on the zombie film. He doesn’t play with the genre as much as he did with his debut – but he has crafted another fascinating hybrid of a film.

 

Once again, we are on the Red Creek reserve – this time in the present day. Things are already tense for the reserve Sheriff, Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) – who has a teenage son with a pregnant, white girlfriend, a few troublemakers, an ex-wife he still has feelings for, and an aging father – who complicates things even more when he won’t stop calling about the fish he just gutted, coming back to life. Barnaby takes a little bit of time setting up his own personal zombie apocalypse film – before flashing forward six months to see how far society has fallen in that time. The twist here is that if you have Indigenous blood, you are immune from the zombies – at least as far as their bites won’t turn you into one. If a horde rips your guts out though, that’s another matter.

 

The film does get bloody and violent – and the body count ratchets up more and more as the film moves along, and the kills, while not being particularly inventive for the genre, do get very bloody – and Barnaby isn’t afraid to sit there for a while as the zombies rip you apart. You are stuck watching as it happens. On the scale of a typical zombie movie, I’d say that Barnaby does a good – but not great – job. He is basically copying Romero – and everyone who has copied Romero – and while he does it very well, it’s also not overly original.

 

Where the film is original though is in its outlook. Like Romero again, Barnaby is using the zombie genre to smuggle in weighty, important themes. There are very real debates going on within the Red Creek community about survival – and what they should be doing. They are immune for the bites, but they are letting in white people as well – and protecting them, many at the insistence of Charlie, the pregnant girlfriend. But by letting them in, they are putting their own community in danger. Not letting them in basically dooms them to certain death. The film is about colonialism as much as it about anything, this time imagining a world where, for the first time in generations, the Indigenous people will actually have a say – even control – over what direction their society, and society and general, will move towards.

 

As a filmmaker, I still think Barnaby has a way to go – a way to improve. His films are heady genre films, with weighty themes, important subject matter, but also want to operate as pure genre films as well. It’s a difficult mix to pull off – and Barnaby is still trying to bring both parts together into one great film. I think he’ll get there – but it’s not quite yet.

Movie Review: Rabid (1977 and 2019)

Rabid (1977) *** ½ / *****

Directed by: David Cronenberg.

Written by: David Cronenberg.

Starring: Marilyn Chambers (Rose), Frank Moore (Hart Read), Joe Silver (Murray Cypher), Howard Ryshpan (Dr. Dan Keloid), Patricia Gage (Dr. Roxanne Keloid), Susan Roman (Mindy Kent), Roger Periard (Lloyd Walsh), Lynne Deragon (Nurse Louise), Terry Schonblum (Judy Glasberg), Victor Désy (Claude LaPointe), Julie Anna (Nurse Rita), Gary McKeehan (Smooth Eddy).

 

Rabid (2019) *** / *****

Directed by: Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska.

Written by: John Serge and Jen Soska & Sylvia Soska.

Starring: Laura Vandervoort (Rose), Benjamin Hollingsworth (Brad Hart), Ted Atherton (Dr. William Burroughs), Hanneke Talbot (Chelsea), Stephen Huszar (Dominic), Mackenzie Gray (Gunter), Stephen McHattie (Dr. Keloid), Kevin Hanchard (Dr. Riley), Heidi von Palleske (Dr. Elliot), Joel Labelle (Trent Taylor), C.M. Punk (Billy), Edie Inksetter (Dr. Beverly), Tristan Risk (Nurse Dana / Cynthia Creature), Sylvia Soska (Bev), Jen Soska (Ellie).

 

David Cronenberg’s second film, Rabid, is not one of his best. Like many of his pre-Videodrome (1983) films, it is Cronenberg still working through how to connect all his different obsessions – weird sex, body horror, psychology, identity, all into a genre film and the results are mixed. I don’t think it’s quite as good as his debut – Shivers (1975) and certainly isn’t as good as its follow-up, The Brood (1979) – but I do prefer all three to his first foray into bigger budget films – Scanners (1981). Cronenberg isn’t overly interested in his main character in Rabid – Rose, played by adult film star Marilyn Chambers. Along with her boyfriend, Hart (Frank Moore), she is involved in a motorcycle accident in the opening moments of the film, and ends up at a nearby plastic surgery clinic – and ends up having an experimental treatment done. It does work out quite as they expected – as the strange treatments have caused her to develop a new organ – a small stinger that emerges from her armpit, and can be used to suck human blood – the only thing that will keep her alive. She is patient zero in an epidemic that descends upon Montreal – martial law is declared, and Hart tries to save her – and she tries to prove she isn’t the monster she is.

 

There is room for improvement in Cronenberg’s film – which is the kind of pleasingly bizarre 1970s horror film that would likely mostly be forgotten by now had it not been an early film in the career of a master like Cronenberg – and one that so clearly shows the obsessions he would indulge for the rest of his career. The Soska sisters, Jen and Sylvia, should therefore had plenty of room to play with Cronenberg’s premise. Their remake though strangely seems to both kind of expand and contract Cronenberg’s original. They are clearly fans of Cronenberg – there are references here to many of Cronenberg’s movies, from Dead Ringers to Naked Lunch to The Fly, and probably others. Yet, the also are clearly not slaves to Cronenberg’s earlier film either – there is certainly some connective tissue here, but they have basically gone completely their own way.

 

Some of those changes work, other not so much. The biggest problem with the film is probably its first act – which basically takes 30 minutes to accomplish what Cronenberg does in 30 seconds. They clearly want their main character, Rose (Laura Vandervroot) to be a more complete character than Cronenberg’s, and they want to establish her world – she works for a fashion designer, her foster sister is a model, but poor Rose is a wallflower – which leads to one of the most ridiculous “hot girl isn’t hot because she’s wearing glasses” I have ever seen in the movie. I’m not sure I love the fashion industry stuff here – it seems too easy a target, and the film doesn’t even go as far as say The Neon Demon does – but they clearly want a more focused film than Cronenberg’s.

 

For me, that took a while to get used to – because Cronenberg’s depiction of Montreal slowly descending into chaos – the society wide outlook of that film – is really the reason to watch it. Chambers isn’t a particularly good actress – she excels in a few scenes (seducing that guy in the adult theater, writing around on the floor in pain) – but she doesn’t have much range. The Soska sister clearly just aren’t interested in that here.

 

But the remake gets better as it goes along, as it begins to focus on the changes to Rose, and the strange doctor – named Dr. William Burroughs (Ted Atherton). The climax becomes bloody, disturbing, disgusting. While the ending of this film is completely different than the ending of Cronenberg’s – they stay true to the downbeat, depressing nature of the ending.

 

Overall, it’s interesting to revisit one of Cronenberg’s earliest films. It remains interesting, but mainly for what it would setup for his future career. It’s also interesting to see the Soska’s sisters film – an early film in what hopefully will be a great career. They have the chops to make a great film – this one just isn’t it.

Movie Review: 1BR

1BR *** ½ / *****

Directed by: David Marmor.

Written by: David Marmor.

Starring: Naomi Grossman (Sarah), Giles Matthey (Brian), Andrea Gabriel (Cristina), Nicole Brydon Bloom (Sarah), Alan Blumenfeld (Gus), Taylor Nichols (Jerry), Celeste Sully (Lisa), Hailey Giles (Diane), Susan Davis (Miss Stanhope), Clayton Hoff (Lester), Jerry Ying (Officer Cho), Curtis Webster (Charles D. Ellerby), Earnestine Phillips (Ester).

 

Sarah really should be able to see something was wrong from the start. Afterall, she was able to find an apartment, in Los Angeles, that she could afford to rent without roommates, even though her only revenue is apparently a low-level job. Even if you take out the overly cheerful man who interviews her about the apartment, who asks strange questions like whether she has family in the area, or the strange guy with one eye who is always lurking, and wants you to read this book he has, or the love interest who is a little too perfect, a little too friendly, Sarah should have run far away from this apartment building.

 

It takes the first act of indie horror movie 1BR to really reveal what is going on here, but you know from the start something is wrong. And if you don’t think something is going to happen to Sarah’s cat – which she isn’t supposed to have in the apartment, then I don’t know what to do for you. It is to the films credit that despite us being ahead of the movie at first, that is able to twist and contort itself into something different – something we don’t quite see coming – even if the end of the movie calls to mind another recent indie horror film (I won’t reveal which one, since that may constitute a spoiler, but both movies end with the reveal of multiple lights of the same color).

 

Yet, 1BR is still an effective, creepy film that builds tension through the first act, ratchets it up in the second, and then gives you some cathartic, bloody relief in act three. Through it all, it’s anchored by a fine performance by Naomi Grossman, as Sarah. She is an every-millennial at the start of the movie, trying to make her way in the world, trying to get away from her family, start a job, find love, etc. And then as the mysteries of the film reveal itself – and the cult emerges – her performance becomes engagingly ambiguous. Does she become brainwashed? Is it an act? Is it a little of both?

 

Written and directed by David Marmor, 1BR is an effective little horror film. The film finds the horror in the everyday – it doesn’t rely on camera tricks, jump scares or gore for that tension. A large part of the creepiness is just how ordinary everything – and everyone – looks throughout the film. It twists little by little, to become more tense, more surreal, scarier. It is effective at each stage of its development, right up until the finale.

Movie Review: Color Out of Space

Color Out of Space *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Richard Stanley.

Written by: Scarlett Amaris and Richard Stanley based on the short story by H.P. Lovecraft.

Starring: Nicolas Cage (Nathan Gardner), Joely Richardson (Theresa), Madeleine Arthur (Lavinia), Elliot Knight (Ward), Tommy Chong (Ezra), Brendan Meyer (Benny), Julian Hilliard (Jack), Josh C. Waller (Sheriff Pierce), Q'orianka Kilcher (Mayor Tooma), Melissa Nearman (Reporter), Amanda Booth (Secretary), Keith Harle (Hunter Jake).

 

The pedigree for a cult movie is undeniable with Color Out of Space. It is an adaptation of a H.P. Lovecraft story, and even if Lovecraft stories usually don’t translate well to the screen, there is always the potential for them to become something indescribably weird. The film was directed by Richard Stanley – who is perhaps best known for getting fired a few days into filming The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) – which became a legendary debacle. And most of all, it stars Nicolas Cage in a role that allows him to go crazy, and talk about alpacas a lot. This isn’t quite Mandy of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans level insane late-period brilliance from Cage – but it’s a step above something like Mom and Dad, which is already several steps above the five or six direct-to-video action films Cage makes every year. So, basically, it’s in Dog Eat Dog territory – still something so twisted and weird that you cannot imagine another actor pulling it off at all, but not quite genius level. But like the movie itself, it sure is, well, something.

 

The movie is about the Gardner family, a city family who have recently moved to the country to take over the family farm. Nathan (Cage) was an artist, who now is going to farm and raise alpacas – the animal of the future – although it doesn’t seem like he really knows how to do that. His wife Theresa (Joely Richardson) is getting back into the swing of things after a mastectomy – trying to keep her real estate business going even with the spotty Wi-Fi. Teenagers Benny and Lavinia aren’t doing that well – Benny is constantly getting stoned, often with the weird squatter who lives on their land (Tommy Chong) and Lavinia is exploring Wicca, doing weird spells and trying to center herself. Then there is young Jack, who is pretty much left on his own. The family is pretty much going stir crazy even before anything weird happens.

 

It doesn’t take long for that weirdness to start though. It begins when the sky turns a strange pink, and a meteorite crashes onto the property. Slowly but surely, the family starts behaving in increasingly strange ways – Benny and Lavainia are the only two who seem to realize just how strange things are getting, but even they cannot stop themselves from being sucked into the strangeness. To say more would be to spoil the fun – but needless to say, things do get really, really weird, really blood, really twisted in ways that make you wish that Stanley hadn’t been fired from The Island of Dr. Moreau (seriously, he couldn’t have made anything worse).

 

It’s always a pleasure to see Cage in a film that can match his weirdness level. I’m not sure he has any real judgment left, or if he just keeps making so many movies that he’s going to occasionally hit on one that works with his crazy energy – but when he finds one, it’s a thing of beauty. Cage gets increasingly weird throughout the movie, in ways that make the already crazed narrative feel even less predictable than it otherwise would be. No one else in the film can match that level of weirdness – and they don’t even try, which is probably a good thing – Cage, and the narrative twists and turns are strange enough.

 

I won’t say where all of this leads, but I will say you could tell in was a Lovecraft story even if you didn’t know. For the most part, Lovecraft stories don’t work as films – hell, I just Re-Animator for the first time a few weeks ago, and I’m not convinced it worked, as it seemed to be four different movies mashed together, and I’m not convinced I want to watch any of them. But this one does. Stanley finds a way to visualize Lovecraft’s horror in ways that are both terrifying, and just plain weird. And Cage keeps everything engaging throughout. I don’t know if the movie adds up to anything other than its own weirdness – but its weirdness is so engaging, I’m not sure it needs to.

Movie Review: The Platform

The Platform *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia.

Written by: David Desola & Pedro Rivero.

Starring: Ivan Massagué (Goreng), Zorion Eguileor (Trimagasi), Antonia San Juan (Imoguiri), Emilio Buale (Baharat), Alexandra Masangkay (Miharu), Zihara Llana (Mali), Mario Pardo (Amigo de Baharat), Algis Arlauskas (Preso), Txubio Fernández de Jáuregui (Jefe de Restaurante), Eric Goode (Sr. Brambang).

 

A man wakes up on the floor of a prison cell. There is a hole in the middle of the floor, and one other prisoner on the other side of that hole. He is older, has been here a while – and will explain the rules. They are on a relatively high level – 48 – so they’ll be okay this month. They may end up on a worst level next month – but they can deal with that then. Once a day, a table packed with food descends through the prison – stopping on each floor for a few minutes. There is enough food for everyone to eat – as long as people don’t gorge themselves. But, of course, that is exactly what happens. Those on the top floors eat like kings – but as the table lowers each level down, some people will get nothing to eat for the entire month.

 

The Platform doesn’t waste a lot of time explaining why this prison has been set up this way. It doesn’t really make much in the way of logical sense -unlike say Snowpiercer, which took a similar premise, but put it on a train circumnavigating a post-apocalyptic world. It doesn’t really need an explanation though – in the words of another film by the director of Snowpiercer “it’s metaphorical” – and as long as you except that, you’ll enjoy The Platform just fine. The screenwriters, David Desola and Pedro Rivero, seem to know this – but they have also thought through at least some of the practical logic that people behind this concept would have to figure out – like how you prevent food hording, etc. – and they dole out that information only as needed – perhaps at the precise moments they feel that the audience will ask the question themselves.

 

The hero of the movie is Goreng (Ivan Massagué), a skinny, bearded intellectual, who amazingly, volunteered to be a part of this sadistic experiment – not knowing all of the details of course. His cellmate is Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor), who is not there voluntarily. You can tell the differences between them simply by finding out what their “luxury” items are – for Goreng is a copy of Don Quixote that he plans to ready. For Trimagasi, it is a kitchen knife that sharpens itself as it is used. That knife got him in prison – and perhaps it will help him survive.

 

What follows in The Platform is a claustrophobic film that traps these two characters together. The film will add more characters, through some creative means – and as you expect, at some point, Goreng will rally against the system – to try and break it the cycle. I give the filmmakers behind The Platform a lot of credit – they clearly started with an interesting idea, and then tried – and mainly succeeded – to expand that idea in different directions. I wasn’t as thrilled with the endgame of the film as much as the first two thirds – you know it’s coming, but aside from a lot of blood and gore, it’s just not as satisfying.

 

The Platform though may be the right film at the right time. As Covid-19 upends our entire way of life – at least temporarily – many have started to question the very foundation of society that we have created for ourselves, and we see how fragile it can be. The Platform is a film that shares some of that DNA with the films of Bong Joon-ho, who has used genre trappings to question our society – and it’s more relevant than ever right now. Add in the claustrophobic setting, and The Platform is an even more effective film to watch during our self-isolation. It is isn’t a perfect film – but it’s a perfect film right now.

Classic Movie Review: Prince of Darkness (1987)

Prince of Darkness (1987) 

Directed by: John Carpenter.

Written by: John Carpenter (as Martin Quatermass).

Starring: Donald Pleasence (Priest), Jameson Parker (Brian Marsh), Victor Wong (Prof. Howard Birack), Lisa Blount (Catherine Danforth), Dennis Dun (Walter), Susan Blanchard (Kelly), Anne Marie Howard (Susan Cabot), Ann Yen (Lisa), Ken Wright (Lomax), Dirk Blocker (Mullins), Jessie Lawrence Ferguson (Calder), Peter Jason (Dr. Paul Leahy), Robert Grasmere (Frank Wyndham), Thom Bray (Etchinson), Joanna Merlin (Bag Lady), Alice Cooper (Street Schizo), Betty Ramey (Nun). 

 

No one thinks that Prince of Darkness is one of John Carpenter’s masterpieces- although it has gained a cult following after an initially bad reception when it released in 1987. This was Carpenter returning to his lower budget horror roots after Starman and Big Trouble in Little China – two bigger budget films, that weren’t huge hits at the time. In many ways, it does feel like Carpenter playing homage to himself – he has a group of people trapped in a single building by the hordes outside a la Assault on Precinct 13, and has a villain that can end up inhabiting the people, one at a time, so you’re not quite sure who to trust a la The Thing. Hell, it has Donald Pleasance in it as a Priest, and while his name isn’t said in the movie itself, in the credits, it is Father Loomis – which of course is the name of his Halloween character. In some ways, the character is the same as well – this Priest knows that evil is coming, but cannot get people to believe him.

 

Prince of Darkness is an odd film indeed. Carpenter had an interest in quantum mechanics and physics at the time, and he seems to be setting up the age-old conflict between science and religion. There is something locked in the basement of this church (considering the title of the movie, no points for guessing what) – and it has awoken, and is ready to come out. Instead of just counting on religion however to keep it contained – he calls on Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong), a physics professor at a local university who enlists the help of his best students, complete with all the technology that the cast of Strange Things could dream of, to find a scientific solution to their problems. Science and religion are both in conflict in this movie, but also working together in a strange way.

 

Carpenter’s basic strategy here is the same as it was in The Thing – he wanted to build a mounting sense of dread in the movie, moving slowly, building suspense before the climax. That it isn’t as successful as it was in The Thing is obvious. Mainly that’s because Carpenter’s screenplay strains with unnecessary exposition and scientific explanations – dialogue that is deadly to deliver. The cast is mainly fairly dull – they never are able to bring to life what are basically archetypes. The couple at the center is Brian (Jameson Parker) and Catherine (Lisa Blount) – a pair of students who fall in bed, and then in love, in short order – a movie meant to make the ending hit harder, so it’s not just a bunch of cookie cutter characters being offed one by one. Blount fares better than Parker here – he really is the most bland of all bland leading men – so the ultimate ending certainly does have a kick, particularly the final shot.

 

But the star here really is Carpenter – who despite the flaws in the narrative, really does nail the mounting dread. I think some work needed to be done perhaps on the homeless horde outside to make them more menacing (and believable) than they are here. But Carpenter’s slow mounting dread is expertly handled, his score his excellent. His best decision is to shoot the dreams the team has – radio transmission from the future – or consumer grade VHS – the grainy, fuzzy look working perfect to make them even creepier. Prince of Darkness still isn’t one of Carpenter’s best films – it doesn’t hold a candle to Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Thing or Christine – and it doesn’t have the ambition of its follow-up – They Live – but it’s better than they gave it credit for in 1987 – and worth the attention of the horror auteur’s fans.

Classic Movie Review: The Thing (1982)

The Thing (1982)

Directed by: John Carpenter.

Written by: Bill Lancaster based on the story by John W. Campbell Jr.

Starring: Kurt Russell (MacReady), Wilford Brimley (Dr. Blair), T.K. Carter (Nauls), David Clennon (Palmer), Keith David (Childs), Richard Dysart (Dr. Copper), Charles Hallahan (Vance Norris), Peter Maloney (George Bennings), Richard Masur (Clark), Donald Moffat (Garry), Joel Polis (Fuchs).

 

The first film I thought to rewatch when a global pandemic trapped us all in our homes with our loved ones for days, weeks, perhaps months on end was not Steven Soderberg’s Contagion – I still haven’t ventured back into that one yet, but likely will this week, but John Carpenter’s The Thing instead. This is perhaps Carpenter’s best film (Halloween can also credibly make that claim) – a paranoid creature feature with great special effects, but is all the scarier simply when it traps its characters in a room together, no one quite sure if the others are still who they say they are, with no way to escape. Like much of Carpenter’s work, The Thing wasn’t quite a critical or commercial hit when it came out in 1982 – maybe it was the odd decision to release this cold, snowbound movie in June, maybe it was because the film came out just three weeks after Poltergeist and two weeks after E.T. (when was the last time we had a summer with a trio of mainstream movies that stellar?) – but it has rightly gone onto be recognized as the horror classic it so clearly is.

 

The story is simple enough – a group of men are stuck at an Antarctic science station – prepared, already, to spend many long claustrophobic months together, when something strange happens – a dog comes running into camp, followed by a helicopter, who has one very determined Norwegian leaning out the side trying to gun down the dog. Needless to say, it is the dog who survives – not the Norwegians – but the dog isn’t really a dog anymore – but instead is something the Norwegians found frozen in the ice, that has no dethawed. And it can take the shape of anyone it so desires. It takes the men a while to realize this of course – but once they do, they don’t handle it well.

 

What’s remarkable about The Thing is how much Carpenter is able to convey, while telling us so little. He dives into the story headlong, right with that dog running across the snowy terrain, being chased by the helicopter, and unlike say Alien or Jaws, he doesn’t take his time revealing the monster itself. It’s that same night, when the dog keeper places their new arrival with the other that it is revealed to be not like other dogs – in a virtuoso special effects sequence that surely could be done with CGI now, but wouldn’t have the same impact. Often when filmmakers attempt this – diving into the story, getting to the “good stuff” quickly – they sacrificed elements like story and character. Not for Carpenter – it helps that the narrative is relatively simple and straight forward, but as the movie progresses you certainly understand all you need to know about the main characters – Kurt Russell’s MacReady, the closest thing the film has to a hero, although that may be because we spend the most time with him, since he also does things that if he wasn’t out hero, would make him the villain. Or Wilford Brimley’s Dr. Blair – who seems, well, like a warm Wilford Brimley character until he isn’t. Or the hotheaded Childs played by Keith David – who remains mysterious to the end. And on and on – I’m not suggesting that these are particularly deep characterizations, just that they are as deep as they need to be to make them not just interchangeable characters, simply there to increase the blood flow – sacrificial lambs to the slaughter, even if in effect they kind of are.

 

The special effects, strangely, seem to be what drew the ire of contemporary film critics at the time – Roger Ebert called it a “geek show,  gross out movie … it seems clear that Carpenter made his choice early on to concentrate on the special effects and technology and to allow the story and people to become secondary” in his 2.5 star (thumbs down) review, Vincent Canby completely dismissed it “The Thing is too phony looking to be disgusting. It qualifies only as instant junk”. Even reviewers who got what Carpenter were going for, didn’t seem to like it – Dave Kehr said “he seems to be aiming for an enveloping, novelistic kind of effect, but all he gets is heaviness”. I bring this up not to shit on the reviewers who either didn’t get or didn’t like The Thing in 1982 (nothing is more tiresome to me than pieces like that) – because on one level, I get them. I do wonder what movies in the CGI age will end up being regarded like The Thing is today – and whether when that movie emerges, it will be one that I dismissed as more CGI soup. When you watch lot of movie with special effects, they can blend together to a certain degree – you can roll your eyes and think “here we go again” when the same visuals come onto the screen. Special effects can do that now – and it seems like it did it make in 1982 as well. It wasn’t even like the horror community embraced it that much – only two Saturn nominations (Best Horror Film, and Best Special Effects) – hell, the idiots at the Razzies nominated the brilliant Ennio Morricone score for Worst Score of the year.

 

But it isn’t the special effects – as wonderful as they are – that I think when I think of The Thing. It’s the long sequences of paranoid men together in a room, sizing each other up, trying to figure out who is real, and who is the Thing. The blood test sequence is the best, most sustained example of this – a sequence that goes on minute after agonizing minute, you’re starting to doubt the whole thing, they whole process, before the big reveal. It is perfectly played by the cast – but then it all is. Even the effects heavy climax is nailed by Russell, Brimley, David and T.K. Carter – the fact Carter’s Nauls simply vanishes, and we never see what happened (a budgetary restriction, which works to make the film’s ending even more ambiguous than intended. Carpenter’s The Thing is a triumph of 1980s special effects – I know some will snicker at them now, but they still work on me (and compare them to other special effects at the time – no, it isn’t Cronenberg’s The Fly level, but it’s close) – but the reason the film has lasted is because it is the exact opposite of a “geek show, a gross out movie”. Sorry Roger, you were wrong on this one.