Cuckoo (2024)

AUGUST 11, 2024

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, WEIRD
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

After scoring a massive hit with Longlegs last month, I'm sure Neon was hoping for a little more than $3m for the opening weekend of Cuckoo (indeed, it barely outsold Longlegs itself, on its 5th week). But it's a little less audience friendly than even that was, and lacked the curiosity factor that drove Osgood Perkins' serial killer opus to such unexpected success. Still, I was happy to see that my crowd was fairly full, even if that meant I had to change seats because the dipshit next to me kept using his phone; I go to the movies partly because I like the crowd experience (especially for horror films) but I do wish I could, I dunno, maybe pick that crowd myself.

Anyway, while Cuckoo wasn't exactly the usual multiplex fare, it was Marvel-level inviting compared to Tilman Singer's first film Luz, which despite only being 70 minutes long managed to bore me into "how much is left?" territory by its halfway point. That one was another of these "vibes horror" movies that are coming along with increasing regularity, and as I've mentioned before, I don't really connect with such films. I wouldn't say Cuckoo is a complete departure from that kind of thing, but felt more like a happy medium between similar movies (which include Skinamarink and, well, the other movies from Osgood Perkins) and a more traditional story.

Indeed, I don't even know if I could accurately summarize Luz ("a possession tale involving what appears to be a hypnosis session to find a missing person" is about as specific I can get) but Cuckoo has, on the surface, a pretty normal, even somehwat familiar story: a rebellious teenager (Hunter Schafer) is forced to move to a new home with her father and his new wife, along with a stepsister she doesn't care much about. But as she starts to explore the ground of said new home (in this case a resort hotel in the Alps) she discovers creepy goings on, which her father and stepmother seem oblivious to (or... PART OF?), forcing her to take matters into her own hands and maybe save her innocent step-sibling along the way. A movie with the same sounding plot could have been a Screen Gems movie circa 2009 starring Adrianne Palicki or Leighton Meester.

But the devil's in the details of course, and it doesn't take long for the off-kilter stuff to kick in. First off the resort is run by Dan Stevens, so you know whether he's good or bad he's gonna be WEIRD; despite his handsome romance novel cover appearance the dude seems to be from whatever planet we got Burgess Meredith from. He always finds a way to make his characters left of center, even in big budget junk like Godzilla x Kong, so you know damn well he's not gonna just be some boring villain. No, he's going to talk about birds and play a little whistle and spray victims not with chloroform or pepper spray but pheremones. It's just the Dan Stevens way, and I love that this is his THIRD genre movie in this year alone (after GxK and Abigail), for a guy who could have parlayed his Downton Abbey and Beauty and the Beast success into "the next Hugh Grant!" territory but instead has, well, taken more after current day Hugh Grant (who is awesome) instead of the blander one we got during his '90s heyday.

And while he is as good as always, the movie really belongs to Schafer as Gretchen. I do not watch Euphoria* so I have zero familiarity with her, but she is an absolute gem here, keeping her "I'm over it" attitude juuuust short of crossing the line into unlikable territory, so that you're right there with her as she rolls her eyes at the various goings-on and (naturally) root for her to triumph when things get scary. Her reaction to one of Stevens' creepy lines (I won't repeat it here just in case, but it's in the trailer) is so good that I almost wish the movie had leaned more into that kind of irony, though given its strange nature it's probably for the best that they didn't risk turning more audiences away by going full horror comedy. It's got a sense of humor, but it's not a "funny" genre movie.

It's also not a body horror movie, despite what one of the blurbs on that trailer claim. Unless you count a nasty cut to the head (injury from one of the movie's few traditional scare scenes, a chase that ends in a glass door) and a very uncomfortable looking cast after a car accident, nothing really happens to Schafer's body, and the other targets in the film are left alone when it comes to that sort of thing as well. Without spoiling things, for this to be considered a true body horror movie, it would have to be told from the perspective of Gretchen's stepmother or something. Just my two cents and maybe a warning for anyone excited for a new Cronenberg-type film. I feel that quote was setting up a particular sect of the fanbase for disappointment.

That said, it did remind me of The Brood at times, with a little bit of Phenomena and A Cure For Wellness thrown in for good measure. But it's got enough of its own personality that the reminders never distracted me all that much (or worse, made me wish I was watching those instead), so don't get me wrong - it's not one of those movies where a filmmaker homages so many of his influences that he doesn't have room for any ideas of his own. I would guarantee that no one on the planet could possibly guess the motivations behind the villains' actions even after the first half hour or so; indeed if you WERE a fan of Luz you'll be happy to know this movie shares its ability to never once get predictable. It's just here it worked for me, whereas in Luz it did not.

That said there are a couple of minor wrinkles. One is that it appears to be edited down from a longer version at times; there's a scene where the villain is about to shoot a victim, and Schafer runs in to stop it from happening, only the villain is completely elsewhere by the time she arrives. But it's not played as a "Oh crap, where did he go?" kind of moment; Shafer doesn't even react to his absence, as if she already knew he had left (i.e. during a scene that was removed). And at one point her and her only ally (Luz's Jan Bluthardt) are both wearing big can headphones around their necks; we can infer why (the villains use a weird sound to disorient victims) but their sudden appearance suggests a scene where they figure out that they could wear them to protect themselves. Nothing crippling, but noticeably jumpy editing means there's probably a few trims we didn't pick up on in the moment (I'd be willing to bet there was more with Astrid Bergès-Frisbey's character Ed, too, as she basically disappears for all but one scene of the second half).

There's also a time loop thing that's never clarified. And I don't mean "HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?"; I don't care about that. No, the issue is that it's not entirely clear that the characters realize they're in a timeloop when it happens, except for one time that it almost certainly does. It's a weird point of reference, but what it needed was a moment like in NOES 4: Dream Master, when Dan starts noticing the deja vu and repeats Alice's line along with her to snap her out of it and let us in the audience know they caught on. Here, it happens I think four times before a character makes a "Hey, didn't I already do that?" kind of face, but then the loop ends before they can use the knowledge to their advantage. And then it just never happens again anyway. The inconsistency, coupled with what is a very odd plot point (even by this movie's standards) makes it stick out as just random for the sake of being random. If those other scenes were lost to keep the runtime down, I feel chopping these out would have been a better way to get that done.

Otherwise, it's just a freaky fun time. It's not unpleasant or anything (rare for a modern day mad scientist movie, especially one touted as "body horror"); most of the violence (including the villains' demise) is off-screen, and gore is kept to a minimum as well. And the movie's weirdness never overwhelms the narrative; it's more of a garnish than the main course, which is the best way to go for me. It gives the movie a personality and lets it stand apart from its influences, but the main goal is telling a coherent story with a character you want to succeed - a perfect approach in my opinion. May all involved continue to walk that fine line.

What say you?

*My two favorite movies of the year are Immaculate with Sydney Sweeney and Challengers with Zendaya, and now this was a nice surprise after being so down on the director's previous film, while making me a fan of Schafer. So maybe I should just watch Euphoria? Its central cast certainly has good taste in scripts.

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FTP: The Wax Mask (1997)

DECEMBER 16, 2023

GENRE: GIALLO, MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

There’s kind of a heartbreaking moment on the bonus features for The Wax Mask (Italian: Maschera di cera), where Sergio Stivaletti notes that the movie never got a fair shake from horror fans. Not a direct quote because I don’t have the patience to go back and find where he says it (more on that soon) but the gist is “It was never seen as the exciting debut movie from a FX artist they liked – it was always the movie Lucio Fulci was going to make and I replaced him when he died.” And he’s right; you’d be hard-pressed to find a single review or article about the film from the past 25 years that doesn’t practically lead with “This was supposed to be a Fulci comeback movie,” which is unfair to Stivaletti (for those not privy to the history: Fulci died weeks before production was set to begin). The closest equivalent I can think of would be A.I. being directed by Spielberg instead of Kubrick, but it’s not like the ‘berg was making his debut, you know? We trusted him.

But one thing that’s not mentioned as much is, you know, it’s very likely the movie wouldn’t have been very good with Fulci calling the shots, either. At that point he hadn’t made a good flick in over a decade, and the Italian film industry’s decreased interest in horror (Stivaletti notes it may have been the only major Italian horror film being produced at that time, saying they were more interested in distributing American disaster movies of the era) meant that they weren’t afforded the same resources they had access to in the early 80s. With the story being a period piece, I feel it always would have come off as underwhelming at best, and (ironically) some of the film’s only real memorable moments were apparently things Stivaletti added that wouldn’t have been in Fulci’s version anyway.

I mean don’t get me wrong, the movie’s not terrible – at times it’s actually fairly entertaining. It’s just one of those things where the names you see in the credits (in addition to Fulci, who wrote the majority of the script, it was also co-written and produced by Dario Argento) elevate expectations. If you snipped off the opening titles and showed it to someone without context, they’d probably walk away thinking it was a decent enough spin on House of Wax, where a reporter and the museum’s new employee work together to solve the mystery of why those wax figures look so darn realistic and if it has anything to do with a string of disappearances. There are a few gory murders, some goofy mid-90s CGI shots that I find charming now (man did they love their morphing FX back then!), frequent sex scenes with actual nudity (also charming since such things don’t exist anymore), and a fiery climax that gave off low-key Hammer vibes. Nothing too exciting or memorable, but, you know, it’s fine!

That said, it never really looks all that well, which kept me at arm’s length. Cinematographer Sergio Salvati was Fulci’s DP for a number of his classics, but sadly it looks more like Salvati’s later work with Full Moon (including the OG Puppet Master), where everything is over lit and soap opera-ish. Honestly if it wasn’t for the time discrepancy I’d swear it was shot on video, so again I can’t help but think if Fulci had survived I’d have the same issues with it that I do under Stivaletti’s watch, and if anything I give him a little more benefit of the doubt since he’s a first timer whereas Fulci would have no excuse for it to look this phony (with the fact that it’s supposed to be 1912 even harder to buy when it looks like they shot it with something they bought at Circuit City). And as I mentioned, one of the best things in the movie is an out of nowhere Terminator-esque scene where the villain, revealed to basically be a robot wearing human skin, is melted down to his exoskeleton and chases the heroes for a bit as the fire rages behind them all. It’s delightfully batshit, offering the movie the sort of energy that it could have used throughout in order to offset its deficiencies.

Stivaletti, Argento, producer Giuseppe Colombo, and a couple others (none of the lead actors, alas) are on hand for a retrospective documentary that is annoyingly broken into several different featurettes, despite having the same people in all of them. Like I get that they want to pad the bonus features menu (indeed, I was kind of overwhelmed when I first loaded it up), but why not just have each interview separate? They obviously put together a 80ish minute doc and then cut it all up – next time make that “we need more bonus features” call before wasting the time of the editor who saw their work split into chunks. Especially since you kind of have to watch all of them anyway to get the context of what they’re talking about; like one just discusses the cast and even a child could be able to detect that it’s lacking a proper intro and stops suddenly. Also they’re all in Italian with non-burned in subtitles, so you can’t even cheat and fast forward at 2x (while reading fast) to get through them all. There’s a solid interview with Alan Jones about some of the project’s history and reputation, and a vintage featurette of Argento on the set, where it seems there was some Spielberg/Hooper/Poltergeist kinda stuff going on re: who was actually directing at times. And there’s a commentary, which is fine – I was most engaged by the Italian Stivaletti speaking English and occasionally asking moderator/Severin guru David Gregory to translate (“It’s a… word joke?” Stivaletti questions, with Gregory deciphering what he meant: “Play on words”). It’s cute! Oh and somewhere in there (again, if it wasn’t all broken up I might be able to find it again easier) Argento tells a delightful story about the lead actor Robert Hossein hooking up with one of the film’s actresses, only for her husband to catch them. But Hossein, thinking fast, told them they were just rehearsing their love scene and she was naked so she could start getting used to being undressed on camera. Hahahah, what a legend.

What say you?

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Black Circle (2018)

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

If there was one benefit to watching horror movies every day for six years – and also, due to the point of the site, thinking about and then writing about them – it’s that I was able to fine tune my ability to tell the difference between a bad movie and a movie that just wasn’t for me. There was definitely a time in my life where I could have hated Black Circle and told folks to stay away from it because it was terrible or something, but now I know better. Now I know that there’s a select group of genre fans who will eat this up (and not because they’re drunk and having “so bad it’s good” fun), and I am simply not in that group. Thank the Beneath the Mississippis of the world for helping me learn the difference.

To be fair, this one had me hooked in at the beginning, at least. Our hero Celeste is your typical slacker in her twenties who isn’t making enough of her life, and apparently her sister Isa was once the same way. But now she’s doing quite well at her job, dressing nicely, etc – she’s got her shit together, in other words, and chalks it up to listening to a self-help record from the 70s (that’s what the title refers to, for you young “music is only available through streaming services and nothing else” types). Isa lets Celeste borrow it to see if it can yield the same results, and it does, but almost instantly Isa shows up all frazzled and insane sounding, claiming she’s being followed… is the record to blame? Well, yes, otherwise they wouldn’t have named the movie after it.

So for a while it follows the usual haunted object kind of movie scenario – Celeste sees ghostly figures, has weird dreams, etc. One can assume that she will have to track the record maker down to save her and her sister before it’s too late, like Naomi Watts figuring out where the VHS tape comes from, and they’d be right… but fewer could assume the hard left the movie takes into lo-fi sci-fi as opposed to supernatural horror suggested by the first half hour. At a certain point, out of completely nowhere, we meet a young couple who can communicate telepathically and have been sent by “The Supreme” (don’t ask, we never get much more info) to warn Lena (Christina Lindberg from Thriller aka They Call Her One Eye*), who is indeed the one that made the record, that Celeste and Isa are about to arrive. For a while this trio basically takes center stage of the film as if it’s been about them all along, and the film never quite recovers from the switch for me.

At least we start getting some answers as to what is going on. As it turns out, what the record does is separate all the negative parts of yourself (so that all that’s left is the ambitious and “good” parts, hence the life improvements), but those parts end up being a doppelganger that believes itself to be the original and wants to take over for good. Lena and her X-Men-like charges work to fuse the two back together, and naturally things don’t go smoothly. Not a terrible idea, but at this point the movie just tailspins into nonsense, with both of the sisters’ doubles making erratic appearances while the others carry out the experiment, drawing itself out until all the creepy stuff of the first act becomes a distant memory by the time it finally ends an hour later. The “70s self-help techniques are bad” backstory recalled The Brood a bit, but as the telepaths took over I started thinking more about the silly Scanners sequels instead.

Personally, I’d rather a movie be confusing at first and slowly start to gel together until I’m fully engrossed in its off-kilter vibes (Cloud Atlas comes to mind as a good example; I was almost ready to walk out after 20 minutes but I stuck with it and by the end of the first hour I was completely on board) instead of the other way around, but as I said, there’s definitely folks for whom this will check every box. It reminded me of things like Beyond the Black Rainbow or Altered States, i.e. trippy sci-fi without spaceships and laser guns, and again that sort of thing is fine, but I wish it hadn’t lured me in with the promise of a traditional curse/possession type horror movie. Maybe a second viewing would improve things, now that I knew what direction it was going, but not enough to completely change my tune, since the movie gave more than ample time to adjust to the cerebral slant of the back half. Sure, I was disappointed it forgot about being a horror movie as it went on, but I was also left cold by its confusing presentation and abrupt story turns. I actually rewound the movie for a bit assuming I merely missed something with the introduction of the two telepathic kids, but nope – they just show up out of nowhere and the reveal of their powers is given no fanfare, introduced as casually as one might inform the audience what kind of pet or job this new character has. It’s a lot to ask!

I should note that it’s also a curious film that probably works best late at night when your brain is operating at a different level (and you are perhaps stoned), but it also has several hypnotizing scenes (including a lengthy one that kicks the film off, before we meet Celeste) that are quite effective. And by that I mean I fell asleep the first time I tried watching, literally during one such scene. I course corrected and watched the rest around lunchtime the following day, so that I’d be safe from dozing, but it would probably take a month to get through it if I tried only at night. I’m sure this played midnight slots at festivals back when it was making its run, and for a properly wired audience it was probably quite mesmerizing. But I just had to take it as it was, and I just couldn’t ever get back on its wavelength after Lindberg was introduced, and the film practically daring me to fall asleep again at regular intervals didn’t help.

But if you’re a fan of Lindberg, you’ll probably a. be happy to see her again (this and another film from around the same time were the first features she made since 1982!) and b. be even happier that the blu-ray has an hour long interview with her, conducted by Bogliano. I wish it was a more traditional one where we don’t see the interviewer at all, since he is constantly saying “sure” and “right” as she speaks which gets incredibly annoying, but she covers a lot of her career, why she stopped acting, how Thriller is perceived then vs now, etc – it’s a pretty thorough chat. Bogliano also provides a commentary where he almost never stops speaking, name checking his influences and pointing out who did drawings or what crew member played this or that bit part in between explaining some of his choices, mentioning some post production trouble (some money never came through), etc. Then there’s the short film, which is basically just two early scenes from the film, albeit slightly truncated, with a different ending, giving it a traditional short film twist ending instead of proceeding with the narrative as the feature does. A featurette and trailer are also included, so it’s a pretty well rounded package that the film’s fans will certainly get their money’s worth from. But a blind buy is not recommended unless the above mentioned titles are all in your all time faves list.

What say you?

*Which was randomly the “pile” movie I watched before this one, having no idea she was in both. It wasn’t horror and it was just an unpleasant r**e revenge movie, but if you like that sort of thing, I guess it qualifies as one of the more interesting ones since it spends the middle of the narrative showing how she trains in secret to be the avenging woman of the finale that her peers just suddenly turn into.

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The Kindred (1987)

OCTOBER 17, 2022

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

It’s rare that a bonus feature on a Blu-ray perfectly encapsulates why a movie works as well as it does, but that’s exactly the case for The Kindred. Along with a commentary, a retrospective, and some promotional materials (including the trailer, which kicks off with like 30 seconds’ worth of the monster growling over shots of the cast – imagine seeing something that bold today!?) is a collection of behind the scenes material shot during the film’s production in 1986, and it’s mostly devoted to the FX guys trying to get the monsters to move right for the camera/lighting that was set up. No one seems frustrated or anything, but watching them repeatedly try to get, for example, a little mutant thing inside a jar to pop out the correct way, you can almost hear a producer saying “F it, let’s do it with CGI and move on!”

Of course, that wasn’t an option in the 1980s, which meant that they’d keep trying until they got it right with the superior rubber and latex versions. While practical FX will always be around, the reliance on CG has infested even lower budget productions like this as the software became cheaper (and sadly, it’s probably easier to find a VFX artist than a practical sculptor, regardless of budget), and as a result the charm of movies like this went out the window along with the tangible creatures. The Kindred isn’t going to land on the list of anyone’s favorite monster movies of the decade, as it can’t exactly compete with the likes of The Thing or The Fly, but it IS a lot of fun and more than makes up for its clunkier bits with some truly impressive creature work. And goop. So, so much goop.

Even Rod Steiger joins in on the goopy fun, letting himself get drenched in the stuff as if he wasn’t an Oscar winning actor; it’s the sort of moment you can see coming and figure “Well they’ll turn the camera around and have a double take the hit” but nope! Steiger continues his dialogue as he’s slimed like a Nickelodeon star, and it’s such a weirdly charming thing to see – the commitment of an actor who wasn’t treating this B movie as something beneath him, the disgusting texture of the stuff, the content of the scene… it’s a surprisingly sweet moment, all things considered. Steiger isn’t the only one in the movie to be covered in goo, of course – another actor is submerged in a muddy texture that’s possibly the monster’s excrement, one turns into a fish monster, people are wrapped in slimy tentacles… it’s one of the most viscous movies I’ve seen in years, regardless of era.

And yes, this was my first time viewing (so nostalgia isn’t aiding my positive take), a long awaited moment for me. When I was 8 or 9 it was on cable and I remember starting to watch it while waiting for my mom to finish whatever it was she was doing before we left for a trip, and then recorded the rest when we finally left, but for reasons I can no longer recall I never did go back and finish it (given the rushed way I recorded it, a strong guess would be I forgot it was on the tape before using it for something else). I remember seeing one of the creatures (watching the whole thing now I assume it was the scene where the paramedic is attacked in Steiger’s lab) and that fragmented mental image has been all I had left for literal decades now, so I was stoked to see Synapse had remastered the film and put it out on Blu-ray, as it was never given any DVD release and has been effectively lost since its VHS debut.

That long absence means many of you probably haven’t seen it or barely remember it either, so to quickly explain the plot: a scientist who looks like Michael Bay (evil stepdad dude from Scream For Help, actually) finds out from his dying mother that he has a brother, though he is unable to get anything besides a name (Anthony). So he rounds up some of his colleagues and heads to her isolated home/lab, hoping her notes and experiments can provide him some answers. He’s joined by Amanda Pays (swoooooon) as a former student of hers, who also seems to have her own agenda, and it’s not long before “Anthony” makes his appearance – he’s a slimy monster who starts eating everyone. That’s pretty much the gist of the movie, a sort of cross between From Beyond and a slasher, though a surprising number of the cast end up surviving. But that actually adds to the movie’s charm; they’re mostly pretty likable folks and it’s nice to see how many of them will live to tell the wacky tale (kind of like Tremors in that regard; in fact one of my favorite things about that movie is that it has a relatively *low* body count).

As it’s made by Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter, the team who gave us The Dorm That Dripped Blood and The Power, I wasn’t surprised to see that the pacing wasn’t always great, but that said they had clearly learned from their mistakes on their earlier films, and this was easily their best (the pair would work together one more time on Servants of Twilight before splitting, though they both sit for the commentaries and such so it doesn’t seem to be a personal rift). And some slower action actually works in the film’s favor; the nature of “Anthony” is something the characters have to solve using their science know-how, so if he burst through the floor right away there’d be no reason for them to conduct experiments, and it’s through these talkier scenes we get to know them and how they interact with each other, which adds to the movie’s charm (Peter Frechette as Brad in particular brings some Bill Paxton energy to the proceedings). And I had to laugh at how they isolate a character so they can get some action in there early without it disrupting the others: a character decides she must drop off a giant watermelon at her parents’ house in the middle of the night (it’s their anniversary gift?), only for us to see that the monster has somehow hidden inside the melon, from which he bursts out and kills her as she drives. It’s so insane I had to applaud, and it bought the movie more than enough goodwill to get to the point where the goop really starts to hit the fan.

Synapse’s remastering is (as is usually the case) quite striking, though given the film’s longtime unavailability I can’t compare it to anything beyond my murky cable memory (looks much better!). And it’s got the aforementioned extras, all of which are enjoyable (the retrospective is pretty thorough; several cast members and a lot of the key crew) and I appreciate that they’re there, as the film’s long awaited official release means that they could have just put the film itself out on a barebones disc and it’d still be an exciting day for its fans and those like me who never got to see the whole thing. There aren’t a lot of these relatively “big” genre movies (it did play theatrically and performed fairly well for an indie horror film at the time – in fact it outgrossed From Beyond!) left to be properly released, so as a champion of physical media I see each one like this that comes along to be a huge win and perhaps a sign that the fight isn’t over yet, and we will still get proper special editions for anything else that’s still MIA (as opposed to just being brought to Shudder or something). My dream of getting The Keep inches ever closer!

What say you?

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Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

JUNE 8, 2022

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREVIEW SCREENING)

I blame Jaws 2 for the continued success and (more specifically) my continued support of the Jurassic Park franchise. See, I know Spielberg has made better films than the 1993 original, but for me personally it remains my 2nd fave of his filmography (after, yes, Jaws); a film I can throw on any time and be almost as enraptured as I was the night I saw it (a school night no less!) as a young lad of 13. I feel that's an important thing to note - by 13 I was already moving beyond loving every movie I saw just because I saw it, so while I don't doubt nostalgia plays a part in my love of the film, it's not like Shocker or something where my adolescence is doing the bulk of the work. Jurassic Park is a legit great adventure movie, silly plot and all. And by reteaming its core trio of Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm for the first time since, Jurassic World Dominion could have easily been my favorite sequel.

And that's where Jaws 2 comes into play. As much as I love Jaws, I think Jaws 2 is a solid followup (3D and Revenge you can burn in a fire) that is probably the best a sequel to Jaws can be especially without Spielberg or 2/3s of its own iconic trio. And so I go into each Jurassic Park sequel with the hope that someone can measure up and make the "Jaws 2" of this franchise; a sequel that is a step down but still something I can fully enjoy. But alas, I've never gotten it, and worse, I can't ever even decide which one of the now five followups is my "favorite", for lack of a better term. I just rewatched them all (for World and Fallen Kingdom, it was my first rewatch since theaters) and all I can tell you for sure is that Jurassic Park III is my *least* favorite. After that I might as well just toss the other four movies in the air and jot down their order of landing to determine their rank. My disappointment with each film just helps the next one; my expectations are pretty low, so when it's merely "fine" it almost seems like a win.

Which means yes, Dominion continues the tradition of the others, in that it never registers as a good or even pretty good movie as a whole, but has some borderline great sequences that keep it from being a total waste of my time, some great model/CGI hybrid work to bring the dinos to believable life (which is why 3 ranks last, I think - the FX in that one are by far the weakest in the series), and a couple of characters I enjoy hanging out with for a bit. But like the others, it also never once justifies its own existence; the films make money and therefore Universal makes more of them, but it's clear that no one has any genuine ideas to go along with them anymore. Jurassic World's "What if the park opened? And was so successful/incident free that people were actually getting bored of it?" is a genuinely fun idea that has shoddy execution, but apparently they should have just let the park run normally, because Fallen Kingdom was mostly just a retread of Lost World and Dominion bungles things further by barely utlizing its predecessor's twist of letting them all go free on the mainland.

Sure, there are many scenes or little vignettes that show what a world with dinosaurs is like (presented via "Now This" episode in the first few minutes), but for the most part it's treated kind of like the "blip" in Spider-Man: Far From Home, where we get a few gags about it and then largely move away from the idea, hoping no one notices or at least minds that THAT stuff would likely be far more interesting than what we get instead. Writer/director Colin Trevorrow even has the audacity to stage the film's final hour in an isolated compound nestled between some mountains in Italy (I think? There's a LOT of locations to keep track of in this one; it's practically Bondian), rather than finally dive into the idea that dinosaurs are just kind of wandering around populated areas. So for large chunks of the film, its central hook (man and dino sharing the planet) is irrelevant, and it feels like a copy of a copy.

Same goes for its other selling point, which is that it brings back our OG faves and has them mesh with the new characters (Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Isabella Sermon, the clone girl from Fallen Kingdom), but Trevorrow bungles that too, since the fact that it happens is technically a third act spoiler. Hell, the characters barely even interact with their own friends; Alan and Ellie spend most of their time away from Ian, and Owen and Claire are also repeatedly split apart by going off on their own adventures (by choice or circumstance). I didn't clock it exactly but I'd be shocked if the scene where they finally all come together occurred earlier than the 100 minute mark in this 2.5 hr film. And then almost instantly they split up again, though at least in different pairings (the two women go off - and pass the Bechdel test, which is in the news again for very dumb reasons - to reboot a system while Grant and Grady do their own mission. Malcolm just sits in the control room), so most of their interaction is limited to introducing themselves or offering cringey dialogue ("You're the guy who trained raptors!" is I think the only direct line Grant gives to Grady). A better writer would have found a way to get everyone together by the hour mark at the absolute latest, letting the second half (and change) coast on the thrill of seeing all these people join up for the first time to face a new threat. I feel there's another movie about six characters from different movies that did just that? Forget the name, came out like a decade ago.

Why does it take so long, you might be asking? The answer is, of course: locusts. Confused? Yeah, me too. For some goddamn reason, Trevorrow decided that the plot should revolve not around dinosaurs, but genetically enhanced locusts that are wiping out crops in the midwest - except for those that are being grown with Biosyn products. Biosyn, you might barely remember, is the rival company that paid Nedry to steal the embryos in the first movie, and now that InGen is in tatters due to the Jurassic World incident, they're the top guns in this field. It's even the same guy running the show, Dodgson (of "We got Dodgson here!" fame), but he's now played by Campbell Scott doing a whole Steve Jobs thing, feeling nothing like the guy we briefly met almost 30 years ago. Anyway, in public they're this super altruistic company, protecting the dinos and researching cures for cancer and such (no covid mention, even though it was shot after the whole thing began - guess they didn't have the stones). But Ellie (going off a tip from Malcolm, who is working there for reasons I never quite tracked) believes the locusts are their doing, so she recruits Grant to get to the bottom of it. And - I don't need to tell you this, but just in case - she's right!

Meanwhile, Owen and Claire are raising Maisie the clone girl out in the woods somewhere, and BioSyn wants her too, because she can unlock more genetic whateverses. Long story short, Trevorrow almost seems like he'd rather point his camera at anything besides the potentially fun idea of seeing Ian Malcolm hit on Claire Deering, or Owen Grady argue with Alan Grant about how we should interact with velociraptors. Or, you know, dinosaurs. It's the longest movie but I swear the dinos have less screen time than they have since the first film, where they were understandably withheld for key reveals. Even the film's big new baddie, a Giganotosaurus, only appears in a couple of brief scenes.

Worse, they're largely devoid of any real thrills or danger. They keep saying this is the last movie, so I'm thinking OK, maybe they'll kill off Ian or even Alan just to raise the stakes a bit, Scream 5 style. And when Dr Wu reappears out of nowhere (now working for BioSyn and seemingly regretful about his evil actions), I thought for SURE he was a goner. But no. There's only one human death of note in the entire film, and even your kid can probably guess who it would be. And it's off screen anyway, so you don't even get the cheap thrill that we got when previous human villains like Gennaro or Ted Levine got their just deserts in the previous films. There's a certain nonchalance from the actors (Pratt in particular) that keeps a lot of the action scenes from ever feeling as perilous as they should, as if they were being roped into a TV special or Universal Studios ride instead of a blockbuster feature film. Kids won't be scared by the movie, they'll just be bored.

But again, it does have some solid standalone sequences. There's a bit where Owen and Kayla (a new character; a merc who becomes an ally) are trapped on rapidly cracking ice with a raptor closing in on them, and a fun scene where Grant, Ellie, and Maisie are making their way through a cave system that's been overrun with some other kind of smaller dino (kind of like a raptor, Deinonychus maybe?). It's not an overly elaborate scene, but the sometimes puppet-y effects and Neill's occasional indifference to them makes it feel like a family making their way through an actual theme park ride, so it tickled me. They even manage to get some of the awe back to the proceedings, like in an early scene where Maisie comes across a pair of brachiosauruses who have wandered into a construction site, with the workers dropping everything to help lead the beasts to safety.

So like most of the other sequels, it doesn't fail to give us "moments", but it once again doesn't manage to become a successful whole. And since it's almost a half hour longer than the others, that's asking a lot, especially nowadays when the smarter of us are being a little choosier with how long we opt to spend inside an enclosed room with a bunch of strangers with their mouths open to shovel popcorn in. This should - and seemingly very easily COULD - be one of those "This is why we need theaters" kind of movies, but right now Top Gun 2 is taking that crown. More than once I felt the film was being restrained; maybe they weren't comfortable shooting in covid times (they had only just started shooting when the world shut down, picking back up in late summer 2020 before we had vaccines and such) and had to rework some things? But then again, Trevorrow had no such restrictions when he made his first film (or the second, which he didn't direct but still wrote and produced) and those have a lot of the same problems, so I can't quite bring myself to believe the pandemic was the only issue here. Ultimately, it's nice to see Grant and the others again, and there's nothing in the movie that made me flat out angry, but I checked my watch several times, and that shouldn't be the case when you consider the elevator pitch for this film. I'm used to these movies being kind of dumb, but I've never considered them boring.

What say you?

P.S. Minor spoiler here: given the appearance of a certain iconic prop from the first film, I guess the Telltale Game is now canon?

P.S.S. Since they cut it from the movie, instead of the trailer here's the "prologue" that was shown in IMAX last year.

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Mill Of The Stone Women (1960)

DECEMBER 14, 2021

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

One fun thing about diving so deep into older films is that I (and I assume most others) can usually tell more or less when a film was made just by looking at the film stock; I can usually get within a five year period after looking at a single shot in motion, regardless of the fashions or the age of any recognizable actors. It was a skill that threw me for a loop when watching Mill of the Stone Women, because for some reason I thought it was from 1972 but could tell just by looking at it that it had to be at least a decade older. And I was right - it was produced in 1960, and is in fact the first Italian horror movie made in color. I love seeing the firsts!

Ironically, if my eyes (and looking at the back of the damn Blu case, which noted the year) hadn't told me otherwise, I'd be convinced the film was a response to not only the Corman/Poe/Price films, but later Hammer Frankenstein entries that made Peter Cushing into more of a villain than the 1958 original. But no, it (obviously) came before those, being produced more or less at the same time as Corman's first Poe film (House of Usher) and having only the first two Hammer Frankensteins to draw from. The real influence (besides the Frankensteins and other Hammer films from the late '50s) were the two wax movies: House of Wax and Mysteries of the Wax Museum, as the titular Mill is actually a museum of sorts where historical women made of "stone" can be gawked at by townsfolk and tourists.

Being that it's a horror movie, there's no real surprise to learn that they're not stone, but the plot is still more interesting than you'd think. Turns out it's kind of a two birds with one stone (heh) kinda deal, as the resident mad scientist is indeed killing women and using them for his attraction, but he's doing it for a noble (to him) reason: his daughter Elfie (Scilla Gabel, an absolute stunner - thank you, remastered Blu-ray) has a rare blood disease that kills her whenever she gets excited or distraught, so he and his assistant find women with the right blood type, drain them out to revive his daughter, and use their corpses to keep his museum going instead of using actual stone or whatever earthly materials. It's a very environmentally friendly horror plot, I must say.

But being that this is a genre film from the olden days (61 years old! They didn't even have feature movies that old when this came out!), it takes a while to get to that stuff. It can be a bit "slow" at times, even when you consider its age, but then again, being that it was their first attempt at something like this (in full lurid color - there's even a brief nipple shot, which kind of stunned me) it shouldn't be a surprise that it wasn't exactly roller-coaster paced. Luckily, the hero, Hans (Pierre Brice) isn't as dull as a lot of the guys in those Corman movies it resembles - in fact, the plot kicks into gear because he cheats on his girlfriend with Elfie on the day he meets her, the dog. And it's his "I shouldn't have done that, sorry" dismissal that leaves her emotional enough to instantly drop dead, so he's feeling justifiably guilty on two levels for the rest of the movie - it's one thing to cheat on your girl, but to basically cause the other woman's death as a result? Damn.

Most of it takes place inside the mill or their homes, but there are a few exteriors that were lensed in gloomy Holland, giving it that proper foggy atmosphere that will make this an easy recommendation for the Halloween season. But even the interiors are quite nice to look at; both DP Pier Ludovico Pavoni and director Giorgio Ferroni have a lot of "sword and sandal" type movies on their resumes and are thus accustomed to having bigger areas to shoot in, but they clearly didn't let themselves be hamstrung by the confines of relatively small sets - the mill in particular is top-notch work, at least inside (the exterior miniature isn't very convincing, alas). The colors are also all vivid and lush; apparently they wanted to assure the money men that color film was worth the extra dough. I can't say the movie wouldn't work in black and white, but when coupled with its occasionally sluggish pace, it'd certainly be less memorable.

Arrow's deluxe set for the film includes a whopping four versions, but alas I did not have time to go through them all. The one to go with is, naturally, the Italian version, as it is the most complete, but it should be noted that the film has an international cast all of whom are speaking their native tongues, so you're still going to encounter some dubbing. You can just go with the English version (the content of the film is the same, I believe?) if reading the subtitles is an issue, but as is often the case the dub track and the subtitle track offer varations on nearly every line, so basically no matter what you're dealing with compromise. On the second disc there's a French version, which has a scene that was added at the insistence of its French producers (a conversation that clarifies some of the character's histories with one another), but is missing a few others, so it wouldn't be the best place to start. And the other version is of no use to any newcomer, as it removes those scenes AND the added French one, from what I understand. But I like that they went out of their way to include it; I'm sure it's someone's preferred version due to having it on VHS or whatever, so hey, now they can have their hacked up take looking all lovely on the remastered high def transfer.

There are also some bonus features, including a video essay by Kat Ellinger (I am a big fan of these; they're like Cliff's Note commentaries) and an interview with Liana Orfei, who plays one of the unwilling eventual Stone Women. There's also a commentary by Tim Lucas, who is the go to guy for Bava and thus it wasn't much of a surprise that the conversation turned to him a few times (he launches a convincing argument that Bava actually ghost-directed a couple of key scenes), though I was cerrtainly not expecting a history of LSD to be included. Overall it's not a bad track but one of the ones where I wish he was paired with someone to bounce off of and keep it a little more lively, as Lucas always sounds like he's reading from a report and thus it can be a bit dry to listen to even when the information is sound. The deluxe edition also includes a book that has two essays (one on the film's overall legacy, the other tracking its multiple versions) as well as some review excerpts from the time, which is interesting as not all of them are exactly glowing.

It's definitely a "not for everyone" kind of film, as its horror elements are relatively muted and it will probably remind any seasoned viewer of more exicting films, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. The pre-giallo era of Italian horror is one area I am definitely not as well versed in (as I've noted, I "appreciate" Bava more than I "enjoy" his films, for the most part), so I'm always happy to fill that gap in a little more, and anything that might have helped influence my beloved Tourist Trap is obviously something I'm going to admire. And I love seeing so much care for it on Arrow's part; it's not exactly a film that people are beating down their doors for them to release, and yet they offer it this deluxe release with a book, a poster, four cuts of the film... basically, everything a fan could want, even if there aren't a lot of them out there. Every movie deserves this kind of treatment!

What say you?

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Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

GENRE: MONSTER, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

One thing about covid that's interesting is that it's given movies a new possible reason to be underwhelming, as the logistics of mounting a production under these circumstances can be pretty daunting on top of the usual hurdles filmmaking must entail. So when you add in the fact that there has been and possibly will never be a foolproof formula for adapting a video game into a successful movie, it's almost a miracle that Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is even watchable, let alone "OK" and even kind of fun at times. But I could never shake the feeling that it could have been closer to "genuinely good" if it was produced in 2019, or (hopefully?) a year or two down the road.

Literally from the start, something seemed off about the film. It opens on a flashback of our eventual heroes, Claire and Chris Redfield (I'm going to assume you have at least passing familiarity with the games, just fair warning) at an orphanage, with the former being woken up - seemingly not for the first time - by a mysterious figure no one else thinks exists. The scene seems to last twice as long as any opening flashback of its type should, and there are other examples throughout the film that had me wondering if these scenes weren't supposed to take up as much screentime as they do, but merely had to be padded out in order to get the film into acceptable runtime (which, nowadays, means over 100 minutes, as anything shorter suggests it was compromised) as there were other scenes that had to be scrapped because there was no way to do them right under covid restrictions.

Similarly, there are at least two occasions in the movie where it felt like a scene was dropped, with characters appearing in new locations when they were far away the last time we saw them (in one instance, the character seemingly abandoned their spoken plan entirely and went in the opposite direction). There are also some dropped subplots, like armed mercenary types from Umbrella who are seen executing townsfolk, only to never appear again, let alone be a continual threat to our heroes. It's possible these scenes were indeed filmed and merely dropped for pacing or whatever, but when you consider the aforementioned scenes that go on for so long or simply have no followup, only an 11th hour hack job on par with the "glory years" of Dimension could explain these gaps.

No, I suspect covid and/or perhaps a reduced budget had writer/director Johannes Roberts forced into the unenviable position of having to streamline his ideas into something that could still be coherent and offer up the requisite number of scares and thrills. The movie's heart is clearly in the right place, something that will be very apparent to fans of the games who were left cold by Paul Anderson's dismissal of most of its canon. His films had pretty much all of the franchises' main players show up in some capacity, but the plots never really even came close to the storylines from the games (not surprising since they all revolved around Milla Jovovich's Alice, who has no game counterpart).

In contrast, Roberts definitely dives into the first two games, with Chris and Jill heading to the mansion to investigate what happened to a previous team, while Leon and Claire are out in the city as the latter searches for her brother. The movie presents these narratives as occurring simultaneously (the games were a couple months apart, if memory serves), which works just fine in some cases, but also keeps the two leads apart for far too much of the runtime. With Roberts using the Carpenter font and setting up a big chunk of the film's first half in a police station, it's not hard to think about a potential Assault on Precinct 13 style narrative, where you'd have all these characters with different motives all having to band together to fight zombies and monsters (either at the station or the more famous Spencer Mansion), but the movie is almost over by the time Claire and Leon finally meet up with the others.

(Speaking of Leon, the guy playing him is awful and grating. However you feel about how the character was used in the 5th entry in the previous franchise, at least that actor looked and felt like the actual Leon. This guy's like obvious cannon fodder you have to put up with for the whole movie, and seemingly ends every one of his scenes on some variation of "What the f___?" Maybe non gamers won't notice/care, but considering how much of the rest of the movie seems designed to please them, it's a really bizarre choice.)

Instead, we just keep going back and forth between the two groups, which means there are a couple of good sequences on their own (love the bit of a Licker making its presence known by lumbering on the floor above, making the hanging lights sway in succession until it's obviously right above our hero), but a noted lack of tension. Every time we switch to the other team, it's like hitting a soft reset, and by the time things start getting going with their story, it's time to check in with the others again. Plus, two small teams means there's entirely too much "safe" action - there's a noted lack of non-game characters who are around for more than a scene or two, and you don't have to be a game fan to know that the Redfields, Leon, and Jill are not going to die in this would-be franchise (re)starter, so apart from a few well done jolt moments, there's not a lot of terror to be found. There are bits in that first game - some recreated here! - that can still get a little yelp out of me, but too much of this film felt more like the 5th and 6th games, where action took precedence over horror. People say these movies are as fun as watching someone else play a game, but this goes further - it's like watching someone *expertly* play these games, robbing the viewer of true carnage.

I also couldn't understand the point of the 1998 setting apart from being faithul to the games. Umbrella seemingly controls every aspect of this town, so a simple "no cell phones" excuse doesn't work - they just would have blocked them anyway. It's actually kind of ironically funny when a character is given a Palm Pilot and has no idea what it is; if the movie was set in 2021, anyone under like 35 (as the character is) would be just as confused anyway. Roberts tosses in some '90s pop songs (no Steinman though, so Strangers 2 remains his peak in that department), but otherwise there isn't much point to the setting; for the most part you're likely to forget that it's supposed to be set nearly 25 years ago. And really, given its covid-era production (it was shot in late 2020) it almost seems like a missed opportunity to not draw on it for their plot about a virus spiraling out of control.

The good news is, unless you are simply Pavlovian with your reaction to Easter eggs and references to the games (I admit to laughing out loud at a "Jill sandwich" gag), you don't need to be a fan of the games to get as much enjoyment out of it as you can - I suspect newcomers and hardcore fans alike will agree that it misses the mark. It's certainly a decent enough timekiller, but never really rises above its straightforward goal of "being more faithful." Yeah, sure, you nailed that - but most if not all of Anderson's movies are more engaging and exciting, regardless of how they "ruined" this or that character. So in my book, that's not really an improvement; I'd rather a filmmaker tossed everything and made a movie that stands alone rather than watch one where more time was spent on matching the floor plan of a building than thinking of interesting things for the characters to DO in that building.

What say you?

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Bug (1975)

JANUARY 11, 2021

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, PREDATOR
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Sometimes it's legitimate ignorance/confusion, but one type of joke I often can't stand is when there are two movies with the same name and when you say you are watching or enjoying one, someone will make a crack about the other (one basic example: you say you're enjoying Jack Palance in Alone in the Dark and someone will ask if he's in a scene with Tara Reid, who starred in the other, awful one). The reason for this is that I am already annoyed I have to clarify which one I mean, because so many producers are too lazy to come up with a title that hasn't already been used, so when I take the time to specify and STILL get a hacky joke reply, it's just twisting the knife. I bring it up because when I said I was watching Bug, I specified that it wasn't William Friedkin's while simultaneously thinking that the two films couldn't be less alike - only to discover they actually DID have a number of similarities by the end.

I mean, if you haven't seen Friedkin's 2006 thriller, the quickest way to sum it up would be "Two people gradually go insane while barricading themselves in a room", whereas *this* Bug is, in general, a typical 1970s nature gone amok movie about a breed of cockroach type bugs that begin decimating the populace of a small southwestern town. And given that it was produced by William Castle and directed by Jeannot Szwarc - whose work here helped him get the Jaws 2 gig - it's reasonable to expect the same kind of schlocky thrills you also got from the likes of Frogs and Giant Spider Invasion, right? Well, for about 45-50 minutes that's indeed what you get, and then... well, it turns into a movie about a guy going insane while barricading himself in a room. Hell, I can go further with a SPOILER and note that the protagonists also burn to death, which means that Friedkin's Bug, while obviously not a remake, shares more surface similarities with this one than some legitimate remakes did with their originals (Prom Night and the most recent Black Christmas come to mind). It might actually be an interesting double feature, especially on a crowd of people who had never seen either and only knew that they were in no way related despite having the same title.

Until it pivots, it's certainly a fun killer bug movie, if a bit TV movie-esque (no surprise; Szwarc came from TV and, after Jaws 2 and a couple other features, returned there and hasn't come back). An earthquake sets the little things loose in the opening scene, so you get the Star Trek sort of "shake the camera and have all the actors tip themselves to the side" goofiness that's always enjoyable and also more visually exciting than the usual man-made explantion you get in this kind of film (i.e. the pesticides in Kingdom of the Spiders). It's like a bonus mini-disaster movie! From there we get a few isolated attacks, including one in, believe it or not, the Brady Bunch kitchen! Seems that this film was going into production right around the time that show had gotten canceled, so to save money they just slightly redressed their set and shot the scene there. Since the victim is a Mrs Brady-esque lovely lady, it almost feels like a strange, Adult Swim kind of sketch to see someone in that iconic room being killed in the most ridiculous way possible.

See, these bugs don't bite people to death or whatever. Instead they... well, they basically fart fire. Our hero scientist James (Bradford Dillman) gives it a more scientific explanation of course, but "they fart fire" is how it looks, and it's this little superpower that causes all the deaths. In the Brady kitchen, one of them gets in the poor woman's hair and starts a fire, one she doesn't even notice at first while she is puzzling over her recipe. In another scene they cause a truck to burn up, and since they are also attracted to fire and eat ashes, this is the most pyro-driven killer insect movie I think I've ever seen. There are like four different scenes of Dillman lighting a newspaper or something on fire and sticking it near them in order to lure them somewhere, which at the time was kind of obnoxious but when it was over I actually appreciated the repetition, as it was lulling me into thinking this was gonna be the usual deal and the climax would involve them finding the nest or something and blowing them all up.

Nope! You see, that lady in the kitchen was Dillman's wife, and after her death he becomes obsessed with the bugs and studying them in order to find a way to eradicate them permanently. And this is where the movie pivots into nuttier fare, with the non-Dillman cast more or less disappearing as we focus almost exclusively on him in his house for the final thirty minutes. But it's not like, him facing off against the bugs as a last man standing thing; instead it enters into Phase IV territory (the bug footage was actually shot by the same guy, incidentally) as the roaches start communicating with Dillman by forming words out of their bodies. It's like the writers had gotten 60 pages into their standard nature gone amok script, went to see Phase IV during a break, and got inspired to change course but never bothered to thread their new ideas into what they had already written.

But I liked that! One thing I love about 1970s genre fare that was never as prevalent in other decades is that they were often pretty grim, killing off heroes and/or ending on a note that suggested the evil thing was just getting stronger (even Kingdom of the Spiders, a pretty goofy movie throughout, ends on a major downer), but the TV movie aesthetics had me thinking this would not go that route. Plus, even though Rosemary's Baby had already come and gone (well, not GONE but you get it), William Castle's name still suggested whimsy and fun, an element that is entirely absent from the film's back half. Hell if anything the end was dark even by the standards of this sub-genre, since the insects are seemingly specifically driving this guy crazy after murdering his wife, AND they evolve into something bigger/stronger for good measure. Hahaha, GRIM. I love it!

The disc has but one bonus feature of note: a commentary by Troy Howarth that is a little more defensive than I'm used to for him. He tends to be one of the more engaging historians they get for these things, but here he seems to be particularly annoyed that Dillman never got as much respect as an actor as he believes the man deserves. I don't disagree, necessarily, but it starts to overwhelm the track at times, at the expense of learning more about the other players involved. The movie is almost over before he even really starts to give a little background on Szwarc, for example, but by then we've heard him defend Dillman's presence five or six times. Calm down, man!

I tried to focus on the track, but I did zone out a few times, so maybe Howarth mentioned this himself, but I think it's amusing that this movie - released two weeks before Jaws - starred the guy who'd star in one of its most famous knockoffs (Piranha) and was directed by the guy who'd direct the actual Jaws sequel, both films released a few weeks apart just three years later. After Jaws came along there was definitely a shift in these sort of things, some holding on to the darker elements of the earlier movies while attempting to make things more commercial, so I think it's funny that the director and star of what had to be the last one released (perhaps even made) prior to Jaws changing the game forever went on to make films that literally owed their entire existence to it.

Long story short: I'm gonna program a film marathon of Phase IV, Bug (1975), Jaws, Jaws 2, Piranha, and Bug (2006) someday, hope you can make it.

What say you?

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Castle of the Creeping Flesh (1968)

DECEMBER 1, 2020

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, WEIRD
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

One thing I love about outlets like Severin is that they are seemingly happy to cater to hardcore genre fans who enjoy challenging themselves, as opposed to going after big name titles that will assuredly sell better than the weirdo stuff that comprises the majority of their library (hell, Cathy's Curse is probably one of the more normal movies they've put out in the past few years!). And this year's annual crop of Black Friday selections were no exception, offering such oddities as The Theater Bizarre, Douglas Buck's grim Family Portraits, and Castle of the Creeping Flesh, which is possibly the strangest of the lot.

In fact, it's so odd it barely qualifies as horror, and it's worth noting that the original German title had a translation roughly "In the Castle of Bloody Desire", which is far more fitting. Another title was "Appointment With Lust", which also would have worked though perhaps suggests something more hardcore than what the film offers. That said, there's plenty of sex here (not all of it consensual), certainly more than anything traditionally "horror" - the bulk of that element just stems from its central location: an appropriately gothic and isolated castle that fits the scary movie bill (indeed, it was used in Bava's Baron Blood and the Nic Cage Season of the Witch). There is a mad scientist plot of sorts, but it's presented in a way that suggests it was added in later.

If that was the case, at least it's not as random as such things usually are - if I am understanding the included interview with the family of director Adrian Hoven, the heart surgery footage we see throughout the footage is actually footage of HIS heart surgery (indeed, he passed away from heart issues in 1981), which is a hell of a way to boost your production value, I must say. But the most is so horny that even these scenes are frequently interrupted by Janine Reynaud writhing in her bed or something, as if she was getting off to the idea of a guy performing open heart surgery in a dingy castle.

But at least she's enjoying herself, which isn't always the case as the movie offers a pair of rape scenes. They're not brutal, I Spit on Your Grave kind of scenes, thankfully, but instead just kind of sleazy, as both victims offer looks of momentary pleasure and, in one case, just sort of hangs out with her attacker after instead of telling their shared friends (including her fiance) what he had just done before they arrived. She even makes a joke about it! It's very odd, but that's par for the course for the film, which never seems to decide what kind of movie it is. It has all of the markings of a proper gothic horror, with a group of people arriving at a castle and discovering nefarious goings on, but once they arrive Hoven and his writers seem content to let everyone just keep hanging out and having (consensual!) sex. One guy gets out of the bed he is sharing with his lover, wanders into another room, and immediately begins having sex with the woman in that one. Later they're almost interrupted by another pal who has noticed one of their number has gone missing, but I guess he isn't too concerned because once he sees them going at it he quietly lets himself out. They can find her later, I guess.

It also offers one of the sillier subplots I can recall in one of these things. Seems the Baron's daughter was attacked by some men in the village, so he did what anyone would: set an angry bear loose in the area in hopes that it would kill the culprits (the bear would presumably ask around and make sure it was attacking the right people?). It's just a story we hear early on, long forgotten by the time one of our protagonists goes outside at night and, sure enough, runs into the bear. You'd be forgiven for forgetting the setup by the time it has a payoff, but honestly if the idea was never established at all and the guy simply got attacked by a bear out of nowhere it wouldn't exactly stand out as particularly odd in this movie.

Halfway through I started wondering if the film was an inspiration for Rocky Horror Picture Show, given its "people show up at a strange castle" plot and general randomness (and, again, horniness), a sentiment that was all but confirmed by the climax, where one of the villains takes the corpse of a loved one, climbs up a tower, and then falls to his death, just as Rocky and Frank did there - all that's missing is someone firing a laser gun. The two would make for a fantastic double feature, I suspect; three straight hours of unparalleled "No one involved is concerned with making any sense, here" entertainment. Did I mention the random voiceover that comes out of nowhere and says "KILL!" over and over?

Needless to say, if you want the movie that comes to your head when you hear the title, steer clear of this. But if you are a fan of Euro-sleaze and want something a little more memorable and outré, run don't walk to... well, the Severin site, and pick this up (if you're on a budget, a censored copy is on Prime for 99 cents). The disc doesn't have much for extras beyond the aforementioned interview with Hoven's wife and son (which is more about him than the film, though they do offer one hilarious sentiment about one of its actors: "He died a few years ago. He never got any big roles."), just a few alternate title/credit sequences with its other titles, and "different" ending that, best I can tell, simply holds on the final shot for a full minute instead of going to black. If a movie could ever use a candid historian track...

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The Creeping Flesh (1973)

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER
SOURCE: STREAMING (AMAZON PRIME)

If nothing else, The Creeping Flesh proves that the scripts were a big part of why Hammer films succeeded and have endured. The film stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and was directed by Freddie Francis, same as any number of Hammer classics, but the script is from a pair of newcomers (for one of them it was his first and last writing credit), and while it's not a disaster by any means, I quickly understood why it is I had almost no awareness of the film's existence until I found it on Amazon Prime when purposely looking for something older to watch. The title seemed vaguely familiar, but when I saw the cast I was curious how it is that it didn't come up more often... until I watched it.

But I was still curious about its relatively obscure status for the first half hour, which established a pretty typical Hammer-like scenario, albeit with the oft-unsuccessful bookending device that shows a crazed Cushing telling a colleague about his last experiment and how he ended up in his current predicament. His story begins three years earlier, when he was working on an experiment and study involving an old skeleton he found on one of his expeditions, believing it to be some kind of missing evolutionary link due to the enlarged size of its skull. He's so focused on his work that he forgets to tend to his young adult daughter, who seems to be confined to the house and lamenting that her mother died when she was so young that she barely remembers her. But we quickly learn this was a lie; her mother was actually at an institution and only passed away in the past few days.

When Cushing makes a trip to the asylum to collect her belongings, we learn that it's run by Lee, so we know something fishy is going on. The two men are half-brothers, apparently, and both competing for some science award, and it was at this point I was hoping that this would be similar to Horror Express, with the two men teaming up to tackle some ancient enemy (perhaps being able to win their prize together like real brothers?), but as Cushing leaves a patient escapes, and it's at this point the movie begins to start to collapse under the weight of its innumerable subplots. Cushing's daughter finds out her mother was alive, prompting a flashback about how she ended up in the asylum, Lee's own experiments fail, prompting him to steal Cushing's research, the escaped guy is causing havoc in the town, etc, etc.

And thus, instead of Horror Express (which co-starred Telly Savalas, as you might recall) I actually started thinking about a different bald dude: namely Horace Pinker. Like my beloved Shocker, this movie just keeps changing gears, to the extent that any quick description would only be summarizing a twenty minute chunk of the movie, just as all those "Shocker is about a killer who can go into the TV" writeups are basically spoilers since that doesn't happen until the third act. Lee - who gets top billing, mind - disappears for a while and only interacts with Cushing briefly, and Cushing himself is also MIA for a bit when the narrative decides to focus on his daughter for a bit. In the movie's weirdest subplot, he injects her with his experimental serum hoping it would calm her down and also prevent her from becoming like her mother (science!), only for her to turn kind of feral but also trampy, wearing revealing dresses and hanging out at the tavern, a far cry from her schoolmarm type attire. You'd expect Cushing to be trying to find her/get her back, but nope - he barely appears in this lengthy section of the film.

So did the serum do this to her, or is she simply afflicted by the same confusing "disease" as her mother? The flashback (which is inside of a flashback, now that I think about it) doesn't really clarify much; we learn that she was a burlesque dancer of sorts who slept around while ignoring Cushing (their lone scene together almost makes it seem like he's a ghost since she doesn't acknowledge him at all), though how she turned into someone requiring hospitalization is unknown - I guess we can just assume it was syphilis? The period setting (1890s) has me thinking that must be the case, and also why they don't seem to actually be treating her but simply tossing her in a cell, but it could have used some explanation. This is a movie that has Cushing's scientist go out of his way to show another scientist that their specimen's skull is twice as large as a normal one by holding a normal one next to it, something neither man would actually need clarified but done for the audience's benefit. Surely they could have lent us the same kind of history lesson on what were then 80 year old medical practices for diseases (and also, name the disease!).

Eventually, the title starts to make sense, as the skeleton becomes animated/revitalized by water, of all things, and starts lurking around on some kind of quest (the point of which is only revealed in the final shot, and it's kind of funny so I won't spoil it here). These scenes are fine; there's a particularly genius bit of planning where the hulking brute (ten feet tall) is going up the stairs and we see a chandelier on the other side of the frame swinging a bit, because he would have bumped it as he walked past on his way to the staircase - that's the sort of attention to detail that I love. But in the grand scheme of things, it's somewhat anticlimactic, as his value as the movie's villain had been diminished by about a half dozen other things demanding the spotlight.

I WILL spoil the big reveal though, because the movie is almost fifty years old and I am warning you to boot. We return to the present day where Cushing (who is very Donald Pleasence-y in these scenes) is finishing up his story to his new colleague, and only then is it revealed (though I guessed it earlier, *pats self on back*) that he is now institutionalized himself, with the "new colleague" just being a new doctor there who is checking up on him. The new guy exits the cell (made up as a lab) and meets with Lee, still running the joint and the proud recipient of that science award. And then we have to wonder if it really happened or if Cushing was simply crazy; the aforementioned final shot suggests it was real, but Lee says they're not really related which is the sort of thing that could be easily proven/disproven (wouldn't there be documentation about their parents somewhere, especially since they were somewhat high profile people?) so it only confuses matters more. And is it a legitimate attempt at "keep the audience talking long after they've left the theater" kind of stuff, or simply a cheap way of waving off their convoluted story? "Oh, that's why it was so erratic - it was a story from an insane person."

(A crazy person who frequently told parts of the story that they were not only absent for, but also would have had no way of knowing later due to the deaths of the only witnesses.)

Granted, neither of the marquee stars had a 100% success rate with their solo films, but when they teamed up it was usually at least fun, so it's kind of a shame to see they (plus Francis) weren't able to really save this one. An OK enough timekiller, sure, but one that stubbornly refuses to utilize its best assets, with a focus problem that will remind you of trying to reign in a hyper child at a toy store. Certainly not worth digging through Amazon Prime's remarkably awful interface to find, at any rate.

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