When it was announced, it was assumed that "X" was merely a stand-alone slasher flick. Those who saw the movie's debut at the South by Southwest festival were greeted, after the end credits, with a surprise. It was a trailer for "Pearl," an entire prequel to the movie they just finished watching. Ti West and his team shot the project in secret, immediately after production wrapped up on the first film. It was the kind of gutsy marketing stunt that easily could've backfired, if "X" wasn't successful or well received. Both movies only cost A24 two million dollars though, so maybe it wasn't such a risk after all. Luckily, the prequel was greeted by even better reviews upon release two weeks back.
Set sixty years before the events of "X," the film follows Pearl as a young woman. World War I rages in Europe, where her husband Howard is currently deployed. The Spanish Flu pandemic has increased isolation at home. Pearl toils away on her German immigrant parents' Texas farm, where she cares for her invalid father and suffers abuse at the hand of her mother, Ruth. Yet Pearl dreams of being a star, often visiting the local movie theater and enraptured by reels of dancing girls. When she hears about an upcoming audition for a dance troupe, Pearl sees it as a chance to escape her suffocating life. Her mother tells her not to go and the girl's pent-up anger explodes out. Soon, Pearl's desire to escape her situation will increase her homicidal rage.
Ti West mirrors his title character's love for the movies by creating a meticulous homage to the golden age of cinema, showing that it's not just grungy horror movies he's an expert at imitating. "Pearl's" colors are bright and sharp, recalling the brilliant Technicolor glow of classic musicals and Douglas Sirk. The highly expressive score by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams swells with emotion, both exuberant and sinister. This gives the movie a sense of unreality, which is bolstered every time West slips into Pearl's elaborate daydreams. Such as a sexual encounter with a scarecrow. Or, in what might be the most unexpectedly delightful cinematic moment of the year, a full-blown song-and-dance number late in the film. The film is never cutesy with its throwback aesthetic and the handful of closing irises are very meaningfully placed. "Pearl" is an absolute spectacle to behold, playfully contrasting sunny visuals with the dark and violent world its heroine lives in.
Much like its predecessor, "Pearl" tells an on-its-face simple story that reveals more meaning as it goes along. Symbols are dropped throughout the film. A bird in a cage seems to represent Pearl's cloistered life. A rotting roasted pig on the doorstep symbolizes her deteriorating mental state. Cross-like shadows often float in the background, suggesting the ever-present but rarely verbalized puritanical weight of tradition bearing down on Pearl. Movies themselves represents an impossible dream for Pearl, an escape to somewhere else that she can never crossover to. This is even true of her sexual life, as the caddish projectionist she courts throughout the film shows her a stag reel. Up on the screen, people are free to dance and make love however they please. In Pearl's real life, she is stuck on a farm with a drooling father and a cruel mother who insists she learn to be happy with what she has. And into this potent stew, West adds some modern-day anxieties, as setting the story during the influenza outbreak of 1918 can't help but bring our current pandemic to mind as well.
West pays his due to the horror greats he loves as well. "Pearl" has clear shout-outs to "Psycho," "Night of the Hunter," and Tobe Hooper's "Eaten Alive." It also subtly calls back to "X" in several key ways. The most devastating being the audience's knowledge that Pearl isn't going to get off this farm. Still, "Pearl" is a rich enough experience to stand alone as well, if you haven't caught up with that one yet. If "X" was a brilliantly assembled and layered ode to horror's sleaziest glory days, then "Pearl" is an incredibly rich character study about the love of cinema and the madness of isolation. "MaXXXine," the eighties set capper to this trilogy that is teased after the credits and already in preproduction, is going to have to be a hell of a movie to live up to these two, some of the most exciting and brilliantly brought-to-life horror films I've seen recently. [9/10]
William Castle will always be best remember for his gimmick movies. His career was defined by outrageous in-theater tricks like Emergo, Percepto, and Illusion-O. Yet I do wonder if, as the sixties winded on, he was growing tired of these nutty stunts. Or maybe he was just running out of good ideas. He'd use them less and less as the decade wind on. Nestled between the world-wide casting call for “13 Frightened Girls” and the paper axes of “Strait-Jacket” was his gimmick-less 1963 remake of “The Old Dark House.” The next year's “The Night Walker” is probably the most notable of Castle's gimmick-less genre efforts. Castle deemed the re-teaming of former husband and wife performers Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor – alongside the movie's quirky focus on dreams and a screenplay from “Psycho's” Robert Bloch – enough of a publicity stunt for this one.
Saloon owner Irene Trent is married to Howard Trent, a blind and partially deformed millionaire with a possessive streak. Irene has reoccurring dreams about other men, which makes Howard paranoid that she's cheating on him. Following an ugly argument, where Howard accuses Irene of sleeping with Barry, his lawyer, the blind man dies in a freak laboratory accident. Yet Irene's strange dreams persists. She is haunted by nightmares of Howard and of her mysterious dream lover. Irene begins to suspect that her night time visions are crossing over with reality. She teams up with Barry to get to the bottom of this, as the figures from her dreams seemingly emerge into the waking world.
As much as “The Night Walker” is concerned with dreams, most of its other nightmare scenes are grounded in reality. Irene's dream lover and her dead husband appear to romance and taunt her in equal measure. Instead of going a fantastical route, the film frustratingly decides to find a rational explanation for everything. Irene and Barry go about investigating the landmarks she sees in her dreams, all of which are real locations. Long before this plot development, its already clear that “Night Walker” is weaving another standard gas-lighting plot. As the movie winds down towards its final reveal, the plot gets increasingly ridiculous and unlikely. Multiple characters are involved in the conspiracy. Two plot twists are dropped on us within the closing minutes, both barely justifying everything that came before.
“The Night Walker” would under-performed at the box office, suggesting that maybe Castle should've included a far-out gimmick for this one after all. (Supposedly, Castle created a promotional short about hypnotism called “Experiments in Nightmares” to promote the movie. I can find no traces of it.) It would be Stanwyck's final theatrical credit and the last black-and-white movie Universal released. The movie has attracted a fair share of defenders over the years, likely owing to that creepy opening and that one notable dream sequence. It just bugs me when movies depicted dreams as logical affairs and that's a pitfall “The Night Walker” stumbles into far too often. [6/10]
I've enjoyed each previous episode of "Thriller," the most beloved of the three anthology shows Boris Karloff hosted, I've reviewed. So here's another. "The Devil's Ticket" follows struggling realist artist Hector Vane who has pawned everything he and his wife, Marie, owns. Flat broke, he finally decides to begin pawning his paintings. Upon arriving at the shop, the usual owner has been replaced by seemingly the devil himself. Hector agrees to loan his soul to the Satanic pawnbroker for three months, in exchange for success and popularity. It works and Vane's paintings begin flying out of the galleries. He also gains a mistress named Nadja, whom he adores. As the months wind down, the devil agrees to not claim Vane's soul on one condition: He paints a portrait of someone else and give it to the pawnbroker, Vane essentially trading his soul for someone else's.
"The Devil's Ticket" is based on a story from Robert Bloch, like multiple episodes of "Thriller." It puts a clever spin on the deal-with-the-devil premise... With one serious flaw. We're never given a good reason to care about Hector Vane. His ego seems to be the main thing driving him, instead of the typical artistic desire for recognition. In the first scene, he's rude to Marie, who is totally devoted to him for unexplained reasons. He repeatedly tells his mistress how much he loves her without doing a single nice thing for her. She's understandably annoyed by his lack of devotion, which obviously includes his unwillingness to leave his wife. When the devil gives him an ultimatum, he angsts endlessly about what to do without ever considering the morally correct option: Giving up his success and letting the devil take his soul. MacDonald Carey is fine in the lead, showing the proper amount of desperation, but can't overcome the guy being a total schmuck.
In “Pike's Pique,” the local oil company plans to run a pipeline under the Munsters' house. Instead, they punch through into Grandpa's underground laboratory. Borden T. Pike, the company's owner, attempts to negotiate with the undead family but it repeatedly goes awry. Largely thanks to his neurotic wife and Grandpa's interference. “Low-Cal Munster” reveals that Herman is a veteran. His army unit is having a reunion soon but Herman is too chubby to fit into his old uniform. He goes on an insane diet to loose the necessary weight before the get-together. This becomes especially difficult when Thanksgiving comes along.
“Pike's Pique” is probably the funniest episode of “The Munsters” I've reviewed so far. It finds an ideal balance between goofy visual comedy, honed sixties sitcom timing, and the lovable cast delivering pun-filled punchlines. This episode always knows when to cut to a cartoonish sight gag. Eddie playing with a giant mouse trap, Grandpa turning into a wolf and leaping in the wrong direction or hanging upside down, a golf club going limp, a house of cards reassembling: All of these ridiculous sights appear just when they are needed. Fred Gwynne cracking lines about loosing your head or smashing through a table in rage is just two examples of the exuberant cast enlivening silly dialogue. It also helps that this episode has an appealing guest star in the form of Richard Deacon as Mr. Pike. His meek interactions with his paranoid wife and the monstrous family members is a rich source of laughs.
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