Halloween 2024: September 12th

MaXXXine (2024)

It's hard to launch an ongoing horror franchise. This has always been the case but our modern risk-averse studio system is so obsessed with "I.P." that, ironically, they seem increasingly unwilling to create fresh "I.P.s" of their own. What was the last "new" horror series to really connect with audiences? "Terrifier?" "The Conjuring?" "IT," if you can count that? Ti West and A24's "X" certainly hasn't reached the level of pop culture saturation that, say, "Saw" or "Paranormal Activity" did. Yet the way they managed to build a devoted following based around an unproven idea and grind out two follow-ups to it is impressive. They mostly achieved this the old fashion way, by making the movies cheaply. "MaXXXine," the capper on this fame-obsessed trilogy, didn't do blockbuster money this past July. With a budget of only two million – which is still more than "X" and "Pearl" cost to make combined – it didn't have to. All box office concerns aside, more important is that each film stands on its own as bold statements from a talented filmmaker and his group of dedicated collaborators. The trilogy's success proves that you can still make cool, interesting, and financially solvent films in the genre.

Six years after the events of "X," Maxine Mink has headed to Hollywood and done well for herself in adult films. She still dreams of mainstream success though. Her audition for the horror sequel "The Puritan II" impresses the director – also a woman – enough to take a chance on the porn starlet. Maxine is still haunted by what happened in Texas. Moreover, a sleazy P.I. is harassing her, seemingly determined to drudge up her blood-soaked past. When other sex workers she knows start to end up brutally murdered, pentagrams carved into their skin, Maxine feels increasingly endangered. If she hopes to put her past truly behind her and become a star, she's going to have to confront this killer head-on. 

In "X" and "Pearl," those who dream of silver screen quotation were outsiders, misfits, lonely people who saw bigger-than-life projections as a futile escape from their dreary lives. In "MaXXXine," everybody wants to be a star. A montage shows street performers in L.A. reenacting iconic figures like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, nobodies hoping to get a little taste of that stardom. Maxine's porn star coworkers attend big parties in the Hollywood hills out of some hope it might score them a juicy connection. Her agent seems to be a washed-up never-was and one of the police detectives she meets casually mentions trying acting once. Her costar in "The Puritan II" seems like she's still chasing the dream, despite already starring in a successful film, because horror movies aren't respected. This idea that L.A. is a town where everyone wants to be in show business dovetails with the ubiquity of screens. Camcorders are a common presence, grainy handheld footage appearing in several key scenes. TVs are ever present, where constant news chatter promises to give anyone the spotlight for a little bit. The right-wing Jesus freaks that float around the whole movie are obsessed with pop culture too, seeing sin and Satan in every movie, TV show, or song they encounter. In Hollywood, everyone is a Pearl. In the modern day, with camera phones and YouTube, we're all Pearls. 

"X" was identified by its themes of aging and sexual repression, which still floats around "MaXXXine." Maxine feels her time is running out, that she has to prove her worth as a star before she's too old. This is emphasize by the way the make-up draws attention to the natural bags under Mia Goth's eyes. A key scene, where she is having a plaster cast of her head made, directly references the heavy make-up Goth underwent to become Pearl in the first movie, making the connection between the two all the more explicit. Sex, meanwhile, is as mainstream as can be in this story taking place in L.A.'s sleazy underbelly. A desperate need to control that desire is what drives the murders, the need for stardom and the need for sexual expression practically being one and the same. 

As much as "MaXXXine" links back to the previous installments, it's a much messier film on a thematic level. While "X" was a simple slasher, and "Pearl" was a character study, this is a wilder tale with more subplots and a wider scope. The result might not be as coherent but I still had an incredibly good time with "MaXXXine." Much has been made of the film's giallo influence – obvious in the black gloves its killer wears – but the biggest callback here is Brian DePalma's craziest, sleaziest, most coked-out eighties thrillers. The multiple split screens makes this apparent. A prominent needle drop from Frankie Goes to Hollywood is only the most direct shout-out to "Body Double." However, West always does more than simply pay tribute to his influences. DePalma's obsession with voyeurism and Hitchcock are reflected here in skin-crawling snuff films and a "Psycho" homage, which mirror events from the first two films in fascinating ways. Most impressively, West manages to capture the unhinged energy of "Blow Out" or "Raising Cain" in an outrageous climax that keeps escalating in craziness. Some may wonder how a story that started the way "X" did can end in shoot-outs, helicopter spotlights, on-camera exorcism, and weird cult shit happening in the Hills. But I admire how hard West swings for the fences here. 

More than anything else, what I most loved about "MaXXXine" is the earthy specificity of the world it creates. Unlike most films that claim to depict the spirit of the eighties, "MaXXXine" goes out of its way to paint the dingy, sweaty, analog reality of 1985. The fog, neon, and strobe lights combine with a spectacular squalidness. One notable moment has an antagonist kicking open a series of bathroom stalls, each toilet within more disgusting than the one before it. The strip joints, peep shows, adult video stores, and sketchy clubs have such a delightfully purposeful look to them. Effort went into making these places seem alive. This is also obvious in the direct pop culture references West and his team include. A Judas Priest T-shirt, a lingering close-up on a New Coke can, or the world of the Hollywood backlot aren't here as cutesy in-jokes for the fan boys to catch. Instead, they were picked to flesh out the world these characters inhabit. 

I don't think West and "MaXXXine" are beyond intentional camp though. The film is definitely the most willfully ridiculous of the trilogy. You see this in Kevin Bacon's hilariously sleazy turn as the dirtiest P.I. in recent memory. Or in the decision to glue a shaggy toupee to Giancarlo Esposito's head. (Who does not out-camp Bacon despite trying his best.) The film's gory scenes go less for the stylized suspense of West's previous picture and more for an elevated outrageousness. A slashing scene can't resist to splatter a row of VHS tapes with blood. By the time of the over-the-top finale, West is bouncing a decapitated head down a staircase in slow-motion, a move so amusingly tacky that it would make Fulci blush. Not to mention Tyler Bates' soundtrack actually features the kind of boozy saxophone sounds usually reserved for parodies. Some may find this all a little-too-much, the movie collapsing under the strain of its own need to be the ultimate Hollywood Sleazecore throwback. Personally, how can I not be entertained by this? By red-hot Satanic cattle prods or the prominent use of a junkyard car crusher? I can't lie. I had a great time with this. 

Goth doesn't get the kind of show stopping moments here that she did in "Pearl." That was a much more emotional experience than this, while "X" was a fantastically orchestrated grubby horror show. "MaXXXine" is messier, weirder, and dumber than both of those, especially the closer it gets to its upbeat denouncement. However, the film is also full of talented actors giving it their all and some extremely fun sequences of sex and violence. If it's not as all-together satisfying as "X" or "Pearl," that's more a testament to those films' quality than any flaws this one has. If nothing else, I continue to be fascinated with the detailed, lived-in realities West created with all three of these movies. In a world when so many genre filmmakers are eager to invoke a past era, West continues to distinguish himself by actually putting in the work. The result has been a trilogy with an extremely above-par batting average. Satanic panic, VHS scan lines, Hollywood aspirations, cocaine, eighties sleaze, horror/heavy metal crossover, and a lovingly naïve dream of stardom combine to make an incredibly entertaining motion picture. [9/10]

The Whale God (1962)

Kujira gami

Obviously, anybody who knows anything about Japanese giant monster movies knows Toho ruled the roost during the daikaiju genre's golden age. If you know that, you probably know that the only real rival to that studio's dominance was Daiei, whose Gamera was a worthy challenger to Godzilla's status as King of the Monsters. However, giant monsters were not Daiei's primary output. The studio was mostly built on the back of historical dramas, like "Rashoman" and "Sansho the Bailiff," and pulpier samurai movies. With the long-running Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman series, starring Shintaro Katsu, probably being the most popular. Eventually, Daiei would mash up kaiju and Jidaigeki with the "Daimajin" trilogy... But this was not Daiei's first experiment with this idea. In 1962, just as "Zatoichi" was getting started and three years before Gamera existed, the studio would make a moodier fusion of big beast and Edo melodrama. Known in its native land as "Kujira gami," and variously translated abroad as "Killer Whale" and "The Whale God," the film remained obscure and unavailable stateside for decades. After a subtitled version circulated online for a while, "The Whale God" finally got an official release on disc over here last year. Upon learning that Daiei did their own version of "Moby Dick," starring Shintaro Katsu, with vintage tokusatsu special effects and a score from Akira Ifukube, I knew I had to see this thing. 

In the medieval era of Japan, a small fishing village is beset by an enormous, vicious whale. Dubbed the Whale God by the locals, numerous whalers have lost their lives to the beast. Shaki's grandfather, father, and brother have all been killed by the sea monster. The elder of the village declares that anyone who kills the Whale God will inherit his estate and receive his daughter's hand in marriage. Shaki isn't interested in this so much, as he's in love with a young Christian girl named Ei and desires only vengeance against the whale. Vicious drifter Kishu, however, is very interested in the monetary gains. The two men enter into a rivalry, both centering around their mutual obsession with destroying this killer whale. 

"The Whale God" was directed by Tokuzo Tanaka, whose best known works are entries in Daiei's samurai series like "Zatoichi," "The Sleepy Eyes of Death," "Lone Wolf and Cub," and "Shinobi no mono." Tanaka also made "The Betrayal," an extremely moody, fatalistic sword fight movie starring Raizo Ichikawa. This is what "The Whale God" most resembles. Setsuo Kobayashi's black-and-white cinematography is largely composed of close-up on faces and harpoons within cramped, shadowy interiors. The tone is dark and violent, focused on the futility of its characters' actions, with a bloody bar brawl being a good encapsulation of that. Kishu rapes Ei and she gives birth to his child, this being the most blatant example of how women are treated as tradable commodities by the men around them. This is not an escapist fantasy, like most kaiju movies, but rather heavy drama dealing with weighty themes like vengeance, obsession, and sexism. 

"The Whale God" is so focused on its ideas that it becomes melodramatic. Everyone in this village is fucking obsessed with this whale, you guys. Everybody wants to kill this animal. Nearly every conversation relates back to the whale somehow. If "The Whale God" is Daiei's version of "Moby Dick," then every person in the village is Ahab. The fact that what is merely a water-dwelling mammal has been assigned God status speaks to something, the whale becoming an ever-present aspect of the natural world that can never be destroyed. The mission to kill the beast is described as futile more than once, everyone who sets off on it knowing it's a suicide mission. Despite that, Shaki remains obsessed with harpooning the beast that has destroyed his family. When Ei has her baby and Shaki adopts him, he says this child will grow up to try and avenge him if he fails. With the implication being that this is a cycle, of loss and bloodshed, that will never end. It's a matter of honor for Shaki. He's become so sucked into that mindset that he can't see this is an ultimately futile mission. This entire village is stuck in this thought process of upholding a way of life that isn't sustainable. Of course, it destroys them. Of course – spoiler alert – once the whale is dead, the village elder realizes his life has no purpose now. Considering one of the favorite topics of samurai movies is that the samurai's fixation on honor was a self-destructive, toxic cycle, one assumes "The Whale God" is another variation on that theme. 

All of that is well and good. But you might be wondering how this qualifies "The Whale God" as a monster movie. Whales are, after all, real animals that are already monster sized through no fantastical means. However, the film still treats the beast as an otherworldly threat. The puppet effects, which included a life sized prop, are quite surreal. When the whale opens its gaping mouth, it resembles a yawning human more than any cetacean. With a shroud of netting over its body and countless harpoons stuck in its back, the Whale God gives the impression of some deathless creature out of local folklore. It's notable that the whale's eyes only become visible after it's fatally wounded, the fact that this is a dumb animal after all becoming apparent only as it faces death. Even then, the whaling scenes are dream-like in their intensity. The massive puppet is clearly meant to be a baleen whale of some sort, probably a humpback. It's obviously not representative of any actual animal though, being much closer in spirit to Godzilla than Shamu. This, when combined with the sea creature's large body count and violent nature, easily pushes the film into the horror genre. "Kaiju" simply means "strange beast," after all, and the Whale God is certainly that. 

The result is a brooding, often unsettling film. The performances are utterly intense. Kojiro Hongo is steely and fiery as Shaki. Katsu is a burly, animalistic brute. Takashi Shimura, one of Japan's great actors and a regular of Toho's monster movies, plays the village elder as unmovable in his self-destructive beliefs. Ifukube's score is thunderous, grinding, and mournful, lacking the triumphant, militaristic themes of his better known music. Culturally, it is an interesting picture, touching on Japan's relationship with Christianity and its historical treatment of women. Of course, Japan has a long, complicated, bloody history with whaling too. That makes it kind of funny that an environmental theme, common in later kaiju movies, is one of the few topics not covered here. While it's a bit too slow and dry to earn the status of classic, "The Whale God" is still a really interesting and well-made motion picture, one I'm glad is finally officially available over here. Tokuzo Tanaka directed another historical fantasy/monster movie for Daiei two years earlier, so I guess I'm on the hook to review that one some day too. [7/10]

Thriller: The Hungry Glass

Since ancient times, when it was thought they could be used to communicate with spirits, mirrors have been objects of superstition. Unsurprisingly, there's been more than a few horror stories about that very topic. Boris Karloff does a nice little introduction on the mirror's sway over us at the beginning of "The Hungry Glass," another episode of "Thriller" based on a Robert Bloch story. Gil and Marcia Thrasher buy a home on the windy, New England coast. The house is the stuff of local legend, as the original owner died after becoming obsessed with her own reflection. Now, no mirrors are said to be found anywhere in the home. Gil and Marcia ignore the superstition at first but soon begin to notice strange spectres around the house, captured in photographs or reflected in the window. Gil, a Korean War vet with PTSD, becomes increasingly nervous. Especially after his wife uncovers a locked attic room, filled with mirrors...

"The Hungry Glass" seems to be fondly recalled as one of the best episodes of "Thriller" and it's not hard to see why. The episode provides exactly the kind of spooky chills, driven by shadowy ambiance, that the program is remembered for. From the first scene, the wind is always howling in the background. The crusty locals provide ominous warnings in Mainer accents, which are naturally ignored by the modern, sensible protagonists. The old house is largely without electricity and its dusty, dark interiors make a fine setting for a ghost story. There's a bearded, old sea captain with a book hand. Director Douglas Heyes – who also directed yesterday's "Eye of the Beholder" and, no, I didn't plan that – mines the creepy home for all its worth. There's a long, dialogue-free sequence where Marcia unlocks the hidden room and it's surely the highlight of the episode, a real eeriness being summoned by these black-and-white images. The ghostly visions aren't the most convincing but they are used sparingly and are all the more effective because of it. 

Another reason, perhaps, "The Hungry Glass" is well regarded is because it stars William Shatner. And, oh, this is some good Shatner. His handsome, leading man charm works perfectly in the early moments, when he's joking about vampires and in high spirits. As soon as things start to get weird, Gil begins a slow unraveling. A moment where he spies something unusual over his wife's shoulder, the audience only seeing one of his peering eyes at first, shows the physical theatricality that Shatner excelled at. As the character grows wearier, Shatner vacillates between softly spoken chilliness and sweaty, wild-eyed rants. The finale of the episode walks this same line between genuinely creepy and over-the-top hysterics. Good shit, in other words. As in "The Cheaters," the previous high-water mark for this series, "Thriller" knew when to focus on the gloom and when to lay on the throttle. [8/10]

The Addams Family: Fester's Punctured Romance

When Gomez and Morticia notice Fester spoiling the children, they begin to wonder if he’s having some difficulties. It turns out the guy is lonely, eager to find a bride at this point in his life. He has placed a want ad in the lonely hearts column, his family helping him take the perfect picture. When Miss Carver, a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman arrives at the Addams’ doorstep, she is mistaken for Fester’s date. He quickly deduces that this fresh-faced, made-up woman is not his type. Morticia mistakes Carver’s attempt to sell her product as a declaration of love, encouraging Fester to give his assumed date a shot anyway. 

“Fester’s Punctured Romance” is another example of an “Addams Family” episode that works largely because of the cast. Carolyn Jones’ astonished reactions to the toad-like faces Fester makes when posing for an ideal dating ad photo are way funnier solely because she commits so totally to the act. The show’s dialogue remains absurdly sharp, such as Wednesday’s interaction with the saleswoman outside the house. Moments like these are a little better than sillier bits, like Gomez standing on his head. Once Miss Carver, played by an amusingly straight-laced Merry Anders, arrives at the house, I fully expected “Fester’s Punctured Romance” to go for the typical sight gags. That she would immediately flee in horror from all the odd sights. Luckily, the episode holds out longer than that, instead going for a fresher comedic device: The conversation with two meanings. The saleswoman is simply trying to sell some make-up but the Addams assume every word is a come-on. We get the expected terrified fleeing later but the episode holding out on that allows for far more funny interactions. [7/10]