Here are the things we know to be true. In 1974, after losing their previous home in Hurricane Agnes, the Smurl family – Jack and Janet, their daughters Dawn and Heather, and his parents John and Mary – moved into a duplex on Chase Street in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. The home was an admitted fixer-upper, with a creaky foundation, in a town plagued with sewer piping issues and built atop a honeycomb of old mining areas. Eighteen months after moving in, the family reported your standard poltergeist activity: Missing objects, weird smells, creepy voices, and knocking sounds coming from the walls. (Especially the wall the grandparents shared with the bedroom of their teenage granddaughters.) After Janet gave birth to twins, Shannon and Carin, the family claims the haunting intensified. Supposed incidents include a light falling from the kitchen ceiling, Dawn being pushed down the stairs, Shannon seeing floating figures in her room, and a pet German Shepherd being lifted into the air and thrown into a wall by an unseen force. Most notoriously, Jack – a devout Catholic who underwent brain surgery in 1983 – says a succubus raped him in an episode that aligns closely with sleep paralysis symptoms.
The family went to the press with their claims, who crowded the streets to such a degree that the neighbors complained. Several Catholic priests performed exorcisms in the house and stayed overnight, reporting nothing unusual. The family refused psychological counseling and denied writers from skepticism based publications enter their home. The help they did seek out was from Ed and Lorraine Warren, the infamous "parapsychologists" who claimed that the Amityville Horror hoax was still a legitimate haunting. The Warrens said multiple ghosts and at least one demonic entity were inhabiting the home. Ed Warren said he saw demonic black masses forming in the air and heard evil voices. Around this time, the money strapped Smurl family was also negotiating book and movie deals about their story. This is why actor Jason Miller visited the house during this period. A book co-written by the Warrens, entitled "The Haunted: One Family's Nightmare," was published in 1986. It was poorly reviewed. A made-for-TV film adaptation followed in 1991. The paranormal activity stopped rather anticlimactically sometime before the Smurls moved out of the house in 1987. Subsequent owners of the property have reported no ghostly events.
This is the story invented for the sequel: Early in their ghost hunting career, Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated a haunted mirror. The incident was so traumatic that it pushed a very pregnant Lorraine into labor. Their daughter, Judy, arrived stillborn and nearly died, which the couple attributed to the evil spirits within the mirror. In 1985, the Warrens have basically retired from demon battling because of Ed's worsening heart condition. Judy is all grown up and engaged to a man named Tony. Around the same time, the aforementioned spooky mirror ends up in the home of the Smurl family in Pennsylvania, kicking off a horrifying series of events. Old friend of the Warrens, Father Gordon, is so distressed by what he encounters in the home that he commits suicide afterwards. This attracts Judy – who has been experiencing strange visions herself – to the Smurl residence. Her parents follow closely behind, discovering the haunting's connection to one of their earliest cases.
There are a number of moments like that throughout the sequel. As the evil mirror is crushed in a trash truck, one of the Smurl daughters vomits up a torrent of blood, spraying it around the room. Judy stands in a mirrored room at a bridal shop, before a creaking open door allows in a malevolent spirit. In a set piece that feels like it could've been from one of the better “Omen” sequels, Father Gordon is harassed by demonic spirits in a gorgeously lit room. Any time a suitably tense or freaky feeling is established, it's immediately squandered on a big, loud special effect. “Last Rites,” in particular, seems to greatly miscalculate what is and isn't genuinely scary. It's spectral menace is a generic evil hag with a cartoonish clown grin, which made me chuckle every time it appeared. As the film goes on, it only gets sillier. The entire last act is a barrage of excruciatingly loud, CGI-driven spectacle. An eight foot tall version of Annabelle juts out of the darkness, there's a weak-as-piss revival of some “Exorcist” shenanigans, before the entire climax revolves around the evil mirror. Oh boy, does “The Conjuring: Last Rites” grossly overestimate how scary a mirror is. Even when you used computers to make it do all sorts of wacky shit.
It's something of a bummer too. Whatever merits these movies have, the chemistry between Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga remains adorable. It says a lot that some of the better moments in the film involve no demons or spectres at all. Instead, scenes of the two cooking pancakes or bantering around a dinner table prove far more charming. Farmiga and Wilson have played these ridiculous characters long enough that they feel fleshed-out and lived-in, despite mostly still being caricatures. The new additions to the Warren family here also prove unusually charming. Mia Tomlinson, as Judy, has got those diamond eyes and button nose that immediately makes you want to see her protected. Ben Hardy plays her fiance as a sincere dork who proves surprisingly likable. One of the biggest flaws of the sequel is that it splits time between the Warrens and the Smurls. Clearly, the former are the stars of the show but the latter motivate the plot. The actors playing the tormented family are fine, making them all seem like decent people, but their plight often feels pushed to the margin of the story.
Starting in 1963, Herschell Gordon Lewis would direct a series of garbage bag horror movies that made up for their lack of plausible storytelling, realistic acting, and professional camerawork by throwing a bunch of blood and guts around. The complete rejection of good taste evident in Lewis' films naturally attracted an audience. However, the novelty of sheep intestines heaped on Playboy bunnies had worn thin by 1967. HGL then started experimenting with other exploitation sub-categories. He dabbled in topics like LSD, biker gangs, all-girl rock groups, wife swapping, and the birth control pill. Emerging out of this period was “Just for the Hell of It,” the director's attempt to make a movie about teenage delinquents. (Which he did without casting any actual teenagers.) The resulting motion picture features the same mixture of technical incompetence and weird, outsider perspective as the rest of the filmmaker's output.
Like most of Lewis' productions, “Just for the Hell of It” is set in a sunny, Floridian suburb. The otherwise idyllic town is beset by a group of rowdy youths who call themselves Destruction Incorporated. Led by the criminally insane Dexter, the group performs random acts of violence on any local unlucky enough to stumble into their path. In-between terrorizing people on the street, they throw wild parties, do drugs, and wreck small businesses. Why do they do this? For no apparent reason at all, perhaps other than to amuse themselves. Their victims are too frightened to testify against them, making the police powerless. Doug is a former member of Dexter's gang who has cleaned up his life, dating a nice girl named Jeanne. He is the only person willing to stand up to the troublemakers. His sense of justice makes him an enemy of the hellraisers, Dexter and his lackies soon deciding to make his life a living hell.
The movie was obviously an attempt by its director to cash-in on the cultural hysteria around the hippy movement. The theme song refers to the violent teens as hairy animals and one of the bystanders decries them as “monkeys.” Except these rebel-rousers don't have long hair. They don't appear unshaved, unwashed or even somewhat slightly dazed. They have cleanly cropped hair cuts and wear tucked-in and button-down shirts. This is undoubtedly an exploitation movie. Three teenage girls are lured to one of the gang's party, presumably sexually assaulted, and intimidated into not reporting to the incident. A random blonde on a beach is raped while the hero's girlfriend gets violently brutalized. However, in a rare display of tact, Lewis doesn't include any nudity in these moments. Which surely would've been permissible by 1968. The hokey soundtrack feels very much like a hopelessly out-of-step square attempting to replicate what the kids were listening to. The dialogue is a hilariously awkward attempt to copy contemporary slang. What hippy would call the cops “fuzz” and not “pigs?” These riotous teens rarely do drugs, never have on-screen sex, and seem unusual gentle with what chaos they do reap.
Naturally, the acting is stilted and otherworldly. Ray Sager, the future Montag the Magnificent, plays Dexter as a weirdly vamping marionette while everyone else are stiff as boards. The filmmaking craft on display is rough. When the gang destroys the diner, its owner seems to yell at them from an entirely separate dimension. Aside from that cornball theme song, the soundtrack is composed of jazzy dissonance and random electronic farts. There are unexpected bursts of artier touches, shots of the unhinged antagonists giggling in brightly colored cutaways. It's not as funny as HGL's better remembered horror movies. Nor as weird as, well, “Something Weird.” Often boring or annoying, “Just for the Hell of It” is still too fascinatingly fixated on the idea of senseless violence not to be somewhat interesting and too miscalculated in its attempt to say hello to the fellow kids not to entertain. [5/10]
If you say the words “Tales of the Unexpected” to most fans of classic genre television, they will probably assume you are talking about the British series that ran from 1979 to 1988. That Roald Dahl-hosted program did air in the U.S. as well, in syndication throughout the eighties. However, if you're talking to a real hardcore anthology aficionado, they might recall an earlier, American “Tales of the Unexpected.” This one was produced by the prolific Quinn Martin, of “A Quinn Martin Production” fame, going so far as to include his name above the title. (Providing a convenient way to differentiate it from the identically named program that began two years later.) This “Tales” aired for five hour long episodes in 1977, getting crushed in the ratings by “Charlie's Angels” and “Baretta.” I guess, as some sort of stunt to raise ratings, the sixth episode took the form of a feature length special. If that was the intention, it didn't work. The show went on hiatus for sixth months before burning off the last two episodes in August. The longer episode, entitled “The Force of Evil,” would eventually be released on VHS as a stand-alone movie. Along with a handful of other “Tales,” it now floats around the internet as blurry uploads.
“Force of Evil” follows Dr. Yale Carrington, a beloved husband to Maggie and father to two kids, John and Maggie. Seven years earlier, the crematorium operator at the hospital named Teddy Jakes raped and murdered a girl. He came to Dr. Carrington, asking him to provide an alibi. The doctor refused and Jakes went away for the crime. Now, however, he is out on parole. Jakes begins to show up at the doctor's office. He harasses Maggie in the parking lot of the grocery store. The family's stables burn down mysteriously and a friend of Maggie is struck by a boat while jet-skiing, both crimes attribute to Jakes. Carrington has his brother, the town sheriff, put some pressure on Jakes but it only increases his stalking. The doctor takes justice into his own hands, poisoning Jakes' daily insulin, and dropping his body down a well... This does not stop the man's will to torment Yale Carrington and his family, his vengeance continuing from beyond the grave.
Part of what makes “Cape Fear” a compelling story is how the hero is constantly tempted to violently strike back at his stalker but ultimately shows himself to be morally superior. This is not present in “Force of Evil.” Dr. Carrington and his wife outright plot to murder Teddy Jakes, going so far as to hide his body. This does insert a new angle to the telling. Jakes is a vile man, a remorseless predator who delights in intimidating and terrifying his enemies. However, Carrington taking the law into his own hands, setting out to murder Jakes, at least makes the man's revenge understandable. This could have been built into a meditation on the nature of justice, what constitutes self-defense exactly, and how people consolidate their moral compass. “Force of Evil” doesn't really get into that though, leaving the morality of its protagonist mostly unexamined. The supernatural element that is also hinted at never amounts to much either. The script seems to confirm that Jakes is dead half-way through, his body being dragged out of the well, while also flirting with the possibility that he simply somehow survived the assassination attempt. It's all very vague and half-assed.
As the title implies, there is something of a twist ending here. More like an ambiguous ending, to be frank. It is mildly interesting. William Conrad provides opening and closing narration, as he did on a few other Martin productions, which helps this feel more like a proper anthology series. However, if this represents the overall quality of this “Tales of the Unexpected,” it's not hard to see why it didn't catch on. “Force of Evil” goes out of its way to remind the viewer of superior material while never grappling with the moral themes it brings up or weirder ideas batted around by the script. “Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected” does seem fondly remembered by some seventies nostalgists. Stephen King shouted the show out in “Danse Macabre,” his non-fiction essay on the horror genre... Except the scenario he describes is actually from an episode of “Ghost Story,” meaning this series actually has zero cultural legacy. Good theme song though. [5/10]
“The Addams Family” is not a show that you would refer to as topical most of the time. However, “Fester Goes on a Diet” roots itself to the late sixties in two specific ways. The main plot involves Uncle Fester receiving news that Yvette, his latest pen pal from France, will be visiting him soon. After Pugsley is caught exercising, in hopes of impressing his own lady friend and much to his parents' horror, Fester gets the idea to loose some weight himself. He consults fitness guru Jack LaLanne – whose eponymous show was already fifteen years into its 34 run by 1966 – and quickly gets on the exercise regiment supposedly used by U.S. astronauts. That last detail leads Gomez and Morticia to believe that Fester has been selected to be an astronaut, the two quickly becoming fearful that his electric physicality would be dangerous within the high-oxygen environment of a space shuttle. The Saturn IB round of Apollo missions would start shortly after this episode aired, which is probably why the topic was on the show writers' minds. The episode does not end with Fester going into outer space, which he wouldn't accomplish until he started fighting aliens in 1989.
You never know if older programs such as this will hold up to modern standards. By which I mean I was worried this episode would be full of fat jokes. “The Addams Family” has rarely used Jackie Coogan or Ken Weatherwax's physical appearances as the butt of jokes but you never know. It was the sixties, man. Thankfully, “Fester Goes on a Diet” doesn't mock either actor for their appearance much. The idea of Pugsley getting into weight training is a joke because his parents are aghast that their child would be into something wholesome like exercise, not because he's a husky kid. Jack LaLanne, beloved pop culture figure though he might have been, was not much of an actor. He does deliver a few stiff lines about Fester's appearance. However, most of the humor is derived from the weirdness of the uncle's body, not his weight. Fester's attempts at knee bends or arm reps go wrong because he's more like a corpse than your average person. It's goofy physical comedy, not mockery of a fat guy. The ending – fairly easy to predict – could even be read as fat-positive through a 2025 lens, though unintentionally. Still, I didn't cringe much.
1 comment:
The Warrens were charlatans in real life, but they're such a comforting presence in the Conjuring movies, mostly due to Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. That's one reason I don't think that baton passing will work so well. The younger actors are fine, but they can't really hold a candle to Farmiga and Wilson.
It's also a little annoying that the Conjuring Cinematic Universe never really found a true successor to James Wan in terms of talent. Most of the other filmmakers are workmanlike at best, and there's something to be said for that, but it would have been nice to see them give the reigns to someone a little more adventurous.
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