I'm glad that we, as a culture, decided to forgive Winona Ryder. Considering the vile acts male movie stars commit, their careers intact afterwards, a little shop-lifting truly doesn't feel like a big deal. Hell, it's practically morally justified. As clear as that is in retrospect, the lovely Miss Ryder was truly having a downswing in her career at the turn of the millennium. What was supposed to be her big Oscar moment got overshadowed by another actress. She was the love interest in a lame Adam Sandler movie and a lame Richard Gere weepy. And then there was “Lost Souls.” It probably sounded like a solid career move, as the directorial debut of the cinematographer of “Schindler's List.” However, nobody seemed very enthusiastic about the script and the test screenings were disastrous. A wave of religious horror movies coming out in 1999 – all hoping to cash-in on Y2K Revelations anxiety – led to the film being shelved for over a year. It finally dropped in October of 2000... Opposite a re-release of the biggest Satanic Panic thriller ever. Almost as if the studio was intentionally trying to make sure nobody paid attention to this thing. By that point, Ryder was no longer contractually obligated to promote the film, adding to the stink of failure around the whole project. After that, “Lost Souls” was quickly forgotten by normal people. I am not a normal person, however, and promised to review the movie while talking about “Bless the Child” last year. Well, consider the prophecy fulfilled.
As a teenager, Maya Larkin survived an exorcism, Father Lareaux driving a demon out of her body. Since then, she has become Lareaux's assistant whenever they are needed. The two arrive at a mental hospital, where an epileptic man and family annihilator has been obsessively writing down numbers. The exorcism is a failure, Father Lareaux left catatonic and the victim stuck in a coma. Maya decodes the man's writing and discovers the name Peter Kelson. That is a lawyer and writer famous for his true crime books on the nature of evil. Peter is having strange dreams and odd experiences. A priest attempts to kill him. Maya slips him an audio recording of the exorcism but Peter can't hear anything on it. The same recording pushes his elderly neighbor to suicide. After meeting Maya again, Peter becomes convinced that his life is the result of a Satanic conspiracy. At midnight, on his 33rd birthday, he will become possessed by the spirit of Satan himself. Maya sets out to stop this apocalyptic chain of events before it is too late.
As far as I can tell, "Lost Souls" is like this because nobody involved wanted to make an actual horror movie. In one of the few interviews Winona gave concerning the film, she refers to it as "more of a supernatural thriller." Director Janusz Kamiński said the film was "not the most ideal project." After it received a rare F grade from Cinema Score, New Line ordered reshoots to make the movie "scarier." This suggests nobody was trying to make a scary movie in the first place. Reshoots like that almost never work, right? You can spot with ease where these new moments were inserted. Such as when Maya has a vision of a knife wielding maniac in a melting bathroom or a blurry sequence of a man's arms and legs cracking and twisting around. If that sounds like a bad cliche, it's far from the only one present. A true groaner of a moment involves a little girl whispering blasphemous statements, amid jerky editing and digital distortion. The only cliche I find more tiresome than that is attempts to emulate the head-bopping demons of "Jacob's Ladder." "Lost Souls" employs that one too, alongside heavy metal music video style glimpses of a screeching, twitching exorcism.
"Lost Souls" is easily the lamest of turn-of-the-millennium Satan movies. "End of Days" is low-tier Arnold but has one or two moments, a cool special effect or a memorable quote. "Bless the Child" is bad but in an occasionally funny, interesting way that reflects the bat-shit beliefs of its author. I don't remember anything about "Stigmata," so I guess I need to write about that one next September. Regardless, you could detect some degree of passion, no matter how misplaced, in those productions. "Lost Souls" is seemingly the result of bored artists showing up, punching a clock, getting a paycheck, and expending not an ounce of themselves in the process. The last scene is so blunt and anticlimactic, furthering the feeling that everybody merely wanted to get this done and move on with their lives. Which is what I shall proceed to do. In their quest to reclaim every studio horror flick of the nineties, and in-between re-issues of "Child's Play" and "The Thing," Scream Factory gave this one a spiffy Blu-Ray. Which did nothing to redeem its reputation. May these souls remain lost. [2/10]
It is a mythological concept that exists all throughout Scandinavia but is practically unknown elsewhere. A witch fashions a creation out of bones, stolen wool or hair, nail clippings, or wood shavings She hides it between her breasts and grows it with the wine she spits out when taking communion. It grows into a weird little creature that sneaks out at night, sucking the near-by cows dry. Once gorged on milk, it returns home and vomits up the stolen goods into a churn, the witch using it to make cursed butter. As a reward, the beastie is allowed to suckle from a secret nipple on the sorceress' inner thigh. In Sweden, it usually takes the form of a hare or cat and is called a bjära. The Norwegians imagine the beast as a living ball of wool known as a trollnøste. The Estonian kratt is made from household items and brought to life with blood but still steals for its master. Latvian witches had the pūķis, a small dragon that dragged home gold and grain. In Iceland, however, this particular creature is a gruesome looking worm-thing called a tilberi. In 1987, Icelandic filmmaker Viðar Víkingsson would direct an hour long television movie inspired by this same mythology. Severin would bring this “Tilbury” to its widest audience yet as part of its folk horror box set a few years back.
The year is 1940 and the place is the Icelandic countryside. Auðun is a young man, a swimmer. He still harbors an attachment to his boyhood crush, Gudrún. After receiving news that he's been recruited into the war effort, Gudrún's pastor father asks Auðun to check on her. Arriving at the British controlled military base, Auðun discovers that the girl he knew has grown into a promiscuous young woman. She's carrying on an affair with a married British officer named Tilbury. The eccentric, impish man seems to have a strange sway over Gudrún. Auðun seemingly spies him sucking on her thigh and puking up green butter. As Auðun grows increasingly obsessed with his childhood friend, he becomes more and more convinced that her lover is a monster from Icelandic folklore.
“Tilbury” is probably most easily read as a film about sexual repression, a tightly wound young man suffering the culture shock of a more modern, sexually liberated couple. At the same time, there are more international concerns on Víkingsson's mind. The British presence in Iceland is shown as something of an unnatural intrusion, the foul-mouthed Brits often bullying and harassing Auðun. It makes him an outsider in his own country. Chocolate bars are made from the tilberi's green butter. Later on, the film connects this with crass corporate capitalism coming to Iceland, furthering the feeling that the supernatural threat represents the corrosive effects of American excess. Among the soldiers is another swimmer who gets imprisoned for possibly being a Nazi. He obviously sucks but he's also the first person to correctly identify Tilbury as a monster. Which makes me wonder what the hell the filmmaker meant by several Menorahs being present when the villain goes fully demonic. Needless to say, there's something deeper being hinted at here and I don't think it's antisemitic?
That might be my primary disappointment with “Tilbury.” Most of the oral tradition and folk art about tilberi depict them as grotesque worm-like creatures. The replicas on display at the Icelandic Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft recall lengths of intestines, pre-mature fetuses, and massive globs of belly button lint. The creature in the movie, meanwhile, is mostly depicted as a human being with some impish features. Not that I'd expect a low-budget television film to truly have the money and resources to depict a creature that weird anyway. Mostly, it makes me wish that we had way more movies about this particular monsters, to allow for more cinematic interpretations of them. This “Tilbury” is still cool though, an oddly funny and funnily odd tale of witchcraft, sexual hang-ups, World War II, and globs of green butter. [7/10]
Presumably following the logic that people spend money on their kids, premium cable channels in the eighties produced a surprising amount of kids' show. In September of 1982, Showtime would begin broadcasting “Faerie Tale Theatre.” Produced and hosted by the fittingly whimsical Shelley Duvall, the series often featured A-list celebrities as guest stars. (And sometimes had high profile names behind the camera too, with Francis Ford Coppola and Tim Burton directing two episodes.) Usually, this was in-service of doing wacky and comical retellings of the most well-known Grimm's fairy tales. Occasionally, however, the show would present a more obscure story. Such as “The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers,” based on the even more awkwardly entitled “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.” As you might have guessed from the title, this was essentially the program's Halloween special, presenting a tone a bit more ghoulish than your standard modernized take on a fairy tale.
That means it's still less gruesome than the original text, which might be the origin of the hoary horror cliché of spending the night in a haunted house to win a monetary prize. The titular character is Martin, the son of a superstitious carpenter. The boy has never experienced fear, not because he's exceptionally brave but because he's too dim-witted to know better. The boy is sent to ring the church bell at night, a set-up for a prank by the local deacon. This only results in the man getting his leg broken, leading to Martin being kicked out of his father's home. He eventually wanders towards an inn in the land of Transylvania. King Vladimir, the ruler of this land, is staying there with his daughter, Princess Amanda. That's because the castle is so beset by ghosts that nobody is willing to live there. The king makes Martin the same offer he's presented to several lads before him: If he can last three nights in the haunted castle without dying or being scared off, he will win riches and the princess' hand. Martin agrees to the task, despite having no use for money, because he hopes he'll finally be frightened for the first time in his life. However, the boy's cluelessness once again makes him difficult to startled, no matter how many spectres and zombies appear before him.
Despite the Hollywood cast and quite detailed sets, “Faerie Tale Theatre” was still somewhat shot like a “Muppet Show” segment. The camera work is largely stationary. The digital effects are exceedingly cheesy. The writing still feels a little like a comedy sketch stretched to a full hour. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy “The Boy Who Left Hoe to Find Out About the Shivers.” Anytime the episode commits to capturing a non-threatening but suitably spooky haunted house ambiance, it's a ton of fun. The old castle setting looks like a bitchin' small time amusement park fun house. Set pieces involving a pendulum swinging into place or a revolving door feel right out of a classic “Abbott & Costello Meet the Monsters” flick. There's a pretty cool looking Grim Reaper and blinking gargoyle. The highlight of the episode is clearly a sequence where a horde of zombie-like spirits emerge, eventually playing a game of ten pins with skulls and femurs. That sounds like a great party to me! The finale features Christopher Lee shooting some extremely unconvincing laser beams out of his hands, before the punchline of the entire enterprise – the only thing that scares the boy without fear is the thought of getting married, hey-oooooo – arrives right when you expect. I would've absolutely been obsessed with this if I had seen it as a kid. [7/10]
We haven't seen Kitty Kat, the Addams' pet lion, in a while but the writers haven't forgotten about them. “Cat Addams” is kicked off when Grandmama notices that the feline is acting lethargic and not eating. Gomez quickly comes to the conclusion that Kitty Kat is not sick but rather lonely. The Addams decide to hide out on safari and seek out the help of the family witch doctor, Dr. Mbogo, in locating a mate for Kitty Kat. Unfortunately, this does not work, as Kitty's dad apparently ate Mbojo's dad. Instead, the family calls up a veterinarian called Dr. Gunderson. Gunderson arrives for a house call, assuming he is helping out a regular house cat. When he's terrified by the lion, Gomez and Morticia assumes that the guy is just suffering from a lack fo confidence. They enact a scheme to boost the terrified vet's self-esteem.
Like “The Great Treasure Hunt” before it, this is another episode of “The Addams Family” that starts off pursuing a plot point far outside the budgetary limits of a sixties sitcom. The idea of Gomez and the gang going on safari and trying to pair Kitty Kat up with a girlfriend would probably be a lot of fun... Sadly, this show couldn't afford to have real actors in the same room with an actual lion. The brief moment where Dr. Gunderson has to interact with the lion is achieved by having stock footage of a lion – clearly not the same one that usually depicts Kitty – awkwardly inserted into the Addams' basement. The producers couldn't even afford to show Dr. Mbogo in his hut, instead using brief reused footage from his first appearance in “Uncle Fester's Illness.”
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