Halloween 2024: October 14th

Mr. Vampire (1985)

Geung see sin sang

I'm not going to lie to you guys. I first learned what a jiang-shi is thanks to Hsien-Ko in the "Darkstalkers" video games. I wasn't always as big of a folklore nerd as I am today. I'm sure that character – who is awfully adorable for being a rigor-mortis infused, qi sucking, hopping corpse – was a lot of western people's introduction to the concept, a figure in Chinese ghost stories comparable to the Eastern vampire or zombie. Of course, the reason Capcom thought to put a jiang-shi into their monster fighting video game series is because they were a common presence in eighties Hong Kong martial arts movies. The visual clichés of the creature were solidified then: The Qing dynasty era burial robes, the paper with holy symbols stuck to their heads, the stiff-armed and hopping gait, the blueish grey skin and little fangs. While Sammo Hung reintroduced the concept to Hong Kong cinema in 1980's "Encounters of the Spooky Kind," it was 1985's "Mr. Vampire" that truly kicked off a wave of martial arts horror/comedies about the monsters. The film – which Hung produced – spawned several sequels and a whole batch of imitators, making these distinctive Chinese ghouls a prominent part of the international mythic bestiary. 

In the early days of Republic-era China, Master Kau uses Taoist magic to relocate corpses to new graves for rich clients who hope to please the spirits of their ancestors. The reanimated bodies are kept under control by magic scrolls glued to their foreheads. Otherwise, they would become wild, breath-sucking jiang-shi. Kau's clownish assistants, Man-choi and Chau-sang, often get into mischief. The group is hired to relocate the ancestor of a rich businessman, Mister Yam. Kau is distressed to find the body hasn't decayed in twenty years, a sign that it's going to become a vampire. Kau attempts to keep the hostile spirit under control but Man-choi and Chau-sang's incompetency soon leads to the hopping vampire getting loose. The group attempts to get the supernatural terror back under control. Romantic rivalries, more magic, a horny ghost, and lots of kung-fu ensues. 

As with "Encounters of the Spooky Kind," "Mr. Vampire" is a loosely plotted film, with intervening subplots and set pieces that don't have much to do with the primary story. Man Choi seems to be attracted to Mr. Yam's daughter – the debut role of future action star Moon Lee – while her military officer cousin also pursues her. This leads to a slapstick sequence where Man Choi uses magic to manipulate the officer's body and humiliate him. A lengthy subplot involves Chau-sang falling under the sway of a female ghost, whose frantic lovemaking threatens to exhaust him to death. She's introduced in a musical number, where she attempts to hitch a ride on the young man's bicycle. That leads to a wild sequence where Master Kau has to fight off the spirit, which results in her hair turning into spikes and her head floating around the room. Later, Man Choi is bitten by the jiang-shi and must hold off the transformation by constantly dancing on a bed of glutinous rice. (Which seems to have a similar effect on these Eastern vampires as garlic does to European ones.) None of these plot threads or sequences have much to do with the story of the leaping vampire getting loose. This results in "Mr. Vampire" playing a lot like a gag comedy, the main narrative being nothing but a clothes line to hang a series of increasingly outrageous stunts and jokes on. 

And when those stunts and jokes are this entertaining, who can complain? As in many of the films of Hung, Jackie Chan, and their collaborators at Golden Harvest, "Mr. Vampire" smoothly combines acrobatic martial arts and physical slapstick comedy. The action scenes are endlessly inventive and fast paced, constantly showing off the skills of these performers. A sequence where Kau and his students ensnare the vampire with a net of enchanted thread is fantastic, playing out like an elaborate ballet of stunt work and action. The finale features Chin Siu-ho, as Chau-sang, effortlessly running up walls, leaping over props, and using chairs and tables as weapons. An earlier scene, where the hero is nearly branded and has to juggle the buffoonish police officer while fighting off another revenant, shows off how adapt the movie is at getting both thrills and laughs out of these action scenes. Mostly because the film is equally good at both elements. An earlier scene, where Chau-sang mistakes the daughter for a prostitute, got a lot of laughs out of me. As did the Marx Brothers-esque bodily possession sequence. The totally physical performance does lead to a few overbearing gags. Ricky Hui mugs furiously as Man Choi, especially during an inexplicable moment of homophobic gaggery. Overall though, the stunts and comedy work perfectly in sync to create a consistently entertaining motion picture. 

As a light-hearted monster movie, "Mr. Vampire" is a lot of fun too. Director Ricky Lau and cinematographer Peter Ngor make a good looking film. The nights are beautifully dark, often cast in gorgeous shades of blue and dark green. Many of the sets and locations have a charming artificial quality to them, the film fully transporting the viewer into its fantasy land. Mostly, I came away from the movie understanding why the jiang-shi would become such a pop culture icon after this. The stiff-limbed movement of the vampires is such a cool visual, an interesting physical stunt and a fittingly uncanny feature. These vampiric creatures hunt by sensing people's breath, leading to several mildly suspenseful scenes of people holding their breath while the monster hovers near-by. Yuen Wah, another member of Chan/Hung's troupe, plays the main jiang-shi and his make-up gets more beastly as the film goes on. The ghost scenes are also a hoot, featuring bizarre special effects and visually inventive camera work. I don't know if it's ever scary, exactly, but "Mr. Vampire" maintains a spooky, kooky tone throughout that is perfect for the Halloween season. 

A wild horror/comedy circus of a film, "Mr. Vampire" rarely slows down. Something crazy, cool, or funny is happening on-screen nearly every minute of its runtime. Lam Ching-ying, as Master Kau, remains an ideal straight man throughout and somehow manages to make a unibrow intimidating. Much the same way "Encounters of the Spooky Kind" did, the movie gets right into the action and ends the minute after the threat is resolved. I've got to respect economic storytelling like that. "Mr. Vampire" is considerably smoother than Hung's earlier supernatural kung-fu comedy, with more likable characters, funnier gags, and cooler gimmicks. In other words, this is the stuff of cult movie legend and exactly the kind of third-eye stimulating madness I seek in Hong Kong movies. After years of grainy bootlegs and subpar releases, the movie finally has a lovingly restored Blu-ray release, so check it out right away. [9/10]

Bleeders (1997)

Who mourns for the VHS gimmick box? If you're of the right age, to have wandered video stores during their hay days, you know what I'm talking about. In the eighties and nineties, any goofy feature on the VHS box, to make your title leap off the shelves at customers, was a worthwhile investment. Horror movies were especially fond of these. Boxes with embossed covers or lenticular holograms were always a good bet. Some went further and decorated their cardboard sleeved with monsters with blinking eyes, monsters that roared, or monsters that propositioned you. Low-budget Canadian horror movie "Hemoglobin" was written by the same team who made "Alien," based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, and starred Rutger Hauer. You'd have thought that would've been enough to sell the movie but its distributor had another thought. They cut out four minutes of nudity, retitled the film "Bleeders," and stuck a plastic sleeve full of squishy fake blood on the front of the box. Maybe this was the right instinct because, seventeen years later, that box gimmick is still the main thing people remember about this movie. 

Three hundred years ago, the Van Daam family got kicked out of Holland because they loved incest too much. The family eventually settled on an island in the Northern Americas. In the modern day, last of the bloodline John Strauss arrives on the island in hopes of finding an answer to the mysterious blood disease that is slowly killing him. Instead, he finds a dead end small town where the biggest new story is that the local cemetery is being dug up, due to cheap coffins causing bodies to fall out... That's what everyone in town thinks is happening. In fact, a clan of inbred, mutant dwarfs live under the island and have been feeding on the town's dead bodies for centuries. Now that their food supply is being removed, the monsters are coming above ground for fresher meat. John Strauss, his devoted wife, and the alcoholic town doctor investigate and discover that John has a very predictable connection to these damnable creatures.

Loosely adapting Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear," "Bleeders" does show some of the author's favorite themes poking through. Such as the curse of a degenerate family bloodline dooming the protagonist to an ultimately inhuman existence, grave robbing ghoul monsters, and old legends in burned down homes. Unfortunately, the film follows another one of Lovecraft's recurring tropes too closely. Namely, a protagonist who is a totally inept dork. John Strauss spends most of the movie in a sickly stupor, his nose frequently gushing blood, and often falling unconscious. His voice is spaced out, he speaks of insatiable urges, and generally acts like a weirdo. It's hard to believe his wife would be so totally devoted to him. When the easily foreseen truth about John's genetic destiny is revealed, the character falls into more disturbing behavior. That could've made for an interestingly sordid story of a descent into depravity. However, Roy Dupuis as John and Kristin Lehman as his wife both give such unlikable performances. Dupuis is stilted, Lehman is somehow both blank and overemotive. They share zero chemistry, no matter how much graphic humping they do in the uncut version. Their tragic love story is played as contrived melodrama, leading to a thoroughly unconvincing final moment. 

Bafflingly, the story of the Strausses digging up his horrible family history often feels like it's playing alongside an almost unrelated second movie. Much like Full Moon's "Lurking Fear" from three years earlier, "Bleeders" is also a schlocky monster movie about a small town being overwhelmed by cannibalistic underground humanoid dwellers. The creature effects that bring the deformed ghouls to life aren't bad, their hunched and tumorous bodies being properly grotesque. Scenes devoted to the creature surfacing, attacking people at the docks, yanking victims through open graves, or pulling little girls underground is when "Bleeders" is at its most lively. This element peaks early, when Hauer's doctor enters into the tunnels under the cemetery. After a hurricane blows in and everyone takes shelter in the town lighthouse, "Bleeders" becomes a repetitive siege picture. Tension free attack scenes continue until the movie blusters towards an underwhelming climax. 

In general, "Bleeders" is a movie with an off-balance tone. The musical score is composed of Indian sitar music and wailing guitars that would be more at home in a Skinnemax erotic thriller. The film has the plot of a low-brow creature feature but approaches everything with deadly seriousness. For an example of that, it opens and closes with comically self-serious narration. This conflicts with the characters, most of whom are written as cartoonish assholes. The married couple stay at a hotel which also functions as the town mortuary. The woman who runs the place is utterly obnoxious, while her daughter is so soft-spoken as to barely exist. While hanging around the burned house, John encounters an old woman in a wheelchair who speaks with a hilariously exaggerated Mainer accent. The little kids and fishermen around town are all played in this weirdly broad manner. The only actor in the film, perhaps unsurprisingly, that strikes the right balance of camp and gravitas is Rutger Hauer. The scene where he performs an autopsy on one of the creatures, dryly commenting on its hermaphroditic nature, is the highlight of the movie. When Hauer announces to everyone in town what's happening, it's the right kind of campy exuberance that this movie needed significantly more of. Always a pro and a joy to watch, Hauer manages to wring something like actual pathos out of his character's standard backstory of alcoholism and failure. (Delivered minutes after he's introduced.) Really, if the movie had been completely about him and cut out the married couple entirely, it easily would've been improved. 

Depressingly, this would be the final screenwriting credit of Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett in the former's lifetime. Considering the quality of the duo's output, and the obvious respect O'Bannon had for Lovecraft, it's difficult to believe "Bleeders" represents their original screenplay too much. I guess that's the difference between getting a Ridley Scott or Paul Verhoven to direct your script versus getting the guy who made "Witchboard III" to direct your script. Having now seen the film, I actually understand exactly why the distributors threw a cheap Halloween decoration on the box to help sell the movie. Despite its strong pedigree, "Bleeders" is a limp mess. It's held back by a weirdly split story structure, unappealing characters, and a general lack of dramatic tension in its execution. Lumpy, formaldehyde-slurping, subterranean hermaphrodites and a boozy Rutger Hauer go a long way but it's not enough to salvage this forgettable feature. [5/10]

Strange Frequency: Soul Man

Owing to shared custody weekends with my dad, and his Carl-like taste in music, I watched a lot of VH1 during 2001. Based on the success of shows like "Behind the Music" and "Storytellers," the network was continuing to drift away from just playing music videos into more music-adjacent programming at that time. They started to produce scripted movies and shows too. Such as "Strange Frequency," which was described as "the rock 'n' roll version of the Twilight Zone." Beginning as a TV film, thirteen half-hour episodes would spawn from the premise. I never watched it at the time but, considering the amount of folklore around the music world, it always struck me as a good idea for an anthology. 

"Soul Man" revolves around Mitch, a much abused roadie for temperamental rock star Jason Armstrong. He also lusts after Nicole, his boss' main squeeze. While looking to replace a broken guitar, Mitch stumbles upon a piece of music written in blood. It's supposedly the last song composed by Jimi Hendrix, on the night he died. Legend has it that playing it successfully can summon the devil. Mitch does so and, afterwards, is approached by a manager from Iscariot Productions. Later that night, Jason injures his hand and Mitch is asked to fill in for him. The resulting concert turns Mitch into a star overnight and wins Nicole's heart. That's when he figures out who his manager actually is. Soon, the shredding roadie is in a contest for his very soul. 

There's no rock legend more persistent than musicians selling their souls to the Devil for talent and success. This might be because signing contracts with record companies already feels like a Faustian bargain. (An observation made many times before, in classics such as "Phantom of the Paradise.") "Soul Man" – a clever title, I'll admit – is a standard take on this premise. After signing with his new manager, Mitch stumbles into success without realizing what he's gotten himself into. However, probably owing to "Strange Frequency's" low budget, the episode can't explore this idea too thoroughly. Mitch goes from his incredible first concert to a moral questioning immediately in the next scene. The only bad thing that happens is Nicole getting pushed aside by a wave of shrieking groupies. The middle act feels like it's missing, the episode heading right into the climax of a "Devil Went Down to Georgia"-style duel. Which is set in the same music store location we saw earlier, one of seemingly three sets in the entire episode. 

The script is rushed. The budget is low. There's a lot of close-ups of someone's fingers rockin' on the guitar, while the actor's faces appear in a totally different shot. Despite its obvious flaws, I still kind of liked "Soul Man." Mostly because of its leads. Roger Daltry acts as both the show's host and plays the Devil. Probably because I watched too much "Highlander: The Series" as a kid, I'm abnormally fond of Daltry as an actor. The devil is exactly the kind of hammy role he excels in. He even gets to put on a hick accent in the double role of the music store owner. James Marsters, "Buffy's" Spike, is serviceable enough as Mitch. We only see a little bit of his considerable charm here, stuck in a fairly one-note part. It's also funny that the show so obviously uses a double for the guitar playing scenes, when Marsters is actually a decent guitarist in real life. Maybe I'm nostalgic for pre-9/11 basic cable schlock like this – check out the low-rise jeans the girls wear – but I kind of enjoyed "Soul Man." I would've much preferred VH1 pivot to shit like this than reality TV trash. I hear there's an episode with Eric Roberts as a murderous hippie? Oh sweet Satan, help me resist. [6/10]

The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906)

Les quatre cents farces du diable

French magician turned cinematic pioneer Georges Méliès probably created the first horror film, 1896's “Le Manoir du Diable.” That short was simply about the devil pranking a guy inside a spooky house. Méliès would expand on this theme all throughout his career, the concept reaching perhaps its most ambitious form with 1906's “The Merry Frolics of Satan.” Two gentlemen visit an alchemist, who gives them a pill that he promises can grant any wish they might have. The two men request to travel around the entire world within a few minutes. Little do they know that the alchemist is actually the devil himself. They conjure a magical train that takes them all around Europe but each destination is fraught with misfortune, imps usually appearing to ruin whatever good time the two are attempting to have. After a calamitous journey through the heavens on a carriage pulled by a phantom horse, the devil whisks his victim away to the inferno below where he roasts him over a fire on a rotating spit. 

Méliès made what are often known as “trick shorts,” little films devoted to nothing more than displaying camera tricks and simple contraptions to achieve the earliest possible version of cinematic special effects. This meant they were light on narrative. “The Merry Frolics of Satan,” at 22 minutes long, is among  Méliès' longest works. That doesn't mean it has much more in the way of narrative. This is essentially a series of set pieces, the travelers beset by a new supernatural mishap everywhere they go. Every scene features some loopy slapstick, usually achieve through large paper prop interacting with the actors. This results in scenes of people being knocked about by an enormous telescope or a phantom hand. Or a lengthy sequence of a set of briefcase being unfolded into the miniature train. That stunt is topped later, during a scene where rampaging imps and a pair of monkeys fold up the tables and chairs people are dining on and yanking them away.

There might not be much story here, merely a comedic condensation of the Faustian moral of “Never bargain with the devil.” However, the style is the point with  Méliès' films. The special effects are crude by modern standards. Most of the unusual faces and props are nothing more than elaborate pieces of wood or paper, that fold in on themselves. The trap doors from which objects emerge and disappear are never disguised. In effect, however, it makes for an enchanting visual appearance. Many scenes were colored-in by hand, creating a surreal appearance resembling a child's activity book. Similarly, the playfulness on display is incredibly charming, even 128 years later. The skeleton horse pulling the celestial carriage kicks its feet in the air. Leering faces appear among the stars. Dancing girls do a kick line after our doomed hero arrives in Hell.  Méliès was having so much fun bringing these incredible visuals to life for the first time. He made that clear by casting himself as Satan, the mischievous overseer of all this mayhem. The result is a piece of cinematic magic that still impresses over a century after it was first put to celluloid. [8/10]

Halloween 2024: October 13th

Poison for the Fairies (1984)

Veneno para las hadas

In Latin American countries, witches do not exist solely as folkloric boogey-women and New Age practitioners. A mixture of folk medicine, folk magik, and spiritualism – with roots in indigenous, African, and Catholic beliefs – known as Brujería has survived in these areas for centuries, despite attempts by Christianization to stomp them out. This has led to the witch being an archetype with a deep resonance, leading to both sympathetic and villainous portrayals in Mexican and Central American pop culture over the years. Among the most acclaimed Mexican witch movies is Carlos Enrique Taboada's "Poison for the Fairies," which won the 1985 Ariel Award for Best Picture and Best Director. I was very impressed with Taboada's ghost story "Even the Wind is Afraid" last year, so it seemed natural to give this one a look during this season's attempt to broaden my knowledge of Mexican horror films. 

Flavia, the young daughter of rich parents, begins attending a new school in Mexico City. There she meets Verónica, a poorer girl who has been raised by her grandmother and nanny. Verónica is fascinated with witches and claims to be one, merely disguising herself as a little girl. The two form a tentative friendship, Flavia skeptical of Verónica's supernatural claims at first. After Verónica overhears a teacher is leaving, and passes it off as a magical prediction, Flavia is slowly convinced. The two girls perform a ritual to banish Flavia's strict piano teacher. After the woman dies of a stroke, Flavia becomes increasingly fearful of her new friend's "powers." Verónica uses this sway to manipulate and bully Flavia more, talking her into being allowed to come along on a family vacation to the countryside. There, the two girls go about gathering the ingredients for a poison potion – to use against fairies, the mythical nemeses of witches – but Verónica's cruelty towards Flavia soon reaches a boiling point.

The first scene in "Poison for the Fairies" depicts a bloody passage from a fairy tale, which sets up the film's carefully balanced tone. The flowery musical score, from Carlos Jiménez Mabarak, recalls a family film from the fifties or sixties. The vague time period the story is set in, with its vintage cars and antiquated fashion, makes the movie seem much older than 1984. This is paired with gorgeous, soft cinematography from Lupe Garcia. The girls are often depicted as figures in larger tableaus, such as when Flavia climbs to the top of a castle's ruins or when Veronica swings back and forth in a fantastically green forest clearing. Despite how much "Poison for the Fairies" resembles a nostalgic, rose-tinted view of childhood, this is certainly not a kids' movie. The parental figures in the girls' lives are generally warm and loving. The children, on the other hand, are depicted as the duplicitous and cold ones. 

In order to align the viewer totally with its youthful protagonists, "Poison for the Fairies" rarely shows an adult fully on-screen. We usually only see them from behind or above, glimpses of their hands or legs. This is not a story of the adult world. Instead, it is told through the eyes of children. That doesn't mean this world is free of fear. Notably, when a mature face does appear on-screen, it also occurs as a shock: The one-eyed glare of an old woman, the lifeless stare of a dead body, the weathered lines of an elderly groundskeeper. The film takes us directly into Flavia's dreams and nightmares, drawing parallels between a face in a casket or a doll sitting in its box. A fantastic dream sequence begins with a tree branch outside a window slowly shifting into a hand and ends with a mother's loving touch replaced with the talons of a cackling hag. Despite feeling a little bit like a vintage Disney movie, "Poison for the Fairies" never shies away from showing childhood as a terrifying time nor guards children against fear or danger.

One of the most chilling things about "Poison for the Fairies" is that Verónica is probably a little sociopath. The earliest sign we get of this is when the girl's nanny asks her if she misses her mother. Ana Patricia Rojo – with her golden blonde hair, expressive smile, the face of innocence – turns her head slightly, thinks for a minute, before bluntly saying "No." Watching as an adult, you can see when the little girl is spinning a yarn, as she lies and backtracks on her wild claims around her friend. Flavia sees it too but Verónica is also exceptionally good at manipulating her friend. When she keeps a key piece of information to herself or concocts a scheme to convince her that she's a witch, the effect is chilling. Not only because Rojo gives a great performance but because... Everybody knew a kid like Verónica growing up. After sneaking a snake into class, Verónica manages to convince the teacher that Flavia is at fault. The girl is hurt that her friend would take advantage of her like that but Verónica coolly explains that, well, she had to blame her. As the story progresses and Verónica gets her hooks into the other girl more, her manipulations grow crueler. She uses fear to "punish" her supposed friend for the pettiest reasons. Being treated so cruelly by someone claiming to care about you is a cross everyone has to bare and Lord knows it usually first happens in childhood. "Poison for the Fairies" centers itself in that all too familiar pain, in a depiction of someone trusting and naïve getting close to someone who has already learned how to trick, fool, and control for their own selfish needs.

Despite dealing extensively with the subject of witches, “Poison for the Fairies” is a grounded film. There's never any suggestion that Veronica actually has magical powers. All of her acts of witchery are either the result of trickery or coincidence. However, she certainly convinces Flavia her spells are real. During a ritual, she asks about why the candles are black and Veronica replies, simply, that's “how the devil likes them.” Flavia comes from a rationalist, atheist family. They don't prayer before bed and don't put up a nativity at Christmas. This contrast heavily with how easily Flavia is convinced in Veronica's conjuring though. That's the power of belief and ritual, all the talk of witches invading Flavia's dreams and subconscious. While in the countryside, the girls devote themselves to tracking down the ingredients for the potion. Common elements, snake skins and frog legs, are imbued with power simply because Verónica and Flavia believe that to be the case. The only time “Poison for the Fairies” seems to show a genuine supernatural event is at the very end, by which point Verónica's mean-spirited actions have more than made her a symbolic witch, if not a literal one. 

“Poison for the Fairies” has a hell of a finale too, generating a real sense of tension by constantly making the viewer wonder how far this situation will go. It's a good example of how strong the film's child actors are, Rojo and Elsa Maria both showing such a sense of depth despite their young ages. In much the same way Veronica can be seen as either a scheming villain and an ordinary little girl, the film somehow exists in the world of both daytime frivolity and nightly horrors. It's a rare work that captures the carefree joys of childhood and the vulnerability that comes with it, something the film does in the same scenes occasionally. That makes the film much truer to the fairy tales and folklore that obviously inspired it than many straight adaptations of these stories. (It also makes it an obvious influence on Guillermo del Toro. A scene where the girls are chastised for getting their dresses muddy likely inspired a similar moment in “Pan's Labyrinth.”) In other words, it's an accomplished and effective film, its status as a classic of Mexican cinema well secured. [9/10]

Isolation (2005)

They don't make monster movies the way they used to. I mean this almost literally. The rise of digital effects has truly robbed us of one of life's humblest joys: Watching underpaid actors scream and flee from rubber or latex abominations, dripping with slime and gore, played by either an elaborate puppet or a suffering stuntman in a sweltering suit. Creature feature used to be tactile, ya get what I'm sayin'? The big studios make everything in a computer and the little guys usually can't afford lots of practical effects. When something more in the vein of "Pumpkinhead" or "The Deadly Spawn" does make it into the wild, it's usually under most people's radars. "Isolation" was one of countless low budget horror flicks that Lionsgates shoveled onto DVD in the 2000s, with little promotion or press. The film hasn't been discussed much in the nineteen years since its release. At least outside the demographic of aging genre nerds with photographic memories who never forget a random title they read about in Fangoria nearly two decades ago. However, it's exactly the kind of old school rubber monster flick I happened to be looking for today. And, hey, it's Irish, meaning I can mark off another country on my cinematic trip around the world. 

In hopes of salvaging his faltering cattle farm, Dan Reilly has taken a deal with a shady biotech firm. They are performing strange test on the cows, to produce bovines that will grow faster and bigger. Jamie and Mary, an interracial couple on the run from her family, parked their van on the farmland, which Dan tolerates. That night, the experimented-upon cow begins to give birth. Dan recruits Jamie to help but the situation quickly goes awry. The calf dies shortly after being born... Strangely, however, the animal was born already pregnant. The fetuses inside it are twisted, bony monsters. And they are very alive. The strange offspring, which carry infectious properties, begins to squirm around the farm. Soon, Dan, Jamie, and Mary are fighting for their lives against these creatures. 

Much like Larry Fessenden's "No Telling" – a film it has a lot in common with – "Isolation" operates essentially as a grounded update of the mad scientist premise. Instead of using radiation or lightning to make its monsters, the creatures here are the result of biological engineering. Writer/director Billy O'Brien leans into this in a big way. The creature resembles, at first, a spinal cord that has sprung to life. These biopunk Tinglers get bigger and grislier as the film goes on, resembling a disturbing mesh of bones, sinews, blood, and oozing organs. Like Xenomorphs, they also burst out of the normal animals they grow inside of, burrowing into people eventually too. In other words, the film takes some familiar sci-fi/horror tropes and put a surprisingly fresh and grisly remix of them. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan keeps the monster largely in the shadow, so you're never entirely sure of what you are looking at. This further adds to the disorientating sense of "What the hell am I looking at?" you feel whenever the beast is on-screen. The special effects are entirely practical, making sure this aberration of science looks like a physical thing that's actually there. It's a lot scarier in execution than the logline of "mutated cow monster" sounds on paper. 

Aside from an effectively messed-up monster design and some clever special effects, "Isolation" is a well orchestrated little horror film in general. As you'd expect from the title, the movie plays up the emptiness of its setting. The Irish countryside comes across as especially desolate and dreary, always overcast. Seemingly every corner of the farm is dingy and dirty, the film building notable sequence around a slurry pit or a shallow bodies of water. The characters feel very alone, out there in the countryside. Once the monster is loose, the setting gets more cramped and claustrophobic, the characters chased under floorboards and into ventilation areas, sharp machinery near-by. The musical score is discordant and threatening but smartly deployed. There are many silent stretches which smartly build towards disturbing, sudden acts of violence. These are jump scares used smartly, paired with some effectively squirm-inducing gore effects. The bony creature slithering under a bedsheet or lunging at someone with a scream produce exactly the right reaction in the viewer. 

In other words, "Isolation" does everything right as a technical exercise, with a slow-burn first act that keeps escalating in intensity and craziness on the way to the bloody finale. The characters are kept simple, without any tedious back story, and the narrative rarely leaves the farm. As simple as the script can be, the movie clearly has some bigger ideas on its mind. Jamie is a Traveler, a racial underclass in Ireland, and Jamie being a black woman surely isn't a mistake either. Meanwhile, cows are treated in the film as disposable assets, instead of living things. A pneumatic hammer gun is used repeatedly on the animals and, when it's inevitably turned on a person, it's by a character that doesn't seem to value human life either. There's no concrete point here about the abuse of animals, industrialized farming, the cattle industry, or biotech capitalism. The quarantine subplot about the film is the most underdeveloped idea here. However, "Isolation" suggests a lot within its simple monster movie set-up. There's an undercurrent of technology pushing the natural world past it's breaking point and people, desperate simply to survive, caught in the crossfire. 

"Isolation" doesn't let its cast and characters get in the story's way. Ruth Negga and Essie Davis, a long time before "Loving" and "The Babadook," make for relatable and reasonable heroines. John Lynch, as Dan, has a nicely desperate quality to him. The result is a lean, mean creature thriller full of grimy, dismal atmosphere and a hell of an original monster. Sometimes, that's all a horror flick needs to be a hidden gem. O'Brien has done some notable work since, such as "I Am Not a Serial Killer," but the film did not launch him to the forefront of the industry. Which is a bit of a bummer, as "Isolation" is the kind of straight-to-the-point, grisly, and clever genre entertainment that so many people are in search of. And it's so extremely Irish top, with enough lilting accents and brogues to satisfy anyone who simply finds residents of the Emerald Isles fun to listen too. If you haven't seen this one, and you're on the lookout for a creatively nasty little monster-fest, definitely dig up "Isolation." [8/10]

Shockers: The Visitor

Two years back, I watched "Parents' Night," an episode of short-lived Channel 4 anthology, "Shockers." It was an unsettling hour of television and I've been wanting to get back to the series since. Probably the second best known episode of this largely overlooked series is "The Visitor," owing to it starring a young Daniel Craig. Craig plays a mysterious drifter who wanders into a swanky home. At first planning to rob the place, he quickly realizes the three residents there – Louise, Matt, and Terri – are expecting a new roommate that no one has previously met. Posing as "Richard," the man integrates himself into their lives. He seduces both Louise and Terri, though Louise is dating Matt. He also empties out Matt's bank account. When Louise pushes back against "Richard's" creepy behavior, he grows more possessive and unhinged. When the real Richard shows up, the imposter shows that murder isn't beyond him either. 

For fans of Craig, "The Visitor" is an especially fascinating watch. It can't help but play as an alternate universe version of Craig's James Bond, one who never had his violent instincts focused by the British government. "Richard" always thinks on his feet, grabbing any opportunity he can to benefit himself. We see this keenly when he kisses Terri, to distract her as he cleans up the last spot of evidence of the bloody crime he committed. His soulful blue eyes and charming demeanor makes it easy for him to seduce women. Ultimately, he's a sociopath, who manipulates people as easily as he breathes and truly only cares for himself. He also thinks nothing of springing towards violence, cold-bloodedly knocking off anyone who pisses him off or has something he wants. It's a chilling performance from Craig, who is one half emotionally unstable stalker and one half icy hitman. 

As with "Parents' Night," "The Visitor" shows that "Shockers" was determined to live up to its name. A slow burning tension characterizes the hour, as the audience inevitably waits for "Richard" to show his true nature. When that does happen, it's startlingly brutal. "The Visitor" is not especially bloody, most of the actual violence taking place off-screen. However, the way Craig beats a victim to death with a cast-iron skillet or smashes an arm in a door are presented in ways both furious and unflinchingly harsh. The visual style of the episode is sometimes a little irritating. The editing during a sex scene gets a bit frantic and the decision to repeat several key lines of vulgar dialogue is odd. "The Visitor" still approaches its violent content in a chilling manner, being totally grounded in its approach while also ratcheting up the suspense the way you'd expect from a good slasher pic or domestic thriller. (Two genres this episode resembles.) 

The gimmick of "Shockers" is that each episode was written by up-and-coming names. "The Visitor" comes from novelist and screenwriter Guy Burt, best known for "The Hole." While the story here is clearly influenced by films like "Shallow Grave" or "Single White Female," some deeper themes are established. Terri comes from a well-to-do family, the house essentially being something she inherited. Matt is a successful hedge fund manager, frequently bragging about his success, while Louise has the very bougie job of designing lay-outs for cook books.  We don't learn anything about "Richard's" backstory but his transient lifestyle suggests he's probably lived in poverty his whole life. When the real Richard shows up at the house, the imposter berates him that he doesn't know what it's like to have to work for anything he has. This gives this story of a smooth psycho blowing up some twenty-somethings' lives a class struggle subtext. While I wouldn't suggest Terri and Louise deserve anything that happens to them, it does bring an extra layer to this story of a lunatic sneaking in and taking over your life. While it doesn't have quite the level of disquieting impact that "Parents' Night" did, "The Visitor" is still surprisingly potent stuff. [8/10]

The Addams Family: The Winning of Morticia Addams

One of the most charming contributions to pop culture "The Addams Family" has made is Gomez and Morticia becoming accepted as the perfectly attuned couple everyone should aspire to be. This is challenged in "The Winning of Morticia Addams," when Fester reads an article that suggests the opposite may be true. A recent study suggests couples who fight more often are actually happier. Worried for their marriage, Fester and Granmama plot to engineer some discord in Morticia and Gomez's relationship. When these schemes fail, Fester reaches out to the article's author, Dr. Chalon, and invites him to the home. The doctor is immediately smitten with Morticia and attempts to seduce her. (Which she rebuffs, of course.) Upon hearing of this, Gomez challenges Chalon to a duel. The only problem is that Chalon is a celebrated fencer who has killed three previous men in duels. 

What makes Gomez and Mortica such an ideal couple is the innate understanding and infinite passion they have with each other. When Fester tells Gomez's Zen yogi guru that Morticia has demanded her husband quit the club, Drashi Dumo makes an angry house call. Gomez's reaction is, simply, if that's what his wife thinks, then it must be true. The two see Gomez's freed-up schedule as a chance to spend more time together. Always approaching your partner with an open mind and understanding, never doubting their commitment to you and vice versa, might be the secret to a happy marriage. Remaining utterly dedicated and enamored of them certainly doesn't hurt either. 

Challenging that bond without cooking up some bullshit drama between Gomez and Morticia, and violating the foundation of their love, must've been a tricky scenario to write. Bringing in a headstrong third party that tries to seduce Morticia is a good solution. It helps that Lee Bergere as Dr. Chalon makes a good foil for Gomez. He's a swarthy Frenchman who probably could charm a wife with a less rock solid devotion to her husband. Making sure Morticia roundly rejects his come-on makes sure that the dilemma that follows isn't either husband or wife's fault. All Morticia wants to do is prevent her beloved from getting killed, while Gomez's utter respect for his wife makes him outraged at Chalon's behavior and determined to correct it. 

In other words, it's a really good set-up for some jokes. Putting Fester in the situation where he has to roll back his plans, Gomez remaining oblivious to this, leads to some amusing interactions. (Though Fester's hope that his nephew will beat his wife is, uh, uncomfortable to say the least.) That Gomez strictly refuses to back down, despite Chalon's obvious superior fencing abilities, leads to some wonderfully goofy moments. In general, there's a lot of good gags here. Lurch standing in for the net during a basketball game or Chalon's response to Wednesday's Marie Antoine doll all got chuckles out of me. While "Progress and the Addams Family" probably would've made a better season finale, for how it escalates the central conflict of the series and brings back an old antagonist, this is an equally good note to take season one out on. [7/10]

As I've watched my way through season one of "The Addams Family," I've compared it a lot to "The Munsters." The two rival series touching on a lot of the same subjects made such comparisons difficult to avoid. It's still hard to say either sitcom is better than the other though. Herman and Grandpa's interactions were certainly funnier than anything Gomez and Fester did together. Mortica and Gomez are obviously the better, sweeter couple than the childish Herman and the sometimes shrewish Lily. It's tempting to say "The Munsters'" jokes were hokier than the "Addams'" but the truth is both shows are equally cheesy in their approach. The Addams may have a sharper social criticism built into their premise, not to mention sometimes edgier sight jokes. The Munsters' running gags, however, are simply a lot funnier to me than the Addams'. Both shows have the benefit of having great casts, pitch-perfect actors embodying archetypal characters that you immediately understand and deem likable. I think I do find 1313 Mockingbird Lane slightly more charming a home than 0001 Cemetery Drive, probably becomes the former emphasizes classic monster movie dustiness over the latter's opulent eccentricities. Thus far, Eddie has gotten a lot more to do than either Wednesday or Pugsley. (Though all the kids are adorable.) "The Munsters" only having four central members of the family, as opposed to the Addams' seven, might make it a little easier for the other show to write consistent premises. Nevertheless, I'd say both are equally silly, spooky fun. I've enjoyed watching season one of "The Addams Family" and look forward to hopefully picking up the show again next year. 

Halloween 2024: October 12th

The Fan (1982)

Der Fan

It says a lot about the state of things in 2024 that many people have unironically adopted the term “stan” – from a song about a serious case of erotomania that ends with a murder-suicide – to refer to themselves. The internet unendingly accelerating every aspect of our lives has made individuals basing their entire fucking personality around their favorite singer or celeb a not atypical sight. Everyone broadcasting all their thoughts 24/7 via social media has made this behavior more visible. A new strata of quasi-celebrity “content creators” who depend on forging parasocial bonds with their followers has only increased disturbing hyper-fixations such as these. It's nothing new though, as the countless stories of celebrity stalkers since the beginning of time make clear. The push and pull between stars and their adoring public has always been a fertile ground for fiction. Eckhart Schmidt's “The Fan” – usually referred to as “Der Fan,” to help distinguish it from the several other movies with that title –  was overlooked and obscure for years. However, fancy Blu-Ray releases and revival screenings have pushed the German movie back into the critical consensus, making this “Fan” a certified cult classic. 

Simone is a disaffected teenage girl living in West Germany. She fights with her parents, skips school, and avoids eating. The only thing in life that matters to her is R., a pop singer that she adores. She writes letters to him daily, listens to his music endlessly, plasters the wall of her room with his pictures, and fantasizes about him non-stop. Eventually, upon hearing R. will be in Munich to record a television appearance, she hitchhikes to the city. Upon meeting him in person outside the studio, Simone faints from excitement. This intrigues the pop star and he invites the teenage girl into his entourage. He thinks Simone is another groupie that he can use and discard. He doesn't know that the girl is in love with him. Nor how dangerous she is.

“Der Fan” is, in some ways, the spitting image of a stereotypical, humorless German art movie. Bernd Heint's cinematography is cold and distant, Simone often appearing as a silent image in the wider tableau of cramped interiors. Notably, the script – which Schmidt adapted from his own novel – does not probe too deeply into the girl's mind. We never learn why she is so lonely that she begins to obsess completely over a pasty, blank-faced Gary Numan wannabe. It's hinted that she has a rough relationship with her parents, getting into a fight with her dad after he changes the channel from one of R.'s music videos. She has no friends in school but boys like her, attention that she rejects. Despite the lack of insight into Simone's psyche, “Der Fan” envelopes us completely in her sad, lonely world. She writes letters in her head to R. constantly, the voiceover playing across many scenes. She kisses the life-sized poster of him she's assembled on his wall. She contemplates suicide when her fan letters go unanswered. The hows and whys of her obsession are less important than the details, the frosty isolation that infects every corner of her world. 

The reason Simone's lonely existence is so compelling is largely thanks to Désirée Nosbusch's performance. She doesn't say much but her face speaks volume. Her wide, expressive eyes are infinite pools in which we can read sadness and an obsessive kind of devotion. Her body language is fragile and delicate, yet precise. The way she reclines and stretches, in a succession of form-fitting and shoulder-padded outfits, brings to mind a ballerina, a wilting flower, but also a venomous spider about to spring. Does she reject other men because she only has eyes for R.? Or is there some trauma in her past we can only speculate about? Either way, she is an endlessly compelling figure. One of the most striking images in the film takes the camera right inside her mouth, a sign of how sucked into her world we are at this point. All the heartbreak and emotion is in her face, the way she holds herself, as we move towards a sickening climax. 

Because, of course, we know what's going to happen when she meets R. The best case scenario is the pop star ignores her, causing the girl to have a mental breakdown. What ends up happening is far worst, the adult lothario taking notice of this pretty but definitely underage girl. From the beginning, there's a tension inside “The Fan,” this unavoidable feeling that all of this is going to end very badly. The minute R. makes contact with Simone, that graduates into a full-blown seasick sensation. The New Wave warbler does not have pure intention towards this starstruck girl, as rock stars rarely did towards the young fan girls at their feet. The audience knows that the rock star sees the groupie as a disposable perk of the job, a release valve he can blow the stresses of touring inside of. Simone doesn't understand that, obviously, which is where the film's quickly disturbing tension comes from.  

As bad as we fear it's going to go, what happens is so much more nightmarish. In its last third, “Der Fan” graduates from uncomfortable thriller about fandom obsession into a full-blown, grotesque horror movie. The bloody events that follow play out as a ritualistic activity, few details spared from the viewer. Without any explanation of her motives, everything Simone does makes perfect sense. She finds a way to be with R. forever, while shedding the image of herself she had created up to that point. The icy visuals, when combined with stylized eroticism and gory special effects, create an absolutely chilling finale that leaves the viewer stunned. That's before a gut punch of a final line. There's only so much one can say about the ending without ruining it. Needless to say, this is a slow burn horror film that certainly doesn't snuff out suddenly but escalates to a sickening wild fire. 

There's so much more to say about “Der Fan.” Simone's rejection of affection from other men in favor of the put-on-a-pedestal perfection she ascribes R. is a sign of a youth eager to escape the systems of control found in modern society. When the rock star turns out to be another symptom of that same system, she unsurprisingly freaks the fuck out. An early shot contrasts a photo of a crowd of people doing the Nazi salute with a poster of R. His band symbol, that Simone decorates herself with, are two stylized lightning bolts that resemble the S.S. insignia. Is Simone's blind devotion to her pop idol a commentary on how easily swayed to fascism people are? The robotic, inhuman perfection projected by so many New Wave acts do, in a sideways sense, reflect Übermensch imagery. The slowly churning soundtrack – made up of synth music from Rheingold, whose lead singer plays R. – further establishes a mood of freezing discomfort. Perhaps I'm not German enough to understand all that stuff. What I do know is that “Der Fan” contains a brilliant central performance, is orchestrated to create maximum anxiety in the viewer, and has a gobsmacking finale that I won't soon forget. I can already tell that this is a movie I'm going to be thinking about a lot in the days to come. [9/10]

Dear Dead Delilah (1972)

If you read Grady Hendrix's indispensable history of the eighties horror literature boom “Paperbacks from Hell,” you might be familiar with the name John Farris. If you're already an aficionado of written words designed to frighten, you probably already know that Farris is a perpetually underrated talent. Farris had his fair share of success, including a few brushes with the mainstream via film adaptations. The most well known of which is Brian DePalma's version of “The Fury.” That wasn't Farris' first encounter with celluloid though. In fact, the author took a hack at directing himself in 1972. “Dear Dead Delilah” would trade in the Southern Gothic tropes that Farris thoroughly explored in his writing, while being the somewhat inglorious final on-screen appearance of Agnes Moorehead. That factoid is what has drawn the film whatever minor attention it's gotten over the years. 

In 1943, in the backwoods of Nashville, a pregnant woman named Luddy would hack her mother to death with an axe. Two and a half decades pass before Luddy is released from a mental institute. A chance encounter has Luddy being hired as a caretaker for Delilah Charles, the wheelchair-bound matriarch of the squabbling Charles clan. Delilah has invited what remains of her bloodline – niece Ellen, junkie brother Alonzo, broke brother Morgan, sister Grace, and Ellen and Morgan's partners – to the decaying family estate. She announces that her passing is imminent and that no one will inherit the house. However, she has hidden 600,000 dollars – money her late father made from selling his race horses – somewhere on the plantation grounds. The infighting increases and it's not long before someone starts chopping people up with an axe. Has Luddy's murderous nature resurfaced or is the Charles brood knocking each other off? 

I don't know how John Farris ended up trying his hand at directing with “Dear Dead Delilah.” He wrote the script too. That makes me wonder if a director dropped out at the last minute, forcing the author to get behind the camera for the first time. This is also, notably, Farris' only credit as a director. It's not too difficult to see why the writer wouldn't make a second feature. Instead of a grand old gothic thriller like “Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte” or “The Spiral Staircase,” the film most resembles a television soap opera. “Dear Dead Delilah” is a uniformly bland looking motion picture. The movie is full of scenes of people standing in rooms, having long conversations. The camera apathetically cuts between them in medium shots, the cinematography doing little to distinguish a setting that should be atmosphere. Long stretches are without music, though the score that does appear is utterly forgettable. “Dear Dead Delilah” carries this made-for-TV feeling through to the end, where the actor's faces appear next to their names in the credits, in a way that recalls a television outro than a typical theatrical film. 

The resemblance to a soap opera doesn't end at the visual presentation either. Plot-wise, “Dear Dead Delilah” feels a lot like a melodramatic television serial. The story is devoted largely to the family members bickering among themselves. The script is full of red herrings, each of the Charleses having good reason to knock each other off. However, the movie foreshadows far in advance who the actual murderer is. It's most assuredly not Luddy. Despite the elderly caretaker always ending up at the site of the killings, sometimes holding a bloody axe, it is immediately apparent that she's being set up to take a fall for someone else. This is a good example of how thinly developed the characters are. Delilah is a hateful old biddy. Morgan is a greedy schemer, his girlfriend Buffy a brainless bimbo, the addict brother defined by nothing but his habit. The bickering is often and not distinct, the characters never proving likable or all that memorable. Naturally, this means the viewer is not all that preoccupied with who lives, who dies, and who is swinging the axe.

As a horror movie, “Dear Dead Delilah” is positioned at an interesting time in the genre. The Southern Gothic setting and the presence of an old guard icon like Moorehead recalls the hag horror thrillers that were somehow still popping up in the early seventies. The exploitation title has the same verve to it as “Baby Jane,” “Auntie Roo,” and countless others. Scenes where Delilah has hallucinations of her dead father or Luddy's slipping sanity certainly fit right in with these grotesque melodramas. However, since the plot is devoted to a large group of characters slowly being killed off, the film is something of an early slasher movie too. If you go in expecting a gore-fest, “Dear Dead Delilah” is likely to disappointed. There's a well done horseback decapitation. The finale features a surprisingly well done shotgun blast to the face. However, packing most of the carnage into the last half-hour gives a definite feeling of too little, too late. 

A clearly exhausted Moorehead hams it up but not enough to make Delilah anything more than a bitchy stereotype. Despite ostensibly being the story's protagonist, Patricia Carmichael as Luddy gives a broad and cartoonish performance. Michael Ansara provides some campy fun as the greediest brother while Robert Gentry – notably, most well known as a soap opera star – has some slimy charisma as the niece's lover. There's an amusingly silly shot of an empty wheelchair rolling out of a mausoleum. “Dear Dead Delilah” needed more ridiculous moments like that if it truly hoped to entertain more often throughout its ninety minute runtime. If you want to see an aging actress swing an axe, watch “Strait-Jacket.” If decapitations in an old building amid relatives arguing over inheritance is your thing, check out “Dementia 13.” And if you're hoping to get into John Farris, read “All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By.” Lurid title and bizarre poster art aside, “Dear Dead Delilah” doesn't have much to offer that hasn't been done better in other sources. [5/10]

Pet Shop of Horrors: Despair

Anime is so accessible today. Hundreds of series are available at your fingertips. When I first became interested in Japanese animation, you had to rely on whatever your local Suncoast had in-stock. A title that was seemingly always on the shelf was "Pet Shop of Horrors." Based on a long-running manga, the series revolves around Count D, the mysterious and androgynous owner of a Chinatown pet shop. He sells his frequently heartbroken customers mythical animals, usually in the form of humans. The buyers always break the rules Count D lays down for the creatures, leading to their own destruction. Though "Pet Shop of Horrors'" title always stuck out to me, I never actually watched the series. Horror anthologies are rare in anime, so given the international theme of my marathon this October, I decided to finally give the OVA a look. 

The most highly regarded of "Pet Shop of Horrors'" four episodes seems to be its third, "Despair." Actor Robin Hendrix became famous for his role in a science fiction blockbuster. However, he was typecast afterwards and has struggled to find further work. After his wife leaves him, he forms an obsession with raising reptiles. While visiting Count D's pet shop, he's sold a very rare creature: A beautiful, blindfolded woman from the waist up but a serpent from the waist down. Robin names her Medusa and soon becomes committed to the silent, alluring serpent. He is warned to never remove her blindfold but, after fumbling a high-profile audition, that's exactly what he does...

Every episode of "Pet Shop of Horrors" follows a formula. Count D's customers are always heartbroken in some way. The "pets" he sells are always human versions of mythological beasts and act as symbols of their owners' strife. Inevitably, the buyers violate the rules Count D provides and doom themselves. In the first episode, it's a pair of grieving parents who spoiled their drug addict daughter to death. In the second, it's the manager of a pop star who recently committed suicide, due to a love triangle. In the fourth, it's an up-and-coming politician and his advisor, a childhood best friend whose fate he's intertwined with. And in "Despair," it's a fading pretty boy actor. The melodrama around each protagonists' lives, and how the mythical beasts they've acquired ties into it, is always meticulously explained. Despite the brief twenty-two minute runtimes of each episode, the backstories are rarely left unelaborated on. The ironic fates their new "pets" send them towards are telegraphed far in advance, with Count D and the clueless detective investigating him often discussing the story's themes during lengthy denouncements. 

The result is a slow-paced, melodramatic series that holds few surprises. The maudlin, smooth jazz score doesn't help the pacing problems. Nor does the stiff animation and gangly, bishonen character designs. This means the show's attempts at horror are often ineffective, veering more towards weepy tragedy than macabre terror. This is also true of "Despair," Robin's obsession with his Medusa playing out more as a doomed romance than an inevitable nightmare. The episode treats their mutual destruction – revealed in the first scene, as "Despair" plays out largely in flashback – as something of a noble end for them both. 

Despite its dragging execution and underwhelming horrors, "Despair" is the best episode of "Pet Shop of Horrors." It's not as choked by melodrama as the other three, Robin coming off as somewhat likable. The finale ruminates on how stars that are considered washed-up often have their legacies secured by tragic ends, a frequently true observation about fame. Robin Hendrix's reevaluation starts at his funeral, a phenomena we observed with Michael Jackson and Paul Walker. As far as Medusas go, this one favors beauty over fear. Yet the sad monster element did appeal to me some, more so than the overcooked entanglements of the other three. The small cult following of "Pet Shop of Horrors" revolves more around the homoerotic rivalry between the effeminate Count D and the macho, blustering – but still very pretty – detective than the monster stuff. (If you're curious, the other creatures featured in the series are a flesh-eating mermaid with a siren song, a kirin that grants political power at a terrible price, and a weird rabbit girl named Alice.) The show's formulaic and heavy-handed writing, mediocre animation, and total lack of chills and thrills makes it hard to recommend. [5/10]

The Addams Family: Lurch, the Teenage Idol

Gomez and Morticia notice that Lurch hums along while playing his harpsichord, finding the melody catchy. Gomez decides to call up a record exec, who immediately loves Lurch's grumbling song. They sign to a contract and, overnight, Lurch becomes a sensation. His song is so popular that a crowd of fans gather outside the Addams mansion and the record company decide to send him on a world tour. However, this means Lurch is neglecting his butler duties, annoying the rest of the family. 

This show has managed to squeeze a surprising amount of comedy out of Lurch's dismayed moaning and corpse-like demeanor. Having the monosyllabic butler become a pop star is obviously meant to further contrast with his Frankensteinian behavior. Ted Cassidy manages to make Lurch simply cracking a weird smile, either while posing for a portrait or greeting his horde of fans, amusing. Naturally, the butler gets a bit of a swollen head about him following his newfound fame, though only Uncle Fester seems genuinely angry about their lack of service. The episode can never quite build this into a complete arc though. The last third involves a sudden case of laryngitis for the manservant-turned-crooner, a desperate bit of drama. Lurch's dilemma between his duty to the Addams and his sudden stardom is resolved abruptly. 

Despite a rushed ending and a somewhat shapeless form, "Lurch the Teenage Idol" is still amusing. Shrieking, fainting fans allow for decent set-ups. Props – like a golf ball, a boiling cauldron of newt soup, and Granmama's stick pin – pay off well enough. Probably the cutest moment has Gomez marking a spot on his wife's arm, so he can pick back up there later, or Wednesday doing the Watusi to Lurch's beat. The Beatles, Freddie and the Dreamers and (fittingly) the Zombies are all referenced, making it clear that this episode was a somewhat backhanded but ultimately harmless response to the British Invasion. Lurch's mumbling being compared to the folk movement is probably more insulting. Still, this episode is probably a little funnier than "The Munsters'" take on a similar premise. And if you don't know, there was an attempt to turn Lurch into a pop star in real life too, though it didn't resemble his in-universe song much. [7/10]