Welcome to the film-related musings, complaints, and comments of Zack Clopton, an amateur film-critic, scholar, and screenwriter. Featured here are Director's Report Cards, essays, and other reviews. Enjoy!
Last of the Monster Kids
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In May of 2014, an image of an empty room from a future Wisconsin Hobby Lobby location was posted to 4chan. The photo of identical walls senselessly leading into each other, dull lighting overhead, soggy looking carpet below, and piss-yellow wallpaper between was accompanied by some short text. It described "noclipping" out of reality and into a place called the Backrooms, a labyrinthine dimension of identically drab locations that are seemingly empty except for when it suddenly, malevolently isn't. The author of this piece of fiction has never stepped forward but their post quickly became a foundational text for the growing internet subgenre of "liminal space" horror. Among the many resulting fan projects was a series of found footage short films, made by a sixteen year old former Minecraft LetsPlayer named Kane Parsons. This became extremely popular and Parsons soon had major Hollywood studios interested in developing his work into a feature film. A24 and Atomic Monster won out and Parsons' "Backrooms" movie opened this past May to massive box office and positive reactions from critics and fans. What this means for the future of Hollywood has already been debated endlessly, meaning "Backrooms" is easily 2026's most discussed horror release. Naturally, I must weigh in on it during the Halloween months.
At the start of the nineties, failed architect Clark is currently managing a furniture store called Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire. To deal with his divorce and alcoholism, Clark is seeing therapist Mary Kline, who has lingering issues of her own. Annoyed by the store's high electricity bills, and baffled by a strange switch on the circuit box, Clark investigates the basement show room... And notices a sliver of light in the wall. Upon investigating, he falls through the wall into another world of self-replicating rooms arranged in a random, endless order. Clark becomes obsessed with these back rooms, calling upon his two employees to record an exploration with a video camera. However, the further into the strange nature of this world Clark goes, the more he learns how dangerous it can be. It's only a matter of time before Mary Kline is pulled into the Backrooms as well.
The eeriness of liminal space imagery arises from its lack of people. The visuals are familiar. Indeed, part of what made the initial Backrooms post stick in the brain so much is that nearly everyone has seen a room that looks something like that. It could be the back of an aging department store, a weird hotel, your old high school, a relative's apartment. You know this place but it’s bereft of human connection, so lacking in distinctive touches that it feels like a moment in a dream. As for why this appeals to the modern generation so much, I think it has to do with the death of communal spaces. Some have observed that the current crop of teenagers grew up when malls and other traditional gathering places for youths were starting to die off, making distant memories of public but strangely empty locations a cultural touchstone perhaps. In “Backrooms,” Parson repeatedly draws a parallel between these dead spaces, whether it be the titular extra-dimensional complex or Clark's failing business, and supposedly warmer areas like living rooms, therapist’s offices, or an outdoor apartment complex. All the places in “Backrooms” seem artificial, impersonal, and they all end up a part of the titular labyrinth eventually.
It dovetails with a growing sense of cultural isolation and alienation. (Also, there's a brief lingering shot of phone lines and an ever-present electric hum in the film, which probably isn't a shout-out to dissociated from reality classic “Serial Experiments Lain” but I'm gonna say it is anyway.) These are all symptoms of late-stage capitalism, of individual connection being squeezed out by soulless mass production driven by corporations demanding ever-more growth and profit even as it chokes the life out of the society around it. This is perhaps why the imperfect echoes of people and places seen in the Backrooms recall the close-but-not-quite-right visuals of modern day generative A.I. The walls, doorways, and eventual residents of the Backrooms look perhaps familiar and logical from a distance but, a closer look, reveals nightmarish visual glitches. “Backrooms” takes place in the nineties and its ending implies that, whatever the Backrooms are, they are growing and spreading. Which means, thirty-six years later in 2026, we might as well all be living in the Backrooms. Inhuman intelligences have, indeed, attempted to replace agreed-upon actual reality with an eerie simulacrum and we're all fucking stuck in it. In the press tour after the film's release, its director would express his disdain for generative A.I., suggesting it was on his mind while making the movie.
These are the thoughts and feelings “Backrooms” invoked in me but maybe I'm treating all that yellow wallpaper as a Rorschach test. Parson's film smartly avoids providing an origin for the titular phenomena, where the Backrooms came from and to what purpose it exists remaining mysterious. Which doesn't mean that the movie avoids telling us what it's doing. The opening line is Mary Kline talking about how maladaptive coping mechanisms form, how the human mind repeats what is familiar to it. A key monologue describes what the Backrooms does as like a faulty memory of an experience. Blurry MRI scans of the brain, comparable to the winding rooms, crop up at one point. Probably the hackiest part of Will Soodik's screenplay is Dr. Kline's back story, which includes a mentally ill mother. She carries around the literal last remaining piece of a troubled childhood home, some loaded visual symbolism that naturally gets a key role in the climax. I probably could've done without that stuff but Parsons' film, at the very least, doesn't belabor this element too much.
Pretty much every positive review of “Backrooms” complimented the evident talent the young director displayed here. While I have no doubt that Osgood Perkins providing his usual cinematographer, editor, sound designer, and set dresser probably deserve some thanks, “Backrooms” suggest that Parsons knows how to make an effective horror movie. While the Youtube shorts were made in Blender, physical sets were built for the feature, making the surreal environments properly tactile. An overall eerie vibe is successfully captured. Several long sequences are done in the found footage style, effectively extending the sense of disorientation the characters feel to the audience and furthering the feeling of a half-remembered, off-putting nightmare. The highlight found footage moment ends in a well-done bit of visual misdirection. Parson is so adapt at generating a creepy feeling and a sense of tension that I'll forgive the film for its somewhat disappointing lapse into more traditional monster movie antics in the last act.
Despite a kind of lame formative trauma for its heroine and a finale that maybe leaves behind the material's more interesting ideas, “Backrooms” is good. I would say it's at least the second best A24 film based on an internet meme, depending on how you feel about “Zola” or the Nic Cage “This Man” movie. (Aside from the obvious, Parsons pays homage to at least twoother notable works of internet-based horror here, which is hopefully not an indication of some creepypasta cinematic universe forming or whatever.) Chiwetel Ejiofor is one of 2026's more relatable Toxically Masculine Lead in a Horror Movies, channeling a bit of Jack Torrance. Renate Reinsve does the physical stuff nicely as Dr. Kline. How the script essentially hands over protagonist status between these characters at one point is a bit odd but the pacing rolls with it. It doesn't feel lumpy. Overall, I would say young filmmakers getting scouted from Youtube to make well done new horror movies is an overall good thing for both the genre and the film industry and I'm curious what this guy will do next. [7/10]
West Africa is home to over one hundred distinct species of snakes. This, naturally, means the slithering reptiles frequently appear in the myths of the local people. Serpent deities represent rebirth, eternity, fertility and creation in many stories. Pythons are considered sacred animals in several belief systems. Snakes are often feared as well and many erroneous beliefs about the animals proliferate. They are also associated with witches and warlocks. This is still a very real concern in modern day Ghana, paranoia around witchcraft leading to persecution and isolation. For one example, there is the obayifo. This is a vampire/witch like creature said to wear skirts made of snake or transform into them. Which brings me to “Diabolo,” a Ghanaian horror movie made in either 1989, 1991, or 1992. (Sources vary.) The film is an example of how myths about snakes and sorcerers survive into the modern day. It's also an example of so-called “Ghallywood” filmmaking, extremely low budget productions made by unprofessional crews and spoken in English, whether or not the actors are fluent in the language or not. Which means we are going into some wild and weird territory here.
The plot of “Diabolo” is both threadbare and repetitive, to the point that it's hard to call it a plot at all: A man picks up prostitutes at parties and lure them back to his home with large amounts of cash. He drugs them, lays them on his bed, and undresses him. Upon which he transforms into a python and slithers between their legs. Sometimes, this causes the women to vomit up money afterwards. Usually, it results in their deaths the next morning, as they stumble home. The Diabolo Man keeps this up until someone decides something must be done. A shaman is enlisted to help fight this evil but it's ultimately up to the women the Diabolo preys on to stop the monster.
That straight-to-the-point synopsis doesn't really explain what watching “Diabolo” is like though. The film begins with a lengthy sequence set at a night club. At one point, a one-legged dancer named Lewis Pee is introduced with on-screen text. He does, indeed, break dance despite only having one leg. Another draw-out moment is devoted to a stage magician doing his act in full. A subplot of some sort concerns men wrongfully accused of the Diabolo's crimes, thrown into prison and brutalized by the cops. Other times, “Diabolo” simply watches people walk from location to location or just hanging out. Such moments are often scored to popular, unlicensed music. The version available on YouTube actually has to mute the audio during these sequences, so as to avoid the website's copyright detection system.
If that doesn't make it clear, “Diabolo” is not a slick production. The sound mixing is atrocious, dialogue often hard to decipher over the blaring music or blowing wind sounds. That music is usually either stock music or the film' theme song, a jazzy Casio keyboard pre-set with Atari 2600 explosion sounds interlaced with the title being shouted. What dialogue can be heard is often difficult to understand, owing to the thick accents of the actors. The camera work is frequently shaky, going out of focus a few times. The shadow of a boom mic lingers on-screen for several minutes during an early sequences. The acting is wooden, lines stiltedly shouted or mumbled. The performers often are reduced to flailing around on the ground. The special effects are, unsurprisingly, crude as hell. The opening credits feature pixilated computer fonts flashing around on-screen. The final scene brings the image of a snake with a human head – a reoccurring concept in African mythology – to life by burying an actor up to his ears and laying a dead snake behind him.
Yes, a dead snake. As previously observed, animals being endangered or killed are not a concern in West African cinema. A ritual involves a real chicken being decapitated. The finale has a cat menaced by a python. (And, thankfully, left unharmed.) The movie seems determined to generate fear mostly by having real snakes slither around on top of people. That should make it clear that “Diabolo” is a pretty sleazy motion picture. One of its earliest shots is a lingering close-up on an actress' ass. Despite repeatedly featuring women being drugged and sexually assaulted with a reptile, the film also doesn't contain any nudity or on-screen sex. Thus, a movie with an extremely fucked-up premise is also too guarded to depict that fucked-up premise on-screen. The result is a motion picture that vacillates between unintentional hilarity and extreme discomfort. One minute, you're laughing at actors spasmodically rolling around or the hilariously bad editing. The next, you are seriously afraid that an animal is about to be killed. Or watching a witch doctor pull what I think is rope out of a woman's orifice, a scene I did not understand the significance of.
All of that is bordered by quite a lot of tedium too, during those scenes of people just walking or dancing or sitting in a room. My closest point of comparison is the Nigerian “Witchdoctor of the Livingdead,” which was similarly crude and childish. That movie had an infectious spirit of anything-can-happen nuttiness to it, which the sluggishly paced “Diabolo” cannot summon. It's a film that shifts between being a Bleeding Skull mind-melter, a hilariously amateurish outsider production, and feeling like it could become a real snuff film at any minute. I'm genuinely not sure what to make of it. People in Ghana seemed to have liked it though. Star/writer/director Bob Smith Junior became so associated that he became professionally known as “the Diabolo Man” or “The Snake Man.” It seems to have gotten at least one, maybe two, sequels. I can't say the film didn't bore me. I also can't say that it wasn't interesting. “Diabolo” is certainly a deranged, baffling experience. [6/10]
The minute I found out there was an episode of “Tales of the Unexpected” featuring Brad Dourif as a potentially murderous hitchhiker, that shit shot to the top of my watch list. An unassuming man, with a bucket hat and a gold watch, drives down a road. He impulsively picks up a wild-eyed hitchhiker. The radio plays a news story about an on-the-loose serial killer, nicknamed the Will-o-the-Wisp Killer, that has claimed seven victims so far. The supposed description of the killer matches the appearance of the hitchhiker. The passenger grows increasingly unhinged, as he berets and goads and threatens the driver. They eventually end up at a lonely road-side diner, only a waitress and two women inside. The hitchhiker's behavior grows more intense, the driver and the other occupants of the building feeling increasingly certain that they are in danger.
By 1984, Brad Dourif was still four years off from playing his most iconic character but was still well on his way to being typecast as a psychopath. I guess that happens when you have a wiry frame, intense eyes, and get good at projecting an aura of menace. That's exactly what he does in “Number Eight.” At first, he strikes the viewer as merely eccentric, cracking jokes at the driver's expense and generally being overly familiar with someone he just met. Yeah, he does a cackling laugh that sounds a lot like the Chucky laugh too. However, Dourif does an excellent job of slowly upping the implicit threats, the distressing behavior. What starts as awkward flirting with the women at the restaurant escalates to personal boundaries being crossed. He keeps referencing a “party” he's planning, which feels like more of a sickening promise of inevitable violence than a mere gag the longer the episode goes on.
Now, this is “Tales of the Unexpected.” Every installment of the series is predicated on the story having a twist ending. Do you believe that the man acting like a dangerous nut case is truly more dangerous than the quiet, submissive man he's traveling with? The other leading man of this story is Dennis Christopher, also a physically slight character actor with distinctive eyes and a quiet intensity. He had played a murderous loner already by this point too. Yet Christopher makes a good foil to Dourif. He does a good job of playing up the guy's nerves, obviously because he's stuck in a very tense situation and not because he's hiding anything. Alright, so the ending for this tale might be quite expected. That doesn't make watching two beloved performers bouncing off each other any less rewarding to watch. “Number Eight” is tense, secluded, and completely compelling. [8/10]
David Cronenberg was coming off the biggest hit of his career in 1988, the remake of “The Fly” pushing the King of Body Horror as far into the mainstream as he'd ever go. I don't know why he randomly directed an episode of “Friday the 13th: The Series” at this time. Perhaps out of Canadian solidarity. The titular “Faith Healer” is Stewart Fishoff and, obviously, he's a fraud. Skeptic debunker Jerry exposes Fishoff in front of his audience, who angrily chase him into an alleyway. That's when the guy stumbles upon today's Cursed Object. It's a silk glove that can transfer a sickness from one body to another, healing one person at the cost of giving another an amplified version of the same disease. Jack enlists the help of Jerry to get close to Fishoff, who is now very rich and powerful. There's a problem though: Jerry is dying of a terminal illness and sees this magical glove as a chance to cure himself and finish off on an old enemy.
If you're wondering whether Cronenberg's trademarks would manifest at all when applied to a weekly TV show, “Faith Healer” doesn't wait long to answer that. One of the irate victims Fishoff ripped off is an old woman, walking with crutches and with scars on her face. The effects of the magic glove causes the fake healer's hand to break-out in hideous sores. What ailment Jerry is suffering from exactly is never specified. It causes his chest to break out in large, pulsating black nodes. Maybe he has some strain of Bubonic Plague or especially aggressive leprosy. I don't know if Cronenberg was sought out to direct this one because the script was heavy on the body horror or if he brought that element to the episode himself. Either way, it marks this an especially grisly installment of the show.
The conflict being between a religious fraudster and a skeptical debunker also inserts a theme of science versus faith. That too feels like a distinctly Cronenberg-ian choice. If Dave's work has always been about the internal becoming external, Stewart Fishoff's rotten character manifesting as mutated skin despite his squeaky-clean public image is fitting. Jerry also makes a joke about bending spoons, turning this into Cronenberg's take on the James Randi/Uri Gellar rivalry. That seems like the kind of thing that would interest Dave. The last act involves a tense shoot-out between two guys that look a bit like Michael Ironside, in a city that's clearly Toronto, invoking “Scanners” as well.
In fact, “Faith Healer” feels enough like a David Cronenberg movie that it doesn't feel much like an episode of “Friday the 13th: The Series.” Micki and Ryan have a fairly small role here. Jack is an old friend of Jerry's, the scenes of them talking being a highlight. However, most of the episode revolves around the faith healer and the skeptic, two characters never seen before or since. Was a horror auteur allowed to essentially do his own thing here or did it just work-out that Cronenberg's episode happens to stand alone from the rest of the series well enough? Whatever the reason, there's enough twisted flesh and scientific themes to please fans of the director. [7/10]
If nothing else, 2026 is the year that definitively proved that a successful career on YouTube can be a pathway to Hollywood, especially if you're making a horror movie. Around 2017, Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson started posting comedy skits on the Youtube channel "thats_a_bad_idea." Their comical videos regularly get hundreds of thousands of views while occasional horror shorts do even better, attracting millions of eyeballs. Last year, the channel released a pretty good found footage movie called "Milk & Serial." Despite only being an hour long and a budget supposedly smaller than most people's monthly expenses, the flick attracted extensive press from genre websites. I suspect this might have been a calculated advertising campaign to build hype for Barker's next release, as he already had a movie deal based on the success of those earlier shorts. "Obsession" was in-production when "Milk & Serial" went viral, Blumhouse picking the film up in post and Focus Features agreeing to distribute it after a single festival screening. Am I suggesting Curry Barker is that most dreaded of pop culture imposters, the industry plant? Probably not, merely that his success was not quite as overnight as it appeared. But "Obsession" was undeniably a success, making twenty times its budget opening weekend and attracting ecstatic reactions from critics and viewers. As the third or fourth "scariest movie ever" released in 2026, I felt the need to weigh in.
Bear has had a crush on Nikki since childhood. Advice from their mutual friends Ian and Sarah have gotten him nowhere. Upon learning that Nikki plans on moving away from Atlanta soon, Bear realizes he has to shoot his shot. While attempting to purchase a replacement for a crystal necklace Nikki recently lost, Bear instead comes upon a trinket called a One Wish Willow. You take the stick-shaped object out of the box, declare your wish, snap it in half, and supposedly it will come true. Bear buys the device, intending to give it to Nikki as a gift. After once again being too cowardly to declare his feelings for her, he instead uses it himself. He wishes that Nikki loved him more than anyone else in the world. Shockingly, the device works as promised... Too well, in fact, as Nikki becomes utterly obsessed with Bear. Her behavior immediately turns disturbing and quickly violent too. The One Wish Willow allows for no take-backs on its wish and Bear must now navigate his crush being distressingly, frantically in love with him.
I think people were writing stories about how you should be careful what you wish for, because you may get it, approximately ten seconds after the concept of wishes was invented. Many films have played on the irony of this idea, usually through the intervention of a magical plot device or a stiflingly literal genie. "Obsession" operates under the "Big" method, of a seemingly harmless novelty actually having the powers advertised. This is a premise that presents a lot of questions. Bear asks two separate employees at the shop about how the objects work, both seeming to grasp the magical mechanics of the One Wish Willow without stopping to explain how it is possible. Later, Bear calls the number on the box and has a phone call with some creepy dude, who soon summons hellish screams. So, what, the One Wish Willow is some sort of demonic object? That traps people in Hells of their own making, luring them in with the promise of fulfilling their deepest desire, a punishment for avarice and want? Except later, we see someone use the One Wish Willow and immediately receive what they want with seemingly no negative consequences. To find out that Curry Barker got his start in sketch comedy makes sense, as "Obsession" operates with the logic of a "SNL" bit. You're presented with one idea – magical wish makes protagonist's life hell – up until a swerve arrives that subverts that seemingly straight-forward set-up, for an ironic punch line.
This works fine within the space of a five minute Youtube video. Over the course of a feature film, however, other problems present itself. Cinematographer Taylor Clemens gives "Obsession" a muted, frequently too dark color palette. The camera angles are usually close up on the actors' face, the framing boxy. When combined with production design that focuses on an untidy mundanity, such as in Bear's slightly sketchy apartment, the presumed aesthetic is a grounded, realistic one. "Obsession" wants to operate like a nightmare, everyday reality slowly becoming increasingly "off" with horrific interjections. The visual approach might have helped create that but the film can never make its more outlandish moments feel like they could logically exist in this world. Such as in a scene where Bear turns around to discover that Nikki, in her mania, has completely plastered the front door over with duct tape. That's a sight gag, a joke, and it feels too at-odds with the presented reality of the film.
This is not the only example of a vexing disconnect between the film's stated premise and its actual execution. "Obsession's" title and general setup suggest a twist on the stalker with a crush thriller. Nikki's intense mood swings, possessiveness, histrionic reactions to the mere idea of abandonment, public tantrums, and trying to blame Bear for her actions are not-so-tasteful invocations of borderline personality disorder. Other moments – such as when she stands in one place all day, waiting for Bear to come home from work, pissing, shitting and apparently puking right there – go back to the idea that she is being compelled to literally not function when he isn't around. Other times, however, Nikki just does crazy shit for no reason. She'll space out for a second and then shriek. A lengthy sequence has her flittering around a dark bedroom like a sleep paralysis demon. She does a public performance of an incestuous poem or delivers a rambling monologue from a shadow doorway. The dumbest reoccurring idea is postmortem uses for a cat. Why would a person obsessively in love with you do that? Inde Navarrette's facial contortions and unhinged theatrics are impressive but it can't cover the lack of interior coherence here.
There is, I suspect, reasons for these lapses in logic. "Obsession" is not depicting these things because it follows the story's reasoning. Instead, it wants to scare and freak out the audience. This is why there are gross-out reveals concerning unconventional lunch meat and bodily fluids, night terror-like shenanigans, and extremely uncomfortable public declarations. "Obsession" is as self-conscious about its desire to be scary as your average jump scare filled potboiler, only with highly engineered cringe-inducers than sudden and loud noises. (Further indicated by repeated face-bashing trauma, which has quickly become a cliche of "elevated" horror.) This is why Nikki acts more like a person possessed by a demon at times than a yandere fanatically infatuated with someone. This is also why the plot twists itself in silly configurations. Such as someone asking Bear to leave the apartment and talk to them after Nikki has repeatedly reminded him to never leave her side, which has predictable results. In fact, "Obsession" is one of those movies where a lot of the plot would've been resolved if the characters simply said what they were feeling.
This is, I suppose, part of the point of "Obsession." Quickly, the film reveals itself as a series of punishments and humiliations for its hapless protagonist. Bear, as played by a suitably sweaty Michael Johnston, is an utterly spineless individual. He is too afraid of rejection to tell Nikki how he feels and too timid to stand up to her once she becomes obsessive. Ultimately, he's also too cowardly to take responsibility for his own actions, trying to weasel his way out at the last minute of the climax. He is an archetypal "nice guy," feeling entitled to romantic love but unwilling to risk anything to earn it, and "Obsession" is the machine designed to torment him for this crime. Despite quickly grasping that Nikki is not acting under her own free will, he still accepts her initial affection and has sex with her. Is the parallel we are meant to grasp here that having a crush on someone, wishing they liked you as much as you like them, is tantamount to rape? This has been the reading many have taken with "Obsession," seeing it as a dark comedy that presents the audience with a Guy That Sucks and making him suffer for our amusement. But I don't know, man. The attitude I got was more self-hating than anything else, cinematic flagellation from a recovering dweeb who is now embarrassed that he was ever anything like this. What is there to be gained from watching a sad boy grapple with the consequences of his own sexist disregard for the bodily autonomy of the woman he claims to respect, but merely only desires, for ninety minutes? I guess this is a lesson that many men still need to hear but "Obsession's" ironically smug handling made me more irritated than anything else.
Thus, I must part ways with the critical consensus. There are clever elements to "Obsession." Several shots depict Nikki's face in darkness or half-light, rendering her literally faceless much the same way Bear's wish took away all her agency. This does tie in nicely with all that head bashing. However, once the blood and puke and overly proud-of-itself profanities and half-assed gross-outs and shapeless creepiness start to pile up, I found the experience increasingly tedious. Kudos to the folks who dug it but "Obsession" was not for me. Barker has his considerably more star-studded follow-up in the can and has already been plucked for a big franchise gig. (Insomuch that the umpteenth attempt to turn "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" into a consistent money generator can be considered "big.") I think the guy is talented but I personally found "Obsession's" writing inconsistent, its attempts at scares annoying, and its intended greater message shallow. [4/10]
The way the Italian film industry used to crank 'em out back in the day is truly something to behold. If one film became a hit, suddenly every cinematograpfica was packed to the gills with similar motion pictures. The peak period for the giallo was actually fairly short-lived, running from around 1969 to about 1973. That three year period saw over a hundred different stylish murder-mystery thrillers gracing Italian screens. No wonder the style burnt itself out so quickly! Argento, Bava, and Martino would emerge as the most notable names but the sheer number of gialli made meant quite a few filmmakers have earned cult followings for their work in the subgenre. A less well known name is Aldo Lado. He scripted a killer thriller named “The Designated Victim” in 1971 before going on to make “Short Night of the Glass Dolls” and “Who Saw Her Die?” The former title seems especially well regarded. I've always remembered that evocative title – I mean, it wouldn't be a gialli without one – and decided to give this one a watch this year.
In Prague, a park's groundskeeper discovers what is seemingly the dead body of a man. The apparent corpse is quickly identified as Gregory Moore, a journalist. Despite his death-like state, Gregory is very much alive. As he lays on the slab, he thinks back on the events that led him here. It started with the disappearance of his girlfriend, Jessica. She was a defectee from the Soviet Union and vanished after the two attended a fancy party. The authorities attempt to dissuade Gregory from investigating further but he's unconvinced. His contacted by a mysterious old man who claims to know what happened to Jessica. The man is pushed in front of an on-coming train before getting a chance to talk to Gregory. He starts to follow the clues left behind, which lead him to a mysterious organization called Klub 99. Can he recall what led him to the morgue and will he be able to fully awaken before an autopsy is performed on his still-living body?
The giallo is well known for its button-pushing content in terms of violence and sex. Less discussed is the political underpinnings of the style. Authority can rarely be trusted in these stories, with elaborate cover-ups or murderous priests appearing from time-to-time. “Short Night of the Glass Dolls” pairs this with a more explicit Soviet-era unease. Despite being as Italian as any other example, “Short Night” is actually a cross-European production. It's set in Prague, was a co-production with West German and Yugoslav companies, and was mostly filmed in Croatia. (Lado was ethnically Croatian, which feels like a significant point.) The story is explicitly political, with Jessica's status as a former Soviet and Gregory being an outsider in this city factoring into the story. While most gialli depict the police as either eccentric or incompetent, “Short Night” has them as fully antagonistic. The cops try to stop Gregory from digging into what's going on here. It's a welcomed bit of A.C.A.B. theming and goes hand-in-hand with the sense within the story that the protagonist shouldn't trust anyone.
There's a good reason for that. I do my best to avoid spoilers in my reviews, especially for films more on the obscure spectrum like this. However, it's tricky to discuss “Short Night of Glass Dolls” without spoiling its last act. Gregory's investigation leads him to blind weirdos, sheds full of doll parts, butterflies, and hippy love-ins with strumming guitars. Most of these are red herrings for the true culprits behind the disappearances: The Illuminati! Yes, “Short Night of Glass Dolls” climaxes with the hero storming into an “Eyes Wide Shut” style ritualistic orgy among the elites. Conspiracy theories about the rich and powerful gathering in mansions to do pervy, witchy shit often go hand-in-hand with racist or xenophobic rhetoric. However, history has repeatedly shown that the rich and powerful gathering to bleed life from the poor and young is an all-too-common occurrence. Aldo's film running with this idea further places its anti-authoritarian politics in context.
It's a damn good finale. Glaring faces emerge from the darkness and Jean Soral's head spins around like he's been taking lessons from Linda Blair. As is also typical of the subgenre, “Short Night” is stylishly shot and scored. While the cinematography is nice and shadowy, and makes great use of the city's architecture, the editing is what really caught my eye here. The film is cut with a precise, poetic rhythm. Maybe this is extra apparent because so much of the story is told in flashback, cutting between the past and Gregory's currently paralyzed state being an important element. This is another giallo with an Ennio Morricone score. While the music isn't as memorable as his “Four Flies on Grey Velvet” or “A Lizard in a Woman's Skin” soundtracks, it's still quite eerie.
In other words, “Short Night of Glass Dolls” has a lot going for it. So why didn't the film hook me more? Jean Sorel's lead performance is okay. He's got the big, dreamy eyes that are well suited to the film. However, the guy seems to lack much in the way of personality. He talks much about how much he loves his missing girlfriend but we simply don't see much evidence of it. In fact, he hooks up with his ex despite ostensibly being grieving throughout the entire story. I found Mario Adorf, as the boisterous friend, to be a much more likable presence. “Short Night of Glass Dolls” also has a slow pace. While stories that wander around a lot without going much of anywhere are not always rare in gialli, this one seems to have an especially aimless story. The hero spends the whole film coming close to uncovering something, only to be pushed away at the last minute. This continues until the conclusion, making the entire film feel a bit like a delayed pay-off to its best idea.
It's a bummer that I ultimately couldn't get onto this one's wavelength. That climax is awesome and the scene that follows are equally creepy. Simply put, the path to get there isn't quite compelling enough to make the wait worth it. This one needed some more hyper-stylized cinematography perhaps. Or more surreal touches, like the legless beggar who appears in the first scene. Or maybe having your main character be isolated on the operating table for most of the story robs it of some tension. Whatever the reason, I wasn't feeling this one on this watch. I'll probably have to give it another look to warm up to it. Also, the title is nonsensical even by the standards of baroque. I'm sure the narrative can be said to feature a quickly passing nocturne featuring metaphorical crystal playthings of some sort but, if so, I missed it. [6/10]
The episode of “Supernatural” – the BBC gothic horror anthology from 1977, not any other show with that name – was pretty good, so here's another one. Walter Von Lambert submits his story for the approval of the Club of the Damned. He tells of traveling Europe with his close friend Philip. While stopping in an obscure city, they witness a performance of music and magic by a beautiful young woman named Dorabella. Philip is immediately smitten and Dorabella is happy to reciprocate. Walter notices that his friend's behavior quickly changes. He stays up all night. He acts strange. He suddenly insist that they drag an ornate box with them everything, whose contents smoke in the sunlight. Most pointedly, people start to die where ever Dorabella seems to travel. Upon arriving at the estate of Dorabella's family, for her marriage to Philip, Walter comes to the inevitable conclusion: His buddy's new girlfriend is a vampire.
I'll have to ask my best bro about this, since I'm the one getting married soon. However, it's often been observed that a man changes when a new woman comes into his life. Walter and Phillip are best buddies but, the minute he turns his focus on Dorabella, their bromance comes to an abrupt end. Dorabella is controlling, glaring at any other woman that approaches the duo. He's obsessed with her too, seeing visions of the women and dragging that coffin around for her. It's an interesting parallel to draw, between someone becoming the thrall to a vampire and losing a friend to a clinging, controlling relationship. Their wedding ceremony involves Phillip slipping on a ring with a spike in it that pierces his fingers, Dorabella sucking the blood from it, a literal depiction of her draining his life force away. The premise allows for another layer to this story. Before the end, Walter asks his buddy to leave his new bride behind and run away with him instead. It can't help but read as a homoerotic pleading. Phillip has put a ho before his bro and Walter isn't happy about it. She doesn't understand you like I do, man.
I can't help but find this Bitches Ain't Shit subtext funny. It's also befitting of the gothic horror traditions “Supernatural” was clearly following. As in the last episode I covered, the atmosphere is thick in this one. The entire last act takes place in a creepy old mansion, with ominous faces carved into the stone pillars. There's a shot of a cloaked Dorabella standing in the shadows, framed by the moon behind her, fog rolling around her feet. That scratches that classic horror craving of mine. Ania Marson certainly has the sex appeal and undercurrent of danger that would be worthy of a vintage Hammer flick.
The creepiest addition “Supernatural” makes to the vampire lore is one that I genuinely don't think I've seen anywhere else. The servants in the vampire manor are blind, their eyes turned milky white with cataracts. This feature extends to the vampire themselves. It's a good representation of how joining the legion of the undead robs a person of their humanity. It's also creepy looking, a fact the episode utilizes well in several moments. Most notably the twist ending, which I definitely should've seen coming but was nicely caught off-guard by. This is a great dose of gothic horror, as slow as any other classic British genre show but with a genuine atmosphere of creepy, classy dread to go along with it. [8/10]
I'm going to be honest with you guys. One of the main reasons I wanted to finally watch “Friday the 13th: The Series” this autumn is because I read that it has a pretty good episode about a creepy scarecrow, one of my favorite underutilized monster archetypes. The episode is, in fact, called “Scarecrow.” Ryan has sent out mailers across Canada to help locate more cursed objects, which takes him and Micki into the countryside. They are in search of an old scarecrow and their path leads them to the Cobean farm. The couple is clearly hiding something, if the mentally disabled and violent son they keep locked up in the attic is any indication. The Curious Goods team run into some other faces. Marge, the local innkeeper, seems too friendly for her own good. Ryan finds a kid hiding in a near-by home, taking him under his wing, and this is when the truth starts to come out. It would seem the Cobean farm is the only successful one in the area. This is the result of the scarecrow, which crawls down off his post and decapitates any one whose picture is placed on its chest.
The scarecrow has always struck me as an especially pagan image. These are effigies of men that are crucified out in the field, to guard over the harvest. It's very easy to imagine them as remnants of the old ways, lingering reminders of traditions so old, we no longer remember why we do them. Fittingly, quite a few killer scarecrow stories have a folk horror edge. This episode certainly does. The murderous straw man is activated by old magik and implemented in human sacrifices, all in return for a bountiful crop. The responsible party – guess if you can figure out who – has some serious witch-like vibes about her. While the episode is low on country winds whispering through the stalks, the final chase is backgrounded by one of those Amish quilts. When you add in a barn full of dangling dead bodies and an extremely cool final shot of the cross posts before the evening sun, it leads to some fine ambiance.
It also helps that the scarecrow itself has got a creepy design. The sack head looks a bit like the features of a human face stretched and warped in one direction. Scythes are more evocative of the Grim Reaper than tilling the fields in this day and age, making that an appropriate murder weapon. “Scarecrow” is another episode of “Friday the 13th: The Series” that recalls the slasher movies the show is ostensibly spun-off from. We've got a masked, lumbering killer slicing folks up, including a surprisingly gory on-screen decapitation. A moment of a shrieking woman, wielding a butcher knife high, leaping from the shadows feels like another feather from Miss Voorhees' cap that this show plucked.
This episode also expands on the central duo's backstory a little. We learn Ryan had a little brother that died after being struck by a car. He carries his baseball around as a reminder. Naturally, the orphan he quasi-adopts acts as a surrogate of sorts. It feels like a detail thrown in to graft some extra pathos. Will Ryan's dead brother ever be mentioned again? Not to mention this show already had one of the protagonist look after a random little kid in an earlier episode. Still, these two have grown on me a lot. Watching them slowly pull the hints together is amusing. There's a moment when Micki notices a clue and leaps into action that I especially liked, even if it's a total misdirect. Jack's absence in this episode and the last are explained by him being on vacation but I've grown attached enough to Robey and John LeMay that I still had a good time with “Scarecrow.” [7/10]
How do you remake "Faces of Death," not exactly a narrative film that mostly drew attention for including – or claiming to include, anyway – real footage of people dying? It's not like a major studio was going to stitch together genuine autopsy and car wreck footage and drop that shit in AMCs nationwide. Secondly, why would you want to? Does the title have much name recognition among the general public, outside the realm of hardcore horror buffs? These are the debates I recall with my MovieManiacs.net forum bros all the way back in 2006, when it was announced that Universal's genre label Rogue Pictures would be remaking "Faces of Death." This was during the 2000's remake trend, when seemingly every cult classic of any note was getting a greenlight for a shiny redo. So "Faces," of all titles, was an unlikely pick but truly no more obscure than "The House on Sorority Row" or "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark." J.T. Petty was attached, a filmmaker who had previously made a mockumentary about snuff films, leading to speculation that his "Faces of Death" would follow a similar route. I vaguely recall some chatter about turning Dr. Gröss into a proper horror villain. Obviously, this iteration didn't get beyond the embryonic stage. Petty made a few more movies but seems to have shifted his focus to writing for video games these days. Rogue Pictures faced death in 2018.
In the intervening twenty years, cell phones with HD cameras, inescapable social media, and a world more divided than ever has made real footage of death and destruction distressingly accessible. Clearly, in such a landscape, the idea of a new "Faces of Death" remained intriguing. This is presumably why Legendary acquired the rights in 2021, Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei attached to write and direct. Considering their film "Cam" had some real insight into life in the digital age, I was very curious about what form this project might take. Filmed in 2023, Goldhaber and Mazzei's "Faces of Death" spent three years trying to find distribution before IFC and Shudder actually did put it in AMCs nationwide this past April. It didn't make a lot of money but won positive reviews from the horror press, so time for me to catch up.
Margot is an adrift twenty-something working as a content moderator at Kino, a short-form video focused app. When an upload is reported, she's the one who has to make the choice of whether it contains objectionable material. She has chosen this difficult job as a way to cope with her own internet-related trauma: While performing a viral dance on some tracks, her sister was killed by an oncoming train. The clip leaked online and Margot became forever known as “Train Girl.” At work, she is presented with a clip depicting a bound person being decapitated by automated mannequins. She assumes it to be fake but the imagery sticks with her. Similar uploads soon appear, each depicting a person being violently killed by mechanized mannequins while a droll voice-over describes what is happening. Margot becomes increasingly convinced that the uploads are real and, after some sleuthing and with help from her horror buff roommate, learns that these are recreations of moments from the infamous “Faces of Death.” She's right. The videos are the work of Arthur, an internet-obsessed serial killer who is capturing people and using them as props in his deadly remake. Margot investigates further, soon drawing the attention of Arthur himself.
As much as tech company overlords hope to eventually replace all paycheck demanding employees with computational models, as of this moment, a human being is double-checking the online content reported by a third party. This means every time a gore video, child pornography, animal abuse, and every other horrible thing you can imagine is taken down off Youtube or TikTok, presumably at least two sets of flesh-and-blood eyeballs had to look at it first. Unsurprisingly, this is a profession with a high rate of turnover, most not willing to deal with the psychological scars of seeing the worst humanity has to offer for eight hours a day. Setting a story around a job such as this is a fascinating premise. Now corporations are essentially paying people to watch private little “Faces of Death” videos every day, all day. If you stretch this idea out further, it means that shocking and violent imagery has become ubiquitous on the modern internet. Every time we open our app of choice, we are all taking a chance of seeing something way worse than staged footage of monkey brains being eaten.
Goldhaber and Mazzei touch on the side effects of this in interesting ways. At the beginning of the story, Margot is no longer phased by videos of people taking nasty falls or of a bear dragging away a possibly dead body. She dismisses the first real murder she observes as a clever hoax. When she wants to get the police involved, her boss informs her to hold back, to allow disturbing content (as long as it's “fake”) to proliferate for now, because it's good for the shareholders. Outrageous content drives eyeballs and that makes money. When trying to determine if what she is seeing is real, she posts the clips to Reddit, where one commenter declares them to likely be real and then says it's a “nice find.” What the fuck has the world done to us, where watching real death and human degradation has become a tedious job to some and a fascinating hobby to others?
The film has few concrete answers, which are probably impossible to find anyway. Margot's own life is a consequence of this modern age. Where we are all obsessed with watching, real tragedies are recorded and spread around endlessly, and we all face it with little sense of injustice or outrage. Watching your little sister get hit by a train sucks and being constantly reminded of this all the time must surely chip away at the soul. Margot's personal tragedy has been reduced to a meme. That viral penetration is what the film's villain hopes to create with his murder clips, to achieve infamy by turning his victims' dying moments into internet hits. One of the first people he abducts is a would-be social media star, a teenage girl whose life seems to revolve around her phone's lens. Eventually, all Margot can do is accept her infamy and do her best to live on. The powers that be – the cops, the corporate overseers, other people with the power to step in – aren't going to do anything about it. It's up to the individual. This is the world we live in and we're stuck with it, some of us doomed to hunger for that viral superstardom and others cursed by it.
It's the most honest conclusion the filmmakers could probably come to, even if it causes their “Faces of Death” to brush up against the often regurgitated horror theme of resolving personal trauma. However, more interesting ideas are within the film and remain frustratingly unexplored. When Margot first sees the violent clips, she doesn't believe they are real. (Much as in the original “Faces of Death,” a movie that less honestly played with the layers of reality.) This is also something all of us must deal with. All of us most be critical and skeptical of everything we see online now, because any of it could be fake. If we doubt our own eyes, what even is reality? The film's murderer is a sociopath, who sees other people as nothing but a means to an end. He cynically decides to pattern his killing spree after a cult classic 1970s mondo movie because “people love remakes.” It'll draw more attention to his crimes and insure his name goes down in history. All of his victims, people with lives and dreams of their own the script reminds us, might as well be A.I. simulacrums to him. This is not unlike an ice-cold studio exec, reducing all artistic endeavor to “content” that must be deployed in a calculated, revenue-generating fashion. Then again, if you watch a video about Iranian children burning to death after their home is struck by a missile and then pause and wonder “Is this AI generated?,” that's a damning statement about how the modern, capitalized era has fundamentally altered the empathy centers in all of our brains.
The film ultimately looses the thread of the malleability of the truth, what that means for us, and how it reflects on our relationship with all the images we see on a screen. This must still be a thrilling narrative. That it certainly is. Mazzei and Goldhaber's script is well organized. They patiently, naturally lays out minor details that will become important later. Rather than Chekov's Gun, we have Chekov's Opioid Antagonist and Chekov's Metal Spike. The film is extremely tight in its editing. A split-screen sequence devoted to showing how Arthur easily determines Margot's identity and location from what she's posted online is a chilling reflection of how fragile our personal safety is now. The killer's identity being revealed right away allows multiple sequences of drawn-out suspense, where we watch as an unaware victim is observed by the person who means them harm. Multiple well done sequences of sneaking around, hoping to avoid detection, follow. The script smartly keeps other information close to its chest, waiting to reveal some aspects of Arthur's operation until Margot herself is discovering it. An attack in a darkened suburban home or a race from the killer's lair, as he spies his fleeing victims through the scope of a rifle, are excellently assembled variations on the same slasher movie tropes and Hitchcockian thriller techniques we've seen a hundred times before.
If 2026's “Faces of Death” falls short of the bigger ideas it plays with, I can't hold that against the filmmakers too much. Goldfaber and Mazzei are extremely smart and know what they are doing. They've made a suspenseful, absorbing, grim horror movie here. More than one person has declared it to be a better “Scream” reboot than the actual “Scream” reboots we've gotten. This is also true, the movie actually presenting interesting observations about our modern relationships with violent images, old and new, within the context of an exciting killer thriller. The killer even wears a white mask, though the red contact lens are a nice touch. Also much like a “Scream” movie, Darce Montgomery's serial killer explains the thesis behind his master plan, also explaining part of what the filmmakers mean too. Montgomery also probably goes a little too far in acting like a screeching weirdo. (He also calls someone a “cuck” which, along with his overall shouting demeanor, causes us to assume he's right-wing or incel adjacent.) There's at least one sick, gnarly reveal that made me gag. The film also includes probably the best depiction I've seen yet of someone falling down an internet rabbit hole and becoming obsessed with a bizarre mystery they've discovered. Margot is so absorbed with getting the truth out that she actually delays escaping from the villain's house sooner, much to the annoyance of the other person there. Which is a good way to signal to the viewer that we are suppose to find her commitment to solving this thing unreasonably. But sometimes you get caught up in stuff.
As a homage to John Alan Schwartz' largely mercenary original, 2026's “Faces of Death” is probably better than it deserves. The infamous Gorgon Video VHS release gets prominently featured. The re-creations of the original's most infamous moments are arguably creepier and better made here than in the seventies film. Should've sneaked the original's corny-ass theme song in there somewhere though. I was waiting for that. I also was amused by the way the remake's marketing played on the sense of being forbidden, much like the original did. Good to know we can still kind of pull that marketing gimmick off in the modern day, even if it's largely ironic. On the short list of meta “remakes,” this is a pretty good one. The ultimate horror film about the terror of the social media age and the dehumanizing effects of living behind a screen has yet to be made but this one is well done. Legendary missed a chance to make a collectable hollowed out monkey head popcorn bucket though. [7/10]
I don't buy movies on discs as much as I used to or would like to. This is mostly out of a desire to save money and because physical space for my collections is at a premium these days. Another reason is that the boutique DVD scene moves faster than I can keep up with. It seems like every month, a new label devoted to unearthing hidden gems and exporting international obscurities has popped up. What the hell is Deaf Crocodile, aside from a semi-aquatic reptile with a hearing aid? It's a home media company launched in 2025 that mostly specializes in art house cinema and animation from Eastern Europe and former Soviet Bloc countries. They are doing noble work but this is a corner of the film buff world I don't often explore. I first read about "Devil's Bride" years ago, a folk horror-tinged musical considered a classic in its home country of Lithuania. I assumed it was one of those titles so obscure in the English-speaking world that I would probably never get to see it. Instead, Deaf Crocodile gave it a loving restoration and it's currently streaming for free on Tubi. What a time to be alive. Let's delve into this more.
Our story begins in Heaven, with a flock of angels singing the praises of a sleepy, bored God on a golden throne. Whenever he nods off, the angels sneak away to indulge in some earthly vices. One such ethereal being's not-so-virtuous activities are discovered and plucked out of Heaven. The being lands on Earth as the demon, Pinčiukas. He is soon found by elderly miller, Baltaragis, who ensnares the devil and makes him his slave. Baltaragis insists that the demon give him a beautiful wife and success and, in exchange, Pinčiukas will receive the couple's first-born daughter. This comes to pass but demons are a tricky sort and Baltaragis' wife perishes after birthing their daughter. The child grows up into Jurga, a stunning young woman. She quickly catches the eye of traveling laborer Girdvainus and the two fall in love. Determined to get his promised end of the bargain, Pinčiukas goes about manipulating and tricking the people in the village into breaking the young couple up. (While Baltaragis, full of regret, tries to set the demon up with his hefty, sexually veracious sister.)
The first thing you'll notice about "Devil's Bride" is the stunning photography. The film is in vibrant color. The red interior lighting of the mill, Jurga's golden blonde hair, and the orange gowns of Pinčiukas' demonesses all pop right out. The most prominent colors are the natural greens and blues of the gorgeous Lithuanian countryside. Most of the film takes place in the rolling fields, lush forests, and quint lakes of the area. This setting is made further picturesque by wonderfully engineered props, like that striking windmill, God's golden throne, or a festooned window that shows up a few times. That last detail points towards what is the film's greatest strength, its sense of whimsy. Among Pinčiukas' various japes is summoning a black carriage out of a swamp, causing black-gloved hands to pop out of the water, or making coins rain from the sky. Those orange-clad familiars of his never contribute much to the story but are at the film's margins, boogieing down in the woods or throwing smoke bombs around. While the setting is ostensibly grounded in historical reality, lightly surreal touches like these created a dreamy tone of fantasy, play, and myth. "Devil's Bride" is, in other words, a fairy tale that fully transports its viewer to a place that looks a bit like our world but where much more fantastical things can happen.
This is a fitting atmosphere for a musical to capture. Characters bursting into song and dance already establish this as an improbable story so it's good that the environment matches. The clear visual inspiration for "Devil's Bride," at least to my doofus American eyes with no prior familiarity with Lithuanian cinema, is "The Sound of Music." While these hills and field are certainly alive with melodies and harmonies, the soundtrack is far from Rogers and Hammerstein. "Devil's Bride" is instead powered by a consistently groovy rock guitar. There's a little bit of fuzz to the funky chords too, rooting the film's sound firmly to the early seventies psychedelic rock scene. "Devil's Bride" is a sung-through musical and I don't usually like those. It's hard for any song to stick out from the rest when the entire movie is singing. Individual melodies or lyrics tend to fade into a mishmash of indistinct notes. I guess "Devil's Bride" is not immune to this. I wasn't humming any bars or had any single songs stuck in my head after watching. However, the various movements are linked enough to the individual scenes, and the feelings they are summoning, to make it work for me. The music here is fun and bouncy, sung in a meaningful way, and always matches the emotional flow of the story.
The most prominent of those emotions is longing. Every character in the film wants something. Pinčiukas gets kicked out of heaven because he wants to do something other than chanting "Holy holy" while circling Yahweh's throne. Once cast into the mortal realm, he wants his freedom and the girl. Jurga wants Girdvainus, Girdvainus wants Jurga. Her dad longs for his dead wife and for his daughter to be set free from the devilish deal he made. Even the side characters are characterized by unfulfilled desires. The town drunk dreams of unlimited money, with which he can buy endless booze and infinite women with, and he sells his soul to get it. The impish Pinčiukas is an object of desire too, for the miller's sister. (Who, in an amusing Winona Ryder/Jamiroquai situation, is randier than the diabolic beau she's set up with.) This makes every song in this singing/dancing musical an I Want song, connecting this archetypal story to a universal feeling. Everybody knows what it's like to want something they can't have, usually in matters of the heart. The solution the film finds brings its heavenly prologue down to Earth. Pinčiukas learns to love the one he's with and the united lovers find divine, ever-lasting bliss with each other. Ooh baby, do you know what that's worth? The final image is one of the funniest takes on a story's cast – even the demonic trickster – living happily ever after that I've seen recently, pulled off with the film's trademark casually surreal humor.
"Devil's Bride" is probably not the best choice for an autumnal horror marathon. Yes, there are demons in the story but the main one is a guy with a silly beard in a funny hat, not horns and hooves. His acts of supernatural deception are more mischievous than startling. The eternal damnation that usually follows deals with devils doesn't come up much. (This is opposed to the source material, a 1945 novel by Kazys Boruta with a notably downbeat conclusion.) The element that most pushes the movie into the spooky set is a last act montage of "Witchfinder General" style binding and dunking. Otherwise, this one is heavy on the "folk" but not-so-much the horror. There's been a couple of horror movies made in Lithuania more recently, if you're trying to find a truly macabre example. However, I still had a great time with "Devil's Bride," a brief but delightful dose of music and the fantastique rich with cultural specificity. [7/10]
Much like his “Star Trek” co-lead, Leonard Nimoy was a great Canadian export. This makes it only sensible that, while monologing gravely about preposterous bullshit on “In Search Of...,” that he would discuss what is commonly called Canada's Loch Ness Monster. That would be Ogopogo, a serpent-like creature said to inhabit British Columbia's Lake Okanagan. The “In Search Of...” crew did their due diligence and connect the legend to local tales from the Secwepmc and Syilx tribes. They talk of a spirit dwelling in the lake called Naitaka, who offerings are made to before crossing. The documentary crew also sought out a diver, who swims around the lake and finds nothing much but rocks and cold. Mostly, the half-hour is filled out with stories from people who have claimed to have seen the monster. Before “in Search Of...” presents what they call the most compelling piece of evidence of Ogopogo's existence: A blurry home movie of a dark, splotchy shape moving under the water.
As I mentioned when talking about “In Search OF's” episode devoted to Bigfoot, it's hard to deny that the evidence presented here isn't that convincing. Nimoy's host segments note how sincere and credible these eye-witness accounts are. This is in the same episode where some local pranksters pushed three tires attached to a inflatable dingy out onto the lake to hoax the TV show. When you look at the playful smiles on the faces of the people telling their tales, or the hard-to-believe claim that a couple has seen the serpent “forty or fifty times,” I would say we can never dispel people's tendency to just make shit up for their own amusement. Nor the need of authors to sell their work, as the presenter of the above mentioned home movie also wrote a book on the topic of Ogopogo.
A scientist at an aquarium compares what he supposedly saw in Lake Okanagan to a shark's skin. That would be a more notable statement if even experts weren't susceptible to bias and their own imagination. The episode's most convincing statements come from the episode's resident skeptic, trotted at the end. He points out that the lake is too small to support a breeding population of such a large animal. That it was formed by glaciers millions of years ago, with no connection to larger bodies of water since then. Though he does concede that “sea monsters,” in the sense of a large animal of some sort living in the depths of the ocean, can be said to exist.
This episode probably needed more of “In Search Of's” trademark creaky reenactments. The episode begins with a pretty good segment re-creating a young wake-boarder screaming upon encountering the supposed beast. Otherwise, we simply get footage of some Native Americans sitting around a camp fire. Which isn't to say this episode doesn't have some camp value. The extremely Canadian accents of the people interviewed made me chuckle, with one fellow even ending his sentence with “eh?” Or a reporter who describes coming to the lake and hearing about the monster with baffled amusement. “In Search Of...” was never great television but it was incredibly cozy. I am not immune to the charms of lo-fi blurping seventies electronic music playing over footage of Moray eels squirming around a tank. [7/10]
I think we've previously seen Ryan reading some comic books in past episodes of "Friday the 13th: The Series." It would seem it is more of a passion for him than previously revealed, as "Tales of the Undead" begins with him visiting his local comic shop. The owner has recently come into possession of a rare original copy of "Tales of the Undead #1," the first appearance of a hugely popular superhero named Ferrus the Invincible. To increase its value, the book has also been signed by Jay Star, the character's creator. A kid in the shop desires the pricey book and breaks into the display case to steal it. Upon grabbing the comic, he turns into Ferrus and murders the shop owner. Ryan and Micki determine the comic is the latest cursed artifact they have to track down. They reach out to Jay Star, an elderly and ill man who was screwed out of his share of the profits his character has made for the publisher. Upon hearing about what happened, Star tracks down the thief and grabs the magic book himself. Now able to change into the indestructible robot hero he created, the old man sets out to take revenge on those that wronged him. The only way Ryan and Micki can stop the monster, they believe, is to track down the lost artwork for the scraped issue that killed Ferrus the Invincible off.
"Tales of the Undead" is one of those "Friday the 13th" episodes that feature a notable name in the opening credits. Alfred Sole, director of "Alice, Sweet Alice," apparently worked on the story for this one. In some ways, the episode suggests that the writers were quite familiar with the world of comics. The set-up nods at the speculators' market around the hobby that was shortly to reach its peak around this time. "Jay Star" is acknowledged to be a pen name based on the author's possibly Jewish or Polish last name, another insider detail. Mostly, the story of an artist who created a long-running character that has made millions for its parent company. but has been left penniless in his old age is as familiar to the industry as heroes fighting villains. The struggles of Siegel and Shuster or Jack Kirby to regain some control over the iconic heroes they created are well known. Even today, writers and artists whose work formed the basis for billion dollar franchises have to turn to GoFundMe to pay off medical bills or die from treatable conditions.
In other ways, "Tales of the Undead" seems weirdly out-of-touch with the world of caped heroes it's riffing on. The focus on Star writing a story that kills Ferrus off, in the hopes that would at least spite those that betrayed him, is one thing. The idea that the company would not publish such a story, because they can't kill off their golden goose, is frankly implausible. When have comic companies ever been reluctant to kill off popular heroes that can easily be resurrected later? It's also a little weird that a superhero would debut in a comic called "Tales of the Undead." Maybe this was an example of a horror book following market trends and changing its focus after the debut of a popular character. That idea rubs counter to this being a first issue or published in the thirties though. Ferrus, a towering and hyper-violent robot guy, does seem more like a villain than a hero. I guess this could be an Incredible Hulk or Etrigan the Demon situation.
That's just me being a nerd though. "Tales of the Undead" is a decent episode otherwise. Whenever someone transforms into Ferrus the Invincible, there are comic book panel style transitions. This is a clever workaround for what was surely the limited budget the episode had and also a neat homage to the media the episode is based on. A special guest star is brought into play Jay Star: Ray Walston, of "My Favorite Martian." This is the kind of part very much in need of an industry old-timer with plenty of age and experience on his face. Walston is good, showing a genuine anger at those that screwed him and even some creditable villainous cruelty as the episode goes on. The sequences with the killer robot are a bit awkward but mostly decently done. I wish the script was a little more consistent about how indestructible this supposedly invincible guy is though. He goes down fairly easily in two scenes. I also like the detail of Micki initially being dismissive of old comic books before getting hooked on them. The episode uses that turn-of-events as a prelude to more flirting cousins shenanigans, of course. Do you think Ferrus the Invincible ever crossed over with the Escapist or Condorman? [7/10]
