Halloween 2019: October 2nd

With October being officially upon us, the Halloween season is kicking into high gear. In order to make the first day of October special, I've begun observing a new tradition in the last few years. The Halloween Mood Table was invented and introduced by Dinosaur Dracula. It's a table of any size in your house, piled up with as little or much Halloween stuff as possible. For me, candy, spooky toys, spooky movies, and spooky books are the essential ingredients. But there's no wrong or right way to do a Halloween Mood Table. Just search Twitter for the phrase and you'll see all different types. After a late start the last few years, I got my Mood Table up right on the first this year. Take a look, before we get to the reviews!

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2019)

During the hay-days of drive-ins and exploitation flicks, we would occasionally get a B-movie with an especially ridiculous, outrageous, or bizarre title. “Blood Orgy of the She-Devils” or “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent” might not have been very good but their titles sure are fantastic. In our modern age of post-modern, ironic, quote-unquote bad movies, there's a cottage industry of faux-grindhouse flicks that attempt to replicate these cheesy titles. These films are often winking so hard at the camera that they become insufferable, their attempts to be wacky or outrageous coming off as only pandering. So when a movie with a name like “The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot” started playing festivals, I had immediate expectations of something along those lines. But here's another swerve. Because the film, produced by Lucky McKee and directed by first-timer Robert D. Krzykowski, isn't like that at all.

In the mid-1980s, Calvin Barr seems to be an ordinary old man, living out his quiet life in a small town with only his dog to keep him company. However, Calvin is secretly an American hero. While undercover during World War II, he personally assassinated Adolf Hitler. But the Germans covered it up, the war continued, and the U.S. government could never acknowledge Calvin's actions. Moreover, Calvin doesn't feel much like a hero, haunted by his memories. That is when his government calls on him again. A mysterious plague is ravaging the Canadian countryside and the legendary beast known as Bigfoot is believed to be patient zero. Calvin is the only man both immune to the virus and experienced enough to track the monster, forcing him to come out of retirement to kill another world-famous figure.

“The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot” is not another forced camp-fests. It's not a wild exploitation flick of Nazi bashing and sasquatch exterminating. Instead, it's a stunning portrayal of an old man weighed down by a lifetime of regrets and pain. Calvin might have assassinated the most vile dictator of the 20th century but killing a man face-to-face like that – even a man as despicable as Hitler – still bares heavily on his conscience. The way this memory affects him, and how the smallest thing can trigger flashbacks to his war days, shows that he's pretty clearly suffering from PTSD. Moreover, the war and his secret mission forced him to leave behind his beloved girlfriend, whom he was never as emotionally open with as he hoped to be. The film takes the idea of an outrageous comic book hero, a man responsible for ending both larger-than-life historical figures like Hitler and Bigfoot, and deconstructs it... Because “heroes” in real life aren't spotless action figures. They are broken humans, just like you and me, wrestling with their mistakes and the blood on their hands.

Making a movie about Bigfoot a serious elegy on the cost of heroism probably sounds ridiculous on its face. And it is, which Krzykowski acknowledges with some extremely quiet humor. Yet a factor that makes the film truly powerful is Sam Elliot's lead performance. As a performer, we associate Elliot with roles of dignified, wise, but distinctly anachronistic machismo. The role of Calvin Barr plays off this preconceived notion, as Elliot reveals the wounded psyche behind this persona. He even cries in several scenes. Moreover, Elliot's power as a performer allows him to imbue every line with a mythic importance. His monologue about the fallout of his assassination of Der Fuhrer is singularly powerful, dripping with disappointment and world-weariness. As are the scenes devoted to him reluctantly deciding to agree to the latest mission. Generally speaking, Elliot is such an appealing actor that you happily watch him during the long scenes the character is just walking his dog or hanging out around his house.

As much as “The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot” is devoted to quiet, contemplative scenes of our protagonist considering his legacy, it's also an adventure movie and a creature feature. And a pretty good one. The flashback scenes – which disappointingly swap Elliot out for Aidan Turner – are bristling with an uneasy tension. This is evident in the moment where Calvin struggles putting together the secret gun he'll kill Hitler with. The sequences devoted to Calvin hunting Bigfoot are exciting, often shot in ultra-wide lens that emphasize the forest setting. Some of these images are even stunning, like the shot of the forest on fire. This take on Bigfoot is pretty cool too, an emaciated and diseased ape-man with a memorably inhuman face. The action scenes are also brutally violent, the hard-hitting blows standing out effectively against the film's otherwise quiet mood. Krzykowski also shows a Spielberg-like grip on sentimental nostalgia, with a Williams-like score that strains for big emotion and the detailed periods of small town American life.

In other words, it's pretty great. It's clear the filmmakers probably could've made a big, goofy, exploitation monster movie. Yet the decision to create something more melancholic and thoughtful resulted in a far more memorable and interesting film. I've already seen some disappointed that “The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot” doesn't approach its outrageous title in the typical way. Yet there are plenty of shitty movies like that. As a display for Sam Elliot's often underserved talents and a fascinating meditation on American heroism, the film is among my favorite new releases I've seen this year. I eagerly look forward to Krzykowshi's next feature. [9/10]

The Oblong Box (1969)

It was generally accepted that the Poe Cycle ended with the release of “Tomb of Ligeia.” But then something unexpected happened less than four years later. American International Pictures would acquire the U.S. distribution rights to the Vincent Price-starring historical thriller “Witchfinder General.” In order to make this ultraviolent, hyper-grim movie more marketable, they would re-titled it “The Conqueror Worm” and add Price reading from Poe's poem to the beginning and end. Somehow, this strategy to convince people “Witchfinder General” was a Poe movie actually worked. The release was a big success, prompting A.I.P. to greenlight another wave of Poe adaptations, however loose. The first film in this brief revival of the Poe Cycle was 1969's “The Oblong Box.”

While in Africa, the rich Markham brothers run afoul of the native population. Younger brother Sir Edward is subjected to a voodoo ritual that brutally disfigure his face. Back in England, older brother Julian keeps the deformed, now-insane Edward locked up in his attic. Eager to escape, Edward pays some people to help him fake his death. Eager to cover up his family embarrassment, Julian quickly has Edward buried, unaware he's burying his brother alive. When his body is uncovered by graverobbers, Sir Edward dons a red cloak and starts out on a killing spree of vengeance.

Calling “The Oblong Box” a Poe movie is definitely a stretch. The film has nothing to do with Poe's story of grief and a mysterious box on the high seas. Instead, it weaves together a number of gothic horror tropes into an unnecessarily convoluted whole. We've got voodoo, a deformed relative locked up in the attic, a premature burial, and a pair of Burke and Hare-style grave robbers that turn to murdering. There's a number of unneeded subplots, such as the melodrama involving Julian's engagement to his younger fiancee or the insane Sir Edward developing a crush on the family maid. The graverobber subplot, with their habit of murdering people, seems especially extraneous. Unless that was just a way to get Christopher Lee in the movie. Lee pontificates proudly through his few scenes but is even little else to do.

As a horror movie, “The Oblong Box” seems to be directly emulating a few popular trends at the time. Seemingly following the lead of “Witchfinder General,” the film is far more explicit than any of Corman's Poe pictures. Midway through, there's a gratuitously horny sequence where Sir Edward visits a brothel, full of cleavage barring prostitutes. Naturally, his path of vengeance largely involves slashing throats. That element of gory murder, combined with the spooky red mask he wears, feels like something out of the krimi films that were popular in Europe around this time. When Edward's deformed face is finally revealed, the result is rather underwhelming. My favorite shots in the film, perhaps unsurprisingly, are moments devoted to fog billowing over the English countryside. While there's some novelty to a gory Poe movie, “The Oblong Box” needed a little more of that foggy atmosphere to truly hook me.

According to Wikipedia, the film was largely rewritten before filming by Jonathan Wickers. Wickers would later draw critical acclaim for his gritty, latter day pictures for Hammer such as “Demons of the Mind” and “Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.” Wickers gives himself credit for inserting an anti-colonel theme into the film. There are certainly suggestions throughout “The Oblong Box” that the Markham brothers deserve the voodoo-tinged revenge being reaped on them. Yet we never actually see the family's acts of slavery and racism, making this undertone seem half-assed at best. Furthermore, the black characters are still portrayed as shrieking, frightening caricatures with few other character treats. Which makes any attempt by the film to sympathize with the plight of African people during the colonel age hard to take seriously.

This was the first film Vincent Price and Christopher Lee shared credits in but the two never actually share screen time together. (Director Gordon Hessler would pull the exact same shit in his follow-up feature, “Scream and Scream Again,” which also threw in Peter Cushing.) Price is his usual lively self, by the way, intoning about grave matters with the campy flair you expect of him. That final twist ending isn't half-bad either. However, it's ultimately hard to recommend “The Oblong Box.” Three times in my life, I've attempted to watch the movie. Once on AMC's late night horror show years ago and twice for this review. Each time, I've fought sleep. Which really says a lot. [5/10]

Tales from the Cryptkeeper: Transylvania Express

And so “Tales from the Cryptkeeper” wrapped up its second season by bringing back another set of season one characters: Mike and Ben, the goofy surfer dudes from season one's finale, “Ghost Ship.” In “Transylvania Express,” the two implied stoners book a trip to Austria, instead of their intended destination of Australia. Upon arriving, they are deeply confused by local customs and end up stowing away on a train bound for Transylvania. Naturally, this train is primarily occupied by vampires, with a werewolf and Frankenstein's monster putting in appearances too. The two dudes spend the entire night fleeing the monsters, as well as the non-undead locals who are difficult to communicate with.

While season one's “Ghost Ship” had its moment, I'm really not sure we needed to see Mike and Ben again. The duo's surfer slang quickly gets annoying this time around, as they pepper each sentence with “dudes” and other antiquated slang. They get into totally expected, and fairly groan-worthy, shenanigans such as surfing down a snowy mountain. Watching them flee from a succession of various vampires quickly looses its novelty factor. Though the vampires actually are pretty cool, especially the Count Orlok-like leader of the pack. Once again, the episode really forces in its moral, warning kids repeatedly and obviously not to fear something just because it's different... Unless they are a vampire, I guess. The host segment heavily features the glass-shattering antics of the Old Witch, further taking the season out on a disappointing note. [5/10]

Forever Knight: Crazy Love

Nick Knight is chasing a serial killer again in “Crazy Love.” Murderer Peter Barlow, whose killings and sexual assaults are born out of a twisted need to possess his victims, is being studied by Dr. Welsh. Parlow then escapes the hospital and immediately resumes terrorizing the city, including killing another former patient at the same hospital. As Nick pursues the demented killer, he gets closer to Dr. Welsh. All this talk about killers needing to own their victims completely inflames Nick's blood lust, making him recall a time when a medieval princess repeatedly asked him to drink her blood.

“Crazy Love” is another episode with a pretty good villain. Peter Barlow is fairly creepy, thanks to an especially sleazy performance from the beady-eyed Peter Blais. He even gets a decent jump-scare in, when he bursts into a woman's apartment suddenly. Disappointingly, Barlow is written out of the episode about half-way through. After that, the episode is devoted to the mystery of the week, which is not especially compelling. It's obvious Dr. Welsh is hiding something. The subplot involving Nick's blood lust goes in some unexpected directions, as he satisfies himself by drinking Janette's blood instead, in a highly sexualized scene. The episode ends on a downbeat note, suggesting Nick is still having these clandestine blood-sucking sessions. I wonder if that'll build into a reoccurring plot line? [6/10]