Having now inspired two separate horror movies, it looks like Travis is going to be the most influential non-human anthropoid of the 21st century. Sorry, Harambe. I apologize for being glib. The story of Sandra Herold, her chimpanzee “son,” and the friend of the family he left brutally deformed was a senseless tragedy all around. Unfortunately, it was also too fascinating and bizarre a tale not to demand our attention. A deeply mentally ill woman using an innocent wild animal as a surrogate for her lost loved ones, mistreating him when she thought she was loving him, the novelty of our almost but not quite human cousin living in such proximity to people: It all says a lot about human psychology, animal well-being, and the responsibility we have and most certainly do not have towards the natural world. Sadly, the moral far many more people took away from this incident is that a chimpanzee can and will totally fuck your shit up. The pendulum has perhaps swung too far in the other direction, from the public perceiving chimps as adorable pranksters to vicious murder machines. Surely not helping matters are motion pictures like “Primate,” literally turning an endangered species into a horror movie villain. While the animal lover in me has mixed feelings about this, the trash movie enthusiast cannot resist the allure of such ape-shit shenanigans. Be prepared for more puns like that through this review, something I'm definitely not going to apologize for.
College student Lucy returns home to Hawaii with her best friend, Kate, and an additional guest, Hannah. They arrive at the scenic home of Lucy's parents, with its cliff-side swimming pool and large outdoor enclosure. Waiting for them are several family members: Kate's brother and Lucy's long time crush, Lucy's deaf-mute father who is also a famous novelist, her little sister Erin, and Ben. Ben is a chimpanzee, who has grown up with the girls. Lucy's late mother was a linguistics scientist and taught Ben to communicate a little, through sign language and a tablet with a press-button soundboard. The dad goes off to a book signing, leaving the kids and the ape alone. Unbeknownst to anyone, a rabid mongoose got into Ben's pin and bit him. The girls and Nick begin to have a party, even inviting some other guys over, but soon notice that Ben is acting strangely. After tearing a visiting veterinarian's face off, Ben begins to violently attack the people who considered him family. Soon, Lucy, Erin, and the others must defend themselves against a homicidal animal that is intelligent, extremely strong, and armed with a mouth full of pointed teeth and opposable thumbs.
“Primate” is directed by Johannes Roberts, whose “47 Meters Down” films gave him experience with stories of young women trapped in an isolated location with a blood-thirsty animal. “Primate” is a little less contrived than that one. Ben's rabies stems from a mongoose, with the clarification that Hawaii is a rabies free state but no explanation for where the infected mongoose came from! Mostly, the contrivances in the script here allow for the suspense to go up. The heroes isolated in the pool as they attempt to get around the insane monkey stalking the area produces a few moments of nicely drawn out tension. The best example occurs when Lucy is hiding in a closest, only a door and a layer of transparent plastic separating her from the agitated ape. Considering chimpanzees are naturally unpredictable creatures, Ben made all the more-so by his altered mental state and the audience's general uncertainty of what the animal is even seeing at any point. It's a sequence that builds nicely and ends with a suitably intense shock of the hairy beast smashing right through a glass window. Since the film establishes so early how dangerous this animal is, we are well aware of the stakes at play here. Combined with tight editing and frenzied cinematography, “Primate” frequently makes for a tense thrill ride.
Perhaps I'm the one making a mistake by expecting that level of depth from a movie like "Primate." It's a minor miracle that the film pulls off the level of suspense and shotgun-level jolts that it does. The core players are quickly introduced in the first act. There's some uneasiness between Lucy and Erin, the younger sister resenting the older for leaving home. Hannah seems to have invited herself on this vacation, causing some annoyance. Obviously, there's unspoken sexual tension between Lucy and her crush. I don't know why I bring any of this up because it is not important at all. Once the (ape)shit hits the fan, the meat bags in "Primate" become basically indistinguishable from each other. Any nuance the characters might have had totally vanishes as the heroines focus entirely on outsmarting the simian stalker and tending to the wounded. This is probably for the better. I hate it when horror movies insert petty drama between the cast in a survival situation. "Primate" runs a tight 89 minutes and it stays focused on the goal of maximum thrills and grimaces throughout, any unnecessary bickering cut out. Still, I would've liked to have been able to tell the girls apart by more than just their hair colors. By the time some drunken frat boys show up, it's clear that "Primate" is basically a slasher movie, as much about gory showmanship as anything else.
Udo Kier was, to put it plainly, like no other. He was a performer gifted with huge reflective eyes that could glow with rage or lust or madness. He had an outrageous accent and an on-screen persona just as flamboyant. His unforgettable and extremely European screen presence led to repeated appearances in films by respected auteurs like Fassbinder, Wenders, von Trier, Herzog, Van Sant and Maddin. It also meant Kier – who passed away last November and worked right up until the end of his life – was in a lot of trash. Often, he was the most memorable thing about said trash. This is technically not the case with 1976's "The House on Straw Hill," alternatively known as "Trauma" or "Exposé." The film is most notable as a Video Nasty, one of the 72 titles banned in England during the eighties VHS boom after being declared a threat to moral decency. Much to the chagrin of Mary Whitehouse, I'm sure, "Straw Hill" was one of the few home-grown video nasties, exploitation filth made right there in England. While its "deemed obscene by the government" status has guaranteed this otherwise not-that-notable film a permanent place of notoriety in horror history, I'm watching it in remembrance of Kier's unhinged talent.
Paul Martin is having trouble finishing the follow-up to his best selling debut novel. He is having frequent nightmares of blood and death. This leads to a break-up with his girlfriend Suzanne. Hoping to refocus on his work, he rents an isolated cottage out in the British countryside. By chance, he saves a woman named Linda from some local yokels. She is a stenographer and agrees to work as Paul's secretary, typing up his new novel as he dictates it. Sexual tension simmers between Paul and the unreceptive Linda. The hicks return to rape her in the field outside the home, resulting in her killing them both with a shotgun. The cottage's caretaker vanishes. Suzanne reappears and Linda seduces her. Paul's nightmares and visions intensify. Someone cuts the brakes on his car. Clearly, secrets and ulterior motives are afoot in the house on straw hill.
Whether the film succeeds as smut is a matter of opinion. Richmond and Hayden are nice to look at. Their girl-on-girl scene has a certain sweaty, sleazy heat to it and is probably the closest the movie comes to genuine eroticism. So I suppose "House on Straw Hill" will give interested wankers what they are after. Whether it functions well as a horror movie is more debatable. Udo's visions of a dead body in a bathtub, breaking glass and a bloody hand falling to the side, reoccur enough that they start to grow tedious. There are two sequences of people being knifed. One is a darkened stalking that ends with a slashed throat and the other is a "Psycho" inspired shower stabbing that ups the flesh and blood. Both would make passable moments in a mid-tier giallo. The montage of Udo's car careening out of control, intercut with the above mentioned lesbian tryst, is mildly well done. The free mixing of sex and a malevolent atmosphere does create a somewhat charming sense of sleaziness.
Really, there's only one deeper idea in "The House On Straw Hill" that holds any sway at all. The script finally reveals what the plot is up to in the final scene. This is preambled by a moment where Martin is dictating the end of his novel to Linda, who begins to change every single word and line that he makes up. It's another tensely edited scene, showing that the people who made this movie actually did have some grasp on suspense and pacing. Furthermore, it raises an interesting question about true authorial intent. Every bestselling writer has an editor. How many eyeballs does a manuscript pass before on the way to being published? How many fingerprints are left on a finished book? The question of what degree a story actually belongs to someone – and who deserves credit for the telling – when so much collaboration is necessary in every field is an intriguing one. "Straw Hill" goes right back to being dumb, sleazy schlock right after that. Perhaps a presentation a little more focused on the push-and-pull within the creative process than buttocks and bewbs could have explored this idea more.
Unburdened by having to set up the premise of the show, the second episode of “Wednesday” is slightly better than the first. But only slightly. This one leans into the “Harry Potter” influence much more blatantly. Christina Ricci teaches a class suspiciously similar to herbology, Wednesday's Gorgonian love interest generates a ghostly spider for her, while the second half of the episode basically revolves around the goth Tri-Wizard Cup. Otherwise, the plot continues to function in usual streaming television fashion. We've got half-a-dozen story threads, plates for the show to keep spinning in the air. The monster that seemingly killed Wednesday's attacker last time is nowhere to be seen. Neither is the kid's body, as he reappears. This might be the work of some sort of cover-up, the town sheriff remains suspicious, and his son remains obviously flirty with the title character. We get some more development on Wednesday's powers, the idea that there's some kind of prophecy around her arrival at the school, and her following in the footsteps of her mother despite her stated desire not to do so. Romantic entanglements and rivalries are also starting to form. I'm struggling to care about any of it.
On one hand, there's a moment or two in “Woe Is the Loneliest Number” where I'm reminded that Tim Burton used to be a decent director. The practical sets and production design on display here are actually quite good. Gwendolyn Christie has a giant fire place shaped like a Medusa face with a gaping mouth in her office, which is cool. Sadly, every semi-compelling visual is bordered by some a moment full of badly composed CGI. This is most apparent during the boat race finale, which is unforgivably hideous in spots. Add to that the Netflix-mandated need to keep as much of the action in the center of the screen at all times, to make distribution into social media friendly clips easier, and you've got an hour of TV that feels like beige wallpaper. The term “slop” is overused by, truly, what else to do you call this kind of approach?
Once again, it's time for me to marvel at how “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” put extremely bleak, perverse stories on late fifties/early sixties American television and got away with it by having a portly, sardonic Englishman make corny jokes before and after them. Traveling salesman Leon Gorwald, while stopping over in a small town, jaywalks across a street. The deputy sheriff notices him and prepares to fine him. Leon tries to bribe his way out of a ticket, a stunt that pisses the cop off and gets Leon thrown into one of two jail cells back at the station. The actual sheriff and his deputy arrives shortly afterwards with grim news: A girl was found mutilated with a knife the other night and they're pretty sure they caught the guy who did it, some scumbag in a mechanic's overalls. As news travels around town about the death of the girl, a lynch mob begins to come together at the local bar. The three cops do what they can to maintain law and order but things soon get out of hand. And Leon Gorwald, some average guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets caught up in it. Or that's what seems to be happening at first.
“Incident in a Small Jail” is another Henry Slesar penned episode, who also wrote the earlier highly regarded “Hitchcock Presents” installment, “The Right Kind of House.” Both these episode are utterly economic in their setting and story. They have limited settings and a small cast of characters, like a one-act play. Both stories introduces a situation that builds steadily but carefully in tension. At first “Incident in a Small Jail” feels like a brilliant encapsulation of a chain reaction. Leon Gorwald casually makes the decision to skip across a street, the butterfly flapping its wings that leads to the tidal wave of him being thrust into the center of an angry mob. The way each new complication is added to the scenario – the unrefined punk tossed into the cell next to him, some drunkards down the street deciding to go vigilante, one small cry for help at the exact wrong time – feels like a perfectly executed web of little bad moments adding up to ruin someone's life. From this perspective, the moral of “Incident in a Small Jail” seems to be “one minor misdeed can have ghastly consequences.”
All of this grim, tightly-wound tension proceeds what seems like an unexpected happy ending... Before “Incident in a Small Jail” drops a pitch black twist, like a knife in the back. The final image of the episode must be one of the most chilling in all of the black-and-white era of American television. In other words, this friggin' rocks. Every time I watch “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” I find myself stunned to discover that, oh my god, television can actually be good. Why aren't all shows, to this day, tightly paced thirty minute packages of caustic noir goodness? [9/10]
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