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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After the surprise critical and commercial success of "Barbarian," people were ready to declare former Whitest Kid U' Know Zach Cregger the next great horror director. I always have a "wait and see" attitude with these kinds of things. "Weapons" proved that Cregger is a distinctive voice in the genre, willing to tackle big ideas without sacrificing thrills and hollers. I was disappointed to hear that his next project would be an adaptation of a mega-popular, long-running video game series. "Resident Evil" has already spawned somewhere between seven and twelve feature films. There had already been a new movie and streaming series, after Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich moved on to ruin another Capcom video game, and the response was unenthusiastic. Were we losing a bold new voice in the genre to the franchise machine? Or was this an example of an auteur leaping onto a familiar property because he was genuinely a huge fan? Well, the movie is out now so it is time to decide.
Bryan is a simple medical courier. He makes one more delivery for the night before heading home to his newly pregnant girlfriend, the two uncertain about whether to keep the fetus. While at the hospital, he's asked to take on another rush delivery. He's promised a bonus to deliver an insulated package to Raccoon City General Hospital. It's snowing and the roads are perilous but he takes on the mission anyway. While driving the back roads, a strange woman walks in front of his car and is struck. This is the first sign that something crazy is going on. Bryan has unwittingly been chosen to deliver part of an anti-virus that can stop an unleashed bio-weapon in the process of ravaging the world.
When the first trailer for Cregger's "Resident Evil" came out, and fans didn't see Jill Valentine tank-controlling through Spencer Mansion, there was some outcry. Indeed, Cregger's film is not an adaptation of any of the games and features none of the franchise's reoccurring characters. While a Rebecca Chambers cameo would've been nice, this approach allows for something clever. Cregger is more interested in adapting the experience of playing a "Resident Evil" game than any specific plot. Our protagonist is exploring environments he's unfamiliar with, with no idea what kind of threat might be around the next corner. When Bryan gets a hold of a firearm, he must carefully conserve ammunition. His journey is repeatedly thwarted by padlocks he doesn't have keys for. The focus is on what choices he'll make with the resources available to him in risky situations. We see evidence of past events that had happened in these locations, hints at other stories playing out in this world, but that's not the tale this "Resident Evil" is telling. As in most games, we are stuck with this guy, on this adventure, as he tries to survive it.
It's an interesting approach to a big problem often facing video game movies. Namely, the vastly different pacing needs of each medium. Cinema is telling you a story, while gaming is about you enacting that story or experience. Most games keep things novel and challenging by throwing new enemies or puzzles at the player, the kind of perpetual escalation that film can't usually support. By attaching solely to one guy's trek, Cregger hopes to emulate that structure while still making "Resident Evil" feel like a movie. Bryan is repeatedly running through new areas with obstacles unique to them. The longer "Resident Evil" goes on, the more this approach strains. He crawls down into a sewer and sees some freaky shit about to attack him. A run through a city street is hastened by zombies falling from the rooftops. By the time he's clinging onto an elevator slowly being chipped away by acid from overhead, "Resident Evil's" attempt to latch a video game's framework to the flow of a motion picture is clearly favoring one style over the other.
You never want your movie to feel like a YouTube play through video. Cregger's film comes dangerously close to that territory at times. However, if this "Resident Evil" is mostly just one set piece after another, it must be said that they are good set pieces. The film is successful at deploying a new bit of freaky body horror in such a way as to shock, surprise, and freak out the viewer. Another element taken right from the games is the hero perpetually being pursued by the same unstoppable monster throughout: A tentacled parasite always adding more victims to a Katamari Damacy of flailing limbs. This keeps tension up throughout, balancing a fear of what's coming up behind you with what you might face ahead. That's best shown during a fabulous freak show in a hospital maternity ward and a sequence where Bryan must choose between an incoming horde of zombies and an extremely perilous bridge. "Resident Evil" takes the tricks from the games and applies them to the task of making a scary monster movie. It's mostly pretty successful.
Cregger's film is often cheeky about what it's doing. There's a few shots clearly emulating the perspective of a first-person shooter. The script outright acknowledges that real life doesn't work like a video game. The film definitely seems to be asking us what we would do in these situations – the best of which involves a dismembered torso being dragged further into the darkness – if the controller was in our hands. That question of "How would you do it?" is furthered by the film's hero not being a highly trained special agent or super-powered zombie killer. Instead, Bryan is just a guy, pasty and stubbly and in way over his head. He has no expertise with guns, a good running joke. His only extraordinary quality is his sheer determination to keep moving forward, of staying focused on that mission of delivering this package. Star Zach Cherry doesn't play this as indomitable courage. Instead, it feels a bit like Bryan is too stupid to know that he doesn't have to run towards danger. It's a funny way to approach your horror movie hero, someone so laser focused on simply doing their job that they accidentally become brave. I guess this kid really needs that extra paycheck. Don't we all?
An emotional through line focusing more on how we're all trapped in the hellscape of late stage capitalism would probably be more involving than the standard subplot about Bryan's girlfriend and possible future child. Every scene devoted to that truly feels like the movie stopping to say "This is a poignant, thematically relevant moment." "Barbarian" and "Weapons" had a similar bluntness about their ideas, so I suppose this is a trademark of Cregger's. His "Resident Evil" doesn't always nail its goal of blending a video game's anatomy with a film's direction. It is still a fun time at the movies. The lead is likable. The thrills hit. The monsters are freaky. There's a bunch of blood, slime, gunk, and grime. The ending is surprising. I would call that a success. [7/10]
If you were to perform an internet search for the horror film series with the most installments – or, god forbid, ask an LLM – the answer you’d get would probably be wrong. Seventeen “Witchcraft” movies and fifteen or so “Puppet Master” films are certainly achievements of some sort. If one were to tally up all the movies with “Amityville” in the title, which I hesitate to call a “series” exactly, the number would surely be staggering. Such view points are distressingly English language centric, however. A look to Asia reveals several fear franchises that dwarf most American long-runners. A 1997 Hong Kong film called “Troublesome Night” has spawned 19 sequels. Another contender is “Shake, Rattle & Roll.” That is a Filipino anthology series that began in 1984, with the seventeenth and most recent installment having been released just last year. The stories are often inspired by the Philippines’ rich local folklore, with new installments usually coming around Christmas time. It would seem trying to run the entire series every December is an annual tradition among Pinoy horror fans. While the films remain frustratingly unavailable in my corner of the world, I was able to find a copy of the original with English subtitles.
“Shake, Rattle & Roll” begin with “Baso.” Paolo, his partner Girlie, and their mutual friend Johnny gather in a spooky old house to play Spirit of the Glass. That’s an Ouija-like game of divination performed with a scroll of paper and a drinking glass. They unwittingly summon the restless spirits of three people, trapped in a love triangle, who died during the Spanish colonial era. In “Pridyider,” Lorna and her daughter Virgie move into a home that includes a fancy new refrigerator. Maid Nelia is seemingly crushed to death by the refrigerator's door. This is the first of several bizarre incidents involving the appliance. “Manananggal” is about Douglas, a lad living with his grandmother and younger brothers in the Visayan jungles. He is attempting to court Anita, despite his granny’s warnings that she’s a manananggal. Upon seeing Anita separate her upper body from her waist and flying through the night with bat wings, he realizes that this is true.
Of the three stories presented here, “Baso” is both the most traditional and the driest. Young people sneaking into an old dark house to perform a ghostly ritual is about as classical a horror set-up as possible. The darkly lit scenes of the glass slowly spelling out names is well-done. Unfortunately, after that, the segment launches into a long flashback that explains the backstory of the spectral love triangles. The period costumes and details are decently assembled but it still feels more like a historical soap opera than a horror movie. The eventual shift back to the gruesome stuff is hampered a bit by some unconvincing make-up effects. There is still a shock ending of sorts, though the episode concludes so abruptly afterwards that I’m not sure it sinks in exactly. Director Emmanuel H. Borlaza is best known for a romantic fantasy about a mermaid, which might explain why this first story seems to shy away from horror at times.
The second episode has to overcome what is a silly premise on its face. Refrigerators are not especially mobile devices, nor do they present many options as a murder weapon. “Pridyider” seems somewhat aware of this and attempts to derive horror from visions of dismembered body parts around the fridge instead. Once again, the effects are a bit rubbery, which does little to dispel the notion of goofiness around this one. However, director Ishmael Bernal and cinematographer Ely R. Cruz take the material seriously. “Pridyider” is shot with a patient, quiet intimacy and eroticism, as if the heat coming off the vents of the fridge is making everyone around it hot. When the absurd finale arrives, in which the household appliance seems to develop a sense of lust, it actually feels like a logical extension of the segment’s style up to that point. It makes for an unexpectedly intense finale, despite how difficult it is to take the premise seriously.
The “Manananggal” sequence is a straight-ahead monster movie and effectively so. There’s a thread of quiet absurdity here too. The events take place during Holy Week, Douglas being accosted by several guys dressed for a passion play. Otherwise, director Peque Gallaga mostly plays the folk tale straight. In its human form, the manananggal is an alluring, exotic presence. The only way to destroy it is to salt and bless the lower half of the body as the vampiric half flies into the night. The first crow of the cock at dawn draws the monster back to its source. The isolation of the jungle setting creates a nicely eerie mood, further emphasized by the shadowy visuals. The segment becomes a siege story in the second half, the family attempting to prevent the winged creature from breaking through the thin walls of their hut. Unlike the other parts of “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” “Manananggal” smartly shoots around the film’s limited budget. There’s only one shot of the titular monster taking flight, conveyed through some awkward animation. Otherwise, the scenes are carefully framed to obscure the lower half of the segmented beast. This surprisingly does little to decrease its threat value. “Manananggal” is a fairly potent mini-monster movie.
The main reason I’ve decided to seek out international horror movies is to expose myself to other cultures. As horror often does, “Shake, Rattle & Roll” is obviously reflecting the social mores of the country that birthed it. “Baso” is a story about how violence and class separation are reoccurring patterns throughout Filipino history, as it is in history everywhere. “Pridyider” seems especially focused on the plight of young women, at the mercy of predatory men. The possessed fridge seems to act on the most violent impulses of the perverted groundskeeper or Virgie’s handsy boyfriend. Director Bernal seems mostly known for his social dramas, often focused on the struggles of women in Manila, making this angle unsurprising. While “Mananangal” is largely a straight-ahead adaptation of the folklore that birthed it, it’s speaking to social issues as well. Douglas and his family are practicing Christians, often praying to a small religious alter. The eponymous monster is a symbol of native paganism, linked to lust and mystery. This makes the story an encapsulation of the conflict between the Philippines’ extremely Christian modern existence and its still lingering shamanistic roots.
Out of the three directors who worked on this first “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” Gallaga is also the only one who would extensively return to horror later in his career. He contributed segments to the next three entries in the series and made a few other monster movies, also inspired by the Philippines’ rich history of legendary creatures. (Though he worked in a variety of genres, including historical war epic, erotica, and light-hearted fantasy.) In other words, “Shake, Rattle & Roll” is both extremely Filipino and fairly entertaining in its own right. The most restored edition of the film still has some visually degraded moments and the ending of “Pridyider” is lost, making that segment’s conclusion very abrupt as well. While campy and goofy at times, the presentation won me over long before the end. I don’t know if that’s enough to build sixteen sequels on but I liked it. By the way, as far as I can tell, the actual answer to the question of which horror franchise has the most installments is “Honto ni Atta! Noroi No Video.” That’s a direct-to-video Japanese series, compilations of spooky footage, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 installments. “Shake, Rattle & Roll” isn’t that populous but I did have a good time with it. I guess, if I keep doing a global theme for my Halloween marathons, I’ve got a Filipino pick settled for the next sixteen years… [7/10]
Before "A Song of Ice and Fire" made him a literary superstar, George R.R. Martin was a humble science fiction and horror writer, struggling to make a living. After one of his earlier novellas received a low budget adaptation, Martin found a contact with the film world. That's how he got a regular gig writing for the 1985 revival of "The Twilight Zone." He provided teleplays for five episodes, mostly in the second season, and the best regarded of the lot seems to be "Toys of Caliban." It concerns Toby Ross, a boy with a developmental disability. He is seemingly in his late teens but with the mentality of a toddler. His elderly parents, Ernie and Mary, isolate the boy from the world within their apartment full of toys. This is because Toby has the ability to "bring" – physically manifest – any object he sees in a photograph into the home. Any attempt by Toby to manifest living creatures only results in corpses appearing. His parents are fearful of what his powers could do with any more exposure. After "bringing" too many donuts one night and getting a serious tummy ache, Toby's parents are forced to take him to the emergency room. The boy is fine but he catches the attention of a Child Protective Services agent who believes Toby is being abused. This brief glimpse of the outside world has tragic consequences for the family.
Once again, this autistic adult is forced to tango with one of my least favorite writing tropes, the inelegantly named "Magical Disabled Person." I would prefer to use another word for it but understand that some are offended by the term, even if I'm not. This episode is not so generous and refers to Toby as a word that rhymes with leotard several times. Yes, "Toys of Caliban" is another offering that portrays neurodivergent individuals in a patronizing, dehumanizing manner. Toby's parents are depicted as the ones who are suffering, while their overgrown infant of a son lives in a world of blissful ignorance. He is so dangerous that they have no recourse but to lock him away forever. Alexandre Borrie's CPS agent points out that resources and classes the elderly Rosses might be unfamiliar with are available to help their son. Toby's dad knows better and insists the kid stay in a windowless home forever. This is still not enough to protect the family and the final scene of "Toys of Caliban" offers a frankly offensive solution. The poor, pathetic simpleton, the only way out for them and their beleaguered N.T. sires is to put them all down like a sick dog. (The penultimate scene has the dad rubbing Toby's head as he kneels at his feet and calling him a "good boy," making the dog comparison fairly literal.)
The resulting episode is often cringe-inducing. David Greenlee's blubbering performance as Toby reaches "Simple Jack" levels immediately. I'm pretty sure his jubilant but agonized cries of his own name must have been an inspiration for "South Park's" Timmy. It's difficult to look at "Toys of Caliban" as anything but an embarrassing misfire from another era, using the difficulties functional human beings live with because their brain chemistry or bodies are a little different from the majority as nothing but a gimmick to lure tears out of weepy viewers. And it's a bummer too, because I think this episode could've worked without making Toby a regressive stereotype. One of the most famous episodes of the original "Twilight Zone" features a youngster with unfathomable psychic powers and it accurately observes that a regular kid is scary enough without making them "special."
Richard Mulligan gives a good performance as an exhausted, heart-broken father and Anne Haney has a sad fragility about her as the mother. (Even if her big monologue essentially boils down to, once again, how hard Toby's condition is on his parents.) There's two decent shocks in this episode, when Toby's literalness results in him teleporting two bits of fleshy horror into the home. However, , it's difficult to regard "Toys of Caliban" with anything but aghast grimaces and bemused bafflement that such a hilariously insensitive portrayal was ever acceptable. I don't hold it against George R.R. Martin though. All writers gotta eat, even if it means turning someone else's horrible story into a coherent screenplay. [3/10]
The seventeenth episode of "Friday the 13th: The Series" does not feature a C-list Batman villain. Instead, it's an entry into the eighties' most minor of horror trends: Stories about murderers who return from a sit in the electric chair to kill again, sometimes with electricity-themed superpowers. The condemned is Eli Pittman, a dental student wrongfully convicted of murdering his girlfriend in 1978. Despite getting two jolts in Ol' Sparky, Pittman survives. Since you can't legally execute someone for the same crime twice, he is set free apparently. (I'm not a lawyer but wouldn't they be able to further detain him for the standing murder conviction?) A decade later, Pittman has reinvented himself as a dentist in a halfway house for troubled teens. He's held onto the electric chair intended to kill him, actually one of Lewis Vendredi's cursed artifacts. Now, Pittman shocks orphaned teens no one will miss in the chair and, in return, gets electric shock powers. He's using those to seek vengeance on all who convicted him. Micki, Ryan, and Jack are on the case.
"The Electrocutioner" was written and directed by Rob Hedden. Presumably, it was this episode that convinced Frank Mancuso Jr. that Hedden was the right man to make "Friday the 13th Part VIII." "Jason Takes Manhattan" is probably my least favorite film in the series and it's largely because of the melodramatic direction, childish screenplay, and a tone indecisively placed between self-aware camp and ostensibly a serious attempt at horror. All of these flaws are apparent here. The episode starts with a fairly well done flashback to Pittman's execution, which is shot in grainy black-and-white and features some stylized camera angles. However, as the execution attempt begins, Pittman screams towards the heavens. This is the first of many very silly touches in the episode. Any time Pittman plots his revenge, we return to that flashback, now presented as everyone pointing and laughing at him. One shot has his screaming face superimposed on the image, a very cheesy looking choice. All of the murder scenes are made laughable because the actors playing the victims make goofy faces as they contort around. There's also an inexplicable jump scare involving a plume of steam shooting out of a wall, a gag I'm pretty sure Hedden repeated in his Jason movie.
This approach, either deeply un-serious or miscalculated, is evident in Hedden's script too. The story bends in some odd directions. Every time Pittman kills a runaway teen in his chair, they are reduced to a pile of steaming clothes. That's weird. Why does that happen? Later, Jack hunts the killer down by magnifying a needle and making a compass with it, to track Pittman's electric charge. Was this Mr. Wizard moment truly the smoothest way to get to that plot point? In general, the central trio act rather broad in this episode. Ryan is introduced playing with a glow orb while listening to shitty rock music, a story beat that comes back around for a lame joke in the last scene. Micki is treated like a genius fir suggesting that more people were responsible for an execution order than those simply shown in a photograph.
The half-assed, senseless quality to the writing is most clearly seen in the villain. Angelo Rizacos plays the dentist-turned-electrocutioner and it's a hammy performance. He looks like "Weird" Al and generally acts like a nerd, which is not the most intimidating of choices. Mostly, I'm baffled by the decision to make the villain both wrongfully convicted and a remorseless killer. The way he callously kills random teenagers is obviously a writing choice to void any sympathy the audience might feel towards him. I guess Pittman was only pissed because he was charged with a crime he didn't do, not by the concept of murder itself. Those visions of being laughed at and persecuted are clearly designed to make him look unhinged. I get why he would be pissed but, also, he survived execution and was let go. He even got superpowers out of the deal! Kind of makes you wonder what is driving his need for vengeance. Is the implication that the cursed electric chair – which he makes no attempt to disguise as his dental chair, something you'd think his regular clients would comment on – has driven him mad? But it's not like he was willingly placed in the chair in the first place either. I did like the ironic, final fate of the villain. Hedden does have one or two interesting ideas but this episode is, overall, very silly and juvenile. I'm going to presume that it was not Hedden's creative skills that impressed Mancuso but some quality – his ability to shoot fast and cheap? His personality? His soft and moist lips? – not apparent in that episode itself that got him the feature gig. [4/10]
Owing to German Expressionism's influence on the foundational films of the genre, Fritz Lang is heavily associated with the classic horror era. This is despite him debatedly never making a proper horror movie. “M” would birth cinema's first serial murderer but exists outside the conventions of the killer thrillers that would eventually form. Dr. Mabuse, with his hypnotic powers and ability to swap bodies, would go on to influence many mesmeric villains but Lang's films with the characters are as much crime stories as they are anything else. “Metropolis” is, of course, epic science fiction despite its mad scientist, inhuman android, and hellish machinery obviously inspiring countless horror films. Another good example is 1921's “Destiny.” An omnibus feature that, like “Waxworks,” features three tragic tales across time and, like “The Phantom Carriage,” is also a fable about Death as a personified being. That pushes it close to the margins of horror, so I supposed it's as good a silent classic as any to kick off this year's Halloween season.
A young couple, deeply in love, ride a carriage into a medieval village. They pick up a hitchhiker, unaware that the sunken-eyed passenger is Death himself. Years before, Death had bought a small plot of land in the village before erecting a massive, impenetrable wall around it. Later that day, the couple meet the strange man again in the tavern. It is during this encounter that the woman's lover seemingly vanishes. She quickly deduces the true identity of the man she met that day, wailing in front of that wall for her lover to be returned. Death takes pity on her and explains the situation, that he's merely following God's will and that it was her boyfriend's time to go. He makes a wager with the girl and presents her with three candles, each one representing another love story happening somewhere in the world. If love can triumph over death in these scenarios, he will give the woman her partner back. The three tales involves: An infidel in love with the sister of the Caliph deep within the Muslim world, a love triangle set in Venice, and a story of a Chinese emperor demanding the assistant of his court magician and the extreme steps she takes to escape his lust.
“Destiny” is loosely adapted from the Hindu legend of Sati Savitri, as filtered through Lang's grief over the passing of his mother and a childhood fever dream of Death itself lingering over his bed. Fittingly, the film feels very much like a transcription of a genuine folk tale. The plot device of a chance meeting with the personification of Death is present in many European folk tales. As is the idea of making a wager with an otherworldly power, whether it be the Grim Reaper, the Devil, or some sort of fairy-like being. The idea that a giant wall was built by Death itself as an entrance point into its realm feels like a mythic origin for some ancient protoglyth. It's also a very suitable metaphor for the divide between the living and the dead, a barrier impossible to breach except for that final one-way trip. This is a fairy tale, in the Brothers Grimm sense, the kind of story that we – by which I mean, all people everywhere – have been telling for eons.
At the same time, “Destiny” is a movie very specifically of the era in which it was made. The sample size of German Expressionistic films I've been exposed to is admittedly small, out of the already comparatively small number of films from this time and place that still exist. Having said that, it's weird that “Destiny” is the second omnibus feature from this period I've seen that also has an Arabian Nights inspired segment. Naturally, both the depiction of Islamic and Chinese cultures are not the most sensitive through modern eyes. In addition to featuring white actors in yellow and brown-ish face. That's to be expected from a 105 year old motion picture. So is a fair deal of melodrama. If anything drags “Destiny” down for me, it's that element. Both the first and second historical sequences are extremely heavy on the love triangles, secret betrayals, plotting and scheming, sneaking around, and all of that. The Venice segment is almost difficult to follow at times, because of its conflicting plot points. Even as someone fairly familiar with silent cinema, it can be a bit hard to follow at times and also not that compelling in its own right.
Of course, silent films can often overcome of-the-time stiffness with their stylized, striking visuals. “Destiny” has a number of those. The most iconic of which is a gothic arch-like opening in Death's wall, a massive staircase revealed on the other side. That's exactly the kind of dreamy visual that I seek out in older films like this, that appeal directly to the subconscious. Of the stories-within-the-story, the third tale is my favorite. Set in ancient China, it's the most outwardly fantastical. The emperor's wizard presents him with a miniature army of little humanoids. His magic wand can transfigure people into animals and objects, the most memorable example being when a human body twists into the shape of a cactus. There's also a flying carpet and a magic horse that can run across the sky. All of it brought to life with the quaint but suitably otherworldly special effects work of 1921. Filmmakers got stuck on the idea of realism eventually but that was less of a concern in the medium's early days, allowing cinema to be the shadow play and puppet shows it has always been.
“Destiny” might be one of the rare omnibus features where I found myself far more invested in the framing device than the stories contained within. While the tale of the third candle is neat enough in its own right, I did feel my interest waning some during the other two segments. Meanwhile, the story of the young lovers and Death has an universal quality to it. We all must face our own mortality but I believe that love survives. Or, at least, that the acts of kindness that speak to the greater need for love and compassion ripple through time further than those of cruelty or selfishness. That's what the last act of “Destiny” is about. It is, unsurprisingly, the most poignant narrative collected here, despite also partaking in the same sort of protracted melodrama that you see throughout the film. Lil Dagover is, perhaps, a bit hammy as the girl but I do find her final act touching.
Through it all, there's the enigmatic figure of Death, as played by Bernhard Goetzke. His glaring eyes, under a perpetually heavy brow, is a striking image. The reaper is characterized here as someone with a pretty shitty job. He is simply obeying the natural order of things, that all that is alive must also die, but everyone hates him for it. This is best displayed in a brief moment that is on most of the posters, in which Death arrives to take a newborn child. I don't think “Destiny” is as strong as the other Lang directed features I've seen. However, its mythic themes still resonate. There are definitely moments and imagery here that still has power over an audience, a century later. And a gloomy fable about what fades away and what lives on is probably a good pick to kick off my annual season of Halloween festivities, as the leaves are turning brown and the weather grows cooler. [7/10]
Earlier this year, in what was either some early guerilla marketing for “Disclosure Day” or an attempt to distract from the casual malevolence and stupidity of the current administration, the United States government declassified a collection of documents about so-called unidentified flying objects. (Or unidentified anomalous phenomena, if you're nasty.) It was, as is usually the case with things of this nature, a whole lot of nothing: Blurry photos and videos of indeterminate shapes in the sky, among pages of reports of wildly varying credulity. If nothing else, it showed that the government's interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life is not a recent event. Not that I needed to be told this. As a genre dork raised on a steady diet of old B-movies, I'm well aware that covert government operations have been investigating possible alien invasions for decades now. Look at 1958's “The Brain Eaters,” a low-budget quickie distributed by A.I.P. and produced by/starring “Night of the Blood Beast's” Ed Nelson. The film contains what has to be among the earliest depictions of the feds going about and collecting Files on some eXtraterrestrial life.
Weird shit is happening in the small town of Riverdale. Glenn Cameron discovers a large structure in the woods, shapes like a rocket's nose cone and surrounded by dead animals. People in town are acting strangely and there's been a rash of murders. With Archie presumably too busy at the malt shop to investigate, the government dispatches Senator Powers and a team of federal agents to look into matters. They find the interior of the cone is full of maze-like tunnels. Glenn's dad, the mayor, is discovered to be acting unusual and violent. This proceeds a more horrifying discovery: An otherworldly parasite has attached itself to the back of the mayor's neck, taking over his mind during a 48 hour process of fatally sucking his brains out. The mayor is not the only victim, as several of the town's residents are under the sway of these strange creatures. Cameron, Sen. Powers, and a group of scientists and assistants attempt to stop and control this invasion before it grows any more powerful. Yet any of them could also be possessed by these brain eaters at any time...
Roger Corman claimed to have been an uncredited producer on "The Brain Eaters," helping the filmmakers scrounge up a budget that maxed out at all of 26,000 dollars. With so little money at their disposal, the producers could not afford even a Paul Blesidel-made rubber monster suit. Instead, the film falls into that cheapest category of alien invasion stories, often favored by B-movie producers: The body snatcher narrative, in which humans are taken over by malevolent, otherworldly, and usually off-screen intelligences. Unlike the likes of "The Day Mars Invaded the Earth" or "They Came from Beyond Space," there are at least monsters of a sort here. As in Corman's "It Conquered the World" and Heinlien's "The Puppet Masters" – which the film resembles enough that the author sued – small beasties attached themselves to the spinal cord to take over the body. The special effects are not impressive. The brief glimpses we get at the Brain Eaters reveal them to be exactly what they are: Wind-up toys with fuzzy patches from a fur coat and pipe cleaner antennas glued on. Horror host Seymour derisively dubbed the movie "Attack of the Bunny Slippers" and that's not an unfair joke.
Despite its obvious budgetary short-comings, I do think “The Brain Eaters” has some qualities that make it mildly interesting. Without spoiling too much about this obscure, sixty-eight year old monster movie, the eventual origin revealed for the titular menace may not be exactly what you are expecting. The finale features a future sci-fi icon, in make-up that makes him look like Moses but immediately recognizable because of his voice, appearing to pontificate on the nature of the parasites. He describes a society of collective conformity, without fear or anger. The obvious comparison is “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” which similarly had its otherworldly invaders promising a world of peaceful co-existence at the sacrifice of all individuality. “The Brain Eaters” does not have any room for ambiguity. The invaders are villains and are clearly meant to invoke fears of communist ideology that defined the Cold War period. They can look like any person on the street but an insidious outside threat lurks within them, a danger to our basic American freedoms, the script seems to say. Yet simply giving the monsters the space to express why they feel their way of life is superior does add an interesting wrinkle to the material. It fleshes the standard plot out a bit.
“The Brain Eaters” was directed by Bruno VeSota, a distinctive looking character actor that had appeared in several previous Corman productions. VeSota had also previously co-directed the dream-like “Dementia.” While “The Brain Eaters” is not nearly as visually memorable a motion picture as that one, cinematographer Lawrence Raimond does engineer a few good shots. The sequence set inside the mayor's office are at an askew angle, to create a sense of disorientation. A shot of several mind-controlled citizens lurking outside the heroine's apartment are similarly moody. In general, “The Brain Eaters” is possessed of a certain noir-like pessimism. The ending is strangely downbeat. More-so than in your typical fifties creature feature, there's a sense that the government are almost powerless to stop the invaders. Scientists repeatedly emphasize that they have no idea where the structure came from or how it works. The local cops and politicians both fall victim to the brain-sucking manipulators, as if to suggest that our traditional voices of authorities are not exempt from the influence of outside threats. There's a sense throughout that the structures we trust to protect us are far less sturdy than they appear.
This unexpected streak of cynicism is enough to distinguish “The Brain Eaters” from the many other similar movies from the same era. The film is definitely cheesy in terms of its special effects and plotting. The runtime is barely over an hour, leaving little room for any additional depth. Its characters are as stock-parts as you'd expect. However, the script throws in enough curve balls to keep me guessing and I was mildly impressed by how hopeless the movie ends up feeling at times. I guess, on the verge of a new decade, even the B-movie makers were beginning to loose some of that post-WWII optimism. It's entirely possible I am easily charmed by the quirks of motion pictures such as these and willing to forgive its flaws. But if you've not caught up with this one, and you've got a taste for bullshit of this strain like I do, give it a look. It might poke into your brain in unexpected ways. [7/10]
To anybody who has done a minute of research on such matters, it is understood that the world of low-budget film marketing is essentially a carny act. It's harder these days, when a simple glance at your phone can tell you more information on any given movie. Dig deep enough into the guts of Tubi, however, and you can still find motion pictures that depend on an intriguing or salacious title, eye-catching poster art, or the promise of a known star (who may only be on-screen for minutes at most) to get people to watch it. Back in the days of drive-in theaters or video stores, that was enough to get an audience to put their money down on a ticket or weekend rental. If the advertising was ultimately not exactly representative, it was not the producers' problem, as they already had your dollar. Or your loonie, as the case may be for our neighbors to the north. That's where a motion picture with an especially misleading – perhaps even confusing – title was produced and released straight-to-video in 1987. What would you assume the central threat in a horror flick called "Blue Monkey" to be? Probably a member of the Old World monkey species cercopithecus mitis. Or at the very least a periwinkle primate of some sort. An azure ape, perhaps. But no. "Blue Monkey" is about a giant mutated bug thing. The title, as far as I can tell, stems from a single scene where a child uses the phrase as if it is well-known slang for a generic boogeyman or creepy crawlie of any sort. I am not familiar with these words meaning that and it would seem most people who saw "Blue Monkey" aren't either, judging from the reviews. Nevertheless, it is certainly a memorable title, enough so that I immediately thought of this otherwise obscure film when I went in search of a Canadian movie to watch this September. So I guess misleading marketing does work.
This tale of a monster that is neither blue nor a monkey begins in the greenhouse of an elderly woman. She has received a new species of flower, currently only found on a recently emerged volcanic island near Micronesia, that has grown extraordinarily overnight. A visiting handyman seems to prick his finger on a thorn, despite the plant not having thorns. He quickly grows sick and collapses, after which he's taken to a local hospital. Doctors Rachel and Judith are on the case, the man already developing gangrene and a high fever. The emergency team is distracted when police detective Jim Bishop arrives with his partner, who was recently shot. Shortly afterwards, an unidentifiable larva emerges from the sick man's mouth. It seems to bring with it a disease that takes the man's life, forcing the hospital to go into lock-down. All the regular staff and patients are now trapped inside. The weird larva continues to mutate, especially after some kids feed it some growth hormones. It grows into a giant cricket/mantis type thing that begins to prey on the unsuspecting staff. Detective Bishop, Doctor Rachel, and an etymologist are on the case to stop the creature before anymore lives are taken.
While the monkey remains elusive, there is a lot of blue coloration in this film. "Blue Monkey" was directed by William Fruet, the Canuxploitation veteran who gifted the world with "Killer Party" and a few other titles of minor notoriety. Its cinematographer was Brenton Spencer, formerly an assistant cameraman on "The Changling" and "First Blood." Both of these guys would go on to mostly work in the world of low-budget, Canadian-lensed, genre television. The standards of such things were different in the eighties which means "Blue Monkey" actually looks pretty damn slick. The tunnels, storage rooms, and industrial areas of this hospital are often lit in atmospheric purples and, yes, blues. There's a lot of billowing mist, to add to the mysterious ambiance. The film utilizes quite a lot of point-of-view shots to suggest its beastie lurking around and sneaking up on potential victims, a trick that works decently to build a little suspense around the monster. I've seen a lot of generic creature features set in non-distinct buildings and warehouses so I can say that the "Blue Monkey" team went the extra step to light the hell out of these sets.
So the film makes the most of whatever production values it had. What about that monkey, err, monster? The man-sized invertebrate is properly bug-eyed, mandibled, clawed, and chitinous to suggest any number of real world creepy crawlers. The effects are decent, with enough slime and pulsating thoraxes to make this creature intimidating. The only time the seams start to show is when the bug starts flopping around in insectoid frenzy or walks upright like a man. Otherwise, "Blue Monkey" does an okay job of mining some ick factor out of its beast. Victims are webbed up in fleshy cocoons, gooey eggs are squeezed out, and there's a good gag where somebody's chest explodes and tosses blood around. Obviously, "Alien" was the main source of inspiration here but Fruet and his team imitate Ridley Scott's masterpiece competently. The problem arises with how long the film takes to get to the good stuff. The monster remains in its larval stage for longer than is advisable. The middle section seems devoted largely to simply watching the bug stand around. It feels a bit like the action doesn't start until about the last half-hour. This was probably a conservation of budgetary resources, the filmmakers trying to build as much movie as they could around as little footage of an expensive, temperamental special effect. But it does not lead to the most exciting watching experience.
In order to fill space when the monster isn't around, "Blue Monkey" occupies itself with a quarantine subplot. It makes sense that a weird creature getting out would lead to the government locking a public location down. Despite that, there's still a lot of coming and going around the building in its first half. The speed with which the government contains this building seems improbable to me. (I'm tempted to make a joke about efficient socialized Canadian healthcare but, despite its production origins, the movie appears to be set in the U.S.) The quarantine storyline results in only a handful of meaningful scenes of people in bio-hazard suits assembling around the hospital and shooting one person who attempts to escape. It is, obviously, an excuse to keep people in this building with a murderous monster when they otherwise could have simply left. The result feels half-formed. As if the producers decided to shove a pandemic thriller into their monster movie after realizing the big bug was not quite enough to support a feature length runtime.
Hey, at least the actors being chased around this hospital are likable enough. Steve Railsback stars as our detective, bringing the amount of intensity you expect of him to a fairly generic part. Gwynyth Walsh makes a professional seeming heroine, a random doctor thrust into an extraordinary situation. The most familiar faces are maybe in the supporting cast. John Vernon plays a classically hard-assed John Vernon-ian part as the jerk administrator of the hospital. Don Lake is a name you probably don't know but you might recognize his face, from his appearance in nostalgic 90s favorites like "Terminator 2" or "Super Mario Bros." (I remember him as the Crazy Eddie parody in "Short Circuit 2.") He plays the insect specialist and brings a likable eccentricity to the part. I wondered if his character would play the expected arc of a scientist wanting to study the monster, but Lake is too affable for that and goes the humanist route. A name you'll recognize but a face you might not is Sarah Polley, the beloved Canadian character actress having an early career role as one of the obnoxiously adorable moppets wandering around the hospital. That's the kind of movie "Blue Monkey," investing its minor characters with more quirks than they probably otherwise needed. Like the alcoholic blind lady who convinces her teetotaler room mate to take up the bottle. Or Joe Flaherty randomly showing up as an expectant father who has done the math so exactly, he can perfectly pinpoint when his wife is going into labor.
Would Flaherty's Count Floyd character declare “Blue Monkey” to be “verry scarry” or not? Hard to say but I bet he would also be a bit bewildered by the title. Some overseas distributors made the decision to re-title the motion picture to “Insect.” Which might not also be strictly accurate. I didn't look to check if the bug monster had six legs and three body segments, but it's certainly a far more suitable title. Damned to VHS-only purgatory for many years, “Blue Monkey” has now been given the prestige Blu-Ray restoration, proving again that any eighties horror movie is going to get that treatment in the boutique DVD era. It's got one or two things about it that I can recommend while also being fairly un-extraordinary in other ways. Not to keep harping on this but maybe this one would have more of a cult following if it actually was about a sapphire sasquatch of some sort on a rampage. Just saying, that has more novelty than a mutated bug-thing! [6/10]
Usually, when a film becomes best known for its ending, it's a testament to the impact a twist or reveal had on audiences. People remember that the Planet of the Apes is Earth or that Bruce Willis was a ghost because they add new context to everything that came before. Sometimes, however, an ending becomes famous for the wrong reasons. If all you hear about a film is that the ending cheapens the ninety minutes before it, someone fucked up during production. That was mostly what I heard in 2005 about "Cry_Wolf," that it had a deeply unsatisfying twist that made the entire experience feel like a prank. Despite that notoriety, like most wide release horror films of the last twenty years with the mildest of slasher vibe, defenders have since emerged. I skipped "Cry_Wolf" back in my own high school days but that was a long time ago now – two decades, in fact – so let me see if this one is as lame as everyone said or if it's actually a clever subversion of genre conventions.
Following scholastic failures at past schools, rich British kid Owen is transferred to Westlake Academy, a fancy American boarding school. He quickly falls in with a group of friends led by Dodger, a pretty redhead with a mischievous glint in her eyes. The gang is composed of jockish Tom, preppy Mercedes, metal head Randall, nerdy Regina, token black guy Lewis and characteristics-free Graham. They gather every weekend. They drink and play a game call "Cry Wolf," in which someone is secretly designated with the role of the Wolf and everyone else must determine who that is. In recent news, a former student named Becky is found dead in the woods outside the academy. Dodger and Owen take inspiration from this for a school wide game of Cry Wolf, kicked off by a mass e-mail describing a masked serial killer. However, the "game" soon gets weird, as rooms are trashed, threatening private messages are sent, and people within the group begin to disappear. Owen begins to suspect that the Wolf is real, that he's targeting his friends, and that the killer is someone they all know.
One of the first shots in "Cry_Wolf" is a close-up on the tiny screen of what I think is a Nokia cellphone, the blocky black-on-white text containing plot relevant information. A few scenes after that, Owen plays for a second on his N-Gage before flipping over to its notoriously cumbersome phone feature. Mobile phones are prevalent all throughout the film, such as when Mercedes sends Lewis a sexy selfie. He complains about how long it takes to receive the pic, a good indicator that the film is set in the paleolithic era of our modern wireless age. Characters use instant messenger and e-mails to communicate extensively. That marks "Cry_Wolf" as an obvious attempt to re-imagine the classic slasher movie set-up for the hip youth of 2005. Further evidence of this is seen in the then-trendy fashion, such as Randell's mall-goth eyebrow piercing or Mercedes' boy-shorts lingerie. "Cry_Wolf" is also dated precisely to my junior year of high school by the casualness of its ideological impropriety. Homophobic slurs are thrown around a few times. Young men boast proudly of their un-gentle sexual conquests. A teenage girl having an affair with an adult male teacher is a plot point. While the script briefly pauses to consider the obvious power imbalances in such a relationship, the ending basically plays the trope of a jailbait femme fatale entrapping an older man straight.
I bring all this up not to clutch pearls or to mock the clumsiness of dated technology. Instead, it all points towards "Cry_Wolf's" hunger to be seen as a very cool film of its day. The movie was the result of a contest by Chrysler and Universal to award a new filmmaker with a million dollar budget, suggesting it was a deliberate attempt to capture the voice of a new generation. In some ways, the embracing of how mobile phones and the internet were already starting to change the way people communicate and the flow of (mis)information makes it tempting to call "Cry_Wolf" ahead of its time. However, "Serial Experiments Lain," this ain't. We hear about how rumors spread online but we don't see much evidence of it. The legend of the Wolf, an internet-birthed bugbear four years before Slenderman, seems to spread entirely off-screen. The movie ultimately uses the ever-present inter-connectivity of the online era as a gimmick added to a meatspace-centered thriller construct. The Wolf still mostly exists via scenes of him chasing people down or lurking around a corner. Suspicion grows via misplaced knives, bloody evidence, or a chance glimpse at a secret meeting. The film is ensouled with this "how do you do, fellow kids" attitude, desperate to appear in-the-know but unable to use these ideas in any way that isn't awkward.
The sheer 2005-ness of the movie is also unbearably present in its visuals. Some of the shots of life in the idyllic, New England setting have a nice autumnal warmth to it. The entire film has a lot of orange/red in it, to match its Halloween setting and the highly visible ski mask the villain wears. However, other shots are murky to an impenetrable degree. Since cell phones are so central to the story, maybe they were used to light the film too. In general, whenever the masked figure appears on-screen or their murderous rampage is being described, the film lapses into a shaky, intentionally washed-out, spasmodic style. In general, the editing is fast and choppy, making several overly dark scenes even harder to follow. "Cry_Wolf" was shot with an R-rating in mind, cut down to a PG-13 for theaters, and then restored to its bloodier nature in DVD. Despite that, the film does not seem that concerned with showcasing gory set pieces. The music video style inserts genuinely seem to be the only trick the film has up its sleeve.
That strange lack of tension is present all throughout "Cry_Wolf." Even if you went into the film unaware of its "April Fools' Day" style plot, from the minute Lindy Booth's eyes sparkle mischievously at Owen, you can tell that this story is one of massive game being played. It's all a fake-out. While suspense could've been derived from the question of who is behind this manipulation, or how far it may progress, there's little doubt about the answers to those questions. The main character ends the film as a sap, perfectly strung along every step of the way by a game master whose identity is never a mystery. The result is a mystery completely devoid of intrigue and a thriller totally without thrills. This is further compounded by a cast of characters who are one-dimensional at best. Most of the performances are similarly one-note, with Jared Padalaki and Jesse Janzen especially blustering through their dialogue. Julian Morris is a wide-eyed wisp of a protagonist, with little depth. The weakness in the casting can also be seen in the decision to have Jon Bon Jovi, during his brief attempt at starting an acting career, as the grabby teacher. To say his on-screen presence is living on a prayer is giving his stiff shrug of a performance too much credit.
As Dodger, Lindy Booth turns up the purring, pixie sensuality and it's very easy to see how a teenage boy could instantly fall for this redheaded trickster. The script denies her, and every other character, any depth though. Aside from that and the camp factor in its 2005 signifiers, "Cry_Wolf" has little else to give. Director Jeff Wadlow did not become the voice of a generation. After trying out action with "Never Back Down" and "Kick-Ass 2," he now specializes in the schlockiest of Blumhouse's horror flicks. This is an example of a film dressing in the drag of the slasher genre in service of an attempt at something clever, without any interest in what that style can do well. A straight ahead gory murder mystery assuredly would have been a lot more entertaining. Whatever defenders that have emerged for this one, I cannot count myself among them. [4/10]
In April of 2025, thanks to my dog being too excited about meeting other puppies on her morning walk, I fell with an outstretched palm onto some asphalt and broke my arm in two places. To facilitate proper healing, I had a surgery in which a small metal plate was screwed into my bones. I guess this thing is just a part of me until the crematorium operator digs it out of my ashes. Shortly after I got my cast off and wrapped up physical therapy, I saw “Metalosis Maligna,” a 2006 film from Dutch animator/multi-media artist/prankster Floris Kaayk. The seven minute short operates as an educational documentary about the titular condition. It is a streptococcus bacteria that can infect the flesh around metal implants during their insertion. The disease lies dormant in the body for several years, symptoms starting and stopping without warning. Those symptoms include the metal implant “growing,” not merely spreading through the healthy tissue but replacing it entirely. What begins as painful bumps under the skin can quickly escalate to metal protrusions through the flesh. In extreme case, metalosis maligna can cause entire body parts to be replaced with jagged, metallic growths. There is no known cure for the disease.
Metalosis maligna is, thankfully, fictional. However, Kaayk's film does everything it can to convince a not-so-savvy viewer otherwise. It is done in the style of a television documentary, the kind of thing you would expect to see as part of a news program. Or broadcast as an infomercial to raise awareness of the condition. Clips of random people on the street, CGI animation depicting how the disease spreads, and interviews are included like you would expect to see in any scientific documentary about a specific pathogen. The presentation is intentionally low-key, the female narrator speaking softly, the musical score quiet and unintrusive. The interviewed doctor relates the details of the disease and how little we know about it with stone-faced seriousness. The specifics of the condition are obviously fantastical. I'm fairly confident metal can't “grow.” Tthat a human being would die if metallic matter started stabbing through multiple parts of their body. This contrast is most obvious in the last act, when we see people having whole areas of their limbs and head replaced with jagged collections of screws, plates, and metal bars. However, the dryness with which all of this is shown and assembled goes a long way towards making it seem that the titular infection is real. Show this to a child or someone especially gullible and they would probably think it was.
The verisimilitude with which Kaayk depicts this made-up disease is furthered by some very convincing looking effects. A shot of red lumps rising up through the skin is wince inducing. The time-lapse sequences depicting the disease's progression through a series of X-rays or slowly consuming a man from the inside out feature some seriously unsettling sound effects. If the comments on YouTube are any indication, some people find "Metalosis Maligna" to be humorous. There is indeed an obvious absurdist element to what we are seeing. The climax has the same droll, unemotional doctor asking a man whose head has been entirely replaced with quasi-skeletal metal bones to attempt to speak. The final image is of an infected rat in a laboratory, its head similarly consumed by a mess of corkscrewing metal fibers. If you can detach yourself enough from "Metalosis Maligna's" visuals, and really find the irony in the seriousness it's all treated with, I suppose you could find this humorous.
I, on the other hand, found "Metalosis Maligna" to be extremely unsettling. Maybe that's primarily because I'm right in the demographic to be freaked out by this, as someone who recently had a metal implant added to their body. The detail that the condition can lay dormant for years after the surgery before sprouting seems especially designed to make a viewer paranoid. I've always found the idea of invasive diseases that cause radical changes or internal growth through the body to be especially horrifying. "Metalosis" reminds me of especially extreme conditions like petrified muscle or treeman syndrome, which are only slightly less terrifying than scrap metal infecting your body.
The short also reminds me, obviously, of "Tetsuo: The Iron Man." Much like that weirdo cult classic, it's easy to read the Kaayk's work as a literalization of anxieties about technology overtaking our bodies. When this short was made in 2006, smart phones were only beginning to take shape but their current omnipresence must've been a natural extension of the way internet was already creeping into every corner of our lives back then. On the other hand, a fear of disease, deformity, and the failing of our own bodies is universal. "Metalosis Maligna" hits so hard for me because of how it marries the visceral horror of bodily decay with the age-old idea of modern convenience having unforeseen consequences. That it is carried out so convincingly results in one of the most disturbing seven minutes of film I've ever seen. I'll let you know if I start to sprout any metal barbs from my arm, which truly does sound like one of the more horrifying ways to die conceived by a filmmaker. [9/10]
If you are a properly well-read film fan, it's a question you have an answer to. What is your favorite Hitchcock? For me, it's “Rear Window,” which I'm of the belief might be a perfect film. While a hundred different critics and scholars and cinephiles are likely to give you a different answer each time, there's one person that you probably wouldn't think to ask. Namely, because he's dead but if he was alive: What was Alfred Hitchcock's favorite film out of all his work? Luckily, people did think to ask the man that during his lifetime. While he would occasionally waffle, usually Hitch said that 1943's “Shadow of a Doubt” was his personal favorite. Perhaps not as influential as “Psycho” or “The Birds” – outside of a Chan-Woo Park homage or a remake or two – it is nevertheless recognized as a masterpiece by this most lauded of directors.
In the sunny, idyllic town of Santa Rosa, California lives the Newton family. Among Joseph and Emma's three kids, is the teenage Charlotte. She is so-named for Emma's brother, whom she refers to as Uncle Charlie. The same uncle arrives unexpectedly at the family's home. He brings many gifts with him, including an emerald ring for his niece. Shortly afterwards, two mysterious men appear at the home, claiming they are there to document the average American family. They seem very interested in Uncle Charlie, however, and Charlotte correctly deduces that they are detectives. The young girl soon arrives at another conclusion: That her uncle is a notorious serial killer known as the Merry Widow Murderer, who have left a trail of strangled old ladies across the country. Uncle Charlie realizes quickly that his niece has discovered his secret, a tense game of wits unfolding between them.
When we are first introduced to the Newton family and the town of Santa Rosa, they both seem so delightful as to be out of a classic sitcom. Dad is easy-going, Emma is a devoted stay-at-home mom, Middle child Ann is a perfectly precocious young know-it-all while tiny Roger is a typically adorable little boy. Young Charlie emerges as the purest figure in the home, a bright-eyed young woman whose endless optimism and light-hearted wit is irrepressible. Teresa Wright is so charming and effortless in the role that you completely buy into this idea as well. However, like all innocent ages, it will come to an end. “Shadow of a Doubt” is about a girl realizing that the world can be a dark and deceptive place. Moreover, it's a film about how the people we trust and love the most can be the ones with the most unsettling secrets. A quiet tension emerges throughout “Shadow of a Doubt,” always backing away at the last minute from outright saying if Uncle Charlie is a remorseless serial killer or not. As more evidence seems to pile up, there is some degree of doubt. Surely, the young girl is trying to rationalize, her Uncle Charlie can't be a killer? We have clear answers before the end but the presence of the suggestion, the creditable idea that your personal hero could be a monster, is enough to cast a shadow over the young girl's life.
The apparent ambiguity in Uncle Charlie's guilt is not ambiguous at all. He's introduced fleeing from detectives. He cuts out the article about the crimes from the family newspaper. He rants about how old widows disgusts him, his hands curling into strangulating claws as he does. After someone else is seemingly identified as the killer, it still does nothing to block the obvious truth: Uncle Charlie is the Merry Widow Murderer. Despite that, young Charlotte cares about him. She wants it to not be true. Perhaps the viewer becomes so invested in the young girl's journey that we want it to be true as well. Or, perhaps, maybe Joseph Cotten is so charming in the role that we like the guy too much to want him to be the killer. Either way, the lingering close-ups on Wright's eyes as she is no longer able to deny the truth is quietly heartbreaking.
All throughout his career, Hitchcock returned to the idea of a likable monster. He delighted in making the audience sympathize with definitely or potentially homicidal mad men. Sometimes via misdirection, as with the apparent Jack the Ripper in “The Lodger.” Sometimes it was by making them pathetic victims of their own psychosis, as with Norman Bates. Sometimes it was because they were simply the most interesting character in the movie, as with “Rope” and “Frenzy.” “Shadow of a Doubt” aligns the audience's perspective with Wright's heroine, which means the viewer finds her uncle as charming as she does. The slow reveal that Charlie is a strangler, with some extremely Freudian hang-ups about the women he targets, makes him another in the Hitchcockian line of charismatic killer perverts.
Maybe this was Hitchcock working through his own guilt over his shitty behavior towards women. Maybe it was a way to address the latent queerness in many of his films, forcing viewers to think about whether societal outsiders were true “monsters” simply because of the impulses they felt. “Shadow of a Doubt” is not that gay of a movie. Which isn't to say there aren't some perverse sexual desires hiding within. As I've said, the Charlies are close. Maybe closer than a niece and uncle usually are. When the handsome police detective played by Macdonald Carey starts to court Charlie, her uncle perceives it as a threat. Ostensibly because he doesn't want to be caught by the cops. However, the idea that he sees the detective as a romantic rival for his pretty young niece is unavoidable. The camera repeatedly focuses on Uncle Charlie's hands, often as they grasp and squeeze as if choking invisible necks. That his targets are elderly women he seems disgusted with, while exalting his young and virginal niece, feels like the man has some clear Madonna/Whore hang-ups. Which makes his murders, much like Norman Bates' two decades later, a symbolic release of his sexual desires.
The suspense in “Shadow of a Doubt” largely comes from the question of whether Uncle Charlie will try and murder his beloved niece for knowing the truth. And if sex is death and vice versa for this man, what does that mean for his feelings towards his niece? In the climatic moments of the film, when Uncle Charlie attacks Charlotte, it plays out in the enclosed space of a train car alcove. He pins the girl into a corner. She is panicked, terrified. Repeatedly, the camera draws attention to the man's hands and the closeness of their bodies. In other words, it is a symbolic attempted rape. This sees Hitchcock taking the chemistry between Cotten and Wright, which seems chummier than familial love, and making it into a source of tension. Is Uncle Charlie going to kill his niece? Is she in love with her uncle? And, Jesus, which of those conclusions are worst?
“Shadow of a Doubt” would be co-written with Thornton Wilder, the lauded playwright whose work often reflected an interest in the contradictions of small town American life. The story itself identifies the Newton family as the average, ideal American nuclear unit. The kids certainly are utterly adorable. The town itself seems calm, peaceful, and content. Despite that, this is the place where a serial killer is hiding. He is, in fact, hiding within that seemingly normal family. With the implied threat of incest – that most common of crimes, of betrayals, of abuses, within the outwardly normal seeming American household – always floating under the surface, that makes “Shadow of a Doubt” an examination of that darkness under the veneer of suburbia. (Or what would become suburbia anyway, as this is not exactly a post-war movie.) Once you start to realize that, the other cracks in the foundation show. The father and his weird friend's creepy fascination with true crime, the weirdness in some of the family interactions. Hitchcock, an Englishman of course, seems to have mostly warm feelings towards the American way of life here. However, the film makes it clear that these prosaic, happy locations are where acts of evil can happen as much as anywhere else.
That same thematic thread is evident in Joseph Valentine's cinematography, as classical an example of film noir visuals as you're likely to find anywhere. The early scenes, before Charlotte begins to suspect the truth about her uncle, are more brightly lit. The small town setting is bright and warm at first. However, as the story grows darker, so does the look of the film. The sequence where Charlotte arrives in a library, to look at the complete paper containing the story on the strangler, makes it clear that the girl has passed into a more shadowy world by this point. This role of shadows is evident throughout. The symmetrical interiors of the suburban home, peering up and around staircases with slanting angles, are often enhanced with jutting, growing shadows. More than once, Charlie is surrounded by lingering darkness, hinting at his true nature. The bars of stairways or windows become metaphorical prison bars, showing the young heroine trapped in a once familiar and now alien home with a man she can no longer trust.
Those who contend that there is any sort of meaningful barrier between the horror genre and the so-called “psychological thriller” might argue that “Shadow of a Doubt” is better classified as noir. Maybe. It's certainly a part of that tradition too. The grislier stuff is always kept off-screen. However, any movie that mines as much of a sense of unease and tension from the premise of having a murderer in your midst as this one resides comfortably within the macabre to me. (And this is a Universal Picture too, begging the question of whether I can bullshit Uncle Charlie onto my list of Universal Monsters.) As for Hitchcock himself considering this his personal fave, well, I don't know if I could put it above some of the master's other great films in my own ranking. However, it is a fantastic film, skillfully acted, beautifully shot, tensely assembled, and rich and evocative with deeper ideas. [9/10]
I've noted before that, after a certain point, it becomes tricky to tell if a movie was made with Troma or Criterion in mind as their ideal distributors. Lars Van Tier and Pier Paolo Pasolini movies have penises and bodily excretions flopping around on-screen but they're considered serious artists, status-quo challenging provocateurs. Tom Six and Srdjan Spasojevic do much the same and they are hacks only interested in shock value, whose films are made strictly for the strongest stomach-ed of Fangoria subscribers and nobody less depraved. It is not as if the high or low ends of the brow have an exclusive right to pretensions either, as insisting your video montage of dongs and dookie has some deeper meaning is a justification utilized by both schlock slinger and artsy-fartsy types. Perhaps a cinematic depiction of a ding-a-ling or poo poo is itself a neutral act, the execution determining the value of what's on-screen. Which brings me to tonight's stop on the Horror Around the World 2025 journey: “Taxidermia,” György Pálfi collection of penis jokes, puke, and body horror that was submitted as Hungary's official selection for Best International Picture at the Oscars and is described on Wikipedia as satirical, surrealist, and “a metaphorical socio-political retelling of Hungary's history.”
“Taxidermia” follows one family through three generations. At a frozen outpost in the middle of World War II, Morosgoványi Vendel is forced to perform humiliating task for his commanding officer. Working next to a bath house, he grows increasingly sexually frustrated and desperate to find a way to relieve his urge. His off-spring, Balatony Kálmán, grows up to become a competitive speed-eater in the Soviet era. He pushes his ability to binge and purge as far as possible for the glory of his nation. At the same time, he shares a rivalry with a fellow speed-eater for both contest titles and the love of the same woman. Decades later, Kálmán has become so morbidly obsessed as to be immobile. He lives with his adult son, Lajoska, out of the back of his taxidermy shop. His father, obsessed with raising the world's heaviest house cat, belittles his son and fixates on his past glories. A horrible accident leads Lajoska to build an elaborate device to help him fulfill his grisly destiny.
“Taxidermia” is book-ended by an art collector presenting his purchases in an exhibit. This establishes, early on, that the film's images clearly mean something. If any one idea reoccurs throughout “Taxidermia's” segments, it is consumption. In World War II, the protagonist is forced by the military system to degrade himself. His thoughts remain on sex and food, the butchering of animals being a reoccurring feature. During the sixties, Kálmán and his wife – also a competitive eater – are seen shoveling pork and beans into their mouths out of red star shaped trough. The act of eating itself has become part of the national propaganda machine. In the final third, bodies are hollowed out, put on display, and sold as a product. Presumably because Hungary is now a capitalistic nation in a post-Soviet age? While Pálfi's film is clearly reflecting specifically Hungarian thoughts and feelings, its themes are also universal. We are all at the mercy of elaborate systems of control, all of us subjected to having our substance ground into more feed for this machine we call society.
The method Pálfi mostly uses to convey these ideas is grossing the audience out. Within its opening minutes, “Taxidermia” is depicting a man seemingly lighting his own flatulence on fire. The second episode is absolutely filled to the brim with vomit. We are talking multiple scenes in which people gorged themselves to the point of sickness before puking their guts out over and over again. Such unpleasant moments are often depicted with a clinical, unflinching eye. Such as when Kálmán induces vomiting with a rotating wheel device. The film brings the same approach to its violence. The climatic disemboweling plays out in intimate close-ups of sliced sinew and unspooling intestines, backed up with no music and slowly displayed. As much as the film is enamored with the body's insides coming out, it's main method of repulsion revolves around simply putting obese people on-screen. “Taxidermia” really fucking hates fat people. A heavy-set, elderly woman's body is shown in the nude as a sick joke. The entire middle sequence relishes in flabby folks consuming millions of calories in short spans of time. That anyone would be attracted to bodies that look like this is repeatedly a punchline. The last part features a character so overwhelmingly rotund that he ceases to be human, becoming a Jabba the Hutt-like monstrosity in both appearance and behavior.
I am sure, if pressed on this depiction of large individuals, the makers of “Taxidermia” would insist it was all with a specific purpose in mind. That the clear and evident disgust with overweight bodies that pulsates from nearly the entire movie is about showing the excess of the state or the dehumanization of the self. In execution, however, it amounts to scene after scene of fatty fat-asses being fatly fat. The camera makes sure that the slop they consume is extra sloppy, to better convey its revulsion at these images. I'm not one to throw around terms like “fatphobic” but there's no other way to describe “Taxidermia.” It's a symptom of the movie's biggest problem: A commitment to being grotesque but without any comedic zing or light-sense of absurdity. The first episode almost recognizes an actual human emotion with its hero's sexual frustration, so blue-balled he can't even fuck a hole in the wall in peace. However, that gives way to a suffocating vomitorium – literally – of on-screen nastiness and heavier pretensions. “Taxidermia” is full of gross shit and all of it oh so clearly means something. But at what point does torrents of puke and mounds of latex flab become less symbolic and more self-indulgent? Very quickly, if you ask me.
“Taxidermia” is a technically impressive film. Its cinematography has that sterile artistry to it that seems unavoidable in European genre cinema sometimes. Naturally, the color pallet is mostly icy blues and sickly greens. The make-up effects are exactly as detailed and disgusting as they are intended to be. The climatic sequence, the primary reason for the title and poster, is creatively horrific. At the same time, a motion picture trying so hard to make the viewer queasy, while constantly hitting you over the head with its own metaphorical weight, quickly becomes tedious. If a movie is going to try and make me gag, at least be honest about it. Put gross shit in a movie because it's gross and you want to gross us out. Don't create a ninety minute monologue about how revolting you find fat people before claiming it's actually symbolic, maaaaan. In other words, “Taxidermia” is a film undeniably high on the aroma of its own farts, absolutely compelled by how stomach-churningly foul it can be while rhapsodizing endlessly about the nuances and textures of the pungent scent. I'm good, thanks but no thanks. [5/10]
The only time I think people bring up the eighties revival of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” is to discuss the couple of episodes directed by notable names. “Beast in View” is not one of those episodes. It was directed by Michael Toshiyuki Uno, who had a mostly undistinguished career of made-for-TV movies. (Though “The Wash,” a rare starring role for Mako, sounds kind of interesting.) But let's give it a try anyway, shall we? The episode concerns Dr. Morgan McGregor, a pop psychologist with a call-in radio show and best-selling books. She has recently married long time boyfriend, Roger. Their honeymoon is disturbed when Roger discovers that Morgan is receiving threatening phone calls. The calls are from a deranged man who promises to kill Morgan for her crime of marrying another man. When pressed, she admits that the calls are from her ex-husband.... Who is dead. Despite that, the stalking and harassment intensifies. When she's attacked in her home, her husband investigates and discovers a startling truth.
Like most of the USA Network's “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” installments, “Beast in View” is a remake of an episode from the original series. In this case, one from the longer “Alfred Hitchcock Hour” season. Both versions are adapted from a novel by Margaret Miller. If adapting a whole novel in a thirty minute program sounds like a tall order, it clearly is. “Beast in View” barely has time to establish Morgan and Roger's relationship before introducing the threat of her stalker. Within a few scenes, she's already been pursued by a strange man at her book-signing. Normally, this would be the half-way point of the story, when the danger has escalated from theoretical to a physical. Instead, the episode heads right into the climax. Maybe that would be less of a problem if “Beast in View” didn't also have a crazy twist ending. One of those wild swerves that barely makes any sense and feels all the more abrupt when shoved in the final seconds of a rushed adaptation such as this.
That “Beast in View” feels unavoidably rushed and abbreviated is disappointing. Otherwise, this is an effective thriller. The cinematography is excellent, establishing a sense of being watched early on. The sequence where Morgan is stalked through her home by the unseen assailant, after ominous footsteps enter, is quite suspenseful. Knowing this script was based on a book by a woman makes it a clear reflection on gendered violence. The cops – special guest star Tom Atkins! – flat-out admits there's nothing they can do to stop the phone calls. The husband starts carrying a pistol, being told that's the best security one can buy. As in real life, having a gun around doesn't actually make anyone safer but instead contributes to the violence. Most of this interesting idea is tossed out in favor of that silly twist, which I'm guessing had more nuance on the page. Still, this is a solid half-hour, with decent lead performances from Janet Eiber and Cliff Potts. [7/10]
Here is an episode of “The Addams Family” with a very special guest! “Lurch's Little Helper” begins with Gomez in another spirited round of cultural appropriation, playing samurai with Lurch. This comes around the same time as several other demands on the butler. Morticia begins to worry that they are putting too much pressure on the family butler. Rather than hire more help, Gomez' solution is to build Lurch an assistant. After a day in the basement with Fester, the duo has cooked up a robot named Smiley to help Lurch out. Lurch is told to take it easy for once, which confuses the butler at first. Soon, however, he is delegating all his work to Smiley the robot. The machine is not as talented, however, and the family starts to notice. They cook up a scheme to prove to Lurch how much they need him, by passive-agressively praising the robot and making the butler feel unloved.
The sixties was a different time, in many ways. This was especially true of television. In today's cynical, thoroughly self-aware world, pro-wrestling and the Muppets remain the sole domains of kayfabe. It is probably best that performers receive the proper credit and all that. At the same time, isn't the world a little more whimsical when we treat a robot like it's an actual actor? “Lurch's Little Helper” was part of a run of special guest appearances across multiple TV shows for Robby the Robot, “Forbidden Planet's” break-out mechanical star. This was after Robby appeared on “The Gale Storm Show,” “The Thin Man,” and in three episodes of “The Twilight Zone.” 1966 was a busy year for the machine, as he also had a memorable guest spot on “Lost in Space” around the same time. Despite his fame, “Smiley” is credited as “himself.” Perhaps this is because Robby notably does not speak with Marin Miller's distinctive voice.
Now, what about the episode itself? There are some ups and downs here. Ted Kennedy gets some amusing moments to himself, when Lurch is feeling suddenly self-conscious about his lack of activities around the house. As delightful as Robby the Robot's mere presence is, “Lurch's Little Helper' does get into a repetitive pattern too quickly. Someone in the family will ask the butler to do something. He'll then summon the machine to do it for him, the robot doing a less subtle and more painful job. This continues until the show returns to another premise it has been revisiting far too often. Namely, the family feeling the need to trick somebody into behaving a certain way, instead of simply talking it out. Ya know, actually watching this show made me realize that the original Addams Family were a little dysfunctional? That aside, I did laugh a few times, mostly at the silly little side gags. Such as Gomez and Thing playing tug-of-war or an unexpected sing-along session. Also was it just me or did Jackie Coogan sound a little hoarse here? Did Uncle Fester have a cold? [6/10]
