Halloween 2025: September 26th

 

Lost Souls (2000)

I'm glad that we, as a culture, decided to forgive Winona Ryder. Considering the vile acts male movie stars commit,  their careers intact afterwards, a little shop-lifting truly doesn't feel like a big deal. Hell, it's practically morally justified. As clear as that is in retrospect, the lovely Miss Ryder was truly having a downswing in her career at the turn of the millennium. What was supposed to be her big Oscar moment got overshadowed by another actress. She was the love interest in a lame Adam Sandler movie and a lame Richard Gere weepy. And then there was “Lost Souls.” It probably sounded like a solid career move, as the directorial debut of the cinematographer of “Schindler's List.” However, nobody seemed very enthusiastic about the script and the test screenings were disastrous. A wave of religious horror movies coming out in 1999 – all hoping to cash-in on Y2K Revelations anxiety – led to the film being shelved for over a year. It finally dropped in October of 2000... Opposite a re-release of the biggest Satanic Panic thriller ever. Almost as if the studio was intentionally trying to make sure nobody paid attention to this thing. By that point, Ryder was no longer contractually obligated to promote the film, adding to the stink of failure around the whole project. After that, “Lost Souls” was quickly forgotten by normal people. I am not a normal person, however, and promised to review the movie while talking about “Bless the Child” last year. Well, consider the prophecy fulfilled. 

As a teenager, Maya Larkin survived an exorcism, Father Lareaux driving a demon out of her body. Since then, she has become Lareaux's assistant whenever they are needed. The two arrive at a mental hospital, where an epileptic man and family annihilator has been obsessively writing down numbers. The exorcism is a failure, Father Lareaux left catatonic and the victim stuck in a coma. Maya decodes the man's writing and discovers the name Peter Kelson. That is a lawyer and writer famous for his true crime books on the nature of evil. Peter is having strange dreams and odd experiences. A priest attempts to kill him. Maya slips him an audio recording of the exorcism but Peter can't hear anything on it. The same recording pushes his elderly neighbor to suicide. After meeting Maya again, Peter becomes convinced that his life is the result of a Satanic conspiracy. At midnight, on his 33rd birthday, he will become possessed by the spirit of Satan himself. Maya sets out to stop this apocalyptic chain of events before it is too late.

"Lost Souls" is proof positive that gathering a bunch of talented people together is not enough to prevent the making of a stinky dog turd. The narrative's stakes are about as high as they can get, the good guys racing to stop the creation of the Antichrist before he can get the End Times rolling. Despite that, "Lost Souls" is utterly bereft of tension. The script flip-flops between Maya and Peter as protagonists, the indecisiveness stalling a sense of anticipation. The details of Peter's unholy origins are revealed during a dispassionate conversation, not as a traumatic flashback but as a list of names and events. His shock seems minimal. The movie quickly progresses past the revelation that everyone in the male lead's life has been part of a demonic cult determined to bring the Devil into his body. Most of the exorcisms take place off-screen and the arrival of Satan occurs in a literal blink of an eye. Supporting characters and subplots pop in and out, until they are dismissed. A good example of "Lost Souls'" complete unwillingness to generate any excitement is the climax. A Black Mass gathers to crown Peter as the Father of All Lies. A couple of people get shot and then the heroes escape during a scene transition, what would normally be the most important part of the story occurring completely off-screen. 

As far as I can tell, "Lost Souls" is like this because nobody involved wanted to make an actual horror movie. In one of the few interviews Winona gave concerning the film, she refers to it as "more of a supernatural thriller." Director Janusz Kamiński said the film was "not the most ideal project." After it received a rare F grade from Cinema Score, New Line ordered reshoots to make the movie "scarier." This suggests nobody was trying to make a scary movie in the first place. Reshoots like that almost never work, right? You can spot with ease where these new moments were inserted. Such as when Maya has a vision of a knife wielding maniac in a melting bathroom or a blurry sequence of a man's arms and legs cracking and twisting around. If that sounds like a bad cliche, it's far from the only one present. A true groaner of a moment involves a little girl whispering blasphemous statements, amid jerky editing and digital distortion. The only cliche I find more tiresome than that is attempts to emulate the head-bopping demons of "Jacob's Ladder." "Lost Souls" employs that one too, alongside heavy metal music video style glimpses of a screeching, twitching exorcism. 

"Lost Souls" being such a terminally dull experience is all the more frustrating because of the talent assembled. Based on his work with Spielberg, Julian Schnabel, and Vanilla Ice, Kamiński clearly has an eye for visuals. Mauro Fiore – who would eventually win an Oscar of his own for "Avatar" – is credited with cinematography here. "Lost Souls" received some positive notices for its photography but I don't personally see it. This is a gloomy, grey looking motion picture, overly fond of washed-out colors and dimly lit interiors. Reliable performers like John Hurt, Philip Baker Hall, and Elias Koteas are lined up for a selection of interchangeable supporting rows. It's always a joy to gaze into Winona's giant anime girl eyes but she spends the whole movie looking for some sort of emotion to latch onto. This mostly results in her staring ahead, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide with dull surprise. The character's sole defining trait is being a devout Catholic, her faith strictly being an informed and never displayed attribute. She shares zero chemistry with the bland Ben Chaplin as Peter. I think there's supposed to be some sort of romantic chemistry between the two characters but there's no sign of it. There's a mildly clever reveal concerning a hidden pentacle, a brief blip of surprise in an otherwise monotonous story. 

"Lost Souls" is easily the lamest of turn-of-the-millennium Satan movies. "End of Days" is low-tier Arnold but has one or two moments, a cool special effect or a memorable quote. "Bless the Child" is bad but in an occasionally funny, interesting way that reflects the bat-shit beliefs of its author. I don't remember anything about "Stigmata," so I guess I need to write about that one next September. Regardless, you could detect some degree of passion, no matter how misplaced, in those productions. "Lost Souls" is seemingly the result of bored artists showing up, punching a clock, getting a paycheck, and expending not an ounce of themselves in the process. The last scene is so blunt and anticlimactic, furthering the feeling that everybody merely wanted to get this done and move on with their lives. Which is what I shall proceed to do. In their quest to reclaim every studio horror flick of the nineties, and in-between re-issues of "Child's Play" and "The Thing," Scream Factory gave this one a spiffy Blu-Ray. Which did nothing to redeem its reputation. May these souls remain lost. [2/10]
 

Tilbury (1987)

It is a mythological concept that exists all throughout Scandinavia but is practically unknown elsewhere. A witch fashions a creation out of bones, stolen wool or hair, nail clippings, or wood shavings She hides it between her breasts and grows it with the wine she spits out when taking communion. It grows into a weird little creature that sneaks out at night, sucking the near-by cows dry. Once gorged on milk, it returns home and vomits up the stolen goods into a churn, the witch using it to make cursed butter. As a reward, the beastie is allowed to suckle from a secret nipple on the sorceress' inner thigh. In Sweden, it usually takes the form of a hare or cat and is called a bjära. The Norwegians imagine the beast as a living ball of wool known as a trollnøste. The Estonian kratt is made from household items and brought to life with blood but still steals for its master. Latvian witches had the pūķis, a small dragon that dragged home gold and grain. In Iceland, however, this particular creature is a gruesome looking worm-thing called a tilberi. In 1987, Icelandic filmmaker Viðar Víkingsson would direct an hour long television movie inspired by this same mythology. Severin would bring this “Tilbury” to its widest audience yet as part of its folk horror box set a few years back. 

The year is 1940 and the place is the Icelandic countryside. Auðun is a young man, a swimmer. He still harbors an attachment to his boyhood crush, Gudrún. After receiving news that he's been recruited into the war effort,  Gudrún's pastor father asks Auðun to check on her. Arriving at the British controlled military base,  Auðun discovers that the girl he knew has grown into a promiscuous young woman. She's carrying on an affair with a married British officer named Tilbury. The eccentric, impish man seems to have a strange sway over Gudrún. Auðun seemingly spies him sucking on her thigh and puking up green butter. As Auðun grows increasingly obsessed with his childhood friend, he becomes more and more convinced that her lover is a monster from Icelandic folklore. 

“Tilbury” begins with a short prologue, explaining the specifics of the folkloric creature its story revolves around. The sequence focuses closely on the witch's breasts, thighs, and her spitting out the sacrament. It brings a distinctly sexual nature to the ritual. When  Auðun spies the officer Tilbury with his lips on his crush's thigh, it is similarly provocative. Especially when these meetings are done in secret places or under tables, leaving slimy residue behind. It's a shock to the boy to see the girl he likes being so wantonly sexual with a creepy little pervert. The more we see of Auðun's childhood recollections, however, the less wholesome they seem. He repeatedly revisits the image of the young girls teasing him by kicking their legs over his head as they're on swings. Is he looking up their skirts or laying down under them in preparation for...? Well, when paired with the tilberi's acts of suckling and vomiting – his lover and creator being the same figure, that he calls “Mommy” – it all starts to feel very kinky. Auðun's resentment of Officer Tilbury is clearly based in jealousy. At the same time, it starts to feel like he equally resents him and Gudrún for being willing to express their sexuality in an open, wanton way. 

“Tilbury” is probably most easily read as a film about sexual repression, a tightly wound young man suffering the culture shock of a more modern, sexually liberated couple. At the same time, there are more international concerns on Víkingsson's mind. The British presence in Iceland is shown as something of an unnatural intrusion, the foul-mouthed Brits often bullying and harassing Auðun. It makes him an outsider in his own country. Chocolate bars are made from the tilberi's green butter. Later on, the film connects this with crass corporate capitalism coming to Iceland, furthering the feeling that the supernatural threat represents the corrosive effects of American excess. Among the soldiers is another swimmer who gets imprisoned for possibly being a Nazi. He obviously sucks but he's also the first person to correctly identify Tilbury as a monster. Which makes me wonder what the hell the filmmaker meant by several Menorahs being present when the villain goes fully demonic. Needless to say, there's something deeper being hinted at here and I don't think it's antisemitic? 

While certain elements of “Tilbury” left me uncertain of how to feel, I still enjoyed it a lot. In general, the film has a delightfully light surreal touch to it. When we are greeted to bizarre sights – like our hero stepping from a swimming pool into a sauce that is also a military watch tower – you're left wondering if you're watching a dream sequence or a reflection of objective reality. The most delightful mixture of these elements occurs during a stylish shot dance sequence, the protagonist's anxieties playing out as a musical number. This is furthered with the bizarre sights we're shown, most of which involve the tilberi's very antisocial behavior. The amount of green butter puke in this movie pushes it into the realm of gross-out comedy at times, which I mean as a compliment. Karl Ágúst Úlfsson has such an uncomfortable greasiness to him in the eponymous role, that you totally believe he's a milk-sucking goblin. The special effects are extremely lo-fi yet the persistently off-beat tone the movie cultivates makes that work.

That might be my primary disappointment with “Tilbury.” Most of the oral tradition and folk art about tilberi depict them as grotesque worm-like creatures. The replicas on display at the Icelandic Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft recall lengths of intestines, pre-mature fetuses, and massive globs of belly button lint. The creature in the movie, meanwhile, is mostly depicted as a human being with some impish features. Not that I'd expect a low-budget television film to truly have the money and resources to depict a creature that weird anyway. Mostly, it makes me wish that we had way more movies about this particular monsters, to allow for more cinematic interpretations of them. This “Tilbury” is still cool though, an oddly funny and funnily odd tale of witchcraft, sexual hang-ups, World War II, and globs of green butter. [7/10]

 

Faerie Tale Theater: The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers

Presumably following the logic that people spend money on their kids, premium cable channels in the eighties produced a surprising amount of kids' show. In September of 1982, Showtime would begin broadcasting “Faerie Tale Theatre.” Produced and hosted by the fittingly whimsical Shelley Duvall, the series often featured A-list celebrities as guest stars. (And sometimes had high profile names behind the camera too, with Francis Ford Coppola and Tim Burton directing two episodes.) Usually, this was in-service of doing wacky and comical retellings of the most well-known Grimm's fairy tales. Occasionally, however, the show would present a more obscure story. Such as “The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers,” based on the even more awkwardly entitled “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was.” As you might have guessed from the title, this was essentially the program's Halloween special, presenting a tone a bit more ghoulish than your standard modernized take on a fairy tale. 

That means it's still less gruesome than the original text, which might be the origin of the hoary horror cliché of spending the night in a haunted house to win a monetary prize. The titular character is Martin, the son of a superstitious carpenter. The boy has never experienced fear, not because he's exceptionally brave but because he's too dim-witted to know better. The boy is sent to ring the church bell at night, a set-up for a prank by the local deacon. This only results in the man getting his leg broken, leading to Martin being kicked out of his father's home. He eventually wanders towards an inn in the land of Transylvania. King Vladimir, the ruler of this land, is staying there with his daughter, Princess Amanda. That's because the castle is so beset by ghosts that nobody is willing to live there. The king makes Martin the same offer he's presented to several lads before him: If he can last three nights in the haunted castle without dying or being scared off, he will win riches and the princess' hand. Martin agrees to the task, despite having no use for money, because he hopes he'll finally be frightened for the first time in his life. However, the boy's cluelessness once again makes him difficult to startled, no matter how many spectres and zombies appear before him. 

The cast list for any given episode of “Faerie Tale Theatre” sometimes feels like if every part in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch was played by a celebrity guest hosts. A not-especially boy-ish thirty year old Peter MacNicol plays the title “boy.” Christopher Lee is King Vlad, explicitly identified as the son of Vlad the Impaler. David Warner is the innkeeper. Vincent Price is the narrator. Most randomly of all, Frank Zappa plays the king's hunchbacked assistant. And would you believe that Zappa gives the funniest performance? He never speaks and instead silently performs physical gags, like smashing a window when asked to let in some fresh air or rubbing a stolen apple on his arm pit. Lee mostly plays it straight, with just a bit more goofiness in his usual style. MacNicol is playing a very silly character but otherwise does it straight, playing a character whose exceptional courage actually extends from a genuine inability to process when he's in danger. 

Despite the Hollywood cast and quite detailed sets, “Faerie Tale Theatre” was still somewhat shot like a “Muppet Show” segment. The camera work is largely stationary. The digital effects are exceedingly cheesy. The writing still feels a little like a comedy sketch stretched to a full hour. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy “The Boy Who Left Hoe to Find Out About the Shivers.” Anytime the episode commits to capturing a non-threatening but suitably spooky haunted house ambiance, it's a ton of fun. The old castle setting looks like a bitchin' small time amusement park fun house. Set pieces involving a pendulum swinging into place or a revolving door feel right out of a classic “Abbott & Costello Meet the Monsters” flick. There's a pretty cool looking Grim Reaper and blinking gargoyle. The highlight of the episode is clearly a sequence where a horde of zombie-like spirits emerge, eventually playing a game of ten pins with skulls and femurs. That sounds like a great party to me! The finale features Christopher Lee shooting some extremely unconvincing laser beams out of his hands, before the punchline of the entire enterprise – the only thing that scares the boy without fear is the thought of getting married, hey-oooooo – arrives right when you expect. I would've absolutely been obsessed with this if I had seen it as a kid. [7/10]

 

The Addams Family: Cat Addams

We haven't seen Kitty Kat, the Addams' pet lion, in a while but the writers haven't forgotten about them. “Cat Addams” is kicked off when Grandmama notices that the feline is acting lethargic and not eating. Gomez quickly comes to the conclusion that Kitty Kat is not sick but rather lonely. The Addams decide to hide out on safari and seek out the help of the family witch doctor, Dr. Mbogo, in locating a mate for Kitty Kat. Unfortunately, this does not work, as Kitty's dad apparently ate Mbojo's dad. Instead, the family calls up a veterinarian called Dr. Gunderson. Gunderson arrives for a house call, assuming he is helping out a regular house cat. When he's terrified by the lion, Gomez and Morticia assumes that the guy is just suffering from a lack fo confidence. They enact a scheme to boost the terrified vet's self-esteem. 

Like “The Great Treasure Hunt” before it, this is another episode of “The Addams Family” that starts off pursuing a plot point far outside the budgetary limits of a sixties sitcom. The idea of Gomez and the gang going on safari and trying to pair Kitty Kat up with a girlfriend would probably be a lot of fun... Sadly, this show couldn't afford to have real actors in the same room with an actual lion. The brief moment where Dr. Gunderson has to interact with the lion is achieved by having stock footage of a lion – clearly not the same one that usually depicts Kitty – awkwardly inserted into the Addams' basement. The producers couldn't even afford to show Dr. Mbogo in his hut, instead using brief reused footage from his first appearance in “Uncle Fester's Illness.”

Instead, the majority of “Cat Addams” is about guest star Marty Ingels as Dr. Gunderson reacting with terror and bafflement to the Addams' antics. Yes, it's yet another episode like that. My familiarity with Mr. Ingels' work only extends to his voice work in crappy old Hanna-Barbera cartoons like “The Grape Ape Show” and “Pac-Man.” (He previously did another sitcom with John Astin.) If I had to guess, I would assume that playing over-the-top cowards like this was part of his regular shtick. Regardless, he does make for an amusing presence. The back-and-forth he has with Cousin Itt and an illness feigning Fester does make for an honest chuckle or two. This episode is also notable for Lurch appearing instantly when summoned, the butler producing a Tsetsee fly right from his jacket, and Astin and Carolyn Jones giving each other some crazy bedroom eyes during one sequence. Pretty standard stuff but, hey, I like it. [7/10]

RECENT WATCHES: Saw III (2006)

Gregg Hoffman was one of the major producers behind the original “Saw,” scraping together the one million dollar budget and founding Twisted Pictures alongside Oren Koules. He was also one of the voices pushing for a sequel to be made. While “Saw II” was in production, Hoffman was admitted to a hospital with some neck pain. Despite only being 42 years old, he unexpectedly died shortly afterwards. James Wan, Leigh Whannell, and Darren Lynn Bousman initially figured they would pass on further sequels. That they didn't want to push their luck. However, while at a dinner to remember Hoffman, the trio realized that “Saw III” was going to happen regardless. If that was the case, they wanted to make sure it was a fitting ode to their late friend. When you consider “Saw III” is another super gory horror movie full of maiming, torture, and brutal executions, it feels like kind of a weird tribute to a dead friend... I guess that's how it goes sometimes though. If loss and grief were on Bousman and Whannell's minds, it would certainly explain how the third film, grim even by the standards of this series, turned out the way it did though. 

Detective Kerry investigates the grisly aftermath of another one of the Jigsaw Killer's fatal games. She notices that the exit to the trap was welded shut, meaning the victim had no chance at all to survive. Shortly afterwards, Kerry is captured by the villain and falls prey to a similarly impossible to escape trap. At the same time, Dr. Lynn Denton – whose son was recently killed in a traffic accident, leaving her husband Jeff heartbroken – is kidnapped by Amanda, John Kramer's apprentice. Kramer is nearly at the end of his life, succumbing to his inoperable brain tumor. Denton is forced to operate on him, an explosive collar around her neck that will go off if Kramer dies or she tries to leave. Meanwhile, Jeff is undergoing his own trial. Jigsaw has captured the man who drove the car that killed the Denton's son, the witness who fled the scene, and the judge who let the culprit go. Jeff now has a choice: To either find it in himself to forgive those he blame for the death of his son or watch them die in Jigsaw's elaborate traps. However, more is going on than either know, John Kramer and Amanda playing their own game.

As only Darren Lynn Bousman's second feature film, it's tempting to say his style has gotten stronger, straying further from the obnoxious music video techniques so noticeable in "Saw II." I guess this is true. Aside from an overly dark opening scene and a scuffle that's hard to follow, I suppose "Saw III" looks more stable than the proceeding film. However, the sequel in no way leaves behind the ugly, annoying visuals tics that were already a series trademark. David A. Armstrong once again lights the movie in toxic waste green and Walmart-at-2 A.M. florescent beige. An additional touch of shit stain brown is added to emphasize the extra groddiness of the slaughter house setting. Kevin Greutert throws in perhaps more flashy edits than last time, with lots of white flashes, close-ups on photos and text, and the expected rocket-sled paced montages of people freaking out. If there was an occasional goofy charm to it last time, this style has now worn out its welcome for me. 

Maybe the always-ugly visuals grate on the nerves this time because "Saw III" is, so far, the most mean-spirited and nihilistic entry in an already extra-grim franchise. A lot of this has to do with our apparent protagonists this time around, introduced twenty whole minutes into the story. Lynn Denton is in a deeply depressed funk, becoming numb to pain and any other feeling. Bahar Soomekh plays her as often half-asleep. As depressing as Lynn is to be around, Jeff is much worse. This is a man so frozen in grief, so consumed by revenge, that he confronts everything interaction with screaming anger or whispered scorn. Being depressed or bereaved can feel like that but it's hard to take "Saw III" as a serious mediation on grief. The film employs hoary clichés like the dead son riding a tricycle or happier flashbacks to better times. Angus Macfadyen's petulant, gassy performance as Jeff is an exaggerated take that leaves little room for sympathy. 

Being able to sympathize with Jeff, to feel his tormented state of mind, would have helped the sequel a lot. Jigsaw's tests place Jeff into the role of observer, forced to sit back and watch the people he blames for his son's death as they suffer through elaborate tortures. He debates and angsts about what he should do before, always too late, deciding to help. What this means is that "Saw III" sticks us with an utterly ineffectual protagonist who is miserable to be around. The movie has nothing to say about overcoming grief or depression because Jeff doesn't do any growing or healing. Jigsaw's trial reduces him to either a dispassionate watcher or a hapless rescuer, forcing his hand or causing him to embrace his worst tendencies. You are left wondering what Jigsaw is trying to prove with these trial. I thought his whole modus operandi was forcing people to stop wasting their lives by making them fight for survival? How does making Jeff either embrace his need for vengeance or activate his basic human empathy achieve any of that? Moreover, why does Amanda drag Lynn in to perform surgery on John Kramer, when we already know that his condition is critical? She's giving him a few extra hours of life at most. 

The answer to many of the questions that "Saw III's" half-assed narrative presents are easy to find. The script is nothing more than a sketchy justification for more deadly games, to place more shrieking meat bags into industrial torture devices that rip them apart or force them to mutilate themselves. The violence in "Saw III" is notably wetter than in previous films. The opening trap involves Bousman's old buddy J. LaRose tearing metal rings from his body, his flesh stretching and blood spurting. The frantic montage that ensues during the second trial scene includes a lingering close-up on oozing intestines. Limbs are twisted around until bones burst though the skin and, in an especially vile touch, mulcified pig guts are used to drown someone. When someone does survive one of Jigsaw's traps, a random gun blast is introduced to kill them anyway. A female victim is left nude, adding an extra layer of uncomfortable sexualization to the violence that follows. And you can't introduce an explosive collar in the first act without the expectation that it will go off in the third. 

That's the sense all throughout "Saw III," that the movie wants us to anticipate the violent undoings. The question is never whether someone will survive but, rather, in what way will they die. So who gives a shit about what happens? The result is a horror film with an especially nihilistic tone, leading towards a hopeless ending filled with death and blood. How can we care about any of these people when they only exist to die in hideous ways? The sequel is so desperate to top previous installments, to be nastier and bloodier and meaner, that it devotes a lengthy scene to depicting chop-shop brain surgery in lingering close-ups. Critics often denigrate the horror genre by saying it's nothing but gruel tossed around on-screen to titillate a sadistic audience. "Saw III" embraces that label, rather than fighting it. 

Leigh Whannell still has the sole writing credit on "Saw III" and you kind of get the impression that he had to crank this one out in a hurry. The sequel's structure is weird, devoting its first several scenes to wrapping up lingering plot threads from previous films before moving ahead with the new story. I also suspect he was starting to run out of ideas, as part three seems preoccupied with revisiting scenes from the earlier films. (Not to mention the gory executions are largely taken from medieval history books.) Looking back does provide the sole compelling element of the film though. We see more of John Kramer and Amanda's relationship. How does a person end up becoming a devoted student of the man who nearly killed them? We still learn little about Amanda's past, other than her being a recovering addict and cutter, but it's clear that she's a person who never had any direction or emotional support in her life. Jigsaw is clearly a fanatic, too invested in creative ways to mutilate people, but he still gave Amanda a meaningful purpose. He cared about what she did with her life. 

Both Whannell and Bousman have referred to "Saw III" as a "twisted love story" about these two's "father and daughter relationship" but it reads a lot differently to me. Shawnee Smith's performance veers towards ugly histrionics, playing Amanda as still a desperate addict but now hooked on Jigsaw's validation, instead of junk. Tobin Bell, meanwhile, increasingly turns Jigsaw into a diluted monk of a religious order only he understands. This relationship is not one of a father and a daughter. It's of a cult leader and his most devoted disciple, of an obviously vulnerable person being manipulated by the man who has power over them. Considering Kramer is a dying man whose hobby involves a lot of construction and welding, he probably needed people to help him carry out his plan. Who better than a woman with nothing else to live for? Yes, I am implying that Jigsaw "groomed" Amanda into being his sidekick. If "Saw III" explored this dynamic more, it would actually be an interesting film. 

I've enjoyed plenty of sick movies. I've gone to bat for films that aren't much more than glorified effects reels. I defended "Terrifier 3" and "Cannibal Holocaust," both grosser movies than this one. I don't necessarily think fiction asking us to embrace our inner psychopaths and enjoy some violence is a bad thing. But you've got to temper it with something else. Commentary on the human condition or society or just some fucked-up jokes or a sense of momentum or wit. There's an ugliness to "Saw III's" approach, an insistence that none of this matters and that life is only suffering and sorrow, that I find distasteful. Moreover, it's boring. If everyone in the film is only there to die, there's no suspense. Only the efforts of Bell and Smith to add some substance to the only interesting pair of characters in the film raises this from an utterly miserable experience to a movie with something to offer. However, "Saw III" made 150 million dollars more than its budget at the box office, so I guess the sequel did honor Gregg Hoffman's legacy. [4/10]

Director Report Card: Neveldine/Taylor (2022)

7. Panama

Directed by Mark Neveldine

In 2021, Vulture published an article delving into the somewhat sketchy business dealings of producer Randall Emmett. Emmett built a mini-empire of low-budget, direct-to-VOD action movies in which washed-up stars of old get top-billing for appearing in a handful of scenes, while generic theatrics starring much cheaper actors happen around them. The article would provide an extremely useful name for this style of movie, which has somehow proliferated over the last decade: The geezer teaser. You get a geezer, film enough scenes with him to qualify as a “teaser,” stick his name above the title and his face on the DVD box, and fill the rest of the 90 minutes out with whatever. It's a classic exploitation movie model that, despite the death of video stores and Redbox, has proliferated. The incredibly depressing last ten years of Bruce Willis' career was made up almost entirely of these kind of movies, for only the most prominent example. 

Considering his horribly racist antics have slowly made him hard to hire for big budget productions, it's no surprise that Mel Gibson would find steady work in this niche. In 2022, Mel would lent his fading star power to five such films. They have generic names like “Hot Seat,” “Agent Game,” “Bandit,” or “On the Line” and not a single soul alive can recall actually watching any of them. Rarely are the filmmakers behind these strictly mercenary productions any one especially notable. There are exceptions though. Mark Neveldine, half of the ostensibly talented team that brought us the “Crank” movies, would take a paycheck making one of these in 2022. And that is why I'm talking about “Panama,” sure to be among the least notable motion pictures I will ever write about. 

As the title suggests, “Panama” is set in 1989, right before the United States' invasion of the titular country. Retired bad-ass Becker is drinking away his grief over a dead wife. An old co-worker named Stark approaches him with an employment opportunity. Becker is hired by the CIA to go undercover in Central America. He is to infiltrate the local casino and drug trafficking business to help purchase a helicopter for Contra rebels in a scheme designed to assassinate Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Becker soon gets in over his head, making friends and enemies, falling in love with a beautiful woman named Camila, and becoming sympathetic to those fighting against the military regime. 

By some extraordinary circumstances, “Panama” was not produced by Randall Emmett. His movies are usually distributed by Liongates. This one was put out by Saban Films – yes, the “Power Rangers” guys – who have also had a hand in plenty of movies like this. Despite no association with the King of the Geezer Teasers, “Panama” still checks off all the boxes to qualify. Gibson's face takes up the most room on the poster, his name above the title, despite having maybe ten minutes of screen time throughout the film. Mostly in the beginning and end, with a couple of scenes of him talking on the phone peppered throughout. Instead, a lumbering Cole Hauser is the actual star of the movie. There's an abundant amount of female nudity, plenty of sex, lots of guns, and a moderate amount of explosions and shoot-outs. One of the CIA guys we see at the start of the movie turns out to be a bad guy at the end. It's all extremely routine.

One can't help but assume that films of this type are primarily rented, bought, and watched by the most non-discerning of audiences. By which I mean old guys. The geezer teaser is designed to appeal to exactly the kind of facile macho wish fulfilment fantasies of its ideal viewer. “Taken” is the bigger budget predecessor to the entire genre, a movie specifically design to appeal to dads looking to re-establish their masculine powers despite being well into the second half of their lives. Fittingly, the hero of “Panama” is a semi-retired tough guy who is wracked with guilt over the death of a wife, having crawled into a bottle to cope. His adventure here takes him to an exotic land where he gets to show that he's still a bad-ass and hop into bed with another beautiful woman, while still nebulously seeking revenge for the death of his first wife. The very first scene even includes Gibson, in voiceover, describing what a certified action hero this guy is and how kicking ass and taking names for the U.S. of A. is the best feeling in the world. 

In other words, “Panama” is lowest common denominator stuff, designed to thrill and titillate only the most bored of customers. Despite that obvious goal, the film has a surprisingly convoluted plot. One might even call it needlessly convoluted. The story involves our hero making deals, manipulating, back-stabbing, and bossing around a number of shady drug lords, rebel types, and high rollers. I'll admit, I lost track of the story almost immediately. “Panama” works through a plethora of subplots and supporting characters as it winds through its glacially paced 95 minute runtime. Faces come and go, often getting shot, but not a one of them make an impression, much less what purpose they serve in this meandering narrative.

That's the dirty secret of the geezer teaser. Well, the other one, after the obvious fact that the washed-up action icon promised on the Netflix thumbnail won't actually do that much. No, despite ostensibly luring the audience in with action movie cheap thrills, these movies are frequently uneventful. Still, within the realm of this underachieving subgenre, “Panama” is an especially egregious example. An overwhelmingly large percentage of this motion picture is made up of people sitting around in rooms and talking. Becker talks to rebel leaders in underground bunkers. He talks to drug kingpins in their hotel rooms, by the pool, on their balconies. He makes deals at the casino, answer phone calls in bed and on the couch. For a film that promises big action, “Panama” mostly delivers a lot of sitting around and talking it out. 

Why this is the case is not too difficult to discern. Obviously, “Panama” is mostly dudes sitting in rooms because that's a whole lot cheaper to do than actual action scenes. That cheapness radiates off this entire production. There are many signs throughout that very little money was available here. Every time a gun fire, a cheap-looking CGI muzzle flair is utilized. The characters outright reference “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns 'n' Roses before instead playing a generic piece of rock music, cause this movie had nowhere near the funds to licenses a well known song. The most hilariously cheap sequence in the film arrives when Becker is challenged to a dirt bike race by the secondary antagonist. What follows is a messy montage of close-ups of the actual actors on bikes, wearing helmets, and quite clearly barely moving cut together with far-off shots of stuntmen on the same bikes doing all the actual racing. To further sell this half-assed illusion, there are several shots in which the camera was mounted to the side of the bike... Meaning the riders' asses are right in our faces. A bold cinematic choice there, let me tell ya. 

The handful of times “Panama” actually does attempt to function as an action movie are equally underwhelmed. A shoot-out between Contra rebels and government backed enforcers is haphazardly edited, to the point of near incoherence. Mel Gibson does actually appear to kick a dude in one scene. At 66 years old, Mel was still a more convincing action figure than Cole Hauser. Burly, somewhat doughy Hauser shuffles like an arthritic sasquatch through a handful of fight scenes. The most embarrassing of which is a very slow foot chase down a flight of stairs, the filmmakers desperately attempting to make this mundane scene look exciting through a rapid fire succession of edits. When that doesn't work – which it never does – the film leans on some shaky, handheld camera instead. 

While it's hard to read that last factoid as a positive measure, it is one of the few signs that half of the team who made “Crank” was responsible for this movie. Mark Neveldine's visual style has always featured gritty, frantic camera work. Aside from that, the Neveldine/Taylor style can be spotted briefly a few other times. Military insurgents playing their machine guns as if they are guitars, while epic riffs play on the radio and shooting at bad guys, is the kind of over-the-top, self-consciously ridiculous macho thing you'd expect from these guys. The irreverent and edgy dialogue is also apparent in Gibson's voiceover narration, which often feels like tossed-off one-liners Mel recorded during a lunch break. Also, a minor character has the middle name of “Fagoth,” the sort of willfully offensive comedy that crops up in the more Tromatastic moments of the directors' work.

Other than that, it feels like any old hack could've directed “Panama.” The film also includes plenty of the leering sexism that cropped up in the “Crank” flicks and “Gamer.” Not that this is unique to Mark Neveldine. However, even by the standards of low budget action movies, “Panama” shows a startling disregard for women. The sex and nudity is excessive, with Hauser's primary love interest existing mostly to writhe around naked atop him while he awkwardly lays there. The drug kingpin character is always surrounded by half-naked or fully naked concubines. At one point, he presents a woman's crotch to our hero and says it is the source of all power. If that wasn't glaringly sexist enough, every female character in the movie exists to either die and provide a tragic motivation for the hero, be sexualized, captured, nag at him, or all of the above. If the film didn't suck so bad, casual misogyny of this level would almost be kind of impressive. 

Somehow, reducing every woman in this story to bitches, whores, or corpses is not the most offensive thing about “Panama.” The movie invoking the U.S. imperialism in Central America of the late eighties almost could get a pass, as some sort of ironic statement about Uncle Sam's action during this time. Instead, the script seems quite sincere in treating the interloping CIA agents as the good guys. Far worse is how the film invokes the abuse and war crimes that occurred during Noriega's reign. Hauser wanders through a refugee camp filled with dismembered and crippled men, women, and children. At one point, hideous sexual violence committed by the soldiers is referenced. Why put these scenes in your disposable action movie? Was this an attempt to add some gravitas to the material? Or another one of the Neveldine/Taylor provocations? Either way, it surely sticks out, moving the film from merely tacky to utterly tasteless. 

More honestly, these gross elements feel like the result more of a clueless lack-of-effort than a genuine attempt to offend. When not being funny in its cheapness or questionable in its politics, “Panama” is mostly extremely boring. The film easily feels twice as long as its modest hour-and-a-half runtime, going on past several logical end points. It is very sad that a filmmaker who once could be counted on for hyperactive, outrageous subversions of standard action tropes would end up doing a movie so totally lacking in drive, originality, or a sense of purpose as this. “Panama” might not be the worst movie I've reviewed. It might be among the laziest though, an aggressively tedious and pointless experience whose appeals to puerile interest can't awaken the viewer from the stupor it puts them in. [Grade: F]

Halloween 2024: October 29th

Strange Darling (2024)

Roughly ten thousand horror movies come out a year. This genre attracts seriously devoted fans but sheer volume means titles still get overlooked. Did you know the Soska Sisters made a straight-to-Tubi zombie flick with the little Catwoman from “Gotham” this year? Me neither! Anyway, there are definitely levels of “overlooked” in this genre though. I saw a tweet a while back that said “Strange Darling” was overlooked. The film got great reviews from the industry websites and pulled in a decent amount of buzz among the fandom. But it didn't make “Terrifier” money, which I guess means it's an underperformer. Well, I never forget a title and I've had “Strange Darling” on my list since it started to grab positive notices on the festival circuit not too long ago. Let's sneak this one in before October is over. 

The opening narration promises that the film depicts the final hours of an infamous serial killer's rampage. A woman, identified as only The Lady, speeds away in a vehicle from a man pursuing her. Following a car accident, she runs into the woods where the man stays on her trail. She arrives at the home of a pair of eccentrics and hides within. This chase began the night before in a seedy hotel, the man and woman met up for some casual sex. This quickly escalated to a game of erotic roleplay, both parties soon arguing over who is truly in control. “Strange Darling's” structure continues to leap back and forth through time, as it reveals more of what led up to these moments and the true identities of both people.

I try to avoid spoilers as best as I can, especially when writing about relatively new releases, but it will be very difficult to talk about "Strange Darling" without ruining its central twist. Turn back off you want to go into this motion blind. "Strange Darling" is, essentially, a game of misdirection being played between the viewer and the filmmaker. Everything in the opening sequence is designed to make us think the man is the the aggressor, frenzied snorting cocaine as he chases after the desperate female or presented as a violent lunatic in a black-and-white image. The non-linear story structure intentionally gives the impression that the man is murdering random people as he pursues his ultimate target. As the film backtracks between its various chapters, we quickly discover this is not exactly the case. The film is a classic switch-a-roo, the apparent prey actually being the predator all along. Writer/director JT Mollner is intentionally using our preconceived notions about horror films – and, indeed, life in general – to try and catch us off-guard. We expect the fleeing woman to be the victim and the gun-totting man to be the killer. If your brain has been poisoned by watching too many movies and learning about basic story structure like me, the incoming twist will be a lot easier to anticipate. Nevertheless, I must admit that "Strange Darling's" swerve is nicely orchestrated. Beginning in the middle, leaping ahead, before returning to the start is a clever way to keep us guessing and looking for signs of the grim truth to come. As an exercise in non-linear storytelling and subversion of cinematic tropes, "Strange Darling" is reasonably well executed. 

The question must be asked though: To what purpose is this trickery invoked? It's tempting to compare "Strange Darling" to movies like "Hard Candy" or "Gone Girl," which play with expectations in order to make points about gender roles, capital punishment, or the media. What deeper reasoning is there to "Strange Darling's" twisting story? The woman asks the man to handcuff her and choke her, while roleplaying as a serial killer and his victim. Which certainly suggests a criticism of how we immediately assume men are the perpetrators of violence and women are the victims of it. Once the twist comes, you assume there's a feminist angle here, of a woman striking back at the patriarchal structures. Except our killer lady is unambiguously presented as a villain, the apparently murderous man actually being a hero. When the time comes to reveal any reasoning at all to the Lady's killing spree, the script provides a single line with vague connotations. There's no attempt to delve deeper into her warped psyche. This is paired with a frankly embarrassing scene where a female cop immediately believes the woman is in crisis and the reasonable male authority figure questions the scenario. In other words, "Strange Darling" flips our expectations on its head to prove that... Women are villains sometimes and men are victims sometimes? That we should... Doubt women and believe men? Is this some half-assed anti-#MeToo propaganda? What the fuck kind of message is that? 

Giving Mollner the benefit of the doubt and assuming he's not some sort of Men's Rights Activist, "Strange Darling" exists as a technical exercise. A title card proudly proclaims the movie was shot on 35mm film while the opening scroll obviously recalls "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." The timeline shifting, chaptered structure brings "Pulp Fiction" and the dozens of Tarantino imitators that followed in its path to mind. The film screws around with editing, a prominent indie rock soundtrack, and split diopter shots. In other words, "Strange Darling" is some smart-assed film school bullshit. As far as examples of such self-indulgent theatrics go, it's well done. Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner make convincing leads, the former almost successfully selling the movie's deception while the latter gives a nicely physical performance. The headshots and throat stabbings catch you off-guard. I definitely wanted to know more about the old hippy couple living in the woods, played by Ed Begley Jr.  and Barbara Hershey. The details we learn about their lives – a belief in Sasquatch, a hobby of assembling old jigsaw puzzles, a thought-out shared history – adds a lot of color to the movie's middle section. All of this suggests that "Strange Darling" could have been a fleshed-out story if it wasn't so enamored of its own twists and turns. 

Ultimately, "Strange Darling" has some stylish filmmaking on its side and a decent pair of lead performances, in service of a smug story that never actually says much. Ironically, the strong first act suggests a straight-forward chase story – similar to John Hyams' "Alone" – without all the narrative fuckery probably would have made for a better movie. Alternatively, if the roleplay element of the story was embraced more, we might have gotten an interesting story about power dynamics, such as in "Sanctuary" or "Piercings." Instead, "Strange Darling" refuses to make any coherent point about gender at all and mostly exists as a testament to the "cleverness" of its own twist. And it's a decent twist but a feature length film needs more than that, which Mollner and his team stubbornly refuses to provide. An extra point for an effective use of "Love Hurts," despite that being probably the most obvious pop standard you could include a lo-fi cover of in your indie thriller about a hook-up gone horribly wrong. [6/10]

Doomsday Machine (1972)

It is easy to overlook this fact but, during the original five year run of "Movie Macabre," Elvira actually did host some good movies. I don't know if weathered, forty year old VHS recordings of Elvira introducing "Peeping Tom," "Masque of the Red Death" or "Village of the Damned" are out there somewhere. The handful of commercial releases the original broadcasts have gotten are usually of the public domain movies – or at least very, very cheap to acquire movies – she presented. That was certainly the case with the handful of installments Shout! Factory put out on disc like a decade ago, releases that can still be found in thrift stores to this day. Most of the titles on those sets were for less-than-sterling motion pictures like "Monstroid" or "Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks." "Doomsday Machine," a forgotten attempt at a sci-fi thriller from 1972, is another such example. But I watched "Werewolf of Washington" the other day so I suppose there's no reason not for me to talk about the other presentation in that same double feature. 

In the far-flung future year of 1975, U.S. spies use cat throwing and pigtail assisted homicide to sneak into a Chinese laboratory. Inside, they find a device that, if activated, could start a nuclear chain reaction that would destroy the world. The military immediately commandeers a manned space flight to Venus, forcing the all-male crew to include three female scientists. (Including a Soviet one.) This is to have a breeding population in space, should the worst happen. Well, it does. For reasons that aren't explained, the Chinese government activated the doomsday device and wipe out all life on Earth. Now, the crew of the Astra are the only humans left alive. They wrestle with the philosophical implications of this while encountering new perils on their way to Venus. 

Production on "Doomsday Machine" began in 1967, with Herbert J. Leder in the director's chair, before money ran out. The footage languished on a shelf for five years before minimal funds where found to at least complete the film in some form. I say "in some form" because the new team, led by Harry Hope and Lee Shalom, did not have access to the original cast or sets. The change over when this happens is blatantly obvious. The last fifteen minutes of the movie features the characters wearing face obscuring space helmets and communicating exclusively through radio coms, their voices sounding notably different. This final act also involves several new plot developments previously unheard on the way to a truly baffling and deeply underwhelming ending. I suspect the special effects sequences of the ship flying through space and the destruction of Earth were also the result of the 1972 reshoots... Mainly because they are all made up of stock footage from other movies, mostly Ishiro Honda's "Gorath" and David L. Hewitt's "The Wizard of Mars." This is very apparent, partially because the effects shots from "Gorath" look much better than anything else in the movie, but mostly because no attempt was made to match the different space ships across all the stock footage. The Astra inexplicably changed shape and form all throughout "Doomsday Machine's" runtime. 

Not that the stolen effects shots and bizarre non-ending make that much of a difference. All of "Doomsday Machine" is paced like molasses rolling down a hillside, moving with a deeply drab and almost otherworldly stiltedness that makes the entire film feel like an sixties instructional film. The characters are all one-note and the acting is dry. Rather than attempt to build any tension from events as massive as the destruction of all life on Earth, the film rolls right along with little emotion registering. Much time is spent on droll nonsense like attempting to lighten the ship's load, dictate radiation levels, or slowly debate who should breed with whom. The only recognizable human emotions that rise to the surface in "Doomsday Machine" is a kind of pathetic horniness and a deeply unseemly resentment towards women. That the heroes are on a mission to repopulate the human race always floats under the surface, earlier scenes involving the girls changing into their underwear or teasing the guys while only wearing towels. While the film feels far too juvenile to be a sexploitation flick, the scorn and eventual violence the me show the women is far more startling. The film is so slow and uneventful – yes, I realize I'm saying that about a plot where the entire world is destroyed – that it numbs you into a sleep-like state before smacking you with an attempted rape and beating scene. 

"Doomsday Machine" is far too glacial to achieve the status of a cult classic. However, sometimes there are signs that the film could have been a campy hoot. The shiny skin-tight space suits are ideal ZeeRust nonsense. The lift-off sequence involves the crew sitting down in leather recliners while psychedelic lights wash over them. In fact, "Doomsday Machine" is oddly colorful at times, space apparently being awash with swingin' sixties lava lamp lights. The sets are extremely limited and crude but there is a funky, knock-off "Star Trek" feel to them that I kind of like. The classic sci-fi series is also invoked by the ambient sound design, full of far-off warbling and electronic space noises. Unfortunately, the film's ineptness only made me laugh once. A moment that should be dramatic, the death of two characters, is undermined by some extremely goofy attempts to replicate zero gravity and depressurization. 

"Doomsday Machine" being an incomplete sixties film, dusted off in the early seventies and stapled together with some stock footage and crushingly slow new scenes, is difficult not to notice. If the movie had seen release when originally planned, it still would've felt like a throwback to fifties sci-fi. That feeling was amplified by 1972, creating a dull experience that feels truly out of time. One assumes "Doomsday Machine" was intended to capitalize on space race mania and Cold War tension but was sunk by its complete inability to be interesting and total lack of excitement. This is the kind of low budget schlock deeply improved by Elvira's quibs and gags, all of which are decently sharp. I'm also shocked it was never featured on "Mystery Science Theater 3000," given its public domain status, but it was featured on quasi-revival series "Cinematic Titanic," if you want a good idea of what a riffed version of the film would feel like. Better yet, "Doomsday Machine" would be a great option to put on if you're struggling to get to sleep. Never before has the extinction of the human race and the Earth dying in nuclear hellfire been such a soothing nap aide. One extra point for the cat tossing and hilarious zero-G acting. [3/10]

Love, Death & Robots: The Witness

One of the most freeing aspects of "Love, Death, and Robots," Tim Miller and David Fincher's animated sci-fi anthology, is that the episodes are not confined to one specific runtime. The episode I watched last year was comparable to a standard TV time slot while "The Witness" runs all of twelve minutes. It's the right length for this story: In a rather "Blade Runner"-like city, a woman is doing her makeup on a hotel room. A loud noise alerts her to something happening in the apartment across the street. Seemingly, she has witnessed a man committing a murder. She flees, the apparent assassin in hot pursuit. The woman arrives at her job, as a dancer in some sort of bondage-themed strip club/brothel, unaware that the killer has followed her there. She grabs a pistol from her boss' room and the chase begins again, the man drawing ever closer. 

As I detailed last year, "Love, Death & Robots" arose out of an attempt to make a new film out of French magazine, "Heavy Metal." That publication was well known for two things: Introducing the highly detailed, often surreal artwork of visionaries like Moebius and Richard Corben to the west. On a more puerile level, the comic was also notorious for featuring lots of nudity and sex, far beyond what was permissible in American comics at the time. "The Witness" definitely draws as much, if not more so, from the latter instinct as the former. The female protagonist having the job of a stripper involves her slithering out of a dress, eventually thrusting her body directly at the viewer. While this is happening, the male antagonist has two sex droids of some sort, clad in fetish gear, squirming all over him. The entire last act of the story involves the female lead being clad only in an open robe, her naked body often exposed. This story being so preoccupied with the idea of being watched and observed suggests the flesh on display, and the main character being a sex worker, serves a purpose. She sees and is seen in turn, both seeking and sought after. Yet I also don't think "The Witness" is making a coherent point about women being objectified. I think the filmmakers involved – one of which is Alberto Mielgo, who won an Oscar for pretentious bullshit "The Windshield Wiper" and was a visual consultant on "Into the Spider-Verse" – probably wanted to see some cartoon titties and bush too.

Luckily, "The Witness" has more going for it than just the titillation of computer generated nudity. The animation style is definitely akin to "The Windshield Wiper," taking the same sort of unusual angles to many of the scenes and a somewhat blurry, out-of-focus visual approach. It works a lot better here, helping to capture the disorganized quality of being on the run and the adrenaline of the chase. As in "Spider-Verse," there's also some brief flashes of traditional animation and comic book style sound effects layered over the CGI visuals, which adds an interesting effect. As a twelve minute piece of story telling, "The Witness" is intriguing and mildly suspenseful. Even though I wish we got a little more of the sci-fi setting and that the ironic twist ending wasn't projected so far in advance by the beginning. [7/10]

The Fall (2019)

Earlier this year, Jonathan Glazer's “The Zone of Interest” would win Oscars for Best International Film and Best Sound. It was a haunting film, more than one review comparing it to a horror movie. While his sci-fi mind-bender “Under the Skin” is probably Glazer's most proper entry into the horror genre, there is another example. “The Fall” is a seven minute short film Glazer directed for A24 in 2019. It concerns a panicked man hiding in a tree from a pursuing mob. Each person wears masks, depicting faces locked in grimacing expressions. The attackers pull the man from the tree, snap a photo of him, and strap him into a gallows. The trap door is opened and the man falls into a seemingly bottomless pit, the others watching patiently until the rope falls out of sight.

Yes, “The Fall” is another short film that falls – if you'll excuse the pun – into the artsy-fartsy domain. Like much of Glazer's work, “The Fall” does capture a properly unsettling, nightmare like tone. The basic gist of the short, of many pursuing one, could certainly have come out of any nightmare. As is the idea that this mob is attacking this single man – whose innonence is represented by his mask having a remorseful face – for no discernable reason. The masks remind me of Japanese Noh masks, in the way they freeze the human face in one expression. Such a simple but undoubtedly uncanny distortion of the commonplace is another element out of a bad dream. Ideas like a pit we fall into forever would be dismissed by the waking mind but is exactly the kind of thing the subconscious mind would literally dream up.

Something else “The Fall” has in common with Glazer's other work is how precisely it is assembled, in its sounds and visuals. The score, from Glazer's regular collaborator Mica Levi, is an oppressive soundscape of mounting noise and groan-like exclamations. The mumbling shouts of the crowd, the winding of the rope as it slides off the gallows, and the tree swaying are all carefully placed to produce a direct response. Tom Debenham's cinematography is rich and dark, often seemingly adopting the point of view of an unseen observer. As if we are stumbling upon some horrible ritual in the forest at night, unaware of its meaning but surely knowing it's very bad. 

And for all these reasons and more, “The Fall” is an effective and disquieting burst of nightmare imagery. Now, what does it all mean? Most seem to read the film as symbolic of fascism, seeing parallels in the way a non-conformist is attacked by a faceless but identical mob. Considering Glazer cites a photograph of Trump's sons with an animal they killed as an inspiration, I'm sure this was no doubt intentional. Yet the visuals presented here are vague that you could read just about any meaning into them that you want. “The Fall” is probably best absorbed as an exercise in straight dream logic, recalling feelings and ideas without any specific destination behind them. I do know that, despite its potent visuals and expert production, “The Fall” struck me as incomplete. As if it's a prologue to a longer story, that ends just when it seems to really get moving. Simply put, it's a striking exercise in sound and images that didn't resonate with me on a deeper level. I guess it goes that way sometimes. [6/10]

Halloween 2024: September 21st

The Day After (1983)

With the dawn of the Reagan Presidency came a new era in the Cold War, characterized by a more aggressive foreign policy, a number of proxy-wars in foreign lands, and a lot more saber-rattling between the world superpowers. The public was all too aware of this increase in nuclear anxiety, resulting in a surge of films about the aftermath of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia. The most noteworthy of these releases, in America anyway, was the 1983 television film, "The Day After." The film was a hot topic of conversation for weeks, due to its graphic content and anti-war stance. The movie has been credited with changing Ronald Reagan's opinion on the chances of a nuclear war, an anecdote that has been questioned. In the years since then, "The Day After" has been recalled as both one of the greatest television movies of all time and a dismissed bit of eighties camp. 

The Cold War was long over by the time I first saw the movie. My survivalist nut-job dad still sat me down to watch it with the warning that "All of this could actually happen." Watching in that mindset, and being all of ten years old at the time, unsurprisingly left me upset. I started having nightmares about the end of the world shortly afterwards, that continued for years. Though I had only previously seen the film once, all those years ago, several scenes continue to vividly live in my memory. This is why I'm including "The Day After" in my Halloween Horrorfest Blog-a-Thon, though it's debatable whether the film belongs more to the genre of docudrama than horror. (As we'll discuss soon enough, I think it's easy to argue for its status as horror.) It's time for me to revisit the source of some kindertrauma and see how it holds up through adult eyes. 

Lawrence is a typical small town nestled in the heartland of America, about forty miles south of Kansas City. The families there are involved in everyday dramas: Dr. Oates is dealing with his daughter's decision to leave town. Denise, oldest daughter of a busy farmer named Jim Dahlberg, is planning to marry her boyfriend soon. Billy is a military man stationed at a near-by missile silo. College student Stephen wonders about his future. Meanwhile, tensions rise between the Soviet and U.S. forces in East Berlin. Nobody in Lawrence is prepared when the Cold War gets hot, missiles flying out of the grounds and a nuclear bomb dropping on Kansas City. Soon, the survivors must attempt to carry on, in a ruined world full of sickness, devastation, and death. 

Certain scenes in "The Day After" have lingered in my mind long after I had forgotten most of the other details of the movie. Chief among them is Billy emerging from his hiding space after the bomb drops, wandering a suddenly overcast world and watching with a mixture of horror and astonishment as the fallout comes down like snow. Another is the Dahlbergs, down in their cramped cellar, forced to listen as the family dog cries out overhead. Both of these moments are haunting but the scene that most stuck with me occurs before the bombs are dropped. It's when we visit a grocery store, as news of the situation in Berlin hits the radio, and people start buying anything they can in a panic. That scene hit me hard as a kid, I think, because it was so easy to imagine something similar happening in my small town. But also because of the futility of it. If a nuke dropped on your city, it doesn't matter how many pork chops you have in the freezer. You're screwed. The sheer hopelessness of that feeling, of knowing you are doomed by forces far outside your control, is maybe the element of "The Day After" that makes me feel the most sick to my stomach. 

"The Day After" was directed by Nicholas Meyer, after making "Time After Time" and "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." Much like those films, this one continues to show Meyer's talent for contrasting the mundane with the unexpected. The first hour or so of "The Day After" is concerned with establishing its characters in the lead-up to the attack. We become involved in their day-to-day lives, especially in Denise attempting to establish herself as an independent person against her loving but strict father and her normal bickering with her younger siblings. Or Dr. Oates' bond with his wife and own daughter. The threat of nuclear annihilation is always there, floating in the background. We hear and see reports on TV and the radio. It's a good depiction of how normal lives go on in the shadow of international incidents while also building tension for the disaster to come. 

Much of the controversy surrounding "The Day After" in 1983 was based around the fear that its content was too graphic, too disturbing, for a mainstream television broadcast. It's an interesting complaint because, watched now, the special effects seem a little corny. And yet... When the bomb goes off, we are greeted to a fast-paced montage. We see many people, some of whom we've followed in the first half, reduced to bones and dust in seconds. Fire rains down, buildings explode, people are crushed under the debris. The screen is bathed in red as winds of smothering heat sweep across the countryside. It plays out as an assault in the viewer's senses, a disturbing barrage of death and destruction. If the effects are dated, the sheer ferocity with which these images are deployed makes them impactful still. 

The aftermath, from which the film earns its title, most surely rank among some of the grimmest stuff broadcast on American TV in the eighties. Death is everywhere, starved animals laying about. A dead body, rendered completely blackened from burns, juts out of a wretched building. Burns and radiation sickness are ever present, all of the cast slowly succumbing. The infrastructures put in place to keep society going quickly decays, soldiers executing looters right in the streets. An expectant mother hopelessly wonders what the point of bringing a child into the world now is. An especially potent moment has a group gathered in a ruined church, a cross dangling in the air, as the priest desperately attempts to instill some hope. None is to be found. "The Day After" ends on images of death and emptiness. As the final credits roll, we hear a voice calling out from a radio if anyone else is out there. With the chilling implication being that there isn't. The world dies with us. 

As summarily hopeless as "The Day After" is, an important element keeps it from being an act of empty nihilism. Namely, the human factor. Meyer was insistent that no recognizable actors be in the film, though a few of them – Steve Guttenberg, JoBeth Williams, John Lithgow – became stars afterwards. This was clearly an attempt to keep the material as down-to-earth as possible. When the world as we know it has ended, human kindness can prevail sometimes. Billy bonds with a badly burnt man who has lost his ability to speak. The youngest of the Dahlbergs children is blinded by staring at the mushroom cloud. As he recovers in a dingy, underground hospital, he forms a friendship with a doctor there. Jason Robards, Meyer's concession to the network of having one known actor in the film, shows the strain of having to go on in a world that's been destroyed. The lesson to take away from this is, if the world dies in nuclear hellfire, the kindness still matters. 

"The Day After's" commitment to unflinching realism is obviously born out of its purpose of educating the public. The film ends with text explaining that this is actually a toned-down version of what the aftermath of a real nuclear war would be like, which is maybe the most disturbing moment of all. If those stories of Ronald Reagan and various other heads of state being moved by the movie are true – I'm not convinced they necessarily are – than I suppose "The Day After" achieved its goal. In a post-Cold War era, the threat of nuclear annihilation may not be quite so imminent. Yet "The Day After" remains as a disturbing depiction of what very well could have happened at the time, an incredibly well-made film that is still unsettling to this day. I'm not going to show it to any kid of mine though, at least not when they are ten... [9/10]

Children of the Corn: Genesis (2011)

Knowing what we do now, it's hard to look at the Weinsteins separating from Disney as anything but petty tyrants trying to hold onto what little power they had left. The brothers took Dimension with them to the Weinstein Company, determined to squeeze the label's hits for all they were worth. Of course, TWC was run like a circus and could rarely get its shit together long enough to push a proper film through development. It's well known that the producers would throw together a ninth "Hellraiser," shot in a week, strictly to hold onto the presumably valuable remake rights. "Hellraiser: Revelations" is the most infamous cinematic ashcan copy this side of Corman's "Fantastic Four." However, the company actually did the exact same thing with another of their long running series first. The remake trend was petering out by 2011 but I guess Bob and Harvey figured "Children of the Corn" might make a worthwhile property again someday. Or maybe they were bitter the 2009 remake was made without their involvement. Whatever the reason, "Children of the Corn: Genesis" would be rushed into production in 2011 and crapped onto the Dimension Extreme straight-to-DVD label that August. 

In 1970, a man named Cole returned from Vietnam to his hometown of Gatlin, Nebraska. He found his parents murdered by corn-worshiping kids. Forty years later, Tim and Ally have their car break down in the California desert. With no cell reception and Ally being pregnant, they seek shelter in a nearby home. A strange man and his Ukrainian wife invite them in. However, things quickly get weird. The man, known as Preacher, is a religious fanatic but also owns a hi-def camera and TV. His bride attempts to seduce Tim and asks him to get her out of there. Once night falls, they are ordered not to exit their room. Ally does and discovers a child locked up in a shed. Poltergeist activity and strange visions ensue, all of it connected to the massacre in Gatlin somehow. 

To learn "Genesis" – a subtitle suggesting a prequel but without any real meaning – was quickly assembled to hold onto a copyright is unsurprising. The script tosses together a bunch of different elements without much cause. A young couple stranded in the desert and ending up in the home of a Bible-thumping, redneck lunatic recalls many other horror films. Eventually, objects and people start to get tossed around by an unseen force, suggesting a ghostly haunting. Or, as Ally bluntly suggests, the work of a telekinetic. All the while, Preacher rambles on about evil, purity, and corruption. The girl finds a shed with a steel cross inside, handcuffs attached to it, which triggers a split second vision of some S&M group sex activity. The suggestion seems to be that Preacher is a backwoods cult leader, possibly producing child porn, his wife and her offspring are his captives. At the same time, the movie is constantly swerving in different directions, repeatedly changing its mind about who is the real threat here and its exact nature. Is the little boy more dangerous than Preacher? Or is he the psychic murderer? What is the deal with the kid anyway? None of this melds into a coherent whole, the movie running down its eighty minute runtime by doing whatever with what little material it has. 

You might have noticed that the above has little to do with children, corn, the mass killing of adults, or He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Yes, the "Children of the Corn" movies have truly reached in-name-only status by this point. How the opening flashback to Gatlin set Preacher/Cole down the path he's on now is never explained. His own philosophy shifts between being a rebuking of the original child cult and some sort of continuation of it. How this connects to the little kid in the shed and the telekinetic weirdness is never explained. The movie does the bare minimum to justify its placement in this series. Preacher has corn silk crucifixes around his house. A group of Amish looking child cultists appear at the very end. Ally has a dream where she's in a cornfield. She's strapped to a scarecrow stand and put before some ominous stick sculpture by a group of sickle-wielding youths. This is the sole time "Genesis" resembles the previous films. Otherwise, it's a bottom-of-the-barrel attempt at a "nice urban couple at the mercy of a desert weirdo" thriller with some supernatural bullshit grafted on. Nary a cornstalk in sight. 

Truthfully, the biggest connection "Genesis" has to Stephen King's story is the bickering married couple. Tim and Ally don't verbally spar the way Burt and Vicky did. Honestly, Kelen Coleman and Tim Rock almost have a cute chemistry together. However, Ally eventually becomes convinced Tim slept with Preacher's mail order bride. Meanwhile, Tom becomes annoyed by the suggestion that Ally might have aborted their first pregnancy. These threadbare subplots lead to truly inessential sequences. Considering the movie is nothing but a bunch of random bullshit, held together by the lingering rights to a short story from 1973, it's utterly impossible to care about anything that happens. The interpersonal melodrama least of all. 

With so little going for it, what good can I possibly say about "Children of the Corn: Genesis?" Mainly, that Billy Drago is as convincing a wild-eyed psycho as ever. Drago as a Manson-like cult leader, pontificating on the woes of the world while producing kiddie porn on the side, could've made for a decent film under less desperate circumstances. Also, there's a scene where a cop gets raptured right up into the stratosphere that made me laugh. Otherwise, there's nothing to recommend. I don't blame director Joel Soisson, a regular of Dimension's direct-to-video sequels. I imagine he did the best he could with the limited resources he had, as that opening scene isn't awful. IMDb lists the budget as four million dollars but there's no way that's true. The biggest stunt, a climatic freeway accident, appears to be stock footage. In other words, "Children of the Corn: Genesis" is the weakest kind of ethanol, carried solely on Drago's leathery back, and suitable for consumption by only the most devoted corn heads. [3/10]

The Frighteners: Have a Nice Time at the Zoo, Darling

Long before the Peter Jackson film of the same name, there was a British suspense anthology series known as "The Frighteners." Airing on ITV for thirteen episodes in 1972, the series was largely forgotten until a DVD release in 2017. The most highly regarded episode seems to be the last, "Have a Nice Time at the Zoo, Darling." Thirteen year old girl Elizabeth is stalked by an older man after leaving choir practice. The next day, she visits the zoo where the same man – who keeps pictures of children in his coat pocket – approaches her again. The two begin a dialogue, the girl uncomfortable and the man nervous. As they look at the animals and talk more, their conversation grows graver, making it increasingly clear that they share a history. One of them will be dead before the day is over. 

Despite the title – and the screaming face prominently placed in its opening credits – "The Frighteners" was a series that focused solely on psychological suspense rather than supernatural terror. The end of "Have a Nice Time at the Zoo, Darling" reveals that this is a story more dramatic than horrific. There is still an undeniable, queasy tension to the entire episode. That's largely because of the game of misdirection the script is playing. An adult man following a teenage girl – her youth emphasized by the school uniform she wears – brings certain connotations to mind. Considering we also see him at a playground by himself, looking at photographs of little girls while sitting on a seesaw, one can't help but assume his motivations. At the zoo, he asks innocuous questions about the animals while drawing physically closer to her. During a very uncomfortable moment, he reaches out and nearly touches her, as if he's trying to sniff her hair. This guy is a pervert, right? If not a full-on sexual predator, preparing to assault this young girl.

The episode carefully avoids naming the reason for this meeting, obviously expecting the audience to fill in the blanks. It gets more cringe-inducing as the girl reveals that she's interacted with the man before, getting him to admit that he found her beautiful when she was younger. And that he was sent away for many years. She references making a vow of love towards the man and him seeing another woman, as if she's displaying jealousy. Is this some sort of sick power play, between a child molester and a past victim? Who, in her trauma from the violation, convinced herself that she actually loved this older man? It's a sick suggestion that David Hodson's script willingly plays with. Considering the cold, casual way the girl talks about piranhas, saying they look harmless but can be deadly, I was wondering if we weren't meant to ask who the predator and who the prey was. Or if a long gestating game of revenge was playing out here. 

Well, it's sort of that. The final shots are chilling, for the way they suggest that Elizabeth might be far more calculating and vicious than you'd expect a girl her age to be. However, the script does reveal that the dynamic between these two is not as salacious as it seems. After building up quite a lot of suspense with nauseating implications, it's a slightly disappointing ending. (Or relieving, I guess, depending on your perspective.) Nevertheless, "Have a Nice Time at the Zoo, Darling" is an effective half-hour of television. Geoffrey Bayldon and Helen Lindsay are both excellent in their respective roles. Shot in black-and-white do to a technician strike, the episode has a striking look. The cinematography varies between roaming tracking shots and tight close-ups, helping create a sense of realism and drawing us into this uncomfortable interaction. It's probably not exactly what horror fans are looking for or expecting but this is still a disturbing half-hour that is tensely executed and contains a chilling ending. [7/10]

The Addams Family: Morticia, the Matchmaker

"Morticia, the Matchmaker" expands our knowledge of the extended Addams family by introducing Morticia's cousin, Melancholia. Her fiancée recently dumped her to join the Foreign Legion, the latest in a long line of abandonments. Visiting the Addams, Morticia and Gomez decide to find a proper husband for the heartbroken woman. After many rejections, they receive a call from Charles P. Harvey. Harvey is a lawyer only interested in getting Gomez to sign over some land to him – a bat cave in Nairobi – that oil was recently discovered under. However, upon learning he's single, the Addams immediately attempt to pair him up with Melancholia, much to her joy and Harvey's distress. 

"The Addams Family" usually drives its humor from outsiders reacting to the family's manner. Which is a joke that has proven surprisingly flexible but still only has so much juice in it. "Morticia, the Matchmaker" does shift things around a bit by playing inside the family for some of its runtime. Melancholia reacting with warmth to the Addams' various bizarre decorations is the first sign that she's where she belongs. The way Morticia and Gomez leap right into trying to help her is quite adorable, especially the enthusiasm John Astin puts into the phone calls he makes. The biggest laugh in the episode comes when they ask Lurch to take Melancholia's hand in marriage, the show once again getting a shocking amount of humor out to Ted Cassidy's bemused grumbles. (Morticia says Lurch is a "lady's man," which frankly gives me more insight into the towering man-servant's personal life than I care to have.)

Eventually, the show does lean into its usual comedic devices. Once Harvey is introduced, we get many scenes of him being horrified by the Addams and all their associated habits. The physical gag of Granmama throwing "love dust" into his face is revisited far too often. I honestly do feel bad for all the jokes at Hazel Shermet's expense, as Melancholia. It's not like she's hideously ugly or anything. She looks rather nice after Morticia gives her a gothy make-over. Lee Goodman goes get some chuckles as Harvey though, reacting to the entire situation with a number of smart-alack asides. The plot line does wrap up on a nicely unexpected moment, so all's well that ends well. This episode also reveals that Gomez has a number of operations around the world, including the aforementioned bat cave and a salt mine. I'm going to try and not hold that against him. Considering how Gomez seems to relish in what other people think of as failure, hopefully any workers connected to him get to take it easy and not get exploited. [6/10]