Halloween 2026: September 2nd

 

The Wailing (2016)
Gokseong

Religion is kind of a worldwide phenomena, ya know? I think it's human nature to assign events to the actions of a higher power or otherworldly forces. We also tend to think of faith as following international borders. Those who write history have worked very hard to paint the Americas and the Anglo corners of the world as the Christian nations, middle Asian countries as Islamic, India as Hindu, and so forth. The East Asian parts of the world, from an ignorant American perspective, seem mostly characterized as a mix of Buddhist, Shinto, and ill-defined local mysticism. This is not accurate, of course. In South Korea, for example, 20% of the population identify as Protestant and 11% as Catholic. While Christianity has a decent sized congregation in the country, local shamanic beliefs are also commonly practiced, sometimes hand-in-hand. This interesting spiritual breakdown is reflected in Na Hong-jin's 2016 film, "The Wailing." Critically acclaimed, the film is what largely brought Na's name to Western fans' attention.

Jong-goo is a policeman in the South Korean village of Gokseong, a small community surrounded by mountains and forest. He is sent to investigate an unusually grisly murder, a man covered in strange boils and scars having brutally dismembered his wife. This is the first of a number of reported violent crimes in the area, often of someone murdering the other members of their family. Many of these incidents seem to link back to the appearance of a Japanese stranger in the village. Jong-goo begins to have nightmares about this unusual man. Shortly afterwards, his daughter Hyo-jin begins to exhibit increasingly strange, violent, and vulgar behavior. Jong-goo is convinced the stranger has possessed his daughter and is prompted to seek out a traditional shaman to exorcise the spirit. While this has some effect at first, the curse falling over Jong-goo and his family can not be so easily defeated. 

I'm pulling from a comparatively small sample size here and also making the same mistake I chastise others for in my opening paragraph, of grouping all Asian cultures together mindlessly. Having said that: A curse that easily passes from person to person seems to crop up in horror movies from that corner of the world sometimes. That's kind of how the mechanics of the haunting in “Ringu” operate. A more recent example would be “The Sadness” from Taiwan, where a literal virus prompts people to indulge their most depraved, violent impulses. In “The Wailing,” evil is similarly a communicable virus. It seemingly begins with the Japanese man coming into the village. He is said to commit sexual assaults, crawl around the forest in his underwear, or eat rotten meat. If this is patient zero for a corrupting otherworldly force is hard to say but, either way, it's spreading through this village. We see individuals in a zombie-like trance, rotting and covered in sores. Meanwhile, in the case of Jong-goo's daughter, the curse acts more like a traditional possession. Whatever the symptoms, this is a demonic outbreak that works very much like a pandemic. If one person in town has caught it, odds are good someone else has it too. 

This is a cool set-up for a fright film, seemingly mixing the familiar tropes of the zombie movie with a degree of demonic horror. However, it's only the jumping-off point for the themes “The Wailing” explores over its two and a half hour runtime. The film operates a lot like a detective mystery, with Jong-hoo attempting to track down the person responsible for these events. It's clear that he is caught in a chain reaction whose trigger event happened some time ago. This is evident in a well done sequence where the shaman performs an elaborate ritual, with a lot of dancing and physical movement, to cast the spirit out. This mostly results in Hyo-jin screaming in pain as her body contorts. As the story progresses, characters learn conflicting information about who is the source of these events and what to do about them. A Catholic priest concludes that the Japanese stranger – a cultural outsider who may be a mere scapegoat? - is a demon. The shaman believes a ghost is responsible. The media blames the consumption of psychedelic mushroom. Ultimately, it doesn't matter to Jong-goo because his daughter is still sick, isn't getting any better, and his home seems careening towards disaster. If all religion is merely an attempt to put a system of cause-and-effect on a universe that is merely random chaos, “The Wailing” is a good depiction of that. Its protagonist is the middle of the falling dominoes, with no chance of stopping the collapse even if he can trace things back to a source. 

A key moment occurs when Jong-hoo and his partner are investigating the home of the supposed demonic individual. Someone points out that a key object was casually picked up, contaminating the forensics and ruining any chance of it becoming evidence in the court of law. When compared to an earlier scene of Jong-hoo cowering from a ghostly image in the police station, the conclusion is difficult to avoid: This guy isn't a very good cop. As he grows more desperate, he uses violence and intimidating frequently to get what he wants. When combined with the dysfunction in his home life, another theme seems to emerge. The family calls on the shaman, under the belief that he knows what to do. He is revealed to be as clueless as anyone else. Doctors can't stop the spread. The Catholic priest is confused too. There is a systematic failure of authority in “The Wailing,” men who are stupid or irresponsible or corrupt or selfish being assigned power they cannot be trusted to wield. This outbreak of demonic influence is their fault and trusting them to stop it seems like a doomed effort. It feels a lot like, oh, every government in the world ever. How can we expect a system that caused these problems to then resolve them? 

Tying these ideas together is Na Hong-Jin's mastery of ambiance and ability to deliver a good shock. The scenic locations, beautifully captured by Hong Kyung-pyo's cinematography, only make the cast seem more isolated and alone as things get worst. Several sequences in “The Wailing” begin with seemingly normal circumstances being disrupted by unusual events that grow more disturbing. A lightning crash and black-out precedes the appearance of a shadowy spectre. A visit to the woods is disrupted by the strange man appearing, who crawls closer and closer. A nose bleed escalates to a torrent of vomit. A frantic drive down a freeway is disturbed by a swarm of bugs pelting the windshield. The movie does a fantastic job of staring at events as they grow more ominous, looking evil right in the face as it plays out in front of us. The result is the viewer feels as trapped with these unsettling revelations as the characters do. These aren't mere jump scares, that jolt the audience and then fade as the adrenaline dies down. These are sturdier chills, nightmare imagery that sticks in the mind and becomes harder to forget.

 

Good shit, in other words. Na Hong-Jing doesn't seem to have attracted the reputation as a lot of other South Korean horror filmmakers. His previous films, “The Chaser” and “The Yellow Sea,” got strong reviews. His follow-up to this one, “Hope,” got scooped up by Netflix and dropped on their streaming service with little promotion, as Netflix is prone to do. I'm definitely going to have to go back and check those out though. (Na also penned a film for Thai filmmaker Banjong Pisanthanakun that started life as a sequel to this one before turning into a stand-alone project. I'm considering making that my stop in Thailand on this year's world tour.)“The Wailing” is a potent dose of dread, featuring strong performances and heady ideas in service of fantastically directed scenes of horror. [8/10]

 

House of the Black Death (1965)
 

In the various circles of schlock movie perdition, Jerry Warren surely resides somewhere on the lower tiers. Ed Wood's surreal dialogue and irrepressible fetishes made his films cult classics. Andy Milligan's deeply felt misanthropy transformed Z-movies into windows to his personal hell. Coleman Francis created stifling works of highly quotable anti-art. I've never seen a single person who express anything but ironic enjoyment of Jerry Warren's work. His films, usually composed of thoughtlessly cut apart and reassembled international movies with utterly lifeless new footage providing the thinnest of connective tissue, have little camp factor and few merits of their own. So how bad does a movie have to be when Jerry Warren is called in to save it? Lora Crozetti, an early female writer in the world of sci-fi fandom, wrote a book called “The Widderburn Horror.” In 1965, director Harold Daniels attempted to adapt it into a movie. Reginald LeBorg apparently also shot some footage of people wandering around the woods. The producers deemed the project incomplete and brought in Warren to shoot additional material and cut it together into something releasable. Whether he succeeded is debatable. However, the film, now entitled “Blood of the Man Devil” and eventually re-titled again to “House of the Black Death,” did play in theaters before paying audiences. Which is something, I guess. 

The Desard family's legacy is one of witchcraft, devil worship, black magic, and arcane curses. At the family's foggy estate resides the bed-bound Andre, the eldest member who is deeply protective of the Desard's dark secrets. His brother, Belial, works with a coven of loyal followers to undermine Andre and claim the family's powers for his own. Andre's children, Paul and Valerie, arrive at the home to discuss these terms. Belial's followers kill their dog and go about attempting to activate a much discussed curse, that will turn Paul into a werewolf. Paul, his sister, a skeptical doctor, and dear old dad talk about ancient spells and tomes. Meanwhile, the literally horny Belial has his followers perform striptease outside the house as part of dark rituals, I guess.

“House of the Black Death” qualifies as a motion picture only on a technicality. It begins with a montage of the main players, their names and roles in the story being introduced by an off-screen Satanic voice. If that seems didactic, it's practically dynamic compared to how the rest of the movie plays out. Most of the film's thankfully short 74 minute runtime is devoted to people standing around within the undistinguished rooms of the family home. They ramble on about the family's demonic heritage and history of lycanthropy, often repeating the same points again and again. The visibly bored actors are usually in the center of the frame, footage cutting back and forth with the subtly of a power saw, as they talk about this incomprehensible bullshit. The word “coven” is repeatedly pronounced in such a manner as not to rhyme with oven, man. It is lifeless, feeling like stilted amateur theater unwisely committed to celluloid for all time. 

Considering his pedigree, I would expect these endless scenes of inane dialogue to be Mr. Warren's work. The exact breakdown of who shot what seems lost to the ages. We do know that Warren brought in his regular Katherine Victor, who appears in scenes of the cult bickering among itself. Otherwise, we can only speculate. The multiple scenes of female Satanists gyrating around in their lingerie before a demonic alter represents exploitation film making at its most desperate, throwing half-naked bodies on-screen in hopes of diverting audience attention for a second longer. Sure, the girls are attractive. Among them is legendarily proportioned British pin-up girl Sabrina, in her final film credit. Their dance routines are recorded without a sense of eroticism or basic energy. It's like “Orgy of the Dead” with all the fun parts cut out. Much like that particular piece of cheese, “House of the Black Death” links its tedious conversations and titillation-free lap dances with hokey horror movie atmosphere. There's a stone altar shaped like a saddle, the topic of several conversations. A rusty gate, a cardboard tombstone, a blanket of fog over the floor. Even someone with as much affection for elementary school Halloween party set-dressing as myself can only find so much here to be charmed by. The scene where someone finally turns into a werewolf – a split-second shot of foam gurgling through a gorilla mask – and Lon Chaney transforming into a paper skull instantly made me chuckle a little. But that's it.

I watched “House of the Black Death” because of its over-the-hill stars. As always, John Carradine and Lon Chaney Jr. are professionals. Carradine never blinks or stutters when reading reams of droll exposition. He is one of the few actors in the film that actually do anything meaningful, called upon to perform a mostly off-screen fiery incantation at the end. It's impossible to care about any of it and I doubt Carradine did either. However, he does his best. Chaney was well into the drinking-himself-to-death portion of his career. He hams gratuitously for the camera, smiling wickedly and staring with evil lust at the various girls on display. The little horns on his head are kind of cute. These are, to say the least, the most modest of pleasures. The two horror legends never directly interact. You'll have to watch “The Black Sleep” for that, a movie that's also quite lame but is still considerably better than this one. 

I genuinely do try and find the best in every movie I watch. I've sat through some dire stuff simply because an old monster movie guy was propped up through a scene or two. I've seen films that tested my patience more than “House of the Black Death,” I suppose. However, it is an hour and change stunningly devoid of value. Many pieces of interesting cinema have been dismissed because “nothing happens” within them. This is a genuine description of “House of the Black Death.” It “moves,” and therefore is a movie, only because live humans were recorded for it. If you swapped them out, even the esteemed Mr. Carradine and Chaney, with motionless cut-outs, the film would be fundamentally unchanged. I feel no hatred towards it, only indifference, perhaps the most damnable sin of all. [2/10]

 

Wednesday: Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe

The idea of Tim Burton being involved with some new version of “The Addams Family” is, to generalize, hack shit. To quote a sort of wise man, it's too obvious, a hat on a hat. This is so true that Burton had already been attached to a reboot of the property years before. However, the most obvious programming possible is what Netflix specializes in. This is presumably why the new series would revolve around Wednesday Addams. The upbeat, cheery little girl of the sixties sitcom has now been utterly eclipsed in pop culture by Christina Ricci's interpretation of her as an extremely sardonic, glaring, sadistic goth girl. Wednesday now exists more as a Halloween costume, the phenotype upon which a hundred OnlyFans providers have built their brand on, than as a character. Again, this made a show about her having adventures the most obvious choice. Nevertheless, none of this prevented Netflix's “Wednesday” from becoming a pop culture phenomena back in 2022, turning Jenna Ortega into a cult icon overnight. After watching the original “Addams Family” series over the last two years, I've decided to give this iteration a shot. 

And so I must grapple with the most ChatGPT-coded angle on “The Addams Family” you could imagine. In “Wednesday,” Gomez and Morticia's daughter has psychic powers. She has grim premonitions of the past and future upon touching someone, like she's in “The Dead Zone” or some shit. After filling her high school's swimming pool with piranhas to avenge Pugsley getting bullied, Wednesday is shifted off to Nevermore Academy. This is a private boarding school for monsters and freaks, which is where Gomez and Morticia met each other as teens. Meaning this premise is also “Harry Potter,” right down to the student body being sorted into four different groups. Wednesday's class mates include werewolves, sirens, gorgons, a telekinetic descendant of a witch hunter, and actual actual actual vampires. Having the Addamses exist along side literal monsters kind of defeats the purpose of them being the kookiest, spookiest family in town, does it not? Dropping Wednesday into Monster High is the definition of redundant. 

Again, the writers and producers of “Wednesday” were not inclined to resist the most obvious choices. This means that Wednesday's room mate is a perky and upbeat modern teenager, addicted to social media and prone to brightly colored accessories. This at least leads to the first episode's funniest moment, when Wednesday literally divides their room up. Another obvious writing choice here is to have Wednesday come into conflict with the local normies, which include the suspicious town sheriff. I was fine with this idea in the abstract until she started kung-fu fightin' some bullies. One of two way over-choreographed fight scenes here. I am less okay with the other choices here. The entire point of the Addams family is that they love and adore each other despite their outwardly morbid appearance. Here, Wednesday has teenage angst with her parents. She believes Gomez and Morticia are trying to turn her into a perfect copy of them and resents them for it. How trite. (Wednesday is also woke now, something I don't object on its face so much as it's difficult for me to imagine the Addams having an opinion on any modern political divides.)

I am trying my best to give this show a fair shot but, unfortunately, I can already see all the tendencies of streaming television that I despise at work. A dozen potential subplots, that can bounce back and forth over the next seven hours, are set up here. Despite her repeated insistence that she is not interested in such things, the first episode laboriously sets up multiple love interests for Wednesday. There's the straight-laced guy who works at the coffee shop, the handsome classmate with some connection to her, the skinny dweeb in the fencing class. Several rivals to lovers paths. There's implications about a dark family secret, connected to her parents' school days. Clearly, Wednesday's principal and court-mandated therapist are Up to Something. At least two potential villains with a grudge appear. There's a mystery to resolve too, a brutish beast with bulging Burton eyes introduced shortly before the credits roll. Such standard serialized drama elements is a rough fit for the farcical style of the Addams Family. How are characters such as these meant to function in a world where things like murder have actual legal consequences? 

The worst part of it all is the cast seems well chosen. At first, Jenna Ortega is doing a fairly straight impression of Ricci's work in the Sonnenfeld's films. However, as the hour goes on, she proves adapt with the kind of corny, morbid one-liners that made the original sitcom so much fun. Ricci herself is here, as is Riki Lindholm, and both seem like they fit in. While the verdict is still out on whether I agree with their characterization, I also like Luis Guzman and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Gomez and Morticia. At least their devotion to each other and their family is intact. Shifting the focus from the familial unit to one member being in a strange location changes the key interaction, in such a way that I find rather boring. In general, I found “Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe” quite boring. I'm going to try and stick it out for at least the first season but if the rest of the show is this bland, I'm going to skip season two. [4/10]

 

NBC Matinee Theater: The Fall of the House of Usher

I don't pay for regular television anymore and I know I'm not alone in that regard. From what I've gathered from sitting in waiting rooms, daytime television is now dominated mostly by chat programs, game shows, and endless reruns. Things have changed a lot since the mid-fifties, when NBC deemed daytime audiences so valuable a demographic that they invested in a pricey, daily anthology series, filmed in color and broadcast live. That would be “NBC Matinee Theater,” which run for 650 episodes over the course of three years, a number that seems improbable today.  The series has faded utterly into obscurity in the years since but a handful of notable episodes still float around online. Like a lot of early anthology programs, “Matinee Theater” often drew from classy literary sources for material. This usually precluded anything spooky or macabre but the series delved into the accepted canon of respectable horror stories from time to time. One example is a version of “The Fall of the House of Usher” that aired in August of 1956. 

Adapter Robert Esson and director Boris Sagel maintain the broad strokes of Poe's story. The protagonist, named David here, arrives at the crumbling family estate of his old school mate, Roderick Usher. Roderick is gripped by a powerful melancholy and a malady that makes him sensitive to all sights and sounds. He attributes this to a family curse that has driven every Usher before him mad. His sister, Madeline, is also quite ill and dies while David is visiting. You probably know what happens next. This “House of Usher” underplays the isolation of the story by adding more characters: A faithful family housekeeper, a doctor called in to tend to the sick Madeline, and a police constable. It also ventures outside the titular location into the near-by town for a scene, which I think tellings of this tale probably should not do. 

While the producers of “Matinee Theater” sought to save money where they could by utilizing small cast and limited staging, the best thing about this “Fall” is its set. We never see the exterior of the home in full. Only a creaky gate, a sign bearing the family name swinging ominously in the wind. Roderick's room has an overflowing book shelf, an ornate throne, a window waiting to be dramatically thrown open. The family tomb, a pivotal location in any version of this story, has the neat detail of a wall of caskets. The shot of Roderick and David descending into this inner most chamber, lit by candlelight, is a good one. The reading of “The Haunted Palace” also ranks among the episode's better moments. It's not much but I think the producers did an okay job of summoning some gothic ambiance with the set dressing that was afforded to them. 

Otherwise, the tone of this take on “Hosue of Usher” veers more towards the hokey and melodramatic. Tom Tryon, best known to me from “I Married a Monster from Outer Space,” plays Usher at maximum staginess, bellowing his cries of misery and putting all his feelings into the character's descriptions of his mental agony. Marshall Thompson as the protagonist is so straight-laced and blandly heroic as to appear out-of-place in this tale. Probably owing to its TV-bound roots, the darker suggestions within Poe's text are downplayed. Madeline is introduced clawing at the walls of her room, making the family madness as broad as possible, and all the subtext of incest and depravity is gone. The image of Madeline's arm rising from her newly interned sarcophagus reminded me too much of Disney World's Haunted Mansion. And then the episode revisits that visual about three more times. It comes across as fairly defanged and hammy. Considering there's a dozen other adaptations of this story out there, the “Matinee Theater” version counts as inessential. The show did most of the public domain horror standard greatest hits (plus an occasional deeper cut, like The Queen of Spades or The Bottle Imp) and one imagines they are of a similar pedigree as this: Serviceable but a bit weak sauce. [5/10]

 

Halloween 2025: September 29th

 

Cold Prey 2 (2008)

Fritt vilt II
 

The entire point of my Horror Around the World themes is to expand my horizons as a horror nerd. To not only see films I've never seen before but to expose myself to cultures I'm not that familiar with. I want to learn what the words "horror movie" mean on the African plains, the balmy beaches of the tropics, or the frozen reaches of Norway. Which begs the question of why I'm watching the sequel to the Norwegian movie I watched last September for this year's entry from the land of the fjords. Especially since the first "Cold Prey" struck me as a somewhat middling attempt to emulate the American slasher remakes of the 2000. The mountainous nation has produced more horror films than you might think, after all. Well, I'm always willing to check out a slasher flick, even if it's a sequel to a movie I didn't like that much. Maybe doubly so, since the slasher subgenre is one of the few places where sequels are often improvements over the previous installment. That seemed to be the case with "Cold Prey II," which is widely regarded as one of the best body count movies of the 2000s. Any of my Norwegian friends, please forgive me for going with another obvious pick. It's simply too hard to say no to more blood on the snow.

In the snowbound town of Otta, near the Jotunheimen mountain range, resides a small hospital that is in the process of being decommissioned. The skeleton crew of a staff – Dr. Herman, Dr. Camilla, her ambulance driver Ole, a handful of nurses and security guards – go about their business. Their quiet night is interrupted by the arrival of Jannicke, the traumatized survivor of a massacre at an abandoned ski resort in the mountains. She claims a masked man with a pickax killed her friends and dropped them in a snowy gorge. The police investigate and discover this to be true, bringing the bodies back to the morgue... Including the burly murderer, who it seems Jannicke did not kill. The hospital staff are honor bound to revive the man, despite Jannicke's protest. It's not long before the lunatic is back on his feet, swinging pickax around again, and offing the hospital staff. Jannicke, finding a fellow survivor in Camilla, is determined to end it this time.

Having moved on to Norway's first disaster movie, original “Fritt vilt” director Roar Uthaug passed the reins of Norway's first slasher franchise over to Mats Stenberg. Stenberg hasn't directed much else but he does show a more confident visual approach than Uthaug did on the first one. While the Marcus Nispel-like washed-out lighting and grayish green color palette remain, the sequel ditches the thundering musical score, frantic camerawork, chopped-up editing, and overdone musical design. In its place is a humble slasher flick that utilizes its setting for some decent suspense. A sequence where a nurse hides under a gurney, clinging to the bottom at the killer walks over head, is genuinely suspenseful. The quiet and mostly empty building makes for a fittingly creepy setting. When the film does employ flashier visuals or loud jump-scares, they are better utilized. A pickax tossed towards the camera or a seemingly dead body leaping to life are distinctive exclamation points on the build-up of tension that came before. This is most apparent in the sequel's very last image, a moment of high-attitude that takes the audience out with a chuckle and a rush.

In general, “Cold Prey II” also has a sturdy grasp on what we expect from a slasher sequel. Namely, it does mostly the same thing as the first one but bigger, bloodier, and better. The script – from Uthaug, Thomas Moldestad and Martin Sundland – seems to pattern itself after two horror sequels that did exactly that. The hospital setting seems probably inspired by “Halloween II” while the story takes more than a few queues from “Aliens.” Namely, in forcing the deeply traumatized final girl back into a confrontation with the same monster. Jannicke displays a “nuke from orbit” reaction to the mountain man's reappearance. By the climax, she heads into the villain's lair, ready to take the fight to them. The comparison is most evident in a bad-ass scene where the local police enter the hospital, armed with SWAT gear, only to be quickly overwhelmed and taken out by the murderer's more guerilla techniques. While the first “Fritt vilt” was weirdly conservative with the bloodshed, part two is notably not. The movie features a gnarly neck snapping, a spurting slashed throat, multiple fire extinguisher bludgeoning, and plenty of pick-axe impalement too.

 

Probably the biggest improvement “Cold Prey II” makes over the original is by providing us with a more fleshed-out cast. Like the first one, the sequel takes a bit of time to establish the characters before sending the masked murderer after them. Unlike the first one, they aren't an indistinct batch of spam-in-a-van cliches this time. Having the cast be a group of young professionals, instead of your typical horny teens, ads a little more personality to them. It also makes one of the subgenre's oldest cliches – a girl stops to take a shower – actually make sense. Bringing Ingrid Bolsø Berdal back, now as a perpetually on-edge survivor with no patience for mistakes, is also a good idea. She's the only one who knows how bad it's going to get, adding a bit of suspense. The script is also smart enough to make the killer, nothing more than a big dude in a ski-mask last time, into a bit more of a mythic figure. We learn he has a history this time, having been killing people up in the mountains for decades, and seems to be developing a Jason-esque tendency to shrug off seemingly fatal injuries. 

“Cold Prey 2” still doesn't utilize its wintry setting nearly as much as it could. The hospital is less isolated than the first film's ski resort, meaning the sense of icy desolation is lessened. In general, it's hard to say if these movies are the Norwegian riff on the very American slasher archetypes so much as they are Norwegian filmmakers deliberately emulating American archetypes. Nevertheless, the second one is a big improvement over the first. The sequel had the highest grossing opening weekend of any Norwegian movie ever, which probably says more about the lack of popcorn blockbuster franchises in that country than the Scandinavian appetite for slasher shenanigans. The film ends in a fairly definitive way, which did not stop a third installment from being made. I liked “Cold Prey 2” a good deal but it has mostly encouraged me to seek out more Norwegian horror in general than watching the next installment right away. [7/10]

 

Space Monster Wangmagwi (1967)
Ujugoe-in wangmagwi

A while back, I wrote about “Yongary, Monster from the Deep,” which has the distinction of being the most iconic South Korean kaiju movie of the Showa era. By which I mean it's the most direct imitator of “Godzilla.” You might think that “Yongary” was the only giant monster movie made in that country during the sixties but you'd be wrong. The fire swallowing dinosaur was beat to theaters by a few weeks by “Space Monster Wangmagwi.” Not that there was much chance to verify this for many years. The Korean Film Archive held the sole complete copy for decades, the motion picture unseen because of copyright hang-ups. Once that was cleared up, festival screenings started to pop up in Korea in the 2000s. This finally cleared the path for a proper re-release of “Wangmagwi.” Now the formerly “lost” movie can be easily seen by anyone, because we do indeed live in an age of wonders and horrors untold. As a discerning kaiju head, what's my reaction to this rare piece of monster movie history?

Across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regard this Earth with envious eyes. Namely, the tin can clad conquerors of the world known as Gamma surely draw their plans against us. That plan involves dropping an ape-like monster onto the southern plains outside of Seoul, South Korea. The creature grows to enormous size within Earth's atmosphere and quickly begins to run amok. It stomps on people, wrecks buildings, and sprays a combustible gas from its forehead. This invasion is a big inconvenience to Ahn-hee, who intends on marrying her boyfriend, Oh Jeong-hwan, that day. Oh is a fighter jet pilot and called upon by the air force to defend his homeland from the enormous beast. Ahn-hee refuses to evacuate and, while still wearing her wedding gown, is abducted by the monster. She encounters a little boy who climbs atop the giant's body, one of several incidents happening around the city in the midst of this national emergency. 

By 1967, the giant monster movies made in Japan had already gotten very silly. This was the same year Godzilla found a son, King Kong fought a robotic double, Gamera gained a dizziness prone blood-sucking rival, and not one but two strangely chicken-like leviathans flattened Tokyo. This makes it unsurprising that “Wangmagwi” is more comedy than horror film. In fact, Hyeok-jinn Gwon's film is almost akin to a sketch comedy movie at times. After Wangmagwi begins its rampage across Seoul, the movie often cuts away to a series of farcical events happening during the attack. A pair of buffoons make bets against each other as the monster attacks, offering each other money and their wives should the other die. In a shelter, a man has to take a shit at the same time a woman is about to give birth. This is unrelated to a guy climbing atop a rescue vehicle in only his underwear. The humor in “Wangmagwi” is quite scatological and juvenile. A little boy, not unlike the kid heroes from “Yongary” or the “Gamera” flicks, climbs atop Wangmagwi's head. His actions include deafening the monster by stabbing at his ear canal and disrupting its radio connection to its alien overlord. He also takes a piss inside the monster's head, a truly unexpected sight. 

Considering how knowingly ridiculous “Space Monster Wangmagwi” is, the titular titan is not the most intimidating of movie monsters. Amusingly, Wangmagwi's arrival on Earth and march towards Seoul are not depicted on-screen, merely being told to us during a news broadcast. The urban destruction is fairly brief. The monster crushes some buildings, knocks over at least one recognizable landmark – Independence Gate – and sets a city block ablaze with its fiery spray. Wangmagwi notably steps on a human being, an act Godzilla is always implied to do but rarely actually depicted as doing. He also carries a maiden around in his hand, King Kong style. However, Wangmagwi's reign of chaos is short-lived. His ultimate defeat is rather anticlimactic. In general, he's a fairly silly looking monster. He's got big droopy ears and exaggerated fangs jutting out of his oversized jaws, making him resemble a cartoon bulldog. The creature's appearance is very human-like, with two legs and two arms. He moves exactly like a guy in a suit too. Whatever illusion Toho and Daiei's kaiju flicks created that these rubber creations were actual fantastic beasts is not all that present here. 

No matter how ridiculous the kaiju genre got, there were still fascinating reflections of the culture that birthed them. Ishiro Honda was a staunch pacifist and believer in world unity. Despite that, an undeniable nationalistic pride emerged from his “Godzilla” movies in the lengthy montages of Japan's definitely-not-an-army fighting the beast. Though made with a fraction of the budget and resources, there's a Korean vein of this same idea in “Wangmagwi.” The military assembles against the monster efficiently and bravely. Oh faces off against the monster without a trace of fear. Cops run through the streets and fire their pistols at the monster's feet. With the Korean War not far in the past, the film represents a pop culture depiction of the nation being strong, resourceful, and independent in the face of an outside invader. The possibility of using a nuclear bomb against the monster is also regarded as an absolute last resort, another reminder of how the atomic horrors of World War II float over every movie like this. The Korean national identity is also reflected in the melodrama of Ahn-hee being so committed to marrying her boyfriend, that not even a kaiju attack can convince her to postpone the ceremony. When the couple adopt the brave boy in the last reel, it feels like the Korean family unit being put forth as an unshakable institution. May no intergalactic goliaths tear it asunder. 

All of the above means “Space Monster Wangmagwi” is not exactly a lost classic. The special effects are fairly janky. Despite the oversized threat, the movie's ambitions strike one as rather limited. Nobody, down to the alien overlords orchestrating this plot, seem to take anything that happens as too momentous an occasion. Mostly, the extremely silly script makes this a fluffy, light-hearted affair. How am I to resist any giant monster movie that features a little kid pissing in the kaiju's ear though? There's an undeniable charm to “Wangmagwi's” weird tonal switch-ups and goofy creature effects. It reflects the Korean self-image in a way that the more generic “Yongary” simply did not. I am glad monster movie fans all over the world can see it now. By the way, “Wangmagwi” isn't the first Korean kaiju movie either. A 1962 fantasy about a bulgasari – an iron eating dragon of sorts – attacking medieval Songdo predates it. That film remains lost and probably always will but who knows. If “Wangmagwi” can be rediscovered, perhaps that one is still out there somewhere too. [7/10]

 

Amazing Stories: You Gotta Believe Me

I guess I didn't get enough of ominous visions concerning crashing airplanes when I watched “Final Destination” earlier this season. “You Gotta Believe Me” concerns Earl Sweet, an ordinary fellow sleeping in his bed. He has a vivid and distressing nightmare of an airline jet crashing right outside his house. He sees the ghosts of the dead passengers pass him by, the scorched remains of their bodies on his front yard. Earl awakens in a cold sweat, unable to shake the disturbing feeling the dream has left him with. He walks to the near-by airport, soon recognizing the possessions of the passengers awaiting the next flight in the lobby. This convinces the man that his dream was actually a vision of the future. He attempts to alert the authorities, who dismiss him as a raving lunatic. The man has to take matters into his own hands to prevent the disaster only he knows is about to happen. 

Like all the best episodes of “Amazing Stories,” “You Gotta Believe Me” ditches the Spielberg-ian whimsy or Dante-esque madcap comedy most of the show attempted. The episode, which aired eleven days before Halloween, is probably one of the eerier installments of the program. The opening nightmare scene plays out in still, slow medium shots. There's little music and a far-off sound design as we see the old man wandering through the burning wreckage. He centers in on the a charred Teddy Ruxpin, discordantly repeating a line of a childish fairy tale. It's a creepy moment and “You Gotta Believe Me” manages to make that feeling last for the rest of its half-hour. When Earl arrives at the airport, it is strangely empty. The announcements echo like far-off cries. He moves like a still, sleepwalking observer through a placid dreamland. It's surprisingly creepy, director Kevin Reynolds showing an aptitude for spookiness that his future Kevin Costner collaborations rarely displayed. 

The other element making this episode a good one is its lead performance. Great character actor Charles Durning plays Earl. While the temptation might have been to play the role as entirely hysterical and panicked from the beginning – think John Lithgow in “Twilight Zone: The Movie” – Durning makes the choice to underplay it. He is quiet and calm at first, allowing the sense of unease on his face to slowly reveal itself more and more. The entranced quality he goes for fits someone who has been startled awake, uncertain of the reality of what he's seeing. This allows for a slow build, as the feeling that the crash is destined to happen becomes increasingly certain. That makes the action packed climax stronger than it would've been otherwise, an exciting pay-off to what has come before. Like a quality short story, “You Gotta Believe Me” then orderly wraps up right after that. All these factors surely make “You Gotta Believe Me” one of the best episodes of “Amazing Stories'” entire run. [8/10]

The Addams Family: Lurch's Grand Romance
 

For the penultimate episode of the original “Addams Family,” we get a special guest star and a Lurch centric narrative. Morticia's previously unseen best friend Tiny Trivia is visiting the Addams household. Trivia has recently decided to devote herself full-time to her dream of becoming a singer and actress. Lurch is immediately smitten with the lady. The butler proves to be a little shy around women, however. The family goes about attempting to help him gain some confidence but it's no use. Grandmama decides to go a more direct path. She whips up a love potion and hands it over to Trivia. The concoction works too well and the woman is soon smothering Lurch with a level of affection he finds uncomfortable. In addition to that, the brew makes Trivia uncontrollably horny for any man she sees. Gomez, Fester, and Cousin Itt all become her next targets for romance in quick order. 

Bringing in a guest star to “The Addams Family” but having them do something other than run and scream has worked out in the past. Diane Jergens was a song-and-dance gal in real life and already a veteran of early television sitcoms by the time she played Trivia. It would actually be her final on-screen credit, the actress retiring shortly afterwards. She's an energetic presence however. Listening to her sing the same song repeatedly is kind of annoying but she's got a go-for-broke intensity that suits this show well. Especially in the last third, when she's gone guy-crazy and is kissing over every male she encounters. Seeing Gomez flustered and out-matched by a female for once is a good joke.

This episode, in general, has some amusing moments. The family coming together to teach Lurch some game is a decent set-up. His inability to use Fester as a stand-in for an attractive lady is a solid joke. “Lurch's Grand Romance” is most remembered as the source of the first Wednesday dance sequence, Lisa Loring attempting to teach Ted Cassidy some of her moves. Both of these scenes allow for Cassidy to stretch his comedic muscles, Lurch getting to say and do a lot more than usual. Seeing the Frankenstein-ian man-servant be awkward and stuttering made me chuckle. I like it when the whole family is involved in these scenarios. (Well, almost the whole family. Pugsley must be at school.) Those scenes are a little more amusing than watching Trivia act like a nut, though those aren't terrible either. An early sequence where Fester looks into a crystal ball or continued discussions about Gomez' reaction to hearing someone speak French also result in some solid one-liners. [7/10]

Halloween 2024: October 11th

Crimes of Passion (1984)

Controversy followed Ken Russell's entire career. His maximalist visions frequently pushed the envelope in terms of content. From Oliver Reed and Alan Bates' nude wrestling match in "Women in Love" to a convent of mad nuns having an orgy with a statue of Christ in "The Devils," his work frequently came under fire from censors. Eventually, his excessive imagination and outrageous antics seemed to reach a point of self-parody. Critics and audience both became less receptive to Russell's work going into the eighties. A big turning point seems to have been 1984's "Crimes of Passion." The erotic thriller was heavily cut by distributor New World Pictures to avoid an X rating, leading to a compromised vision that was critically dismissed and financially unsuccessful. However, time has been kind to "Crimes of Passion." Russell's unrated director's cut is widely available, becoming a video hit back in the day. With the salacious subgenre receiving renewed interest in recent years, "Crimes of Passion" is frequently touted as a unique entry. It almost goes without saying, it's gotten a special features packed boutique Blu-ray release, cementing the film's status as a cult classic.

Joanna Crane is a fashion designer by day but, at night, she dons a platinum blonde wig and assumes the persona of street walking prostitute China Blue. As China, she fulfils deviant sexual fantasies for a number of men, never allowing herself to become emotionally close to any of them. Family man and sometimes detective Bobby Grady, whose marriage is slowly decomposing, is hired to trail Joanna. He discovers her perverse night life and quickly becomes one of her clients. However, the two immediately feel a spark that puts Joanna's ability to distance herself from her work at risk. Also putting her at risk: "Reverend" Shayne, a drug addicted and deranged street preacher with an unhealthy fixation on "curing" China Blue that involves the razor sharp vibrating dildo he carries with him everywhere. It's not long before both men are taking over both of Joanna/China's lives.

As a work of stylish eroticism, "Crimes of Passion" is hard to beat. Much of the film is composed of the various outrageous encounters "China" has with her clientele. One perv gets her in a stirrup chair while having her dress up as a beauty pageant winner. Another is obsessed with rape fantasies. At one point, she's picked up by a yuppy couple who discuss business while fondling her in the back of their limo. Russell depicts all of these encounters with the kind of go-for-broke excess that was his trademark. "Crimes of Passion" exists largely in a neon-lit netherworld of sleazy hotel rooms, shadowy sex, and bizarre fetishes. It is, simultaneously, a gorgeous and grimy film. The somewhat episodic nature of China's work allows Russell to create wildly different set pieces. The film is at its most swirlingly wild when China has an abusive cop handcuffed, stabbed with her stiletto heels, and forces his nightstick into a very intimate place. The frantic editing and wild camera movement of this moment recalls "The Devils'" most unhinged sequences. As self-aware as the film is in its own campy sleaziness, and as aggressive as its style can be, "Crimes of Passion" is also a strangely artistic and tender film at times. Russell frequently cuts between the steamy scenes and prints of famous artwork, making it clear that these moments exist as artistic displays in their own right. China and Bobby's first encounter plays out mostly as shadows cast on the wall, a scene of genuine eroticism. Meanwhile, the hooker being hired to give a dying man one last thrill is a surprisingly emotional scene.

China White's dream-like underworld of neon-drenched sex and nightmarish paraphilias contrast against a brightly lit depiction of suburban mundanity. We never see much of Joanna's day job, though her apartment is lavish. It's also largely white in its walls and decoration, providing a visual contrast against the darkly lit seediness of the night scenes. As for Bobby's life, it's crushingly dull. Annie Potts plays his wife as a frigid, emotionally closed-off woman. Every interaction they have in their white picket fenced home is tense. Bobby's unsavory desires are always threatening to burst into this respectable life, such as the dirty jokes that are told during a family cook-out that climaxes with the husband literally dressing up as an ejaculating prick. A notable scene has Bobby and the missus watching a music video that depicts marriage as a series of cages that ends with the happy couple reduced to skeletons. This life, the roles of husband and wife, father and mother, that they've consigned themselves to aren't making them happy. Not that Joanna is much better off, performing similarly ridiculous roles for her various clients. This is one of the primary theses of the film, that too many people are playing a part to please someone else and not allowing themselves to live their own own wants.

The very first scene in "Crimes of Passion" is Bobby's rowdy buddies telling sexist jokes while at some sort of group therapy, where the married man eventually lies about his life being happy and normal. While Joanna insists that she's always in control during her sessions with her johns, it often feels like she's more at their mercy than she'd like to admit. The cop into pegging spits in her face afterwards, needing to reassert his macho dominance after paying a hooker to degrade him. After they make love, Bobby and "China" have a petty argument not unlike those he has with his wife all the time. Anthony Perkin's street preacher is the ultimate example of someone torn apart by the different roles they've assigned themselves to play. He can't get through a religious sermon, often delivered atop an actual soap box, without beginning to vulgarly rant about the state of the world. He seems to think he can communicate directly with God but is always pulled back down towards his lustful desires. Inevitably, this has resulted in a highly disturbed individual. "Crimes of Passion" most resides in the horror genre when it takes us inside "Reverend" Shayne's head, where his erotic fantasies often overlap with violent delusions. A sequence where a blow-up doll writhes orgasmically while spurting blood surely must be seen to be believed. The film never quite depicts the Reverend going fully over into the realm of a sex worker slaughtering serial killer, though it's implied all throughout. Instead, his desire to serve God and jerk off at peepshows while snorting poppers represents the most extreme divide in the film.

The fact that Ken Russell got an ostensibly respectable actor like Perkins to play such a sleazy, disgusting character is a feat unto itself. Russell goes so far as to have Perkins revive Norman Bates' voyeurism, when the Reverend rents the room next door to China's and watches her hook-ups through a peephole. Perkins – who spends the entire movie in a wide-eyed state of drugged-up sweatiness that is simply spellbinding – excels at the ribald dialogue he's given. That's another unexpected aspect of "Crimes of Passion." It's a hyper-verbal script full of clever conversations, circular sentences, dirty puns, and colorful insults. Perhaps that's what attracted a semi-respectable cast to material this salacious. Kathleen Turner stars as Joanna/China, her smoky voice being put to good use while also projecting a surprising sense of vulnerability. Recognizable performers like Annie Potts and Bruce Davidson fill out the supporting roles, also getting some shockingly well constructed dirty dialogue of their own. The obvious star power of Turner, Perkins, and the supporting cast amusingly stand alongside John Laughlin as Bobby, an actor who embodies being an average joe without any sense of irony about him.

As the film goes full giallo in the last act, I was once again amazed that Ken Russell was allowed to make so many movies for so many years. He drops a musical number into the middle of an attempted torture/interrogation scene and never backs away from that sharpened murder dildo. Some will look at "Crime of Passion's" over-the-top sexual fantasies as an overly self-aware act of campy button-pushing. And perhaps it is. However, the film is also deeper than that, with a sharp screenplay that a lot more than mere exploitation on its mind. A totally convinced cast operating on a similarly bug-nuts level is certainly a big factor in the movie being as entertaining as it is. Ultimately though, it's the tone of sweaty depravity and wild imagination that Russell creates that makes "Crimes of Passion" a hypnotic sex vortex of a motion picture. Hilarious, gorgeous, perverse, and weirdly thoughtful, the film is the kind of destined cult classic that you can hardly believe exists. Or, at least, that is exists with Jessica Rabbit and Norman Bates in the lead roles. In other words, this is exactly the kind of shit I live for. God bless Ken Russell, wherever he is now. [9/10]

Save the Green Planet! (2003)

Jigureul jikyeora!

Earlier this year, it was announced that indie weirdo turned Oscar favorite Yorgos Lanthimos was making a film called "Bugonia," about a conspiracy theorist who kidnaps a corporate exec under the belief that they are an alien. As I read that plot synopsis, I thought to myself "Hey, waitaminute, that's the premise of "Save the Green Planet!"" And indeed it is, Lanthimos' new project being an acknowledged remake of this mostly forgotten South Korean cult oddity from 2003. Not forgotten by obsessive-compulsive nerds like me, of course, who read a review of the film in Fangoria many moons ago and added it to my ever-growing mental list of stuff to watch some day. Since Lanthimos' films usually become hot topics of discussion about the kinds of crowds I travel in, I imagine "Bugonia" will generate lots of conversation whenever it comes out. Meaning I should probably go ahead and watch the original first. This is the not especially interesting reasoning behind me choosing Jang Joon-hwan's hard-to-classify film as my South Korean pick for 2024's Horror Around the World project. 

Kang Man-shik is a high powered CEO of a pharmaceutical company. While in a parking garage, he is abducted by a strange young man named Lee Byeong-gu. Kang awakens tied to a chair in a dank room. Lee and his girlfriend proceed to physically torture Kang in bizarre ways, under the belief that the exec is an alien from the Andromeda star system. Lee believes that aliens are about to destroy the Earth and that Kang is their prince in disguise. Only Lee knows this, convinced he's the sole person who can save the world. The longer the man is subject to Lee's bizarre rantings and treatments, the clearer it becomes that the conspiracy theorist has a personal connection to the man's company. Meanwhile, detectives attempt to locate the missing CEO, uncovering more of Lee's strange story. 

It's a stereotype of Asian cinema that consistent tones are not all that important. I've already seen an example of that this season in "Mahakaal." "Save the Green Planet!" does a much better job of blending different genre elements into a compelling whole though. The film is, ostensibly, a comedy. Lee's bizarre beliefs and eccentric behaviors are played for quirky laughs. This is most apparent in fantasy sequences that show him kicking a bully around with acrobatic martial arts. Or, my favorite scene in the scene, an extended lesson on the cosmology of his bizarre beliefs that feature serio-comic artwork of aliens abducting dinosaurs and an extended "2001: A Space Odyssey" parody. We are clearly meant to laugh at the guy's bizarre behavior and rants some of the time. "Save the Green Planet!" is fairly gruesome too though. Kang is subjected to having his leg chopped up with an axe, his chest burned with a steam iron, wounds rub with menthol spray, and is threatened with anal rape too. Dead bodies start to pile up as the story progresses. The movie walks a very fine tonal tight rope, never quite crossing over into the realm of gory slapstick but  too brutal to be light-hearted while also remaining extremely wacky in some regards. Somehow, it works though, the elevated mood sold by the often frenetic visuals and editing while everything else about the film's aesthetics suggest a certain degree of grit. The absurdity of Lee's beliefs are played for laughs, despite the severity of some of his actions. 

In fact, Joon-hwan does a good job of balancing the many different modes of the film. The scenes devoted to the detectives on the case have a nice hard-boiled approach to them with the right air of quirkiness to keep them from being dull. When an eccentric detective is digging around Lee's house, a genuine sense of suspense is engineered. A clear understanding of creating tension is on display, as Lee has to redirect the detective's attention away from the obvious evidence of his crime. The comedy is often whimsical, such as the girlfriend's heavily foreshadowed day job as a tight rope walker in a sideshow or the increasingly wacky details of Lee's conspiracy, thoughtfully introduced over the course of the film. As an off-beat sci-fi/horror film, "Save the Green Planet!" is also successfully quirky. The sci-fi aesthetic is patterned after the weird artwork of cult literature, which gives an amusingly off-beat feeling to the various flight of fantasy scenes. Keeping in the tradition of Korean genre cinema, the violence is brutal but stylized. Ranging from a stomped on hand to a body covered in bees, you feel the pain. Which is all the stranger when the implement of violence is, say, a giant robot arm or a steel dildo that ejaculates steam. (I did not anticipate both movies today featuring, weaponized sex toys.) Somehow, all these different elements work together equally well, instead of clashing wildly. 

Perhaps it all ties together so well because the film always takes Lee's story, no matter how unlikely it gets, seriously. Throughout the film, we learn more about the tragic circumstances that brought him to this point. His life has been one full of pain and loss. The elaborate conspiracy theories he's created emerge as a coping mechanism against a chaotic life. This quickly moves from being darkly funny – in how he gets revenge on the bully that's followed him since high school – to deeply sad. When he's using quack medicine to try and save a sick and dying loved one, I couldn't help but think of the people dying of cancer who have been convinced that pomegranate juice will save them. Shin Ha-kyun plays Lee as almost child-like, locked in a permanent adolescence as a result of never recovering from childhood trauma. This points towards an increasingly melancholy ending, that ends a film this strange and violent on a strangely poetic mark. 

Not every element of the film works for me. Lee's girlfriend, Su-ni, being a bigger eccentric than him struck me as an odd decision that the film never quite justifies. You definitely see the twist ending coming, which would've worked a bit better if the film had established more of a sense of ambiguity over what we're seeing. Finally, there's some distractingly bad shakiness in the cinematography sometimes, detracting from a film that otherwise looks good. "Save the Green Planet!" is definitely an example of a movie that pushes its own quirkiness as far as it can go, perhaps to diminishing returns at time. However, a sure handling of its opposing tones and a surprisingly firm grip on the tragedy of the main character makes a film that's probably too comedic to be a horror movie but too horrific to be a comedy work quite well. I'm very interested to see what Yorgos Lanthimos will do with this material. [7/10]

The Hunger: Sanctuary 

A few years back, I watched an episode of "The Hunger" and it sucked. You probably don't remember this, as I've never heard another soul discuss Showtime's attempt to build an on-going anthology out of the vampire cult classic. Surely, a horror program hosted by David Bowie can't be all bad? Let's give "Sanctuary" a shot. Bowie stars as Julian Priest, a once controversial performance artist who has fallen from relevance. He now lives as a recluse in a repurposed prison. One day, a mysterious man named Eddie Foden, on the run from the cops and currently sporting a bullet wound in his shoulder, shows up at Priest's compound. After thinking it over, Priest invites the man in. The two share a connection, linked by a story of sex and death, that will spell doom for them both. 

Within minutes of pressing play on "Sanctuary," I remembered why I dislike "The Hunger" TV show so much. The opening credits are an assault of jagged editing, abrasive noise, pseudo-philosophical profoundery, and artsy-fartsy attempts at edginess. The entire episode carries on in that fashion. Priest's art pieces include a naked woman being crucified, sawing a cow in half before a crowd, and slicing off a piece of his own skin on-camera. Are we to expect that any of that would actually raise an eyebrow in a post-"Piss Christ"/Damien Hirst art world? All of it is filmed in the same obnoxiously in-your-face style of the opening credits. The flashbacks are visually and aurally distorted. All the colors are sickly and washed out. All the locations are harsh and industrial, with unconventional camera angles. Basically, if all the shitty attempts to emulate the "Closer" music video were a late night Skinnemax show, that's what "The Hunger" is. Tony Scott himself directed this episode but it looks a lot more like "Man on Fire" than the original movie. 

As for the story content of "Sanctuary," it isn't much better. The idea of a washed-up artist meeting a younger man who reminds him of himself – connected by the same sleazy agent – isn't bad. The script simply can't let this premise breathe. Instead, it bogs itself down in rambling conversations about art and death that never exactly make sense. In an attempt to catch the viewer off-guard, the story constantly twists in on itself, keeping secrets instead of directly stating who it's characters are and what they want. The episode builds towards a metaphorical twist of some sort that doesn't make much sense at all. We still somehow anticipate it coming. Largely because this episode is so high on its own farts, that it's clearly going to try some rug-pulling final reveal that is attempting to make a wider point about something or other. 

It's garbage that has one thing going for it. Whether David Bowie was a great actor or merely savvy enough to lend his particular image to projects that suited him is debatable. I don't know if he gives a good performance here. I do know that hearing him call someone a cunt is totally worth watching this for. There's also some interesting meta-subtext here. The scene where a twitchy-as-usual Giovanni Ribisi berates Priest as someone who used to be cutting edge but is now irrelevant can't help but feel like Bowie commenting on his own place in pop history circa 1999. The late nineties and early 2000s are full of gems but I don't think it was a time in Bowie's career when he was considered the trend-setting, inflammatory artist he used to be. About the only relevant thing "Sanctuary" says is admitting all vital artists will succumb to this fate someday. At least those that don't self-destruct at a young age. If this is an interesting coincidence or if Bowie was genuinely hoping a show like this might get him out of a rut, I don't know. Considering this around the same time Mr. David Jones was soundtracking video games and starring in shit like "Mr. Rice's Secret," "Gunslinger's Revenge" and, well, this show, it's hard to believe the latter. Maybe I should try an episode from the Terence Stamp hosted first season next? Couldn't be much worse than this... [4/10]

The Addams Family: Cousin Itt and the Vocational Counselor 

This elegantly entitled episode has Morticia still worried about Cousin Itt finding a steady career. After throwing around a number of suggestions – including secret agent, a joke I seem to recall the nineties "Addams Family" cartoon ran with – Gomez and Mortica decide Itt would make a fine marriage counselor. The loving couple pose as his first clients and it goes badly. This prompts the family to call in a vocational expert by the name of Mortimer Phelps. At first baffled by the family's antics, Phelps soon becomes enthusiastic about helping Itt. 

You wouldn't think a walking pile of hair that speaks in gibberish would present many story opportunities but it seems Cousin Itt was popular with the "Addams Family" viewers back in 1965. You can tell not only because the show kept bringing the diminutive fur ball back. They also built a specific, new set for him, for a brief gag. That would be a Felix Sila sized room that Lurch has to crouch around inside of it. It's a good joke, better than the reoccurring one about Itt dreaming of becoming a stewardess. Let's not examine the cousin's gender identity nor the sexist expectations of certain jobs in 1960s America, okay? 

This is really an episode split in two. The first half springboards off the idea of Itt being a marriage counselor and Gomez and Mortica being his guinea pigs. We are so used to seeing these two be nothing but passionately in love with each other that having them roleplaying a bickering couple is actually a solid joke. You can see John Astin and Carolyn Jone's chemistry didn't work for romance alone in the moments of them arguing, which the episode nicely stretches out for a bit. That makes their quick reconciliation more meaningful too, Gomez's constant canoodling of his wife's arm seeming more passionate than usual. 

The rest of the episode plays the titular set-up, of Itt bouncing off Richard Deacon as Phelps. He makes for a good straight man, his reaction to Lurch – whimpering out "Help" before fleeing – being a good example of his skills. Conversations about Rorschach inkblots, word association, and block games cycle in nicely absurd directions. Instead of just going with the expected humor of a normie being weirded out by the Addams, Phelps quickly warms up to Itt. It results in one of the few endings of the show where Gomez seems genuinely annoyed with someone. Overall, this is one of those episodes that truly packs as many jokes into its runtime as possible. [7/10]