Halloween 2026: September 13th

 

Psycho III (1986)
 

Of the role of Norman Bates, Tony Perkins once said "I know this story. I should. I've lived with it – and sometimes tried to live it down – for more than 20 years." It's true that Perkins was frequently reluctant to embrace his status as a horror icon. Right after "Psycho" came out, he moved to Europe specifically to avoid typecasting. At the same time, the character of Norman Bates was too emblematic of the man himself: A smiling, sensitive boy-next-door being eaten alive by the secret he can't totally conceal. Perkins would always insist that it was the quality of the screenplays for the "Psycho" sequels that convinced him to return to the role. The star was supposedly enthusiastic about Charles Edward Pogues' script for "Psycho III" but another factor surely convinced him to put on Mother's dress for a third time: He would get to direct too, a strategy often effective in luring reluctant stars back to the franchises that both blessed and cursed them with immediate stardom. 

Though released three years after "Psycho II," the story is set a mere month later. Following part two's events, the local police are sympathetic to Norman and business is booming for the Bates Motel. Norm has to hire help, a drifter named Duke, to assist with running the place. None of them know that the taxidermied corpse of Emma Spool has taken Norma Bates' place in the rocking chair. A journalist arrives in town and is drawn to Spool's disappearance, convinced Bates has something to do with it. She's not the only stranger in Fairvale. Maureen is a nun who, after accidentally pushing another sister from a bell tower during a crisis of faith, fled into the desert. She ends up at the hotel too, inflaming Norman's lust and activating "Mother's" possessiveness. An intended shower murder instead turns into Norman rescuing Maureen from a suicide attempt. The two attempt a relationship of sorts but blood will soon be shed again...

When Universal first announced they were making a sequel to “Psycho” in the early eighties, I'm sure some folks fully expected a trashy slasher flick that would be an embarrassing stain on the legacy of Hitchcock's masterpiece. “Psycho II” decidedly was not that movie but “Psycho III” kind of is. Norman slashes a young woman's throat as she sits on the toilet after urinating. One of Duke's one-night-stands thrusts her breasts into the camera before being stabbed to death inside a telephone booth. The sex and nudity the original could only imply are on full display here. (Which would've included some male frontal nudity too, if Jeff Fahey hadn't been squeamish.) While some critics would surely be bothered by this, I happen to enjoy a trashy slasher sequel. “Psycho III's” blood lust is well engineered, with quality special effects and a certain ferocity to the violence. If you can swallow Norman Bates acting a bit more like Jason Voorhees than usual, you will find plenty more here to like too. 

For his directorial debut, Perkins was clearly trying to bring his trademark character into the modern age. Carter Burwell's score features none of the familiar themes and is largely synth-driven. Cinematographer Bruce Surtees was primarily Clint Eastwood's D.P. up to this point, which is probably why “Psycho III” focuses on the wide flatness of the desert around the motel more than the previous films. Or the clinging sweat to the actor's face, emphasizing the heat of the Arizona nights. But westerns were not the key visual inspiration here. Rather, the sequel is heavy on neon lighting and askew camera angles. This pairs well with a plot that grows increasingly outrageous as it goes on. Improbable reversals of previous plot twists, a little blackmail, religious awe, and a dead body in a freezer are some of the additions grafted onto the “Psycho” premise here. It's all quite over-the-top and the sequel is aware of that. Perkins embraces the Hitckcockian tradition of winking, naughty, pitch black humor. “Psycho III” notably features a cut to a darkened room, a woman grunting and walls trembling... Before revealing that she's just struggling to open a freezer. Oh, what a scamp you are, “Psycho III!” 

The extra layer of sleaziness atop “Psycho III” is not strictly for its own purpose. After her suicide attempt, Maureen visits a priest, asking him about the nature of sin and carnal thoughts. Accordingly, the sequel surrounds its characters with temptation. Duke, a total sleazeball who nearly assaults Maureen in his first scene, is always looking to get laid. The partiers celebrating the sports team ask Norman to join them. Of course, Norman isn't merely being tempted by sex. The minute he catches a glimpses of Maureen, he is transfixed and terrified. When he sees that her initials are the same as Marion Crane, he has to leave the room. Upon learning that Duke has put the girl up in Room 1, he is drawn to the familiar peep hole on the wall. It's almost as if the world is actively pushing Norman's buttons, urging him to return to his old, murderous ways. That's how any addict or ex-con feels: You are forced back into a society fully expecting you to still be bad and countless opportunities to do so are placed right in front of you. Almost as if they are set-up to fail, ya know?

Through this set-up, “Psycho III” builds on the second film's themes of forgiveness. The first sequel asked if someone like Norman Bates can ever be forgiven for such salacious crimes. Or if such a judgemental attitude is ultimately fair to a person forged into a killer by an abusive parent. The community of Fairvale seems ready to forgive their local notorious murderer. The narrative hands Norman a girlfriend who is happy to match his freak, a female returning his attraction for the first time in the series' history. Ultimately, as much as Norma Bates' control over her son extends beyond the grave, Norman is the Master Bates of his own destiny. He must forgive himself, must let go of the pain of the past and accept that a hopeful future is possible, if he's ever going to put his stabbing days behind him. 

And if “Psycho III” is a meta movie as much about Perkins' own career as about the character, maybe that conclusion has a personal resonance. Is this the actor/director accepting that he can't resent his association with this character? If we presume an even deeper connection, is this some sort of statement by Perkins on his own, often scrutinized sexuality? It's hard to say. (Especially since he would deny his queerness shortly before dying from AIDS-related complications.) The film must conform to the expectations of a grisly horror flick. Norman's love is ultimately doomed, in a way as overheated and knowingly absurd as the rest of the film. While the sequel plays coy for a while, it ultimately does give Bates-in-Drag his rock star reveal. The sequel is happily to escalate things, most notably in a tense sequence that puts Norman in the front seat of a car as it goes into the swamp. The twist on the last movie's twist that part three provides, intentionally or not, suggest that evil is hereditary. Which means Norman doesn't have any choice over his actions. This is further supported by the before-the-credits teaser, a last minute addition because Universal execs feared the ending wasn't “scary” enough. 
 

If part three is not the sturdiest film on a thematic level, that doesn't effect its ability to entertain. It turns out, going full coked-up DePalma was the right choice for this series. “Psycho III” is knowingly ridiculous and absurd but is clearly having so much fun with that. The stylish visuals and pulsating soundtrack makes this all the more of a sleazy head-trip. Perkins' performance is at maximum twitchiness, Norman stuttering from the first scene. Any movie that begins with a nun plummeting to her death is already daring the audience to accuse it of going too far, the sequel continuing to press those buttons as it goes along. If “Psycho” was always doomed to just become another slasher series, at least those in-charge were determined to make sure they had fun with it. The film also belongs to one of the most delightful of horror micro-genres: Movies that got tie-in music videos where the “monster” pursues someone in new footage. Irresistible. [8/10]

 

The Ape Man (1943)  

Silver Age comic nerds know that it's a fact – or at least an anecdote repeated so frequently that it's become a fact – that books with some sort of ape on the cover moved more copies than non-ape festooned comics. B-movie producers of the forties and fifties seem to have been aware of this phenomenon as well. You could easily fill an entire day with Poverty Horror films from that period, featuring a gorilla. A few referred to the primates as “monsters,” surely disappointing cinema goers assuming that word means something a little more exotic than a well-studied and understood animal. Maybe it was just the lingering impact of “King Kong.” Or maybe it was because you can buy a gorilla outfit at any costume shop in the country, making them a cheap “monster” to put on-screen. Bela Lugosi starred in a few movies like this. 1943's “The Ape Man” is one of them, though it at least features a mad scientist having a questionable hair day. It was the fifth of the widely distributed but rarely lauded nine films Lugosi starred in for Monogram Pictures and the second to directed by William “One-Shot” Beaudine. 

“Gland doctor” James Brewster has vanished and this is apparently headline news A group of reporters gather at the dock to interview Brewster's sister, a ghost hunter named Agatha, as she steps off a boat. She meets with Dr. Randall, Brewster's colleague, who informs her that the story of the man's disappearance is a hoax. Instead, the truth is much stranger: During their experiments with a gorilla, Brewster transformed himself into a human/ape hybrid. He now hides in the underground lab, sleeping in the same cage as the ape test subject. Injections of spinal fluid can momentarily undo the change but the samples most come from freshly dead donors. After Randall makes it clear that he's unwilling to kill for his friend, Brewster decides to do it himself. His gorilla bunk mate does the throat crushing and Agatha helps cover it up.. Reporter Jeff Carter, and his newly assigned female photographer Billie Mason, end up investigating. 
 

Monogram and Beaudine made these movies so quickly and so cheaply, that it's genuinely hard to say what tonal choices were intentional or not. Like the slightly later “Voodoo Man,” “The Ape Man” can charitably be described as goofy. To convey his character's transformation into a gorilla hybrid, Lugosi hunches his shoulders downward and limps around in an oddly skipping fashion. He often grows annoyed with his gorilla minion, played by an actor with awfully soulful eyes in an extremely shitty looking gorilla suit. This results in multiple sequences of Lugosi attempting to intimidate or whip the beast back, the result only being comical. There are long stretches without dialogue, where Lugosi and his gorilla buddy are wandering around and making faces at each other. It becomes utterly impossible not to imagine sarcastic dialogue between the two in these moments. When combined with awkwardly framed moments, like Lugosi and his monkey minion sneaking up on multiple people, I found myself laughing at a lot of “The Ape Man.”

Also like “Voodoo Man,” some of this silliness was intentional. The movie has a definite comedic streak. Wallace Ford plays our journalist hero and, in typical Wallace Ford fashion, he's prone to making smart-alack remarks. Most of these asides are sexist comments directed at Louise Currie's heroine. Ford's character seems to find it difficult to accept that a woman could be a photographer and he often denigrates her presence. That's funny mostly because it's such a defined relic of antiquated he-man chauvinism, though the film seems to consider it witty romantic banter. The first scene also features a vagrant in a hat, who seems oddly well informed about everything that's happening around him. He reoccurs a few times, watching actions from the distance. At one point, he redirects a potential victim of the villain to spare her life. Who the hell this guy is or why he's here is not revealed until the final scene and it's another fourth wall breaking punchline. None of these elements are as funny as the sight of Lugosi lumbering around with a very Hasidic looking beard. However, they were obviously put in the movie on-purpose. “The Ape Man” wants us to giggle at least a little. 

Again, it's hard to give the makers of “The Ape Man” too much credit for making a self-aware horror/comedy. The film is exceedingly cheap, most of the scenes taking place in a collection of mundane looking rooms and offices. Beaudine's direction is utterly flat, most of the sequences being staged like community theater. While cinematographer Mack Stengler throws in one or two neat shots of shadows on the wall, the film is mostly extremely boring to look at. Plot wise, “The Ape Man” is basically a re-trend of Lugosi's earlier “Murders in the Rue Morge.” Dr. Brewster describes feeling more bestial and ape-like at times, as if his sanity is slipping away. His gorilla-assisted murder spree is implicitly a result of his unstable mind. However, the lack of money and creativity denies Lugosi a proper chance to play a full Jekyll and Hyde or werewolf scenario. He does however make several Frankenstein-like growls. “The Ape Man” was released in theaters about a week after “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman's” Hollywood premiere, so it's hard to say which one was filmed first. Was this a test-run for Lugosi's one-off tenure as Frankenstein's Monster or was that character simply on his mind from playing it recently? 

As a Bela fan, “The Ape Man” is honestly a somewhat depressing watch. The scene where Lugosi sits in a chair and ruefully talks about the mistakes in his life that led to this point is the most soulful bit of acting he does. Knowing the financial and personal failures that led him to starring in movies for Monogram, it's hard not to read a sad level of real life subtext in that line. He does get one other good line, when threatening his sister, but mostly the goofy physicality defines the role. Also like most of the Monogram 9, the pacing drags and the plot wanders around without clear direction a few times. I don't think we needed all those scenes of Wallace Ford trying to figure out how to open the secret passage way behind the fireplace. The villain's sister being a ghost hunter, most of the newsroom banter, and war-time references never genuinely effect the plot. This is, in other words, a bad movie, cheap and derivative and sloppy and not notable for much at all. But I did laugh a lot and that final scene is really baffling, so I won't call this time entirely wasted either. [6/10]

Ghost Story: The Dead We Leave Behind
 

During last year's Halloween shenanigans, I mentioned an obscure anecdote. In Stephen King's “Danse Macabre,” he credits an episode of obscure, short-lived seventies anthology “Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected” with giving him the proper willies. However, the scene he describes is actually from an episode of a different obscure, short-lived seventies anthology. It's actually from “Ghost Story's” first non-pilot episode, “The Dead We Leave Behind.” Park Ranger Elliot Brent resides in a cabin in the woods with his much younger wife, Joanna. The two do not seem to enjoy each others' company and she spends most of her time glued to the TV. This irritates Brent. After a spirited argument, he accidentally throttles his wife to death. Rather than take responsibility for the crime, he buries her body in the woods. Afterwards, he begins to have unsettling visions via the same television Joanna favored so much, of his victim rising from the dirt for revenge. He ends up putting some other bodies in the ground, similar mysterious dreams – or are they premonitions? – following. 

While writing about “Shadows of Fear” yesterday, I made the observation that it was a worthwhile piece of television despite starting deeply unlikable characters. “The Dead We Leave Behind” also follows a terrible person. Jason Robards plays Park Ranger Brent as a man perpetually in a grumpy mood. I don't know why he married Stella Stevens, as he seems to actively resent her presence. Granted, a TV buzzing inane bullshit all day would grate on my nerves after a while too. However, Brent would rather listen to the squawking cacophony of his CB radio instead. Is that any better? In general, the script doesn't give the protagonist much depth. Robards has a certain gravelly charisma but mostly the episode made me wonder why I should care about this asshole's life at all.

“The Dead We Leave Behind” also doesn't have the clearest internal logic. There are references to local beliefs about burying the dead as soon as possible, least their spirits rise. That is the only set-up for the supernatural events that follow. The episode is clearly trying to play out like a nightmare, a man's guilt over his actions manifesting as bad dreams. However, Robards' character doesn't seem to feel any remorse for his actions, so that doesn't work. The repetitive nature of his visions get boring fast, spoiling any creep factor it has. We need a little more pulp to this set-up for it too work as some “Tales from the Crypt” style supernatural comeuppance. I do like Sebastian Cabot as “Ghost Story's” host in framing device. I also enjoy the suggestion here that the hotel he oversees is less a regular hotel and more some sort of afterlife. But “Ghost Story” remains an inconsistent series and this episode is one of the weaker ones. Sorry, Uncle Steve. [5/10]

 

Friday the 13th: The Series: A Cup of Time
 

“Friday the 13th: The Series” attempts to tie together several seemingly unrelated ideas. Someone in town is murdering homeless people. They goad them into drinking from a cursed tea cup, after which they mysteriously suffocate to death. Meanwhile, pop star Lady Die is in town, preparing for a big concert. Bertie, an older woman who seems to have a crush on Jack, is desperately trying to attract him despite his lack of interest. (The show seems to treat her as someone we should recognize but this is her first appearance.) However, after getting one look at Lady Die, she seems to recognize her as an old friend. Yes, Lady Die is the tea cup murderer, which gives its owner renewed youth in exchange for a regular supply of victims. Also, there's a homeless little girl that Micki quasi-adopts for the reminder of the episode but that's not so important. 

“A Cup of Time” is the first episode of “Friday the 13th: The Series” to actually remind me of the movies it is named after. The beginning is a P.O.V. shot of someone prowling through the underbrush and sneaking up on a napping person. Nearer to the end, there's a sequence of someone getting chased through the forest by an unhinged old woman. While murder is prominently featured, there's no resemblance otherwise to the slasher roots of this program. “A Cup of Time” is another “Friday the 13th” episode that is heavy on the goofiness. Once again, the premise itself is underwhelming. A tea cup is not a scary prop. The effects used to bring its evil actions to life are extremely creaky stop-motion sequences of vines creeping out of the cup and strangling the drinker to death. That the villain must convince everyone to drink from the cup in order to facilitate these murders further stretches plausibility. At one point, she tempts someone by saying that a cup of hot tea is comforting on a warm night. To whom, exactly? 

This is paired with another weirdly prevalent trope in Canadian eighties genre TV: Highly unconvincing fictional pop stars. Naming your pop-punk princess Lady Die is clever. Unfortunately, the music we hear her sing is dreadful. Her big single is a Casio rock version of “I'm a Little Tea Pot.” It's as intolerable to listen to it as that sounds. It's also hard to believe that such an act would develop a die-hard fan base of New Wave kids. While there's some definite meat on the bone of idea of connecting a homicidal desire for youth with the pressures of the entertainment industry, “A Cup of Time” never finds any substance. Its plot threads feel unrelated. Also the make-up used to turn Lady Die into an old hag looks like a cheap Halloween mask of Grandpa from “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” This is the third episode in a row to feature Jack putting on a disguise and unconvincing voice, so I guess that's going to happen a lot. Needed more inappropriate flirting between cousins. [5/10]

Halloween 2026: October 5th

 

The Thing (2011)
 

John Carpenter's “The Thing” ranks near the top of any list of obvious future classics that were initially dismissed by audiences and critics. This is the most basic piece of trivia about the movie. Nine years after the film's unsuccessful theatrical run, enough of a cult following had built up to make a continuation of some sort commercially viable. That's when “Darkman” screenwriter Chuck Pfarrer pitched Universal on a sequel. The studio passed on the treatment but it would re-emerge as a comic book from Dark Horse. (Re-titled “The Thing from Another World,” to distinguish itself from Marvel's ever-lovin', blue-eyed variety.) Three further comic book arcs sprung off from that one, proving that there was demand for more Things. This would kick off a series of attempts to sequelize Carpenter's remake but, in the metamorphic nature of the alien threat, always in mediums other than film. There was an almost well received video game in 2002. Three years after that, Frank Darabont attempted to produce a four hour long television mini-series for the Sci-Fi Channel. This would've depicted what happens when the Thing reaches a populated area. That didn't get made but, in 2007, you could walk through a Halloween Horror Nights maze based on the film.
 
All of this suggested a serious desire to replicate the 1982 film. During the horror reboot hungry new millennium, rumors of a remake of Carpenter's remake sprung from the ice. Quickly realizing that an imperfect clone would be unflatteringly compared to the progenitor, it was decided to follow the second most hacky trend of the time and do a prequel about the Norwegian camp instead. Dutchman Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. quickly boarded as director and a new “Thing” finally grew. Much like another horror reboot Universal made around the same time, the film was subjected to clueless executive meddling and reshoots. Fans and critics generally saw the prequel as an unconvincing copy of what came before. Though it did duplicate Carpenter's work in the sense that it also didn't make much money at the box office... Despite general audiences rejecting the premise twice now, there has been some hubbub recently about another stab at “The Thing.” It remains to be seen if anything will sprout from that but it did prompt me to revisit this prequel, to see if it was better than I recalled from a decade ago. 

And so we return to the frozen wasteland of Antarctica, slightly before the last time we visited it. A Norwegian research team from Thule Station are crossing the ice when their vehicle plunges through the surface. Within, they make two startling discoveries: An apparent otherworldly space craft and, a short distance away from it, the frozen remains of its very inhuman passenger. Kate Lloyd, an American paleontologist who specializes in excavating fossils from the ice, is called in to assist. The team successfully removes the hunk of glacier containing the life form and takes it back to the station. Team leader Dr. Halvorson is ecstatic to have made the paradigm shifting discovery that man is not alone in the universe. Kate and the others, including American helicopter pilot Sam, are less certain. That feeling grows when the thing in the ice breaks out, springing back to life after millions of years. Worst yet, the creature possesses the ability to assimilate and perfectly replicate living tissue. Now, much like an American team will discover in the near future, the residents of the station must contend with the shapeshifting Thing and their own paranoia about who could possibly be it. 

While the uncertainty of its ending has been endlessly discussed, Carpenter's "Thing" is greatly served by ambiguity all throughout. Who among the cast is the monster is rarely certain. The "what" around the creature is largely explained, "where" remains a vague answer of outer space, and the "why" is totally unrevealed. What happened at the Norwegian base is a purposely intriguing question, meant to draw the audience in further and foreshadow what will happen to the Americans soon, but the specific details were a mystery. All of these touches are what makes "The Thing" the intriguing, involving film it is. The prequel, meanwhile, seeks to answer as many questions as possible. Heijningen and his team went through the exploratory scene set at the abandoned base with a fine-tooth comb. They then built their film around showing us the exact steps that led to each little detail. Even minor ones like an axe embedded in a wall or an overturned shelf. It's a well-intentioned but flawed thesis, misunderstanding the purpose of a scene meant largely to entice and forebode as backstory that must be breathlessly detailed. This is the kind of fan boy brain better applied to wikia pages than narratives. 

This is not the main bone of contention people have to pick with 2011's "The Thing" though. No, the prequel was vexed by the exact annoying bullshit everyone feared from a modern day follow-up. Tom Woodruff Jr.'s Amalgamated Dynamics created practical creature effects for the project and they were used on-set. After test audiences complained that the results "looked like an eighties movie," CGI was hastily plastered over the rubber and latex. The effects team were so dismayed at the last minute changes that Woodruff ended up crowdfunding his own "Thing" inspired, all-practical (and totally forgettable) movie. Heijningen, meanwhile, has expressed regret over kowtowing to a clueless studio. Some internet users have petitioned for a release of the unaltered footage, if not a full director's cut of the prequel. This presents a tidy, fan-favorite narrative, of the promising young filmmaker having his vision ruined by air-headed execs. Of a disregard of hand-made artistry in favor of shiny, modern technology that will age far quicker and far worse. 

Now, I have no doubt that the practical creature make-up was easily superior to the rushed out CGI the final film utilizes. The digital effects are often poorly combined with the live actors. A face splitting in two or the final adversary both look especially unconvincing. However, Woodruff has clarified that his team's designs were maintained, the puppetry merely replaced with identical if less convincing CGI. None of the monstrous forms on-display here compare in any way to the work of a sleep-deprived, coked-up, young and hungry Rob Bottin. The original film featured asymmetrical creations, flesh that twisted and warped with a vicious nightmare logic. It combined the very familiar frailty of our human bodies with unexpected sights and sounds, to create a truly alien seeming entity. The prequel, meanwhile, always seems to center a face or jaws in its mutations. There are a lot of vagina dentata like maws or stabbing tentacles shooting forward like arrows. Bodies bend and flop around but are still recognizably human. The one clever gag the film has, an arm suddenly detaching, is quickly squandered by the film returning to gaping, toothy, screeching mouths. While the mediocre digital blanket job does the designs no favor, they repeatedly show a lack of imagination. Never once did the transformations make me wonder what the hell I was looking at, which is kind of an essential quality for this material. 

That lack of imagination is apparent in other elements of the film. While not technically a remake, 2011's “The Thing” essentially operates as one. Many of the iconic moments have similar sequences here. The beloved blood test is reprised, this time with fillings in teeth being used as the indicator that someone is still human. The aforementioned bit with the arm clearly recalls that time a head skittered across the floor. The prequel also concludes with a stand-off between the hero and the monster in its own lair, climaxing in a fiery explosion. Rather than expand on the first film, the script is content to merely repeat what worked before. Except Matthijs van Heijiningen Jr. isn't John Carpenter, with the rest of the crew clearly being similar downgrades. Instead of a score that emphasizes quiet unease, dramatic moments are punctuated with loud notes on the soundtrack. Instead of focusing on generating a feeling of isolation, the film goes for shit jumping out of the dark at you. 

2011's “The Thing” functions a lot like a modern legacy sequel, in the way it seems designed to simply remind viewers of a better movie with most of the changes being cosmetic. While Carpenter's “Thing” is famously devoid of female characters, this one has two. Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Kate. You'd think inserting a woman into an all-male space, especially in a story set in the early eighties, would present opportunities for commentary on gender dynamics or sexism or something. Kate is treated badly by Dr. Halvorson but not because she's a woman. It's because he's an asshole who is angered by anybody who challenges his plans. If a man had played this part, her function in the story would be entirely unchanged. Which is either the most progressive position you can take or renders the choice so arbitrary as to make you wonder why it was done at all. Having the French doctor also be a woman doesn't make this a male-exclusive environment anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. 

Perhaps I'm nitpicking, complaining about what a film isn't and not about what it is. However, if a quasi-remake does little more than make changes simply to be different from the original, something has gone astray. A pun about how the authors of this "Thing" were not as good at copying as their titular menace is unavoidable. Personally, I think if you are going to make a belated follow-up to an iconic film, you're better served not blatantly emulating scenes and story beats from such a highly regarded work. Maybe the next remake should go back to the monster being a plant guy. What makes this "Thing" more unnecessary is that a far more clever remix of Carpenter's classic was released the year before. Peter Watts' short story "The Things" retells the 1982 events from the perspective of the alien, aghast that Earthlings are unable to shapeshift and unwilling to be assimilated. I don't know how you'd translate that story cinematically but it would make for a more interesting variation than this unimaginative prequel. [5/10]

In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro (1986)

You might not have heard of Raju Patel but he had a curious life and career. The son of an India born filmmaker, he was born and raised in Kenya. His dad, Sharad Patel, had some success with the biopic about Idi Amin where imprisoned journalist Denis Hills played himself. With business dealings in both England and America, Patel would have a pretty big hit with sex comedy “Bacholer Party” at only 24 years old. He would work on Disney movies, Hindi-language productions, and collaborated with random names like Mark Damon and Michael Jackson. He then checked out of life early, dying in his forties of colon cancer. Despite his eccentric career, Raju Patel would only direct one feature. That would be “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro,” an international co-production that nonetheless still qualifies as one of the few horror movies made in Kenya. It's a trap-on-VHS cast-off that has a pretty good title, which is why I remember it. After all, if you're going to put a famous African mountain in a horror movie, probably a good idea to go with the one that has “Kill” in its name.

Within the shadow of the titular mountain peak are the key locations the film takes place in: The small village of Namanga, a school building for the local youths, a mining operation overseen by an Australian named Chris Tucker, and a hotel/bar that largely serves the miners. The area is caught in an on-going drought and it's causing the local wildlife to behave aggressively. American zoologist Jack Ringtree, while awaiting for his wife to arrive in the village, discovers a child orphaned after her mother is killed by unknown animals. This proceeds further violent attacks, the responsible party being a large troop of vicious baboons. Jack tries to alert the authorities and evacuate the area but his concerns are dismissed. It's not too long before the baboon attacks increase in frequency and intensity, soon trapping the locals within the hotel. 

Among the various dangerous wildlife of the African plains, the Chacma baboon probably ranks far below the more well-known body counts of lions, elephants, hippos, cape buffalo, wild dogs, hyenas, and so forth. Which is not to say that the baboon can't make for a properly intimidating visual. They have those massive fangs after all, the puffy face pads, the big red butts, the sinewy little bodies. While their primate intelligence has made them nuisances to people over the years, it's mostly the fact that they are exceptionally crazy looking when pissed off that makes the baboon a decent movie monster. “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” exploits this nicely. The baboon attack scenes, mostly done with real animals, get a lot of mileage out of the apparent ferocity of these monkeys. A swarming pack of angry baboons going right for your face is, indeed, a scary thought. “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” emphasizes this with some surprisingly gory special effects, of severed limbs and other body parts slumping to the ground as the beasties tear people apart. 

At the same time, the premise of “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” may strike some as, at the very least, unlikely. Baboons are not historically known to be man-eaters and, in some lights, can be kind of cute. The film tries to deflect this thought by claiming to be based on a true story. (An internet search on the topic mostly redirects back to this movie, meaning it couldn't have been too well known an event.) Despite that, “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” still generates outrageous chuckles more often than gasps. A rather robotic looking baboon puppet is used for a few scenes. I do applaud the actor playing an airplane pilot in one sequence, who keeps on flying while a very real mad ape is going at his head. Despite that intensity, it's still a deliriously silly sequence. Vicious as they can appear, I guess there is something inherently comical about monkeys sometimes. Still, in its last third, when the film becomes something of a siege picture about a stranded group of survivors hiding in a single location from the rampaging horde, it does generate some okay tension. The wind blowing on the plains at night, wild beast with glowing eyes emerging out of the darkness through a broken window, isn't a bad effect.  

By some improbable coincidence, this is the second jungle-set movie I've reviewed this year that features John Rhys-Davis sporting a preposterous accent. This time, the Welsh thespian adopts an Australian accent as the overseer of the mining operations. He's joined by Timothy Bottoms as Jack. If all animal attack movies are “Jaws” rip-offs of a sort, Rhys-Davis would probably slot into the Quint role. Bottoms is a combination of Sheriff Brody – the low-level authority whose reasonable warnings are ignored by those in command – and Hooper, an animal expert. Unfortunately, the film does not flesh its lead characters out any beyond that. The subplot of Jack and his wife's stormy relationship is nothing but filler. There appears to be an undercurrent in the script, criticizing white industrialists exploiting the natural resources of Kenya. This is most apparent in Don Blakely's role as the elderly, fairly racist hotel owner. This idea never germinates into anything substantial though. The film misses the chance to have its clueless town leader get munched by some crazed monkeys. I guess that correlates with the mayor making it out of “Jaws” unscathed. 

The underwhelming character work pairs with an abrupt and unsatisfying ending, though I suppose it's as logical a conclusion as you'd expect from a story about a drought. “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” never quite comes together. The script is too thinly sketched and unable to mine consistent thrills out of its fuzzy threats. Which isn't to say that there isn't some novelty to a baboons go bananas horror flick, especially one set on the actual African continent. (Which distinguishes this one from “Shakma,” whose trailer is slightly funnier, on the short list of baboon-sploitation flicks.) Raju Patel, or at least the team he hired, does show a semi-decent handling of the material, suggesting he probably could have made better movies than this one further down the line. I guess the experience of wrangling a pack of literal baboons did not endear the directional process to the guy. This is definitely a film I wanted to like more than I actually did, if only because of its novelty, but there's not quite enough here to make it stick. Though that airplane attack scene is hilarious. [6/10]

 

 

Wednesday: Woe What a Night
 

I feel like any time I review a modern streaming series, all I do is complain about how these shows are paced, plotted, and structured. The fourth episode of "Wednesday" is a case study example of how sloppy this style is. The show has stacked up a collection of plot threads that it can leap between whenever it wants, with no concern for tonal consistency, satisfying pacing, or overall coherence. This installment sees Wednesday digging deeper into her investigation of the wide-eyed monster in the woods, presenting her evidence to an annoyed and stunned Sheriff Galpin. She discovers that it takes body parts from each of its victims and seems to find its cave lair. She spots some scratches on Xavier's neck and uncovers his secret art studio, which includes paintings of the beast. Suspecting him of being connected to the killer, Wednesday instead ends up asking Xavier out to the upcoming school dance to cover for herself. 

This uncorks a mess of soap opera-like romantic entanglements. Enid goes to the dance with another guy, one of the bullies in town, to make Ajax jealous after he stood her up the other night. Xavier apparently genuinely likes Wednesday and, when he discovers that she only asked him out because of the mystery, he asks his siren ex-girlfriend to erase his memories of the Addams. But Wednesday still has a date to the dance cause Thing, of his own accord, asked normie townie boy Tyler to take her instead. That's not all of the melodrama at work here, as nerdy beekeeping boy Eugene is also harboring a crush on Enid. Oh my god, what the fuck. How is this an "Addams Family" show? Netflix really did take a premise designed to deliver goofy, morbid sight gags and turned it into a "Twilight" style supernatural romance for teenagers and fandom-brained Tumblr users. 

By 2022, however, the comic strip and sitcom that spawned her was long since overshadowed by the snarky goth girl archetype that Wednesday Addams became in the popular consciousness. "Wednesday" is a show more for people who saw the Barry Sonnefield films as a kid and caught a crush on Christina Ricci or fans of some YouTube cosplay account than anything else. I mean, the character imprinted on young me too, leading to an unfortunate life long fascination for women with dark hair, black clothes, cyanide wits, and undiagnosed BPD. Tim Burton deserves a lot of blame for the commodification of the goth subculture too, which makes his involvement with this show almost satirically on-the-nose. This episode really gets at how annoying this entire shtick has become in two moments. That is when a character tells Wednesday how he admires how free and unburdened she is by social expectations. Once again, it is hammered that Wednesday is a self-styled outcast, unpopular with her peers. A bit hard to buy that when she's at the center of two separate crushes in this episode alone and her family clearly has a long history with the school she's attending. Another scene has Wednesday criticizing the "objectification of women and the male gaze," a tweet misconstrued into dialogue. The episode then features the obviously movie star pretty Jenna Ortega doing a wacky girl dance at the goth prom to a Cramps song. It is a moment so tailor-made to appeal to people with a fetish for superficial strangeness that it's really as objectifying and othering for the young woman at its center as a strip tease would be. 

Of course, that scene became a viral sensation and is probably the main reason "Wednesday" became such a hit for Netflix. Like I said, I'm part of the problem. I liked that scene. It is one of the few moments "Woe What a Night" emerges from its own mess of subplots and rehashed cliches to show a spark of energy or wit. The "Carrie" homage that follows is predictable as can be but Ortega's enthusiasm and then disappointment with the stunt actually got a laugh out of me. So did how she stumbles through her attempt to ask the long-haired pretty boy to the dance. Or the genuinely cool shot of her and Enid in their dorm, split right down the middle between their two distinctive aesthetics. All of this suggests that if "Wednesday" was as much of a sitcom as the show that spawned it, merely about contrasting the protagonist's particular behavior against stratified adolescent social rituals, it would probably be consistently funny. Alas, such a humble pleasure is beyond the modern media landscape and I have four more episodes of this show, that I very stupidly promised to review, to wade through. [5/10]
 

 

The Twilight Zone: To Serve Man

As with past installments I've covered, I know the twist ending of "To Serve Man," the 24th episode of "The Twilight Zone's" third season, very well.  The rest of the episode is discussed less often. Alien beings known as the Kanamit arrived on Earth. They come in peace and, moreover, generosity. The beings speak to the United Nations from a book and offer endless treasures. While people are skeptical at first, the Kanamits lives up to their offers. They turn barren deserts into verdant fields. They offer impenetrable force fields to each nation, ending all international conflict overnight. They also willingly submit themselves to any tests the Earth governments ask for. Among these is an attempt by the American government to translate the significant book the aliens brought with them, whose title means "To Serve Man." Chambers, a cryptographer, and his assistant Patty work at the task. As pleasure cruises from Earth to the Kanamit home world begin, Chambers decides to join such a ride. As he boards the vessel, Patty arrives to inform him of the book's true purpose... 

The outlook of Rod Serling's work was usually pessimistic. Many of his stories reflect a belief that, while the individual person might be good, the human race is destined to destroy itself over petty grievances. "To Serve Man" is a bit unusual in that an outside force is the antagonist. Nine foot tall, dome-headed aliens arrive extending a glad hand only for it to hide more sinister intentions. It is tempting to read the moral as xenophobic or at least extremely cautious: Don't trust any offer that seems too good to be true. It reminds me of Hansel and Gretel, where endless generosity and a shelter in a storm are only a precursor to pure predation. All that kindness is to disarm you. All those sweets are just to fatten you up. While "To Serve Man" is ultimately cynical in its perspective, I do think Serling is criticizing mankind's preference for easy answers and gluttony more than anything else. Alien saviors arrive and resolve all our problems instantly. It makes us so happy that we can barely stop to consider their motivations. Moreover, the Kanamit promises endless pleasures too. Why, as a man boarding their ship excitedly shouts, they even have baseball on their home world. Maybe that fairy tale comparison is apt and the episode should be taken as a simple warning that good intentions are not always what they seem. Now, as then, tis simple truth, sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth. Literally, in this case. 

My initial reaction to "To Serve Man" is once again astonishment at how economical vintage television could be in its story telling. This is a far reaching story, about the entire planet's reaction to otherworldly visitors, and ends in outer space. Despite that, it runs a half-hour and mostly takes place in a few simple rooms. The action is mostly composed of people talking. Somehow, the stakes never feel artificial and the audience never feels cheapen. The U.N. setting establishes the global impact of these events and the seriousness with which each actor approaches the material makes the consequences feel fittingly important. I really like the montage in which leaders of various countries thank and welcome the alien visitors, speaking in their own languages with the translation appearing as a news ticker at the bottom of the screen. It shows that newsreels and stock footage – notable examples immediately recognizable as from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "Earth vs. The Flying Saucers" – can indeed be used to create a sense of scale and wide-reaching events. It's never the budget of a project but always the people utilizing it. 

"To Serve Man" doesn't have the intense expressionistic visuals of "Eye of the Beholder" nor the surreal nightmare logic of "It's A Good Life." Director Richard L. Bare – who would go on to direct "Wicked, Wicked" and 166 episodes of "Green Acres" – mostly keeps things simple. Though I do like the Kanamit being introduced first as a towering shadow on the wall before we see its face. Beloved tall guy Richard Kiel plays the lead alien. While the bulging cranium and white robes are typical of extraterrestrial depictions of the time, the Kanamit communicating strictly via telepathy means their faces are unmoving. Their eyes seem to project dull, animalistic instincts while their mouth droops open slightly, like a dog salivating over a ham bone. Maybe that's meant to be a hint to their motivations being hunger, not kindness. The ending is one of bitter irony, the title being revealed as a sick punchline, and the final moments being a grim conclusion that the wilier predator is always destined to eat the lesser one. Pretty good stuff. A tasty meal served quickly and effectively. [7/10]

Halloween 2026: September 3rd

 

Primate (2025)

Having now inspired two separate horror movies, it looks like Travis is going to be the most influential non-human anthropoid of the 21st century. Sorry, Harambe. I apologize for being glib. The story of Sandra Herold, her chimpanzee “son,” and the friend of the family he left brutally deformed was a senseless tragedy all around. Unfortunately, it was also too fascinating and bizarre a tale not to demand our attention. A deeply mentally ill woman using an innocent wild animal as a surrogate for her lost loved ones, mistreating him when she thought she was loving him, the novelty of our almost but not quite human cousin living in such proximity to people: It all says a lot about human psychology, animal well-being, and the responsibility we have and most certainly do not have towards the natural world. Sadly, the moral far many more people took away from this incident is that a chimpanzee can and will totally fuck your shit up. The pendulum has perhaps swung too far in the other direction, from the public perceiving chimps as adorable pranksters to vicious murder machines. Surely not helping matters are motion pictures like “Primate,” literally turning an endangered species into a horror movie villain. While the animal lover in me has mixed feelings about this, the trash movie enthusiast cannot resist the allure of such ape-shit shenanigans. Be prepared for more puns like that through this review, something I'm definitely not going to apologize for. 

College student Lucy returns home to Hawaii with her best friend, Kate, and an additional guest, Hannah. They arrive at the scenic home of Lucy's parents, with its cliff-side swimming pool and large outdoor enclosure. Waiting for them are several family members: Kate's brother and Lucy's long time crush, Lucy's deaf-mute father who is also a famous novelist, her little sister Erin, and Ben. Ben is a chimpanzee, who has grown up with the girls. Lucy's late mother was a linguistics scientist and taught Ben to communicate a little, through sign language and a tablet with a press-button soundboard. The dad goes off to a book signing, leaving the kids and the ape alone. Unbeknownst to anyone, a rabid mongoose got into Ben's pin and bit him. The girls and Nick begin to have a party, even inviting some other guys over, but soon notice that Ben is acting strangely. After tearing a visiting veterinarian's face off, Ben begins to violently attack the people who considered him family. Soon, Lucy, Erin, and the others must defend themselves against a homicidal animal that is intelligent, extremely strong, and armed with a mouth full of pointed teeth and opposable thumbs. 

Likely the reason chimpanzee attacks on humans have gained so much notoriety in the last decade is because of their viciousness. Denser muscles and "fast twitch" fibers give chimps a brutal grip strength, meaning they can rip through flesh and crush bone with ease. When combined with their tendency to go for vulnerable areas like the fingers, faces, and genitals, the idea of a random chimp event has truly become the stuff of nightmares for many. This is something "Primate" exploits repeatedly. In the opening sequence, we see Ben yank someone into his cage, a standard horror movie opening... But the film goes the extra mile and then shows the ape tearing Rob Delaney's face off, all before the opening credits. Later, we see Ben bite a chunk out of someone's thigh, bash heads in, rip a jaw off, scalp a girl with his bare hands, and snap a finger like a Kitkat. The make-up artists, effects team, and sound designers truly earned their pay on this one. Each attack is wince-inducing and horrifying. The film seems to delight in the meatiness of the human body and how those multiple layers of skin, muscle, fat, and nerves can be twisted and torn. It has truly been a while since a mainstream horror movie made me groan this much.

“Primate” is directed by Johannes Roberts, whose “47 Meters Down” films gave him experience with stories of young women trapped in an isolated location with a blood-thirsty animal. “Primate” is a little less contrived than that one. Ben's rabies stems from a mongoose, with the clarification that Hawaii is a rabies free state but no explanation for where the infected mongoose came from! Mostly, the contrivances in the script here allow for the suspense to go up. The heroes isolated in the pool as they attempt to get around the insane monkey stalking the area produces a few moments of nicely drawn out tension. The best example occurs when Lucy is hiding in a closest, only a door and a layer of transparent plastic separating her from the agitated ape. Considering chimpanzees are naturally unpredictable creatures, Ben made all the more-so by his altered mental state and the audience's general uncertainty of what the animal is even seeing at any point. It's a sequence that builds nicely and ends with a suitably intense shock of the hairy beast smashing right through a glass window. Since the film establishes so early how dangerous this animal is, we are well aware of the stakes at play here. Combined with tight editing and frenzied cinematography, “Primate” frequently makes for a tense thrill ride. 

Roberts has cited "Cujo" as an influence and it's easy to see the connection there. Both films, after all, are about vulnerable characters trapped in a tight location by a rabid animal. While Roberts successfully emulates the intensity of Lewis Teague's classic, perhaps he should've studied that film a little harder in other regards. Ben the Chimp is a delightfully devious villain. He seems to taunt the girls as they float in the pool, by tapping the "Dead" button over and over again on his speech tablet. After an unsuccessful attempt to push the bananas bonobo off a cliff goes horribly wrong, Ben rises back up with victorious glee. He plays like a child with the dismembered parts of his victims. Probably the moment that most characterizes the ape as a convincing sociopath is when he reveals that he has the fob to unlock a car. All of that aligns with what the film is going for. Ben is brought to life through a clever combination of an actor in a detailed animatronic suit and CGI, which looks real enough to pass the sniff test but with enough uncanniness to add to the creature's fright factor. However, part of what made "Cujo" not just scary but effective was the equal anxiety and sympathy the film had for its titular terror. Cujo was a killer and a threat but he was also just a dog, sick and dying and not knowingly acting with any malice. "Primate" probably would've been a stronger movie if it offered the same agency to Ben, playing him not as evil but rather as a thinking, feeling creature driven by sickness and instinct to behave in this manner. 

Perhaps I'm the one making a mistake by expecting that level of depth from a movie like "Primate." It's a minor miracle that the film pulls off the level of suspense and shotgun-level jolts that it does. The core players are quickly introduced in the first act. There's some uneasiness between Lucy and Erin, the younger sister resenting the older for leaving home. Hannah seems to have invited herself on this vacation, causing some annoyance. Obviously, there's unspoken sexual tension between Lucy and her crush. I don't know why I bring any of this up because it is not important at all. Once the (ape)shit hits the fan, the meat bags in "Primate" become basically indistinguishable from each other. Any nuance the characters might have had totally vanishes as the heroines focus entirely on outsmarting the simian stalker and tending to the wounded. This is probably for the better. I hate it when horror movies insert petty drama between the cast in a survival situation. "Primate" runs a tight 89 minutes and it stays focused on the goal of maximum thrills and grimaces throughout, any unnecessary bickering cut out. Still, I would've liked to have been able to tell the girls apart by more than just their hair colors. By the time some drunken frat boys show up, it's clear that "Primate" is basically a slasher movie, as much about gory showmanship as anything else. 

And I love a good slasher movie, probably more than is considered healthy. The only performer in the film going for much nuance is Troy Kotsur as Lucy's father. He shows the impressive subtlety of expression and thoughtfulness that won him an Oscar for "CODA." This does not stop the movie from playing his disability for easy thrills though, the deaf man unaware of the horror just behind him. Which probably speaks to the limited variety of roles available to actors with disabilities. The Academy Award winner also punches a chimpanzee in the face not once but twice. Who am I to turn my nose up at such a blessing? Yes, "Primate" is undeniably junk food but it is such delicious junk food. I have too much respect for the technicians and artists at work here who made me gasp, groan, hoot, and scoot towards the edge of my seat multiple times throughout the film. Perhaps that speaks to the simian nature of all our brains. This monkey see that monkey do homicide and it makes him clap for more. This is, as far as research shows, the first of Johannes Roberts' movies to open in January but is so perfectly indicative of the simple pleasures of the "January horror movie" that I can't imagine it'll be the last. "Primate" is prime pulp and I loved it, flaws and all. [8/10]

The House on Straw Hill (1976)

Udo Kier was, to put it plainly, like no other. He was a performer gifted with huge reflective eyes that could glow with rage or lust or madness. He had an outrageous accent and an on-screen persona just as flamboyant. His unforgettable and extremely European screen presence led to repeated appearances in films by respected auteurs like Fassbinder, Wenders, von Trier, Herzog, Van Sant and Maddin. It also meant Kier – who passed away last November and worked right up until the end of his life – was in a lot of trash. Often, he was the most memorable thing about said trash. This is technically not the case with 1976's "The House on Straw Hill," alternatively known as "Trauma" or "Exposé." The film is most notable as a Video Nasty, one of the 72 titles banned in England during the eighties VHS boom after being declared a threat to moral decency. Much to the chagrin of Mary Whitehouse, I'm sure, "Straw Hill" was one of the few home-grown video nasties, exploitation filth made right there in England. While its "deemed obscene by the government" status has guaranteed this otherwise not-that-notable film a permanent place of notoriety in horror history, I'm watching it in remembrance of Kier's unhinged talent. 

Paul Martin is having trouble finishing the follow-up to his best selling debut novel. He is having frequent nightmares of blood and death. This leads to a break-up with his girlfriend Suzanne. Hoping to refocus on his work, he rents an isolated cottage out in the British countryside. By chance, he saves a woman named Linda from some local yokels. She is a stenographer and agrees to work as Paul's secretary, typing up his new novel as he dictates it. Sexual tension simmers between Paul and the unreceptive Linda. The hicks return to rape her in the field outside the home, resulting in her killing them both with a shotgun. The cottage's caretaker vanishes. Suzanne reappears and Linda seduces her. Paul's nightmares and visions intensify. Someone cuts the brakes on his car. Clearly, secrets and ulterior motives are afoot in the house on straw hill. 

"Straw Hill" was directed by James Kenelm Clarke. Mostly a composer and documentarian early in his career, he switched gears when he co-founded Norfolk International Pictures. It is for this company that he would make films with classy titles like "Let's Get Laid," "Hardcore," and "Sweet Virgin." Several of those flicks and this one co-star Fiona Richmond, billed as "Britain no. 1 sex symbol" on the posters. All of which is to say that "House on Straw Hill" is an irrepressibly horny motion picture, blurring the line between exploitation and softcore porn. Richmond is naked within the first five minutes. She spends most of the movie humping or getting humped and also gives Udo a blowie seemingly through his pants at one point. Linda Hayden's character is compelled to masturbate no less than four times throughout the film. Unsurprisingly, the sexual assault sequence is filmed more for titillation than terror. "Lesbian sex" and "anal rape" are among the film's keywords on IMDb. 

Whether the film succeeds as smut is a matter of opinion. Richmond and Hayden are nice to look at. Their girl-on-girl scene has a certain sweaty, sleazy heat to it and is probably the closest the movie comes to genuine eroticism. So I suppose "House on Straw Hill" will give interested wankers what they are after. Whether it functions well as a horror movie is more debatable. Udo's visions of a dead body in a bathtub, breaking glass and a bloody hand falling to the side, reoccur enough that they start to grow tedious. There are two sequences of people being knifed. One is a darkened stalking that ends with a slashed throat and the other is a "Psycho" inspired shower stabbing that ups the flesh and blood. Both would make passable moments in a mid-tier giallo. The montage of Udo's car careening out of control, intercut with the above mentioned lesbian tryst, is mildly well done. The free mixing of sex and a malevolent atmosphere does create a somewhat charming sense of sleaziness.

Mostly, this is a pretty dumb movie where not much actually happens. A key moment depends on a presumed slain character returning to life, a clear result of the filmmakers writing themselves into a corner. The runtime is largely a mix of skin scenes, bloody nightmares, the occasional murder, ominous foreshadowing, and Udo dictating his novel to Linda. Watching Kier ramble out tawdry prose while he grows ever-more wide-eyed certainly has entertainment value. The main joy present in "The House on Straw Hill" is watching Udo go crazy. He gives his character some intriguing quirks, like always wearing latex gloves when making love. Unfortunately, somebody made the unfathomable decision to dub over Kier's voice, denying us the chance to hear his insane German accent deliver such florid lines. I probably would have bumped this one up half a star if they simply kept the original audio.

Really, there's only one deeper idea in "The House On Straw Hill" that holds any sway at all. The script finally reveals what the plot is up to in the final scene. This is preambled by a moment where Martin is dictating the end of his novel to Linda, who begins to change every single word and line that he makes up. It's another tensely edited scene, showing that the people who made this movie actually did have some grasp on suspense and pacing. Furthermore, it raises an interesting question about true authorial intent. Every bestselling writer has an editor. How many eyeballs does a manuscript pass before on the way to being published? How many fingerprints are left on a finished book? The question of what degree a story actually belongs to someone – and who deserves credit for the telling – when so much collaboration is necessary in every field is an intriguing one. "Straw Hill" goes right back to being dumb, sleazy schlock right after that. Perhaps a presentation a little more focused on the push-and-pull within the creative process than buttocks and bewbs could have explored this idea more.

The "House on Straw Hill" title is clearly meant to recall both "Straw Dogs" and "Last House on the Left." There's some comparison there, what with the sexual violence occurring out in the scenic countryside and being bloody avenged. The image of Kier wearing a silk shirt while brandishing a shotgun made a few of the posters and obviously invokes Sam Peckinpah's controversial classic. At least this title accurately describes the film, as that house is indeed located on Straw Hill. "Trauma" is too vague to have a specific importance to this story. "Exposé" makes it sound more like a movie about journalism, though I guess plenty of things are exposed here. All of these details mark this as the film as the cheap, greasy rip-off it is. This is one of those movies that is probably objectively bad but whose stupid sleazeball atmosphere I unfortunately am somewhat charmed by. I bet this would play a lot better in a 42nd Street grindhouse than all digitally restored at home. R.I.P. Udo, overacting and groping some beautiful breasts is surely how you would want to be remembered. [6/10]

 

Wednesday: Woe is the Loneliest Number

Unburdened by having to set up the premise of the show, the second episode of “Wednesday” is slightly better than the first. But only slightly. This one leans into the “Harry Potter” influence much more blatantly. Christina Ricci teaches a class suspiciously similar to herbology, Wednesday's Gorgonian love interest generates a ghostly spider for her, while the second half of the episode basically revolves around the goth Tri-Wizard Cup. Otherwise, the plot continues to function in usual streaming television fashion. We've got half-a-dozen story threads, plates for the show to keep spinning in the air. The monster that seemingly killed Wednesday's attacker last time is nowhere to be seen. Neither is the kid's body, as he reappears. This might be the work of some sort of cover-up, the town sheriff remains suspicious, and his son remains obviously flirty with the title character. We get some more development on Wednesday's powers, the idea that there's some kind of prophecy around her arrival at the school, and her following in the footsteps of her mother despite her stated desire not to do so. Romantic entanglements and rivalries are also starting to form. I'm struggling to care about any of it. 

On one hand, there's a moment or two in “Woe Is the Loneliest Number” where I'm reminded that Tim Burton used to be a decent director. The practical sets and production design on display here are actually quite good. Gwendolyn Christie has a giant fire place shaped like a Medusa face with a gaping mouth in her office, which is cool. Sadly, every semi-compelling visual is bordered by some a moment full of badly composed CGI. This is most apparent during the boat race finale, which is unforgivably hideous in spots. Add to that the Netflix-mandated need to keep as much of the action in the center of the screen at all times, to make distribution into social media friendly clips easier, and you've got an hour of TV that feels like beige wallpaper. The term “slop” is overused by, truly, what else to do you call this kind of approach? 

On the other hand, this episode is slightly more tolerable than the debut. There are more nods to the original sixties sitcom here. Thing has a bigger role here and I like the clarification that he communicates via sign language. (Despite that being less funny than everyone in the family just instantly understanding him.) Wednesday has a stated preference for spiders and venomous insects as pets. Some plot reason I've already forgotten has her making friends with the nerdy kid who runs the beekeeping club, which is actually kind of cute. Wednesday has also inherited her mother's knowledge of carnivorous plants. Suggesting a series much truer in tone to that original show was possible, Jenna Ortega continues to excel at delivering absurdly morbid one-liners. I will also admit that Emma Myers as the upbeat, werewolf room mate is fairly adorable. Making Wednesday the Felix to a sunny, energetic Oscar is, again, hack shit but at least the cast compliment each other. The second half of the episode also features its female cast members wearing cat ears and skin-tight body suits, the kind of blatant fetishism I expect from anime but not big budget live action streaming nonsense. I guess Burton still had some of that “Batman Returns” kinkiness in his system after all. This is still aggressively mediocre television though. [5/10]

 

 

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Incident in a Small Jail

Once again, it's time for me to marvel at how “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” put extremely bleak, perverse stories on late fifties/early sixties American television and got away with it by having a portly, sardonic Englishman make corny jokes before and after them. Traveling salesman Leon Gorwald, while stopping over in a small town, jaywalks across a street. The deputy sheriff notices him and prepares to fine him. Leon tries to bribe his way out of a ticket, a stunt that pisses the cop off and gets Leon thrown into one of two jail cells back at the station. The actual sheriff and his deputy arrives shortly afterwards with grim news: A girl was found mutilated with a knife the other night and they're pretty sure they caught the guy who did it, some scumbag in a mechanic's overalls. As news travels around town about the death of the girl, a lynch mob begins to come together at the local bar. The three cops do what they can to maintain law and order but things soon get out of hand. And Leon Gorwald, some average guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets caught up in it. Or that's what seems to be happening at first. 

“Incident in a Small Jail” is another Henry Slesar penned episode, who also wrote the earlier highly regarded “Hitchcock Presents” installment, “The Right Kind of House.” Both these episode are utterly economic in their setting and story. They have limited settings and a small cast of characters, like a one-act play. Both stories introduces a situation that builds steadily but carefully in tension. At first “Incident in a Small Jail” feels like a brilliant encapsulation of a chain reaction. Leon Gorwald casually makes the decision to skip across a street, the butterfly flapping its wings that leads to the tidal wave of him being thrust into the center of an angry mob. The way each new complication is added to the scenario – the unrefined punk tossed into the cell next to him, some drunkards down the street deciding to go vigilante, one small cry for help at the exact wrong time – feels like a perfectly executed web of little bad moments adding up to ruin someone's life. From this perspective, the moral of “Incident in a Small Jail” seems to be “one minor misdeed can have ghastly consequences.” 

This theme, that we are all at the mercy of a chaotic and random universe, is already a fairly black pill to swallow. However, “Incident in a Small Jail” has an even bleaker idea up its sleeve. The episode is brilliantly cast. Myron Healey as the deputy sheriff is the exact kind of hard-ass you would expect to insist on following every minor law, instantly making you dislike him. John Fiedler plays Leon. As always, he's short and non-threatening in his avuncular baldness but that whiny and stammering voice, so perfect for Piglet, also makes him a little untrustworthy. He did try and bribe a cop after all. Should we trust this guy? Once future tough guy Richard Jaeckel appears as the killer, however, you are on the guy's side despite his weaselly quality. The stranger's violent acts are perfectly set-up by Crahan Denton as the sheriff. His weary delivery of the girl's mutilated body being worst than anything he saw in the war is fantastic. 

All of this grim, tightly-wound tension proceeds what seems like an unexpected happy ending... Before “Incident in a Small Jail” drops a pitch black twist, like a knife in the back. The final image of the episode must be one of the most chilling in all of the black-and-white era of American television. In other words, this friggin' rocks. Every time I watch “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” I find myself stunned to discover that, oh my god, television can actually be good. Why aren't all shows, to this day, tightly paced thirty minute packages of caustic noir goodness? [9/10]