CHUCK’S ROUNDHOUSE: Agent Recon (2024)

Following the non-event that was the 2005 release of “The Cutter,” Chuck Norris would essentially retire. He strapped on the cowboy boots for a small role in “The Expendables 2” seven years later. He provided a voice-only cameo in a 2015 episode of “The Goldbergs” before actually appearing on-screen in an episode of “Hawaii Five-0” five years after that. Mostly, Mr. Norris would amuse himself during his golden years by appearing in commercials. He hocked products like Mountain Dew, multiple video games, a Czech bank chain, United Healthcare, T-Mobile, Toyota and Mike Huckabee’s doomed presidential campaign. Almost all of these ads played more off the internet based Chuck Norris Facts than his actual action movie credentials. Which shows you what the guy was by this point: A dead meme that only amused the hyper-normies at ad agencies and their target audience of old people. Not the most graceful retirement for an action star but better than what happened to Seagal, I guess.  

This was before, in 2024, it was announced that the former Walker, Texas Ranger would be making a return to the world of cinema. That’s right, he was going to play himself in a jokey Czech horror/comedy in which Vanilla Ice gets top-billing. As of this writing, the sure-to-be future masterpiece “Zombie Plane” remains unreleased. However, Chuck also lent his talents to something called “Agent Recon” around the same time. To what do we owe this sudden re-emergence? Well, perhaps Chuck was aware that he wasn’t long for this world and wanted to add to his family's nestegg or something. Maybe he simply got bored in his old age. My personal theory is that his right-wing friends convinced him to dump all his savings into Crypto and, after that bubble popped, grandpa had to go back to work. 

It is a question worth asking but it is not, in fact, the question you should be asking about “Agent Recon.” The more pertinent quarry around this mysterious motion picture should be: Who is Derek Ting, the writer, director, producer, and star of the film? “Agent Recon” is actually the third entry in a series of science fiction/action movies Mr. Ting has similarly self-produced. It follows 2017’s “Agent,” which starred nobody famous, and 2021’s “Agent Revelation,” which at least roped in Michael Dorn. Unlike most low budget action stars on-the-rise, Ting’s background does not appear to be in competitive martial arts or stunt work. Instead, a cursory Google search informs me that he’s a former CNN producer, tech writer, and consultant for DoubleClicker and Mercer. He is not the CEO of free-mobile phone service TextNow, who happens to share his name. At first I thought maybe this was an example of some tech start-up guy trying to buy himself a low-budget movie career. No, it would seem that the Ting in question is a self-made guy trying to manifest a life as a direct-to-video action star. 

One suspects that Ting figured more people would see “Agent Recon” than its two prequels, which is why the film begins with a lengthy synopsis of previous events. Not that this makes the plot much easier to follow. As far as I can tell, “Agent Recon” is the story of Jim Yung, a once ordinary guy who gained superpowers after being exposed to an alien infection known as Ash. He combined this with an ability to manipulate the vital human life force known as Mana to gain more extraordinary abilities. He has used these powers to fight a shape-shifting alien race known as the Kinians, run from a secret government unit devoted to hunting aliens, and battle some sort of untrustworthy artificial intelligence. His mentor, Alastair, was seemingly killed. Now, Yung and his friends have somewhat reluctantly aligned himself with Colonel Green, a grizzled veteran searching for his daughter after an alien assault at a secret base in New Mexico. Along the way, an A.I. based on Alastair’s consciousness is uploaded into an android body. 

I will make no accusations against Derek Ting’s personal demeanor. (I’ll leave that up to the creators of this Change.Org petition that want to sue him for wasting public funds on his shitty movies.) If I had the means and drive to do so, perhaps I would also try and fashion an action hero status for myself. Nevertheless, “Agent Recon” does seem to be the self-serving fantasy of some guy, eager to build a comic book-like cinematic universe around himself with a convoluted lore. A lot of “Agent Recon” is devoted to explaining the movie’s back story and its various events. There’s a lot of chatter about DNA, A.I., aliens, conspiracy theories, this “Mana” thing, and the new and established characters’ histories. It’s all relatively incomprehensible, playing as the sort of thing an overly enthusiastic kid writing a fan fiction about the totally bad-ass new addition to his favorite anime or superhero team would come up with. In other words, the dense mythology of the “Agent” series is needlessly convoluted, endlessly talked up, and utterly meaningless to anyone that isn’t Derek Ting. 

That Ting’s film is so eager to describe the history and events of his universe is at odds with what we actually see on-screen. I’m not only referring to the obviously limited budgetary resources of “Agent Recon.” The movie’s aliens are mostly guy in gas masks. Its military bases look like generic Eastern European cities. The cast is small, the special effects are deeply unimpressive, the cinematography is heavy on aerial drone shots, and the editing is shaky. I’m pretty sure the big alien lair in the finale was created by generative A.I. As much as the script talks about the specifics of these extraterrestrial races and superpowers, the film mostly seems to be stapled together from unimaginative genre stock parts. The Kinians intruders are referred to as zombie-like, with their weakness being their livers instead of their brain, but act like the fodder in any low budget action movie. For all its ambitions, the film is mostly devoted to scenes of guys in military fatigues walking and shooting through darkly-lit buildings and forests.

Plot is not always important in action flicks, as long as the fights are good. Similarly, a derivative sci-fi or horror script can overcome those limitations with a properly energetic execution. Unfortunately, “Agent Recon” doesn’t have any of these things. Ting is so invested in his self-made mythos that a lot of the film is devoted to expanding on it. Because he has neither the money nor the imagination to properly depict these cosmic events, we get one tedious exposition dump after another. I was lost almost immediately but, by the time side characters are hacking into foreign networks and reading up on alien experiments, I was really lost. 

As for Ting’s abilities as a leading man and kick-puncher… Well, his website describes him as a martial artist. It’s fair to say that he’s a lot more adapt at fighting than an average slug like I am. He seems capable of pulling off a kick, punch, or swinging ax blow. However, there’s still an unavoidable awkwardness to his moves, a result of either the low budget production or Ting’s own inexperience. A scene where he rolls to the ground to pick up a shotgun is a good example of how “Agent Recon” desperately wants to convince us that Derek Ting is a total bad-ass but falls short of actually pulling that off. It’s hard to dismiss the feeling that this entire enterprise is the result of the man’s own ego. Especially when the film he wrote, directed, and produced has him inexplicably throwing Kamehames – he does the hand motion and everything – or intimidating bigger guys and generally depicting him as the most important human being in the universe. 

But the majority of people who watch “Agent Recon” aren’t going to care about any of that shit. They hadn’t heard of this Ting guy before watching it. No, what about Chuck Norris? Norris plays the result of some top secret alien engineering, an 84 year old man apparently being the robotic form that was decided upon. He first appears as an awkward held static shot of his face, the actor obviously having been photographed before a green screen. When he finally speaks, he sounds every bit like an old, old man whose frail and ancient body is barely holding itself together. He mostly says inspirational quotes to Ting’s character, the auteur casting one of his personal heroes as his own mentor. Several shots of Chuck from behind are clearly of an unmoving mannequin, suggesting he was only available to the production for a few days. Despite that, he does get some action beats to himself in the last act. In the finale, senior citizen Norris walks around and blasts indistinct aliens with a plastic-y looking chain gun. He looks off into the distance, a Joe Biden-esque sense of confusion on his face, as his not-exactly-whip-crack instincts have him very slowly pivoting around. I guess Chuck wanted to prove that he still “had it,” as he does do some fighting. Extremely awkward, sluggish fighting that amounts to some slow-mo punches and a few karate tosses, all of which are cut away from before we see Chuck himself and not a faceless stunt guy finish the blow. 

It is, in other words, about as embarrassing as you’d expect a great-grandfather still trying to be an action hero to be. Somehow, Derek Ting looked at an octogenarian Chuck Norris and decided that was the perfect guy to play an unstoppable cyborg. I guess Chuck has frequently been accused of being robotic. Norris is not the only washed-up action guy in this movie. Former “Beastmaster” Marc Singer plays Colonel Green. While no less insanely grizzled and wrinkly than Chuck, Singer does get more screen time. Not that you’re going to care about it, as the emotional plot of his daughter being rescued is hastily introduced half-way through and extremely sloppily executed. I will say that Singer is obviously a clear professional, delivering the bullshit dialogue he was given with, if not high energy, at least some degree of conviction.

During the press for the film, Ting insisted that Chuck Norris read the script in one session and loved it so much that he immediately agreed to participate in the project. This same anecdote also mentions that Chuck’s wife, a woman named Gena O’Kelley that is 23 years younger than him, sat the laptop before him on a flight. Which, when combined with Singer’s also rather sickly looking appearance, makes me wonder whether elder abuse isn’t the real culprit behind these guys appearing in a movie like this. Needless to say, the behind-the-scenes questions of “Agent Recon” are much more interesting than the largely boring, deeply inessential, mostly incoherent motion picture itself. I guess I can’t criticize Derek Ting for trying to fulfill his childhood dreams of being an action star. Go for it, my dude, I guess. However, he lacks the insane vision of an Edward D. Wood or Neil Breen. “Agent Recon” is kind of weird and a little funny but it’s never very entertaining or interesting. [3/10] 

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 1 outta 5]

[X] Facial Hair

[] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall

[] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face

[] Shows Off His Hairy Chest

[] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: The Cutter (2005)

By 2005, Chuck Norris was too old for this shit. “Walker, Texas Ranger” ended in 2001, after a nine season run that is frankly hard to believe. A mere four years later, there was an attempt to relaunch the show as a series of TV movies that did not get beyond the first installment. Chuck was well into the twilight of his career, doing shit like founding a short-lived fighting league, putting his name on books, and getting ironic cameos in big comedies. This was right before the internet turned him into a meme, signaling that he was truly a jokey relic of the past. The former Lone Wolf would basically retire after that... But not before starring in one more crappy, direct-to-video action movie. The story behind “The Cutter” is interesting but not that interesting. The film spent a decade in development before ending up at Avi Lerner's Nu Image/Millennium Films. One presumes this is how the story of a diamond cutter who survived the Holocaust got transformed into a low budget Chuck Norris vehicle. It would, for many years, be the final starring role for the once Karate Champ. 

In the Sinai dessert, an archaeological team uncovers the mythical, bejeweled Breastplate of Aaron. Shortly afterwards, a man lands in a private glider, kills the dig team, and steals the holy relic. Meanwhile, in Spokane, Washington... John Shepherd is a private detective who specializes in finding missing people and rescuing kidnapped individuals. After a botched rescue attempt of a teenage girl results in her death, he feels immense guilt. Through a series of encounters, he makes the acquitance of Elizabeth Teller. She is the granddaughter of Isaac Teller, a Jewish jeweler and Holocaust survivor. While imprisoned in the camps, he was forced by Nazi officers to design a new gemstone cut formation. Now, decades later, the last surviving officer at the camp and his younger associate, the murderer from earlier, captured Isaac and demands he cut the twelve fabled stones of Aaron. Shepherd and his team are on the case. 

"The Cutter" is, from most perspectives, a fairly shoddy motion picture. Chuck's "Hero and the Terror" director Bill Tannen came back for this one. While Tannen's career isn't the most prestigious, he was still an industry veteran directing his tenth feature here. Despite that, an aura of cheapness floats over all of "The Cutter." I mean, how many action movies can you think of set in Spokane, Washington? Many scenes seem to take place in unassuming homes, apartments, and buildings. The climatic moment happens in a single room, a generic warehouse setting, while another prominent fight occurs at the back of a city bus. The film features some extremely annoying editing, indicative of the early 2000s, with many sped-up montages  in-between scenes set to fast paced music. There are whooshing sound effects, frantic cuts, and shifts between color and black-and-white. It feels like a desperate attempt to make a low budget and unambitious project seem much more trendy and stylish than it otherwise obviously is. The film ends on a literal freeze-frame shot, like the old TV shows it actually has much more in-common with than "2 Fast 2 Furious." 

"The Cutter's" low budget cheesiness veers towards unintentional hilarity very quickly. The aged jewels of brilliant color and clarity that the plot revolves around look a lot more like plastic toys. The sound design is amusingly cheap, every firearm making one of two different gunshot sounds. The first proper fight ends with the hysterical sight of a guy launched through a window and doing the Howie Scream, a stock sound effect rendered hilarious by both its instant recognition and tendency to seem out-of-place in any context. Inevitably, you quickly notice that this melee filled shoot-em-up seems to revolve around mostly older people. The title character is a Holocaust survivor who can't be any younger than eighty. (Performed by, of all people, Bernie Kopell.) The secret final boss of the movie is a similarly ancient man, played by actual Holocaust survivor and long tenured character actor Curt Lowens. The leading lady has grey hair but still gets a sexy shower scene, making me wonder if "The Cutter" was specifically made with the AARP crowd in mind. 

No old guy is more prominent in "The Cutter" than Chuck Norris, who would've been about sixty-four at the time of filming. His action scenes seem to involve a lot of him mostly standing stationary, punching or shooting at someone right in front of him. The bigger stunts he does do, like jabbing an attacker in the temples or rolling over a stone wall, look awkward. He is often replaced by a stunt double wearing a noticeable wig whenever the story requires him to kick higher than his hip or fall backwards. We aren't quite in Charles Bronson in "Death Wish V" levels of embarrassment here but the disconnect between the star's age and the expectations of the action genre are still unavoidable. Chuck spends a lot of this one sitting down, drinking tea, talking on the phone, or displaying an inexplicable knowledge of Biblical history.  A car chase amusingly features him only in quick cuts, clearly not actually behind the wheel of a speeding automobile. The climax, once again, has him disarming a bomb rather than delivering a killing blow. Probably the most unfortunate moment occurs during his trademark shirtless scene, his once taunt and muscled arms looking rather skinny and his famous manly chest now peppered with liver spots. 

While "The Cutter" is definitely a Chuck Norris vehicle, in the tradition of many geezer teasers to come, it does feature a younger actor in an equally big role. That would be Daniel Bernhardt, the man you get when your action movie is too shitty for even Jean-Claude Van Damme's lax standards. Bernhardt is the bad guy, a good use of his talents. He gets to put on a variety of different accents, sneers villainously at his opponents, and wears a number of disguises. Including, most incongruously, a kippah. Bernhardt hams it up nicely, enlivening an otherwise listless production. In fact, if you watch a lot of crappy action movies, there are a number of people here you'll recognize. Norris regular Marshall R. Teague is his contact on the police force. Chuck's brother Aaron has a bit part, getting to unexpectedly thrown out some fast punches of his own.  Tracy Scoggins has some belligerent sexual tension with Chuck in a few scenes. Former American Gladiator Deron McBee gets karate chopped in the throat. How much value a movie making you say "Hey, I know that guy!" when some mildly recognizable character actor walks on-screen is debatable but it further brightens up "The Cutter." 

Another kind of familiar face is Todd Jensen, a regular in movies made by Avi Lerner's Nu Image/Millennium Films slop factory. Lerner's fingerprints are on the film in another way. Having picked up the baton left by Golan and Globus, Lerner is also an Israeli nationalist whose low budget action schlock doubles as white-and-blue propaganda. "The Cutter" is not quite as blatant as "The Delta Force" but, like earlier Nu Image production "The Order," it does take the Exodus myth as historical fact. Having the Breastplate of Aaron be the main MacGuffin and Nazis be the bad guys make me wonder if this was, at one point in its long development history, another "Indiana Jones" rip-off. But Nazis always make good villains, the film's backstory of the Holocaust only seeming odd because it was made and ostensibly set in 2005. This is not a Zionist screed. It's a standard Nu Image, in the other way: Being really cheap and kind of bad. However, watching a senior citizen action star fumble through familiar beats while surrounded by enough funny, intentional or otherwise, moments and one or two Guys I Like doesn't make me regret watching it. [6/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 3 outta 5]

[X] Facial Hair

[X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall

[] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face

[X] Shows Off His Hairy Chest

[] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: Bells of Innocence (2003)

The 1960s saw evangelical fundamentalists, Biblical literalists who rejected modern science and changing social ideology, grow more influential within American Protestant congregations. Their tenets include the spreading of the gospel, the conversion of non-believers, that every good thing that happens to you is an act of God, the end times are upon us, that Satan and his demons are active in the world, and the adoration of Christ and Him alone. This necessitated the creation of a Christian media, in opposition to a secular – and therefore sinful – media. What we now call the "faith-based" film industry began to take shape at the start of the seventies. While apocalyptic oddities like "If Footmen Tire, What Will Horses Do?" and "A Thief in the Night" soon emerged, this style of filmmaking has mostly been defined by banalities like "The Cross and the Switchblade." 

 

The modern Christian movie functions a lot like fetish pornography. It exists to serve its intended audience what they want to see and are already familiar with, at the sacrifice of complex narratives, quality acting, and realistic dialogue. (Also the budgets are usually comparable.) A year before "The Passion of the Christ" gave cinematic proselytizing its biggest moment, a much less notable Christian film was released straight-to-video for the intended audience of church goers, youth pastors, and blind grandmothers. "Bells of Innocence" would be of little notoriety for anyone outside this demographic if it wasn't for its top-billed actor. Chuck Norris became "born again" sometime in the mid-nineties. He began incorporating conservative Christian hysterics into "Walker" shortly after this, so it's not surprising he ended up in one of these. The film also starred his son Mike, his granddaughter Gabby, and frequent "Walker" guest star Marshall R. Teague, so I guess it was a family affair. 

The film follows the improbably named Jux Jonas, a man whose young daughter died after being hit by a car. That loss shattered his faith in God and now he's a suicidal alcoholic. Despite that, his devout friends Conrad and Oren talk him into flying them into Mexico, where they will distribute Bibles at a small ministry. Their plane breaks down in the middle of the Texas desert and they wander into a town called Ceres. The locals seem totally unaware and cut off from the outside world, react strangely to visitors, avoid all physical touching, and bare distinctive marks on their arms. Only a solitary rancher named Matthew offers any assistance. Jux meets Lyric, a little girl that reminds him of his lost daughter, and she beckons him to stay. That's because Ceres is actually run by demonically possessed humans, town elder Joshua being a literal minion of Satan. A war between good and evil has been playing out there for decades. Now, the fate of Jux's immortal soul is the latest battle in this conflict. 

I am, usually, a fan of films made outside of the Hollywood system. I have, from time to time, praised movies made by largely unprofessional crews that lack the polished attributes of your bigger budgeted productions. I admire the can-do spirit of artists with more of a dream than experience or money, pursuing it anyway. Any resulting jank usually becomes part of the charm of such a motion picture and the best of these can reach the level of stupefying outsider art. I suppose this same attitude could be applied to movies like "Bells of Innocence." Cinematographer Hamid Shams was a camera assistant on "Evil Dead II" and "Death Wish 3" and done some lo-fi TV stuff, so he wasn't exactly an amateur. Nevertheless, "Bells of Innocence" has a flat, colorless visual style that, on several occasions, lapses into shaky handheld work. A chase scene has the camera flipping back and forth, for one example of this awkwardness. This is emphasized by blunt editing, the cuts between scenes being so abrupt as to often become unintentionally funny. This is apparent from the very first scene, a mostly unconnected sequence of people running in the dark from some villains on horseback and running into Native Americans doing a ritual of some sort, that is incoherently assembled. (There's a smattering of indigenous characters in the film, so the Norris family hasn't totally let go of that fixation yet.) Director Alin Bijan, his second feature after an un-faith based 1995 skin flick, does not distinguish himself. 

More than any other technical deficiency, two factors make "Bells of Innocence" an especially difficult watch. The acting is quite poor, distressingly so. Mike Norris is a wooden actor who does not have the screen presence of his father. His delivery of dialogue is awkward and unconvincing. His attempts at bigger emotions feel stilted and forced. This is largely true of the rest of the cast. Carey Scott gives a very annoying performance as Oren, acting in a childish, mawkish fashion that honestly makes the character seem unaware of certain social cues. His reoccurring trait of telling a joke he never gets to finish, because people start randomly laughing before he gets to the punchline, is a very questionable choice. David A.R. White as Conrad always feels like he is reading a prepared speech from the pulpit, trying to invest it with deeper emotions he cannot summon, than someone acting out a character. This is true of most of the acting in "Bells of Innocence" and partially what marks it as an unprofessional, church basement production. You know something has gone very wrong when Chuck Norris gives the best, most relaxed and natural performance in your motion picture. 

This points towards the biggest problem with "Bells of Innocence" and the majority of so-called "faith-based" film making. This is not so much a movie as it is a sermon. The narrative is not told with the intention of invoking certain feelings or ideas in the viewer. The goal is not fleshing out characters, experiences, themes or moods. Instead, it's preaching, telling you exactly what it means and what you should think about these events, with no room for ambiguity or personal interpretation. The message relayed in "Bells of Innocence" is that the devil is real and apocalyptic war with the forces of evil is inevitable, Luckily, all you have to do to be on the winning side is accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, no matter what bad things happen to you. Jux's grief upon his daughter's senseless death would seem to present one of the most complicated aspects of faith: How can you believe in an all-good and all-loving God if life just constantly grinds you down and takes away the people you love? Rather than address this idea, such events are presented as temptations by Satan and his minions. Jux's faith is turned like a light switch, from Questioning God's Plan to Jesus Loves All the Little Children, during the key points in the film. The subtext, that it is God's will that people die and lives get ruined, is never addressed simply because he chooses God over the Devil. Why? Ostensibly because his experience in Ceres has proven to him that Jesus is the way but, in execution, it looks more like he simply changes his mind. To evangelicals, is faith just God saying "Trust me, bro, it'll all make sense" and taking him at his word? It is an attempted persuasion without nuance. 

Moreover, "Bells of Innocence" delivers this idea in as didactic a fashion as possible. Before the trio arrives in town, we get several scenes of the town's sinister elders discussing what is to happen. When the gang takes shelter in Chuck Norris' cabin, he flatly explains that he is an angel, the history of the town, and what this all forebodes. The heroes outright proclaim their faith in God, against the demonic villains' statements. With such a hamfisted approach, it is unsurprising that the film has no grasp on the subtleties necessary to create an effective horror movie. The film seems to think having someone's eyes glow red and a red skull appear over their faces is the height of terror, alongside other thoroughly unimpressive CGI effects. The script is generally inconsistent, how much the people in the town can or cannot touch an outsider seeming inconsistent, and is totally unable to build up any tension at all. After all, we know that God is Good and Jux's soul will be safe, so there's not much in the way of suspense. 

It should probably be unsurprising that "Bells of Innocence" also does not feature much in the way of the Chuck Norris action you might be hoping for. The most exciting thing he does is talk down a crowd of demonic meanies, projecting a bolt of light from his finger and making a guy groan and grimace. This is, admittedly, one of the fewer moments that made me laugh here. Otherwise, he shows up in a few scenes, hangs out with the protagonists, and drones out some exposition. I went into "Bells of Innocence" hoping it would make me chuckle more often but it is mostly a tedious affair. The first act is extremely slow, as the film takes far too long to get all its characters in place, has them wait around for a while, before the plot finally begins to move. The film seems to reach its climax before chugging forward to a proper ending, the story heading into the credits with little drive or energy. While I'm sure some films made within the Sunday School approved method feature better acting, sturdier writing, and zippier pacing than this motion picture, my impression of the genre is that it's mostly stuff like this: Preachy and limp and boring, with one or two actors who were once semi-relevant but got saved and are now doing shit like this. I like my Chuck Norris movies with more punching and kicking than preaching. [3/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 2 outta 5]
[X] Facial Hair
[] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall
[] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face
[] Shows Off His Hairy Chest
[X] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

Halloween 2025: October 12th

 

Şeytan (1974)

 

A Turkish film industry has existed since 1914 and has, at various points in time, flourished. In the sixties, Turkey was actually the fifth biggest producer of films in the world. Things have slowed down considerably since then but Türkiye absolutely has cinematic traditions all its own. However, classic Turkish cinema remains extremely obscure outside of its borders. Instead, the films that tend to attract the most international attention are the rip-offs. A trend retrospectively known as “Turksploitation” emerged in the seventies, that blatantly copied Hollywood blockbusters, often using footage and music from these films on a strictly unofficial basis. Clips from “Turkish Star Wars,” “Turkish Rambo,” “Turkish Superman,” and that movie where Captain America and Santo fight Evil Spider-Man have circulated freely among the internet for years and years, mocked by dipshit nerds totally ignorant of other cultures. Among those infamous wannabes is what is commonly known as “Turkish Exorcist.” The actual title is “Şeytan” and, while I'm sure a knock-off of a horror classic probably isn't how Turkish horror fans would want their country represented, I'm simply too curious not to check this one out.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Somewhere in the Middle East, a wise old man of the cloth walks through the desert. He approaches a recently unearthed statue of a demonic figure, glaring at it expectantly. Far away, in Istanbul, Ayten is currently in the midst of a divorce. Her young daughter, Gül, doesn't seem too bothered by it. The family enjoys the comforts afforded to by her mother's rich lifestyle. However, she's also been messing with a Ouija board. Next, Ayten hears weird noises from the attic. While looking for the mice that the home's caretaker says aren't present, she comes across a book on the topic of the devil. It's been written by Tuğrul Bilge, an atheist author who lives near-by. It's a concerning appearance that seems to signal  Gül's behavior getting stranger. She sleepwalks, starts acting violently, her bed begins quaking at night. Science is helpless to diagnosis her. Soon, it seems her body has been entirely taken over by a spirit that claims to be Seytan himself. Tuğrul is asked to assist and, after the extraordinary evidence piles up, seeks out the help of the only man that can save Gül. A man that you could, convincingly, call an exorcist.

In the past, I have always seen “Şeytan” referred to as a shot-for-shot remake of “The Exorcist.” This is not true. First off, the Turkish film is over twenty minutes shorter than the Hollywood original. Secondly, a number of adaptational changes are apparent. Such as the Father Karras character being changed from a priest to an author or the mother seemingly no longer being an actress. However, it is true that “Şeytan” does directly copy all the most famous scenes from “The Exorcist.” Most of these scenes are laughably pale imitations of iconic moments. The candle going out in the attic, Reagan being thrashed around on her bed, the pea soup, the levitation, the “Power of Christ compels you!” It's all here, just in Turkish and done with a fraction of the budget and a lot less talent. Look no further than the recreation of the head-spinning sequence and the infamous bloody crucifix masturbation that proceeds it. The cross is replaced with a demonic dagger. The furniture moving across the room looks incredibly cheesy. The head twisting around on the shoulders looks a lot like an actor looking over the shoulder of a dummy body. 

A key difference in that scene between “Şeytan” and “The Exorcist” is that... In the Turkish version, the girl does not appear to be defiling a holy symbol. Instead, it looks like she's merely stabbing herself in the thigh with the demon-headed dagger. Part of what made “The Exorcist” such a shocking success in the seventies is that it had a ream of vile profanity coming out of an angelic young girl's mouth. One can only assume that something is lost in translation but, going by the subtitles on my copy, the worst swear Gül unleashes is to call someone “senile.” Similarly, the scars on the girl's face look like cheap Halloween make-up. Especially when combined with the green skin. The vomiting appears more like spat out globs of snot than vulgar streams of greenish puke. I don't know much about Turkish censorship standards. However, it would seem that, in order to make “The Exorcist” an appropriate story for Turkish audience, the filmmakers of  “Şeytan” ended up removing all the edge and danger from the material. In this telling, there's never any doubt that the girl's soul will be saved. The shock value isn't gone only because the audience has already seen this all before. It's as if the transgressive energy has been surgically removed.

That is to be expected, I suppose, when comparing the Hollywood original to the low-budget, international copycat. Presumably the value in a project like this comes from the cultural differences made evident in the retelling. Most obviously, Türkiye is another Muslim majority country. I don't know how familiar your average Turkish person is with the tenets of Catholicism. While the exact faith of the man called to exorcise the girl here is never actually specified, his prayers seem specifically Islamic in nature. He is presumably preaching from a Quran. Shifting the Karras figure from a priest whose faith has lapsed to a non-believer, who never had any faith in the first place, changes the meaning of the material in a serious way. Tuğrul Bilge accepting the existence of supernatural evil and sacrificing himself paints a more conservative image, of somebody atoning for questioning God's existence at all. One of the new additions to “The Exorcist” template is an epilogue, wherein the now demon-free little girl seems to receive a blessing from a holy man looking apparition. This removes all the ambiguity from the source material. “Şeytan” is not about the crisis of faith in the modern age or the question of whether a real source of good exists to challenge the evil in the world. It is, instead, a reaffirmation that God is good and all-powerful and none of this bad shit would've happened if people hadn't doubted that in the first place.

That is interesting. Is it interesting enough to make “Şeytan” worth watching, especially if you've seen “The Exorcist” fifty times? Probably not. The differences that do emerge surely reflect variations in beliefs. Does the scene of the rather goofy looking demonic figure appearing in the girl's bedroom, wherein the possessed victim visibly bows before it, reflect a difference in how Islam considers the figure of Shaitan in comparison to what modern Christian demographics think of Satan? You'd probably need to be better read in Turkish culture and Muslim beliefs than I am to say for sure. Nevertheless, whatever anthropological factors “Şeytan” reveals is overshadowed by it being a supremely fangless and rather dryly executed unofficial remake. I suppose I am glad I saw it but, ultimately, it's hard to justify watching more than a high-light as worthwhile in a world when you can simply watch “The Exorcist” instead. [5/10]

Watchers Reborn (1998)

For all its many and obvious flaws, “Watchers 3” could be commended for one element. It was something like an actual sequel to the previous entry in the series. While the second movie operated as another adaptation of the original novel, the third at least attempted to continue the story. It didn't do it well. The explanation provided for what happened to Paul Ferguson and Einstein the smart dog in-between movies was not satisfying. The new Outsider in part three was also implied to be the same monster from the last time, suggesting that some re-writing was done between installments. Still, having now set a precedent, you would expect a fourth “Watchers” to follow this pattern too, right? Unfortunately, someone decided to resume the original pattern by making “Watchers Reborn” another adaptation of the story Dean Koontz had written nearly two decades earlier at this point. Perhaps creature effects specialist and “Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College” auteur John Carl Buechler was simply a big fan of the book and wanted to do it right this time. More likely, nobody was expending the necessary creativity and thought process to think of a new story for the fourth “Watchers” movie. Still, there's enough familiar faces and names behind and in front of the camera for this fourthquel to catch my attention.

So, once more, with feeling: A government research facility blows up. A dog and a monster escape. The dog is smarter than the average canine. The monster likes to rip people's eyes out. Dr. Grace Hudson, a geneticist involved with the project, goes in search of the hound. A group of G-man assassins, led by Lem Johnson, are out to destroy both projects and eliminate any witnesses. This time, a traumatized police detective named Jack Murphy ends up with Einstein, the smart dog. It's not long before Grace finds him, the trio going on the run from both the federal agents and the monster. The doctor and the cop fall in love, as she seeks to protect Einstein and communicate with the Outsider before both are killed by the ruthless Lem.

As far as fourth entries in direct-to-video monster movie franchises go, "Watchers Reborn" has a fairly high profile cast. One suspects John Carl Buechler cashed in some favors he had built up through his years as a make-up and effects guy. Mark Hamill is the hero, Lisa Wilcox of "A Nightmare on Street 4" is the heroine, and Stephen Macht from "Monster Squad" and "Graveyard Shift" is the bad guy. The further down the guest list you go, the more random it gets. Perennial TV special guest star and talk show host Gary Collins is Hamill's ill-fated partner and Lou Rawls appears as a scientist. Kane Hodder has a cameo. Sadly, "Watchers Reborn" gives its eccentric cast little to do. Hamill looks amusingly disheveled and worn out but his character's tragic backstory is utterly routine. The script prioritizes his romance with Wilcox over his bond with the genius dog. The two have mildly interesting chemistry but their love story is no where compelling enough to devote this much screen time too. “Watchers Reborn” almost feels more like a boring romantic-comedy between these two than a proper horror film.

With a blue print provided by Koontz' novel and three previous movies, you wouldn't think “Watchers Reborn” would be as sloppily assembled as it is. The standard chase plot is routinely interrupted by weird digressions. An extended scene follows a couple in a bar, arguing with the mobster who wants to sell drugs in this establishment. As you begin to truly wonder what any of this has to do with the rest of the movie, the monster busts in. Another scene has Hamill hitching a ride with a random driver. This seemingly unimportant passer-by persists for a number of scenes afterwards. Far too many moments in “Watchers Reborn” are like that, allowed to ramble on for far longer than necessary. It creates a slapdash feeling with an incredibly unmotivated pacing, events changing depending on who was available that day and headed in no determined direction.

An element I liked a lot in Koontz' novel was the treatment of the Outsider. A frightening monster that routinely tears people apart, it was also driven to destroy through instincts cooked in by its makers. This was a Frankensteinian creature, made without its consent, designed to be unlovable, and so repulsed by its own hideousness that it was disgusted by the idea of anyone looking at it. The previous adaptations pulled from that a little bit.  Buechler's take begins with the Outsider being a mindless monster, that looks like a greasy-faced version of the werewolf from “Altered Beasts.” Slowly, it is revealed that the monster can talk. The last act suddenly plays up the monster's sympathetic aspects. It's not a bad idea but comes across as a random change made far into the runtime. Not to mention it's hard to feel bad for a monster that ripped a bunch of people apart earlier, in gorier fashion than the other “Watchers” films. 

Much of “Watchers Reborn” is set in forgettable looking apartments, barns, and warehouses. This does not dissuade the notion that the movie was made cheaply and hastily with whatever was available. Aside from a scene where he writes his name out in gravy on a newspaper, Einstein the dog doesn't get nearly enough to do either. How do you make a movie about a super-smart dog and not have most of the plot revolve around him? It's not any more faithful to the book than previous adaptations. I guess the “Reborn” subtitle is technically correct but the film certainly lacks the renewed energy you expect from a rebirthing. How can a book be made into a movie four times and each of them miss the mark on what made the original special? A decent cast was pulled together for this one but there's very little else about “Watchers Reborn” that justifies its existence. Maybe someone will give this story of brainy dogs and the monsters who hate them a proper shot some day... [5/10]

 

Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible: Scream Satan Scream!

As an ignorant American, I only know of Steve Coogan for his appearances as an actor in Hollywood movies of varying middlebrow-ness. I am vaguely aware of the Alan Partridge character that he's played many times for British television but that's about the extent of my knowledge about that. However, upon discovering that Coogan also created and starred in a series spoofing classic British horror movies, well, that's a lot more up my alley. “Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible” aired for six episodes on BBC Two in the fall of 2001. Coogan introduced each episode under heavy make-up as “Dr. Terrible,” a slightly senile seeming mad scientist type who would present stories from the fire side, like Roald Dahl in “Tales of the Unexpected.” As the title indicated, the Amicus anthology films was a primary source of inspiration but episodes also spoofed Hammer horror, “The Hands of Orlac,” and Yellow Peril stories. Sounds like a fairly niche idea for a series to me and I''m not surprised to read that audiences didn't warm up to it. But maybe I will...

The final episode to air, “Scream Satan Scream!,” is primarily inspired by “Witchfinder General.”  In it, Coogan plays Captain Slater: Witch Locator. He travels the countryside with his depraved dwarf assistant, Tygon, and looks for beautiful woman to accuse of being witches. It would seem that his methods of determining if a woman is consorting with the devil involves quite a lot of personal inspection of their naked bodies. At some point, Slater actually did burn a real witch at the stake. Now, her two sisters have placed a curse upon Slater and are determined to turn the hysterical, devil-fearing mobs that he riles up against him. Somehow, however, Slater keeps escaping being hoisted by his own placard. 

“Scream Satan Scream!” is, as far as comedies go, pretty dumb. It would be inaccurate to say that the episode only has one joke. However, it does revisit the central joke – that the pious witchfinder is just a horny bastard looking to get laid, using his witch-hunting techniques as an excuse – over and over again. This does lead to a few chuckles, namely the way the universe constantly stymies Slater's efforts. When presented with a pair of beautiful twins, they dead-pan answer each of his questions about witchcraft in the negative. A series of crude double entendres revolving around the town's name “Devil's Hole” is a gag beat so far into the ground that the repetition of the joke itself becomes the joke. Probably the moment that made me laugh the most is when Slater enters the cabin of a young lady he's prepared to accuse of witchcraft, only to discover that she has a giant crucifix up on her wall. 

The more surreal, absurd bits are the ones that made me chuckle a bit more consistently here. None other than Warwick Davis appears as Tygon, an obvious shout-out to the production company that made “Witchfinder General.” Davis never speaks but gets in a number of amusing physical gags, such as when he repeatedly stumbles into metal traps. A sequence in which Slater gets a branding iron all ready only for his intended victim to successfully dispel it, forcing him to brand Davis instead, made me chuckle. That weirdness persists throughout, especially in the climatic sequence where the devil itself appear. The show also attempts to draw humor from the conflicting elements of various witch lore, which is the first joke anybody makes about swimming a witch. I laughed a little but this is an odd one. What would the modern American equavelent to this be? Eric Andre convincing Adult Swim to fund comedic homages to Ray Dennis Steckler?  I think I admire the audacity of something like this actually making it to air more than I enjoyed it as a comedy. [6/10]

The Woman Who Powders Herself (1972)

La femme qui se poudre
 

Horror is one of the few cinematic genres that can entirely get by on mood and atmosphere. Furthermore, it often invokes the surreal and absurd, violating the natural order of the world, in service of unnerving the viewer. Because of this, horror and experimental film making sometimes cross paths. As is the case with "The Woman Who Powders Herself," an inexplicable fifteen minutes of nightmare imagery from French mixed media artist, Patrick Bolanowski. Through a shadowy, distorted, silent movie-like aperture, the short presents a number of bizarre scenes. People wearing dehumanizing, plaster masks motion to each other through the darkness. A woman cakes herself in dust while a man tends to her within a geometrical room. A figure moves across a desolate, surreal landscape. Someone pours a black liquid – Blood? Oil? – into a tea cup until it overflows and consumes the screen. Ominous figures advance on the woman while floating material assembles itself into a tower out in the distance. All the while, a discordant soundscape plays as the footage crackles, warps, and twists through filmic, photographic, and animated means. 

When a film wanders as far into the art house as "The Woman Who Powders Herself" does, what it all means is as much your guess as mine. The provided synopsis describes it as "a study of human anxieties about beauty, youth, and objectification." The actors' faces are twisted into crude caricatures of humanity, except for those who seem to wear a wreath of tumorous tissue around their heads. I suppose that relates to beauty. Is the titular woman meant to be elderly, fighting off her aging appearance by covering her face? Or is she hiding from the world that seeks to objectify her, which descends on her at the end? If that's the case, what does all the other weird shit mean? 

Trying to fashion a narrative out of almost purely experimental filmmaking like "The Woman Who Powders Herself" is hard to do. The desert-like landscape and warped faces gave me post-apocalyptic vibes. The increasingly cracked and popping visuals certainly feel like a depiction of a world falling into nonexistence. Though the touches of animation seem almost whimsical compared to the otherwise haunting imagery. The musical score is composed of mechanical shrieks, foghorn-like cries, and what sounds like water dripping into a sink. All together, the result is a total head scratcher that, nevertheless, summons up an eerie feeling in the viewer and presents our eyes truly with some things we haven't seen before. One wonders if a young David Lynch wasn't influenced by the film. “Eraserhead's” score and visuals share some similarities. While I have zero doubts that E. Elias Merhige swiped nearly the entire "Begotten" aesthetic from this. Nowadays, if you slapped some gnarly doom metal on top of "The Woman Who Powders Herself," you'd have a pretty fucked-up music video. [7/10]

Halloween 2025: September 18th

 

The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)

Here are the things we know to be true. In 1974, after losing their previous home in Hurricane Agnes, the Smurl family – Jack and Janet, their daughters Dawn and Heather, and his parents John and Mary – moved into a duplex on Chase Street in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. The home was an admitted fixer-upper, with a creaky foundation, in a town plagued with sewer piping issues and built atop a honeycomb of old mining areas. Eighteen months after moving in, the family reported your standard poltergeist activity: Missing objects, weird smells, creepy voices, and knocking sounds coming from the walls. (Especially the wall the grandparents shared with the bedroom of their teenage granddaughters.) After Janet gave birth to twins, Shannon and Carin, the family claims the haunting intensified. Supposed incidents include a light falling from the kitchen ceiling, Dawn being pushed down the stairs, Shannon seeing floating figures in her room, and a pet German Shepherd being lifted into the air and thrown into a wall by an unseen force. Most notoriously, Jack – a devout Catholic who underwent brain surgery in 1983 – says a succubus raped him in an episode that aligns closely with sleep paralysis symptoms. 

The family went to the press with their claims, who crowded the streets to such a degree that the neighbors complained. Several Catholic priests performed exorcisms in the house and stayed overnight, reporting nothing unusual. The family refused psychological counseling and denied writers from skepticism based publications enter their home. The help they did seek out was from Ed and Lorraine Warren, the infamous "parapsychologists" who claimed that the Amityville Horror hoax was still a legitimate haunting. The Warrens said multiple ghosts and at least one demonic entity were inhabiting the home. Ed Warren said he saw demonic black masses forming in the air and heard evil voices. Around this time, the money strapped Smurl family was also negotiating book and movie deals about their story. This is why actor Jason Miller visited the house during this period. A book co-written by the Warrens, entitled "The Haunted: One Family's Nightmare," was published in 1986. It was poorly reviewed. A made-for-TV film adaptation followed in 1991. The paranormal activity stopped rather anticlimactically sometime before the Smurls moved out of the house in 1987. Subsequent owners of the property have reported no ghostly events. 

This we also know to be true: "The Conjuring" cinematic universe, extremely loosely based on Ed and Lorraine's career, is the highest grossing horror franchise to date, having made over two billions dollars across nine or ten films. The last three entries in the series have been slightly less successful than the ones before them, the third "Annabelle" and "Conjuring" entries and the second "Nun" all failing to cross two hundred million at the global box office. While that's still a lot of profit, it does suggest some diminishing returns. This might be why it was announced that "The Conjuring 4" would be the final entry about the Warrens themselves, a climax of sorts to "phase one" of the cinematic universe. In other words, a possible finale, the "Avengers: Endgame" of the "Conjuring"-verse. Michael Chaves directed two of those slightly less popular recent sequels but was still retained as director of this one. The subtitle "Last Rites" ensured that everyone knew this was possibly the final movie. Since the Smurl case is chronologically the last of the Warrens' truly attention grabbing "investigations," it provided the basis for the sequel. 

This is the story invented for the sequel: Early in their ghost hunting career, Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated a haunted mirror. The incident was so traumatic that it pushed a very pregnant Lorraine into labor. Their daughter, Judy, arrived stillborn and nearly died, which the couple attributed to the evil spirits within the mirror. In 1985, the Warrens have basically retired from demon battling because of Ed's worsening heart condition. Judy is all grown up and engaged to a man named Tony. Around the same time, the aforementioned spooky mirror ends up in the home of the Smurl family in Pennsylvania, kicking off a horrifying series of events. Old friend of the Warrens, Father Gordon, is so distressed by what he encounters in the home that he commits suicide afterwards. This attracts Judy – who has been experiencing strange visions herself – to the Smurl residence. Her parents follow closely behind, discovering the haunting's connection to one of their earliest cases.

The best films in “The Conjuring” series still tend to feature more jump-scares, those loud and obnoxious jolts that sacrifice genuine tension for a quick jolt, than I'd prefer. The weaker ones rely almost entirely upon them, alongside too much CGI and ideas stolen from better movies. Chaves' first contributions to this cinematic universe, “The Curse of La Llorona” and “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” were utterly kneecapped by this. His third film, “The Nun II,” was a little better. “Last Rites” does prove that the filmmaker and his team are capable of creating a genuinely eerie horror set-piece. My favorite moment in the sequel involves one of the Smurl daughters re-winding a home movie, in order to spot a demonic face in the grainy darkness of the footage. Her own face is reflected on the TV screen as each repetition comes. It's a well-done moment that builds nicely and plays off understandable anxieties, of our private moments and home being invaded by a malevolent outsider. Naturally, this scene immediately leads into a loud and very goofy sequence of a ghostly murder-hillbilly chasing the girl around the living room. So it too often goes with the “Conjuring” movies. 

There are a number of moments like that throughout the sequel. As the evil mirror is crushed in a trash truck, one of the Smurl daughters vomits up a torrent of blood, spraying it around the room. Judy stands in a mirrored room at a bridal shop, before a creaking open door allows in a malevolent spirit. In a set piece that feels like it could've been from one of the better “Omen” sequels, Father Gordon is harassed by demonic spirits in a gorgeously lit room. Any time a suitably tense or freaky feeling is established, it's immediately squandered on a big, loud special effect. “Last Rites,” in particular, seems to greatly miscalculate what is and isn't genuinely scary. It's spectral menace is a generic evil hag with a cartoonish clown grin, which made me chuckle every time it appeared. As the film goes on, it only gets sillier. The entire last act is a barrage of excruciatingly loud, CGI-driven spectacle. An eight foot tall version of Annabelle juts out of the darkness, there's a weak-as-piss revival of some “Exorcist” shenanigans, before the entire climax revolves around the evil mirror. Oh boy, does “The Conjuring: Last Rites” grossly overestimate how scary a mirror is. Even when you used computers to make it do all sorts of wacky shit. 

Much has been made of “Last Rites'” status as a send-off to the Ed and Lorraine that exist solely within these movies. Despite Patrick Wilson looking as yoked out as a 52 year old man could, the film repeatedly draws attention to Ed's worsening heart condition. You're expecting him to die by the end or something. Similarly, repeated references are made to Annabelle and Judy's connection to the demonic doll. Despite that, the sequel barely connects to any previous adventures. Considering the Disciples of the Ram – the Satanic cult present in the first “Annabelle” and third “Conjuring” flicks – seemed like they were being set-up as the Warrens' arch-nemesis, I was disappointed they are totally tossed out in favor of this lame-ass mirror. The script desperately attempts to make this last minute addition to “Conjuring”-verse lore into an enemy grand enough for a final movie. It simply doesn't work, instead feeling more like series architects David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and James Wan – and the other two credited screenwriters – were out of ideas. 

It's something of a bummer too. Whatever merits these movies have, the chemistry between Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga remains adorable. It says a lot that some of the better moments in the film involve no demons or spectres at all. Instead, scenes of the two cooking pancakes or bantering around a dinner table prove far more charming. Farmiga and Wilson have played these ridiculous characters long enough that they feel fleshed-out and lived-in, despite mostly still being caricatures. The new additions to the Warren family here also prove unusually charming. Mia Tomlinson, as Judy, has got those diamond eyes and button nose that immediately makes you want to see her protected. Ben Hardy plays her fiance as a sincere dork who proves surprisingly likable. One of the biggest flaws of the sequel is that it splits time between the Warrens and the Smurls. Clearly, the former are the stars of the show but the latter motivate the plot. The actors playing the tormented family are fine, making them all seem like decent people, but their plight often feels pushed to the margin of the story. 

“Last Rites” ends with an extended epilogue, clearly designed to function as both a heart-felt goodbye to the cinematic Ed and Lorraine with call-backs to past adventures. It's also clearly a passing of the baton to a new team of heroes, should the franchise continue. Considering the fourth installment has already made more than its predecessor – and that the real life Tony Spera has kept his in-laws' grift going to this day – that seems extremely likely. (WB has already announced a streaming series, at the very least.) “Last Rites” is not the worst film to appear out of this very silly franchise, nor is it an especially riveting or frightening one. The leads are nice, it's got one or two moments, but the whole thing remains an immensely silly and self-serious affair. At least it's not as suffocating in its status as Catholic propaganda – the generic virtues of familial love taking precedence over the power of God – as the other ones. Hopefully whatever form the “Conjuring” universe takes next, it'll be about something more like that ghost werewolf and not a fuckin' scary mirror. [5/10]

Just for the Hell of It (1968)

Starting in 1963, Herschell Gordon Lewis would direct a series of garbage bag horror movies that made up for their lack of plausible storytelling, realistic acting, and professional camerawork by throwing a bunch of blood and guts around. The complete rejection of good taste evident in Lewis' films naturally attracted an audience. However, the novelty of sheep intestines heaped on Playboy bunnies had worn thin by 1967. HGL then started experimenting with other exploitation sub-categories. He dabbled in topics like LSD, biker gangs, all-girl rock groups, wife swapping, and the birth control pill. Emerging out of this period was “Just for the Hell of It,” the director's attempt to make a movie about teenage delinquents. (Which he did without casting any actual teenagers.) The resulting motion picture features the same mixture of technical incompetence and weird, outsider perspective as the rest of the filmmaker's output. 

Like most of Lewis' productions, “Just for the Hell of It” is set in a sunny, Floridian suburb. The otherwise idyllic town is beset by a group of rowdy youths who call themselves Destruction Incorporated. Led by the criminally insane Dexter, the group performs random acts of violence on any local unlucky enough to stumble into their path. In-between terrorizing people on the street, they throw wild parties, do drugs, and wreck small businesses. Why do they do this? For no apparent reason at all, perhaps other than to amuse themselves. Their victims are too frightened to testify against them, making the police powerless. Doug is a former member of Dexter's gang who has cleaned up his life, dating a nice girl named Jeanne. He is the only person willing to stand up to the troublemakers. His sense of justice makes him an enemy of the hellraisers, Dexter and his lackies soon deciding to make his life a living hell. 

“Just for the Hell of It,” without any production logos or opening credits, begins right away with a drawn-out scene of the juvenile delinquents wrecking an apartment. The scene goes on and on, shot in a mix of static medium shots and shaky, handheld close-ups. The titles finally begin, playing out over a montage of the kids attacking random people around town. Over the scene, an extremely goofy folk-rock song plays. This, in fact, is how most of the film plays out. Dexter's gang get into fist fights in dinners and wreck them. They spray paint “FUZZ GO AWAY” on a wall. They very gently place a woman's baby in a trash can before smashing her baby carriage to pieces. An old lady is sprayed with a hose, a blind man beat up, a guy on crutches attacked, a newspaper is set on fire without the woman reading it noticing. Many of these montages of destruction are set to that same warbling, repetitive song. All of it is done with the resources, budget, and skills we've come to expect from Herschell Gordon Lewis. Which is to say very little.

The movie was obviously an attempt by its director to cash-in on the cultural hysteria around the hippy movement. The theme song refers to the violent teens as hairy animals and one of the bystanders decries them as “monkeys.” Except these rebel-rousers don't have long hair. They don't appear unshaved, unwashed or even somewhat slightly dazed. They have cleanly cropped hair cuts and wear tucked-in and button-down shirts. This is undoubtedly an exploitation movie. Three teenage girls are lured to one of the gang's party, presumably sexually assaulted, and intimidated into not reporting to the incident. A random blonde on a beach is raped while the hero's girlfriend gets violently brutalized. However, in a rare display of tact, Lewis doesn't include any nudity in these moments. Which surely would've been permissible by 1968. The hokey soundtrack feels very much like a hopelessly out-of-step square attempting to replicate what the kids were listening to. The dialogue is a hilariously awkward attempt to copy contemporary slang. What hippy would call the cops “fuzz” and not “pigs?” These riotous teens rarely do drugs, never have on-screen sex, and seem unusual gentle with what chaos they do reap. 

As it often does, the odd mixture of tedium, do-it-yourself scrapiness, camp, and mean-spirited violence makes “Just for the Hell of It” nearly as hypnotic and entombing as Lewis' more notorious motion pictures. Most of the movie is composed of the aforementioned montages, making this nearly eighty whole minutes of nothing but senseless destruction. The plot is thin as can be, Dexter's rivalry with Doug not being introduced until the eighteen minute mark and only cropping up a few other times before the end. This makes “Just for the Hell of It” feel as nihilistic as the teenage psychopaths it is about. The ending, as slapdash as the rest of the production, is downbeat in its abruptness. A brief epilogue has a character clarifying that none of this matters, before a final reprise of the theme song assures us that no moral can be taken from this telling. I'm sure Mr. Lewis was simply being as crass and commercial as ever. People wanted movies about the kids not being alright and going wild in the streets? Lewis was going to give them that and nothing else. However, the filmmaker's sheer inability to ever aspire to higher art almost makes “Just for the Hell of It” a statement on hedonistic mayhem for its own sake. Few other movies about meaningless violence feel quite as meaningless as this. 

Naturally, the acting is stilted and otherworldly. Ray Sager, the future Montag the Magnificent, plays Dexter as a weirdly vamping marionette while everyone else are stiff as boards. The filmmaking craft on display is rough. When the gang destroys the diner, its owner seems to yell at them from an entirely separate dimension. Aside from that cornball theme song, the soundtrack is composed of jazzy dissonance and random electronic farts. There are unexpected bursts of artier touches, shots of the unhinged antagonists giggling in brightly colored cutaways. It's not as funny as HGL's better remembered horror movies. Nor as weird as, well, “Something Weird.” Often boring or annoying, “Just for the Hell of It” is still too fascinatingly fixated on the idea of senseless violence not to be somewhat interesting and too miscalculated in its attempt to say hello to the fellow kids not to entertain. [5/10]

 

Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected: The Force of Evil

If you say the words “Tales of the Unexpected” to most fans of classic genre television, they will probably assume you are talking about the British series that ran from 1979 to 1988. That Roald Dahl-hosted program did air in the U.S. as well, in syndication throughout the eighties. However, if you're talking to a real hardcore anthology aficionado, they might recall an earlier, American “Tales of the Unexpected.” This one was produced by the prolific Quinn Martin, of “A Quinn Martin Production” fame, going so far as to include his name above the title. (Providing a convenient way to differentiate it from the identically named program that began two years later.) This “Tales” aired for five hour long episodes in 1977, getting crushed in the ratings by “Charlie's Angels” and “Baretta.” I guess, as some sort of stunt to raise ratings, the sixth episode took the form of a feature length special. If that was the intention, it didn't work. The show went on hiatus for sixth months before burning off the last two episodes in August. The longer episode, entitled “The Force of Evil,” would eventually be released on VHS as a stand-alone movie. Along with a handful of other “Tales,” it now floats around the internet as blurry uploads. 

“Force of Evil” follows Dr. Yale Carrington, a beloved husband to Maggie and father to two kids, John and Maggie. Seven years earlier, the crematorium operator at the hospital named Teddy Jakes raped and murdered a girl. He came to Dr. Carrington, asking him to provide an alibi. The doctor refused and Jakes went away for the crime. Now, however, he is out on parole. Jakes begins to show up at the doctor's office. He harasses Maggie in the parking lot of the grocery store. The family's stables burn down mysteriously and a friend of Maggie is struck by a boat while jet-skiing, both crimes attribute to Jakes. Carrington has his brother, the town sheriff, put some pressure on Jakes but it only increases his stalking. The doctor takes justice into his own hands, poisoning Jakes' daily insulin, and dropping his body down a well... This does not stop the man's will to torment Yale Carrington and his family, his vengeance continuing from beyond the grave. 

The few times retrospective reviews of Martin's “Tales of the Unexpected” pop up, it is usually criticized for a perceived lack of creativity. The episode “The Nomads” is a direct remake of the pilot of earlier Martin series, “The Invaders.” Another episode, “A Hand for Sonny Grey,” transplants the old “Hands of Orlac” premise into the world of baseball. Then there's “Force of Evil” which is, to put it kindly, an extended homage to “Cape Fear.” To put it bluntly, it's a direct rip-off. The profession of the main character is changed from a lawyer to a doctor and the location is shifted from the deep south to the American southwest. Otherwise, the similarities are hard to ignore. It's not only the general set-up of a now paroled rapist harassing the family of the man he blames for his imprisonment. In both “Cape Fear” and this episode, the protagonist has the local police pressure the crook, only for that plan to backfire. While in prison, Teddy Jakes read up on law books, much the way Max Cady did. Most blatantly, the climax of “Force of Evil” also sees the family man, his wife, and daughter hiding out on a house boat, only for the assailant to follow them and set the boat adrift from the dock. The episode is credited to Robert Malcolm Young, without acknowledging John D. MacDonald's original novel or James R. Webb's screenplay, but it seems implausible to me that the parallels are coincidence. 

Part of what makes “Cape Fear” a compelling story is how the hero is constantly tempted to violently strike back at his stalker but ultimately shows himself to be morally superior. This is not present in “Force of Evil.” Dr. Carrington and his wife outright plot to murder Teddy Jakes, going so far as to hide his body. This does insert a new angle to the telling. Jakes is a vile man, a remorseless predator who delights in intimidating and terrifying his enemies. However, Carrington taking the law into his own hands, setting out to murder Jakes, at least makes the man's revenge understandable. This could have been built into a meditation on the nature of justice, what constitutes self-defense exactly, and how people consolidate their moral compass. “Force of Evil” doesn't really get into that though, leaving the morality of its protagonist mostly unexamined. The supernatural element that is also hinted at never amounts to much either. The script seems to confirm that Jakes is dead half-way through, his body being dragged out of the well, while also flirting with the possibility that he simply somehow survived the assassination attempt. It's all very vague and half-assed. 

There's some suggestion that “The Force of Evil” could have been a little more than a low-rent TV rip-off of a classic film. Lloyd Bridges stars as Carrington and makes for a sympathetic protagonist. He has good chemistry with Pat Crowley as his wife. William Watson is especially effective as Teddy Jakes, putting off a greasy kind of charisma while also coming across as a totally repugnant human being. You can see how he would be able to con his way into various scenarios while never forgetting what a threat he is. Cinematographer Paul Lohmann has some notable other credits, such as “Coffy,” “The White Buffalo,” and a few Mel Brooks movies. He occasionally adopts a cock-eyed visual direction, adding an uneasy tension to a few moments. Despite these strengths, “Touch of Evil” is sluggishly paced throughout. This story truly did not need to be almost two hours. Moreover, the characters are all thinly written, leaving the talented cast little room to expand on the material. 

As the title implies, there is something of a twist ending here. More like an ambiguous ending, to be frank. It is mildly interesting. William Conrad provides opening and closing narration, as he did on a few other Martin productions, which helps this feel more like a proper anthology series. However, if this represents the overall quality of this “Tales of the Unexpected,” it's not hard to see why it didn't catch on. “Force of Evil” goes out of its way to remind the viewer of superior material while never grappling with the moral themes it brings up or weirder ideas batted around by the script. “Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected” does seem fondly remembered by some seventies nostalgists. Stephen King shouted the show out in “Danse Macabre,” his non-fiction essay on the horror genre... Except the scenario he describes is actually from an episode of “Ghost Story,” meaning this series actually has zero cultural legacy. Good theme song though. [5/10]

The Addams Family: Fester Goes on a Diet

“The Addams Family” is not a show that you would refer to as topical most of the time. However, “Fester Goes on a Diet” roots itself to the late sixties in two specific ways. The main plot involves Uncle Fester receiving news that Yvette, his latest pen pal from France, will be visiting him soon. After Pugsley is caught exercising, in hopes of impressing his own lady friend and much to his parents' horror, Fester gets the idea to loose some weight himself. He consults fitness guru Jack LaLanne – whose eponymous show was already fifteen years into its 34 run by 1966 – and quickly gets on the exercise regiment supposedly used by U.S. astronauts. That last detail leads Gomez and Morticia to believe that Fester has been selected to be an astronaut, the two quickly becoming fearful that his electric physicality would be dangerous within the high-oxygen environment of a space shuttle. The Saturn IB round of Apollo missions would start shortly after this episode aired, which is probably why the topic was on the show writers' minds. The episode does not end with Fester going into outer space, which he wouldn't accomplish until he started fighting aliens in 1989. 

You never know if older programs such as this will hold up to modern standards. By which I mean I was worried this episode would be full of fat jokes. “The Addams Family” has rarely used Jackie Coogan or Ken Weatherwax's physical appearances as the butt of jokes but you never know. It was the sixties, man. Thankfully, “Fester Goes on a Diet” doesn't mock either actor for their appearance much. The idea of Pugsley getting into weight training is a joke because his parents are aghast that their child would be into something wholesome like exercise, not because he's a husky kid. Jack LaLanne, beloved pop culture figure though he might have been, was not much of an actor. He does deliver a few stiff lines about Fester's appearance. However, most of the humor is derived from the weirdness of the uncle's body, not his weight. Fester's attempts at knee bends or arm reps go wrong because he's more like a corpse than your average person. It's goofy physical comedy, not mockery of a fat guy. The ending – fairly easy to predict – could even be read as fat-positive through a 2025 lens, though unintentionally. Still, I didn't cringe much.

In fact, “Fester Goes on a Diet” is a fairly amusing episode. Once again, season two gets some decent mileage out of pairing up characters that haven't interacted much before. I don't recall Fester and Lurch having too many scenes together before this. When Fester tells the butler that his lady friend will be paying him a visit soon, the stocky man-servant's unusually vocal reaction got a good laugh out of me. So did some of the shenanigans of the two attempting to exercise together. Once Yvette appears in the last act, there's a solid gag based of Fester attempting to replicate Gomez' passion for French. A doctor is called in to give Fester a physical, which gets a little more weird than your standard joke of an outsider reacting with horror to the family's antics. Also, there's a cool shot of some fog billowing through the house, the result of Fester using a sarcophagus as a steam bath. Ya know, how come there's not more fog on this show? I'd say the Addams and the Munsters are about evenly matched in most regards but Herman and Lily definitely have the moodier abode. I guess gratuitous amounts of cobwebs and dust and a grand staircase say “haunted house” to me more than a moose head, a fireman's pole, and a two-headed turtle. No offense meant to any of the latter, of course. [7/10]