Most critics of Ghost Story bitch at length about the fact that the movie so severely condenses and truncates the story taken from Peter Straub's best-selling novel that it's nearly unrecognizable. But what's so new and different about this complaint? Hasn't just about every novel that's been adapted for the big screen suffered in the process? (Jaws is the only example that leaps to mind that was actually better as a movie than it was as a novel.) And while I've yet to read Straub's 600-plus page book (it's somewhere in my closet, I think, gathering dust alongside my copies of The Stand and The Shining), I'm sure it lost quite a bit when shoe-horned into a film that runs under two hours. So it's probably more fair to pretend that one has nothing to do with the other and judge each on its own merits (or demerits, as the case may be). And since I haven't read the book, I can only render semi-intelligent opinions on the movie.
Director John Irvin very wisely has John Houseman open the film by telling a ghost story before a roaring fireplace much the same way John Carpenter had Houseman use his wonderfully authoritative voice at the very beginning of The Fog just a couple of years earlier. Houseman is one of four members of the oddly-named Chowder Society--the other members are played by Hollywood legends Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.--who gather regularly to tell spooky stories to one another. The members also happen to share a deep, dark secret involving the death of a young woman (Alice Krieg) some 50 years earlier.
But as all we horror film fans know, deep, dark secrets have a way of crawling out into the light and affecting current events. And so when the son (Craig Wasson) of one of the members of the Chowder Society dies under mysterious circumstances, it's up to his younger brother (also played
by Wasson--economical casting) to dig up the past and find out the truth. It turns out that the ghost of the young woman has returned, seeking revenge and enlisting the aid of a couple of mental hospital escapees.
Irvin sets this story up with much mood and restraint, recalling the style of the horror films Val Lewton produced at RKO in the 1940s. The violence is minimal, and only the occasional rotting corpse clearly marks this a horror film at all. In fact, the only reason Ghost Story got an R rating was for nudity, including a brief frontal shot of Wasson and abundant coverage of Krieg's lithe frame. Not that I'm objecting to seeing Alice Krieg naked--even years later, as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact (and a reprise of that role in the final episode of Star Trek: Voyager), she had the capacity to set one's libido racing. It's just that the nudity here seems thrown in to make the whole thing seem modern and bad-ass when it's really a much more traditional horror film than it wants to admit. Even the few special effects present are restrained, thanks to the abundant talents of Universal Studios veteran Albert Whitlock, who
worked on quite a few Hitchcock pictures.
In lieu of naked bodies, I'd much rather have had even a half-assed explanation as to why the wraith waits so damn long to see revenge on the men responsible for her death. There have been plenty of other movies with a similar theme, including the aforementioned The Fog, in which the vengeful sailors rise on the 100th anniversary of their deaths, and the much older, low budget Strangler of the Swamp, in which an unjustly hanged man causes the strangulation deaths of those responsible for his lynching as well as their offspring.
That latter theme is touched on in Ghost Story as well, with Krieg seducing Wasson (as the younger brother) before getting engaged to and killing the older brother. But why? Why not tear after the members of the Chowder Society themselves some time before they become octogenarians? Why use escaped mental patients to help her? Maybe all of this was explained in
the novel. I'll have to read it sometime and find out.
Despite its flaws, Ghost Story works on a number of levels. It displays great respect for a ghost story well told (even if it doesn't tell its own story as well as it could have), and it pays tribute to the golden age of Hollywood by stocking the movie with stars from that era. Astaire, in
particular, acquits himself well in his last big screen role (he appeared in at least one TV movie, The Man in the Santa Claus Suit, before his death in 1987) and is ably assisted by Patricia Neal as his wife.
Most of all, Ghost Story is a throwback to a simpler time in moviemaking, when shadows and well-chosen words meant a great deal more than special effects, creative cursing and gore. When enjoyed on that level-taken on its own terms and embraced despite its shortcomings--Ghost Story is a stately, satisfying thriller, regardless of how slight its resemblance to the source material that spawned it may be.
Friday, November 14, 2003
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Review: Village of the Giants (1966)
Only in the fevered mind of Bert I. Gordon, the writer/director of such cinematic low points as Beginning of the End, Earth vs. the Spider and the Colossal Man movies, could a twisted, tangled mess of a movie like Village of the Giants, in which "teenagers" (most of whom look like they've moved on to their post-graduate studies) grow to enormous size and terrorize a small town by taking over a theater, dancing to rock music and swinging frightened dudes from their now-enormous breasts, qualify as being "based on 'Food of the Gods' by H.G. Wells"! (That sound you now hear is Mr. Wells spinning in his grave.)
Village of the Giants manages to touch on more elements of bad drive-in filmmaking than just about any other movie I've ever seen. There's the whole good-teens-vs.-bad-teens thing left over from the Frankie and Annette beach movies, with the good kids here led by Tommy Kirk (star of many Disney flicks and looking way too old here), Johnny Crawford (Chuck Conner's son on The Rifleman and the lucky dope who gets to swing from the aforementioned huge boobs) and Ronnie Howard (Opie!) as Genius, a tot with a knack for science who accidentally comes up with a formula to make things grow (a plot device that Bert I. Gordon found fascinating, for whatever reason--wouldn't Freud have just adored Bert?).
We get to see a cat and a dog grow to mammoth proportions before the "goo" is fed to two ducks, who later turn up at a club and "dance" (with more than a little help from some very visible strings). The bad teens, headed up by Beau Bridges (Lloyd's son and Jeff's brother) and Tim Rooney (Mickey's kid), see the ducks as ample opportunity to make quick bucks and set about attempting to seduce the good kids over to the dark side.
(How do we know the bad kids are bad? The boys all wear sneers, the girls wear little else and all of them dance and mud-wrestle right after the opening credits. EVIL!)
The bad kids get hold of the "goo," grow to about 30 feet tall and take over the town, imposing rules on the grownups and taking away their guns. Bert no doubt believed that this was though-provoking commentary on the state of relations between teens and adults, and in competent hands it might have been. But bad acting, consistently inconsistent special effects and weak writing keep getting in the way of the social commentary. After all, these kids are now 30 feet tall and could easily smash the good kids like cockroaches.
So what do they do? Just stand around and talk (and, yeah, dance in slow motion) while the good kids plot, plan and eventually figure out a way to cut the bad kids back down to size.
Village of the Giants definitely lands firmly in the "so awful it's awesome" category, but I'm compelled to give credit where it's due: the opening theme song, repeated later in the film for slow-motion dancing purposes, is one of my all-time favorite instrumentals. (No, I'm not kidding.)
All this AND Toni Basil! How can you lose?
(NOTE: Bert I. wasn't quite done desecrating the works of H.G. Wells--he later made ANOTHER movie based on 'Food of the Gods,'" this time using the actual title. The results weren't that much better.)
Village of the Giants manages to touch on more elements of bad drive-in filmmaking than just about any other movie I've ever seen. There's the whole good-teens-vs.-bad-teens thing left over from the Frankie and Annette beach movies, with the good kids here led by Tommy Kirk (star of many Disney flicks and looking way too old here), Johnny Crawford (Chuck Conner's son on The Rifleman and the lucky dope who gets to swing from the aforementioned huge boobs) and Ronnie Howard (Opie!) as Genius, a tot with a knack for science who accidentally comes up with a formula to make things grow (a plot device that Bert I. Gordon found fascinating, for whatever reason--wouldn't Freud have just adored Bert?).
We get to see a cat and a dog grow to mammoth proportions before the "goo" is fed to two ducks, who later turn up at a club and "dance" (with more than a little help from some very visible strings). The bad teens, headed up by Beau Bridges (Lloyd's son and Jeff's brother) and Tim Rooney (Mickey's kid), see the ducks as ample opportunity to make quick bucks and set about attempting to seduce the good kids over to the dark side.
(How do we know the bad kids are bad? The boys all wear sneers, the girls wear little else and all of them dance and mud-wrestle right after the opening credits. EVIL!)
The bad kids get hold of the "goo," grow to about 30 feet tall and take over the town, imposing rules on the grownups and taking away their guns. Bert no doubt believed that this was though-provoking commentary on the state of relations between teens and adults, and in competent hands it might have been. But bad acting, consistently inconsistent special effects and weak writing keep getting in the way of the social commentary. After all, these kids are now 30 feet tall and could easily smash the good kids like cockroaches.
So what do they do? Just stand around and talk (and, yeah, dance in slow motion) while the good kids plot, plan and eventually figure out a way to cut the bad kids back down to size.
Village of the Giants definitely lands firmly in the "so awful it's awesome" category, but I'm compelled to give credit where it's due: the opening theme song, repeated later in the film for slow-motion dancing purposes, is one of my all-time favorite instrumentals. (No, I'm not kidding.)
All this AND Toni Basil! How can you lose?
(NOTE: Bert I. wasn't quite done desecrating the works of H.G. Wells--he later made ANOTHER movie based on 'Food of the Gods,'" this time using the actual title. The results weren't that much better.)
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Review: Creepshow (1982)
Director George Romero and novelist Stephen King obviously have affection for (and were heavily influenced in their career choices by) the horror comics of the 1950s, most particularly those produced by EC Comics. These stories featured gruesome, graphic artwork and well-written, scary stories
that often had "twist" endings.
Creepshow is their tribute to those comics, and Romero gets the look of the movie just about right, with tilted camera angles and bright primary colors. He even employs comic strip borders in many scenes and brought on EC veteran Jack Kamen to draw the comic book seen between stories.
It's too bad the stories themselves can't match the dead-on tone of the visuals. King's first attempt at writing directly for the screen falls short in the same way that many of EC's imitators did: he can mimic the style, but not the substance. Most anthology horror films are uneven, with some stories holding up better than others, but few swing so wildly in quality than Creepshow does.
The framing story features a little boy who gets slapped around by his beer-swilling dad (Tom Adkins) because the kid likes horror comics. Dad throws away his son's copy of the first issue of Creepshow ; the pages turn, and we get to see five stories.
FATHER'S DAY. A daughter whacks her elderly, mean-spirited father (literally, with a marble ashtray) on the title occasion, denying him his cake. She then visits his grave every year, swilling Jim Beam straight out of the bottle while cursing dear old dad ("You called me a bitch!"). Seven years after his murder, Dad crawls out of his grave and returns the favor, then sets about knocking off other members of his family, including a grandson-in-law he's never even met (Ed Harris).
The story lacks any particular logic-a failing of many stories attempting to duplicate EC's success--and makes for a really weak start to the movie. I mean, why does Dad wait seven years to go zombie on the family? Once he's killed his killer, why does he go on killing? Why does he kill Harris, when he's never met the boy? And why DOESN'T he kill the snotty rich kids? This story just annoyed me. But it could have been worse...
THE LONELY DEATH OF JORDY VERRIL. As bad as that first story was, it's fucking Shakespeare compared to the second one, which stars King himself as a rube who finds a meteor, has visions about making a fortune on it, cracks it open accidentally, gets the green glowing stuff inside ("Meteor shit!") on his fingers and starts turning into a plant. Most of this is played for broad comedy, with King's performance consisting entirely of wide-eyed mugging, but it ends on a serious note striving for pity for this dumbass. Sorry. Not buying it. This is an ego-stroke for King and nothing more. But even an ego-stroke can be at least a little fun for the audience--can't it?
SOMETHING TO TIDE YOU OVER. Easily the best story of the bunch, maybe because it comes the closest to the style of the EC stories, which often featured James M. Cain-style lovers' triangles. Leslie Nielsen gives a surprisingly nasty performance as a husband who gets revenge on his cheating wife (Gaylen Ross, from Romero's zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead) and her boyfriend (Ted Dansen) by burying them in the sand up to their necks at his private beach and watches the tide come in. Of course, they don't stay dead for long, returning to haunt Nielsen as seaweed-draped walking corpses. (Their faces are all wrinkled and distorted, but their hands seem to have no makeup at all; what, did makeup artist Tom Savini run out of Latex?)
THE CRATE. The goriest story. A janitor at a college tells one of the professors (Fritz Weaver) about this crate he's found under the stairs. (Note to everyone in horror films: if you find anything under the stairs, no matter how interesting it looks, LEAVE THE SHIT ALONE!) It's from an Arctic expedition in 1834, but there seems to be something moving around inside...something with very sharp teeth and bright yellow eyes. The prof tells another prof (Hal Holbrook), who would dearly love to ditch his shrewish, boozy floozy of a wife (Adrienne Barbeau). So he takes her down to see the thing under the stairs, and....
This story still works, despite the thunderous lack of logic--just how does this creature stay alive for 148 years--because of the performances of all involved, especially Holbrook, whose chilly, opportunistic approach to the horrible find (he calmly mops up the blood spilled by previous victims so his wife won't suspect a thing as he leads her to slaughter) oddly makes him hissable and sympathetic at the same time. And the only way that works is if we feel sorry for him because he's married to Barbeau, who makes her character pretty loathsome.
THEY'RE CREEPING UP ON YOU. A one-man show, essentially, with E.G. Marshall as a truly repugnant millionaire who delights in his business triumphs--even when they end in suicide for those he conquers--but has a fear of germs in general and bugs in particular. So, of course, his spotless apartment gets overrun with millions of cockroaches, leading to a (literally) explosive conclusion.
Marshall is perfect as a man we instantly hate, and the situation carries the irony that EC relished so. But the special effects fail in the end, with roaches erupting from an obvious dummy head. Still, a strong end story to wash away the bile of the first two.
Oh. And the kid who got smacked by Dad to start the movie gets his revenge in a most pointed way--via a voodoo doll.
There's more than a bit of fun to be had with some of the stories in Creepshow. And with DVD technology and a nimble finger, you can skip the first two stories and get right to the good stuff.
(NOTE: There never was a Creepshow comic book, although there was an official movie adaptation featuring lovely...er, scary artwork by horror comics legend Berni Wrightson.)
Creepshow is their tribute to those comics, and Romero gets the look of the movie just about right, with tilted camera angles and bright primary colors. He even employs comic strip borders in many scenes and brought on EC veteran Jack Kamen to draw the comic book seen between stories.
It's too bad the stories themselves can't match the dead-on tone of the visuals. King's first attempt at writing directly for the screen falls short in the same way that many of EC's imitators did: he can mimic the style, but not the substance. Most anthology horror films are uneven, with some stories holding up better than others, but few swing so wildly in quality than Creepshow does.
The framing story features a little boy who gets slapped around by his beer-swilling dad (Tom Adkins) because the kid likes horror comics. Dad throws away his son's copy of the first issue of Creepshow ; the pages turn, and we get to see five stories.
FATHER'S DAY. A daughter whacks her elderly, mean-spirited father (literally, with a marble ashtray) on the title occasion, denying him his cake. She then visits his grave every year, swilling Jim Beam straight out of the bottle while cursing dear old dad ("You called me a bitch!"). Seven years after his murder, Dad crawls out of his grave and returns the favor, then sets about knocking off other members of his family, including a grandson-in-law he's never even met (Ed Harris).
The story lacks any particular logic-a failing of many stories attempting to duplicate EC's success--and makes for a really weak start to the movie. I mean, why does Dad wait seven years to go zombie on the family? Once he's killed his killer, why does he go on killing? Why does he kill Harris, when he's never met the boy? And why DOESN'T he kill the snotty rich kids? This story just annoyed me. But it could have been worse...
THE LONELY DEATH OF JORDY VERRIL. As bad as that first story was, it's fucking Shakespeare compared to the second one, which stars King himself as a rube who finds a meteor, has visions about making a fortune on it, cracks it open accidentally, gets the green glowing stuff inside ("Meteor shit!") on his fingers and starts turning into a plant. Most of this is played for broad comedy, with King's performance consisting entirely of wide-eyed mugging, but it ends on a serious note striving for pity for this dumbass. Sorry. Not buying it. This is an ego-stroke for King and nothing more. But even an ego-stroke can be at least a little fun for the audience--can't it?
SOMETHING TO TIDE YOU OVER. Easily the best story of the bunch, maybe because it comes the closest to the style of the EC stories, which often featured James M. Cain-style lovers' triangles. Leslie Nielsen gives a surprisingly nasty performance as a husband who gets revenge on his cheating wife (Gaylen Ross, from Romero's zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead) and her boyfriend (Ted Dansen) by burying them in the sand up to their necks at his private beach and watches the tide come in. Of course, they don't stay dead for long, returning to haunt Nielsen as seaweed-draped walking corpses. (Their faces are all wrinkled and distorted, but their hands seem to have no makeup at all; what, did makeup artist Tom Savini run out of Latex?)
THE CRATE. The goriest story. A janitor at a college tells one of the professors (Fritz Weaver) about this crate he's found under the stairs. (Note to everyone in horror films: if you find anything under the stairs, no matter how interesting it looks, LEAVE THE SHIT ALONE!) It's from an Arctic expedition in 1834, but there seems to be something moving around inside...something with very sharp teeth and bright yellow eyes. The prof tells another prof (Hal Holbrook), who would dearly love to ditch his shrewish, boozy floozy of a wife (Adrienne Barbeau). So he takes her down to see the thing under the stairs, and....
This story still works, despite the thunderous lack of logic--just how does this creature stay alive for 148 years--because of the performances of all involved, especially Holbrook, whose chilly, opportunistic approach to the horrible find (he calmly mops up the blood spilled by previous victims so his wife won't suspect a thing as he leads her to slaughter) oddly makes him hissable and sympathetic at the same time. And the only way that works is if we feel sorry for him because he's married to Barbeau, who makes her character pretty loathsome.
THEY'RE CREEPING UP ON YOU. A one-man show, essentially, with E.G. Marshall as a truly repugnant millionaire who delights in his business triumphs--even when they end in suicide for those he conquers--but has a fear of germs in general and bugs in particular. So, of course, his spotless apartment gets overrun with millions of cockroaches, leading to a (literally) explosive conclusion.
Marshall is perfect as a man we instantly hate, and the situation carries the irony that EC relished so. But the special effects fail in the end, with roaches erupting from an obvious dummy head. Still, a strong end story to wash away the bile of the first two.
Oh. And the kid who got smacked by Dad to start the movie gets his revenge in a most pointed way--via a voodoo doll.
There's more than a bit of fun to be had with some of the stories in Creepshow. And with DVD technology and a nimble finger, you can skip the first two stories and get right to the good stuff.
(NOTE: There never was a Creepshow comic book, although there was an official movie adaptation featuring lovely...er, scary artwork by horror comics legend Berni Wrightson.)
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Review: Succubus (1967)
A few years ago, not long before a local UHF station became an affiliate of an international Spanish language network, I stumbled bleary-eyed across an intensely obscure horror film under the title of Among the Living Dead. It had obviously been edited to bits-it ran about an hour-and was almost completely incomprehensible. It did, however, have an interesting basic premise: the heroine of the story turns out to have been a mental patient, and therefore we can't be sure how much of the movie actually takes place in the "real" world and how much takes place in her head. And the ending makes it clear that the young woman is in a nightmare and will never know whether she's still asleep or, far worse, wide awake.
The director of that movie was one Jesus "Jesse" Franco, who apparently specialized in such pseudo-artsy horror films, which had scenes of sex and gore with philosophical, elliptical conversations draped between.
Succubus is along the same lines. Maybe they gave it that title hoping moviegoers worldwide would assume that it was a porno flick. No such luck, puppies. This is the story of a beautiful young woman (Janine Reynaud) who stars in a bizarre nightclub act in Lisbon in which she teases and tortures a young couple before taking all her clothes off and killing them. You know, the usual night out on the town.
The problem is that the young woman in question is slowly but surely losing her marbles, and the suture-thin line between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly hard to find. She's seeing a psychiatrist and plays word games with him; during one of these, the doctors asks her about how she feels about specific classic monsters, and Franco pans his camera across the faces of some very badly painted Aurora monster models.
If that sounds laughable to you, then you've come upon the problem with Succubus: Franco wants so badly for us to take his artful, erotic nightmare so seriously that he throws in stuff that either makes viewers shake their heads or bust a gut. Unfortunately, there's a lot more of the former than the latter. Example: our loony leading lady brings another beautiful young woman back to her place-which just happens to be a castle--and they've just begun to kiss on the bed when we see that the blonde she's brought home is really a mannequin even though it really isn't and she tries to bash her/its head in and the blonde runs away only to be cornered by other mannequins moving toward her and then the actress picks up a knife and....
See what I mean? It's not really funny and not really deep--it's just weird.
At least there's a respectable amount of eye candy: Janine Reynaud is a truly beautiful redhead, and some of the men are pretty as well--most particularly a bartender who serves his rounds while entirely naked (his naughty bits are hidden by a strategically placed top hat, though).
Succubus is worth a look only if you're in a tolerant mood or just up for something decidedly goofy--or both.
(By the way: a succubus, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, is "a female evil spirit or demon thought in medieval times to descend upon and have sexual intercourse with sleeping men." Who says horror films aren't educational?)
The director of that movie was one Jesus "Jesse" Franco, who apparently specialized in such pseudo-artsy horror films, which had scenes of sex and gore with philosophical, elliptical conversations draped between.
Succubus is along the same lines. Maybe they gave it that title hoping moviegoers worldwide would assume that it was a porno flick. No such luck, puppies. This is the story of a beautiful young woman (Janine Reynaud) who stars in a bizarre nightclub act in Lisbon in which she teases and tortures a young couple before taking all her clothes off and killing them. You know, the usual night out on the town.
The problem is that the young woman in question is slowly but surely losing her marbles, and the suture-thin line between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly hard to find. She's seeing a psychiatrist and plays word games with him; during one of these, the doctors asks her about how she feels about specific classic monsters, and Franco pans his camera across the faces of some very badly painted Aurora monster models.
If that sounds laughable to you, then you've come upon the problem with Succubus: Franco wants so badly for us to take his artful, erotic nightmare so seriously that he throws in stuff that either makes viewers shake their heads or bust a gut. Unfortunately, there's a lot more of the former than the latter. Example: our loony leading lady brings another beautiful young woman back to her place-which just happens to be a castle--and they've just begun to kiss on the bed when we see that the blonde she's brought home is really a mannequin even though it really isn't and she tries to bash her/its head in and the blonde runs away only to be cornered by other mannequins moving toward her and then the actress picks up a knife and....
See what I mean? It's not really funny and not really deep--it's just weird.
At least there's a respectable amount of eye candy: Janine Reynaud is a truly beautiful redhead, and some of the men are pretty as well--most particularly a bartender who serves his rounds while entirely naked (his naughty bits are hidden by a strategically placed top hat, though).
Succubus is worth a look only if you're in a tolerant mood or just up for something decidedly goofy--or both.
(By the way: a succubus, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, is "a female evil spirit or demon thought in medieval times to descend upon and have sexual intercourse with sleeping men." Who says horror films aren't educational?)
Monday, November 10, 2003
Review: The Stepfather (1987)
And you thought wicked stepmothers were bad news? They've got nothing on Jerry Blake (Terry O'Quinn), who wants nothing more than the "perfect American family" with his new wife, Susan (Shelley Hack), and her daughter, Stephanie (Jill Schoelen). But Jerry has a way of becoming disillusioned and disappointed with those he's entrusted with his faith in the existence of that "perfect family."
And how does Jerry express his disappointment? Well, with his previous family, back when he called himself Henry Morrison, he took a sharp implement or two and chopped them to bits.
Sounds like a yet another serial killer flick, doesn't it? Well, you're right. That's just what The Stepfather is. But this one is a bit brighter than usual for most of its length, with characters who aren't entirely stupid, like Stephanie, who senses almost immediately that Jerry isn't exactly the all-American, upstanding guy he presents himself as. Then there's Stephanie's counselor (Charles Layner), who trusts her instincts and decides to check the stepdad out--only to get his head bashed in with a 2x4. And then there's the brother of Jerry's previous wife (Stephen Shellen), who just won't accept that the man he knows as Henry seems to have vanished off the face of the planet.
I'm not saying this is a great movie. It isn't. It starts with some rather nasty gore, showing us what's left of Henry's family before he goes off to become Jerry. Ordinarily, that would piss me off to the max. But knowing from the get-go that Henry/Jerry is a homicidal maniac adds substantial creepiness to everything he says or does throughout the movie, so that even a relatively innocent statement, like when Jerry suggests to Stephanie that they "bury the hatchet," makes your skin crawl up the wall.
Unfortunately, Jerry starts saying more and more stuff like that until, by the time we get to the straight-off-the-horror-film-assembly-line ending, in which characters who'd been smart for the whole movie start doing really, really stupid things (like walking into a house where you KNOW a serial killer lives without your gun drawn, or running up to the attic when running down and out of the freakin' house might be a better plan), Jerry's throwing off one-liners like a domestic Freddy Krueger.
And that's not just a shame, but a damn shame. Until that autopilot ending, director Joseph Rubin and screenwriter Donald Westlake give us sharp characters, well played by all involved--especially Schoelen (who comes off like a proto-Winona Ryder) and yes, even Shelley Hack. But it's Terry O'Quinn who steals the whole bloody show here, giving one of the most whacked-out performances in one long fucking time. He manages to bring menace even to the most benign scenes-like hosting a backyard party or building a birdhouse--where you can see that Jerry is perpetually concerned about having his past dug up. And when Jerry rushes down to his basement workshop, where his rage bubbles up to the surface and he starts trembling, throwing things around and mumbling uncontrollably, he presents one of the most genuinely freaky and frightening psychos ever put on screen--all the more creepy because he seems so "normal" most of the time.
If you catch The Stepfather blinking past you while you work the remote on a late Saturday night, stop and watch for Terry O'Quinn--just dial your expectations down a bit so that you're not too badly disappointed by the last ten minutes of what is otherwise a standout little slasher flick.
(NOTE: Like damn near every other hit movie in this surely cursed genre, "The Stepfather" generated a couple of sequels, both reportedly decidedly inferior to the original. But isn't that usually the way?)
And how does Jerry express his disappointment? Well, with his previous family, back when he called himself Henry Morrison, he took a sharp implement or two and chopped them to bits.
Sounds like a yet another serial killer flick, doesn't it? Well, you're right. That's just what The Stepfather is. But this one is a bit brighter than usual for most of its length, with characters who aren't entirely stupid, like Stephanie, who senses almost immediately that Jerry isn't exactly the all-American, upstanding guy he presents himself as. Then there's Stephanie's counselor (Charles Layner), who trusts her instincts and decides to check the stepdad out--only to get his head bashed in with a 2x4. And then there's the brother of Jerry's previous wife (Stephen Shellen), who just won't accept that the man he knows as Henry seems to have vanished off the face of the planet.
I'm not saying this is a great movie. It isn't. It starts with some rather nasty gore, showing us what's left of Henry's family before he goes off to become Jerry. Ordinarily, that would piss me off to the max. But knowing from the get-go that Henry/Jerry is a homicidal maniac adds substantial creepiness to everything he says or does throughout the movie, so that even a relatively innocent statement, like when Jerry suggests to Stephanie that they "bury the hatchet," makes your skin crawl up the wall.
Unfortunately, Jerry starts saying more and more stuff like that until, by the time we get to the straight-off-the-horror-film-assembly-line ending, in which characters who'd been smart for the whole movie start doing really, really stupid things (like walking into a house where you KNOW a serial killer lives without your gun drawn, or running up to the attic when running down and out of the freakin' house might be a better plan), Jerry's throwing off one-liners like a domestic Freddy Krueger.
And that's not just a shame, but a damn shame. Until that autopilot ending, director Joseph Rubin and screenwriter Donald Westlake give us sharp characters, well played by all involved--especially Schoelen (who comes off like a proto-Winona Ryder) and yes, even Shelley Hack. But it's Terry O'Quinn who steals the whole bloody show here, giving one of the most whacked-out performances in one long fucking time. He manages to bring menace even to the most benign scenes-like hosting a backyard party or building a birdhouse--where you can see that Jerry is perpetually concerned about having his past dug up. And when Jerry rushes down to his basement workshop, where his rage bubbles up to the surface and he starts trembling, throwing things around and mumbling uncontrollably, he presents one of the most genuinely freaky and frightening psychos ever put on screen--all the more creepy because he seems so "normal" most of the time.
If you catch The Stepfather blinking past you while you work the remote on a late Saturday night, stop and watch for Terry O'Quinn--just dial your expectations down a bit so that you're not too badly disappointed by the last ten minutes of what is otherwise a standout little slasher flick.
(NOTE: Like damn near every other hit movie in this surely cursed genre, "The Stepfather" generated a couple of sequels, both reportedly decidedly inferior to the original. But isn't that usually the way?)
Sunday, November 9, 2003
Review: Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1960/1964)
Face of the Screaming Werewolf, which stars Lon Chaney Jr. as a mummy who turns into the Wolf Man (trust me, I'll try to explain later), has one of the most convoluted histories--and thus, one of the most confusing plots--I've ever seen.
Apparently, it started out as a south-of-the-border horror comedy called La Casa del Terror, with Mexican comedian Tin Tan as a night watchman in a wax museum. Then American producer/director Jerry Warren bought the rights to it, edited out most of Tin Tan's scenes and shot bridging scenes to explain what was going on. To further confuse matters, Warren also edited in scenes from one of the popular Aztec Mummy movies, perhaps to pad out the film's running time to a full hour.
But wait. It gets worse. In Nightmare of Ecstasy, Rudolph Grey's biography of legendary schlock director Ed Wood, film editor "Lucky" Brown recalls that Wood and cinematographer ÒBig BillÓ Thompson shot some footage of Chaney in full Wolf Man makeup climbing the outside of a building. The idea, apparently, was to raise cash for a film project. That project never came to be--or did it?Face of the Screaming Werewolf has a sequence that exactly matches the footage Brown describes. Did Wood direct parts of La Casa del Terror or sell his Chaney footage to Mexican director Gilberto Martinez Solares? Did Chaney own the footage and give it to the Mexican director? Did Warren stick the footage in? Is it all just an extraordinary coincidence?
But whatever the various sources of footage, one thing is clear: Face of the Screaming Werewolf is one fucked-up crazy quilt of a movie.
Doctor Edmund Redding and his two assistants hypnotize a young woman, Ann Taylor, who apparently was an Aztec princess in a previous life. She has a couple of flashbacks, including one really long one with dancing, singing and a sacrifice. A helpful announcer who looks like he's on TV, even though we later hear his voice coming out of a radio, tells us that Taylor, Redding and the other docs are all going to explore a pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Once in the pyramid, the explorers find two mummies: one looks an awful lot like Lon Chaney Jr. (because it is), and the other one is a thinner Aztec mummy who growls like the Frankenstein Monster. Redding throws something at the Aztec mummy and stops him (or at least I assume that's what happens, since the scene abruptly ends there). Both mummies are brought back to America, where the helpful announcer is joined by a helpful scientist, who explains that the Chaney mummy is a "modern man" placed in the pyramid by parties unknown after "exchanging fluids" with the older Aztec mummy in an effort to "simulate" death. (How exactly were these "fluids" exchanged? Do I want to know? And is this supposed to imply that Chaney is playing the same Wolf Man character he played in the old Universal flicks?) The modern mummy is put on public display (the growling Aztec mummy apparently gets locked up for safekeeping). Then thieves kill Redding, steal the Chaney mummy and take him back to their laboratory hidden in a wax museum, where Tin Tan (hey, wasn't he edited out of this mess?) can be spotted snoozing in the background in a couple of shots.
The thieves are doctors of some sort who experiment on Chaney with a huge centrifuge-type thing and electricity, but they can't revive him. (And nobody bothers to explain why they're even trying to.) The three rival docs, led by Professor Janning (who looks a lot like a younger, Mexican Boris Karloff), take a break and go to a cafŽ, where one of them calls another thief (back in the inserted American footage). The thief seems thrilled when he thinks the job involves knocking somebody off, but looks worried when he's told that he'll be stealing the Aztec mummy. (What, he has no problem with murder, but is queasy about stealing someone who's already dead?)
Meanwhile, back at the lab, lightning hits the equipment and revives Chaney. He gets up, goes to the window, looks up at the full moon (my, that storm cleared up quickly)...and turns into the Wolf Man! When the thieving docs return to the wax museum, the Wolf Man kills one of them. And then falls over unconscious. For no fucking reason.
Meanwhile, the hired thug goes off to steal the growling Aztec mummy, only to have said growling Aztec mummy knock him out cold. The mummy then roams the streets until he finds Ann Taylor and carries her off. The hired thug wakes up, gets in his car and accidentally hits the mummy, killing himself, the mummy and Ann Taylor. The next day, we get a smashing closeup of a newspaper headline: "Ann Taylor Dead! Mummy Destroyed!" And then we never hear about Ann Taylor or the Aztec mummy again.
Meanwhile (lots of "meanwhiles" here, aren't there?), back at the lab, the Wolf Man has been loaded onto a table. He wakes up, throttles another doctor and is about to escape when Jennings shines a flashlight in the Wolf Man's eyes and drives him into a cage. (Bet you didn't know werewolves were afraid of flashlights, now did you?) Then Jennings leaves again.
Two cops stop by to investigate the theft of the mummy, but get the door slammed in their faces. Remarkably, the cops just...leave. Later, they talk to the radio scientist, who talks a lot, but explains nothing.
Chaney wakes up in the cage and isn't a werewolf anymore. He gets to utter his one line of dialog--"No!"--before the full moon comes out again and he sprouts fur. He tears the lock off of the cage and escapes again. This time, he roams the streets, runs alongside a highway, grabs a woman and climbs the outside of a building with her on his back. Tin Tan gets up off a table (where he was napping?) and climbs up after the Wolf Man, then gets knocked off the roof of the building and lands safely on the awning below. The Wolf Man runs down the stairs (why'd he bother playing King Kong with the outside of the building anyway?) and lets the girl go. (Or does he? The woman he puts on the sidewalk is dressed differently than the woman he kidnapped.)
Then the Wolf Man runs along the highway again and follows another woman home. This woman looks exactly like the last one he kidnapped (and probably IS the same woman, but incompetent editing clouds the issue) and, after chasing her around the apartment for a few minutes, grabs her and takes her back to the wax museum.
The Wolf man kills the Mexican Karloff look-alike doc and wrestles with Tin Tan. A fire starts in the lab. Tin Tan picks up a torch and beats the Wolf Man with it. And Chaney falls over unconscious. Again. For no fucking reason. And he burns to death. (Who knew werewolves were so flammable?) The cops from the American footage show up, disappointed that instead of finding a monster, all they see is "an ordinary guy." The end.
You know, my head hurts just thinking about this movie. I think I'll go and lie down for a while.
Apparently, it started out as a south-of-the-border horror comedy called La Casa del Terror, with Mexican comedian Tin Tan as a night watchman in a wax museum. Then American producer/director Jerry Warren bought the rights to it, edited out most of Tin Tan's scenes and shot bridging scenes to explain what was going on. To further confuse matters, Warren also edited in scenes from one of the popular Aztec Mummy movies, perhaps to pad out the film's running time to a full hour.
But wait. It gets worse. In Nightmare of Ecstasy, Rudolph Grey's biography of legendary schlock director Ed Wood, film editor "Lucky" Brown recalls that Wood and cinematographer ÒBig BillÓ Thompson shot some footage of Chaney in full Wolf Man makeup climbing the outside of a building. The idea, apparently, was to raise cash for a film project. That project never came to be--or did it?Face of the Screaming Werewolf has a sequence that exactly matches the footage Brown describes. Did Wood direct parts of La Casa del Terror or sell his Chaney footage to Mexican director Gilberto Martinez Solares? Did Chaney own the footage and give it to the Mexican director? Did Warren stick the footage in? Is it all just an extraordinary coincidence?
But whatever the various sources of footage, one thing is clear: Face of the Screaming Werewolf is one fucked-up crazy quilt of a movie.
Doctor Edmund Redding and his two assistants hypnotize a young woman, Ann Taylor, who apparently was an Aztec princess in a previous life. She has a couple of flashbacks, including one really long one with dancing, singing and a sacrifice. A helpful announcer who looks like he's on TV, even though we later hear his voice coming out of a radio, tells us that Taylor, Redding and the other docs are all going to explore a pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Once in the pyramid, the explorers find two mummies: one looks an awful lot like Lon Chaney Jr. (because it is), and the other one is a thinner Aztec mummy who growls like the Frankenstein Monster. Redding throws something at the Aztec mummy and stops him (or at least I assume that's what happens, since the scene abruptly ends there). Both mummies are brought back to America, where the helpful announcer is joined by a helpful scientist, who explains that the Chaney mummy is a "modern man" placed in the pyramid by parties unknown after "exchanging fluids" with the older Aztec mummy in an effort to "simulate" death. (How exactly were these "fluids" exchanged? Do I want to know? And is this supposed to imply that Chaney is playing the same Wolf Man character he played in the old Universal flicks?) The modern mummy is put on public display (the growling Aztec mummy apparently gets locked up for safekeeping). Then thieves kill Redding, steal the Chaney mummy and take him back to their laboratory hidden in a wax museum, where Tin Tan (hey, wasn't he edited out of this mess?) can be spotted snoozing in the background in a couple of shots.
The thieves are doctors of some sort who experiment on Chaney with a huge centrifuge-type thing and electricity, but they can't revive him. (And nobody bothers to explain why they're even trying to.) The three rival docs, led by Professor Janning (who looks a lot like a younger, Mexican Boris Karloff), take a break and go to a cafŽ, where one of them calls another thief (back in the inserted American footage). The thief seems thrilled when he thinks the job involves knocking somebody off, but looks worried when he's told that he'll be stealing the Aztec mummy. (What, he has no problem with murder, but is queasy about stealing someone who's already dead?)
Meanwhile, back at the lab, lightning hits the equipment and revives Chaney. He gets up, goes to the window, looks up at the full moon (my, that storm cleared up quickly)...and turns into the Wolf Man! When the thieving docs return to the wax museum, the Wolf Man kills one of them. And then falls over unconscious. For no fucking reason.
Meanwhile, the hired thug goes off to steal the growling Aztec mummy, only to have said growling Aztec mummy knock him out cold. The mummy then roams the streets until he finds Ann Taylor and carries her off. The hired thug wakes up, gets in his car and accidentally hits the mummy, killing himself, the mummy and Ann Taylor. The next day, we get a smashing closeup of a newspaper headline: "Ann Taylor Dead! Mummy Destroyed!" And then we never hear about Ann Taylor or the Aztec mummy again.
Meanwhile (lots of "meanwhiles" here, aren't there?), back at the lab, the Wolf Man has been loaded onto a table. He wakes up, throttles another doctor and is about to escape when Jennings shines a flashlight in the Wolf Man's eyes and drives him into a cage. (Bet you didn't know werewolves were afraid of flashlights, now did you?) Then Jennings leaves again.
Two cops stop by to investigate the theft of the mummy, but get the door slammed in their faces. Remarkably, the cops just...leave. Later, they talk to the radio scientist, who talks a lot, but explains nothing.
Chaney wakes up in the cage and isn't a werewolf anymore. He gets to utter his one line of dialog--"No!"--before the full moon comes out again and he sprouts fur. He tears the lock off of the cage and escapes again. This time, he roams the streets, runs alongside a highway, grabs a woman and climbs the outside of a building with her on his back. Tin Tan gets up off a table (where he was napping?) and climbs up after the Wolf Man, then gets knocked off the roof of the building and lands safely on the awning below. The Wolf Man runs down the stairs (why'd he bother playing King Kong with the outside of the building anyway?) and lets the girl go. (Or does he? The woman he puts on the sidewalk is dressed differently than the woman he kidnapped.)
Then the Wolf Man runs along the highway again and follows another woman home. This woman looks exactly like the last one he kidnapped (and probably IS the same woman, but incompetent editing clouds the issue) and, after chasing her around the apartment for a few minutes, grabs her and takes her back to the wax museum.
The Wolf man kills the Mexican Karloff look-alike doc and wrestles with Tin Tan. A fire starts in the lab. Tin Tan picks up a torch and beats the Wolf Man with it. And Chaney falls over unconscious. Again. For no fucking reason. And he burns to death. (Who knew werewolves were so flammable?) The cops from the American footage show up, disappointed that instead of finding a monster, all they see is "an ordinary guy." The end.
You know, my head hurts just thinking about this movie. I think I'll go and lie down for a while.
Saturday, November 8, 2003
Review: Not of This Earth (1988)
This remake of Roger Corman's 1956 low-budget cult classic has virtually the same plot as the original and an even lower budget. So why remake it at all? Why, to do what Corman couldn't in 1956: Show lots and lots of naked chicks. And director Jim Wynorski does exactly that. But does that qualify as an improvement? Not really.
Traci Lords takes over Beverly Garland's role from the original as Nadine, a nurse working in a clinic for a doctor (Ace Mask--think that's his real name?) who receives a most unusual patient: Mr. Johnson (Arthur Roberts, who looks a bit like Harvey Keitel), a man in a suit and sunglasses who claims to be dying and needs a transfusion immediately, but who refuses to take a blood test beforehand. Why? Because he's really a blood-sucking alien with shiny eyes--if he takes off the sunglasses, you die.
Mr. Johnson exerts his will on the doc and gets the transfusion, then hires Nadine to come to his house and take care of him. Since the money's good, Nadine goes for it and moves into Johnson's house. Johnson already has an ex-con chauffeur (Lenny Juliano) who starts hitting on Nadine immediately, even though she has a cop for a boyfriend (Roger Lodge), and checks her naked frame out in a mirror after she gets out of the shower.
The chauffeur may be a jerkwad, but he's not a complete idiot. He knows something weird is going on in Mr. Johnson's house. As he very eloquently tells Nadine, "It's like a roach motel. Roaches check in, but they don't check out." Said "roaches" include a vacuum cleaner salesman, three hookers (who, of course, strip before getting zapped by Mr. Johnson's eyes) and a strip-o-gram girl who gets beamed back to Johnson's home planet. Will Nadine be next? Do you care?
There's not much reason to care about Not of This Earth. Wynorski's direction is amateur hour, with some continuity glitches that would have made Ed Wood proud, like day and night scenes mixed together and a car going off a bridge that magically becomes a truck before crashing to the bottom in flames. Much of the acting is straight-to-cable quality, though I have to admire Roberts who, as Mr. Johnson, manages to keep a straight face throughout.
And then there's Traci Lords. She's the best thing about the movie--and no, not just because she has two nude scenes, the only two of her post-porno acting career, or because she has a poolside scene in a bikini that looks like it must have been painted on. Traci Lords actually handles her lines pretty well and gets to play a character who isn't just a blonde bimbo, but who smells something wrong as soon as she comes into Johnson's house and spends most of the movie unraveling the mystery. She plays Nadine smart and sexy and does it well. It's a shame Traci's respectable performance isn't enough to save the rest of the movie, though--it sucks serious ass.
When Wynorski approached Corman about remaking Not of This Earth, Roger should have just walked away. Quickly. At least Traci Lords went on to bigger and better roles in bigger and better movies and a brief career as a techno diva. Wynorski went on to make Vampirella, which was so bad that it went straight to video. Maybe Jim should just stay away from movies about alien vampires...
Traci Lords takes over Beverly Garland's role from the original as Nadine, a nurse working in a clinic for a doctor (Ace Mask--think that's his real name?) who receives a most unusual patient: Mr. Johnson (Arthur Roberts, who looks a bit like Harvey Keitel), a man in a suit and sunglasses who claims to be dying and needs a transfusion immediately, but who refuses to take a blood test beforehand. Why? Because he's really a blood-sucking alien with shiny eyes--if he takes off the sunglasses, you die.
Mr. Johnson exerts his will on the doc and gets the transfusion, then hires Nadine to come to his house and take care of him. Since the money's good, Nadine goes for it and moves into Johnson's house. Johnson already has an ex-con chauffeur (Lenny Juliano) who starts hitting on Nadine immediately, even though she has a cop for a boyfriend (Roger Lodge), and checks her naked frame out in a mirror after she gets out of the shower.
The chauffeur may be a jerkwad, but he's not a complete idiot. He knows something weird is going on in Mr. Johnson's house. As he very eloquently tells Nadine, "It's like a roach motel. Roaches check in, but they don't check out." Said "roaches" include a vacuum cleaner salesman, three hookers (who, of course, strip before getting zapped by Mr. Johnson's eyes) and a strip-o-gram girl who gets beamed back to Johnson's home planet. Will Nadine be next? Do you care?
There's not much reason to care about Not of This Earth. Wynorski's direction is amateur hour, with some continuity glitches that would have made Ed Wood proud, like day and night scenes mixed together and a car going off a bridge that magically becomes a truck before crashing to the bottom in flames. Much of the acting is straight-to-cable quality, though I have to admire Roberts who, as Mr. Johnson, manages to keep a straight face throughout.
And then there's Traci Lords. She's the best thing about the movie--and no, not just because she has two nude scenes, the only two of her post-porno acting career, or because she has a poolside scene in a bikini that looks like it must have been painted on. Traci Lords actually handles her lines pretty well and gets to play a character who isn't just a blonde bimbo, but who smells something wrong as soon as she comes into Johnson's house and spends most of the movie unraveling the mystery. She plays Nadine smart and sexy and does it well. It's a shame Traci's respectable performance isn't enough to save the rest of the movie, though--it sucks serious ass.
When Wynorski approached Corman about remaking Not of This Earth, Roger should have just walked away. Quickly. At least Traci Lords went on to bigger and better roles in bigger and better movies and a brief career as a techno diva. Wynorski went on to make Vampirella, which was so bad that it went straight to video. Maybe Jim should just stay away from movies about alien vampires...
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