One week ago today I wrote up Dan Curtis' made-for-TV-horror take on Dracula, and this week the series continues with the made-for-TV-horror favorite Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. TV horror movies are not my bad, so I can really only guess as to why this movie remains a point of discussion among horror buffs today - I imagine it's because so many people saw it as kids and were creeped out by the movie's murderous gremlins and surprisingly bleak ending.
There's actually some cool subtext to this movie, though. I like the way that Kim Darby's character is pretty much abandoned to her fate by her careerist husband, which functions as a potent metaphor for relationships in which one half goes off to work every day and the other half is "trapped" at home. It made me think a gender-reversed remake might be interesting, but for all I know the remake that came out a couple years ago used this conceit already (I'm not going to look it up because I don't want to).
In addition to Darby there's Jim Hutton as her husband, who brings a nice low-rent Jimmy Stewart quality to the role. He's got to be one of the shittiest screen husbands ever, dismissing Darby's fears at every turn and generally behaving like a boorish ass. There's also William Demarest in his final screen role, a very long way away from Preston Sturges.
In closing, I will advise all readers not to follow this movie's titular advice. It actually seems kind of hypocritical, all things considered.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Night of Terror #13: 'Curse of Chucky'
Hello all. For tonight's Night of Terror I've enlisted the help of Jere Pilapil. Jere may have a boyish exterior but don't be fool: Inside is the psyche of a dangerous killer. He's reviewing Curse of Chucky, part of a franchise of horror movies I have never seen partially because the cover for Child's Play used to freak me out so much as a kid when I went to Blockbuster. Here's Jere:
Curse of Chucky is the sixth movie in the Child’s Play series,
and the first to be DTV, so I guess the maker (Don Mancini, series
creator and writer, second time director) thought that this is as good a
time as any to go back to its roots. I watched this on the same night
that I rewatched its immediate predecessor Seed of Chucky and experienced the largest tonal whiplash that any movie series has given me. Where Seed of Chucky was a madcap comedy romp where a couple people happen to die, Curse of Chucky is a straight-up horror movie, and it might be the most effective Chucky movie since the first Child’s Play.
In Curse of Chucky,
Chucky abandons Hollywood to be mailed out to a woman and her daughter
who live in an enormous, secluded, poorly-lit house. Some things happen
(murder) and some other characters come to stay awhile in the house, and
then some other things happen (more murder, doll-related intrigue,
non-doll-related intrigue).
Most
of the movie’s tension stems from how so few of the characters seem to
get along. Nica (the daughter, played by Fiona Dourif, Brad “I Voice
Chucky and was also in Deadwood” Dourif’s daughter) is trying to hold on
to the house while her sister Barb (played by Danielle “No Relation to
Brad Dourif” Bisutti) is trying to sell the house for her own personal
gain. Also, there’s a priest, a babysitter, Barb’s husband, and Barb’s
daughter involved in the whole thing. Everyone’s got their tensions and
squabbles, and - most impressively - the human relationships do a great
job distracting from how there’s surprisingly little Chucky in this
Chucky movie.
His
presence is all over the movie from the moment he gets unboxed, but
this is a back-to-the-roots sequel in all the best ways, which for Child’s Play mostly
means a lot of shots of feet scurrying and the doll being found in
unlikely places. Even by regular doll standards, Chucky is
creepy-looking, eyes slightly too small for his head, and just the still
shots of the doll sitting there inanimate are as effective as the
imaginative ways he winds up killing people. The low budget becomes a
blessing, since there’s a visual poetry to situations like a parent
asking a doll, “How’d you get there?” followed immediately by a shot of
rat poison and then a shot of people eating soul.
Originally, the follow up plan for Seed of Chucky had been to do a remake of the original Child’s Play.
I’m guessing a lot of components from that got transported here, since
almost all of the movie seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the
series. That’s a very effective choice, since you don’t get a sense of
Chucky’s motives until the end. Up to that point, he’s just killing up a
family without a clear purpose.
It’s
when that purpose becomes outlined that the movie deflates a little,
since it sets up a bunch of cameos and nods to the past that feel
randomly inserted for the sake of establishing backstory that was
totally unnecessary (one nice touch manages to seal up one plot hole
while opening others). But, I would still say that this a worthwhile
sequel to Child’s Play because
it makes Chucky menacing again after he spent some time trying comedy.
To use a very 2013 analogy, Justin Timberlake was OK at acting, but I’m
glad he’s back to making music even if the music isn’t as great as the
old stuff.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Night of Terror #12: 'The Madmen of Mandoras'
Note: I saw this under its original title, The Madmen of Mandoras, not its later and vastly superior title They Saved Hitler's Brain. A cursory reading of stuff on the internet suggests that the latter title isn't just a different title, but an actually different version of the movie with extra footage added.
This is definitely one of those movies that I must admit I don't know how to appraise. On the one hand, it's incompetent on pretty much every level, from the writing to the staging of action, to the acting, on down to the depiction of the disembodied head of Adolf Hitler. And yet it's also one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a while - well-paced, never boring, and it depicts the disembodied head of Adolf Hitler.
I can't really say much about The Madmen of Mandoras other than that, but I would like to point out some similarities between this and the Harry Palmer spy adventure Billion Dollar Brain: Both movies feature radical separatist groups taking orders from a computer/disembodied head of Adolf Hitler and both movies feature villainous Texas oilmen in key roles. Is Adolf Hitler's disembodied head worth a billion dollars, or does it come cheaper than an autonomous supercomputer? I'm no accountant but judging by how quickly it melted once it caught fire I'd say the disembodied head of Adolf Hitler probably came at a pretty deep discount.
The disembodied head of Adolf Hitler.
This is definitely one of those movies that I must admit I don't know how to appraise. On the one hand, it's incompetent on pretty much every level, from the writing to the staging of action, to the acting, on down to the depiction of the disembodied head of Adolf Hitler. And yet it's also one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in a while - well-paced, never boring, and it depicts the disembodied head of Adolf Hitler.
I can't really say much about The Madmen of Mandoras other than that, but I would like to point out some similarities between this and the Harry Palmer spy adventure Billion Dollar Brain: Both movies feature radical separatist groups taking orders from a computer/disembodied head of Adolf Hitler and both movies feature villainous Texas oilmen in key roles. Is Adolf Hitler's disembodied head worth a billion dollars, or does it come cheaper than an autonomous supercomputer? I'm no accountant but judging by how quickly it melted once it caught fire I'd say the disembodied head of Adolf Hitler probably came at a pretty deep discount.
The disembodied head of Adolf Hitler.
Night of Terror #11: 'Peeping Tom'
Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, but yesterday was my birthday and I spent it watching a movie about this horrible blond creep who's way too obsessed with movies. What a screwball!
I'm talking about Peeping Tom, the best horror movie ever made about horror movies. The most fascinating thing to me about this movie (and probably a good explanation for why it wasn't appreciated by anyone when it first came out) is how it seems to predict and comment upon the phenomenon of slasher movies well over a decade before that genre would hit its full stride. Why is it so fascinating on a primal level to watch people get hacked apart by knives and other sharp weapons? Isn't that a little sick?
And Peeping Tom tops every slasher ever made in the weaponry department: Carl Boehm's Mark Lewis kills his victims with a knife that sticks out of his camera tripod (he must have gotten it from SkyMall, hahahaha). It's all part of his obsession with fear, and more acutely his obsession with the image of fear, as well as screen images in movies. To put it bluntly he's movie-crazy, apparently due to myriad traumas inflicted on him by his scoptophiliac father.
But there's no point in me trying to pick apart the subtext in Peeping Tom - that ground is well-worn and you'd need a lot more space to do it effectively. But for such a thematically rich movie it also just works as a horror movie, albeit a pretty grim one. There are splashes of humor and the visual feast is overwhelming. It's as if director Michael Powell thought of the moviegoer's eyeballs as ravenously hungry beasts, always craving more and more images, and sought to overstuff them like the "Gluttony" victim in Se7en.
Comparisons to Psycho and pretty much the entire filmography of Brian De Palma have also been made to the point of repetition, but it's still pretty incredible to watch Peeping Tom and see so much of cinema's future history at 1960 laid before you. Here's a scary thought: Maybe Mark Lewis wasn't crazy, maybe he was just ahead of his time.
I'm talking about Peeping Tom, the best horror movie ever made about horror movies. The most fascinating thing to me about this movie (and probably a good explanation for why it wasn't appreciated by anyone when it first came out) is how it seems to predict and comment upon the phenomenon of slasher movies well over a decade before that genre would hit its full stride. Why is it so fascinating on a primal level to watch people get hacked apart by knives and other sharp weapons? Isn't that a little sick?
And Peeping Tom tops every slasher ever made in the weaponry department: Carl Boehm's Mark Lewis kills his victims with a knife that sticks out of his camera tripod (he must have gotten it from SkyMall, hahahaha). It's all part of his obsession with fear, and more acutely his obsession with the image of fear, as well as screen images in movies. To put it bluntly he's movie-crazy, apparently due to myriad traumas inflicted on him by his scoptophiliac father.
But there's no point in me trying to pick apart the subtext in Peeping Tom - that ground is well-worn and you'd need a lot more space to do it effectively. But for such a thematically rich movie it also just works as a horror movie, albeit a pretty grim one. There are splashes of humor and the visual feast is overwhelming. It's as if director Michael Powell thought of the moviegoer's eyeballs as ravenously hungry beasts, always craving more and more images, and sought to overstuff them like the "Gluttony" victim in Se7en.
Comparisons to Psycho and pretty much the entire filmography of Brian De Palma have also been made to the point of repetition, but it's still pretty incredible to watch Peeping Tom and see so much of cinema's future history at 1960 laid before you. Here's a scary thought: Maybe Mark Lewis wasn't crazy, maybe he was just ahead of his time.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Night of Terror #10: 'Swamp Thing'
One of the best lessons I think can be learned from Roger Ebert (rip) is that it's OK to be interested in movies and also be a sucker for straightforward genre pictures, particularly of the science-fiction/comic book variety. Even if it weren't OK, that would definitely be the case for me, and one of the best examples of that is the fact that I've seen Swamp Thing 3 or 4 times now and have liked it each time, despite the fact that it is completely ridiculous.
Most of that ridiculousness, or at least the most distracting part of it, is in the form of the titular monster. One can imagine a great special effects designer like Stan Winston or someone like that knocking the Swamp Thing costume out of the park, but that is not what happens here. I'm not sure who designed the Swamp Thing character for the movie and I'm not going to look him up because I'm lazy and also because I don't want to insult the guy's work, but it never looks like anything other than a rubber suit. This is particularly true whenever we see a close up of Swamp Thing's hands - it's during these sequences that we get closest to Zaat territory.
But the rest of the movie is so sublimely absurd that it wins me over every time. Director Wes Craven seems to be channeling both comic books and 50s monster movies here, with a refreshingly straightforward take on the ridiculous material but with touches like funny screen wipes to keep things from getting too wonky. And the stunts and action are great, that shot of Swamp Thing flipping a boat is cheer-worthy.
Another interesting touch that adds to this movie's sense of batshit insanity is that Swamp Thing is not the only monster in Swamp Thing. In the movie's last act, two additional characters (including Louis Jourdan as the chief villain who I will get to in a second) take the formula that created the Swamp Thing and turn into monsters themselves. I won't spoil it since a lot of this stuff is probably way more entertaining if you're caught off-guard by it, but what happens next manages to be completely hilarious without throwing off the tone of the movie.
Louis Jourdan. I think I've likened him before to James Mason in North by Northwest if Mason had had a shirtless scene, and I still think it fits. He's not as good as Mason, of course, but he brings substantial chops to the role of the suave, ruthless villain. If there's one thing the big-budget comic book blockbusters of today could stand to take a page of this movie from, it's Jourdan's performance. No more anonymous supervillains, please!
I'll close us out with some immortal words from Swamp Thing: "Everything's a dream when you're alone."
Most of that ridiculousness, or at least the most distracting part of it, is in the form of the titular monster. One can imagine a great special effects designer like Stan Winston or someone like that knocking the Swamp Thing costume out of the park, but that is not what happens here. I'm not sure who designed the Swamp Thing character for the movie and I'm not going to look him up because I'm lazy and also because I don't want to insult the guy's work, but it never looks like anything other than a rubber suit. This is particularly true whenever we see a close up of Swamp Thing's hands - it's during these sequences that we get closest to Zaat territory.
But the rest of the movie is so sublimely absurd that it wins me over every time. Director Wes Craven seems to be channeling both comic books and 50s monster movies here, with a refreshingly straightforward take on the ridiculous material but with touches like funny screen wipes to keep things from getting too wonky. And the stunts and action are great, that shot of Swamp Thing flipping a boat is cheer-worthy.
Another interesting touch that adds to this movie's sense of batshit insanity is that Swamp Thing is not the only monster in Swamp Thing. In the movie's last act, two additional characters (including Louis Jourdan as the chief villain who I will get to in a second) take the formula that created the Swamp Thing and turn into monsters themselves. I won't spoil it since a lot of this stuff is probably way more entertaining if you're caught off-guard by it, but what happens next manages to be completely hilarious without throwing off the tone of the movie.
Louis Jourdan. I think I've likened him before to James Mason in North by Northwest if Mason had had a shirtless scene, and I still think it fits. He's not as good as Mason, of course, but he brings substantial chops to the role of the suave, ruthless villain. If there's one thing the big-budget comic book blockbusters of today could stand to take a page of this movie from, it's Jourdan's performance. No more anonymous supervillains, please!
I'll close us out with some immortal words from Swamp Thing: "Everything's a dream when you're alone."
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Night of Terror #9: 'The Witch's Mirror'
Hello everybody. I had a busier-than-normal shift at the hospital today so I wasn't able to write up a scary movie, so the great Laird Jimenez, the first guest contributor of the year, is filling in with me on 1962's The Witch's Mirror (check out Laird's always excellent Letterboxd account here). Here's Laird:
This movie has everything. There’s, as the title promises, a witch and her mirror, but there’s also infidelity, murder, a haunting, a mad doctor, grave robbing, experimental surgery, bloody revenge… it’s a supercut of Gothic horror plot points rolled into a delicious 75-minute burrito. With all of that incident packed into such a short running time it risks coming off as episodic and potentially slipshod, but in the end all of the narrative conflict is resolved with such satisfying finality that any questions one may raise become moot. Narrative neatness is potentially overvalued by contemporary audiences. Sometimes watching something fall apart can be just as satisfying as watching something come together.
This movie, like most Mexican horror from this era, looks as if it was made for a peso and a song, but is designed and directed with such care that it can stand up against higher budgeted works from Europe. Clearly taking cues from such productions as Eyes Without a Face and Black Sunday, Witch’s Mirror is set in a shadowy Gothic castle abode and features exaggerated melodrama, supernatural revenge and perverse romantic obsession. The titular witch’s quarters are crowded with demonic statues and creepy totems. What it lacks in budget, it makes up for in gallons of atmosphere. Superimpositions and cheap, in-camera effects are used to emphasize the supernatural: a clear liquid is dripped over the camera lens, focal points are distorted, etc. If you can look past the limitations of the budget, it’s a really effectively eerie affair that is exceptionally fun. It’s a tonal balance few movies in the horror genre, which has become oppressively self-serious and grim, strive for anymore: spooky fun!
Director Chano Urueta also directed the excellent Brainiac (which has the equally satisfying original Spanish title of El Barón del Terror) and over 100 other movies, but more interestingly he (reportedly) fought in the Mexican Revolution under Pancho Villa and Zapata, worked on Eisenstein’s never fully completed !Que Viva Mexico!, and appeared as an actor in Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. If you can’t trust this guy to tell you a good story, who can you trust?
This movie has everything. There’s, as the title promises, a witch and her mirror, but there’s also infidelity, murder, a haunting, a mad doctor, grave robbing, experimental surgery, bloody revenge… it’s a supercut of Gothic horror plot points rolled into a delicious 75-minute burrito. With all of that incident packed into such a short running time it risks coming off as episodic and potentially slipshod, but in the end all of the narrative conflict is resolved with such satisfying finality that any questions one may raise become moot. Narrative neatness is potentially overvalued by contemporary audiences. Sometimes watching something fall apart can be just as satisfying as watching something come together.
This movie, like most Mexican horror from this era, looks as if it was made for a peso and a song, but is designed and directed with such care that it can stand up against higher budgeted works from Europe. Clearly taking cues from such productions as Eyes Without a Face and Black Sunday, Witch’s Mirror is set in a shadowy Gothic castle abode and features exaggerated melodrama, supernatural revenge and perverse romantic obsession. The titular witch’s quarters are crowded with demonic statues and creepy totems. What it lacks in budget, it makes up for in gallons of atmosphere. Superimpositions and cheap, in-camera effects are used to emphasize the supernatural: a clear liquid is dripped over the camera lens, focal points are distorted, etc. If you can look past the limitations of the budget, it’s a really effectively eerie affair that is exceptionally fun. It’s a tonal balance few movies in the horror genre, which has become oppressively self-serious and grim, strive for anymore: spooky fun!
Director Chano Urueta also directed the excellent Brainiac (which has the equally satisfying original Spanish title of El Barón del Terror) and over 100 other movies, but more interestingly he (reportedly) fought in the Mexican Revolution under Pancho Villa and Zapata, worked on Eisenstein’s never fully completed !Que Viva Mexico!, and appeared as an actor in Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. If you can’t trust this guy to tell you a good story, who can you trust?
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Night of Terror #8: 'Dracula vs. Frankenstein'
My first impulse in writing up Al Adamson's Dracula vs. Frankenstein was going to be something pretentious about dying men acting out the fantasies of children but then I realized that was dumb and also sort of misleading given the way this appears to have been cobbled together from various sources (this sounds unusual unless you're familiar with Adamson's methods, in which case it sounds completely normal).
Full disclosure: Due to factors beyond my control I got a bad case of the jimmy-legs about 20 minutes into this, and it didn't stop until I was well on my way to my car. And yet even in that restless state I was able to appreciate Adamson's unique exploitation stew being displayed here: Bikersploitation, hippiesploitation, carniesploitation, monstersploitation and Lon-Chaney-Jrsploistation are all represented here and boy oh boy is it weird. As I was watching it I was struck by the probably-incorrect notion that Adamson is like the Sergio Leone of trashy movies, elevating the tropes of the form to their Platonic ideals. Those aren't just boobs, those are The Boobs.
Special notice belongs to Mr. Chaney, who gives a completely mute and mostly slobbery performance as J. Carrol Naish killer houseboy. The character is reportedly mute because Chaney's vocal cords were eaten away by cancer, but his undeniable screen presence is completely intact. He's the cuddliest ax-murderer in screen history, as far as I'm concerned.
In case you're wondering: Dracula beats Frankenstein in the titular slugfest, but it's what you might call a Pyrrhic victory.
Full disclosure: Due to factors beyond my control I got a bad case of the jimmy-legs about 20 minutes into this, and it didn't stop until I was well on my way to my car. And yet even in that restless state I was able to appreciate Adamson's unique exploitation stew being displayed here: Bikersploitation, hippiesploitation, carniesploitation, monstersploitation and Lon-Chaney-Jrsploistation are all represented here and boy oh boy is it weird. As I was watching it I was struck by the probably-incorrect notion that Adamson is like the Sergio Leone of trashy movies, elevating the tropes of the form to their Platonic ideals. Those aren't just boobs, those are The Boobs.
Special notice belongs to Mr. Chaney, who gives a completely mute and mostly slobbery performance as J. Carrol Naish killer houseboy. The character is reportedly mute because Chaney's vocal cords were eaten away by cancer, but his undeniable screen presence is completely intact. He's the cuddliest ax-murderer in screen history, as far as I'm concerned.
In case you're wondering: Dracula beats Frankenstein in the titular slugfest, but it's what you might call a Pyrrhic victory.
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