Census Bloodbath: Psychically Susan

Year:
1985
Director:
John Llewellyn Moxey
Cast:
Cindy Williams, David Morse, Lee Horsley
Run Time:
1 hour 35 minutes

Plot: In When Dreams Come True, museum tour guide Susan Matthews (Cindy Williams of Laverne & Shirley) is in a rough patch with her workaholic cop boyfriend. Alex Kazloff (Lee Horsley). He's too caught up with chasing a serial killer - the lazily named Perfect Murderer - to pay attention to her needs. She has dreams about meeting and being seduced by the mysterious stranger Robert Wynton (David Morse), and when he shows up at the museum, she finds him just as tempting in real life.

However, her prophetic dreams aren't limited to just booty calls. She soon begins to suspect that her dreams are informing her about who the Perfect Murderer is targeting next.

Analysis: As I continue catching up with older titles that slipped through the cracks during my first few rounds of research for Census Bloodbath (I'm getting close!), some trends have begun to emerge First of all, we've been covering a lot of international titles, which makes sense. Obscure non-English films can be hard to categorize. We've also gotten a whole heap of TV movies that managed to escape the Internet's notice. I'm less sure why that might be the case, but it's possible that people simply wanted to spare me from watching When Dreams Come True. And I thank them for their valiant effort.

When Dreams Come True lives up to its title by being a goddamn snooze. While I really appreciate the TV movie slashers that focus on women's stories (Fantasies is great! Sins of the Past is a hoot!), true feminism means accepting that some women can be boring, and Susan is one of the most tedious protagonists in the business. 

Girl needs to dump her awful boyfriend, sure, but I find it hard to believe that the best replacement she can find is this wet dishrag with the hair of Ludwig van Beethoven who is in serious need of a rizz transplant. Any scene she spends with any of the men in her life sucks, and almost every scene features some combination of those three characters. 

Also, almost every time she hangs out with Alex (who is of Romani origin), they say a lot of racist stuff about his family and his ancestors. Though I suppose racism is interesting, even if it's in a negative way. I almost wish their conversations were nothing but epithets. At least then I'd feel something.

Needless to say, it's a bad slasher too. Not only are the kills bloodless (they were always going to be), but they also take place offscreen and for the most part happen to characters who we never get to know anything about. Plus, the killer reveal is so blindingly obvious that I'm not entirely sure they were actually trying to hide his identity from us.

Anyway, When Dreams Come True only ever really comes alive when Susan is hanging out with her horny, witchy coworker Annie (cult film icon Jessica Harper, of Suspiria, Shock Treatment, Phantom of the Paradise, and Bones and All). Harper waltzes away with the movie every second she spends onscreen, using every tool at her disposal (Those giant eyes! That husky voice!) to ooze charisma like a poorly sealed toothpaste tube in a carry-on bag. Oh, and the banishment ritual she does at one point in the movie is the only well-executed special effects sequence.

The only other saving grace here is when they remember that Laverne & Shirley was a comedy and find anything for poor Cindy Williams to do other than look vaguely anxious. She comes alive when she gets to be funny, whether it's reacting with annoyance to her overbearing neighbor's dogs, trying to parse what Annie is saying about her weird dream about being chased by bats through the Grand Canyon (the film's best scene!), or fucking around with her snippy older coworker Mrs. Colton (Norma Young, who we've seen before in a whole other review series as a Venusian girl in the Cardboard Science title Queen of Outer Space).

All in all, When Dreams Come True is more boring than truly bad, but who needs that? Let me be mad!

Killer: Robert Wynton (David Morse)

Final Girl: Susan Matthews (Cindy Williams)

Best Kill: It would have to be the death of the security guard Jack (Eli Cummins) - he is stabbed in the gut - both because it's the only body count death that's actually shown onscreen and because Jack is annoying and sucks.

Sign of the Times: This was acceptable hair for a date at a fancy restaurant.

Scariest Moment: The opening dream, when Susan is running away from an unknown assailant and nobody is helping her, is actually pretty frightening and disorienting.

Weirdest Moment: Susan and Robert go on a date to see The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe and I find out that that's the name of a real movie and not just something they made up.

Champion Dialogue: “Making love in a hallway with just about anybody would certainly thrill me. Especially Richard Gere."

Body Count: 5

1. Woman is killed offscreen.
2. Woman #2 is killed offscreen.
3. Jack is stabbed in the gut.
4. Annie is killed offscreen.
5. Robert is shot by Lee.

TL;DR: When Dreams Come True is a tedious TV movie slasher that is only good when Jessica Harper is onscreen.

Rating: 4/10

Popcorn Kernels: Mother Of Sighs

Some quick reviews of 2018 movies I've been catching up on, now that I have to wait until discount day to pay money for them instead of just swiping MoviePass like a shopping montage in an 80's movie.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Year: 2018

Director: David Yates

Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Johnny Depp
Run Time: 2 hours 14 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Newt Scamander & Co. have a series of adventures while the evil wizard Grindelwald gathers his forces, and maybe they'll do something interesting in the next one.

Now, nobody is pretending that any spinoff franchise could ever be as huge a phenomenon as Harry Potter. Even though the films in that franchise could be pretty patchy, there's no denying their huge cultural impact, pushed into the stratosphere by the world-rending book series they were based on. I'm not asking Fantastic Beasts or its mush-mouth titled sequel to be anything close to that. I am asking for it to have the slightest vestige of quality, however. Unfortunately, you can't always get what you want.

From the title on down, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a miscalculation of biblical proportions. It's visually illegible, constantly plastering plasticky CGI across its choppily edited, mud-colored frame, but that's nothing compared to how illegible the script is. Its incoherent attempts at fan service (they shoehorn in every Harry Potter figure who might conceivably have been alive at the time, but their comings and goings blend in with the sheer mass of new characters we meet who get lost in dead-end plot lines or appear without warning as if they've been here the entire time) tumble over a plot that not only forgets to include very many magical creatures, but also bungles every single lead character from the previous movie, even though it made egregiously major retcons to include two of them in the first place.

The plot gets so unnecessarily complicated that a character literally has to sit us down for ten full minutes to give a flashback-aided presentation about what the hell we've even been watching this whole time, right before a climax that introduces about a half dozen different conflicts that haven't had a scrap of setup.

Rowling can't even resist doubling down on the single worst aspect of the single film: the reveal that the Americans call Muggles No-Maj's. As in, they have no magic. I like the idea that different wizarding communities have different slang terms just like the real world, but it's probably the laziest fake word I've ever heard in a world in which fake words are literally the backbone. Enter Grindelwald, which introduces other terms like the French "non-magique" and the term "can't-spells."  Is she just trolling me at this point? By film 5 in this franchise (yeah, that's the plan, but we'll see if they get there after this trainwreck), are we going to learn that the Australian wizards call them "have-to-throw-shrimp-on-the-barbies-cuz-they-bad-at-wandz"?

Any way you slice it, it's just a mess. Everything good about the first film, which was only OK to begin with, had been left to rot. The fun frolicking with magical creatures is present in small pockets of the film, but it all feels very Looney Tunes and it actively fails to gel with the movie's bizarre choice to focus on the brewing conflict that seems to be leading to Magic World War I. And Eddie Redmayne, who was a charming presence in the first film, is giving a performance that forgets most of his quirks and tics in favor of a stern locked jaw and staring off into space. The plot never really makes a space for him (the plot is much more focused on Dumbledore - who is barely in the film - and Grindelwald - who is in far too much of the film, and spends too much time bragging that he knows something we don't, which when revealed turns out to be a very lame thing), and he's content to just be the wallpaper anyway.

There are quite a few Harry Potter movies that I don't like very much, but I never expected to hate one of these. Well, there's a first time for everything.

Rating: 2/10

Suspiria

Year: 2018
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth
Run Time: 2 hours 32 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A young woman joins a modern dance school in 1977 Germany that may or may not be definitely run by witches.

One way to put me instantly on your movie's bad side is to split it into chapters. Suspiria announces right away that it's going to have six acts, which means I'll constantly be checking in and going "we're still only on act two? Why isn't this movie over yet!" My impatience aside, Suspiria really revels in how drawn-out the whole process is. Two and a half hours of Suspiria is waaaay too much Suspiria. The original is 92 minutes long, the perfect amount of time to be completely rattled and shaken up before the film dumps you on the cold concrete.

However, horror films often can't sustain tension for much longer than that, not that this Suspiria seems particularly concerned with building tension anyway. It's another exercise in style like the previous film (to that end, I do think Guadagnino was the best choice to fill Argento's shoes), and in these elements it works pretty damn well. The set design is impressively austere and the cinematography wickedly echoes the original film by being its complete aesthetic opposite, entirely on purpose. And my favorite element here is the jagged sound design, which layers dialogue from other scenes over odd shots where it doesn't seem to belong, evoking the ethereal and odd sound dubbing of older Italian filmmaking. But where Argento's Suspiria served form at the expense of function, Guadagnino liberally ladles his style over a six-course meal of plot that makes the table groan under its weight.

The most obvious misstep here is the inclusion of the political turmoil in 1977 Germany, as if the location and time period of the original actually had a single thing to do with anything. It's a choice that paints Guadagnino into a corner and this material only ever feels clumsily shoehorned in. Less so the stuff about dealing with the lingering specter of the Holocaust, but it still intersects with the main thrust of the movie so little that you only ever feel like you're being dragged away from where the real action is.

As for this action, it does provoke a stirring of horror or two over its time. There's plenty of exquisite match cutting here that utilizes modern dance as an aggressive, muscular framework for some disgusting imagery that owes everything to precise editing and impressive visual effects. And the eventual climax of the film is a colorful orgy of terror that does make sitting through the entire thing worth it, but while you're in the middle of the sitting part, the movie really does do its best to put you right to sleep.

Rating: 5/10

Searching

Year: 2018
Director: Aneesh Chaganty
Cast: John Cho, Debra Messing, Joseph Lee
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A desperate father uses his computer to solve the mystery of his daughter's disappearance.

I missed Searching in theaters because of the aforementioned Great MoviePass Implosion of 2018, but I also wasn't feeling too motivated to go check it out because of a pretty petty reason. People were staring awestruck at this movie because it shows a whole story over a computer screen. As if Unfriended wasn't sitting right there, having done the exact same thing four years ago. And that wasn't even the first, because we have The Den, and presumably some other film that The Den was ripping off. Nothing is original, my friends. I'm just rankled that the discourse ignored the teenybopper horror film because that's what discourse likes to do.

And when it comes down to brass tacks, that teenybopper horror film is much more honest with its conceit. Searching is a fun movie with a gripping plot, but it's also a cheater. We cut between multiple screens (including just a straight-up TV), we get video footage of John Cho at all times because he leaves FaceTime open like a crazy person, we have actual non-diegetic music plastered over the big moments, and we get close-ups of all the important material onscreen because audiences can't be trusted to pay attention. Unfriended may be a sillier movie, but it's true to its format and I want to make sure it gets that respect.

That said, it's not like Searching is bad. On the contrary, it's a quite delightful little film. It's a muscular, pared-down thriller that - like most thrillers - stumbles a bit in its third act, but takes you on a wild roller coaster ride just the same. It also utilizes real social media and apps like Venmo, Facebook, Tumblr, and the like in a way that isn't just product placement like a Ralph Breaks the Internet, but rather a reminder that this is the fabric of what a teenager does all day. It highlights just how much of our lives are splayed out across the Internet for any enterprising viewer to piece together, and it's an excellent, chilling reminder of just how public most of our lives have become.

Unfortunately, as a two-hander between John Cho and Debra Messing, it's less than thrilling. Cho is good here, as he is pretty much anywhere, but neither quite has the presence or gravitas to sell the ridiculous twists that come swinging for the fences in the later portions of the film. But at any rate, they're absorbing enough that you do forget entirely that you're just watching a computer screen, and that's a recipe for a fun night on the couch with Redbox, even if it's not going to change your life.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1658
Reviews In This Series
Suspiria (Argento, 1977)
Suspiria (Guadgnino, 2018)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Yates, 2016)
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Yates, 2018)

The Italian Nut Job

For our podcast episode about this very film, click here.

Year: 1977

Director: Dario Argento

Cast: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Italian horror movies from the 70's are a peculiar and off-putting breed. Favoring beautifully rendered phantasmagoria over comprehensible storylines, they are particularly difficult to access from a modern perspective. It also doesn't help that Italian films at the time were shot without sound and dubbed later, so each actor spoke their lines in their native language.

Because the film was dubbed for whatever countries it would be released in, it's no crime to watch the English version, unlike the foreign films of today. In fact, a large amount of the main cast at least attempt to mouth their lines in English. But the disparity between mouth and sound is frequently disconcerting. But hey, it's an Italian horror movie. Very few elements aren't disconcerting.

Nope, nothing wrong here.

Suspiria tells the story of Suzy Bannion (Shock Treatment's Jessica Harper, reminding us of how fabulous she is), a young American who comes to a prestigious ballet school in Germany to study, only to find out that it is run by a coven of witches and the other students are dying one by one.

That's about it for the plot, really. Suspiria is an exercise in slow burn pacing, like boiling a pot of water over a match. In fact, it's so slow that you have time to inspect each individual frame in minute detail, something which suits the movie's particular strengths. You see, Dario Argento's magnum opus is an unforgettable visual experience, lining up a relentless series of elegant shots and smashing them into one another, all lit like a Kool-Aid commercial.

Cherry reds, lime greens, and neon blues dominate the color scheme, creating an otherworldly atmosphere that is incomparable to any other film in history. Cutting between perfectly symmetrical shots that would make Wes Anderson spontaneously combust

and rooms seemingly lit by the ghost of Liberace 

or maybe by somebody with a vendetta against the colorblind.

Watching Suspiria is the visual equivalent of eating an entire sheet cake. It feels totally wrong, yet it is decadent and glorious. And afterwards you swear you'll never do it again.

One's enjoyment of Suspiria hinges on one and only one factor: your tolerance for Goblin, frequent Argento collaborators and composers of the score. Which is relentless, wall to wall, and sounds like an entire orchestra falling down the stairs while somebody whispers into a steel ceiling fan with some  Beach Boys surf rock guitars thrown in for good measure.

I bet you didn't believe me.

It's a little hard to take, but for better or worse it creates an inescapable atmosphere that drives the story, insofar as there is one. It's a masterfully made horror film with gracefully composed deaths, but don't pop it in for a Friday night fright. It's too slow and occasionally dull for that. You have to be in the right mood for Suspiria, but if you are, prepare to be blown away by a truly bizarre, totally nonsensical, completely chilling piece of cinema.

The film is certainly an acquired taste, but it will stay with you long after watching it, and that is more than I can say for most modern horror with higher entertainment value. Watch it to get an intimate glimpse into horror history and maybe attain a deeper understanding of what the genre is capable of producing with a deranged master at the helm.

TL;DR: Suspiria can be dull if you're not prepared for it, but it is intense and elegantly beautiful.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 601

Reviews In This Series

Suspiria (Argento, 1977)

Suspiria (Guadagnino, 2018)

Whatever Happened To Saturday Night?

Year: 1981

Director: Jim Sharman

Cast: Jessica Harper, Cliff De Young, Richard O'Brien

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

I'm going to let you in on a little secret nobody seems to know.

Remember that cool movie with the alien transvestites that I talked about a week or so ago?  Rocky Horror Picture something? Well that movie has a sequel.

I'm going to pause to let that sink in.

Take a moment to bask in the glory of this face.

Of course Brenna, Henry, and I had to watch it. So we holed up in Shannon's dorm room with Batman blankets and low hopes and popped the DVD in.

Oh boy, you guys. Just... I need a minute to even get through this.

Let's discuss some semantics while I calm down long enough to string a rational sentence together. Technically this isn't a total sequel to Rocky Horror. No, that dream withered and died in opposite proportions with Tim Curry's career. Described as neither a sequel nor a prequel, but an "equal" (which it patently is not), Shock Treatment features the characters of Brad and Janet but the only returning actors are playing entirely different characters and the mad Transylvanians are mentioned not a single time.

This would appear to be completely damning to a film claiming to be a followup to the most successful midnight movie of all time, but once again under the skeletal and translucent guiding hand of original composer Richard O'Brien, Shock Treatment packs a surprising punch.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for Little Nell straddling things.

Although Shock Treatment could obviously never match up to its illustrious predecessor, it does have many of the same strengths - the songs are of a piece vibrant and exciting rock and roll numbers (this time with an invasion of 80's instrumentations), the plot is less than nonexistent, and the coherence measures on a negative scale. In any other review, those would be considered shortcomings. 

But this is no normal film, sir.

Unfortunately the main cast sorely lacks the camp energy necessary to drive this film into the stratosphere, but the parts that shine (largely those with the most members of the Rocky Horror ensemble) shine bright like the streetlights outside my window when I'm trying to sleep.

On to the plot, insofar as there is one. Brad (Cliff De Young) and Janet (Jessica Harper, who just so happens to be the star of the Dario Argento masterpiece Suspiria. This will never stop being weird) Majors return to their hometown of Denton, TX which for budget reasons is represented by a massive TV studio.

All the townspeople are either brainwashed studio audience members, TV hosts, or guest stars on soap operas. Brad and Janet are content to blend into the background until Brad's old world values and clumsiness (?) force Janet to have him institutionalized. This makes exactly as much sense as it sounds like it would.

The sanitarium is run by nefarious Drs. Cosmo (Richard O'Brien - Riff Raff) and Nation (Patricia Quinn - Magenta) McKinley and the bubbly Nurse Ansalong (Nell Campbell - Columbia) who promptly lock Brad in a tiny cage while Janet is approached by the German Dr. Scott analogue Bert Schnick (Barry Humphries) to be in his new game show.

It would not surprise me in the least to find out that 30 Rock based Gerhardt Hapsburg on this character. Look it up.

So anyway Janet gets sucked into the world of superstardom ("I've come to tell you how fabulous I am") and.............................. songs. I guess. Who even knows? Janet sings a series of tunes in a voice that's infinitely more Helen Reddy than Susan Sarandon and this never ceases to bother me.

She also doesn't seem to have the ability to move a muscle while singing. It's like she's covered in bees and she doesn't want to move lest they find out she's there and sting her.

That would actually make more sense than the scene where Betty Hapschatt (Ruby Wax) reads Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Judge Oliver Wright (Charles Gray - The Criminologist) on a staircase until he falls asleep and a workman shows them a dead bird. Or the part where Brad serenades a toaster. Or the part where a mysterious TV overlord inside a heart makes orgasm faces while Janet sings. Or that whole 92 minute part in the middle.

It's all very very weird and certainly not nearly as lively and dynamic as the manic energy of Rocky but the duller parts are saved by the Hospital Ensemble and several outstandingly solid musical numbers (especially "Shock Treatment," "Lullaby," and "Bitchin' in the Kitchen"). Little Nell kills it with her shrill wail, Patricia Quinn brings her syrupy accent to the floor once more, and Richard O'Brien's unique reedy belt is always a welcome presence.

I don't know how he does it but his songs are invariably both outrageously dumb with rhymes straight from a kindergarten jump rope game and inescapably catchy. I've been listening to the soundtrack on repeat all day and it's hard not to feel that some of the songs are just as good if not even better than at least half of Rocky.

He must have sold his soul to Susan Sarandon.

The great songs aren't even linked together by the remotest semblance of narrative so the nonmusical portions are certainly less classic or enjoyable but I'd overwhelmingly recommend the film to anyone who can withstand 25 minutes or so of utter mind-numbing delirium. It's totally worth it. I promise.

Also there might be some themes buried in there somewhere about the disposability of fame and the media brainwashing the populace, but they're not so much present in the film as they are adjacent to it, somewhere in the middle distance.

But it doesn't even matter. All you can do is stare at it in wide eyed wonder.

The film is impossible to explain so I might as well stop trying, but all I can say is that I can't wait to see it again and if you're looking for a great forgotten treasure for bad movie night, look no further.

TL;DR: Shock Treatment is too dull to feel like a true sequel to the grand Rocky Horror , but is filled with enough energetic songs and dumb verve that it feels like a true lost gem of the 80's.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1063
Reviews In This Series
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman, 1975)
Shock Treatment (Sharman, 1981)