Popcorn Kernels: Final Cut Girls

In which we review two films covered in the month of Scream 101 spotlighting female horror directors.

Near Dark (Listen to the Scream 101 episode right here.)

Year: 1987
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A young cowboy meets a lovely woman one night, and a charming romance swiftly descends into chaos when she turns out to be a vampire, biting him and inducting him into her murderous vampire family.

I’m not a huge fan of vampires, but one thing I do love about them is the rigid, almost Victorian formality of the rules governing their existence. They can only be killed with a wooden stake. Garlic repels them. They can’t cross a threshold unless they’re invited in. Sure, different interpretations pick and choose the rules as they please, but there’s something fun and engaging about the cat-and-mouse game as potential victims try to manipulate these rules and outwit the bloodsucking monsters.

Near Dark acts in active defiance of the established mythos, a route that can lead a film to some pretty incredible places, but this time prevents any of it from making very much sense at all. Or at least being particularly interesting. The vampire family is characterized well enough (especially Lance Henriksen, who gets the chance to spit some killer dialogue), but there’s no real sense of how this group fits together and what rules govern their existence.

Their Mad Max style combined with the film’s dusty Western aesthetic makes it a cinematic triumph, but on the story level it’s just lacking, for me at least. Perhaps it’s that the struggle of the protagonist is placed on such bland shoulders, or that the slow-paced mood smothers most of the more horrifying elements. But while I see the appeal, this one doesn’t do it for me.

Rating: 6/10

Pet Sematary (Listen to the Scream 101 episode right here.)

Year: 1989
Director: Mary Lambert
Cast: Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby, Fred Gwynne
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

A man attempts to reverse his family tragedies by using a graveyard that brings the dead back to life, only they tend to come back… different.

Pet Sematary is definitely a B-grade Stephen King novel, so it only makes sense that it would turn out to be a B-grade Stephen King movie. Hey, they can’t all be The Shining. But what pet Sematary lacks in Kubrickian production value, it makes up for with a certain homespun charm. The presence of Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster himself) is a valuable asset as he adds character to anything he even breathes on, but the film also captures a dreamy vision of small-town life that allows the supernatural to organically slip right in.

Unfortunately, just like the film’s hero, screenwriter Stephen King opens the gate to the otherworldly much too far. Instead of presenting a simple, straightforward challenge to the moral fiber of one family man, he bogs down his tale of death and undeath with a psychic child, a helpful Jedi ghost, and the resurrected spirit of a horribly deformed side character. The sheer amount of deus ex machine gimcrackery and vaguely eerie padding prove exhausting at times, and almost always feel completely inorganic to the story being told.

But while King has never been the best editor of his own material, he knows how to call an effortless sense of the macabre into being with a rattling breath, and when Pet Sematary doubles down on the horror, it succeeds. The special effects bringing its gruesome deaths to life (to coin a phrase) aren’t particularly shocking or brutal, but they make up for that with a dripping, tactile motion that twists your stomach like a wet rag. The special effects are more subdued than your average 80’s horror fare, but when they’re called upon they do the job quite nicely.

And in spite of the film’s rather thin characterizations, the cast mostly is up to the task of at least keeping things mildly interesting. Gwynne, like I said, is fantastic, and the 2 ½-year-old Miko Hughes gives an astoundingly impactful performance, both as the soul-crushingly adorable cherub begging to be loved and the demonic entity from the other side. It’s maybe the best horror performance from an actor that young, and it’s strong enough to pick up the slack in a father-son relationship where the father is laying it on a bit too thick.

As a story and as a film, Pet Sematary is uneven, but as a source of atmosphere, it’s a very solid piece of work. The metronomic, oppressive repetition of shots of trucks barreling down the road provides a perfect bass line for the rest of the film, a constant sense of unease and danger that allows the darker impulses to spring forth. It might not be grade-A King, but there are many disparate levels in his bibliography (Duma Key, anyone?), and it earns its silver with aplomb.

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 833

Popcorn Kernels: Knight Of The Demons

In which we review two demon-related films covered on the Scream 101 podcast.

Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (Listen to the Scream 101 episode right here.)

Year: 1995

Director: Ernest Dickerson

Cast: Billy Zane, William Sadler, John Kassir

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A secluded New Mexico motel is besieged by the demonic forces of The Collector, guarded only by an ancient knight armed with a holy key imbued with the blood of Christ.

Demon Knight was the first of an intended trilogy of feature films meant to bring Tales from the Crypt to the silver screen. They only squeaked out two (and a half, if you consider the years-later dribble Ritual) before they collapsed panting to the sticky, popcorn-covered floor, but it’s a damn shame it had to happen that way. Demon Knight is a film that effortlessly capture’s the show’s effervescent celebration of the macabre.

Even better, it kicked things up a notch. Anthologies and especially TV horror tended to rely on EC comics pastiche and morality plays to be just creepy enough to be memorable, but not so intense they wouldn’t appeal to younger audiences and network executives. Demon Knight still has that general, safely spooky atmosphere about it, but it’s far from toothless. When Tales from the Crypt graduated from the constraints of TV, it leaned into the curve so far that its spine snapped. Demon Knight has great fun wallowing in nudity and absurd sexual references, but where it really shines is its balls-out commitment to gooey, gory special effects.

The rise of the demons arrives in a spectacular effect that rivals Frank’s gory resurrection in Hellraiser, and the periodic bursts of violence that pepper the film are visually inventive grotesqueries that will delight the senses of gorehounds without pushing things too far past the mark where normal civilians can still stomach it. Even the non-violent scenes showcase spectacular effects, including a ghostly seduction where a woman’s lip shows the imprint of an invisible thumb as her tear is flicked away.

Demon Knight might not have much in the way of a story (it’s a typical Romero-esque tale of trapped people turning on each other in a crisis), but it more than makes up for it with that full-tilt approach to the genre and an immortal sense of fun. Plus, at its center is a truly glorious villain performance from Billy Zane. He is the gleefully deranged beating heart of Demon Knight, perfectly capturing the tone by creating a sly, cunning character who’s the charming face of pure evil, part slick con man, part unhinged demon.

Come on, this is a movie full of Crypt Keeper puns, dripping bodily fluids, electroshock sex, and a dude getting punched with a severed head. It is like taking a long, luxurious bath in the best, craziest horror tropes ever concocted. It’s a downright blast, and I recommend it heartily.

Rating: 8/10

Night of the Demons (Listen to the Scream 101 episode right here.)

Year: 1988

Director: Kevin Tenney

Cast: Cathy Podewell, Alvin Alexis, Hal Havins

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A Halloween night birthday party goes horribly awry when partying teens run afoul of evil demons while trapped in an old funeral parlor.

Night of the Demons has the perfect 80’s B-horror setup, and it just barely doesn’t squander it. Although the dialogue in the opening act is pretty sharp, it’s hampered by a lousier-than-usual slate of performances, some gratingly tinny sound design, and a complete lack of atmosphere that does nothing to hide the cinematography’s blatant rip-off of The Evil Dead.

But when the demons kick it into high gear and Steve Johnson’s special effects take their rightful place at the helm, nothing else matters. The plot is so thin a slight breeze would rip it away, but the revolving carousel of showstopping FX sequences is a spectacle not to be missed. A personal favorite of mine involves the reliably naked Linnea Quigley devouring a tube of lipstick in a flawless, obscene moment that holds up perfectly and creates an effortless atmosphere of the uncanny.

They don’t save what is honestly a rather boring motion picture, but the twisting and writhing effects provide Night of the Demons with an unassailable cult status. It’s notable for having the black character actually survive the night, but its final girl is bland, and the waning energy of the 80’s can really be felt in full force. It’s a bit sad, really: a film that deserved better but came out too late to be of any real use.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 768

Popcorn Kernels: You'll Never Go Back

In which we review two horror films directed by African-Americans covered on month 5 of Scream 101 season 2.

Blacula (Listen to our episode right here.)

Year: 1972

Director: William Crain

Cast: William Marshall, Vonetta McGee, Denise Nicholas 

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The African prince Mamuwalde is turned into a bloodsucking monster by Dracula himself, and two centuries later he is released upon 1970’s Los Angeles to pursue the reincarnation of his lost love while a police medical official investigates the sudden spike in local murders.

Mixing Blaxploitation with 70’s horror wouldn’t necessarily seem like a recipe for success, unless you’re a cult film obsessive like Yours Truly. Well, it turns out the naysayers were wrong, because Blacula is kind of incredible. It won’t knock your socks off with pure terror, being as it is a low budget shocker from the pre-Exorcist era of 1972, but it’s – like – alarmingly good.

Sure, there is still plenty of high camp on offer here. I won’t pretend there isn’t. There’s a character named Skillet for crying out loud, but it’s all part of the fun. Blacula is one of those perfect time capsule films, as many low budget horror flicks tend to be. When you’re working on the cheap, filmmakers tend to have actors bring their own clothes and use real life locations that are readily available, and this peek through the lens into black culture of the early 70’s is remarkable. And there’s an ebullient performance of the song “There He is Again” by The Hues Corporation that I wouldn’t trade for the world.

But there’s a point about ten minutes in where everything changes. You’re basking in the stilted acting and the too-sweaty lead, expecting a minor fillip of 70’s camp detritus, but then that opening credits sequence hits, and you realize something monumentally important. Somebody out there really cared about making Blacula. This hand-drawn sequence is an utterly terrific stylized dance between a blood drop shaped like a woman and a staking bat flapping behind her. It’s perfectly, exhilaratingly James Bondian. This isn’t the kind of thing you commission for a tossed-off hack job.

And then the movie kicks into high gear, commenting on the black experience in a white-dominated society, where anyone black (or gay – although Blacula doesn’t treat them well, it’s inclusive enough to depict an interracial same-sex couple without much hemming and hawing) is pretty much already treated like a monster. Sure, it makes plenty of puns on the word “black” as well, but it has so much more on its mind.

Plus, though the gore is virtually nonexistent minus one gonzo final shot, Blacula’s design is a fun blend of old and new, shaping his afro into a classic vampire widow’s peak and giving him a bizarrely angular set of sideburns that provide him an uncanny, animalistic look.

Look, Blacula ain’t perfect. Its particular vintage will tell you that much, as will the disastrously tinny audio quality. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a horror film more than 40 years old that was so effortlessly engrossing and fun to watch, yet still retaining its brain and some sense of dignity.

Rating: 8/10

Tales from the Hood (Listen to our episode right here.)

Year: 1995

Director: Rusty Cundieff

Cast: Clarence Williams III, Corbin Bernsen, Joe Torry 

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Three urban dealers attempt to pick up drugs from a sinister mortician who tells them four stories about how various corpses wound up dead.

Pretty much intrinsically, anthology films tend to be hit or miss. Often, they’re a collection of loosely linked short films strung together by a gossamer web of an interstitial plot. This is not so in the few masterpieces produced by the subgenre, which tend to have a single director and writer at the helm. This was the case with the George Romero-Stephen King project Creepshow, and I’m pleased as punch to confirm this is also the case with Tales from the Hood, which might just be my favorite anthology film I’ve ever seen.

Before we dig into the meat of each story, let’s look at the film as a whole, which – delightfully – Tales from the Hood actively invites us to do. The four stories are integrated with the main plot in such an organic way, it shakes off the lethargy of many anthologies, which dive mindlessly into story after story. Here, each tale feeds thematically (and eventually directly) into the development of the characters in the interstitial plot, to the point that it becomes a full, engaging story of its own. 

The entire movie is a heavy-handed but delightful exploration of black social issues including police brutality and the vicious cycle of black-on-black violence (Spike Lee produced this film, surprise surprise), but in the process it also tells lever, engaging horror stories so it’s certainly the best of both worlds. And Clarence Williams III gives the Cryptkeeper a run for his money as the bombastically campy yet sinister horror host. 

Let’ run through those segments real quick, shall we?

“Rogue Cop Revelation”

A Story that rings even truer today than in 1995, this tale of a black activist murdered by the police is a classic story of revenge served cold… as the grave. Following a powerfully brutal opening, this segment becomes an incredible effects showcase, including a clever design communing organic material with drug paraphernalia. It’s sleek, simple, and effective.

“Boys Do Get Bruised”

Probably the best segment of the entire film, this story hinges on a reveal that’s a little too obvious, but it’s a tale of suburban terror that calls to mind the best of Wes Craven, again leading up to a showstopping display of cartoonishly gruesome special effects.

“KKK Comeuppance”

Another story that pricks even more sharply today. An ex-KKK member is running for governor. This one fills in the requisite “evil doll” slot with another astonishing effects bonanza: this time an effortless integration of live action and stop motion.

“Hard-Core Convert”

Although this is by far the worst of the film’s four segments, it really put the film’s overarching themes through their paces. A flop sweat-fueled Clockwork Orange story about gang violence, it suffers from an extended, extremely annoying strobe effect during a key emotional scene and ends poorly, but at least it’s short.

These four segments combine into one dazzling whole, a politically-minded EC Comics throwback with real talent behind the wheel. The effects are, as I mentioned, spectacular, as is Christopher Young’s chameleonic score. Tales form the Hood is just plain fun, delivering a po-faced, often harrowing message with buoyant charm.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1114

Popcorn Kernels: Mexico Bárbaro

A set of mini-reviews covering Mexican horror films discussed during the first half of month 4 of the Scream 101 podcast.

Satánico Pandemonium (For our Scream 101 review, click here.)

Year: 1975

Director: Gilberto Martínez Solares

Cast: Enrique Rocha, Cecilia Pezet, Delia Magaña

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A nun is tempted by the Devil to perform perverse and violent acts in her secluded convent.

Exploitation filmmakers do love themselves some nuns. The built-in purity of a woman in a habit provides a quick and dirty entry point into the “corruption of innocence” plot that softcore horror directors like so much. But while the industry has access to a surplus of busty women willing to don a habit, they tend to greatly outnumber the talented directors working in the genre. Now, I won’t say Gilberto Martínez Solares is an untalented director, but I will say he directed 9 movies in 1979 alone, so his attention to detail might be a little lacking.

Now it might surprise you, but the technical quality of a movie isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for me. As a connoisseur of trash cinema, for me the biggest sin a movie can commit is being boring. And because Satánico Pandemonium commits as many sins as it can get its hands on, why not toss that one onto the pile? In between its many scenes of orgiastic violence and star Cecilia Pezet in various states of undress, there lies an interminable array of nuns walking down stone corridors, across fields, or down staircases in what feels like real time.

Maybe the idea was that the audience should pay penance for the sin of watching this blasphemous film, and that penance is built directly into the film in the form of excruciating tedium. The scenes of sex and violence are decent enough in their own 70’s low budget way (I’ve never seen a more obvious retractable knife in a horror film), noncommittally titillating with softcore sex and vaguely bloody violence. The occasional startling image will crop up and succeed in creating some kind of atmosphere, but for the most part, these scenes are not worth the price you have to pay to reach them.

I will give Satánico Pandemonium this. There is actually a powerful subtext buried deep (very deep) within the film about how it’s not the Devil, but the harsh restrictions of the church itself that drives a person to sin. The repression of the convent, one of the most outwardly pious institutions in the world, has led our heroine to her outbursts, expressing extreme sexual desire and becoming uncontrollably violent when she is denied what she wants. This is the best horror movie link between sex and murder that I’ve seen in a long time, explicitly because it takes place in the milieu of the Catholic church.

I can’t recommend Satánico Pandemonium, but I respect it for its message and its attempts at being a bonkers sadomasochistic horror movie. And the special effects are at least slightly redeemed by some incredible smoking hands midway through. So… great. Maybe still don’t watch it though.

Rating: 4/10

Cronos (For our Scream 101 review, click here.)

Year: 1993

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman, Claudio Brook 

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

An antique shop owner dissevers a mysterious device that grants him eternal life but curses him with a thirst for blood.

We all gotta start somewhere, and Guillermo del Toro started with a movie about an alchemical vampires with a clockwork scarab licking blood off a bathroom floor. There have certainly been worse debuts, because although Cronos lacks narrative clarity, it reveals the strength of vision he director had even at a young age.

Although del Toro would better achieve almost every element in a later film (Crimson Peak has his best mysterious mansion, Pan’s Labyrinth has a better child element, and so on), Cronos still has an indelible personality that is distinctly itself. Perhaps the most directly Cronenbergian film he ever made, it has a terrific blend of the mechanical and the biological, the sheer wrongness of such juxtaposition fueling its sense of creeping dread.

The special effects and make-up certainly help in this regard. Although they show their low budget seams (del Toro’s ideas are just too big to fit in the realm of microbudget horror), they create sticky grotesqueries that shred your nerves more than any jump scare could.

Unfortunately, these triumphs are housed in a narrative that doesn’t make a lick of sense. His flawless blend of realistic drama and horrific fairy tale hadn’t yet developed, so the dramatic elements that the movie spends most of its time on are severely anemic. You don’t really get a sense of the old man’s personality or home life before his transition, so it’s difficult to connect with how far he has fallen. And honestly, his resistance of the vampiric curse it too complete. He never becomes truly monstrous, and there’s never a sense that he has any particular struggle avoiding his craving for blood.

He’s housed in a meandering plot that just sort of happens around him, though at least that plot contains Ron Perlman (working with del Toro for the first and certainly not last time) hamming it up as a hyperbolically acquisitive villain.

But while the plot and tone of Cronos are iffy, it remains an unassailable triumph of design, from the Cronos device’s clockwork mechanisms to the cruelly antiseptic villain’s lair. If you don’t mind a 90-minute slew of confusion and revulsion (which, really, is a good thing for the genre), check out Cronos. Otherwise, stick with his more established works like Pan’s Labyrinth or The Devil’s Backbone.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 943

Popcorn Kernels: Chokes And Daggers

A set of mini-reviews from movie explored in month 3 of the Scream 101 podcast, all 70’s proto-slashers.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1976

Director: Charles B. Pierce

Cast: Ben Johnson, Andrew Prine, Dawn Wells 

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A hooded maniac known as the Phantom Killer murders couples in various lovers’ lanes of Texarkana while a Texas Ranger and an assortment of kooky cops attempt to track him down.

I was excited to check out The Town That Dreaded Sundown, if only because it was name-dropped in Scream. I should learn to have stricter criteria for my movie-watching, because this inept slasher tested my endurance even more than the previous week’s late 70’s trash fire When a Stranger Calls. Although, I will give it one thing: Much like Golden Era slasher A Day of Judgment, The Town That Dreaded Sundown’s best quality is that it’s a weirdly convincing period piece, this time set in the post-World War II 1940’s.

Other than that, TTTDS (the weirdest acronym I’ve ever had to type) is a plain-jane riff on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. A killer strikes in a rural Southern town, accompanied by foreboding narration that gravely insists this was all based on a true story (although John Larroquette’s gravelly Chain Saw intro easily outpaces Vern Stierman’s jaunty monologue, which carries through the entire film and makes the whole affair sound like a documentary you’d screen in a second grade classroom). There’s also a severe hesitance toward showing any onscreen gore.

However, where Tobe Hooper’s kinetic, gritty direction gave Chain Saw a brutal tang in spite of its chaste gore, The Town That Dreaded Sundown got Charles B. Pierce, an inept at best amateur who was more keen to capture B-roll of his beloved town that actually tell a satisfying story. In his hands, the tone flies wildly out of control, tilting into slapstick comedy both unintentionally (the Phantom Killer tiptoes and pratfalls his way through his own murder scenes like he just stepped out of a Pink Panther movie) and with deadly seriousness.

You see, The Town That Dreaded Sundown has the yuk-yukkiest goofy cops this side of The Last House on the Left. I’m talking characters that would be shunned in the cop movie cafeteria by folks from Police Academy or Keystone Cops. Their staggering ineptitude weighs heavily on this movie, especially the drag-dressing, car-key-forgetting, crash-car-into-the-swamping Sparkplug, played with tooth-gnashing, Barney-Fife-ish glee by Pierce himself.

These characters, who we’re forced to spend the entire movie with, tear the atmosphere to shreds. The killer’s vague positive qualities (i.e. the creepy way his mask moves with every breath he takes, at one point he murders a girl with a trombone, etc.) are hardly strong enough to pull this wacky, boring slasher experiment back from the brink.

Rating: 3/10

Alice, Sweet Alice (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1976

Director: Alfred Sole

Cast: Linda Miller, Mildred Clinton, Paula E. Sheppard

Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After her sister is brutally murdered at her first communion, Alice is blamed for it and the killings that follow.

Alice, Sweet Alice is definitely an oddity. Not quite a drama, not quite a horror film, and not quite a slasher, it’s sort of a primordial ooze of mood and sleaze that made it essential viewing for this month. It’s basically a 100-minute riff on Catholic iconography and ideology, twisting holy imagery into something devilish and unclean. Considering I’m about as far from Catholic as it’s possible to be without being actively Satanic, this didn’t really do much for me. But I nevertheless respect its gusto.

Alice, Sweet Alice’s focus on image and mood is unfortunate, considering that its director isn’t especially talented, but there are some prop designs that just plain work. The mask worn by the killer is a particular triumph, an opaque plastic, face-obliterating monstrosity with garish make-up that maps perfectly onto the eyes to create a chilling expressiveness despite its blank features. There’s also a three-headed doll that’s straight-up nightmare fuel, though it’s easy enough to make a doll creepy.

And the plot itself isn’t all bad. The reveal of the killer only ever feels arbitrary (especially considering that the plot unspools for a good 20 minutes or so after that no-so-pivotal moment), and the movie doesn’t provide enough red herrings to make it a truly satisfying mystery (we’re meant to believe Alice is the killer, but it’s so transparently desperate to convince us of this that it’s obvious she’s not). But many early sequences feel like an Italian melodrama, reveling in tear-stained close-ups of women on the brink, and you won’t catch me complaining about over-the-top drama. Hell, I was a fan of Empire.

That’s really about it for Alice, Sweet Alice. The gore is slight, although their retractable knife provides some stunning shots, and there’s plenty of Tobe Hooper-esque sleaze filling in the gaps of the story. I’m looking at you, Mr. Alphonso, the cat-owning perverted landlord who is by far the most interesting character in the entire movie. Alice, Sweet Alice isn’t the best proto-slasher, but it was enough to renew my faith in the form after the ignominious one-two punch of When a Stranger Calls and The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

Rating: 6/10

Tourist Trap (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1979

Director: David Schmoeller

Cast: Chuck Connors, Jocelyn Jones, Jon Van Ness

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Five young vacationers get a flat tire and find themselves trapped in a creepy roadside museum stocked with evil mannequins and a telekinetic killer.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the kids from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre made a pit stop at the Psycho motel, only instead of Norman Bates behind the counter, it was some sort of twisted Pinocchio man? If you aren’t at least a little curious, then maybe Tourist Trap isn’t for you.

However, I’m a devotee of weird cinema, and if there’s one thing that Tourist Trap has in spades, it’s weirdness. It’s not so much a functional narrative, but its deranged nightmare logic is captivating. The use of mannequins as a source of terror is a logical step forward from the classic trope of creepy dolls (one that would likewise be put to good use in the next year’s Maniac), but Tourist Trap does more than just a lazily effective gimmick. These mannequins are a buck wild special effects spectacle that more than makes up for the 70’s-esque lack of gore in the kill scenes.

Tourist Trap throws all logic out the window in favor of pure, off-kilter energy, having its mannequins twist their heads to reveal gaping mouths, motionlessly vocalize in a screaming chorus, and occasionally spring to life for a spot of soup and crackers. It’s unpredictable, it’s incomprehensible, and a truly pure experience unlike any other, all underscored by the unadulterated lunacy of Pino Donaggio’s score, which seems to have been written for a children’s cartoon and is spliced in here at the most inopportune moments.

If you’re not into films that have the singular purpose of knocking you on your butt with pure strangeness, then don’t seek out Tourist Trap, because it doesn’t have much else to offer. The characters are thinner than Donald Trump’s skin, the Final Girl is kind of an asshole, and the killer has an incredible mask but ruins it by flapping his gums a bit too much. There’s a slight feint toward the political potency of Texas Chain Saw with a dropped line about the highway driving away business, but despite having plenty of time to do so in the interminable third act, it never goes anywhere.

But that mannequin material really is some great stuff. And Tourist Trap knows it, hauling them out as often as the meager budget can allow. Which is quite a lot. Turns out mannequins ain’t expensive. Where it’s not a great movie, it’s a delightfully twisted experience, and I’m glad I took the time to sit through it.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1366

Call Me Maybe Not

For the Scream 101 episode about this very film, click here.

Year: 1979

Director: Fred Walton

Cast: Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Tony Beckley

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

If you asked me to name a horror film more rabidly iconic than When a Stranger Calls, it would be possible but certainly a bit of a challenge. Tapping into a popular urban legend that resonates across generations, it’s invoked any time someone croaks “Have you checked the children?” or makes a comment about the calls coming from inside the house. But the thing is, everything – and I mean everything – that people remember about the film is relegated to its 20-minute opening sequence. There’s a whole hour and ten minutes here that has slipped the mind of the collective pop culture consciousness, and it is our duty today to reunite these disparate segments once more and review the damned thing in its entirety.

Wish me luck. I’ll need it.

So, the setup. Young babysitter Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) is tormented by mysterious phone calls asking if she’s checked the children. To be fair, she hasn’t, but it’s a good thing because the killer is lurking in their room, covered in their blood, lying in wait for Jill. And oh, how I wish the movie ended there. But because I must have committed an egregious sin in some past life, it doesn’t.

Smash cut. It’s seven years later. The killer, Curt Duncan (Tony Buckley) has escaped the sanitarium and it’s up to private dick (so called because he’s both a detective and an asshole) John Clifford (Charles Durning) to catch him. Clifford Dr. Loomises around for an hour, being generally unhelpful as he attempts to use potential victim Tracy (Colleen Dewhurst) as bait. Then, about nine hours later, Jill shows up again with two of her own children in tow, just in time for a fateful rematch with the killer.

Only now, the babysitter has become the master.

Here’s the problem with When a Stranger Calls: it sympathizes with its killer. Now, this has been done before to great effect, allowing audiences to get in the mind of the villain, embrace them, and then get the rug pulled out from under them with something truly revolting. That’s certainly a viable channel for horror, but this film goes about it like a dad on Christmas morning who hasn’t read the manual yet. There is nothing redeemable about Curt Duncan, and the film assumes that we’ll come to understand him just because we learn his name and that fact that he’s British for some unfathomable reason.

To be fair, there is a certain physical bent to his physicality, because Buckley was visibly wasting away from a terminal illness at the time, but the vague creepiness of his visage (ranking somewhere between Kane in Poltergeist II and Donald Pleasance in Halloween 6) isn’t horror. It’s just depressing. And Curt Duncan is just plain poorly written, toeing the line between pathetic wimp and Pure Evil, blandly following the machinations of the plot instead of exploring his psychology in any meaningful way.

This is who the movie thought we’d rather spend time with than Carol Kane.

In addition to a shallow, wan villain and a useless, blustering cop, When a Stranger Calls’ middle hour also offers up sheaves upon sheaves of pure, unadulterated, post-consumer boredom. Literally nothing happens. Duncan isn’t caught. Tracy isn’t killed. Clifford learns no useful information. The second Carol Kane steps back onscreen for the final fifteen minutes, the film entirely ignores everything else that has happened, reverting Duncan back to the one-dimensional psychopath mold because the attempt at sympathizing just didn’t take.

Jill Johnson is an absurdly weak protagonist with nerves made of cellophane, but as a vessel for the pure terror of children being put in peril, Kane is terrific. She’s much better as a besieged adult than as a clueless teen (as, at the age of 27, is natural), and this sequence – while containing less instant iconography - is the most gripping of the entire film, including a stellar fright gag that’s head and shoulders above the stiff, slow-paced, but admittedly tense horror of the opening.

If this movie had spent all its time with Jill Johnson, exploring the aftermath of her tragedy and maybe tackling the issue of how she could possibly feel safe as the mother of two children after what she’s been through, it might actually have been great, or at the very least watchable. But as it stands, it’s a good movie sandwich, bookended by shallow but chilling urban legend material, and stuffed to the brim with an excess of low-quality, fatty drudgery.

I know the limitations of low budget filmmaking in the 70’s necessitated a lot of scenes where cops sit around describing crimes to one another, but usually they come packaged with a modicum of scariness. Seven years later, Fred Walton would redeem himself and apply his directorial talents to the goreless but amusing slasher April Fool’s Day, which survives on the strength of its characters. But if you can reasonably place April Fool’s Day on the top of your CV, you’ve done something dreadfully wrong.

TL;DR: When a Stranger Calls is a mindless slog bookended between two genuinely great sequences.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 873

Popcorn Kernels: There's A First Time For Everything

In this collection of mini-reviews, we cover two films discussed during the month of October on Scream 101 season 2: First films from famous directors that happen to be horror films.

Duel (For our Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1971

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A businessman on a road trip is pursued by a mysterious tanker truck that wants to kill him.

If there’s anybody who should be retroactively expected to deliver a killer first film, it’s blockbuster titan Steven Spielberg. But, unfortunately, he was shackled with a TV movie budget and an impossibly short time frame, so the result is… spectacular. Yeah, Spielberg delivers big on Duel, a debut so preternaturally good that it would take a couple of years before he it that level again (with f**king Jaws. This guy doesn’t mess around.)

Duel, based on a short story by horror master Richard Matheson, does fall into some of the pitfalls of 70’s filmmaking and especially TV moviemaking, like a certain languid pace in its few offroad scenes and a kind of despicable voiceover that rudely intrudes on too few occasions to not be vexing every time. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Duel is maybe the most perfect adaptation of a short story ever filmed.

I’m not saying it’s the best movie based on a short story (Candyman, Brokeback Mountain, The Birds, and From Beyond are certainly in the competition). Though it’s probably still in the Top 10, what I’m saying is that, as a direct conversion from page to screen, Duel best captures the spirit of reading a short story. The characters and plot are simple, driven by a single instinct: survival. The story isn’t beefed up with elaborate backstories or random diversions; it’s just a taut, pared-down thriller that crackles at the base of your spine.

As the kind of faceless evil that would frequently haunt screens in the 70’s and 80’s, the truck is superb. Cutting a jagged shape across the dusty horizon of the American highway, it belches smoke and grins with jagged, license plate teeth (an excellently subtle bit of production design – suggesting the truck has kept trophies from its previous victims). And there’s a reason I say “truck” and not “man.” The faceless driver might as well not exist. He’s a tool bent to the will of Pure Evil, something that is never explained or revealed, merely understood as a force of crushing death.

Spielberg captures this chase in a pounding staccato rhythm with his endless coverage flashing between mirrors, dials, gauges, and the road to keep the tension buzzing. Star Dennis Weaver also contributes tremendously, hamming just enough that we believe in the heightened reality of his character. It’s a terrible challenge as an actor to deliver a legible performance with nobody to play off of, especially when they’re mostly confined to a single location, but he pulls it off with aplomb.

Duel is an auspicious beginning for an auspicious director, and it’s a miracle that Spielberg managed to stay this hungry and passionate about his film projects as he did. Duel is a winner, no contest.

Rating: 8/10

Piranha II: The Spawning (For our Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1981

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Tricia O'Neil, Steve Marachuk, Lance Henriksen

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A scuba instructor and a policeman must save a seaside resort from a swam of genetically enhanced flying piranha.

If there’s anybody who should be retroactively expected to deliver a killer first film, it’s box office demigod James Cameron. But unfortunately he was saddled with a microscopic budget and a troubled production, so the results are… pretty deplorable.

To be fair, James Cameron was kicked off Piranha II: The Spawning after about a week or so and silentyl replaced by Italian schlock-meister Ovidio G. Assonitis (maybe he wasn’t credited because he didn’t want people to make fun of his last name). So we can’t blame him for everything we’re seeing, but there’s no denying he had his hands on parts of this film, and 100 percent of it sucks, so statistically speaking, he probably didn’t do a great job in his first go-round. But he followed this up with The Terminator, so I don’t care if his debut was Ass Munchers from Planet X, it was worth it.

And Piranha II: The Spawning isn’t, like, the worst thing that has ever happened. It’s a dunderheaded B-movie with a truly bananas monster (flying piranhas that can survive on land and burst out of people’s rotting corpses, but mostly just look like puppets tossed by some P.A. from offscreen), which is right up my alley, even if it doesn’t capture the sublime campiness and rip-roaring pace that marks the best of them.

In the first and third acts, there are a handful of scenes and character that belong in the bad Movie Hall of Fame (a sunbathing cougar and two topless female pirates are particular standouts), but the movie utterly fails to make anything of them. Most of the characters we meet in Act One don’t even die! We’re left with a second act slog tough plodding military intrigue before things pick up again with a fatal grunion run and the film’s single best scene: Lance Henriksen, who has been searching for his stranded son’s boat via helicopter, finds him and leaps out of the aircraft, letting it hit the water and explode behind him. You know, Coast Guard standard operating procedure.

But too much of the film is too dull to recommend watching it as anything other than as series of two minute YouTube clips. Piranha II’s complete lack of atmosphere smothers it in its sleep. It’s very Italian: A Jaws rip-off that tries vigorously hard not to be exciting except for its random leaps into absurdity. Endless stock footage, repeating effects shots, and buckets of dire conversation weight this unworthy sequel down and it quickly drowns.

A truly dazzling concept does not a good movie make, or even a bad-good movie make. I wish Piranha II did more to earn its best moments, but alas. This fish is fried.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1051

Popcorn Kernels: The Vampire Strikes Back

Please enjoy this savory sampling of mini-reviews from the second half of Scream 101’s vampire month.

Fright Night (For our Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1985

Director: Tom Holland

Cast: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A teen boy begins to suspect that his new next-door neighbor might be a vampire.

I’ve had a pretty bad run of luck when it comes to visiting classic vampire flicks I’ve never seen before. Sometimes a lack of nostalgia can be devastating, which seems to be the case whenever I watch Tom Holland movies. Just like Child’s Play before it, I found Fright Night terribly underwhelming. Although it has many of the 80’s horror trappings I’ve come to appreciate in a movie, it just lacks a certain oomph that would keep me invested.

The trouble is, I really get what it’s doing. Fright Night transplants gothic horror into modern suburbia, as literally represented by vampire neighbor Jerry Dandridge’s spooky giant mansion nestled between all the cozy two-story homes. It’s attempting to resurrect a legendary monster for the youth of today. Well, back when “today” meant 1985. But the execution stakes that concept in the heart.

Everything about Fright Night is inconsistent, from the acting (Stephen Geoffrey’s Evil Ed is a shrill, cartoonishly broad abomination) to the pacing (the  film lulls about every 20 minutes – it’s like a built-in naptime) to the rules governing what exactly its monsters can do (nothing is more frustrating than Dandridge’s live-in, totally-not-gay handyman, who can run around in direct sunlight unmolested, but is later revealed to be impervious to bullet wounds and weak against stakes to the heart – is he halfway through a vampire correspondence course or what?). And every scene lasts about three minutes longer than it should. This must be one of Paul Feig’s favorite movies.

The only instance where the execution is actually stronger than the concept is the special effects. When they come into play (and they take astoundingly long for a movie of his vintage,), they’re undoubtedly terrific, thanks to the work of I, Madman’s Randall William Cook. But they arise inorganically from the story, rarely if ever making sense in context. Fright Night stops dead in its tracks for these elongated sequences without seeming to realize that they belong to some other, better film. Fright Night is enjoyable enough, but it’s too all-over-the-place to be coherent. I definitely don’t get the mass appeal of this one.

Rating: 6/10

Vampyres (For our Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1974

Director: Joseph Larraz

Cast: Marianne Morris, Anulka Dziubinska, Murray Brown 

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A pair of lesbian vampires lure men to their secluded castle, seduce them, and drink their blood.

One of the most influential subgenres in vampire cinema is the lesbian vampire movie, because horror films have almost always been made by men and men are almost always terrified of women. There was perhaps no better time for the genre than the 70’s, a time of women’s liberation and sexual awakening that was scaring buttoned-up menfolk out of their wits. Of course, when you’re dealing with a genre trafficking in softcore exploitation, the results are always one of two things: unintentionally hilarious or insufferably dull. Vampyres, the 1974 British entry in the genre, is emphatically the latter, British cinema being what it is.

What do you think of when you think of vampire films? Glistening fangs dripping in blood? Caped strangers turning into bats? Garlic and cross and silver, oh my? Well, you’re gonna get none of that in Vampyres, which I guess could be a refreshing take on the genre if it tried to tell any story whatsoever. Marianne Morris and Anulka, as our central couple seem to be acting according to their own private script. Perhaps it’s titled Real Housewives of Transylvania, because pretty much all they do is drink whine while they talk to or about men. And then they shower together sometimes. Y’know. Lesbian stuff.

Vampyres is trapped in an endless cycle of the two women walking to the road (every step is captured in hypnotic detail), flagging down men, having boring philosophical conversations, sleeping with them, and only occasionally killing them. While Vampyres utterly fails as a piece of erotica no thanks to its slipshod, handheld camerawork and acting flatter than the actresses’ resolutely fangless teeth), the centerpiece of its utter suckitude is its extreme lack of horror. The ladies barely exercise their vampiric nature (to the point that it could be argued that they merely think they’re vampires, á là George Romero’s Martin), and when they do the violence is all reactionary. There are no fangs piercing flesh, just two busty women licking blood off a previously injured man like he’s a Thriftee cone.

The tedium in Vampyres is scorching, and the lack of any decent sex or violence renders it literally and figuratively toothless. It fails to provide a single reason for it to exist, and it takes after its characters by completely lacking any semblance of inner life. In the film, vampires Fran’s life goal is to search for interesting people. I have a similar goal, to search for interesting movies. My advice? Look far, far away from Vampyres.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 870

Reviews In This Series

Fright Night (Holland, 1985)

Fright Night (Gillespie, 2011)

Popcorn Kernels: Fangs For The Memories

Everyone, please welcome back our dear friend Scream 101! The podcast has risen from the grave for a second season, and this September we’re all about vampires. Please enjoy a set of mini-reviews about the first two flicks in the lineup.

Dracula (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 1931

Director: Tod Browning

Cast: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners 

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: Approved

C’mon.

I do my best to approach classic horror with the respect it deserves, bringing as much context as possible to understand why people might have been scared of it back in the day, even if it doesn’t phase modern audiences. I get how Psycho shocked a post-Code audience and respect its tense thriller mechanics. I understand Halloween’s game-changing, stylish approach even if it doesn’t particularly spook me. And every time I watched The Exorcist… OK, The Exorcist is still terrifying. I’m just saying, I’m not speaking as a live Tweeting, torture porn-bred millennial when I say that the massively important, influential-even-to-this-day 1931 Universal smash hit Dracula is a pretty awful movie.

Please keep in mind that I don’t hate all Universal horror. Bride of Frankenstein is a doggone triumph. It’s just that Dracula is cut off at the knees twice over by its source material. While Dracula works well as an epistolary novel, its meandering, country-hopping plot is not the stuff of great cinema. And then our Dracula goes one step further by actually adapting its script from a stage play based on the novel, confining that addled narrative into one suffocating location.

The pacing chokes on its own blood as a handful of characters shout at one another, circling back to the same points over and over again. And far be it from me to knock an iconic performance, but Bela Lugosi is no Karloff. His slow-as-molasses line deliveries are just exhausting. The word “boring” is bandied about a lot when it comes to movies released more than a decade before our time, but Dracula truly earns that description. 

There are exactly three things that are genuinely good about Dracula, and they are what prevent it from teetering over a precipice of despair and tedium. First is Dwight Frye, our Renfield. Frye just goes for it, bringing an immutable energy to the role that sends him careening up into the rafters, but appropriately sells the character’s stylized insanity. The second stems off from that over-the-top quasi-expressionism: the production design of settings that aren’t the main mansion. Dracula’s castle is an excellent chiaroscuro nightmare, and the staircase in his London hideout is a deliciously overwrought jagged cliff.

The third and final element is one scene, a bedtime conversation between Mina and Lucy that thrums with naturalistic chemistry, providing a tiny breath of fresh air between all the hammy tagines. But a couple gasps do not a full lung make. I’d rather be buried six feet under than spend an eternity with Dracula, and that’s exactly what this 80 minute expanse of celluloid felt like.

Rating: 3/10

Let the Right One In (For the Scream 101 episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 2008

Director: Tomas Alfredson

Cast: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A young Swedish boy falls in love with the girl who moves in next door, only to discover that she’s a vampire.

I love the book Let the Right One In, as it’s one of the few works of modern literature that has turned my stomach as I was reading it. That might explain why I’m so chilly toward its film adaptation, which defangs most of its more questionable content in favor of a languorous arthouse vibe. Now I’ll be the first to admit that Let the Right One In is a great arthouse horror movie, but I’m well aware of what it could have been, which is supremely frustrating.

But it’s only fair, I suppose, to focus on what it is. Which is beautiful. Like many a Scandinavian film, Let the Right One In uses sprawling fields of snow as giant canvasses of negative space onto which it paints its frame. Given that vampire films tend to predominately feature blood, this aesthetic is especially suited for the subgenre, juxtaposing lurid reds against the pure white snowfall. This is especially especially meaningful when you consider that both our monster and our twisted protagonist falling for her are children, the traditional innocents.

Yeah, there’s a lot going on in Let the Right One In, though you might not suspect that from its sedate pacing. It truly succeeds in combining thoughtful, thematic imagery with intensely visceral horror, sometimes even in the same frame. Certain moments are achieved so elegantly that they could be framed and put in a gallery, even though they depict, say, a woman being engulfed in flame or a man burning off his own face with acid. … Maybe I’m being too harsh when I judge this movie for not being hardcore enough.

And let’s not discount the film’s love story, which is believably clumsy, childish, sweet, and dark. The two child actors are superb, especially Lina Leandersson, whose Eli has the eyes of someone who has seen a million lifetimes come and go.

Hell, Let the Right One In is terrific. I don’t love it, because I sometimes have trouble penetrating its icy exterior, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t sing its praises and recommend it to fans looking for more intellectual horror fare.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 926

Q2 Review Purge: Volume 3

You saw this coming, didn’t you? Underestimate my backlog once, shame on me. Underestimate my backlog twice, shame on YOU. Here’s the third and final (?) set of mini-mini reviews as I reboot my system and get back on track.

All About My Mother

Year: 1999
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña
Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

After her son dies, Manuela travels to Barcelona to tell his father, helping an aging actress, a transgender hooker, and a pregnant nun along the way.

You might not be able to tell from that synopsis, but All About My Mother is pure Oscarbait through and through. There was a period in Almodóvar’s career where he was on his hands and knees begging for the Academy to take him seriously, and this film is smack dab in the middle of it. Naturally, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Always the staunch Oscar contrarian, I must contest that All About My Mother is far from the director’s best work (winners are rarely as good as their competitors, as evidenced by the fact that his masterpiece Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown lost to Pelle the Conqueror). Although there is some delightful comic relief from the talented transgender actress Antonia San Juan, the movie takes itself way too seriously.

While Almodóvar admittedly crafts some stunning imagers and weaves in a tapestry of parallels between the film’s wide variety of mothers, trying to find the line between reality and fiction, All About My Mother is one of Almodóvar’s few films that feels typical. It might push the envelope with its depiction of gender and sexuality, but it’s just an Oscar tearjerker, yanking its characters through sad sad situations so they can spout elegant monologues at the drop of a hat. Obviously it’s far from a bad movie (I don’t think Almodóvar has made one of those), but it just doesn’t make an impression, which is usually what he’s best at.

Rating: 6/10


Talk to Her

Year: 2002
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Rosario Flores, Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Two men become friends at a hospital while caring for their loved ones, who are both in comas.

If you thought All About My Mother was Oscarbaity, wait till you get a load of Talk to Her! A movie so wildly overbearing that even the Oscars were a little put off, shuffling it into the Best Original Screenplay category, it’s by far the least funny Almodóvar movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot at this point. What I admire most about the director is his ability to draw comedy from even the most dire of situations, but here he sets all that aside and doubles down on the sincerity, to muted effect.

It lacks the serene beauty of All About My Mother, though if anything its intricate web of metaphor is even more complex. The film is about transition and metamorphosis, two disparate halves coming together to form a whole. It maybe goes without saying that this theme results in the most f**ked-up Almodóvar relationship yet: the friendship between the lover of a female bullfighter and the lonely stalker of a beautiful young dancer. The queer overtones prevalent in his filmography are almost entirely absent, stripping away all veneer to showcase a story about two people bonding.

Unfortunately, Talk to Her trips over itself in the third act, pointlessly extending the plot for some melodramatic waffling. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence in Almodóvar’s work, but when it lacks so much of his signature style, it also lacks the charm that allows you to cling to the bull’s back. Talk to Her bucks and you go flying, which is an extremely disappointing outcome.

Rating: 6/10


The Lives of Others

Year: 2006
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch
Run Time: 2 hour 17 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

An East Berlin secret police agent tasked to bug the apartment of a suspected dissident finds himself wrapped up in the man’s life as he listens from the attic.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and those who make historical movies are almost always talking about the present. It’s no mistake that The Lives of Others came out during the time of the Patriot Act and America’s surveillance controversy. And it’s certainly no mistake that the film is set in 1984.

The Lives of Others is a thriller about sitting down, about the sociopolitical intrigue that can change lives and enact deaths without stepping out from behind a desk. It’s a terrifying snapshot of a bleak reality that has existed, does exist, and will exist. In essence, it’s a very German film.

However, despite its dour setting and even more dour production design, dripping with greys and mottled greens, The Lives of Others is a story of hope. About the flowers that can grow in the cracks of the concrete. This is thanks in large part to Ulrich Mühe, whose stony visage captures every last chink in his armor as he learns that the people he has been victimizing are actual human beings. The Lives of Others is a terrifying film about bureaucracy and a reassuring one about humankind. It’s not often that something like that comes from a film set in historic Germany (unless Spielberg is involved), and The Lives of Others is a powerful break from the mold.

Rating: 8/10


Star Trek

Year: 2009
Director: J. J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg
Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

The Star Fleet rebel James T. Kirk finds himself on a stranded student vessel facing the alien threat that killed his father.

I know it’s a popular joke to make fun of J. J. Abrams’ use of lens flares, but I’d never until now experienced them for myself. The legends were true. Star Trek 2009 is an ocular freak show. People have counted, there’s literally a lens flare every 12 seconds on average. It’s like standing on the red carpet at the Oscars for two hours. Every single heroic shot is marred by these hideous distractions. They even go off in quiet, indoor scenes with no discernible light source. The lens flares will make your eyes water far more than any of the drama.

But there’s a movie beneath all that digital tampering, so let’s talk about it. As an origin story for a franchise I have not one shred of nostalgia for, it does a decent job of telling its own story. This could be a movie about James T. Bumblefart overcoming great odds as a cadet, and it would still be a coherent, engaging yarn. And there would be even less reason for Zoe Saldana to be there, because Uhura’s extremely discomfiting romance with Commander Spock happens entirely backstage.

As an exercise in J. J. Abrams crashing his CGI action figures into each other, Star Trek is a fun popcorn adventure, if a little beholden to the Star Wars standby of having important battles take place over yawning chasms. There’s only one scene that reaches the dizzy heights of summer fun I was hoping for (Bones follows Kirk, injecting him with a variety of wacky vaccinations to stabilize him as he attempts to deliver an important message) as the film tends toward the over-serious, but it’s never dull.

And Chris Pine is honestly a terrific choice, giving young Kirk a frat boy braggadocio that puts his flaws on his sleeve while retaining his natural charm. Star Trek’s a swing and a hit, even if it’s not a home run. Those lens flares can rot in Hell.

Rating: 6/10


Mamma Mia!

Year: 2008
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried
Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A young woman wants to invite her dad to her wedding on a Greek Isle. Only she doesn’t know which of three men it is, so she invites them all. Then they sing a bunch of ABBA songs.

The Mamma Mia! title card appears as a young girl runs screaming through a cloud of sparkles. That should pretty much tell you all you need to know about it. Mamma Mia! is loud, stupid, deranged, and I love it from the bottom of my heart.

While Mamma Mia! attempts to harness the glittery camp of attending a Broadway musical or a disco show, it frequently swings over the top into wholly unintentional bad-good delight, then back around the horn again into genuine fun. It spins around and around again between these two registers like a gymnast on the horizontal bars, afraid to let go and stick the landing. And stick the landing Mamma Mia! doesn’t, backloading about 90 ballads that suck the energy out of the third act, leaving it so ravaged that not even “Take a Chance On Me” (the most perfect pop song of the 70’s) can resuscitate it.

But despite its sputtering denouement, I love both angles from which Mamma Mia! approaches its content. For all the too-bright lighting that makes every location look like a sitcom set and the herky jerky variance in quality between the celebrity singers (Meryl Streep is at the top with a shockingly good belt, and Pierce Brosnan flounders at the bottom, sounding like Fozzie Bear in the middle of getting his tonsils removed) there’s a genuinely good vin running through it all, like the Greek chorus that resurrects an ancient form of theater to great effect, the bubblegum disco magic of “Super Trouper,” or the beach party sizzle that underscores “Lay All Your Love On Me.”

At the end of the day, Mamma Mia! is a movie that makes me sublimely happy. It is great and it is terrible, frequently at the same time, but it never stops being tremendous fun to watch.

Rating: Please don't make me do this. 7/10? 9/10? 5/10? 9/10. Don't hold me to that.

Last Night

Year: 2010

Director: Massy Tadjedin

Cast: Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A wife and husband both find themselves faced with the opportunity to cheat while he’s away on a business trip.

Last Night is one of those ponderous indie dramas that’s so excessively low key it would easily have been a TV movie. Or a commercial. With minimal sets, a tiny cast, and an abundance of agonizing close-ups, there’s nothing that screams “feature film.” To be frank there’s nothing to look at whatsoever.

Much like Looking: The Movie, Last Night is mostly composed of a string of conversations rather than any real incident. This is fine, especially when the conversation is as thought-provoking as it is. But the inhuman frankness and eloquence of these conversations make it screamingly apparent that the dialogue is Written. Luckily the actors that perform this series of treatises are well suited to the job.

Keira Knightley and Guillame Canet are a better match than Sam Worthington and Eva Mendes (though Mendes shades a surprising amount of depth onto a thankless sex symbol role), but for the most part Last Night is well-delivered, if coldly intellectual drama.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1882
Reviews In This Series
Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016)

Mamma Mia! (Lloyd, 2008)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Parker, 2018)