The Round-Up: July 23-29

THE LAST OF ENGLAND

Tilda Swinton brings an element of mourning to THE LAST OF ENGLAND.

Derek Jarman’s THE LAST OF ENGLAND (1987, Criterion Channel through month’s end, Apple TV+, Kanopy) is a blisteringly angry, sometimes impenetrable work that ranks among the director’s most personal films. There’s no real story, though there are characters and images that recur throughout. It’s more an assemblage of visuals and sounds, a montage of effects in the spirit of Eisenstein. Made at the height of Thatcherism and shortly after Jarman was diagnosed HIV-positive, the film takes on the failure of Great Britain’s promise, juxtaposing home movies from the director’s childhood with images of abjection set in decaying areas of London and Belfast. There are moments of queer jouissance — a leather-clad young man playing the pan flute, a man in a tutu performing ballet around an open fire, a wedding with drag queens as bridesmaids. But they play against scenes of devastation as soldiers in balaclavas round up prisoners and execute a man we will later realize is the bridegroom, while refugees sit on a wharf as Marianne Faithful sings “The Sky Boat Song.” The social commentary gets more direct when a very proper mourner at a properly British funeral asks a soldier if he enjoyed the Falklands War and is looking forward to the next one. In one of the most intense moments, Jarman’s muse, Tilda Swinton, who had played the bride, rends her wedding gown as Diamanda Galas plays on the soundtrack. It’s a moment of unalloyed grief, the remnant of the anger that had informed the first parts of the film, and it anticipates her frenzied mourning dance to the “Sanctus” in Jarman’s later WAR REQUIEM (1989). Though the moment in the later film is more devastating because Jarman found in Britten’s piece a means of shaping his responses not just to war but to the state of the world he would soon leave, the work in THE LAST OF ENGLAND still demands respect as a very personal cry of anguish from one of the screen’s great lost artists.

ETHERIA FILM NIGHT 2023

Sleep paralysis turns into a waking terror in Natalie Metzger's "Sleep Study."

For the past ten years, the Etheria Film Night has screened short horror films by emerging woman directors, and for the past four years, the top choices have been packaged on Shudder. ETHERIA FILM NIGHT 2023 (2023, Shudder, some shorts are on YouTube) features some highly imaginative pieces, bookended by two very good films representing different approaches to abusive relationships. In Meg Swertlow’s wickedly funny “No Overnight Parking,” abused wife Alyssa Milano is stalked by a masked killer in a deserted parking garage. A really good short film says just enough to feel complete, and this one hits that note properly. You can envision what’s going to follow the action; you don’t need to see it (though any chance to see Milano’s work is a joy). Chelsea Gonzalez’s “Make the Call” is a little longer and more layered. Writer Sal Neslusan, who also stars, has created a high-context conversation between former best friends in a world afflicted with a virus that makes the infected uncontrollably violent. She and Gonzelez create their reality in just 15 minutes through the judicious placement of details and with good performances by Neslusan and Camille Chen. Other highlights include Genevieve Kertesz’s lushly shot folk tale, “The Erl King”; Zoey Martinson’s metaphor for racial injustice, “Incomplete”; Natalie Metzger’s creepy vision of sleep paralysis and the stress of motherhood, “Sleep Study,” and Mai Nakashima’s short, very unsettling look at a TV movie that develops a deadly mind of its own, “Border.” None of the pieces are total monkey dump, and at least the weaker entries are over quickly.

THE MAN WITH A CLOAK

 

Louis Calhern, Leslie Caron and Barbara Stanwyck do their best

to elevate the weak script of THE MAN WITH A CLOAK.

Edgar Allan Poe is credited with creating the American detective story, so putting him in a mystery-thriller would seem a natural idea. Right? Not judging by Fletcher Markle’s THE MAN WITH A CLOAK (1951, TCM). Joseph Cotten stars as a hard-drinking poet who calls himself Dupin and gets involved in the fight over dying expatriate Frenchman Louis Calhern’s will. Did he leave everything to his shady lady housekeeper, Barbara Stanwyck, or to the grandson who sent his fiancée (Leslie Caron) to beg for his support of the Second French Republic? The mystery is hardly as complicated as those in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” or “The Purloined Letter,” and yet it still seems a leap when Cotten figures it out. But then, the whole film makes little sense. Why does Calhern plan to kill himself when he’s dying anyway? Why does Stanwyck flirt with Cotten? Does she think he can help her secure the inheritance? Is she attracted to him? Is she jealous of his friendship with Caron? Why has nobody in 1848 heard of Poe when he was already famous for his poetry and short stories? How can Cotton drink constantly and never get drunk? Why does the film treat the revelation of Cotton’s identity as a shock when anybody with a high-school education at the time would have known who he was within 20 minutes? Why did the studio and good actors look at this script and say, “This seems like a great idea?” Calhern, in a role offered to Lionel Barrymore, and Margaret Wycherly, as the cackling cook, come off best. They just disregard all the idiocy and have a high time nibbling on the scenery. Stanwyck and Jim Backus, as a friendly tavern keeper, manage to make the faux poetic dialog almost sound good, and she has a charming moment flirting with Cotton as she lip synchs a song. The music, by David Raksin, is both wonderful and far ahead of its time. If I were you, I’d skip the movie and pick up the soundtrack.

PAST LIVES

 

Teo Yoo is the odd man out, dramaturgically speaking, in Grace Lee and John Magaro's

relationship in the sometimes beautiful, sometimes maddening PAST LIVES.

There’s some lovely work in Celine Song’s PAST LIVES (2023, in theaters, on demand). There are also some pace issues and an unfortunate tendency to treat one character as “the other” that undermine some if not all of the good work. Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea to Canada when she’s 12, separating her from her best friend, Jung Hae. Twelve years later she’s in New York working on her writing career, and they reconnect online, forging an adult friendship that ultimately can’t survive their distance and the different paths along which their lives are headed. Another 12 years later, she’s a married, rising playwright, and Jung Hae comes to New York for a visit. As the adult Nora, Greta Lee does some exquisite work, with beautiful moments of repose She’s very much the center of the film, something established at the beginning when she looks at the camera before the story unfolds in flashbacks. Teo Yoo, who plays the adult Jung Hae, is clearly a capable actor, but his character doesn’t have the focus hers has. He makes eye contact with a woman in a restaurant in China and, on his visit to New York, tells Lee he recently broke up with his girlfriend. Was that the girl in the restaurant? We never really see them together and only know of the breakup and its reasons because he tells Lee about it.  With his story told in snippets, more of the focus goes to Lee’s husband (John Magaro), and the best scene in the film is their conversation after her reunion with Yoo. It’s a wonder of subtextual anxiety as Magaro tries to find out what Yoo means to her now and if that threatens their marriage. I just wish Yoo’s character were given the same consideration. Lee’s meetings with Yoo are awkward at first. There are long pauses to communicate that, but they start to feel too long, almost self-conscious on Song’s part. And it’s frustrating because they eat up time that could have been spent further developing Yoo’s character. I understand the primary focus is what his visit means to Lee, but I simply think it would be more effective were he presented as a fully rounded character.

 

FEAR NO EVIL

FEAR NO EVIL, unless you're a homophobic bully trying to embarrass

a satanic teen in the school shower.

Frank LaLoggia’s debut feature, FEAR NO EVIL (1981, Shudder) is one hot mess. It’s not as cohesive, technically accomplished or well-acted overall as his second film, LADY IN WHITE (1988). Yet there are parts of it that are thrillingly original and one performance that can stand next to the best of any in his or just about anybody’s else’s work. Like many high-schoolers, Stefan Arngrim, the kid from LAND OF THE GIANTS, seems to be the earthly reincarnation of Lucifer. Only this time he is. He’s pursued by the archangel Michael, now an aging woman (Elizabeth Hoffman, making an auspicious film debut at 54, and if anybody knows what she was doing before that, please let me know) searching for her fellow angel, who turns out to be another high-schooler (Kathleen Rowe McAllen). A lot of the school scenes seem derivative, but there’s one in the men’s showers in which the school bully (Daniel Eden) tries to bash Arngrim only to find himself stuck in a lip lock that won’t let go. This and a later scene with Eden have led some critics to label the film homophobic, but I think they’re more about bullying as a sign of misogyny and repressed homosexuality. There’s a local passion play in which Jesus really does die on the cross (how medieval), thanks to Arngrim’s magic. There’s also a beautifully staged funeral scene. But then, there are zombies whose decaying flesh has turned into corn flakes (they were forced on LaLoggia and ended up being what sold the film to a distributor). The film has some great locations, particularly Boldt Castle in Alexandria, NY. But shooting regionally on a low budget meant LaLoggia had to use some pretty poor actors (somebody needed to the remind gym teacher he was playing a human being). But then there’s Hoffman, who already has the command of the camera and characterization she would display in her later work. She makes even the worst dialog compelling and almost poetic and manages to connect with even the weakest actors. Fred Goodich did the excellent, very atmospheric camera work, while LaLoggia and David Spear composed an effective score. There’s also some great contemporary music on the soundtrack from artists like Patti Smith, The Ramones, Talking Heads, The Boomtown Rats, The B-52s and The Sex Pistols.

FRIDAY THE 13TH

Revenge is sweet until it backfires on FRIDAY THE 13TH.

I thought I had reviewed all of the Friday the 13^th movies, but after showing Sean S. Cunningham’s original FRIDAY THE 13^TH (1980, On Demand) to a friend who’d never seen it, I discovered I hadn’t done the first or the second. This was the latest of many viewings of one of the original slashers, and this time, watching with someone else, I noticed some things:

1.     The film obviously borrows heavily from John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978), most notably with an opening murder set in the past, though Cunningham’s film provides no shocking revelation of the killer (that was saved for later) and provides the keys to a more concrete motive.

2.     The big mistake in that opening sequence is partly shared with some scenes in HALLOWEEN. It starts with what seems to be a subjective camera shot that isn’t. Later, when it finally becomes a subjective shot with the killing of the two camp counsellors, Cunningham makes a mistake of his own. He breaks the tension by switching to an objective shot as the first counselor is killed.

3.     Until my friend pointed it out, I hadn’t realized how androgynous the final girl (Adrienne King) is. Her short hair may have been intended to contrast with the female victims, and of course, it was the popular Dorothy Hamill cut of the period, but it also creates an intriguing sexual ambiguity that helps support Carol J. Clover’s contention in MEN, WOMEN AND CHAINSAWS: GENDER IN THE MODERN HORROR FILM that the final girl derives her power from her virginal, almost asexual status, even though King has clearly been having an affair with her boss.

4.     The final battle is a rarity for the period in depicting two women going at it hammer and tongs without a man as the source of contention. Yes, I know Jason’s death motivates the film, but they’re not exactly fighting over him.

5.     I still maintain the best ending for the film would be for the final girl’s mother to come into her hospital room and be played by Betsy Palmer. Yes, it would mean there wouldn’t be any sequels (“Big loss,” I hear some of you saying sarcastically), but it would provide a much more interesting note of ambiguity. Or have I been watching too many gialli?

The Round-Up: July 16—July 22, 2023

 I can't believe it's been almost three years since I posted anything. I've been doing daily reviews on Facebook and Tumblr instead of longer ones here, because there just isn't any time. So I'm just going to start posting my daily reviews here once a week and see if anybody notices. My pattern is to alternate horror, a genre I love no matter how bad the films sometimes get, with other films. I departed from that this past week because I wanted to follow a cute actor whose work I liked from UNINVITED to DEMON WIND. Boy, was that a mistake. As bad as UNINVITED was, at least he had some material and a character with which to work. With the move to DEMON WIND, he went from a so bad it's good movie to a so bad it's just bad one. And I'm not mentioning his name to spare him the embarrassment, assuming anybody ever reads this. Anyway, I shall not repeat that mistake.

But there were still some high points, so here goes:

DIAL M FOR MURDER

Ray Milland has to think fast when the wrong person gets DIAL M FOR MURDERed.

With Jack Arnold’s IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953), Alfred Hitchcock’s DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954, TCM, Tubi) is one of the only films from the early 3D craze to use the format artistically. Both avoid arbitrarily shoving objects in the audience’s faces (how many of us have nightmares about that damned paddleball in HOUSE OF WAX?). But where Arnold uses 3D to emphasize the vast emptiness of the desert, Hitchcock uses it to underline his film’s claustrophobic action, set almost entirely in the flat shared by retired tennis pro Ray Milland and his heiress wife, Grace Kelly. This account of a jealous husband plotting the perfect crime twice to keep control of his wife’s estate may not be the perfect thriller, but with Hitchcock directing, it’s hard to spot any plot holes (feel free to suggest them in the comments). The only noticeable instance of his shoving something at the audience is Kelly’s outstretched hand as she’s being strangled, and who could object to getting that close to those lovely digits as long as she’s not reaching for an Oscar she didn’t deserve. We’re so used to thinking of Hitchcock in terms of his great, near silent montages it’s a revelation to see how well he breaks up long dialog scenes, particularly Milland’s blackmailing former school chum Anthony Dawson into killing Kelly for him. Milland wisely plays against the villainy of the role. He brings his years of experience doing light comedy to bear on the role, and it works. He’s matched by John Williams’ droll playing as the chief inspector on the case. As Kelly’s secret lover, Robert Cummings has some light romantic moments, but he’s got a little more heavy drama to pull off, and to his credit, he doesn’t overdo it. Kelly’s best moments are silent. She looks delicious, but her big breakdown after the killing has dated badly. There’s a fascinating artificial quality to the film, partly because Hitchcock and Frederick Knott, who wrote the original play and the screenplay, haven’t done much to open up the material. There are some bad process shots on the few exteriors, like Cummings’ arrival by ocean liner, that fit into this. There’s also a cheery quality to Dimitri Tiomkin’s opening title music that seems to be telling us that we’re not about to see anything resembling real life. As a work of artifice, highlighting the plot’s mechanical construction (every important prop is painstakingly planted so even the dimmest audience members can’t miss it), the film seems to suggest that the beauty of the well-made plot is an illusion to disguise the chaotic nature of existence so prevalent in Hitchcock’s films.

NO ONE LIVES

Luke Evans make serial killing sexy.

With a title like NO ONE LIVES (2012, Prime), you start out with low expectations. Now, add the fact that it was produced by WWE Entertainment, and you’ll expect even less. Then throw in the directing credit, Ryuhei Kitamura, whose THE PRICE WE PAY (2022) I just hated (and no, I wasn’t planning on doing two of his films in a row, but Amazon doesn’t list directors). Is it possible to move one’s expectations into the negative zone? Yes, it’s the schlock de la schlock. But big surprise, it has a pulpy energy that carries through most of it if you have a high gore tolerance. Helping greatly is the fact that Luke Evans and Adelaide Clemens in the leads make something of their underwritten characters. She’s so good you can’t help wishing for a better ending. A group of crooks headed by Lee Tergesen — who has precious little to do before he goes the way of all Steve Buscemi, eh?— kidnaps a tourist (Evans) and brings his car and trailer to their remote forest cabin (at this point in time, would anybody even consider staying in a remote forest cabin?). When they go through the trunk, they find a bound woman (Clemens). Yes, they just kidnapped a very resourceful and inventive serial killer, and the van is his kill kit. The kills are highly imaginative and only one is sexually exploitative. It all moves like a house afire, and Evans makes even the cheesiest dialog sound almost clever. Sample: Clemens: “You must be out of your mind.” Evans: “I’m very much in my mind.” In this film, Kitamura’s direction is stylish without going into overkill. His camera glides along with Evans as he goes about his business and performs at least one pan that made me laugh. Since this is a WWE production, the cast includes one of their wrestlers, Brodus Clay (aka Tyrus aka The Funkasaurus), but the script doesn’t push him beyond his capabilities, and he has great physical presence. For those so inclined, I’ll also point out that Evans is one of the sexiest serial killers ever to grace a bad horror film. Hey, we take our kicks where we can get them.

LADIES IN RETIREMENT

Edith Barrett (l.) gets an acting lesson (not that she need much of one) 

from Elsa Lanchester and Ida Lupino.

A penny dreadful at heart, Charles Vidor’s LADIES IN RETIREMENT (1941, Prime) is crackling good fun as it builds up civilized scares in the grand Hollywood tradition. In a cottage in the midst of a foggy marsh, a wealthy, retired chorus girl (Isabel Elsom) lives with her buttoned-up companion (Ida Lupino) and timid maid (Evelyn Keyes). When Lupino’s dotty sisters (Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett) are threatened with commitment to an asylum in London, she brings them to the cottage for a short visit that lasts so long Elsom tries to throw them all out. So, Lupino strangles her as the old lady is singing “Tit-Willow” (everyone’s a critic) and walls her up in an old bread oven. Can she keep it together, particularly when her roguish nephew (Louis Hayward, having great fun as the fox in the hen house) shows up and starts asking questions? This is from the days when a murder was depicted by having the victim’s pearls drop a few at a time onto the floor. If you’re in love with slasher horror, you just may not get it. Entirely and obviously constructed on a large sound stage, the house and the marshes are a marvel of art direction, Vidor and cinematographer George Barnes create some vivid compositions that increase the tension while also reflecting character and relationship. Screenwriters Reginald Denham (who co-wrote the original play with Edward Perry) and Garrett Fort have been perhaps too faithful to the original. After a time jump, the dotty sisters’ disruption is communicated through exposition rather than a series of incidents accumulating over time. But the cast is superb, with special honors to Elsom, whose specificity is a marvel as she plays a woman pretending to propriety after a very improper past; Lanchester as the more sullen and rebellious of the sisters (it’s very different from her usual run of good-natured eccentrics) and particularly Lupino. Her character’s arc is similar to the one in THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940), but the proper British setting makes it much more subtextual, and her restraint and stillness are marvelous to behold.

UNINVITED

The moral of the story: don't mess with cat lovers.

If you thought the infamous mutant killer bunny film NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972) was really really scary, then Greydon Clark’s mutant killer cat film UNINVITED (1987, Shudder, Tubi) is the movie for you. Of course, if you laughed your posterior off at the former, you may need medical attention after viewing the latter. Scientific experiments have left a tiger striped tabby with the ability to shoot a bad puppet out of its mouth that immediately grows to medium dog size and kills or lethally infects anybody it doesn’t like. Talk about your meow mess! An early scene in which it takes out two men after they beat and rob someone who had fed it suggests the movie that might have been. I think a killer kitty taking out miscreants would be a great concept, and I’d be happy to write it up once the WGA strike is over. And I shall call it “Pussy Revenge.” Meanwhile, in this film it’s picked up by a college girl (Shari Shattuck, clearly playing a legacy admission) on spring break who brings it on board a yacht whose corrupt owner (Alex Cord) wants to shag her. She also brings along some frisky friends to replace the crew Cord has driven off, and they all set sail for the Cayman Islands, where Cord has stashed his ill-gotten gains. The cat has other ideas. Even without the ludicrous puppet, the sight of people trying to chase down the kitty is hilarious. The attacks are so unconvincing, you may never stop laughing. Cord and fellow criminals George Kennedy and Clu Gulager don’t act as if this were a stinker hardly anybody would see. They actually deliver performances that are worth watching, and Gulager is very funny as the team’s nebbish hit man. The women, however, are hopeless, but then, I don’t think they were cast for their acting abilities.

DEMON WIND

At least I got a kick out of Stephen Quadros' performance, if nothing else.

If you play the 2022 video game HIGH ON LIFE, you can enter a movie theatre in the game world and watch Charles Philip Moore’s DEMON WIND (1990, Shudder, Apple+, Tubi, YouTube in French) in its entirety. That’s one side quest you’d be well-advised to avoid. There’s surreal horror, and then there’s we-don’t-know-what-we’re-doing horror. This film, sadly, falls into the latter category. In 1931, a body burns on a cross. An old woman in a farmhouse tells her husband her wards can’t keep out the evil spirits any longer, so he turns into a demon and kills her. This means he develops really bad acne and pointy teeth and lets pudding fall from his mouth. Jump to the present, when Cory (Eric Larson) is driving his girlfriend (Francine Lapensee) to the same farm, which he inherited after his father killed himself, possibly motivated by his desire to avoid doing any more scenes in this film. His friends join them for some reason not even they understand, and suddenly they’re trapped there. The demons manifest first as three children who grab one of the women and vanish with her. Lucky her. She’s well out of it, probably having a beer with the dead father. The special effects mostly seem to be scratched on the film with a pin. The acting is of the “when in doubt, shout” school. And the plot advances because people do stupid things, like trying to walk out to get help when they know they can’t do that. But you do get a magician who does martial arts kicks, so there’s that. The ads proclaimed, “DEMON WIND: it’ll blow you away.” So can I after eating too much fried food, and at least I got to enjoy getting there. Hey, you knew that kind of joke was inevitable.

NIAGARA

Technicolor noir at it's best

The first shot of Marilyn Monroe in Henry Hathaway’s NIAGARA (1953, Criterion Channel) shows her lying naked under a sheet while smoking a cigarette. It has the kind of fleshy sexuality audiences in the early ‘50s were seeing in foreign films. Although the picture opens with shots of Niagara Falls and keeps going back to the local sights, Monroe easily upstages them. That’s not surprising, as the film is partly about commodifying her as the screen’s newest sex goddess. The only other film that dwells on its leading lady’s posterior so lovingly may be Antonioni’s LA NOTTE (1961). What’s surprising about Monroe’s performance as Joseph Cotton’s murderous, straying wife is how unlike “Marilyn” she is. The breathy, overly deliberate delivery that would become her trademark is here only used as a mask. It’s the public image she puts on when she needs to impress somebody. With her lover (Richard Allan) or husband, she’s got a much harder edge. As a result, this is probably her most provocative performance. It’s the actor as auteur of her own filmography. Despite the use of Technicolor, the plot is the stuff of film noir. Monroe tries to make those around her see how unstable her husband is so her lover can kill him but have it look like suicide. And as in all films noirs, things go wrong. To keep the picture from being too edgy for the conformist ‘50s, her story is seen through the eyes of a “normal” honeymooning couple who keep turning up whenever something important is about to happen. Fortunately, the wife is Jean Peters, who could make normal (and just about anything else) interesting, though she’s not smart enough to realize she’s married to a gay man (Max Showalter, billed as Casey Adams, and of course he’s not playing a gay man, but he sure doesn’t generate a lot of sexual energy, even when admiring Monroe). Hathaway keeps things moving. Even the travelogue scenes tie into the plot, and cinematographer Joe MacDonald creates some great shadowy effects while also lingering over all of Marilyn’s curves. Yet the ultimate effect is rather hypocritical. Monroe is presented as the supreme object of desire and must be punished for it. The alternative is the merely attractive Peters, who’s happily married to a man who sees their honeymoon as a chance to read Winston Churchill’s history of World War II.

MURDER MANSION

They didn't need a fog machine for this one.

All they had to do was tap into the writers' minds.

There are days I question this whole “I watch these so you don’t have to” approach to criticism. In Francisco Lara Polo’s debut feature MURDER MANSION (1972, Shudder, Tubi, YouTube, because why should I suffer alone) — aka THE MURDER MANSION aka MANIAC MANSION aka LA MANSION DE LA NIEBLA — a bunch of people wander around in the fog until they stumble on a spooky house in which to shelter. The writers, however, would appear never to have found their way out of the fog. Do I need to tell you the mansion is reputed to be haunted? Not if you watch it. There’s a pretty blonde (Evelyn Stewart) living there who tells them all about how her great aunt was supposed to be a witch or a vampire or something, and we later discover her coffin is empty. The old lady and her chauffeur died in a car wreck but keep showing up to torment the guests. At least I could wake myself up whenever the chauffeur appeared by shouting “Max! Max! Max!” at the screen. The guests include an heiress (Analia Gade) who has endless flashbacks that have no real bearing on the plot but help get the film to feature length and a drunken middle-aged wretch who stumbles around the place looking for female companionship. When Gade rejects him, he calls her a lesbian. I call her sensible. But then she proves me wrong with a mad scene that seems to have been cut in from an episode of SCTV. That rather fits the film, since the music labeled “ominous” by the closed captioning would be more appropriate in a Snagglepuss cartoon. The film has good color, to give the wretched piece it’s due (sorry, Sir Noel), which some viewers have mistaken for atmosphere. They’ve compared it to the work of Mario Bava and Dario Argento. That would suggest that some viewers really don’t understand Bava or Argento.