AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Mary Harron. Co-screenwriter: Guinevere Turner.)

Storyline

A Wall Street executive lives two lives: one as a Wall Street executive, the other as wildly lucky serial killer. When both worlds begin to bleed into each other, his insanity spins out of control.

 

Review

Brett Easton Ellis’s controversial and experimentally structured 1991 novel inspired this different-than-the-book film, directed by Mary Harron, who co-wrote its screenplay with actress/writer Guinevere Turner. (Turner also plays Elizabeth, one of Patrick Bateman’s victims, whose grisly, post-threesome fate is briefly glimpsed.) 

AMERICAN is an often-hilarious, pitch-black satire-horror flick, set in New York in the 1980s. The film follows Bateman as he struggles (and fails to) balance his psychotic, sexual needs─humiliating, physically torturing and killing women─with his sparkling-clean, OCD-addled Wall Street lifestyle, two modes whose underlying cruelties are hand to glove: Bateman’s Wall Street associates (superbly played by Justin Theroux, Jared Leto, Matt Ross and Josh Lucas) may not physically torture and kill people, but their misogynistic and wealth-enhanced disregard and cruelty helps underscore the acceptability of Bateman’s notions that his victims─usually impoverished, female or both─are less than human.

The cinematography, art and set direction visually reflects that cold, on-the-surface dichotomy. Bateman lives in uptown, architecturally beautiful, and OCD-clean places, which─as Bateman’s sanity further disintegrates─he befouls with his victims’ blood, limbs and viscera, sometimes publicly. The fact that he often does his heinous, hysterical deeds in almost-full-view of everyone and tells them about it (only have them laugh him off or be disgusted by his bad manners) is chilling and still timely, perhaps more so given the events of these last few years.

John Cale’s music enhances the feel of the scenes. It works, like everything in AMERICAN. The acting, across the board, is excellent, especially: Christian Bale (who plays Bateman, effectively conveying the psycho’s rage, incredulousness and desperation); Chloë Sevigny (as Jean, Bateman’s secretary who’s openly crushing on her strangely tender employer); Samantha Mathis (as Bateman’s pill-zonked, sad-sack mistress, Courtney Rawlinson); Willem Dafoe (as Det. Donald Kimball, who knows something’s off about Bateman, but can’t quite finger it); Reese Witherspoon (as Evelyn Williams, Bateman’s wedding- and status-obsessed fiancée); and Cara Seymour (as Christie, a streetwalker who’s terrified of Bateman, but needs his money more).

AMERICAN, as a disturbing but relatively restrained horror flick-satire, hits every mark (without being gratuitous about it), making this one of the most potent, if sometimes gory and holy-frak-that’s-dark satires in the last twenty years.

THE FOG (1980)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: John Carpenter. Co-screenwriter: Debra Hill.)

Storyline

As the coastal town of Antonio Bay prepares for its centennial, late-April celebration, a supernatural, thick fog creeps into it between the hours of midnight and one a.m., bringing with it death.

Review

Spivey Point, California, mid-April 1880, between the hours of midnight and one a.m. The leprous mariners of the clipper ship Elizabeth Dane see lights along the shore and sail toward them, unaware of the ocean-covered, dangerous rocks that lie along the shore. The Elizabeth Dane strikes the rocks and its crew, with all their treasures, sink beneath the waves. Its treasure is soon recovered by those who live in Spivey Point, and the town of Antonio Bay is established immediately thereafter.

A hundred years later, the denizens of the sleepy town are set to celebrate its centennial anniversary, a big nighttime party in Shelby Square, in the center of town. Prior to that, between midnight and one a.m., April 12^th, a mild earthquake rocks Antonio Bay, electrical power surges through the town (causing lights to come on), car horns honk, phones start ringing, gas pumps to start pumping gas, and a white, glowing fog covers the town. Not only that, but in the church, a book─”Diary of Father Patrick Malone”─falls out of a new crack in a wall. Father Malone (played by Hal Holbrook), grandson of the diary’s author, finds it and begins to read it, horror dawning on his face. That same night, the crew of a local trawler (Sea Grass), also enveloped in the sudden fogbank fifteen miles out, is boarded by ghostly, undead men wielding sabers and hooks from the nineteenth century. The Sea Grass crew does not survive the visit. Not long after that, a boy discovers a piece of driftwood on the beach, bearing part of the Elizabeth Dane’s name.

Further strangeness, fog, ghostly visits, and death follow, culminating in a night of full-blown terror, when the spectral sailors of the Elizabeth Dane attack the townspeople during the centennial celebration in Shelby Square.

This steady-build film is an old-fashioned ghost story, from its opening shots where Mr. Machen (named for the influential supernatural author Arthur Machen?) tells several children about the Elizabeth Dane around a beach campfire. Played by with playful gravitas by the great John Houseman (GHOST STORY, 1981), Machen’s tale ably sets the tone for the rest of this mood-effective-well-paced and classic (in a good way) film.

FOG’s stellar cast adds to its immersibility. Adrienne Barbeau, Carpenter’s then-wife, played Stevie Wayne. Wayne’s nighttime jazz radio show (broadcast from a lighthouse), in addition to Machen’s beachside tale, is the glue that helps structure and connect the players and the film’s action. Jamie Lee Curtis (HALLOWEEN, 1978) played Elizabeth Solley. Tom Atkins (HALLOWEEN III:SEASON OF THE WITCH, 1982) played Nick Castle (real-life name source Nick Castle played Michael Myers/The Shape in HALLOWEEN, 1978). Janet Leigh, Curtis’s real-life mother, played Kathy Williams. Nancy Kyes (HALLOWEEN, 1978) played Nancy Loomis.

Charles Cypher (HALLOWEEN, 1978) played Dan O’Bannon (the character’s name is a shout-out to director Carpenter’s real-life friend, who co-wrote DARK STAR, 1974, with him). George “Buck” Flower played Tommy Wallace (the character’s name is a shout-out to Carpenter’s real-life friend Tommy Lee Wallace, who not only played a “Ghost” in FOG but later directed HALLOWEEN III). Rob Bottin, who also created special makeup and creepy FX for FOG and many other films, played Blake, the leader of the leprous “Ghosts.” And director/co-screenwriter Carpenter made a brief cameo as Bennett, Father Malone’s church assistant who, early in the film, asks Malone for his pay.

Partially filmed in Bodega Bay, also a site for Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (1963), FOG was shot in anamorphic widescreen Panavision, lending its relatively low budget (under a million dollars) a bigger budget feel.

FOG sports influences and partial quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“like an albatross around the neck”), H.P. Lovecraft (“a sweep south of Waitely Point and Arkham Reef”), Vincent Price’s DR. PHIBES films (FOG’s coroner is named after Phibes), Edgar Allan Poe (“Dream Within a Dream” prologue quote), making it not only an entertaining, solid-build ghost-story work, but a genre-reverent and relatively goreless one, with lots of personal references for the director and his cast. Furthermore, Carpenter, in a DVD commentary for THE FOG, said the fate of the Elizabeth Dane (minus its ghostly, deadly visitations) was inspired by a real-life event, the intentional, nineteenth century sinking and plundering of a clipper ship off the coast of Goleta, California.

Worth owning, this. A remake, co-produced by Carpenter, Debra Hill and quite a few others, came out in 2005.

MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933)

 

(a.k.a. WAX MUSEUM; director: Michael Curtiz)

 

Storyline

“A reporter investigates a series of disappearances and murders linked to a wax museum and a strange sculptor.

 

Review

MYSTERY, a pre-Production Code film, is a fun horror flick (and the final movie made in dual-colored Technicolor).

The film features Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, and Glenda Farrell as Florence, the fast-talking, take-no-guff reporter. It was remade as 3D work (HOUSE OF WAX) in 1953 by Vincent Price and director André de Toth, who was blind in one eye, and could not see the 3D effect. Another notable difference between the two films is that one of the characters in pre-Code MYSTERY is a junkie; in Code-ruled HOUSE, there is no mention of drugs, and that character is an alcoholic. (I don’t remember how the filmmakers handled that element in the 2005 remake, also called HOUSE OF WAX.)

According to IMDb, Atwill and Wray worked with Curtiz on an earlier movie, DOCTOR X (1932), a director known for being unyielding with his actors, something that rubbed Wray the wrong way. Another holdover element from DOCTOR X was MYSTERY’s morgue set, originally a laboratory set in DOCTOR X.

The story runs thusly: in 1921, wax sculptor Ivan Igor (played by Atwill) is betrayed by his business partner, Joe Worth (played with a con man’s swagger by Edwin Maxwell) when Worth torches Igor’s London wax museum for insurance money, leaving Igor to die in the fire. Cut to 1933. Igor─scarred, alive and bitter─shows up in New York with a new museum. Because of his flame-ruined hands, he has less talented artists recreating his beloved, lost-to-fire wax figures, even as people begin disappearing.

The acting in MYSTERY is good, with Atwill’s Igor suitably obsessed with his work, and willing to go to any length to bring it to fruition; Wray plays the good-hearted Charlotte Duncan, Florence’s opposite number roommate: where Florence is go-for-the-throat flamboyant, Charlotte is quiet and uncertain, which does not bode well for her, with Igor’s infatuated gaze directed at her, when they’re introduced by Ralph Burton, Charlotte’s fiancée and Igor’s assistant.

The story runs pretty much the way you would expect it to. The sets and atmosphere are convincing, and the film works on all basic levels. Good movie!

#ALIVE (2020)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Il Cho, billed as Cho II. Co-screenwriter: Matt Naylor.)

Storyline

A mysterious infection plunges a city into chaos while a solitary young man holes up in his  apartment.

 

Review

This Netflix Original film follows Oh Joon-woo, a teenager alone in a third-story high-rise apartment while cannibalistic, crazed humans who were once his neighbors run wild attacking, killing and eating people. Mostly smart─especially considering his adolescent mindset─he uses social media (what little is left) to let the outside world that not everyone in this violent, diseased situation.

#ALIVE is a solid work, with a few intense attacked-by-the-infected scenes. My only nit about the film is how Joon-woo can assess certain situations and realities, but other should-be-obvious decisions seem to elude him. But that’s more a personal quirk on my part, probably, a generational-divide thing. Well-acted, -written and -directed, this easily-a-set-up-for-sequels flick is better than a lot of crazed humans/zombie flicks I’ve seen in the last few years.

BLACK SUNDAY (1960)

 

(a.k.a. THE MASK OF SATAN; director/cinematographer/uncredited co-screenwriter: Mario Bava. Co-screenwriters: Ennio De Concini, Mario Serandrei, who based their work on a story by Nicolay Gogol, billed as Nicolaj Gogl. Additional English dialogue written by George Higgins, billed as George Higgins III.)

Storyline

A seventeenth century Maldavian witch and her diabolical servant rise from their graves two hundred years later to get revenge on the descendants of her brother, who condemned the undead to death.

 

Review

This Gothic, black-and-white horror film is a stylized, highly influential work. Many of the scenes are striking in their now-familiar-to-the-genre sets, familiar storyline, scene set-ups and framing, and spooky score (courtesy of Roberto Nicolosi and, in the American version, Les Baxter). SUNDAY is Bava’s first credited feature as a director (known primarily as a cinematographer, he’d helped shoot five other features). Two of the things that set SUNDAY apart from other works is the sexualized vibe (tame by today’s standards) and the for-the-period graphic violence (e.g., when Princess Aja Vadja’s spiked satanic mask is hammered onto her face). It’s still hard-hitting now although more horrific cinema has been created and released since 1960.

Of course, this being an Italian production, there’s the post-production dialogue dubbing that is sometimes obvious. And Bava’s cinematography is superb, striking.

Everything works about SUNDAY, including the actors. Barbara Steele (THE CRIMSON CULT, 1968) is great as Princess Aja Vadja, the vengeful spellcaster, and her two-centuries-later relative, Katia. Arturo Dominici plays her equally frightening servant, Igor Javutich, also bearing the scars of the mask of Satan. Andrea Checchi played Dr. Choma Kruvajan and his descendant, Dr. Thomas Kruvajan. Ivo Garrani played Prince Vadja, the modern-day head of the Vadja castle. An uncredited Nanjo Gazzolo provided SUNDAY‘s narration.

With its themes of witchcraft, Satanism, vampirism and possession, this often fogbound, shadowy film, with its wind-whispery hallways and Vadja family crypt, horrible deaths (whose resulting corpses were revealed in slasher flick-like style) is one of the best films in the terror genre. If the above descriptions sound attractive to you, you might want to check it out.

THE DEAD ZONE (1983)

 

(Director: David Cronenberg. Screenplay: Jeffrey Boam.)

Review

Based on Stephen King’s 1979 novel of the same name, this 1983 sad and horrifying David Cronenberg movie is one of my all-time favorite precognitive films. Its perpetually-set-in-wintry-tones mood is perfect for its emotional content and events while Johnny Smith tries to find his way in the world after a five-year coma, only to find that his melancholic recovery is complicated by a clairvoyant and precognitive abilities, which may kill him.

Boam’s screenplay and Cronenberg’s direction are great, with characters worth caring about and equally excellent actors to play them. Christopher Walken played Johnny Smith. Herbert Lom played Dr. Sam Weizak. Brooke Adams played his lost-love, Sarah Bracknell. Tom Skerritt played Sheriff Bannerman. Martin Sheen played Greg Stillson. Jackie Burroughs played Vera Smith, Johnny’s mother. Nicholas Campbell played Deputy Frank Dodd. Colleen Dewhurst, who played Henrietta Dodd (Frank’s mother), previously appeared in Woody Allen’s ANNIE HALL (1977) as the mother of Walken’s character, Duane Hall. Anthony Zerbe played Robert Stuart. William B. Davis (OMEN IV: THE AWAKENING, 1991), billed as William Davis, played "Ambulance Driver".

The human-based horror, as well as its palpable mood, is unsettling and memorable, like that of the source book, King’s first Top-Ten of the year bestseller. Composer Michael Kamen’s score adds an extra sense of longing, loss and flinching terror to this potent mix of talents.

Deep(er) filmic dive

According to IMDb, King’s novel and Cronenberg’s film are “loosely based on the life of famous psychic Peter Hurkos. Hurkos claimed to have acquired his alleged power after falling off a ladder and hitting his head". 

Bill Murray was Stephen King’s choice to play Johnny Smith.

Helene Uddy, who played “Weizak’s Mother,” also appeared in MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981), MRS. CLAUS (2018) and other, sometimes-notable films. 

SEE NO EVIL 2 (2014)

 

(Directors: Jen and Sylvia Soska. Screenwriters: Nathan Brookes and Bobby Lee Darby.)

Storyline

An uninvited Jacob Goodnight crashes an undertaker’s birthday celebration and does what does well: killing people.

Review

Religious fanatic and serial killer Jacob Goodnight returns in this disappointing sequel to the 2006 slasher SEE NO EVIL. The main problem with the film is its script, penned by Nathan Brookes and Bobby Lee Darby─not only does it resurrect, without explanation, Goodnight (whose death was explicitly shown onscreen in the first movie), but EVIL 2 quickly devolves into the usual, mostly uninspired hunt-and-slaughter situations of the genre. (A few of the kills are creative and visually interesting.) It does not help that the characters, as they’re written, don’t have much backstory or chemistry. Despite that, several of the actors in the film─Scream Queens Danielle Harris (HALLOWEEN 4 and 5, 1988 and 1989) and Katharine Isabelle (the GINGER SNAPS trilogy, 2000-2004) rise above the thin-even-for-horror characterizations and breathe as much life as they can into their roles, especially Isabelle, whose character (Tamara) is played with over-the-top zest. Glenn “Kane” Jacobs, once again, plays Goodnight as best he can. Unfortunately, anything fresh he brings to his character is hobbled by bad writing (though Goodnight speaks whole sentences now).

A plus-element in EVIL 2 is Jen and Sylvia Soska, a.k.a. the Soska Sisters, who do what they can to salvage this lackluster follow-up. It’s well-shot and they inject some visual humor here and there─e.g., in the opening credits, when their directorial billing is shown, the sisters are onscreen as two corpses on metal rolling carts.  I liked how Goodnight is dispatched (again) into the netherworld near the end, but the final shots─which should’ve come earlier in the film, answering any questions about his not being dead─are belatedly inserted, coming off as cheap-cheat finish.

You can skip EVIL 2, unless you’re a Soska Sisters/Harris/Isabelle/Kane completist.

THE TINGLER (1959)

 

(Producer/director: William Castle. Screenwriter: Robb White.)

Storyline

A pathologist traps and studies a parasitic creature that feeds off people’s fears, killing them if they are unable to scream.

Review

Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price, THE TOMB OF LIGEIA, 1964) has been studying the effects of terror on its dead victims’ spines for six years─those who were electrocuted have cracked vertebrae─when a local, deaf-mute movie theater owner (Mrs. Martha Ryerson Higgins, played by Judith Evelyn), whom he experimented on with a fear drug, dies. An X-ray reveals a large centipede-like parasite attached to her spine. Chapin, with his cuckolding wife (Isabel Stevens Chapin) and Martha’s widower (Oliver “Ollie” Higgins) looking on, extracts the arm-length, well-fed creature from Martha, and it escapes. . . into a theater of people watching a 1921 silent action film, TOL’ABLE DAVID! Can Warren and Ollie stop the everyone-has-one beast with a “hydraulic press” grip before it kills them and those in the half full film palace? (Or is the theater half empty?)

An hour and twenty-minutes long, TINGLER is an excellent fun-blast of a flick, with a lot going for it. There’s the tightly written, character-twisty script, penned by Robb White (who worked with director/producer William Castle on many of Castle’s best films, including HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, released in February 1959, five months before TINGLER energized filmgoers). There’s Castle, a rigid practitioner of one-take shots and creative-with-often-effective-promotion gimmicks, at the helm. There’s first-ever-on-film LSD trips, courtesy of the fear-adrenalizing tinglers, which recall scenes from HAUNTED HILL and other Castle-directed movies. And of course, there’s tar-black humor, taking variable forms in the characters (Ollie and Isabel, who are devious spouses─HAUNTED HILL was also underscored with this acidic, marital-gallows tension).

Of course, this tale of duplicity, spinal-parasitic monsters and fear would not have been as effective with a less-than-talented cast. Price, as expected, imbues his character with sympathetic aspects, morally ambiguous motives (he’s willing to experiment on Martha without her and Ollie’s explicit consent) and wit─Warren’s wry, dagger-slice comments to Isabel are less venomous and intense than those of Frederick Loren (also played by Price) toward his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), in HAUNTED HILL, and Warren is not out to murder his wife (though he would not mind if she died). Patricia Cutts’s Isabel is a fun (in a bitter way) foil to her science-obsessed husband, dishing out as good as she receives.

The Higgins are also enjoyable. Ollie’s initially innocent, amiable façade and later desperate actions (spot-on performance by Philip Coolidge) and Martha’s briefly seen intensity and panic attacks are given full-blown life by Judith Evelyn, who played Miss Lonelyhearts in REAR WINDOW (1954).

Pamela Lincoln (as Lucy Stevens, Isabel’s younger sister) and Darryl Hickman (as David Morris, Lucy’s suitor, and a scientist) provide a positive counterbalance to the Chapins’ and the Higgins’ shadowy unions. (In real life, Lincoln and Hickman got married in November 1959; they divorced in December 1982.)

The tingler itself is impressive, in all its cheesy, B-movie glory. The scene where its shadow is seen, large as about-to-happen death, against the brightly illuminated movie screen makes it all the more fun, while theater patrons scream, trip over each other and spill popcorn in the aisles is a hoot.

It would not be a Castle film if there wasn’t a gimmick or two to accompany it.  For TINGLER, Castle coined the phrase “Percepto,” placing buzzers under some of the theater seats. During screaming scenes in the film, the buzzers would vibrate and those sitting in those seats would experience the sensations of someone being preyed upon a tingler─like the characters, they were encouraged to scream the deadly terror away. Other viewers, working for Castle, would scream as well. In a later biography, the director/producer said he buzzed twenty million butts (minimum) during this film, whose ending was intentionally volume-inducing

TINGLER is one of my favorite 1950s fun-monster films for the above reasons. If you’re looking for a low budget, tightly shot thrills and an excuse to make noise, this might be a worthy flick.

QUICK NOTE: I got most of my facts about this film from IMDb. If you were entertained by them, you might want to check the “Trivia” subsection on THE TINGLER’s information page.

SEE NO EVIL (2006)

 

(Director: Gregory Dark. Screenwriter: Dan Madigan.)

Storyline

In a falling-apart hotel, a psychopath (Jacob Goodnight) hunts a group of teenagers.

 

Review

EVIL is a solid slasher film. The acting, its setting, its pacing, and writing (for the most part) are entertaining in a smart-minded way. Jacob Goodnight is a chilling killer with a well-explained backstory─it helps that Glenn Jacobs, a.k.a. WWF/E wrestler Kane, plays him with brutal efficiency and surprising nuance when Goodnight’s emotional side comes to the fore (the guy’s got chops!). According to IMDb, the role was written specifically for the 6’7” wrestler, whose character’s name was not uttered in the film. The rest of the actors do their jobs well, and the stinking, corpse-strewn Blackwell Hotel (with its falling-apart secret passages and two-way mirrors) is a great, atmospheric terror site.

There are few surprises story-wise, instances of crude humor, and several scenes where characters─who have briefly knocked Goodnight out of action─fail to follow through in killing him because they flee or don’t help their friends when it matters most. This last flaw, a staple in the horror genre, is not egregious here like it is in other films because most of the other elements and execution of EVIL are top-notch. It’s not going to win anybody an Oscar, but in a genre littered with so many crappy flicks, a high-budget horror film that delivers continuous, smart-minded frights like this does stands out. If you’re a fan of crude humor, make sure to watch the end-credits. Followed by SEE NO EVIL 2 (2014, directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska, a.k.a. The Soska Sisters).

THE CHILDREN (2008)

 

(Director/screenwriter: Tom Shankland. Screenplay based on Paul Andrew Williams’s story)

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW (if you’re new to the genre, really tired, and/or clueless).

CHILDREN, for the most part, is a great, intense, steady-build movie. The story, the pacing, the cinematography, the acting, the soundtrack, its shots (crosscuts, closeups and oddball-angles) work─Shankland’s script captures well the blind stupidity of adults, especially parents, when it comes to assuming children, even creepy-eyed f**kers who have been infected with a strange forest virus and are stabbing and assaulting people, deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt. It’s a relief when most of the adults die.

This is not film for those squeamish about violence against children. While CHILDREN is restrained and features mostly abstract, off-screen underage deaths, it may be traumatic for those sensitive to that sort of thing. There is big, effective use of blood (especially when snow is involved) in place of actual onscreen violence.

What ruined this otherwise spot-on flick for me was the plot-convenient, suddenly stupid f**k characters/plot-convenient-creatively-lazy “shock-twist” ending that does not ring true with the previously established logic and context of the virus and one of its key characters. This supposedly shock-twist ending, even for a sequel-courting work, was tired decades ago─surely Shankland and Williams, who penned a stellar story up until CHILDREN’s last three or four minutes, had the ability to come up with a sequel-hinting wrap-up that does not ending it with a ham-fisted thud?

I should acknowledge a deeper-read take on CHILDREN, given that the “virus” that infects the children is their unsaid realization that their parents have been lying to them about Christmas─and by extension, Santa Claus─and that their parents are something to mistrust, not emulate, given the pettiness, passive-aggressiveness and other negative traits of the adults. By extension, the finish (regarding the teenage daughter’s behavior near the end) fits on a thematic level, but it still feels like a bulls**t way to finish a movie, given that it easily could’ve swung another, less melodramatic way, given her previous behavior. If this take intrigues you, I highly recommend Andrea Subissati’s essay-chapter “Won’t Somebody Think of The Children?”, published in Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television, edited by Paul Corrupe and Kier-La Janisse (published in 2017 by Spectacular Optical Publications), an overall excellent volume.

CHILDREN is a completely good film if you stop watching when two surviving, not-homicidal characters get in the car and begin driving away from the house where the spawn-enabled mayhem took place. Suggestion: when they see the crashed car and stop, turn it off.