SPIRAL (2019)

 

(Director: Kurtis David Harder. Screenwriters: Colin Minihan and John Poliquin.)

Storyline

A homosexual couple, who’ve moved to a beautiful, small town, witness an odd party thrown by their neighbors, and wonder if they and their daughter are in danger.

 

Review

SPIRAL is solid, slow-build suspense film. For the most part, this Shudder Original movie kept me riveted with its use of open landscape shots, spooky interior shots, and Avery Kentis’s shred-your-nerves score─these elements further imbue it with a sense of isolation and unease. Throw in creepy neighbors whose behavior may not reflect their intentions, and an ending that wraps up the movie while cleverly progressing the story (with no need for a sequel), and you’ve got a small-but-worthwhile film with credibility to burn.

I like how screenwriters Colin Minihan and John Poliquin weave character-inherent themes of homophobia, racism and PTSD into the mix. Malik’s inability to reconcile a long-ago hate crime intensifies and distorts the motivations of his sometimes-dumb actions, as he investigates the town’s past and its nice-but-unsettling denizens.

SPIRAL, often predictable, runs a little long in its last quarter, briefly devolving into hazy events and images that may or may not be Malik losing his mind. I get why some of these scenes are there, but a few of the said elements just pad out the film. That said, it’s still an atmospheric, well-executed flick.

THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970)

 

(Director: Daniel Haller. Screenplay by Curtis Hanson (billed as Curtis Lee Hanson), Henry Rosenbaum, Ronald Silkosky, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s story of the same name.)

Storyline

A young man, who’s more than he seems, tries to return a race of monstrous, god-like creatures via sacrifice in Dunwich, Massachusetts.

Review

Miskatonic University, Arkham, Massachusetts. A strange young man, Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell, THE WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON, 1973) attends a lecture by Dr. Henry Armitage (Ed Begley, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW, 1959). He attracts the attention of two young women, Nancy Wagner and Elizabeth Hamilton. Nancy (Sandra Dee, NIGHT GALLERY, 1971-2), returning Armitage’s copy of the Necronomicon to the library, is curious, charmed by Wilbur. Elizabeth is repelled by him.

Wilbur reads the Necronomicon in the library, where he also meets Armitage. He invites Wilbur to have dinner with him, Elizabeth and Nancy. After dinner, Nancy offers him a ride back to his nearby hometown (Dunwich). He accepts.

In Dunwich, he invites her into his ornate, occult-symbol-adorned house. Within the house, Nancy hears ghostly theremin music and ocean swells, and has flash-visions of orgiastic multicolor-painted women, causing her to become dizzy. Due to the lateness of the hour and the fact that her car won’t run, he offers her a bedroom to sleep in, one that “hasn’t been used in years.”

Thus begins the nightmarish, sometimes goofy work that is DUNWICH, climaxing at the Whateleys’ cliffside altar (The Devil’s Hopyard), replete with a soundtrack that incorporates growl-distorted sounds of flocking seagulls.

This film has a lot going for it. It has great actors in the over-the-top roles, an intense, miasmic (if sometimes unintentionally goofy) atmosphere and often solid pacing. Its FX (wild color palates, weird soundtrack noises, quick-cut visions, and Monster POV) is effective and intoxicating for its filmic period. Its scope─the full range of the Old Ones’ influence is experienced over a wide area─is ambitious for a modest-budget project like this.

The end-twists work, making DUNWICH more fun and goofy. And the actors, who put their all into their roles, sell the characters.

The film sports a noteworthy cast: Sam Jaffe (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, 1951) as Old Man Whateley; Donna Baccala (BRAINSCAN, 1994) as Elizabeth Hamilton; Michael Fox (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, 1974) as Dr. Raskin; Talia Shire, billed as Talia Coppola, as Nurse Cora; and Jason Wingreen (THE TWILIGHT ZONE, 1960-3) as Sheriff Harrison.

DUNWICH is a fun, color- and mood-intense Lovecraftian horror flick, one worth watching if you have a tolerance for antiquated counter-culture-infused nightmares, occasionally slow pacing, and flirtations with cheesiness, and are a Lovecraft fan.

THE HOWLING: REBORN (2011)

 

(Director: Joe Nimziki, who co-wrote the screenplay with James Robert Johnston, billed as James Johnston, barely based on Gary Brandner’s 1978 novel The Howling II.)

Storyline

A high school student discovers he’s a lycanthrope just as other werewolves converge on him and his girlfriend.

Review

When a popular, aggressive girl invites high school senior Will Kidman (Landon Liboiron) to a party, his life is irrevocably changed.  The girl, Eliana Wynter (Lindsey Shaw, billed as Lindsey Marie Shaw), runs with a pack of adolescent thugs, many of whom menace book-nerdy Will. After he is stalked at the party by a wild animal and escapes uninjured, secrets about his dead mother, Kay (Ivana Milicevic, CHILDREN OF THE CORN III: URBAN HARVEST, 1995), are revealed, threatening his future as well as the lives of those he cares about.

This eighth HOWLING entry is solid, with sketched, likeable or loathe-worthy characters, good FX, mostly fast-paced writing and a strong, quirky B-movie sensibility. Yes, some of its characters’ backstories could have been better developed─e.g., Kay’s contentious relationship with Will’s father, Jack (Frank Schorpion, PET SEMATARY, 2019), and a few less scenes with melancholic pop songs (including Gus Black’s slowed-down cover of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper”) might’ve improved said scenes. That said, these are minor complaints. If you keep your expectations low─not THE HOWLING: NEW MOON RISING (1995) low─but moderate nonetheless, this might be a worthwhile, unmemorable flick for just-before-bed viewing.

DEATH BED: THE BED THAT EATS (1977)

 

(Director/screenwriter: George Barry)

DEATH, whose idea came to director/screenwriter George Barry in a dream, is appropriately surrealistic and unique. In it, a demon possesses a four-poster bed after his true love dies on it. He continues eating people (via the bed’s hellish ability to transform from a regular bed to a bed-framed, yellow-lit vat of digestive acid). Various people break into the abandoned mansion where the bed is and most of them are consumed by the bed. These devourings are punctuated, sometimes narrated by, The Artist, whose spirit is trapped within/behind a painting, tells viewers about the bed’s history, intermingled with his. DEATH is broken into four segments: Breakfast; Lunch; Dinner; and The Just Desert.

After one of the victims, Sharon, becomes a meal for the demon, "Sharon's Brother" (William Russ, billed as Rusty Russ) comes looking for her. One of the most hilarious scenes of this low-budget, dark-humored and slow-moving film involves the brother and skeletal hands.

DEATH is not a good movie by most standards: its narration takes the viewer out of the movie, as do the interior monologues of several characters; there are padded scenes, lots of lag time.

What makes DEATH worthwhile (for intriguing bad flick enthusiasts) is how Barry makes the most of his limited budget, creating an out-there, artsy work (especially during the intensely yellow-bright scenes where the bed dissolves its victims).  What also works is Barry’s intuitive jump cut edits, which add to the natural, odd feel of this standout cult classic, which was started in 1972, but not widely released until 2003 on DVD.

According to IMDb, DEATH was mostly filmed in “Gar Wood mansion on Keelson Island in Detroit[, Michigan].” This setting is gloomy and Gothic, furthering the mood of the flick which mostly eschews a soundtrack. Love it or hate it, you're not likely to forget it. Danny Draven's loose remake, DEATHBED, was released direct-to-DVD on September 24, 2002.

BOOKS OF BLOOD (2020)

 

(Director: Brannon Braga. Co-teleplay writers: Brannon Braga and Adam Simon, their work based on Clive Barker’s Books of Blood anthology series.)

This Hulu Original anthology film, featuring a trilogy of tales, is based on Clive Barker’s six 1984-5 horror anthologies, later collected into two omnibus editions. (Quick note for bibliophiles: Barker’s BOOKS series reads like a gory, horrific update of the anthological structure Ray Bradbury utilizes in his 1951 story collection THE ILLUSTRATED MAN.)

The three tales told within the film are. . .

“Jenna”: A young woman with misophonia─ she perceives quiet noises at an amplified, overwhelming volume, causing her much pain and negative emotions─moves in with a couple who, at least initially, help her deal with her constant, increasingly nightmarish hallucinations. Certain shots in this first segment seem to be directly lifted from Jordan Peele’s GET OUT (2018) and its ending is disappointing, but it’s otherwise well-written, well-acted and interesting. (The technical definition of misophonia is “Neurological disorder leading to extremely negative reactions and feelings related to certain sounds.”)

“Miles”: A doctor, a skeptic of the occult, meets a young man who can contact her dead son (via bloody handwriting) and changes her view, taking up with him. This filmic version maintains a twist in the tale, but it’s not nearly as visceral as its source book.

 

“The Book of Blood”: Two professional killers are hired to seek a grisly, mysterious book with supernatural writing. This wraparound story incorporates characters and elements from the other two stories in an imaginative, if not entirely immersive way.

I read that BOOKS was originally meant to be a series, but Hulu opted to go the movie route instead. That’s too bad. It might’ve worked better as streaming/television series, à la TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE (1983-8).

As a television/streaming film, this is an okay viewing experience, with stories that don’t gel into an intuitive whole. If you watch it expecting a true-to-its-book or an extreme horror film experience, you’ll likely be disappointed. Several things are changed in the transition from book to film. It’s mainstream-television creepy and sometimes bloody in places, but little else. I like the way some characters, who would be one-note villains in a straightforward flick, are given other, non-villainous attributes. That said, I doubt I’d want to watch this again anytime soon.

DEADLY BLESSING (1981)

(Director: Wes Craven. Screenplay by Glenn M. Benest, Matthew Barr and Wes Craven.)

Storyline

A rural woman is menaced by her ultra-religious neighbors after her husband dies under strange circumstances.

 

Review

After her husband (Jim) dies under questionable, horrifying circumstances in their barn, Martha Schmidt (Maren Jensen, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, 1978-9), finds herself targeted by a killer or killers who are also knocking off other people in the small rural community.

Is it one or several of the Hittites, an Amish-like cult, who view her as a devilish modern-day woman sent to steal one of their sons (her husband)? Led by the stern-countenanced Isaiah Schmidt (Ernest Borgnine, THE DEVIL’S RAIN, 1975), Martha’s father-in-law, their fervent hatred of the non-Hittite “succubus” is possibly pushed to the point of violence─it seems that Isaiah, furious at his eldest son’s marital apostasy, wants the land she and Jim owned.

Whoever’s doing the killing, they’re playing no favorites. Hittites and non-Hittites alike are being offed in slasher flick style, shown in suspenseful scenes that effectively provide an atmosphere of paranoia, death, and effectively underscore (and provide release for) DEADLY’s twisty sexual/religious repression themes─that DEADLY succeeds in a distinctive-within-its-subgenre way makes it a surprising high-mark film, further buoyed by its well-written mystery element. You may spot who’s doing the murders, but it could easily be any of the residents of this tense farming community.

Composer James Horner ups DEADLY’s tension with music that weds elements from Harry Manfredini’s FRIDAY THE 13^th (1980) and Jerry Goldsmith’s choral-doomy THE OMEN (1976) soundtracks, heightening DEADLY’s fast-paced build to a shocking, final conclusion; this says a lot, given how over-the-top the film sometimes is.

No doubt fans familiar with the FRIDAY franchise will recognize the influence of the iconic series on DEADLY (it also later provided a major influence on Craven’s 1984 film THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART II). Fans of Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) may also appreciate a bathtub scene that is variably mirrored in the later film.

Beside Jensen and Borgnine, there’s other notable actors in the cast. Sharon Stone (COLD CREEK MANOR, 2003) played an excitable Lana Marcus, one of her two visiting friends. Jeff East, also seen in Craven’s SUMMER OF FEAR (1978), played John Schmidt, Martha’s easy-going brother-in-law. Colleen Riley (THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART II, 1984) played John’s cousin and arranged marriage fiancée. Michael Berryman (THE HILLS HAVE EYES, 1977) played William Gluntz, a mentally challenged member of the Hittite cult.

If viewed as a modest-budget, entertaining, odd, and overtly piecemeal-influence slasher flick, you might enjoy DEADLY.