A much more middle of the road week, if you examine grades alone, but there were some very disappointing moments for me, personally. I've never given a Vincent Price OR Larry Cohen movie grades this low. Am I getting jaded? Were these actually subpar films? Even reading my reviews can't answer that for you, but they can offer an opinion!
How do I rate things, again??
A = Excellent, a must see
B = Very good, I’d watch it again
C = Worth Seeing
D = Maybe don’t bother
F = Worthless
+ = Superior for this grade
- = Just barely makes it into this grade
And, as usual, KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED FOR THINGS THAT APPEAR TO BE SPOILERS. I'm trying real hard not to do it to you this year, but it's very possible I've fucked that up.
Now, with no further adieu, let's jump right in....
Blue Sunshine (Jeff Lieberman) - D+
Jerry Zipkin gets drawn into a mad conspiracy when one of his best friends flips out and burns three women to death in a fireplace. It would appear Jerry's friend, Frannie, was one of a handful of Stanford graduates who bought blue sunshine acid during the 60s. This particular strain, taken ten years ago, is now causing all sorts of folks to lose all of their hair, and suffer a total psychotic break! Zipkin struggles to uncover the truth of blue sunshine, and who is to blame for it's dispersal, before more Innocents are killed by these LSD-lovin' maniacs.
Ironically, like many films I subjected myself to this week, Blue Sunshine borrows from several other films to achieve its feel: Romero's The Crazies is chief among these, though there's a certain feeling akin to the early works of Cronenberg (specifically Shivers and Rabid - before he went all body horror). The trouble with that, in this case, is that both of those movies have way more class than this one. All aforementioned films feature amateur talent, but there's a lot more going on in Romero and Cronenberg's films. All you've got going on here is a weird mystery, being solved by a dud of a protagonist. It's pretty lame, which is a shame given its fun premise, and proven director (I vastly preferred Lieberman's previous genre film, Squirm).
One weird thing I'll mention: throughout the film, the audience is subjected to campaign commercials and rallies for Ed Flemming, a Stanford grad that's running for Congress. Flemming eventually plays a role in the story, but for the most part, he's a rich kid using his reputation to gain power. The last lines of Blue Sunshine feature a campaign speech from Flemming, where he ends with the slogan 'Make America Good Again'. I understand Reagan used MAGA before Donald Trump, so it's not completely out of left field, but it certainly ended this otherwise unnotable film on an unnerving note.
As Above, So Below (John Eric Dowdle) - D+
Scarlett is the daughter of a world famous adventurer that passed away trying to find the legendary philosopher's stone. After a brief prologue in Iran, Scarlett winds up in France, where she recruits Benji, a videographer and George, her intrepid ex boyfriend, who conveniently speaks Aramaic. The trio desecend into the famous Parisian catacombs, along with some local guides, where Scarlett is sure the stone can be found. Soon, every character is equipped with a GoPro camera, and a complexly cut found footage film follows.
Now, I like found footage, and I've seen a lot of it. Right out of the gate, there's a couple things you should stay away from when going about making this sub-genre. Chief among these is showing your primary camera person. My favourite found footage movie, 2007's rec., manages to go the entire film without showing you the cameraman (somehow this was bungled by its almost shot-for-shot remake, Quarantine). As Above, So Below breaks this rule almost constantly, showing us Benji at least a dozen times before the GoPro cameras appear, further giving the filmmakers license to do this. This might seem nitpicky, but consider actual 'found footage' from real life. In fact, consider most cellphone videos. Most of the time, the camera person is filming, not handing the camera off so they can have a scene. Showing the person filming tends to destroy the realism of this kind of movie (there are exceptions, but not many), and As Above, So Below is an offender.
But wait, there's more: the film manages to evoke an atmosphere of dread by way of its haunting, dimly-lit, claustrophobic setting. Yet almost always, the building tension is dissipated by the need to remind us that Scarlett is a font of lore from ancient civilisations by way of a ten minute history lesson. So drastic are the shifts when these moments occur that any fear the movie may have managed to create vanishes, and you're reminded, once more, that you're watching a product, not something realistic. Then you've got your cheap scares (the man in the black cloak, for example, looks like he arrived on set fresh from the Halloween store, as an example), which can certainly be startling, but without context of what's happening - which you don't get until the last few minutes - anything could be on that screen with loud enough music, and you'd be similarly effected.
Still, there's some enjoyable aspects. Well, really just the setting. There's moments in the first half that show promise, but they're a fondly forgotten memory by the time the characters reach the treasure. Even the gore is sparing, which I'm sure there was reason for, but might have saved some face. Ultimately this one disappointed me.
Scream and Scream Again (George Hessler) - D-
A bizarre series of murders breaks out in England, leaving local police to blunder around trying to find the culprit. A mysterious foreign power appears to have some involvement, as the mysterious Schwietz appears, delivering fatal neck pinches to anyone he comes into contact with. Something of a protagonist eventually appears for Vincent Price to explain the plot to, but by that point, the movie is almost over...
Well, it finally happened, I watched a bad Vincent Price movie (in an AIP film, no less). Usually, this MMMMM darling manages to save any mediocre film he stars in, but the absolutely vapid plot threatens to drown this movie in failure. Much ado about Price starring alongside Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, but Cushing is in literally one scene, and Lee's character doesn't even grace the screen until after the halfway point. It's a ruse, dear friends!
And how about that plot? It's pretty confusing. The foreign power that dominates almost half the film is ill-defined (is it supposed to be Germany?), and doesn't even seem connected to the action in England. Only when Johnny Neck-Pinch (aka Schwietz) shows up to off the police chief do we start to see cohesion (and by that point, it's too little, too late).
The primary offence of the picture concerns the middle 30 minutes, wherein a killer gets into a complicated pursuit with some policemen. It's essentially a 30 minute chase scene that ends with no satisfying conclusion (the killer we were watching through most of the movie is dispatched, but nothing comes of it). Given the all ready awkward pacing here, Scream and Scream Again didn't need a chase scene that lasted a third of its runtime.
I'll see you next year, Vince, and hopefully we can put all of this behind us.
The Mist (Frank Darabont) - C-
After a big storm knocks a tree on their house, David, along with his young son and neighbour, Mr. Norton (Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Andre Braugher) set off from their sleepy Maine cottage country to the local hardware store. While inside, a mysterious fog covers the town, and the occupants of the store quickly learn monsters lurk out in the mist. So begins a multi-day siege while the hardware store customers attempt to batten down and weather the hungry computer-graphics trying to devour them. Things are tense inside, as the pious Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) seeks to assume command of the hardware store's denizens through divine right. Will David be able to escape the mist and find safety? Boy, you'd sure hope so...
It's hard to pin down exactly why this movie wasn't better. It could be the ham-handed melodrama that is served up throughout (with a particularly polarising ending -- I was on the dislike side, since there was no logical reason for the film to end the way it did). It could be the questionable length (very little happens in The Mist's two hours, so far making it the longest film of MMMMM2017) or pacing (why does everyone turn into such an asshole so fast?). It could be the Steven King source material, which, I've gone on record saying is usually a detriment. It could also be the numerous digital effects that look horribly dated ten years later. Whatever the case, a lot about The Mist is aggravating to the viewer.
But there are things to like! Probably the chief aspect to be enjoyed are the performances. Marcia Gay Harden steals the show, but some of the supporting cast (shout out to my boy, Ollie, played by Toby Jones - the true hero of the film) also stand out. The premise (a group of people are under siege in a hardware store by Lovecraftian monsters) is a good one too. The few practical effects used, such as a swollen insect sting, look great - you just wish there were more of them. While there's certainly polished parts, a lot of The Mist feels like missed opportunities, with a dash of being a product of its time.
The Void (Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski) - C+
Daniel is a police officer working a lonely beat somewhere in remote Canada. He finds a staggering man on the highway who appears to be hurt, so Daniel checks him into a local hospital, where his ex-wife works as an overnight nurse. Almost immediately, things turn sinister when another nurse slays a patient, before turning into a tentacled monster of hulking proportions, and mysterious cultists armed with blades surround the hospital. Two men, an unnamed father and son, fight their way through the cultists, demanding to kill the man Daniel rescued earlier. Daniel quickly negotiates a truce, leading to the reveal that the hospital itself is the source of these evil occurrences, and it's up to Daniel and his motley crew to end the villainous cult leader (who - surprise! - has been there, under their noses, all along) before he unleashes hell on Earth.
As so often seems to be the case this year, the first act of The Void is superb. The pacing is excellent, the effects are fantastic and old school (and very much borrowed from John Carpenter's The Thing). Leading man Aaron Poole, as Daniel, is an enjoyable protagonist (and woefully ineffective when the film is at its best), though many of the supporting characters don't rise to his level. The creature effects are very gruesome and satisfying (even if you can't tell what you're looking at sometimes), and considering this film was chiefly financed by a $100,000 Kickstarter, what appears on screen are amazingly effective practical effects. The influences (Carpenter's Thing, as mentioned, but there's also shades of sci-fi horror classic Event Horizon, as well as Stuart Gordon's From Beyond) are transparent, but handled far more lovingly than those in... Oh, let's say Blue Sunshine.
The troubles begin once the opening premise is established, and Daniel and friends have to start doing things. The entire trip to the basement sequence feels shoehorned at best, and rushed at worst (the second act of the film plods along, so that the action-packed third act throws a lot at you to process in a short amount of time). As characters begin to die, it really highlights how poor some of the supporting cast are (I don't wanna name names, but there's a pregnant girl's grandpa in the film, and he shouldn't be). Despite this, The Void is a worthwhile film, and don't let my being Canadian trick you into thinking I'm being easy on it: I'm notoriously unimpressed by Canadian Cinema.
It Lives Again (Larry Cohen) - D
Following the tragic events of It's Alive, devastated father, Frank Davis is working with a handful of doctors to try and save the killer babies before they're destroyed by police. He approaches young couple Gene and Jodie Scott, who eventually come around to Frank's point of view, when Jodie goes into labour and is surrounded by armed police. Frank absconds with Gene and the baby, where it is revealed Davis' group has two more killer babies all ready, for a total of three. Before long, the babies get loose and start wreaking havoc, leading Gene and Jodie to join the police in an attempt to polish off the threat.
Another bitter film experience for me, I'm afraid, as this is the first Larry Cohen movie I haven't outright loved. It's only natural that not everything a director releases will be up to code (or maybe I'm just too into other Cohen films and had supremely high expectations). Whatever the case, It Lives Again feels boring. The story is complex by comparison to the first film, which may be the root of the problem, and that isn't helped by much of the events of the first film being un-referenced, but mandatory viewing.
Cohen comes from a place of slowly ekeimg his monster out, like the classic B-Movies of old, but in It Lives Again, it is almost criminal how much is held back: when one of the babies is slain, an image of it in profile appears on screen for a split second before the character confronting it shoots it, but he may as well be shooting at the ground, for all we know. Flashing what he's aiming at for a couple of frames before he kills it is not a move from the basic language of cinema. And that's only one example.
Are there laughs? Yes, of course. But even then, there doesn't seem to be enough of them. Even the first kill, ostensibly just a puppet claw dancing around a surgeon's face, looks extra cheap, and doesn't excite you for more to come. You also won't find anything engaging about the cast. I'm now a little worried for my assured viewing of It's Alive III: Island of the Alive next year, but, at least that one stars Cohen leading man Michael Moriarty, so it can't be this bad, right? And even if it is, we'll always have The Stuff...
Prevenge (Alice Lowe) - B+
Ruth is murdering the people she believes responsible for the death of her partner. Her unborn daughter drives her on, whispering terrible truths to her mother, and keeping her to task. Though her doctor counsels caution and rest, Ruth is a true chameleon, stepping from identity to identity to dispatch ugly character after ugly character. Whether she's out for a night on the town, going for a job interview or posing as a charity worker, there's no killer more successful than a single mother. Will Ruth successfully fulfil her bloody mission before the baby comes?
Prevenge is an absolute scream, and triple threat Alice Lowe (Writer, Director and Star) is a big part of the reason. Her performance is absolutely solid, and she is beset upon by a cast of absolutely terrible human beings. From the piggish DJ Dave to the mistrusting fitness queen Len (played by Game of Thrones' Gemma Whalen), you don't really shed a tear for Ruth's victims. Similarly, Lowe's eye for cinematography is quite excellent, with many of the visuals being captivating despite having a seemingly minuscule budget. Thanks to these strengths, Prevenge was the highlight of my week.
The film's dark sense of humour is relentless, from each gory, but usually fitting, murder to Ruth's excellent comedic interactions with her doctor. Perhaps the best sequence of the film involves Ruth painting her face like a monstrous skull (all the while getting a peptalk from baby), before taking her supremely pregnant self to a Halloween party to take care of some business. While played for laughs, her choice of costume is surprisingly eerie and shows the film will continue to surprise you with effective visuals. A wonderful contrast to the disappointing It Lives Again.
And so we draw a close to another week of horror movies. Don't you worry, though, there's another week looming just ahead. Tonight I'll be enjoying (I hope) seminal 80s horror film The Monster Squad (hopefully at my local art house theatre!), so that, at least is on the docket for the week. Find out what I think of this, and six other films, next week around this time!
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