Shocktober Revisited: Rosemary's Baby

 editor's note: this review originally appeared in the Horror Fest VIII coverage.

Rosemary’s Baby may be based on the novel by Ira Levin (Son of Rosemary) and be produced by William Castle (The Tingler) directed by Roman Polanski (I can only imagine what’s going to happen now that I’ve mentioned his name again on this blog), but it’s really the story of a book. And not just any book, because while Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) has a lot of books, including the conspicuously placed copy of Yes, I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis Jr.*, the most important one appears about an hour into the film.
 

 Of course, I speak of All of Them Witches.

 Oh sure, the title is an anagram (although not the one Rosemary figures out – for the record, you can make “Hell a Cometh Swift from the title), but for whatever reason, it became the running joke of the rest of the movie. There was a lengthy discussion about follow-up books like Some More of Them Witches, The Rest of Them Witches, That Should Cover Every Last One of Them Witches This Time, and the legally obligated retraction book Not All of Them Was Witches After All, and many a chuckle was had.
  
I realize that it’s probably disrespectful to Rosemary’s Baby to talk about it this way when I’ve never properly written about the film here before, but sometimes when you’ve seen a movie enough times and you’re with a crowd of people who have as well, instead of focusing on the actual story you begin to fixate on silly details or make jokes. While I often try to give a film its proper perspective on the Blogorium, much of what constitutes a Horror Fest recap is trying to convey the atmosphere surrounding the screening as well.

  

 For the record, I was not the first person to make a tasteless John Lennon joke about the Dakota Building. I made the second, and it was in reference to an audience member being unhappy that nothing bad happens to Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) at the end of the film. I responded that she needn’t worry, because “there’s a guy outside waiting for phonies.”

 There were many jokes and references to Cassavetes films (as actor and as director), to Planet of the Apes, Harold and Maude, Midnight Run, The Wolf Man, and to Frank Sinatra, Robert Evans, William Castle, and any number of other ridiculous observations, like what was playing at Radio City Music Hall with Fred MacMurray (our theory – Walt Disney’s The Shaggy Dog: The Musical, or Son of Flubber: The Musical).
 

 (This is a total side note, but since I mentioned John Carpenter’s references in Prince of Darkness, it’s worth pointing out that at the beginning of In the Mouth of Madness,  John Glover’s character’s name is Dr. Saperstein, a slight variation on the name of Ralph Bellamy’s character in Rosemary’s Baby.)
 

 All joking aside (and it’s really the big point at the fest where the audience participation took over, which the Cap’n fully endorses as long as you can still enjoy the movie), Rosemary’s Baby is a great horror movie. It’s so well constructed and so limited to one character’s perspective that even though you know what’s happening to Rosemary and you desperately want her to get away from the Castevets and the conspiracy in The Bramford, you understand why she’s confused and can’t leave. The world is set against poor Rosemary from the outset, in arguably more insidious ways than even Suzy Bannion faces in Suspiria (it turns out witches, Satan, and issues with pregnancy emerged as the consistent themes this Horror Fest).
 

 Her husband is distant and verbally abusive, especially after he gets close with Roman and Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), her doctor recommends doing nothing when she feels pain during pregnancy, and then her old doctor (Charles Grodin), hands her over to the enemy when she comes to him for help. Her only real ally in the film, Hutch (Maurice Evans), is the victim of witchcraft – as is Guy’s original agent – and the first friend she makes in The Bramford plunges to her death not long after they meet. All the while, Polanski keeps us tightly locked in on Rosemary (although not quite as uncomfortably framed as Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion) as we slowly move towards June of 1966, when her baby is due. I shouldn’t need to spell that out for you, and it’s not as blatantly stated in the film, but if you do the math from when conception happened to when the baby should be due, it only makes sense.
 

 The use of dream sequences and somewhat ambiguous dream logic (another recurring motif this fest) helps disorient the audience early in the film, so that even forty five years later, it’s not abundantly clear what Rosemary is imagining and what we’re actually seeing when plans are set in motion. The ending still gets me, despite the presence of one of the worst Asian stereotypes since Mickey Rooney’s unfortunate appearance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “What have you done to his eyes, you maniacs!” and, eventually, “You’re rocking him too hard.” It’s unsettling, but inevitable.
 

 If we jest during Rosemary’s Baby, it’s only because we like it so. Also, All of Them Witches would want it that way. Hail Satan!

 

* Now, it’s entirely up to you whether Yes, I Can is there because of the Rat Pack connection or just as another subtle hint about the Satanism to come.  In the interest of full disclosure, we leaned towards the former.

Shocktober Revisited: The House That Dripped Blood

Since it is October, and since Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium could be described as "horror themed" in its layout, I guess I should make with the reviewing horror movies that won't be a part of our annual celebration in two weeks. Fortunately for you, dear readers, I have a shelf full of horror flicks waiting to be discussed. We'll start this semi-regular column with 1971's The House that Dripped Blood.

I've made no secret of my love for anthology films, specifically those coming from Amicus Productions, so it was a surprise to me to discover that I'd never gotten around to watching The House that Dripped Blood. It turns out that House is a pretty good addition to their collection of supernaturally based horror films. The cast is great, the direction is atmospheric, and most of the stories work in context.

Like most anthology films, you get four stories with a bit of a wrap-around, and House that Dripped Blood covers most of your horror bases: Spectral Killers, Vampires, Witchcraft, and evil museums / shops of mystery. The stories, by Robert Bloch (author of Psycho) are:

1. A writer (Denholm Elliot) and his wife move into the house in question so he can finish his macabre masterpiece. When his creation, a mad strangler named Dominick, starts to appear in and around the house, he's convinced his grip on reality is slipping.

2. A recently retired businessman (Peter Cushing) moves into the house, and while wandering the nearby town, finds a wax museum of horrors. He becomes obsessed with a figure of Salome that reminds him of a long lost love, and when a visiting friend goes missing, the terrible secret of the museum comes to light.

3. A not-retired businessman (Christopher Lee) and his daughter (Chloe Franks) come to the house to get away from the city. When a tutor (Nyree Dawn Porter) begins to connect with the distant and sheltered child, her true nature comes to light, with terrible consequences.

4. An actor and horror-buff (Jon "The Third Doctor" Pertwee) and his co-star (Ingrid Pitt) rent out the house while he's filming Curse of the Bloodsucker. Convinced that his cape looks too cheap, he visits the mysterious Theo Von Hartmann's shop and buys an authentic vampire cape. Maybe a little too authentic, as he discovers when he puts it on.

The wrap-around story involves a detective (John Bennett) investigating the disappearance of Pertwee's character. The owner of the house, Mr. Stoker (John Bryans) shares the mysterious history of the tenants. When Inspector Holloway finally goes to the house, he finds much more than he expected in the basement...

I think the third and fourth stories were my favorite. Admittedly, the Jon Pertwee story gets quite silly in the middle (especially when he puts the cape on after midnight and reacts hammily to his fangs and... flying), but it is salvaged by Holloway's visit, one that ties up the film nicely.

The first story, about the writer and his mad killer, suffers from a rushed ending, one that relies on you paying attention to a last second development based on a character you just met. The set up is wonderful, and most of the lingering architectural shots and creepy ornaments does soften the weak ending.

Despite the really trippy dream imagery in the second story, the ending just doesn't make sense. Something happens to the wax figure that, if what the owner says is true, would render it impossible to be fixed in time for the last shot. The final image, on the other hand, is a pretty good one.

Despite the fact that the film (rated PG) is virtually bloodless, there's plenty of atmosphere and suggested horrors to raise a bit of a chill. This is more evident in the witchcraft story with Christopher Lee, which relies entirely on suggestion for its gruesome finale. The House that Dripped Blood isn't as gory as Tales from the Crypt or From Beyond the Grave, and it might come off as a little tame compared to what was to come. However, taken with the much earlier Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, I think House fits the Amicus m.o.

Finally. the title is a little misleading, because while the film is about four tenants who died (separately) in the same house, at least two of the stories really have nothing to do with house as evil. They attempt to tie everything together with Stoker directly addressing the audience (something that seemed strangely familiar, although I'm convinced I've never seen this before), but if you're willing to put the misnomer of the title aside, it's a fun little spookshow you could probably scare children with - and not scar them permanently.

Shocktober Revisited: The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project

Portions of these reviews originally appeared in 2011.

 In some ways, it's hard for the Cap'n to believe that The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project have been out there for fifteen years. They don't feel that old, which is not to say they don't feel dated in different ways - both are distinctly products of the turn of the millennium - but it doesn't seem like it's been that long. Maybe the Cap'n is just getting older, which is funny, considering that I saw them when I was in college and technically speaking I'm not that old. Old enough that I can't have Horror Fests into the wee hours of the morning anymore, but y'know, comparatively speaking, not that old. Movies from 1999 just don't feel like it was that long ago, but someone born the year The Sixth Sense came out is getting their learner's permit now.

 Here's a look back at what it was like in those halcyon days of pre-Y2k, when people thought The Phantom Menace might not be terrible and that M. Night Shyamalan had promise. Oh, who am I kidding? At least we weren't tired to death of "found footage," although my friends were very concerned that the "scary bonus footage" on the Blair Witch Project soundtrack was three people bickering in the woods. If we only knew...

(For good measure, I'll throw in the now fourteen year old Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, because nobody's going to be talking about it's fifteenth anniversary next year.)

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editor's note: if, for some reason, you actually don't know anything about The Sixth Sense, this is absolutely the wrong review for you. However, if you found this review by Google-ing "Sixth Sense Spoiler," you're going to get it. Consider that your warning.

Long before people hated (or had forgotten about) M. Night Shyamalan, he was the "hot new up-and-comer" with his debut film* The Sixth Sense. If you were somehow drunk for the entirety of the summer of 1999, it's possible that you didn't hear about this suspenseful ghost story with a wicked twist**, and have somehow never seen or heard of the movie where Haley Joel Osment (remember him?) "sees dead people."

 Specifically Bruce Willis (SPOILER), who plays a child psychologist killed in the opening scene by one of his former patients (Donnie Wahlberg). Of course, he doesn't know that until the end of the film, even if eagle-eyed viewers can see that Dr. Malcolm Crowe never physically interacts with anyone during the film and nobody talks to him other than Cole Sear, the kid who sees ghosts. The ghosts, by the way, are spooky and sometimes quite gory (like the accidental gunshot victim kid), but aren't actually dangerous to Cole. Most of them are sad or lonely or need to pass something on. This doesn't stop Shyamalan from milking every ghostly encounter for the maximum creepy factor, but you have to remember that I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who's already seen the film.

 When The Sixth Sense came out, all we really knew about the movie was the "ghost" angle, and that there was a twist. The ghosts are played for scares, and it's quite effective, in the same way that The Haunting (not the one that came out in 1999) or The Others are. It's a clever move not to make the ghosts actually menacing, until you watch the movie again, and then it's just a lot of building tension to mess with the audience in order to pull a switcheroo. The same problem exists with the twist, because a) if you know there's a twist, chances are you're looking for it (I was), and b) the best twists make you want to watch the movie again. If you figure out the twist early (say, when Crowe is "having dinner" with his wife at a restaurant), then there is no rediscovery in watching the film again - you did it the first time. All of the color coding is easy to figure out and The Sixth Sense becomes an elaborate game of "follow the rules" twist filmmaking.

 Maybe I'm being meaner than I ought to be, because I bought the Shyamalan promise - that he was a spiritual successor to Steven Spielberg - through Unbreakable, a movie I also used to really like (and probably still enjoy more than The Sixth Sense) but it all fell apart during Signs. I gave up after he started lifting narrative beats wholesale, and have only seen one of his films sense - The Happening. Most of you know that The Happening is a colossal failure in almost every respect, and is hilarious because of it; I either subjected you to the film or you've heard about it from me. In the interest of fairness, The Sixth Sense is still highly regarded by just about everywhere in the critical community, and people still seem to love the movie. Don't take that old Grumpy Gus Cap'n Howdy to speak for the consensus opinion here.

 After Lady in the Water, The Happening, and The Last Airbender, Shyamalan is pretty much a joke - audiences reported laughter when his name appeared on trailers for Devil - and even his die-hard fans have given up making excuses for the lousy writing, awkward editing, bad performances, and the pompous, thin-skinned auteur / actor himself (Lady in the Water features Shyamalan as a writer who is destined to "change the world," while the least likable character is a film critic). Nobody knows what he's doing next, and I'd go so far as to say they don't care, either.

 The reason I really wanted to bring up The Sixth Sense, which was for 1999 a highlight of an already packed summer of great movies (and The Phantom Menace) was because I have, as usual, a story related to events surrounding the film. The air conditioning was out in the auditorium we saw the film in, so the staff propped a door facing the back of the theatre open, and crickets got in. We knew this because the whole audience could hear them chirping. A colleague of mine (Professor Murder) eventually got up from his seat, crawled under the screen, and we heard "THUMP THUMP THUMP" and the chirping stopped. The packed auditorium gave him an ovation, and he cut the back of his head on a curtain staple. Forgive me if I look back at that night and consider this moment to be the highlight of seeing The Sixth Sense.



* Which was not actually his debut film - he made this and this beforehand, and he wrote Stuart Little. Seriously.
** My own fake poster quote, but here's what the New York Observer's Andrew Sarris wrote at the time: "An effectively understated and moodily engrossing ghost film with a surprisingly satisfying jolt at the end."

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At this point, it's almost been so long since The Blair Witch Project came out that people have by and large forgotten all about the film. Considering that we're still feeling the impact of "found footage" movies, including no less than three that I can name released in the U.S. this year (The Troll Hunter, [REC]2, and the upcoming Apollo 18). That's not including [REC], Quarantine, Diary of the Dead, Paranormal Activity 1 and 2, The Last Exorcism, Cloverfield, The Zombie Diaries and The Poughkeepsie Tapes. These are, in one form or another, the offspring of The Blair Witch's Projects success; a low-budget horror film passed along like an urban legend until it was time to explode in the mainstream. It captured the zeitgeist at a time when horror was winding down from self-referential Scream knockoffs, and scared the hell out of a lot of people.

 And then there was that second film. Yeah, I don't blame you for not remembering Book of Shadows.

 Back to the success story - The Blair Witch Project was a movie I'd hear about long before I saw it. In 1999, the internet was agog about this "found footage" of three film students making a documentary in Burkittsville, Maryland about the "Blair Witch" legend. Something went horribly wrong and they were never heard from again. In fact, I bet you remember the tagline:

 In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary...A year later their footage was found.

  Very few people knew who Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez were, and since The Blair Witch Project ended without credits, there was good reason to perpetuate the myth that this WAS "found footage" and not a horror movie designed to make you think it was real. By the time it opened wide in the U.S. (in the summer of 1999), internet savvy geeks already knew it wasn't (online critics love to be the people who have the "scoop" that shows the seams of an illusion), but there were plenty of "John and Jane Moviegoer"'s who didn't know. I was taking some summer classes at N.C. State, and there was a guy in one of the poetry classes that I overheard talking about having a bootlegged copy of the film. A clerk at Schoolkids Music claimed it had already been in "secret" screenings in Raleigh when I purchased the soundtrack (containing footage from the film as part of a CD-ROM feature). I always seemed to be one step behind The Blair Witch Project.

 And then it opened at The Rialto, and the next part is not going to endear the Cap'n to theatre owners. I can only say that it's something I did once and never again, and not something I would do again. Some friends were in town to see The Blair Witch Project with the Cap'n and friends, and the midnight showing was SOLD OUT. But we needed to see that showing of the film, so while standing in front of the vacant box office, we noticed that instead of using special tickets, The Rialto (at the time) had the kind of tickets one could purchase at, say, an Office Max. So we maybe kind of bought a roll of tickets from Office Max, tore five off, and got in line early. And it worked. It was a shitty thing to do, but it's the kind of thing you'll do at twenty to see the movie everyone wants to see. Our ruse wasn't a total success, as before the film started the manager came out to say that he knew some people got in when they weren't supposed to, and we shrunk in our seats a little. The moral of the story is don't do this, kids - you'll feel shitty about it twelve years later.

 The movie? Well, if you were old enough to see it in 1999, then you already know what The Blair Witch Project is like. It's a nice setup, a whole lot of pointless bickering, some carnival tricks to rattle you, and a baffling ending that's really only effective with an audience willing to be scared shitless already. The reason that nobody remembers The Blair Witch Project is that when people know it's a film and are watching it at home with no suspension of disbelief or desire to really let the adrenaline take over, the film is a total bore. There's virtually no rewatchability to The Blair Witch Project, and other films have taken the crude elements and refined them with less believable but more effective narratives and gimmickry. The success of Paranormal Activity is in large part a reflection of how much it borrowed from The Blair Witch Project in publicity and execution (appropriately ten years later, following an excessive cycle of gory horror films often lumped together under the moniker "torture porn").

 By the time that Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 came out, nobody was that interested in the film anymore. The curtain had been lifted, the actors done the publicity rounds, and the directors moved on to make... well, not much for seven years. They didn't even want to make Book of Shadows, and instead acted as executive producers for new director Joe Berlinger, a documentary filmmaker best known for the Paradise Lost films about the West Memphis Three. Book of Shadows was Berlinger's first (and, as far as I can tell, last) narrative feature, which he co-wrote with Dick Beebe (the House on Haunted Hill remake). It attempted to look at the Blair Witch phenomenon, but quickly devolved into a terrible movie about possession, murder, and surveillance footage wrapped up in a pale Rashomon "multiple perspective story" mold.

 It took quite a while for me to muster up any memories about Book of Shadows, which should give you some idea how forgettable the film is. Until I looked it up, I'd completely forgotten that it involved two different "Blair Witch" tours in Burkittsville or that one ended up butchered and everyone else went to a house with excessive closed circuit cameras. I vaguely remembered people being picked off and someone being accused of being the witch, as well as stock stereotypes of Wiccans, Goth Chicks, hippies (?), and mentally unstable characters.

 Looking at the film from a distance, it's kind of funny how many people I recognize for roles they took after Book of Shadows: Jeffrey Donovan is now better known for being the lead on Burn Notice, Kim Director worked with Spike Lee before and after the film, and Erica Leerhsen played virtually the same role in the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Only Tristen Skyler and Stephen Barker Turner haven't done anything I noticed since 2000. Oh, and there's that Kurt Loder guy; wasn't he in Get Him to the Greek or something?

 While it should come as no surprise to people that I saw a movie with Cranpire where he fell asleep, I can't honestly fault him for nodding off during a late showing of Book of Shadows. There's nothing in the movie worth staying awake for, and I think he got more out of the nap than I did the movie. The only other fun tidbit is that when the DVD came out, Artisan was desperate for a gimmick, so they tried a variation on the "flipper" disc: on one side, the movie; the other had the soundtrack. The problem was that the disc was often too heavy for CD players and when it wasn't, the film portion scratched easily, meaning you could never sell the damned thing when you got bored of having it around. And yet, I suspect if you go anywhere with used DVDs, you'll find a copy of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in the "three for $1" bin. It's still not worth it.

Shocktober Revisited: Tales from the Darkside - The Movie

 This review originally appeared in 2010.

The Cap'n makes no effort to hide my love for Tales from the Darkside, a staple of USA's Up All Night and horror anthology show that frequently gave me the creeps in the wee hours of the morning. After Season Three arrived on DVD two weeks ago, a set that contains quite a few of my favorite episodes (including The Circus, The Geezenstacks, Seasons of Belief, and The Milkman Cometh), I realized that despite my unabated enthusiasm for the show, I'd never actually seen the movie.

I blame this on a handful of factors: when it came out in 1990, I would have only been eleven and still in a phase where horror scared the hell out of me. I've also rarely heard a kind word about Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (it has a 38% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes and generally seems to merit [at best] a "rent it"), so while I've seen the DVD around before, I just never bothered renting it.

And let me tell you, I kind of regret that now. It's not a great movie, but it does do two things that kept me on board for 90 minutes: the anthology structure (which keeps it true to the spirit of the show) and a pretty damn good cast (also keeping in spirit of the show, if you look at the number of people who worked on the series).


The structure is pure anthology: three unconnected tales wrapped together punctuated by a "bridge" story - in this instance one of a boy named Timmy (Matthew Lawrence) trying to avoid being cooked by a witch (Deborah Harry). The stories are vintage Darkside: a killer mummy doing the bidding of a meek college student; a deadly cat threatens an eccentric millionaire and a hit man; a gargoyle spares the life of an artist - but at a price.

I've read in a few places that Tales from the Darkside: The Movie fails to really take the TV show forward into a cinematic presentation, but I'm not really sure that's the point. While it's true that it sticks to fairly limited locations with small casts and limited (although at times pretty good) special effects, broadening the scope isn't really going to do anything but make Darkside like any other anthology film. One of the strengths of the show was the fact that it had a limited budget, and within that they managed to foster a sense of dread and claustrophobia for the stories. There is "no escape" for these characters, and in some ways I think that the movie does replicate that nicely while still benefiting from higher production values.

The cast is also more interesting to me now than I think it would have been twenty years ago: at the time, I supposed that Christian Slater (Heathers, Pump Up the Volume), Deborah Harry (Videodrome, Hairspray), and Rae Dawn Chong (Commando, Soul Man) would have been the big "names" for the film, but the movie also features James Remar (Dexter, Ratatouille), David Johansen (Scrooged, Married to the Mob), Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights, Far from Heaven), Robert Klein (Primary Colors, Jeffrey), William Hickey (Wise Blood, Prizzi's Honor), Mark Margolis (Breaking Bad, The Fountain, Oz, and oh, a dozen other things you've seen) and Steve Buscemi (I shouldn't even need to tell you). It's a nice combination of well known character actors - some of whom were on the show - and up and comers that would be better known later.

The stories are pretty good too, particularly the last one ("Lover's Vow"). Even if you can figure out the "twist" (and it really isn't that hard), there's a surprising poignancy I wasn't expecting from a low budget horror film. The first segment ("Lot 249," based on an Arthur Conan Doyle story) is also nice, although it relies pretty heavily on arcane explanations of scrolls and translations that dull the last "shock" a little bit. What it lacks there, it makes up for with solid performances from Buscemi, Slater, and Moore and some inventive mummy kills.

If there's a weak link, it may be the too-long-for-it's-own-good middle section (Stephen King's "Cat from Hell", adapted by George Romero). It's not that "Cat from Hell" isn't interesting in its own way, it's just that the story is broken into two sections: Millionaire Drogan (Hickey) relating the story of the cat to Hit Man Halston (Johansen), and Halston stalking the cat in a mansion with almost no lightning. The first half sets things up nicely, and you can tell that Romero's relationship with King on Creepshow had some effect on the flashback structure (while Romero didn't direct the film, I strongly suspect the use of a deep blue to indicate "flashback" came from the same comic-book formula used in Creepshow).

The problem is that once we get to Halston hunting the cat alone, it's pretty clear what's going to happen, so the drawn out hunting gets a little repetitive. It's saved by what may be the grossest gore effect in the entire film (involving the cat crawling into Johansen's mouth, down his throat, into his stomach, and back out), but by the end it's almost too little, too late. The wraparound story starts out strongly - with Timmy in a cage trying to prevent a very modern witch from cooking him in her suburban oven - but fizzles out at the end by trying to not play into Darkside audience expectations. It's not the best way to end the film, especially after a great third act anchored by Remar and Chong.

Gripes aside, I still don't quite understand why people dislike this movie so much; it's closer in spirit to the show than either Tales from the Crypt movie (and to some degree, the earlier anthology version Amicus put out) and considering that it's competition in that era was Campfire Tales, Creepshow 2, and Grim Prairie Tales, I'd say Darkside works better as an anthology movie. The genre is probably better known for having a lot of "good" entries and only one or two really "great" films, and I'd certainly say that Tales from the Darkside: The Movie is on the same page as The House that Dripped Blood, Asylum, or Trilogy of Terror. It's probably better than Cat's Eye, Quicksilver Highway and Twilight Zone: The Movie, if not up there with Doctor Terror's House of Horrors, Tales from the Crypt, or From Beyond the Grave.

If you like the show, then the Cap'n feels like you'll appreciate the step up in production value of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, especially because it doesn't stray too far from what made the series work. The film has a good cast, limited - but impressive - gore, and two of the three stories were better than I expected they'd be. So count me as one of the 38% that's "for" Tales from the Darkside: The Movie; it worked for the Cap'n.

Shocktober Revisited: From Beyond the Grave

 Review originally appeared in 2010.


 "Now Cap'n," you say, "are you really going to keep telling me the From Beyond the Grave is a good movie when we all know that it's too tame, too comical, too scattershot, and worst of all, not scary?"

 And I will continue to say "Yes, I am."

 Do I admit that your description of From Beyond the Grave, the Amicus Production's 1973 horror anthology, is reasonably to very accurate? Sure, I'll cop to that. The film is rated PG, keeps most of its violence off-screen, the "Elemental" story is far goofier than I might have led on, the stories aren't all consistently great, and yes, it's not creepy in the way that Tales from the Crypt is. On the other hand, may I refer you to my review of The House That Dripped Blood from this time last year.

 These are all elements inherent to most anthology films: not just anthology films from the era (and specifically, most Amicus productions), but of the subgenre in general. I point you in the direction of Creepshow, The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Trick 'r Treat, Tales from the Darkside, or Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. You'll find that with some consistency, every criticism lobbed at From Beyond the Grave is fair in each case.

 What I love about anthology films is that not every story works, that the tone varies from graphic to goofy, and that sometimes the parts don't add up to the whole. And yet, I come back to them over and over again. It's the cinematic equivalent of a short story digest; if you don't like what's in front of you, the next one isn't far away, so just relax.

 From Beyond the Grave is a lot like The House That Dripped Blood, save for a less successful consistency in tone, but the cast is game to make the stories that shouldn't work palatable, and the ones that do carry the weight for everything else.

 Like that old review, let's do a breakdown of segments, all held together by a frame story featuring Peter Cushing as the Proprietor of Temptations Limited, an antique shop that sells innocuous seeming items with supernatural repercussions.

1. The Gatecrasher - David Warner plays an antique collector who swindles Cushing out of a mirror, only to discover that it hosts a particularly hungry ghost with a grave deal for his new partner in crime.

2. An Act of Kindness - Ian Bannen plays a ho-hum middle manager looking for more excitement in his life, and finds it when he steals a medal from Temptations, Ltd. and befriends Jim Underwood (Donald Pleasance), a street beggar. When he discovers that Underwood's daughter Emily (Angela Pleasance) dabbles in a bit of witchcraft, he gets more than he bargained for.

3. The Elemental - Ian Carmichael is a well-to-do businessman that switches the price tag on one of Cushing's snuffboxes, only to be warned by a clairvoyant Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton) that he's picked up an "elemental," an invisible creature attracted to the pleasures of the flesh, on his shoulder. He ignores her, only to see the elemental's effects firsthand when it attacks his wife (Nyree Dawn Porter). Can Madame Orloff successfully cast the creature out of their country home?

4. The Door - Ian Ogilvy buys an ominous looking door from Temptations, Ltd., only to discover that when he shuts and reopens it, his storage cabinet becomes an entrance to a massive blue room, one that may house a man who used the occult to draw victims into his "trap."

 It's fair to note that the moral of From Beyond the Grave is "don't rip off Temptations, Limited," as the only character who isn't killed as a result of his visit to the shop lives because he paid in full for his door. Every other person who swindles the Proprietor ends up murdered, although not always in ways you might expect.

 As a matter of fact, the second story, involving a stolen medal as a pretense for befriending an old soldier, doesn't head in the direction one would expect at all. Typically, in anthologies, the ironic twist is the plot du jour, and while "An Act of Kindness" does have a twist ending, it's not at all one you're going to see coming, even if you are paying attention.

 The ending of "The Elemental" only falters because its grim tone follows the exaggerated Madame Orloff "casting out" sequence, which cannot be taken as anything but laughable. Had it been played like - and this is jumping forward quite a bit - a similar scene in Drag Me to Hell, there's a chance that the "twist" (which you can see coming a mile away) might be easier to accept.

 Of the stories, "Gatecrashers" works the most, and benefits from the film's rather tame PG rating. Forced to keep most of the killings off-screen, director Kevin Connor settles on a slightly hallucinatory tone as David Warner sets about killing girls to "feed" the mirror spirit. That we don't see the first kill at all, and are only hinted to what actually happened later makes up for the unbelievable behavior on Warner's part in the middle of the story (would he really not change clothes, or wash the blood off of his hands?). The ending is suitably eerie, even if it's not hard to suss out where the story is heading.

 From Beyond the Grave really suffers from the frame story, which never has the impact you hope it will. In part it's because "An Act of Kindness" and "The Elemental" really have nothing to do with what their respective protagonists take from Temptations, Ltd. The other factor (and it's a big one), is that Peter Cushing's kindly looking Proprietor has no sense of menace, of mischief, or really any presence at all until the film's coda, involving a thief that was casing the store all day. Cushing's make-up leaves him appearing older than he did four years later in Star Wars, and there's no real surprise to the "supernatural" - and undercooked - revelation about Temptations, Ltd. at the end of the film. By the time he addresses the audience directly (which isn't really new for Amicus), we're miles ahead of the "twist," so all that's left is the title card to end the film.

 So, like most anthologies, From Beyond the Grave has the not-so-good, the pretty-good, and the entertaining-in-doses components. Sometimes it's a little silly, yes. It lacks a persistent tone of dread, unlike Tales from the Crypt or even The House That Dripped Blood, and it's not going to knock any gorehound's socks off. But taken on its own merits, I'd say From Beyond the Grave is as watchable as any anthology I've seen, and better than quite a few in the last twenty years or so.

Shocktober Revisited: The House That Dripped Blood

Since it is October, and since Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium could be described as "horror themed" in its layout, I guess I should make with the reviewing horror movies that won't be a part of our annual celebration in two weeks. Fortunately for you, dear readers, I have a shelf full of horror flicks waiting to be discussed. We'll start this semi-regular column with 1971's The House that Dripped Blood.

I've made no secret of my love for anthology films, specifically those coming from Amicus Productions, so it was a surprise to me to discover that I'd never gotten around to watching The House that Dripped Blood. It turns out that House is a pretty good addition to their collection of supernaturally based horror films. The cast is great, the direction is atmospheric, and most of the stories work in context.

Like most anthology films, you get four stories with a bit of a wrap-around, and House that Dripped Blood covers most of your horror bases: Spectral Killers, Vampires, Witchcraft, and evil museums / shops of mystery. The stories, by Robert Bloch (author of Psycho) are:

1. A writer (Denholm Elliot) and his wife move into the house in question so he can finish his macabre masterpiece. When his creation, a mad strangler named Dominick, starts to appear in and around the house, he's convinced his grip on reality is slipping.

2. A recently retired businessman (Peter Cushing) moves into the house, and while wandering the nearby town, finds a wax museum of horrors. He becomes obsessed with a figure of Salome that reminds him of a long lost love, and when a visiting friend goes missing, the terrible secret of the museum comes to light.

3. A not-retired businessman (Christopher Lee) and his daughter (Chloe Franks) come to the house to get away from the city. When a tutor (Nyree Dawn Porter) begins to connect with the distant and sheltered child, her true nature comes to light, with terrible consequences.

4. An actor and horror-buff (Jon "The Third Doctor" Pertwee) and his co-star (Ingrid Pitt) rent out the house while he's filming Curse of the Bloodsucker. Convinced that his cape looks too cheap, he visits the mysterious Theo Von Hartmann's shop and buys an authentic vampire cape. Maybe a little too authentic, as he discovers when he puts it on.

The wrap-around story involves a detective (John Bennett) investigating the disappearance of Pertwee's character. The owner of the house, Mr. Stoker (John Bryans) shares the mysterious history of the tenants. When Inspector Holloway finally goes to the house, he finds much more than he expected in the basement...

I think the third and fourth stories were my favorite. Admittedly, the Jon Pertwee story gets quite silly in the middle (especially when he puts the cape on after midnight and reacts hammily to his fangs and... flying), but it is salvaged by Holloway's visit, one that ties up the film nicely.

The first story, about the writer and his mad killer, suffers from a rushed ending, one that relies on you paying attention to a last second development based on a character you just met. The set up is wonderful, and most of the lingering architectural shots and creepy ornaments does soften the weak ending.

Despite the really trippy dream imagery in the second story, the ending just doesn't make sense. Something happens to the wax figure that, if what the owner says is true, would render it impossible to be fixed in time for the last shot. The final image, on the other hand, is a pretty good one.

Despite the fact that the film (rated PG) is virtually bloodless, there's plenty of atmosphere and suggested horrors to raise a bit of a chill. This is more evident in the witchcraft story with Christopher Lee, which relies entirely on suggestion for its gruesome finale. The House that Dripped Blood isn't as gory as Tales from the Crypt or From Beyond the Grave, and it might come off as a little tame compared to what was to come. However, taken with the much earlier Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, I think House fits the Amicus m.o.

Finally. the title is a little misleading, because while the film is about four tenants who died (separately) in the same house, at least two of the stories really have nothing to do with house as evil. They attempt to tie everything together with Stoker directly addressing the audience (something that seemed strangely familiar, although I'm convinced I've never seen this before), but if you're willing to put the misnomer of the title aside, it's a fun little spookshow you could probably scare children with - and not scar them permanently.

Horror Fest VIII (Day Two): Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary’s Baby may be based on the novel by Ira Levin (Son of Rosemary) and be produced by William Castle (The Tingler) directed by Roman Polanski (I can only imagine what’s going to happen now that I’ve mentioned his name again on this blog), but it’s really the story of a book. And not just any book, because while Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) has a lot of books, including the conspicuously placed copy of Yes, I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis Jr.*, the most important one appears about an hour into the film.

Of course, I speak of All of Them Witches.

 Oh sure, the title is an anagram (although not the one Rosemary figures out – for the record, you can make “Hell a Cometh Swift from the title), but for whatever reason, it became the running joke of the rest of the movie. There was a lengthy discussion about follow-up books like Some More of Them Witches, The Rest of Them Witches, That Should Cover Every Last One of Them Witches This Time, and the legally obligated retraction book Not All of Them Was Witches After All, and many a chuckle was had.
  
I realize that it’s probably disrespectful to Rosemary’s Baby to talk about it this way when I’ve never properly written about the film here before, but sometimes when you’ve seen a movie enough times and you’re with a crowd of people who have as well, instead of focusing on the actual story you begin to fixate on silly details or make jokes. While I often try to give a film its proper perspective on the Blogorium, much of what constitutes a Horror Fest recap is trying to convey the atmosphere surrounding the screening as well.

  

 For the record, I was not the first person to make a tasteless John Lennon joke about the Dakota Building. I made the second, and it was in reference to an audience member being unhappy that nothing bad happens to Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) at the end of the film. I responded that she needn’t worry, because “there’s a guy outside waiting for phonies.”

 There were many jokes and references to Cassavetes films (as actor and as director), to Planet of the Apes, Harold and Maude, Midnight Run, The Wolf Man, and to Frank Sinatra, Robert Evans, William Castle, and any number of other ridiculous observations, like what was playing at Radio City Music Hall with Fred MacMurray (our theory – Walt Disney’s The Shaggy Dog: The Musical, or Son of Flubber: The Musical).

 (This is a total side note, but since I mentioned John Carpenter’s references in Prince of Darkness, it’s worth pointing out that at the beginning of In the Mouth of Madness,  John Glover’s character’s name is Dr. Saperstein, a slight variation on the name of Ralph Bellamy’s character in Rosemary’s Baby.)

 All joking aside (and it’s really the big point at the fest where the audience participation took over, which the Cap’n fully endorses as long as you can still enjoy the movie), Rosemary’s Baby is a great horror movie. It’s so well constructed and so limited to one character’s perspective that even though you know what’s happening to Rosemary and you desperately want her to get away from the Castevets and the conspiracy in The Bramford, you understand why she’s confused and can’t leave. The world is set against poor Rosemary from the outset, in arguably more insidious ways than even Suzy Bannion faces in Suspiria (it turns out witches, Satan, and issues with pregnancy emerged as the consistent themes this Horror Fest).

 Her husband is distant and verbally abusive, especially after he gets close with Roman and Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), her doctor recommends doing nothing when she feels pain during pregnancy, and then her old doctor (Charles Grodin), hands her over to the enemy when she comes to him for help. Her only real ally in the film, Hutch (Maurice Evans), is the victim of witchcraft – as is Guy’s original agent – and the first friend she makes in The Bramford plunges to her death not long after they meet. All the while, Polanski keeps us tightly locked in on Rosemary (although not quite as uncomfortably framed as Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion) as we slowly move towards June of 1966, when her baby is due. I shouldn’t need to spell that out for you, and it’s not as blatantly stated in the film, but if you do the math from when conception happened to when the baby should be due, it only makes sense.

 The use of dream sequences and somewhat ambiguous dream logic (another recurring motif this fest) helps disorient the audience early in the film, so that even forty five years later, it’s not abundantly clear what Rosemary is imagining and what we’re actually seeing when plans are set in motion. The ending still gets me, despite the presence of one of the worst Asian stereotypes since Mickey Rooney’s unfortunate appearance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “What have you done to his eyes, you maniacs!” and, eventually, “You’re rocking him too hard.” It’s unsettling, but inevitable.

 If we jest during Rosemary’s Baby, it’s only because we like it so. Also, All of Them Witches would want it that way. Hail Satan!

Up Next: Curse of Chucky and Trick ‘r Treat!

* Now, it’s entirely up to you whether Yes, I Can is there because of the Rat Pack connection or just as another subtle hint about the Satanism to come.  In the interest of full disclosure, we leaned towards the former.

Horror Fest VIII (Day One): Demons and Suspiria

 Lamberto Bava’s Demons is a movie with a great premise… and that’s about it. I will grant you that the gore and makeup effects are nice, but after a spell even those become tiresome, in large part because there’s so little happening in the film that even the demons are boring after a while. For a film that isn’t even ninety minutes, Demons feels padded and overlong, and it’s a shame.

  Quickly, I’d like to dispel an erroneous assumption on the part of attendees at Horror Fest VIII: Dario Argento did not direct Demons; he wrote it and has a “Presented By” title card at the beginning of the film. Now it’s not inconceivable that one would leap to that conclusion, as a) the titles were in Italian (even though I chose the English dub) and b) if you don’t know Italian horror cinema very well, you could make the mistake that if Dario Argento is involved at all, he was a strong influence, but no, it’s a Lamberto Bava film. Bava was Argento’s assistant director on Inferno and Tenebre, but he’s probably better known as a director in his own right (A Blade in the Dark), or for being the son of the legendary Mario Bava.

  At any rate, Argento and Bava co-wrote Demons with Dardano Sacchetti and Franco Ferrini, and it’s hard to imagine that it took four people to write a movie where so little happens. The film is based around a mysterious “Man in Black” (Michele Saovi, director of Cemetery Man and The Church, also known as Demons 3) handing out golden tickets to the Metropol theatre. The tickets are for a very special screening, and we meet a handful of people in the lobby, including a student (Natasha Hovey), a blind man (Alex Serra), and a pimp (Bobby Rhodes). Okay, I’m making an assumption on that last one, and IMDB’s synopsis doesn’t exactly match my reading of it, but it’s not hard to leap to that conclusion when he brings to girlfriends to the movie.

 The plot of the movie within a movie is that four college students are looking for the grave of Nostradamus, and they find one that seems to match, but in the coffin they find a strange mask and a book (which, of course, they read from). If you put the mask on, something sharp cuts into your face and you become a demon, which is interesting because one of the pimp’s girlfriends put on a similar mask in the lobby and has a similar cut on her face…

 As the move plays out, more people are infected and become demons, and as the audience desperately tries to escape, they discover the doors are a façade – the front of the building is now simply concrete, and they’re trapped inside. If anyone is injured by a demon, they become a demon, so they barricade themselves on the balcony and try in vain to find a way out. And that’s pretty much when Demons ceases to be interesting in any way, shape, or form. There’s only so much “bait and switch” Bava can employ when people pair up and split off from the main group, and it’s always the “which one is going to be the demon?” variety. The survivors eventually break through the wall of the balcony and cut off the projector and find an adjacent building, but even that goes nowhere as the building is abandoned and the only room they bother going into is walled off.

 To demonstrate just how disjointed (and front loaded) the plot of Demons is, Bava introduces four totally unrelated punks in the middle of the film, tooling around town and doing coke out of a Coke can (okay, I will admit that’s clever). If you’re under the impression that they’ll be saving the survivors in any way, don’t hold your breath – their purpose in the story is to enter the theatre, but only because one of the demons needs to get out in order for the ending to make any sense.

 Aside from a ridiculous scene involving a motorbike, a samurai sword, and a helicopter crashing through the theatre’s ceiling – all of which happen without any sense of causality – nothing happens in the second half of Demons. People wander around, they die. There’s no sense of tension at all, and the apocalyptic ending is just an excuse for another “bait and switch” to end the film on after the credits finish rolling. Characters abruptly change personalities – the usherette, for example, when introduced appears to be in on what’s happening (or about to happen), but as soon as the demons run amok she transforms into another terrified patron, seemingly without reason.  I understand that people really like Demons, and I remembered enjoying it when I was younger, but the film is too threadbare to really invest in. Sometimes gore just isn’t enough, and the atmosphere only goes so far.

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  Are you ready for the fun part of this recap? I just slammed Demons for its slight narrative and I’m about to do the exact opposite for Dario Argento’s Suspiria. To be fair, Suspiria has a “through-line” story to go along with strong atmospherics, stylish color schemes, and at times disturbing gore, but the main difference is that while Demons peters out as soon as the plot should be kicking into high gear, Suspiria builds to a literally explosive conclusion. I’m also more willing to accept Suspiria’s dream logic structure over Demons nightmarish buildup, but perhaps it’s just a matter of personal preference.

I’ve also seen Suspiria more often than Demons, and have come to have a certain affinity for its story construction. We know as much as Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) does when she arrives at a ballet academy in Germany, with an added benefit of a brutal murder for a former student and her friend (this is an Argento film, after all). Information is revealed slowly, punctuated by strange events and even stranger behavior (maggots in the ceiling, suspicious activity by the staff, people leaving and then being murdered), mostly without clear reasons. Anyone who tries to find out too much about the staff, particularly Ms. Tanner (Alida Valli) and Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett) end up dead, under mysterious circumstances. At least, to the students: as the audience, we’re privy to what happens to the pianist and Suzy’s friend Sara (Stefania Casini), although the how is often unclear.

Am I spoiling anything by telling you that Madam Blanc and Ms. Tanner are familiars for the witch Helena Markos? If so, I guess *SPOILER*, but I can’t imagine anybody reading a Horror Fest recap this far hasn’t heard of or seen Suspiria, the first of Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy (followed by Inferno and, much later, Mother of Tears). I’ve been meaning to show it at a Horror Fest for years, but it always gets bumped at the last minute by something or would fall victim to exhaustion from participants. To be honest, the dreamlike logic of the film was even more effective for me this time because towards the end of the film (specifically around the dubbed Udo Kier scene), I was drifting in and out of consciousness myself. It’s how I always intended Suspiria to play at one of these festivals – late at night, when the mind is prone to wander, leaving you unsure whether what you saw really happened in the film or your imagination.

 I wouldn’t recommend anyone watch Suspiria this way for the first time, but the film lends itself well to a relaxed mind, one that wants to remain invested but is also hovering between lucid and sleepy. Never fear, because just when you think you’ll drift off, the memorably creepy score by Goblin rattles you awake. It was an excellent way to close out the first night of Horror Fest, but there’s a lot more fun to go tomorrow…

 Up Next: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and A Nightmare on Elm Street!

"O" is for Oz - The Great and Powerful

 Allow me to begin with a seemingly unrelated anecdote: the reason I was hesitant to write a full review of The Hobbit last December was that when I found myself describing it to friends, I almost always began by saying "well, it's not as bad as you've heard it is." Beginning a review from a defensive position is tricky, and I find it's much more helpful when you have the benefit of time and context to help support enjoying a film with strong assumptions about its quality or lack thereof (see Retro Reviews of Tron and Dazed and Confused, both of which refute the most common stereotypes surrounding the films.)

 Meanwhile, movies that are more recent exist in the echo chamber that is the internet, where everything sucks more than it might actually and movies that are considered to be very good to great will also suck in a year's time*. So movies that are good but not great or that generally succeed in being entertaining for the target audience - let's say, kids - from directors held to impossibly high standards are therefore "total crap" and "a waste of time."

 And so the Cap'n finds himself in the unenviable position of explaining to you that while Sam Raimi's Oz - The Great and Powerful is nowhere as good as we thought we deserved, it's still a mostly harmless bit of Disney-fied Raimi as anyone should reasonably expect. Considering that trying to make anything tied to The Wizard of Oz without anything specifically trademarked in the MGM film (which, let's be honest, is where more people base their knowledge of Oz than Baum's novels), it's an admirable, if flawed, end result.


  Being that it's a prequel, I'm guessing you know that Oz - the Great and Powerful doesn't have Dorothy or the Tin Man or the Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion (well, the latter two in a form you'd recognize, anyway) but it does have a young version of the Wizard - Oscar Diggs (James Franco) is a carnival con-artists and serial ladies man who finds himself in the wrong hot air balloon during the wrong tornado in Kansas and ends up in Oz. You might have heard of it. He meets three witches - Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz) and later, Glinda (Michelle Williams) - one of whom will be a Wicked Witch of the West by the end of the film. Can you guess which one?

 SPOILER - It's Glinda. Totally Glinda. Those bubbles are toxic, man.

 Since Oscar isn't the Wizard we know yet, that means he has some adventures with characters not appearing in that other Oz movie (and also not that OTHER Oz movie or the OTHER OTHER OZ movie - sorry Tik-Tok and Pumpkinhead), so we meet some other Baum characters or variations thereof, like Finley (Zach Braff), a talking money who wears a bell-hop's uniform, and China Girl (Joey King) who is thankfully not a racist stereotype but is instead a little girl made of china. Also there's Knuck (Tony Cox), who I mention because it amuses me that the only thing he really wants to do is play a fanfare and nobody will let him.

 They have adventures, etc, and then Oz becomes the Great and Powerful by slaying the Jabberwocky... wait. Wrong Disney reboot of a famous children's novel turned movie. Actually Oz - The Great and Powerful manages to resolve itself without a huge battle, which puts it a notch above similar relaunches of crap that was for kids but is now bad-ass action (Snow White and the Huntsman, Jack the Giant Slayer, Alice in Wonderland). There's some ingenuity and good old fashioned misdirection to Oscar's plan that logically places him where we remember the Wizard from that other movie we can't see the likenesses of characters from. Hence the "sexy" Wicked Witch.

 I know, I know - I'm making it sound as bad as you assumed it was. The truth is that Oz - The Great and Powerful does a few things very right and plays it safe in a lot of other ways, and the end result is pleasant but mostly forgettable. It's summer popcorn fare a little bit earlier than usual and I suspect children love it. Good for them. It's not a timeless classic but it's a LOT better than I was expecting considering Alice's Adventures in Narnia is its spiritual ancestor in this round of "what property do we have people remember fondly?" If Oz - The Great and Powerful HAD to happen, this is at least a better version of it than I'd anticipated. There are some nice homages to the film done within legal parameters and I appreciated the Academy Aspect Ratio that opens the film (black and white, full frame, not sepia. We don't want to upset the ghost of Louis B. Mayer!)

  Also, when you compare it to the Raimi-produced Evil Dead remake, Oz - The Great and Powerful is a LOT better!

 Speaking of Evil Dead movies -  I'm not sure why people are clamoring so much for Army of Darkness 2 when it seems pretty clear to me that, like he did from Evil Dead to Evil Dead 2, Raimi remade the film and Disney slapped a different title on it. Make no mistake, were this film to star a younger Bruce Campbell and not James Franco (The Ape), you'd be wondering why Ash was fighting flying monkeys and non Deadites. But how, you ask? Allow me to explain:

 Both Army of Darkness and Oz - The Great and Powerful have a protagonist who is basically a good guy but who has some serious character flaws. Both are sucked through a vortex to another time / place and they immediately agree to the assumption that they are the great savior everybody has been waiting for. They take advantage of this for a brief period of time before being sent off on a quest that will rid the land of evil, and subsequently fail to do what they set out to do (yes, the reasons are different, but stick with me). They rally a small group of willing locals to fight a witch they were somewhat to directly responsible in creating and use modern science to overcome their foes. The only difference is that one leaves and the other one terrorizes a lion he will one day bestow courage onto. Also another witch turns into the "Raimi Hag" after being defeated, and will eventually be crushed by a house.

 (I couldn't find "The Classic" but have heard it's somewhere in there, despite the fact that Raimi's Oldsmobile would stick out like a sore thumb in turn of the twentieth century Kansas or in the land of Oz)

 I'd like to point out that I disagree with the common held argument that James Franco is wrong for the Oscar Diggs / the Wizard but that Robert Downey, Jr. (initially cast) or Johnny Depp (approached after Downey left) would have been better choices. While hating James Franco is almost as in vogue as hating Anne Hathaway or Kristen Stewart, he brings the right kind of sleazy but affable charm to the role. I like that he has his con man act down, and he's a non-threatening sort of lothario - charming but ultimately incapable of much more than skipping town.

 Robert Downey, Jr. has, for all intents and purposes, been showing us what his version of Oscar Diggs would be like since Iron Man - and to be frank, his presence would be overpowering in this movie. He's sweep in to Oz like a human tornado, chewing the scenery and owning the place from the moment he arrived, and it would, quite frankly, rob the reveal of "the Wizard" at the end of much of its power.

 Similarly, bringing Johnny Depp in would for Oz - The Great and Powerful into one of two directions - either Oscar Diggs would end up an eccentric when the audience desperately needs a protagonist who is closer to normal or we'd end up with the toned-down Johnny Depp of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, a leading man he was never meant to play. You bring in Depp for eccentricity, because when he plays the straight man or is forced to carry a film like this without being quirky, it collapses on itself.

 Not to mention furthering the connections between Oz - The Great and Powerful and The Tim Burton Players Present Alice in Wonderland, which already share a studio and producers. So hate James Franco all you want, but shy of Bruce Campbell circa 1993, he's as good of a choice as Raimi could make.

 Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Oz - The Great and Powerful's tangential connection to Disney's other Baum-inspired film, the traumatizing Return to Oz. Is Return to Oz a better movie? Well, it certainly elicits a stronger reaction from me than The Great and Powerful did, but that's because it scared the living daylights out of me as a child and some of the imagery (the hall of heads, the Mountain King) continue to haunt the recesses of my memory. Oz - The Great and Powerful mostly plays it safe instead of opting to give children nightmares, but one aspect of the film that I think gets overlooked is that it's still very much a Sam Raimi film - just in a context we're not necessarily used to seeing it.

 You need to wait no longer than the hot air balloon scene in the tornado to see the love that Raimi has to torment his leading man, as sharpened stakes of wood come at Diggs from every direction with ferocity and a sense of cruel glee coming from behind the camera. It continues throughout the film, after Diggs lands in Oz, although Raimi saves a bit for Bruce Campbell (who apparently managed to make it into the opening credits by spending the 60 seconds he has on screen by being beaten by Tony Cox with a stick). As I mentioned before, the return of the "Raimi Hag" was a nice surprise, although how I could have forseen him making a movie with witches and NOT including that, I don't know.

 For a film about goodness and light or some crap, the man in the title never really drops any of his misleading ways, right down to the establishing of his iconic throne room (I guess MGM couldn't prevent that one from happening, although the ruby slippers, Munchkins, and Flying Monkeys are absent or changed considerably). He's still a charming scoundrel, one that scared off one truly wicked witch and one that was basically evil because of him. While you can go home happy with your children, there's an undertone of cynicism in the film that I don't think gets attention.

 Since most of you will probably Redbox or Netflix Oz - The Great and Powerful (I can't believe I just used both of those as verbs), the hyperbole of internet complaining will be softened and you might even enjoy it. It's a trifle of a film, to be sure, and I'm not convinced we need more of these movies (don't tell Disney that), but it's honestly not as bad as you've heard. In fact, sometimes it's pretty good, or at least better than okay.

 Can you choose something better? Of course you can - there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of fantastic films out there just waiting for you - but let's be honest with ourselves. We all like a little mindless popcorn fun every now and then, and this isn't going to ruin your day with nit-picking or insultingly stupid narrative decisions. And it's Sam Raimi, so if you're going to make your case that I should watch Evil Dead because his name is attached, the least you can do is meet me half way.


* True story - while reading the comments under a review of Oblivion, I learned that Wall-E is over-rated, that Tron Legacy is better than Prometheus, and that Wall-E ripped off Short Circuit, therefore Wall-E sucks. Also that Wall-E is shit and everybody hates it just like Christopher Nolan fuck that guy.

Blogorium Review: Dark Shadows

 So, it's come to this: The Tim Burton Players presented Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, and now Dark Shadows. Having finished the latest foray of Burton and company into the world of "things we already knew existed and probably liked the first time", I have to say that at least Dark Shadows has the benefit of not feeling "phoned in." It may be the fact that I've only spend two hours with Shadows, as opposed to the (usually) one-and-a-half times watching the other three, but this one was at least mostly successful.

 In the interest of fairness, I was once a Tim Burton "fanboy": to this day, I can watch any of his films from Pee Wee's Big Adventure to Sleepy Hollow without hesitation, and I also really like Big Fish as a stylistic, if not tonal, departure from what one expects when one hears the phrase "A Tim Burton Film". On the other hand, I have trouble finishing Planet of the Apes, Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, and Alice in Wonderland, movies that struggle to capture the Burton "style" but feel labored and undercooked, so to speak.

 Additionally, while I may not be a "late" era Tim Burton fan, I am also no devotee of Dark Shadows the series. I am, however, aware of its existence and actually watched it in syndication on USA or the Sci-Fi Channel (I can't remember which) for a while*. I stopped watching not because of the soap opera plotting or the lack of Barnabas Collins (honestly, I think I saw him twice the entire time), but because I seemed to keep catching episodes where a member of the Collins family ended up traveling back in time to the 1700s. Rather than follow their story, the show would immediately jump into the lives of their ancestors while the displaced Collins descendant cooled their heels in jail. As I remember, this happened at least twice - once on the air and again on the videos I rented when it wasn't possible to see it during the day.

 So I come to this not as a Dark Shadows purist nor as a person who really "likes" Tim Burton movies anymore. Maybe that's why I enjoyed the film, even if it is a mess for long stretches.

 The prologue, with narration from Barnabas (Johnny Depp) explaining the Collins family journey from Liverpool to America in the late 1700s, has an appropriately Gothic sensibility and efficiently explains the tragedy of the "cursed" founders of Collinsworth. Barnabas chooses Josette DuPres (Bella Heathcote) over servant Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), who is also a witch. She lures Josette to her death and transforms Barnabas into a vampire before bringing the townspeople to Collinwood Manor and burying him alive. So far, so good.

 But then we jump ahead to 1972, where Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcoate) arrives at the dilapidated Collinwood Manor to serve as the new governess to David Collins (Gulliver McGrath). She meets what's left of the family: matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer), her daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz), David's father Roger Collins (Johnny Lee Miller), live-in psychologist Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), and caretaker Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley). Oh, and thanks to some construction nearby, the freshly awakened Barnabas Collins.

 I appreciate the fact that the advertisements playing up the "fish out of water" jokes of an 18th century vampire in the 1970s don't dominate the film, because most of the ones in Dark Shadows don't really work. Aside from Barnabas' fascination with Carolyn's lava lamp, gags about keyboards and television or not understanding that Alice Cooper (Alice Cooper) isn't a woman don't really connect. Maybe it plays with some audiences but not so much with the Cap'n, but like I said, the trailers used pretty much every joke that's in the movie and it isn't what most of Dark Shadows is about.

 Instead, Dark Shadows occupies most of its time with Barnabas' devotion to family and to restoring the Collins name in the small fishing town, even if it means hypnotizing fishermen (including Christopher Lee) into breaking their deal with Angel Bay Fishery. Now in direct competition, Angel Bay's owner demands to meet with Barnabas and he comes face to face with the seemingly ageless Angelique, who it would seem is still a little hot for her spurned (spurning?) lover. Things get complicated when Barnabas takes a shining to Victoria, who bears a striking resemblance to Josette, much to Angelique's dismay.

 Dark Shadows doesn't have a large cast, necessarily, but it may still be too large for what amounts to a nine person ensemble. Victoria disappears for stretches of the film because there's simply nothing for her to do, and Johnny Lee Miller's Roger never figures into the film in any meaningful way. When Barnabas gives him an ultimatum and he chooses to leave, it's a hollow moment because Roger never amounted to anything in the story. Helena Bonham Carter fares a little better as Dr. Hoffman, but her sudden removal from the narrative only seems to happen in order to set up a sequel.

 Chloë Grace Moretz's Carolyn serves exactly two purposes in the film: one is to provide the 70s soundtrack to Collinwood Manor and the other is an arbitrary plot twist in the last act to justify her being around during the climactic battle between Angelique and the Collins family. Pfeiffer and Haley are at least somewhat memorable with broad characters and dramatic posing, but Dark Shadows is really about Eva Green and Johnny Depp, who go all out with their bizarro versions of "witch" and "vampire."

 Barnabas is so devoted to being a gentleman that he apologizes to people before killing them (in a moment that made me laugh, he informs a group of hippies that he "deeply regrets" the fact he's going to slaughter them) and is fiercely loyal to his "distant" relatives. After last year's Pirates of the Caribbean, I was worried he might sleep walk through another performance or go too weird like Willy Wonka, but Depp's Barnabas Collins is a monster trying to be a man. It may not be on the level of the Ed's (Wood and Scissorhands) but he isn't so far over the top that it borders on caricature.

 Eva Green has a tougher role to play: Angelique is a powerful witch that really only wants Barnabas to love her, and when he continually refuses she lashes out, even when it's clear she doesn't really want to do it. Her conflicted relationship with the monster she created gives Green the ability to be more than just the villain of the film. While the Angelique / Barnabas "sex" scene isn't really funny or titillating (and clearly it's meant to be both at different points), they do manage to destroy her office while a Barry White song plays. That cue at least makes more sense than the lengthy "happening" that Barnabas throws for the town, including Alice Cooper performing live for no good reason.

 In the end I guess I was pleasantly surprised that Tim Burton at least seemed to be interested in Dark Shadows. After the detached, lifeless Alice in Wonderland it really seemed like he didn't always care about the movies he was making, at least since Planet of the Apes, so to have nice flourishes in Dark Shadows like Angelique's skin cracking like china near the end were welcome. I don't know that I'm going to be in a hurry to put on Dark Shadows when it comes out on DVD, but I didn't mind watching it. I chuckled a few times and was able to overlook the meandering parts in the middle. It may not be a return to form for Tim Burton but there's some fun to be had and every now and then a glimmer of the good old days. Sometimes that'll do.



 * I also had (maybe still have) a VHS copy of Scariest Moments from Dark Shadows. It's a montage of scenes that, in context, might be "scary" but in this edited format with no clear idea of what's happening is just silly. Mostly it's the reveal of some kind of monster and someone gasping, which really doesn't have the desired effect of being scary to anyone.