Dune (David Lynch, 1984): 1/5

Laughably bad at times, and even at its best it's just an imbroglio of half-baked "space" ideas; faces, places, names, and historic details come flying at you rapidly without ever being given the time to grow organically. And as if you somehow wouldn't have a hard enough time trying to remember all of the expository bile that's regurgitated at you, DUNE plays by its own rules, making up things as it goes along, never cohering to a single set of governing laws that attempt establish it properly. Its most justifiable reason for existence might be to provide a concrete example of how not to adapt a Sci-Fi Novel to the screen.

Dune (Denis Villenueve, 2021): 2.5/5

Agree with Justin's comment about its production design. Having said that, I didn't feel a single emotion for two and a half hours.

Tell No One (Guillame Canet, 2006): 2/5

The soundtrack is too bad to be true. Not a fan of Francois Cluzet; only here for KST playing a lesbian.

Blue Bayou (Justin Chon, 2021): 2.5/5

This film desperately wants you to believe that there are some good ICE agents in the United States. Bush-league copaganda.

Bitter Moon (Roman Polanski, 1992): 2.5/5

In the seemingly endless saga of films in which Hugh Grant plays a little bitch, this is by far the most unusual.

Lipstick (Lamont Johnson, 1976): 3/5

Weird to see Mariel Hemingway be a literal child and then 3 years later be Woody Allen’s girlfriend in MANHATTAN. Not a pleasant film to watch, but it was better than I expected it to be. Also, it has Anne Bancroft in it, which is always a good sign.

OCTOBER HORROR

Spirits of the Dead (Fellini, Vadim, Malle, 1968): 3/5

A schlocky anthology of three Edgar Allan Poe tales, translated to the screen by some of the biggest names in 1960s European cinema: Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Federico Fellini.

Vadim kicks off the morbid triptych with "Metzengerstein," a semi-incestuous gothic tale of Renaissance Fair proportions.

Malle's segment, "William Wilson," is a fascinating pre-Freudian horror story about a man haunted by his conscience, which externally takes the form of his doppelganger.

Fellini's ghostly final act though, "Toby Dammit," is the standout. A drunk and dissolute movie star is trapped inside a surreal purgatory of his own preeminent making, a spooky place that boasts a swirling band of media and paparazzi who vie for his attention.

Halloween Kills (David Gordon Green, 2021): 0.5/5

1/2 a star for Anthony Michael Hall's absolute commitment to the incredibly terrible lines he had to read.

Snow White: A Tale of Terror (Michael Cohn, 1997): 3/5

Surprisingly effective re-telling of Snow White that brings back a grim(m) edge to the story. Weaver was killing it in ‘97 with Alien Resurrection and the Ice Storm; this is arguably her most uncelebrated role.

Slither (James Gun, 2006): 2.5/5

A woman is forced to eat raw dead animals and gets so fat her skin literally just rips open and she explodes all over everybody. She is quite literally the size of 6 or 7 hippos.

An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981): 3/5

Filed under"decent-but-won't-be-watching-again-anytime-soon" Manila folder. Things start to derail a little for me when David begins his "relationship" with Nurse Alex, a strange detour that continually feels out of place and at tonal odds with the rest of the film.

Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954): 3/5

The creature's appearances provide a charge that transcends the rubber suit (especially when underwater; love the significant role silt plays in one tense sequence), turning this into a sort of proto-Jaws, albeit with an uncanny frisson. Workmanlike rather than virtuoso, but the bluster among the male stick figures amuses and Julia Adams makes an unusually imposing scream queen.

Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931): 2.5/5

The weakest of Universal's classic horror movies. "What's that? Running across the lawn?" asks Harker, staring offscreen after Dracula departs. "Looks like a huge dog!" "Or...a wolf?" Even by early-sound standards, the stiff theatricality is overwhelming, and Browning seems oddly uncertain of what to do with the camera. All this film really has going for it is Lugosi and art direction, and one could even make a case for including Lugosi among the art direction. He's effective here the same way that Schwarzenegger is effective in the original Terminator: his foreignness makes him uncanny.

Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931): 3/5

As it is, there's more than enough Expressionist creepiness to compensate for the creaky '31 dialogue scenes. At some point I need to just accept that Hollywood endured a rocky half-decade immediately following the transition to sound, and that even the best films from that period tend to be somewhat compromised. The difference between Whale's work here and Lang's work in M the same year is truly remarkable—the latter seems an order of magnitude more advanced.

The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935): 2/5

I can't believe how little “the bride” is actually in the movie. (She doesn’t make her first appearance until about 6-minutes before the end credits roll.) I understand she is the relative apex of the film, but I don’t think it would’ve hurt to actually develop her—at least somewhat—as a character, rather than merely a concluding element.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh, 1994): 3/5

Branagh characteristically manages to make a very literal adaptation here, reverently underlining every thematic note. The ultimate Cool English Teacher movie.

Lamb (Valdimar Johannsson, 2021): 2.5/5

Did I find this productively about anything? No. But the central image is so arrestingly absurd, and when combined with the incredibly portentous tone, honestly that was enough to keep it afloat.

When a Stranger Calls (Fred Walton, 1979): 3/5

It’s like the first 20 and last 10 minutes are a horror movie and there’s just a random episode of Law & Order in the middle.

The Ninth Configuration (William Peter Blatty, 1980): 2/5

There's a part where Stacy Keach, single-handed and unarmed, kills an entire biker gang.

Prom Night (Paul Lynch, 1980): 2.5/5

A typical slasher bolstered by its leading player and giallo charms, PROM NIGHT is undercut by some era-centric elements. It is solid horror whose impact is lessened by disco.

Anguish (Bigas Luna, 1987): 3/5

Bonkers Eurohorror where Zelda Rubinstein plays a psycho hypnotist who brainwashes her schlub son (legendary “that guy” Michael Lerner) into becoming an eye-gouging serial killer who runs rampant in a local movie theater. Weirdest part is: it might be the very movie theater you’re currently sitting in, as reality folds in on itself in a mesmerizing “film-within-a-film” wormhole fashion where, roughly 40 minutes in, it becomes unclear as to who exactly is watching who (or why anyone is enjoying any of it). Think: Dario Argento does FUNNY GAMES in Spain, and you’re not too far off.

The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes, 2021): 3.5/5

No revelations for me, just enjoyable footage of Lou Reed’s expressive face and some of the greatest music conceived by mankind. 

Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021): 4/5

Little more than a series of diverting and unprecedented provocations, which I’m fine with. Not deep but not boring. On the other hand, it is a movie about a woman who turns herself into a man each morning to be seen as normal, so is it a trans text? Who knows, man. There’s a lot of stuff flying around.

* Dune (Denis Villeneuve, 2021): 3.5/5

Like Blade Runner 2049, it’s more of a production-design sizzle reel than movie, but what production design! And the sound goes: Bwwwaaawaaaawaaa in a bass tone never dreamt of by a piece of equipment within my house. I’m happy for its success, and I’ll be happy to watch part 2. 

Scary Movie Month

Universal Horror Mini-Fest

Dracula (Tod Browning, Karl Freund, 1931): 3.5/5

Lugosi’s clawed and spiderish hands do a lot of work here, as do those famed eyes. I have zero interest in vampires really, but this is quite a fun primal text, with plenty of sexy fade-outs and almost no background music to smooth over stuff like possums and armadillos scurrying around dirt-covered and coffin-strewn castle basements, Renfield’s mad-eyed fly-gobbling, and Dracula’s snake-like or beast-like comportment. No transformations, just a bat in a window, then a shot of the girl asleep in the bed, then a shot of Lugosi standing in the room. Simple, quiet and chilling. Certainly some racism here against dirty Eastern Europeans. 

The Mummy (Karl Freund, 1932): 2.5/5

Contains one great close-up (that they re-use a half-dozen times) of Karloff looking ancient and creepily powerful. The rest of the time it’s just Karloff wearing a fez and walking a bit stiffly. 

The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933): 3.5/5

There are the bandages of course, but when they are unraveled to reveal an utter lack beneath, we have a psychological portrait as well as first-rate special effects, especially for 1933. 

The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934): 3/5

Karloff vs  Lugosi. War criminals, satanic cults, figures in suspended animation, deformed henchmen, Karloff in  black lipstick and a weird pointy hairpiece. Yet I was disappointed in its lack of intensity. The main location is kind of modern and not really scary, and the title feline amounts to nothing. 

The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935): 3.5/5

Karloff and Lugosi again. Here Karloff again plays a hideous, murderous oaf, mouth agape and arms akimbo. This time terrorizing an sleep-over dinner party (?) thrown by mad scientist Lugosi in an old estate in a storm. Is there a secret laboratory behind a bookcase that turns like a revolving door? But of course.

The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941): 4/5

The subtext hovers everywhere, vibrating. It’s The Gypsy (Bela Lugosi) who is the first werewolf, so: racism. But also Chaney Jr. (who is demonstrated to be a peeping tom) is pretty aggressively trying to get a girl to come on a walk with him when the beast comes out—along with the consequent guilt about ones sexual feelings. At 43:20, Chaney 100-percent encounters a shaky, slender guy in a remote section of a park under the moonlight and, after a significant glance is exchanged, fully macs down on the guy. Hot. The sign of the werewolf is a tattoo-like star on the body, prefiguring/commenting on early reports of (?) the holocaust with its talk of “the unclean that must be forced for our community.”

Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935): 3.5/5

An MGM movie in the house style of Universal. Begins with a shot of a hanged man, moves on to an actual guillotine death, plus a murderer’s hands sewed onto the arms of a pianist, played by Dr. Frankenstein himself. Lorre plays a brilliant surgeon with all the yearning vulnerability of a 7-year-old child.

Dracula/Horror of Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958): 3/5

Like most Hammer I’ve seen, this offers swift storytelling with plenty of event but is really too theatrical to be scary—summoning, at best, moral revulsion. Definitely some vampire = much-desired yet forbidden and punishable sex. Serious gay-panic vibes in the final confrontation between Dracula and a decidedly curious Van Helsing. 

Carnival of Souls, rw (Herk Harvey, 1962): 4/5

Naturally, the carnival location is authentically abandoned, the paragon of found production values and the voodoo of location. Amazing sequence at the 50-minute mark when our protagonist is playing the organ—calliope and church music co-mingling—and she has a revery full of eerie images of faces underwater and zombie dancers spinning, very interior and effectively uncanny. Then in the last 20 minutes, as in Lynch/Meshes, our protagonist seems trapped within the mise en scène or within a genre beyond her ken. Six years before Night of the Living Dead and three years before Repulsion. Harvey’s only feature film, made for $33,000, and it’s all up there on screen, baby!

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964): 3/5

Another grotty and creepy English crime drama staring Richard Attenborough (like 10 Rillington Place). This time he plays a weak little man who is forced to kidnap a girl by his domineering wife who believes herself to be psychic. Deliberate and hard to watch but undeniably nightmarish. 

Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava, 1964): 4/5

Anticipates/invents the giallo and slasher movies in general. Colorful and stylish, and featuring a bevy of authentically pretty models all dressed up in couture and ready to be stalked, manhandled and killed. I didn’t even realize that telephones and mannequins came in shiny blood red. Very much conflates beauty and death. Richness (not brightness) of color is from Sirk/Hitch/Powell, but I also see Lynch and Scorsese. 

Repulsion, rw (Roman Polanski, 1965): 5/5

Genius-level use of image and sound to create tone and internal psychological space. A very “Me Too” movie about how gross, skeevy and aggressive men are. Come to think if it, Rosemary’s Baby is also a very “believe her” movie, which makes Polanski’s life story extremely ironic/self-loathing. 

The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966): 3.5/5

An arty and languidly paced if psychologically intense portrait of a man with a severely burned face who gets a mask that makes him look normal (although like someone else). Identity crisis and bad behavior results. Most of the joy of it is the guy walking around Tokyo in face bandages, followed by the fitting of the mask stuff, followed by him walking around Tokyo as a different actor with make-up making his face look like a mask, followed by the guy trying to pull the mask/face off from the bottom and then walking around with half his face just flopping 

The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968): 3/5

The threat in this Hammer movie is a mind-controlling satanic cult, and the resultant chalk drawings, cloaks and other Satanic ritual stuff is fun. I’m sure there are people praising the efficacy of a series of conflicts that consist solely of adults peering at one another until one collapses exhausted, but I found it a bit cerebral and unsatisfying. 

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, rw (Dario Argento, 1970): 3.5/5

Well-told and stylish giallo—a garish murder mystery with some excellent suspense scenes. 

Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972): 3/5

Wild tonal shifts, including a strongly implied gang rape scene followed by wacky Benny Hill-type music playing over a scene of people moving unconscious bodies. Pink Flamingos-level acting and sneering exaggeration. Still, when it gets down to the business of bloody murder, it demonstrates savant-like sensitivity—and suddenly the confusion of two emotions such as wistfulness and horror creates something like depth. 

The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976): 1.5/5

So goddamn boring. Gregory Peck and Lee Remick are so stiff and bourgeois and dumb that one longs for Satan to destroy their stupid privilege, which thankfully soon occurs.

Demon Seed (Donald Cammell, 1977): 2.5/5

Proof that Julie Christie can arouse even silicon and electricity. Some wonderfully over-the-top New Flesh stuff, but it’s all pretty drawn out. This should have been Act One. Crazy to say this movie about a rapey computer is the most conventional Cammell I’ve seen.

Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980): 3/5

An ultimate document of some kind of extreme, including racist femur-chomping cannibalism and murder of the most grossly misogynistic, abhorrent and horrible. It does mine the power of the pure and documentary southern American jungle for its ample mysterious and real-feeling value. Proof? The filmmakers were accused of actually making a stuff film, or at least that’s the way the marketing went. 

Dead & Buried (Gary Sherman, 1981): 3/5

A gonzo mystery with gory scenes that are now just kind of an essay about the imaginativeness and limits of practical effects in 1981. Jack Albertson, the funeral director, turns out to be turning the whole town into zombies. Wow that was just a super spoiler.  

The Thing, rw (John Carpenter, 1982): 5/5

A movie all about what is shown and what is not, since the characters are safe as long as the camera is on them. When the camera is following one character, we don’t know what is happening to the others and therefore they are suspicious/vulnerable. Camera as protector.  

Prince of Darkness, rw (John Carpenter, 1987): 3/5

Definitely has a Hammer feel, where there’s a solid plot and it’s creepy and fun but not really scary. Unnerving and gross elements include garden sheer stabbing, a pile of beetles moving a guy around until his head falls off, self neck-stabbing, and Satan himself—all in a bland, flat, well-lit  80s palette and mise en scène. Jameson Parker is charisma-free but sports a mustache that would make the most hardened resident of Echo Park weep.  

Halloween 4 : The Return of Michael Myers (Dwight H. Little, 1988): 2.5/5

Michael Myers is wherever the camera is pointed. Power station out in the middle of nowhere? Myers. In an attic in a closet? Myers. Cop gets into a car? Myers in the backseat. The protagonist flees to the town’s elementary school, but who is there, already hiding in a janitor closet? If I saw this one by myself and a bit too young when my parents were having a dinner party in the kitchen and dining room (as was the situation when I first saw the original) would I think this was scary? I reckon so.  

Saw (James Wan, 2004): 1.5/5

I’ve enjoyed several Wan productions now, but this original offering was boring and shockingly incompetent on every level. 

Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021): 2/5

The weirdest thing is that there are a series of shadow animations beside the end credits that tell a coherent story about systematic generational racial violence and vengeance. Unfortunately the previous 90 minutes do not tell this story and instead offer an incoherent and unscary mishmash involving black fine artists and gentrification and five random white girls in a high school bathroom. Baffling. 

Horror Anthology Mini-Fest

At their best, these eliminate or at least reduce all the waiting around for the bango ending, where the monster is at last revealed and confronted. All killers, no fillers. 

V/H/S/94 – (Simon Barrett, Steven Kostanski, Chloe Okuno, Ryan Prows, Jennifer Reeder, Timo Tjahjanto, 2021): 4.5/5

I watched much of these three decadent creature features with my jaw hanging open. Swift, cheap, brutal, satirical and contemporary. You know: garbage!

V/H/S/2 (Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sánchez, Timo Tjahjanto, Adam Wingard, 2013): 4/5

More headlong craziness and violence, including more madness from Indonesian filmmaker Timo Tjahjanto, who should be given a Nobel Prize for rapid-fire depravity—then locked up. I swear these are better than any Miike. 

Asylum (Roy Ward Baker, 1972): 3/5

Each segment ends with the protagonist locked up in said mental asylum. Some nice images.

Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, 1945): 3/5

Well-regarded early horror anthology from Ealing studios. None of the episodes are particularly chilling, but at least they were all short and punchy.