by ·Comments Off on Two Moral Tales (Eric Rohmer)

So Rohmer’s standard scenario for the Moral Tales was: male protagonist with one girl, tempted by another. Sounds easy. Let’s go.

The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963)
Student is in love with girl Sylvie he passes on the street, finally builds up the nerve to talk to her. Then she disappears for a month. He spends his dinner hour that month looking for Sylvie, eating pastries from a bakery, and littering. Starts flirting with the pastry girl Jacqueline, finally asks her on a date, but he’s not serious about her. Suddenly Sylvie reappears, he makes a date with her the same night and stands up Jacqueline, because why waste time with her when the dream-girl is back in his life?

Short, black and white location-shot with a documentary look, no fancy camera tricks, told very straightforward with a narrator doing most of the talking. Interesting and probably a good intro to the Moral Tales, but not a great film on its own. Moral Tales producer Barbet Schroeder (who I now know better as an actor than a director) stars. Bertrand Tavernier, not yet a director himself, narrates. Michèle Girardon, who played Sylvie and starred in Eric Rohmer’s first feature in ’59, killed herself 12 years after the short was made.

Suzanne’s Career (1963)
Bertrand is kind of a shy, low-key guy. He likes popular girl Sophie, and is friends with obnoxious Guillaume. One day they meet Suzanne and Guillaume successfully schemes to get her into bed. She stays in their life constantly, so G. and B. conspire to start getting her to pay for all their outings. But she still hangs around, now she’s just broke. A few months later, G. is busy with school, B. is still trying to date Sophie, and Suzanne shows up happily married to Sophie’s ex. Her “career” was to land a husband, and given that G. and B. have made themselves look like jerks, it would seem that Suzanne wins at the end.

A good movie. Still black and white, higher proportion of dialogue to narration than in “Monceau” and mostly set in cafes and apartments, so less of a documentary feel but still very story/character based with no showoffy new-wave tricks. It seems that Rohmer is more Truffaut than Godard.

Presentation, or Charlotte and Her Steak (1951/61)
A weird one. Filmed in ’51 with Jean-Luc Godard and two actresses, then edited and overdubbed ten years later by Godard and two different actresses, and wedged into a collection of shorts that Godard made about the Charlotte character. Apparently she’s leaving “Switzerland” soon… on her way someplace hurriedly, she stops at her house pursued by Godard to have a bite to eat. He’s not allowed in, has to stand in the doorway, but she does give him some steak, then they go their separate ways. Can’t tell if the original short even had anything to do with the overdubbed story. A curiosity.

Nadja In Paris (1964)
More of a location documentary than a character study, following visiting student Nadja (her real name) through some of her favorite parts of the city.

by ·Comments Off on Pro-Life (2006, John Carpenter)

Movie starts and I am happy. Remote women’s clinic picks up a girl in trouble, then her father, a possibly dangerous anti-abortion religious nut with three gun-happy sons, drives up. Window rolls down… it’s Ron Perlman! You do not mess with Ron Perlman!

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Turns into a precinct/assault movie, which I have no problem with, but uh oh, where’s the horror? Oh, the girl was raped by demons, and her demon baby is about to be born (spoiler: it’s a flesh-colored spider with a doll head) and nothing can stop that and its demon father will rise up from the ground to claim the baby!

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So, pretty stupid. I could at least forgive it that, but that twice, twice!, a character (perlman, one son) comes up against the demon in a hallway of the clinic during the assault, gives an uh-oh look, camera cuts to demon looking all demony… then nothing. Did that low-rent demon suit not offer enough freedom of movement to take a swipe at a guy’s head? Anything? Anyway, girl shoots her baby and demon wanders off. Movie manages not to be an adequate comment on abortion, religion, clinics, fanatics, motherhood or demons.

Percussive score written by Carpenter’s son is the worst movie music I’ve heard since Goblin was in business.

Movie still gets points for having Ron Perlman in it.

by ·Comments Off on Across The Universe (2007, Julie Taymor)

Wow, can’t believe I almost skipped this. A great movie, worth it just for the songs and the underwater photography. “Come Together”, “Because”, “I Want You”, “Happiness is a Warm Gun” and especially “Strawberry Fields Forever” were visual treats. The choreography is good without being dancey, and the look of the film (for the first half, anyway) is realistic, no digital nonsense flying about.

Jim “Ewan McGregor” Sturgess is Jude, Joe “The Ruins” Anderson is his new buddy Max when he comes to America, and Evan “Rachel” Wood is Lucy, Max’s sister/Jude’s love interest. They room with a Joplinesque singer, a Hendrixish guitarist and the cutest lesbian ever and meet up later with James Urbaniak, Bono and Eddie Izzard.

Fewer big wide-shot dance scenes than uncomfortably close-up solo singing numbers. Pretty straightforward love story that uses the 60’s and the Beatles without aping their career path (the two lovers get together during the rooftop concert rather than breaking up there). Better paced than Taymor’s last two films, entertaining and interesting throughout. Quite an achievement, especially considering what a bad idea a Beatles musical sounds like.

Shot by the cinematographer of the last two Jeunet pictures and the next Harry Potter, and with the art/production people from “Far From Heaven”.

Katy loved it, and would’ve loved it even more if she knew the songs.

by ·Comments Off on Lord Love a Duck (1966, George Axelrod)

Roddy “Mollymauk” McDowall of “Planet of the Apes” and “Fright Night” is a freaky kid who digs (stalks) new student “The Real” Tuesday Weld. They become friends but not in the way that Roddy would like. He says he will do anything for her, and he does: teaches her how to get enough cashmere sweaters to join the “sweater club”, takes her to a foreign beach for spring break (where she meets hunky fellow student Bob), helps her marry Bob and arranges her honeymoon (actually he fails that last one out of jealousy), then when she tired of Bob and craves movie-star fame, Roddy kills Bob with a tractor during graduation in the opening/closing scene and sits in jail while Tuesday gets famous.

Meanwhile, the movie is somewhat of a satire on everything from education to fame to family life to other movies. Real wacky and light at times, but unexpectedly dark and serious at others, particularly when Tuesday’s drunken mother commits suicide. Similarly, Roddy’s moving in with Bob and Bob’s yogurt-enjoying mother is an obvious comedy setup, but then he turns the mom into a hopeless moaning drunk while he drives Bob crazy and destroys his marriage.

Interesting movie overall… wouldn’t call it “uneven” in a bad way, more “successfully scattershot”. Katy and I kinda liked it.

Martin West (Assault on Precinct 13) plays Bob and Ruth Gordon (Maude!) is his mom.

by ·Comments Off on Night of the Creeps (1986, Fred Dekker)

1988: I was eleven, and all sorts of wonderful horror movies would play on TV… Deadly Friend, Chopping Mall, House, Prom Night, TerrorVision… and one of my favorites was Night of the Creeps. At the time I didn’t know it was a retro/parody/tribute sort of thing… didn’t realize the comedy in horror films (Freddy’s puns aside) was sometimes intentional, and didn’t catch the references to Night of the Living Dead, the tribute to cop-on-the-edge stories, or the smooth sci-fi/horror/comedy blend (which I enjoyed in such klassics as “Killer Klowns From Outer Space”) because I was too busy being actually scared by “Night of the Creeps”. The jokester kid who figures out how to stop the brain-slugs (fire/heat), then gets infected himself and crawls away to the boiler room to do himself in? One of the most terrifying things I’d ever seen on TV.

Unbelievably, when I rewatched it today, the movie was still good. Not as scary as it used to be, but clever and high quality. There wasn’t a better killer-alien-slug movie made before or since.

Things I’d forgotten: the b/w 50’s flashback intro and the whole detective character, but not much else. Either it’s very memorable or I watched it more times than I probably should’ve in the 80’s.

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Lead characters are named Romero, Hooper, Cronenberg, Carpenter, Cameron (James? for Aliens?), Landis and Raimi – cute. He casts John Carpenter alum Tom Atkins as the troubled detective, and Joe Dante fave Dick Miller as the police armorer (even giving him Joe Dante/Roger Corman stock character name Walter). I did not notice George Clooney, rumored to have a bit part as a janitor.

Funny, Fred Dekker also wrote “House”. I’ve always thought the poster for “Creeps” (zombie hand opening a door) evoked the “ding dong, you’re dead” poster for “House”. And of course, Dekker wrote/directed another TV fave of my youth, “Monster Squad”, before killing his career with “Robocop 3”.

This is unique: referencing your NEXT film rather than your previous one
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Fake though it looks, it used to scare me:
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Your stars, Rusty Griswold from “European Vacation” and an extra from “Porky’s”:
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Below: David Paymer as “young scientist”. This film was released the same month Paymer blew minds as “Larry, scientist” in George Lucas’s acclaimed “Star Wars” trilogy follow-up “Howard the Duck”
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Dick Miller doesn’t want no trouble:
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by ·Comments Off on Dream Cruise (2007, Norio Tsuruta)

“Washingtonians” may still be the stupidest episode of this “Masters of Horror” season so far, but this one is outright the worst. The others have been falling over themselves trying to find a new twist (“I know! george washington was a cannibal! oooh, killer ice cream man and if you eat his ice cream you TURN INTO ICE CREAM!”), but this one gives us no reason to watch, recycling three tired old horror concepts and adding no new style or twist or excellence:

1. guy is afraid of a thing [water] and must confront that thing [go on a boat ride with his boss and boss’s wife whom guy is secretly sleeping with].

2. guy and boss have killed people in the past [guy’s brother drowned, boss killed his ex-wife] who come back as ghosts to haunt them.

3. things keep happening that were just a dream… or were they???!???!??????!!!?

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Guy’s dead brother wasn’t killed on purpose so in the end he helps take care of the malicious dead ex-wife. Still, guy and boss’s wife are left floating out in the ocean at night, and guy is bleeding from the leg, so I hope sharks eat them before morning.

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I only half paid attention. Writer of Ring/Dark Water (who is starting to seem obsessive about drowning) and director of Scarecrow and Ring 0. The boss played the lead in “Audition” and the not-as-good white guy starred in “Captivity”.

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by ·Comments Off on The Screwfly Solution (2006, Joe Dante)

Made me more upset/queasy than any episode since “Cigarette Burns”, and includes possibly the worst stabbing scene I’ve ever watched. No sense of humor here, it’s a dark, pure horror, sort of unexpected from the usually jolly Joe Dante. Definitely the most successful movie from this season so far (still got 5 episodes to go), more so than the relatively lighthearted “Right To Die”.

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Elliott Gould (of American History X and the Oceans movies) and Jason Priestly 90210 are scientists called in by the military to explain/study a spreading phenomenon of mass murders by men against women, seemingly tied to a hormonal virus similar to that manufactured to exterminate the screwfly. The disease spreads, seen through the eyes of Priestly’s wife Anne, until she’s one of the only surviving women, catching a glimpse in northern Canada of the “angels” that started it all.

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Really a dreadful and well-made little apocalyptic movie, a mini masterpiece up there with “Homecoming” and “Cigarette Burns”.

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by ·Comments Off on Matinee (1993, Joe Dante)

In my 23 years of watching Joe Dante movies (and 3 years of actually knowing who Joe Dante is, heh) I don’t think I’ve seen a better one. Maybe it’s just a dreamy first impression thing, and I’d be saying the same if I’d just watched “The ‘burbs” for the first time. We’ll see. Anyway, great movie.

Set in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis at the height of cold war fever, John Goodman is a monster-movie peddler (based on William Castle of “The Tingler” fame) who’s literally coming up with new ways to shock people. I thought he’d be the movie’s lead, but not really, it’s this kid who just moved into a Florida town with a father (who we never see except in photos) who’s part of the Naval blockade of Cuba and a mom and a little brother and, if he can manage it, a girlfriend at school (a budding leftist). Kid’s new friend is trying to date a girl with a dangerous ex-boyfriend who ends up getting a job running the special effects during the MANT screening and seeing the two of them together. Oh, and the nervous theater manager has a bomb shelter in the basement. Hilarity ensues.

Movie is exciting and funny and intelligent while remaining entirely wholesome (rated PG). It’s all about the love of horror films without ever trying to be a horror film… and about growing up with the movies, the way they can reflect and affect people’s moods.

The great Kevin McCarthy as a general fighting the MANT:
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Left: our kid. Right: Dick Miller, whose cohort was played by John Sayles.
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Reportedly William Castle and Alfred Hitchcock shared mutual respect… no, really.
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MANT escapes from the screen, takes a hostage:
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Apocalyptic ending:
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by ·Comments Off on Love Me Tonight (1932, Rouben Mamoulian)

Heavily accented Maurice Chevalier (it’s debatable whether he was the inspiration for the voice of Pepe Le Pew) is a tailor who made a bunch of suits for a viscount (Charles Ruggles of “Trouble In Paradise” the same year) who never pays the bills. Maurice goes up to the castle to collect and the viscount, afraid of letting the count & duke know about his debts, fakes that Maurice is a royal visitor. Maurice falls for the princess (Jeanette MacDonald, who starred in some Lubitsch pictures incl. two with Chevalier) and the class warfare begins.

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A bunch of songs but the only ones I remember are the percussive street-life open (one of those things like in “delicatessen” or “dancer in the dark” where everyday sounds form music) and the number near the end, “the son of a gun is nothing but a tailor!”

Cute movie, would watch again. I’m not as blown away as I was prepared to be (one of the 100 greatest films ever, etc) and Katy, as she always does when I pick the musical, said it doesn’t count as a musical.

Myrna Loy:
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