by ·Comments Off on Castle Freak (1995, Stuart Gordon)

How did Gordon get mixed up with Full Moon Entertainment? Guess I shouldn’t act like he was in a position to choose his own studio, between Fortress and Space Truckers – at least this one’s a Lovecraft story. Probably the only time the editor of Puppet Master 2 worked with the cinematographer of Dillinger Is Dead.

Jeffrey Combs inherited a spooky castle, always a bad sign, arrives to claim it with his wife who hates him (Barbara Crampton in a thankless role) and blind daughter, and without their son who he recently killed in a drunken car crash. And inside the castle lives the titular freak, who recently murdered its keeper/tormentor, and now chews off its thumb to escape the cuffs and go exploring (finger-trauma handcuff escapes are becoming a theme this month).

Combs brings home a local hotgirl – she wanders into the castle and gets freaked (it chews her boobs off). Combs is arrested because people are going missing, and you’d think it would help his case that the freak kills two more cops while their suspect is in custody, but Combs still has to conk a cop on the noggin and escape to save his imperiled family and battle the freak to their deaths on a rainy roof.

by ·Comments Off on Bring Her Back (2025, Danny & Michael Philippou)

People seem unhappy with this movie because it’s full of cliches, is All About Trauma, and it torments and abuses and murders children. But I had a pretty good time watching Sally Hawkins learn about demonic resurrection rituals on bootleg VHS then bumble around until her plan gets so out of control that she kills herself. Also fun because both Foster Mom Sally and her cat-strangler son are dangerous, and we don’t learn until late that she has got him possessed by demons and wants to do the same with her new blind ward Piper, painting P’s older brother Andy as a problem child to get him sent away. And her cat is named Junkman, pretty good name.

by ·Comments Off on Oddity (2024, Damian McCarthy)

My second movie this week where someone runs a cursed antique shop – in this case it’s the blind sister of “Brian May” Ted’s murdered wife (Carolyn Bracken, playing both sisters, was my mother in You Are Not My Mother). On the anniversary of her sister’s death, Blind Darcy comes over bearing cursed antiques for the husband and his new hotgirl (“Do I look stupid?” “I have no idea what you look like. You sound stupid.”) Backstory ensues, the argument of whether Asylum Olin with weird eyes (who also had weird eyes in The Northman) or Asylum Ivan (The Hole in the Ground) actually did the murder is academic, since the husband definitely ordered it. The hotgirl and blind sister both die, the husband can’t help himself from ringing the little bell he was gifted, leading to the best final shot of the season.

by ·Comments Off on Orphans of the Storm (1922, D.W. Griffith)

I was kinda dreading this, but after putting it off for a couple months I hit on a music plan, put a bunch of not-terribly fast/aggressive instrumental albums in a folder, hit shuffle, and it was perfect. Righteous story of poor girl and her blind sister who come to the cruel city and get kicked around until the French Revolution arrives and solves everything. A couple mistaken identities and a pile of blustery men later, all is well.

L-R: Gishes Dorothy and Lillian

by ·Comments Off on Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988, Guy Maddin)

Cat tossing. Occasional sync dialogue. Pretty calm editing for Maddin. A variety of ancient crackling songs in different languages. Framing story is children being told the hospital’s history to distract them from their dying mother.

In quarantine from the epidemic, Einar is jealous of fellow patient Gunnar for his popularity with the hot nurses. Gunnar is a widower because he rejected his beloved Snjófridur on their wedding night when she revealed that she also had the epidemic, and so she promptly dropped dead. Now, due to their shared interest in fish bark cutting (scissoring pieces of tree bark into fishy shapes), Gunnar learns that Einar has defiled his dead wife and stolen her shears. G goes blind and starts stalking E like a vengeful ghost, and this leads to a weary showdown where they mutilate each others’ asses and faces. Maddin’s career of made-up histories starts off with a bang.

fish bark appreciation:

I belatedly realized the fish bark appreciation homage in Hundreds of Beavers:

by ·Comments Off on Heart of a Dog (2015, Laurie Anderson)

I’m figuring out who Laurie Anderson is before the Big Ears fest. This is a poem-essay film about “the connection between love and death”… still drawings and an animated Laurie give an introductory dream sequence about giving birth to her dog, then straight to the death of her mother over blurry, barely-there archive films and photos. The dog goes blind, Laurie has her make paintings and sculptures and play paw-piano (they show a long stretch of dog piano music, including live performance footage from a benefit concert), and Laurie speaks of dog perception and post-9/11 surveillance. Ends with Lou’s song “Turning Time Around” and in the closing credits you realize her real home movies were mixed with staged(?) archive-looking footage (and Chris Marker is thanked). I kinda loved this – all these years I assumed I would find it tedious. It can go either way with personal docs and poetry.

by ·Comments Off on Anatomy of a Fall (2023, Justine Triet)

Did Sandra Hüller push her husband out the window? Did he fall or jump? I don’t know – I strode in confidently seven minutes late, but there were apparently no trailers or ads so I missed the first scene or two. If anybody knows how the husband died please DM me.

All I wrote when I got home is “it’s no Sibyl.” Michael Sicinski agrees:

As is often the case [in November], we encounter a number of productions with solid pedigree and appropriate festival attention. Inevitably, many of these films are “good enough,” but never as interesting as they purport to be. These films are by no means bad, but there’s a sense that they are following well-worn paths to acclaim, striking appropriately literary poses without being formally audacious enough to really put anybody off … In the grand tradition, Justine Triet has been duly rewarded for becoming a less quirky, more conventional artist.

by ·Comments Off on Inu-oh (2021, Masaaki Yuasa)

Cursed Mutant kids meet up and share a musical connection. Tomona was blinded by the magic sword that killed his father, and Inu-Oh was born a mutant due to a deal his serial killer father made with a magic mask. Stories of mutants and curses are usually good, and Yuasa’s animation is playful and unusual, especially when visualizing how blind Tomona “sees” the world through sounds. But then after a half hour it abruptly becomes a hard rock musical… returning to sum up the kids’ stories at the end, but too late. And while some directors will shoot the plot scenes normally then make the style come alive during musical numbers, Yuasa does the opposite. The whole hour of rock & roll theatrics is full of repeated shots and movements and angles, third-rate early-MTV stuff.

by ·Comments Off on Don’t Breathe (2016, Fede Alvarez)

Another movie about criminals doing One Last Job before they retire on their earnings, but this time it’s young, disorganized burglars trying to leave Detroit. Rocky is Jane Levy, star of Evil Dead Remake, casing a house with her partners, tough Daniel Zovatto (It Follows) and meek Dylan Minnette (Let Me In). Unfortunately, the house is occupied by dangerous blind army vet Stephen Lang (VFW) who keeps a kidnapped impregnated girl in his basement, a killer dog in his yard, and a few million bucks in his safe.

Fortunately there’s not much dialogue – the two guys sparring over the girl was unconvincing, and I think there were three appearances of “Let’s Do This.” Better is the camera, which finchers around, between walls and under furniture. It’s a good looking movie, especially considering it’s mostly set within a decrepit house. The girl escapes with the money and sees a news story saying the old man lived, which explains the existence of Don’t Breathe 2.

mini-Cujo at the end: