by ·Comments Off on Night Visions, part 1 (2001-02)

Discovered a whole anthology horror series I’d never heard of before, from a couple of Goosebumps producers, hosted (succinctly) by Henry Rollins. What joy!

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Quiet Please (Joe Dante)

Nervous city boy Cary Elwes goes camping to relax, only to spend the whole trip trying to get away from noisy, arrogant camper Brian Dennehy. But it turns out Cary is the serial killer the city news had been reporting on, bad luck for Brian.

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The Occupant (Joe Dante)

Someone is intruding in divorcee Bridget Fonda’s house and moving stuff around, only enough so she’ll notice, not to tip off the police. She thinks someone is living hidden in her house – tries telling her ex, tries telling a random guy who buys her dinner when her card is declined, tries praying to god. Turns out Bridget is the person living hidden in the house – it hasn’t belonged to her since the divorce. That’s the second episode in a row where our tormented protagonist turns out to be the dangerous crazy person (and this was better than the camping story).

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The Bokor (Start Gordon)

Real clunky writing, as the cadaver assigned to a team of medical students turns out to be a bokor, “an evil voodoo priest.” But this was a fakeout by one student (the princess in Super Mario Bros.) to scare the others (a Bride of Chucky cop and a Lucky Louie regular), so her doctor boyfriend (Jason London of Carrie 2) can bury them alive for witnessing him stealing morphine. Twist: he double-crosses his girl and buries them all then goes home to his sweet morphine. Twist: Princess knew about bokors because she is one, and returns from the grave to dissect him alive.

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Patterns (Start Gordon)

Nicely apocalyptic, the best of this batch with the classiest cast. In interview with psychologist Miguel Ferrer (deep in between Twin Peaks seasons), arrestee Malcolm McDowell (in a slack period before replacing Donald Pleasence in the Halloween remakes) nervously explains that he has a contract with god and needs to do his OCD rituals or else people die. Ferrer is not convinced, so they drug and isolate the patient, then reality starts collapsing in a manner more random-cartoony than apocalyptic-horror, now Ferrer needs to take over doing the OCD patterns in order to keep the planes in the sky.

by ·Comments Off on Belly of an Architect (1987, Peter Greenaway)

Having a rough week, I considered pulling out the emergency relief film, Paddington 2, but Brian Dennehy had just died, and I’d long wanted to see it, so chose to watch the movie about a man in constant pain whose professional and personal life falls apart until he commits suicide – great fuckin’ idea.

Composer Wim Mertens does a serviceable Michael Nyman impression – or maybe that was Glenn Branca, one of his few film credits. Architect Dennehy is in Rome with wife Louisa (Chloe Webb, just off starring in Sid & Nancy) outlining the exhibition he’s preparing on an obscure French architect. Webb is pregnant, and having a blatant affair with Lambert Wilson, who is also stealing money and discrediting Dennehy so he can take over the exhibition, and whose photographer sister Stefania Casini (Jessica Harper’s murdered friend in Suspiria) is trying to seduce Dennehy. I like how Dennehy finds her room full of photographs of previous scenes, as if whenever Casini is offscreen, she’s filming the movie we’re watching.