by ·Comments Off on The Last Ten Minutes vol. 29: SHOCKtober 2024 part two

Is this our first SHOCKtober to feature two separate Last Ten Minutes roundups?
I’m not gonna look through the archives to find out!

Late Night With The Devil (2023, Cairnes Bros)

This got decent reviews, I avoided because of its AI scandal. A talk-show guest is getting carol-anne’d into the video realm, her priest and mom suffer grievous neck injuries and someone I’m going to assume was the show’s Andy Richter gets melted by the split-headed beastie, then the show resets and host Jack is back on set disoriented, experiencing time as clip-show. I guess demons Lawnmower-Manned the airwaves. An owl-headed ceremony leads him to a reunion with his dying wife, then wow it ends on “Keep It Warm” by Flo & Eddie. The host was David Dastmalchian, a regular of Batman and Antman movies.

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Smile (2022, Parker Finn)

With part two in theaters it’s time to admit I’m never gonna watch this. I don’t exactly know what it’s about but I bet someone smiles at the end. Sosie (of a Manson movie) is having the childhood trauma talk with her alive-again mom, who then becomes an overly tall hair-monster with a spooky Lawnmower Man voice. She sets the beast on fakey-fire, then goes home and explains her trauma to her man Kyle (one of the Red State kids, with a Downhill Racer poster). But she was dreaming that part, and now the hair-monster takes both their heads apart, and this must have cured her trauma because she smiles.

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Maxxxine (2024, Ti West)

Shootout at the Hollywood sign – this must be Bobby Cannavale dying in her arms, and another cop has been stabbed in the eye by her dying serial killer father, bringing postscript fame to her acting career, and the story fizzles out on her next movie set with Liz Debicki. On one hand I was right when I decided Ti West was bad 14 years ago, on the other, I don’t learn from my mistakes and watched two more of his features plus two anthology segments and the tail ends of four others. Why can’t I just leave Ti West alone?

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Civil War (2024, Alex Garland)

Ballistic and vehicular mayhem, the press is on the scene, and Dunst seems to know something the soldiers don’t, so her team wanders straight into the White House. The soldiers in the ensuing shootout are awfully accommodating to the photographers, then Dunst gets shot rescuing her reckless comrade. In the end they’re just like me, wanting to get real close to an action movie and take screenshots. Nick Offerman would be a pretty good pick for President irl.

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Men (2022, Alex Garland)

Suitably creepy and cool-looking as Jessie Buckley is chased by a little car with a maniacal driver, then encounters a nude forest god which gives anal birth to a screaming pregnant man-baby which gives alien-egg birth to… I’m guessing Rory Kinnear from Peterloo, who gives spinal birth to a bloody mutant Rory, who gives oral birth to, finally, a different guy (Paapa Essiedu). I looked up the word “portentious” to make sure that’s what this is, and, yup. Definitely a more suitable Annihilation follow-up than Civil War was, though in between he made the computer conspiracy series Devs.

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Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022, Halina Reijn)

I can’t believe these fuckin streamers. They’re computer programs, supposedly learning about you and recommending stuff to your tastes, but when I hit play on this it showed a promo for Maxxxine, the movie I just watched twenty minutes ago. It couldn’t be too hard to improve on this system. Anyway, Borat’s daughter and Amandla “The Hate U Give” Stenberg are still alive in a house full of their dead friends, having hushed talks in poor lighting. It’s nice of Bakalova to give us latecomers a tour of all the deaths we missed, then they play with their phones for a long while. The director’s Nicole Kidman age-gap follow-up is getting better reviews than this did.

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Paranormal Activity 3 (2011, Joost & Schulman)

Also, it’s unpleasant enough to type in the search field using the Roku’s NES-style direction pad, is it too much to ask for the rows of letters to wrap around, so I never have to hit left-arrow six times in a row? First-person-cam dad can’t find his family, but finds occult artwork in the dining room and a coven in the garage (the witches from part 5?). His wife knocks him down with gallows-swing-attack, and one of his daughters is a beastie, then a psychic witch snaps him in half. Not as jump-cutty as part two at least. The directors made the Catfish doc.

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Paranormal Activity 4 (2012, Joost & Schulman)

This one’s well-lit and in color. Wow, did anyone realize all these movies have the same girl in them? I figured each movie was about a different family. This one’s got static cameras in each room, and the jumpcuts are back. Mom gets psychically hurled into the ceiling then Johnny Exposition arrives with internet research on covens, but a longhair girl JCVDs his neck. The surviving girl seems decently famous, starring with Vince Vaughn in Freaky, but she doesn’t survive for long, the coven having grown to a mob of hundreds of suburban women. Instead of fun songs over the closing credits (Civil War had “Dream Baby Dream”) these just have a low rumble.

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Cell (2016, Tod Williams)

Prime movies have ads now? Fuck that, guess we’re skipping Paranormal Activity 6 and Five Nights at Freddy’s, but we gotta check out the ad-free Cell to complete our series of Lawnmower Man references. John Cusack is telling his kid the story of Orpheus and saying goodbye to his team before driving away in an ice cream truck and discovering that the transmission tower is surrounded by a very-CG mob of zombified cellphone addicts. He fires all his shotgun shells into one teenager and locates his own cell-poisoned kid within the mob, then blows the truck and tower and everything sky high – or does he??!? I was sorely tempted to read this book at one time, but went with The Ruins instead, damn. Movie looks like shit – this was Williams’s follow-up to Paranormal Activity 2 (a coincidence, I swear).

by ·Comments Off on The First Omen (2024, Arkasha Stevenson)

The only movie this year that I’ve begun at 4:00am. I was sick and unable to sleep, and when the rooster next door started crowing I thought “might as well put on the longest, slowest movie I’ve got.” The new nun in town is NT Free of that M. Night TV series that I can’t figure out whether I would enjoy or not, and the wide-eyed elder nun is Aquarius star Sonia Braga. NT discovers her new convent to be as suspicious as that Cuckoo hotel, as the movie brings Rosemary’s Baby (or more generously The Sect) into its Omen backstory and impregnates the youngest nun with the devil.

All movies set in Italy involve a dramatic encounter with an art restoration:

Bilge called it “actually good” and Nayman qualifies “never quite great.” But I have prequelphobia, and as much as I love quoting “it’s all for you” from the original, the callbacks here annoyed me more than the high-quality performance and hair stylings of NT pulled me in. Also appreciate the ally priest being recast as the dad from The VVitch, and the opening-scene death of the U.S. President of Rumours, anyway.

by ·Comments Off on Some Pre-1908 Cinema

Films Chronophotographiques (1889-1904, Étienne-Jules Marey)

I, who am easily amused, spent a Saturday night watching 1890s motion tests while listening to the new Maya Shenfeld album. After dropping cats from a height to see how they land, it focused on naked musclemen walking and jumping and doing olympic sports, which was less of interest. I felt like rewatching Nope, Katy brought up All Light, Everywhere. The editor saved the best for last (birds).

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The Little Match Seller (1902, James Williamson)

Like how adding film grain helps digital compositing look more natural, falling snow makes the dreamy matchlight photo effects hold together. The actor’s gesture – hands reaching out to the phantom roast turkey to hands over face crying – is really good. Even shorter than other versions I’ve seen.

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The Big Swallow (1901, James Williamson)

Early meta-film, guy with appallingly large collar gets agitated and swallows the camera and crew, beautifully done.

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Something Good: Negro Kiss (1898, William Nicholas Selig)

Something good: the woman has crazy shoulders on her dress, resists his advances for a few seconds then gets into it.

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The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906, Georges Méliès)

Alternating between sepia-toned and hand-tinted, a proto-Monty Python comedy – this is a movie that opens with an ass-kicking machine. Trick props and sets, a phantom carriage, everything transforming then demons coming out of nowhere. I put on Stereolab’s “Soop Groove #1” into “Metronomic Underground”, opened my eyes wide, and lost my mind completely. No idea what Satan is up to here, then it ends abruptly.

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The Mysterious Retort (1906, Georges Méliès)

Quite short, and I was still recovering from the satanic spell cast by the previous movie, I have no recollection of this. A lab experiment gone wrong?

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The Witch (1906, Georges Méliès)

I don’t like to say “that artist crazy, he on drugs,” I like to respect the creative process, but Georges Melies crazy, he on drugs. Lovely coloring, I dunno what to say about story – I looked up from typing that last sentence and everyone had turned into frogs or snakes.

by ·Comments Off on The Devil’s Candy (2015, Sean Byrne)

Maybe the only movie that I tried to watch the last ten minutes of, then decided not to spoil because it looked good. I still put off watching it for a few years, only remembering “metal/horror.” Everyone I follow on letterboxd has seen this but only Kenji liked it – and Kenji is right, it’s good.

Crazy Raymond plays loud guitar to drown out the voice of the devil, kills his parents, then Jesse/Astrid/Zoey buy the house and play some loud guitar but not enough, as artist Jesse becomes possessed and starts painting intricate scenes of his daughter on fire. The implication is that the devil will cause him to kill his wife and daughter, but Raymond is still the threat, returning to murder everyone, and Jesse’s visions can maybe help. Set/filmed in Texas, and pretty metal, more metal than most horror movies. The girl was in Maps to the Stars, the mom in The Thirteenth Floor. Some of the music by Sunn O))).

Shout out to Melvins:

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Advantage Satan (2007, Sean Byrne)

An early demon/metal/horror short by Byrne, bit of silliness, drunk couple fooling around on a tennis court gets trapped and killed by unseen forces.

by ·Comments Off on Errementari (2017, Paul Urkijo Alijo)

A making-deals-with-demons movie filmed in Spain featuring some really nice beards. Powerful blacksmith lives in seclusion, keeps a demon in a cage – a properly cartoonish red demon with pitchfork and tail – until the ignorant townsfolk break in and muck everything up. Rival demon masquerading as a bald government man is in there, an innocent girl with a dead mom gets mixed up in the mess, and everyone has to go to hell to sort things out.

This looked great, and the director is legit, channeling Danzig on his letterboxd photo… let’s see if we can find his short films.

by ·Comments Off on The Devil’s Nightmare (1971, Jean Brismée)

Nazi baroness dies giving birth in bombarded Berlin, the movie unconvincingly marrying perfect interiors with very rough stock footage. The baby is murdered, then in color the present-day baron speaks of a family curse, and a dirt-digging reporter gets her car pitchforked and runs headlong into the woods.

From here out, it’s your traditional story of a busload of people arriving at a haunted castle then getting killed one-by-one by a hot succubus in a revealing black dress, while the alchemist baron and his butler gradually parse out secrets. Not a generically bad horror movie though – it’s pretty much excellent from start to finish, including the ending where the devil deals with a priest to trade his soul for the bus people, then they all awaken and immediately die in a fiery bus crash.

Mouseover to manifest a succubus:
image

Brismée’s only feature, unfortunately! The writers made some 70’s porn, and this script was remade in 2012 by some low-budge Massachusetts residents. Rififi star Jean Servais plays the baron, Erika Blanc (The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave) the succubus, and Daniel Emilfork (OMG, Krank from City of Lost Children) the devil.

Naughty Krank:

by ·Comments Off on The Queen of Spades (1949, Thorold Dickinson)

A pretty ok movie, mostly notable for all the definite articles in the credits:

We’re in Russia – all the names and signs and newspapers are in Russian, then halfway through the movie they decided the setting was well established and signs start appearing in English. Captain Anton Walbrook (year after The Red Shoes) visits the card games every night but never plays because he’s determined not to lose. So he visits a creepy bookseller to learn some useful tips:

The creepy bookseller is overdoing it:

Anton learns about a terrible old woman who knows the supernatural secret to winning at games of chance (their big card game is just betting 50/50 on a single-card draw). He pretends to be interested in the pretty girl (Yvonne Mitchell of Sapphire) who works for the old lady (Edith Evans, Ghost of Christmas Past in the Albert Finney Scrooge) by plagiarizing love letters, gets close enough to threaten the old lady, who promptly drops dead, then idiot Walbrook tells the girl his whole scheme. He gets the secret of the cards from the dead woman, wins a fortune then loses it all (and the girl) the same night. Shocktober 2021 Challenge: no more movies from the British, they are simply frightened by everything.

by ·Comments Off on Lucifer Rising (1972, Kenneth Anger)

Between Demon Brother and Scorpio Rising, I got my titles mixed up and assumed I’d already seen this, either on the DVD or at an Eyedrum screening – but nope, and it’s so good, possibly the culmination of all Anger’s 50’s experiments into his 60’s rock & roll culty stuff and beyond.

Volcano eruption… fiery title rising from the ocean with nice reflection (how’d they do that)… baby alligator… bare-breasted woman in Egypt cut against colorfully-robed wolfy cult guy. I can’t accurately narrate what happens next, but I watched it a couple times.

I think that is an unknown dude named Haydn with the staff of light, and Metallica vocalist Marianne Faithfull beneath the sphinx.

Also rewatched Bobby Yeah, confirming that it is one of the greatest things that has ever happened.

by ·Comments Off on Arabian Nights (1974, Pier Paolo Pasolini)

It [was] Cannes Month… but after Bacurau I got distracted and thought I might watch the Miguel Gomes epic Arabian Nights… but first, since I’ve seen the other two features in my Pasolini “Trilogy of Life” boxed set, I guess I’ll watch his Arabian Nights. It turns out both the Pasolini and the Gomes played Cannes, so Cannes Month continues!

Zumurrud is a slave allowed to choose her own master – she chooses poor boy Nureddin, gives him the money to buy her and rent a house, but the boy immediately disobeys her and they spend the rest of the movie having adventures trying to reunite.

N, realizing he got lucky:

Z, king of the realm:

Some of those adventures: an older couple bring home a teenage boy and girl, for a bet, and watch as each kid fucks the other while they sleep. A Christian kidnaps Z and has her whipped, but she escapes and comes upon a city that makes her king, then she orders her tormentors crucified. N is kidnapped and fucked by nuns, is later told a story about Chaplin guy Ninetto Davoli who’s supposed to marry a lovely girl but falls for Crazy Budur who kidnap-marries him. A prince finds a girl locked up by a demon underneath the town and loses his shoes fucking her. A girl turns herself to fire, a prince shoots a statue, N encounters a lion in the desert, and so on.

It’s easily the best of the three, despite greenscreen effects as poor as the dubbing and losing a star for killing a pigeon onscreen. Or maybe my expectations had been lowered enough, and I knew what to expect, focusing on the authentic ancient settings and landscapes as much as the silly-ass sex comedy.

Cool sights, unrelated to the plot:

The Devil is Franco Citti, who was in all three movies along with Chaplin Guy – and they were in a fourth Pasolini-written anthology sex comedy at the same time: Bawdy Tales, directed by Canterbury/Decameron assistant director Sergio Citti. Nureddin is Franco Merli, his career launched by this movie, then ruined the next year by starring in Salo. Zumurrud is Ines Pellegrini, who also went on to Salo, but worked through the 70’s, mostly last-billed. And Crazy Budur is Claudia Rocchi, later of Yor, the Hunter from the Future.