by ·Comments Off on V/H/S/99 (2022)

Framing story starts out as some kid’s stop-motion army-guy video, nice.

1. Phony from top to bottom, a punk band goes to the basement venue where another punk band died in a fire three years ago on this very night, and gets murdered by ghouls. Director Maggie Levin “is a filmmaker with rock n’ roll roots” per her bio, argh.

2. Better: sorority pledge (girl from Synchronic) is buried alive as a hazing thing, cops chase off the aboveground girls as a rainstorm is coming through. Synchronic Girl meets a sinister ghost while buried alive while drowning while covered in spiders, oof, and all the other girls get supernaturally leaky-coffin’d next. Director Johannes Roberts made two killer shark movies and a failed Resident Evil reboot.

3. Some underlit Nickelodeon game-show called Ozzy’s Dungeon is Double Dare meets torture porn. Donna competes in a doomed wish-fulfillment game that nobody has ever won, then her surviving family turns the tables on the host, taking him into the victory cave(?) beneath the set to meet the fat-suit wishmaster, but apparently the girl’s wish was to explode the heads of her family members, like a cut-rate version of The Viewing. Directed by Flying Lotus themself.

4. Older brother Dillon of the stop-motion kid is a horny teen who films himself skating and doing pranks. Their friend Boner is an apocalypse prepper – this turns out to be unimportant, as focus turns to the hot medusa across the street who turns the boys into statues for attempting to install spyware on her new imac. Only good joke in the movie is the package delivery service being called DUI. Tyler MacIntyre also made the pd187-approved Tragedy Girls, and looking up the lead actress is how I found out someone remade Castle Freak.

5. Coven is doing a summoning ceremony, but demon Fircus interferes and drags the cameraman Troy and Nate to hell, where they meet Mabel the Skull Biter, the movie’s only good character, and scramble to return to the surface when the coven’s portal opens at midnight. Also the movie’s best segment, the only one that doesn’t look like shit on purpose, so I assume it made the top ten of Vulture’s ambitious V/H/S segment ranking… nope, Dowd got it all wrong. The Winters also made a haunted house livestream influencer movie starring Mabel.

by ·Comments Off on Szamanka (1996 Andrzej Zulawski)

Movie is off like a shot, the credits and characters both in a big hurry to get going. Iwona (a non-actor, whoa) is a chaos demon who should be followed by a cleanup crew at all times, Michael (star of Blind Chance) is a creep professor whose fiancee is out of town, and together they get the amour fou in this sordid missing link between Possession and Cosmos. Possibly the most sex-crazed Zulawski movie, though with too much synth and marching band music.

He is an anthropologist studying a just-unearthed shaman mummy, so I figured it would awaken and kill them all. I did not see it coming that she would smash his head and Hannibal his brains, then a minor character would set off a small nuclear bomb.

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 One Battle After Another (2025, Paul Thomas Anderson)

John Semley in The Nation:

From Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, Anderson borrows a basic conceit: A group of countercultural misfits, living underground, whose lives-on-the-fringe are disturbed by the return, years later, by a government tormentor operating as a stand-in for that all-American avatar of authority and oppression typically called “The Man.”
…
At first blush, Vineland seemed unadaptable in a contemporary context. Not only because of the density of the prose or the lunacy of its plot—which includes a Godzilla attack, a UFO, and a tow truck that ferries the spirits of the damned to hell—but because of its chronology … But Anderson’s film proves that these more central divisions — between freaks and squares, parents and children, the rigid brokers of authority and subversive agents of liberation — can be mapped across American history.

Josh Lewis:

Perhaps what I liked most about this After Hours-esque odyssey of Leo being a bozo father trying his best though, is that he ultimately contributes next to nothing in terms of physical help to Willa who is experiencing her own completely separate bravura setpiece, that builds itself out so patiently from so many gradually accumulated details you honestly don’t realize you’re in PTA’s version of a T2/Friedkin car chase until it’s already under way.

Israel Daramola in Defector:

I’m reminded of another great character in the film: Deandra (Regina Hall), who generates so much sadness and empathy with how she looks at and regards other characters, especially Willa, and how Anderson photographs those feelings that can’t be grasped with words on her face and then frames it in a scene. There’s so much love and care all over this movie full of anguish, explosions, and weed jokes.

Also Good: Paul Duane

Reminder to revisit Robert Daniels’s Time piece after seeing The Mastermind and Eddington.

And of course Nayman, whose Coens book I just finished and whose Anderson book is on deck.

by ·Comments Off on The Last Ten Minutes vol. 32: SHOCKtober Revisits Part 2

Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985, Philippe Mora)

Last watched The Howling in 2007, and last watched Howling II on channel 3 at a Motel 6. Howling sequels are famously the worst sequels, but who can remember which is which? Christopher Lee speaks an incantation, but only in voiceover. Despite your sister’s best efforts to control him, Vlad makes a big show of wolfing out and rushing the captives, then some guy with a shotgun easily kills both Vlad and your sister. A woman wearing insane clothes (Stirba!) throws a prop demon at a priest, who turns into a Svankmajer head, then Lee punches her in the stomach and they both spontaneously combust. Now that the… demon cultist werewolf vampires?… are dead, our romantic heroes enjoy a Cars concert. “Punk group: Babel,” man, this is not punk, it’s new wave. Vlad was in two Dollman movies and Lynch’s Dune, seems like a cool guy, and the girl who gets naked was predictably cast 30 years later by Rob Zombie.

Enter Stirba:

Stirba and her demon friend:

Stirba auditioning to be in Rawhead Rex:

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Howling III: The Marsupials (1987, Philippe Mora)

Gentle scenes of Australians enjoying life surrounded by colorful birds, did I get the wrong movie? Lead guy (Bad Boy Bubby’s dad) is surprised by an old friend who says it’s safe to come out of hiding, so BBB’s dad moves to California to teach at a school where all the students wear the same shirt. The worst actor they could find drops in to reveal the secret identities of the professor’s long-lost marsupial friends. That night one of them wins an oscar and transforms into a possum-person on live TV. At least part two had demons killing priests and Christopher Lee and Stirba, I dunno what this is supposed to offer.

The Substance was just a Howling sequel:

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Night of the Demons II (1994, Brian Trenchard-Smith)

I was last disappointed by the original in 2006, pretty sure I’ve seen both these sequels before on VHS. A girl being sexually harassed by a demon gets rescued by… a nun with nunchucks, get it? This is the movie with the holy water balloons and super soaker, I assumed that was Fright Night. They defeat demonmaster Angela with the power of their faith (ugh) then she returns as Golobulus and they simply defeat her again. Cast members also appeared in: Nemesis, Tremors, Dr. Giggles, 976-EVIL 2, Leprechaun in Space, and Slumber Party Massacre 4. At least Angela is the same Angela in all three of these dumb movies, and the director works on Trailers From Hell so I can’t stay mad at him.

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Night of the Demons III (1997, Jim Kaufman)

Angela’s teeth have got crazier, and she’s making the same deal with the survivors to trade one for many, with the same CG snakes backing her up. Hitting her with a car doesn’t help, she just transforms into a sphere of pure love and light, but fails to escape the same way when the kids drag her into a sunbeam. Not one of the Kaufmans you’ve heard of, Jim made an emmy-nominated talking cat movie.

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Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, John Boorman)

A whole bunch of Linda Blairs, and the priest is hot for a couple of them, while in a different location someone sets themself on fire. The Great Locust arrives and the house starts tearing apart as the priest (Richard “Dr. Faustus” Burton) gets his bearings and rips out Bad Linda’s heart with his bare hands, breaking the curse or whatever. “The world won’t understand… not yet,” says Louise Fletcher (Invaders From Mars) and we still don’t. I remember this movie being very bad – apparently there’s a new feature-length doc arguing that yes it’s bad, but at least it’s also interesting. I ain’t sitting through all that, but I did read the Reveal interview.

Mouseover to transform Linda Blair:
image

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Exorcist III (1990, William Peter Blatty)

Serial killer Brad Dourif and detective George C. Scott are playing Silence of the Lambs mind games in the psych ward – this is a restored version with VHS-quality deleted scenes reincorporated. Dourif has sent a demon-possessed catatonic nurse (she’s also a murderer in Creepshow) to murder Scott’s family. He gets home in time for the nurse to attack him instead, then she just stops, so Scott returns to the hospital to shoot Dourif with a gun, apparently an effective method of dealing with demonic possession. Did we know that before his Exorcist movies Blatty wrote the Tashlin romp The Man from the Diners’ Club?

Comin’ at ya:

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The Guardian (1990, William Friedkin)

While Exorcist III was in production, what was original Exorcist director Friedkin working on: an even worse movie about an evil tree cult. With help from the confounding editing, hero mom hits evil nanny Jenny Seagrove (also narrator of the New Order rock doc) with her car. The cops then tell the upset parents (nobodies, though dad was in House 1 and 2) that none of this happened. Sorry I missed Miguel Ferrer, not sorry Sam Raimi dropped out of this to make Darkman, and anyway the bloody man-with-chainsaw-versus-sentient-tree climax would be nothing new for Sam. It was all worth it for this review .

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Friday the 13th (1980, Sean S. Cunningham)

Looks like the last surviving camp counselor is fixin’ to get slain by Jason’s Mom. Nobody knows how to close doors quietly in movies. J’s M here’s-johnny’s her way into the hidey closet and gets a frying pan to the skull for her troubles. The showdown continues outside, where J’s M is cleanly beheaded by a machete. I don’t know much about horror movies so I’ll assume that’s the end of it! Oh, the (un)dead kid attacking her in a canoe afterwards was just a dream… or was it?? The mom had been in John Ford and Anthony Mann movies, and this was the director’s follow-up to a couple of kids-playing-sports movies.

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Friday The 13th Part 2 (1981, Steve Miner)

If the clumsy guy in the one-eyed cloth-bag mask is Jason, he sure grew up fast. I appreciate both movies using loon sounds whenever the action moves outdoors. Again the sole surviving girl fights back with superior weapons (a chainsaw), then tries a new tactic, putting on his dead mom’s sweater and threatening him maternally. Her friend Paul does not help her kill Jason with a machete, but he does gallantly carry her over a puddle afterwards. Ending is fun, macheted zombie Jason smashing through the window and grabbing her, then inexplicable half-minute coda where she’s fine but Paul is missing. These movies were not built to last, or to be viewed by adults – when Howling II looks better than your movie, you have fucked up. Miner went on to make House and Warlock and… Soul Man.

Comin’ at ya:

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Friday The 13th Part 3 (1982, Steve Miner)

Jason’s got his iconic hockey mask and is smashing up a barn trying to find the final girl who got away. She hit him with a shovel then lynched him, of course that didn’t work. A guy arrives and gets dismembered in under a second, then the girl finds an axe and gives the iconic hockey mask its iconic axe-hole. She wakes up in a boat the next morning to the sound of loon calls and gets pulled into the water by a zombie the cops didn’t see, precisely like the first movie.

Comin’ at ya:

by ·Comments Off on Listers (2025, Owen Reiser)

Absolute charmer of a birdwatching doc – free on youtube and better than most fest-premiering docs we’ve seen lately. Clear from the opening credits that Owen has got visual ideas to spare. His brother Quentin gets most of the face time and has got the charisma to back that up. Most importantly we see hundreds of beautiful birds.

by ·Comments Off on Salem’s Lot (1979, Tobe Hooper)

A TV movie that feels like a TV movie, except for a couple moments of the most nightmarish imagery which would stick in my head for the decade between when I first watched this until I guess Coppola’s Dracula.

But mostly it’s a TV movie, a version of Needful Things where everyone is fascinated with new shopkeeper James “Bigger Than Life” Mason, but he doesn’t sell anything and nothing happens, then eventually in the second half his Nosferatu boss arrives to kill everybody. First we’ve gotta spend a lot of time with writer Ben (played by a TV cop) fascinated with a house in town. “There’s a connection, I just know it,” says a fat cop about Ben and the house, but Ben already told us the connection, why don’t they ask him? Then there’s high schooler Mark (later of Enemy Mine) – they didn’t know about autism in 1979 but this kid loves monster movies and models and “keeps his feelings in hand.” In the end Ben and Mark will team up to defeat evil, two heroes with haircuts for which they both should be embarrassed.

Meanwhile we’ve got three hours to fill, so Ben finds himself a girl as soon as he gets into town (Bonnie Bedelia of Needful Things, haha), angering her dad Dr. Bill (head priest of Exorcist III) and her ex Ned, who punches Ben straight into the hospital. George Dzundza (Species II) is gonna murder realtor boss Fred Willard for cheating with his wife Julie Cobb (of a three-hour Brave New World), but lets Willard escape, to be instantly killed by yard monsters. Gravedigger Mike of Lawnmower Man gets bit (I saw him a couple days ago in a Rob Zombie movie), making his whitehair friend Lew Ayres (Omen II) sad.

Tobe (who would soon make Poltergeist) lingers on the writer thinking a house is evil, and maybe so, but I think it’s the foreign Nosferatu that is more evil here. It kills Ned at least, then our guys shoot James Mason to death (he’s not even a vampire), burn down the town, and leave the girl behind. I watched the sequel relatively recently, do not remember the Rob Lowe/Rutger Hauer remake, or the version last year that everyone hated.

And especially featuring Elisha Cook Jr. as the town drunk:

This movie is terrific at having characters stand next to their names

I don’t get the version of christianity where a popsicle stick crucifix can ward off evil

by ·Comments Off on The Shanghai Gesture (1941, Josef von Sternberg)

Dixie (Toothpaste girl Phyllis Brooks) arrives in Shanghai from Brooklyn, immediately runs into trouble due to being broke and clueless, has to be rescued by hat-guy Vic Mature (before his postwar breakout in My Darling Clementine). At the casino, “Mother” is Ona Munson of Scandal Sheet (not that one). Neither of these gals are no Marlene Dietrich, though Ona does call herself Lily at one point – but the movie is rescued by a delightful Gene Tierney (year after The Return of Frank James), who is the lost daughter of bigwig Walter Huston.

In fact everyone’s got Big Secrets and half the room wants to kill the other half when Mother invites all the major players to her new year’s table – between this and Mildred Pierce I met my melodrama quota for the month. Unfortunately these secrets and rivalries aren’t interesting, and the movie fizzles after a first half that was full of possibility. Rosenbaum: “Given the censorship of the period, much of the decadence is implied rather than stated.”

Mother has been watching Uzumaki:

This movie needs a restoration, I demand one:

by ·Comments Off on Serial Mom (1994, John Waters)

Kathleen Turner and Sam Waterston and Ricki Lake and Matthew Lillard are the perfect family, except mom has started making dirty anonymous phone calls to her supposed friend Mink Stole, then she escalates her naughty behavior by murdering her kid’s teacher with her car, and expands her victims list to anyone who annoys her for not rewinding videotapes, or not recycling. Turner and Waters are on top of their games here, and it’s a great movie, but if it was made as an answer to Falling Down then it might be the greatest movie.

Good Hair Scotty is Andy from Child’s Play 3:

Mom gets arrested at an L7 show: