Review – The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

As is not uncommon with Lon Chaney pictures, Lon Chaney is the main draw of this classic silent movie. Indeed, this time around his makeup is actually a little too good. Quasimodo comes across as dangerously mad, a menacing monster rather than a misunderstood hero. Beyond Chaney’s brilliant work, the picture is a fairly typical telling of Victor Hugo’s familiar tale. Clearly the studio spent a chunk of change on the production, particularly the crowd scenes. The result is impressive for a silent movie. Worth seeing

My eight favorite Halloween movies

Just about any horror movie ever made could arguably be a good movie to watch on Halloween. However, this list is made up of movies that meet two additional criteria. First, they should have an October feel to them. The viewer should be able to feel the air grow colder and smell the smoke of burning leaves. At the very least, part of the movie should be set during autumn.

Second, the movie should somehow reflect the pre-movie pastime of telling ghost stories around a campfire. Plots should be simple and straightforward. Emphasis should be on the creepy, not necessarily the gory. It also wouldn’t hurt for the movie to be okay to watch with the whole family in the room (though I admit two or three movies on the list flunk that standard).

 

Halloween – Well, duh. Here we have that perpetual childhood favorite, The Boogeyman. Only here he’s real, come back to his old hometown for his favorite night of the year. This picture is actually fairly tame by current standards (though still maybe a bit much for pre-teens). The body count is low. The blood flows, but not by the bucketful. But back in 1978 it helped give birth to generations of slasher movies with supernatural villains. And yes, I’m talking about the John Carpenter original, not the Rob Zombie remake.

Creepshow – In the finest campfire tradition, here we get five short stories instead of one long yarn. Writer Stephen King modeled these stories from the immortal mould (or mold, if you prefer) established by William Gaines’ EC Comics (which also spawned the “Tales from the Crypt” TV series), and director George Romero gives the production a distinct comic book flavor.

Sleepy Hollow – Washington Irving’s classic tale of the Headless Horseman gets a new twist at the hands of master-creep Tim Burton. The original made a nice Disney cartoon (which you might consider adding as a warm-up), but the new take on the familiar story adds some entertaining elements to the mix. With Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci in the lead roles, this one has the cast that will be most familiar to 21st-century audiences.

Something Wicked This Way Comes – Sure, this one’s got some flaws. It’s one of those annoying movies that looks as if it was directed by a committee that never could quite manage to agree on what it was supposed to be. The result is stiff in spots and jumpy in others. But author Ray Bradbury’s “October People” are the heart of Halloween, the dark forces that roam the countryside as the evenings grow longer. Here they’re at their worst, masquerading as something innocent: a harmless carnival for children. Jonathan Pryce does an especially good job as Mr. Dark, the story’s arch-villain.

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors – No Halloween would be complete without at least one dreary old British horror picture, and this is one of the best. It’s another anthology, serving up a spooky story salad with something for everyone: a werewolf, a killer plant, a vampire, voodoo, and a disembodied hand out for revenge. The movie was directed by Freddie Francis and stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, all three staples of the low-budget English horror sub-genre.

The Fog – Ah, if only the good people of Antonio Bay hadn’t cheated those cranky lepers out of their money, they wouldn’t have to bar their doors and windows against a little night mist. I don’t want to overload you with Carpenter movies, but the list needed a good ghost story. And this one does the trick. What the production lacks in bloody violence and special effects it more than makes up for with a solid script and decent acting. Here’s another good example of an original that holds its own against a flashy, tech-intensive remake.

The Evil Dead – Send the kids off to bed before screening these last two. Here’s the no-budget masterpiece that gave Sam “Spider-man” Raimi his start. Though the production values are about as low as you can get, this picture has chills you can’t buy with the world’s biggest expense account. The plot – college students on a weekend trip to the back woods accidentally evoke bloodthirsty demons – takes me straight back to the sort of stories my friends and I would make up during sleep-overs when we were kids.

The Exorcist – Though this one’s famous for the big, dramatic stuff, I like the small touches. The Iraq sequence in the beginning is way creepier (and scarier, if you think about it) than all the soup-puking demon junk that happens later in the picture. This is the least light-hearted production of the lot, its seriousness a grim reminder that lurking in the background of Halloween is something more sinister than donning a costume and bobbing for apples.

Review – The Informant!

Industrial espionage isn’t as inherently fascinating as the international intrigue kind more often found in films, but it still has more potential than this movie manages to realize. At its core this is the strange story of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a mid-management chemist for ADM who went to the FBI to expose price fixing in the international lysine market. But rather than just tell the guy’s story, the filmmakers start packing on a bunch of give-me-an-award nonsense. For example, Damon is clearly trying to enhance his waning credibility as an actor by pulling a Raging Bull weight gain (and doing a mediocre job at it). And that’s characteristic of the production as a whole. The quirkiness is neither funny nor intriguing enough to make up for the fact that this is a feature length movie about price fixing in the international lysine market. Mildly amusing

Review – The Stranger Beside Me

I’m a little surprised that a movie based on Ann Rule’s book about Ted Bundy – and with Rule’s name all over it as well – would turn out to be so hard to follow. To be sure, all Bundy’s murders and escapes from custody make his criminal career a bit hard to track. But we literally had to haul out the Wikipedia entry to keep straight who he had and hadn’t killed at any given point in this movie. In the filmmakers’ defense, they only had a short amount of time to tell a complex story. And for a straight-to-video production, this is a reasonably good portrait of a woman’s slow realization that a man in her life is actually a brutal monster. Mildly amusing

Review – The Six Degrees of Helter Skelter

Okay, let’s see. The Manson Family murdered Sharon Tate. She was in Fearless Vampire Killers with then-future-husband Roman Polanski. He directed and appeared in Chinatown with Jack Nicholson. And he was in A Few Good Men with … oh, never mind. If you’ve ever had the inclination to take one of those Los Angeles murder tours of the Tate / LaBianca sites, this video should simultaneously let you know what to expect and convince you that they aren’t worth the money. An obsessive Manson fan (Scott Michaels) wanders down streets and peers over fences in search of killing-connected locales, many of which have been either totally demolished or remodeled beyond recognition. Indeed, the only place the camera enters (other than some footage from 10050 Cielo Drive obtained from Trent Reznor) is the abandoned husk of the Family’s Barker Ranch hangout. Toss in some autopsy records easily found online and you’ve got a movie? Apparently not. See if desperate

Review – Neverwas

I began this viewing wondering why I’d never heard of this movie. Clearly it had a good-sized budget, enough to pay for quality cinematography and buy a handful of big names for the cast. But perhaps that was the problem. The picture sets up as one of those inner child productions that create an elaborate fantasy world realized via hearty doses of expensive effects work. Either they didn’t have the money to pull that off or they deliberately eschewed it, because it never happens here. Instead this is the pretty but grim tale of a psychiatrist (Aaron Eckhart) who returns to work at the mental hospital where his father (Nick Nolte) committed suicide decades earlier. There he encounters two fans – a patient (Ian McKellen) and a childhood acquaintance (Brittany Murphy) – of his father’s work, a children’s book with the protagonist as the Christopher Robin hero. The set-up isn’t bad. It just never goes much of anywhere. Mildly amusing

Review – These Are the Damned

Though this has no official tie to the Village of the Damned set, clearly Hammer wouldn’t object if you drew that connection on your own. The “monsters” are a group of children born resistant to radiation. So they’ve been scooped up by a creepy government scientist and hidden at a secret underground lab where they’re raised to serve as the sole survivors of a nuclear war. However, the experiment unravels when a civilian couple being pursued by the woman’s possessive Teddy Boy brother (Oliver Reed) stumble upon the operation. The studio appears to have spent little time or money on this production. Mildly amusing

Naming my last nerve after Ronald Reagan

After last week’s blast from the baseball past, I took a few minutes to go back and check for other things I thought I’d posted on the Lens years ago. I found a few things here and there, but nothing that had a burning need to see the light of day.

Except this old column. A version of this Reagan rant was originally published in the Kansas City Kansan some time ago. Fortunately, the Gipper’s passing didn’t manage to successfully reignite efforts to get his wizened visage stuck on our money, so perhaps the danger has passed.

 

No doubt about it. Ronald Reagan doesn’t have enough shit named after him yet.

Sure, he’s got an office building in the middle of downtown D.C. But it’s a small office building, at least in comparison to Langley, Crypto City or the Pentagon. Besides, even Reagan’s most simple-minded supporters must at some level be able to recognize the problem with naming an eternal monument to out-of-control federalism after a man who railed about big government between the breaths he used to inflate a giant wading pool filled to overflow with Byzantine bureaucracy and bloated bail-outs. Better they should have named it the Garn-St. Germain Office Building.

He’s also got an airport. Used to be National. Now it’s Reagan. How touching. One can now take a direct flight from John Wayne Airport in Texas to Ronald Reagan Airport in Virginia. If they’ll just name the goose-poop-coated park to the north of the airport after Roy Cohn, one will be able to make a patriot’s weekend of it.

A nice tribute, but wait. Again, as airports go this one’s a bit on the small side. And as close as it is to Washington landmarks, in the wake of Sept. 11 it’s in constant danger of closure, kept open only by prominent pols with grumpy constituencies. And inappropriateness once again rears its ugly head, this time in the form of an airport named after Ronnie the PATCO Slayer. So as a permanent homage to a man as great as Former President Ronald Reagan, I’m afraid it simply won’t do.

No. We need something more important. More permanent. And if possible, something more prominent. Something that’s in the collective face of the American people.

Postage stamp? Nah. Every mickey moe gets a postage stamp. Bad authors. Athletes. Heck, even women and homosexuals get postage stamps. Heck, for that matter I think the Post Office now has an option that allows customers to customize their own stamps. Where’s the glory in that?

On the flag, perhaps. In place of all those tacky white stars. Nah. Too obvious.

The money. Yeah, how about that? How about putting the Gipster on our money someplace? That way every time anyone so much as ventures into a 7-11 in search of the finest Slurpees known to humanity, she or he will have to pay homage to our dear former leader.

I guess it goes without saying that Republicans have already tried this once. The scheme was to quietly drop Reagan onto the front of the ten dollar bill. The effort came to naught, but the matter is by no means settled.

So where precisely might Ol’ Turkey Neck end up? Coins? Bills? What denomination will those of us who remember his presidency a bit more clearly than most never be able to use in commercial transactions ever again?

The group most directly concerned with the answer to these thorny questions is a difficult set to interview. As pointed out a minute ago, everyone who currently occupies a spot on our money is no longer among the living. While that might pose an insurmountable obstacle for an ordinary, scrupulous journalist, I’m not one to shrink at the prospect of interviewing the dead. Not even guys who have been dead for quite some time. Never you mind how I pulled it off. Trade secret.

But to be honest, a handful of them demurred at the prospect of being interviewed. It goes without saying that the Big Three weren’t about to waste their precious time on a reporter from 8sails.com. George “Welcome to the Hall of Presidents” Washington wouldn’t return phone calls. Ditto Honest Abe. And Thomas Jefferson’s people deigned only to fax me a press release extolling the boss-man’s contributions to the Declaration of Independence and so on. The only reference to currency was a brief diatribe about the indignity of placing such a great patriot on a piece of money used primarily by those who bet on horse races.

On the other hand, even the wealthiest stock swindler or most fanatical Moral Majoritarian wouldn’t dream of trying to bump one of the Big Three. Thus my failure to get any of them to chat with me wasn’t all that much of a loss. Likewise the guys who appear on the bills discontinued in 1942 seemed like dead ends. In a way it was a shame, because I’ve heard Salmon P. Chase is so desperate for attention that he’ll talk for hours to anyone who will listen.

Alexander Hamilton was an entirely different question. The last time conservative simps tried to boost Ronnie onto a bill, they targeted the ten. That’s the spot in the line-up currently occupied by Hamilton. And Hamilton seriously didn’t want to talk about it. Phone call after phone call went unanswered. But a good reporter doesn’t give up on an essential source, and as most likely victim Hamilton was essential for this article.

Finally he caved. Begrudgingly – very begrudgingly – he gave me five minutes.

“Okay, look,” he began. “Here’s the record. I co-wrote the Federalist Papers. I’m well known as the author of Number 78, which supplied the foundation for the American judicial system. I was first Secretary of the Treasury. That alone should cement my spot on the ten for all eternity. And I had one hell of a political career going before I was gunned down by that loser Burr.

“Now I ask you: what the heck did Mister Fabulous Ronald Reagan ever do that compares to my record? That glad-handing, traitor-coddling nincompoop! What are they going to put on the back of the ten? Not the Treasury, which he practically gutted for his precious S&L bailout. Maybe they could decorate it with a picture of the Stinger missiles Mister So-Smart sold to the enemies of the American people. Too bad Reagan wasn’t born a couple hundred years earlier. I bet he and Burr would have gotten along just fine.”

There was more, but it was mostly an extended rant about Aaron Burr that didn’t really have much to do with the matter at hand.

That left me with Jackson (the 20), Grant (the 50) and Franklin (the 100).

Andrew Jackson preferred not to talk on the phone – let alone in person – but he was at least cordial enough to answer an email query. The upshot of his response was that he considered Reagan’s threat fairly small potatoes compared to “the bloody British at the town of New Orleans.”

Ben Franklin was simultaneously more and less responsive. In his defense, I should point out that the Big Three would most likely be the Big Four if Franklin had ever been elected Chief Executive. So really Ben doesn’t have all that much to worry about. But even if he’d had cause for alarm, I seriously question whether he could have expressed it. The poor ol’ guy spends most of his time nowadays hanging around a South Street bistro and speaking mostly in platitudes. He’s all too happy to share them with anyone who asks. They just don’t always match the occasion. For example, his response to “What do you think about the idea of putting Reagan on the currency?” was “A penny saved is a penny earned.” “What if he replaced you on the hundred dollar bill?” “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” “Do you think your lifetime achievements should guarantee you an eternal spot on America’s money?” “Dear Prudence, won’t you come on out to play?” “What’s your opinion of Reagan’s contributions to history?” “I’m with stupid.”

Looking back now, maybe he was making more sense than I initially realized.

Of all the interviews conducted for this article, by far the most intriguing was the last. Ulysses S. Grant insisted that I meet him in – of all places – a bar. I was on the wagon at the time, but Grant good-naturedly maintained that as long as I was buying he wouldn’t hold it against me if I didn’t partake. So I didn’t. But he did. Liberally. I think Grant somehow sensed if the assault on Hamilton fell through, the fifty would almost certainly be next. So by the time he had a fifth or so of Jack in him, he was more than ready to share his candid opinion of Mommio Vaquero.

“I can’t believe they’d ever even think of replacing me.” A belch, exaggerated for effect. “I mean sure, I wasn’t the greatest president there ever was. But hey, there’ve been what like 40 presidents now? So that’s me and 38 other guys who weren’t the greatest president there ever was. That Reagan dumbfuck is sure as hell down here with me somewhere.

“And consider my record before I was president. At the head of the Grand Army of the Potomac, I kicked much ass. Much ass, damn it! That sorry bastard Bobby Lee could have told a story or two to anyone who wants to take my place on the fifty. I had that cocksucker in a Bulgarian head-lock! Reagan? Fuck it! Bring him on! I’ll spank that dumbass like a red-headed stepchild!”

At this point in the conversation Grant cut a real thunder-clap of a fart. Then he tried to blame it on me, accusing me of cramming a dead moose up my ass. I didn’t respond, hoping that he’d get back on track once our fellow patrons stopped staring at us.

“Yeah, I was a real ass-kicker in my day,” he continued. “And what did that motherfuck Reagan ever do? Wasn’t he some kind of actor or something? They should put his sorry ass on the three dollar bill, if you take my meaning.”

Another loud belch. Another long draw from the bottle. A lengthy diatribe on the subject of anal sex. And so it went.

So farewell to you Ronald Wilson Reagan, wherever you are. I just hope my eternal tribute to you will never have to be a well-worn phrase: “Actually, could I have two fives back rather than a ten? Thanks.”

My eight favorite H.P. Lovecraft stories

Though not as well-known as Poe (you probably never read a Lovecraft story in a high school English class), the works of H.P. Lovecraft have arguably been much more influential on genre fiction and filmmaking. Whole volumes have been written about the man’s work and its effect on popular culture, many of which are lurking on the shelf above my desk as I type this and daring me to dig into them.

Historical importance aside, I admit that I have a lot of personal affection for his work. The first time I ever got a story published – at the ripe old age of 16 – was in a small press anthology devoted to tales with Lovecraft’s “cosmic horror” as a theme. I’d tracked down his writing in order to get a feel for the conventions, and after “The Lurking Horror” and “Rats in the Walls” I was hooked.

Of course even the most ardent fan must acknowledge the flaws in Lovecraft’s writing. He was a racist even beyond what would be expected of an average white person growing up in early 20th century New England, and this unfortunate trait infects some of his work. He also sometimes suffered excessive influence from the stuffy preciousness Lord Dunsany, one of his literary heroes. And don’t even get me started on his addiction to adjectives. The shambling! The gibbering!

And Lovecraft is the God Emperor of authors who write long stories building up to a conclusion that even the dumbest reader already figured out pages and pages ago. His destinations are fascinating, but you’ll tend to get there before he does.

Faults notwithstanding, Lovecraft is worth reading as one of the first and still one of the best authors to write non-gothic horror. Vampires, werewolves, mummies, drafty castles, swooning maidens (indeed, women of any stripe) are few and far between. Instead, Lovecraft starts with a simple yet awe-inspiring notion: that the universe doesn’t revolve around the human race. He proceeds to weave an entire pantheon of god-like beings who are either mildly antipathetic or wholly indifferent to the protagonists of the tales.

This denial of the ontological-good-automatically-triumphs formula that served storytellers for millennia dovetailed nicely with the young 20th century, from the pyrrhic victories of World War One to the questions raised by quantum physics about the fabric of reality. Lovecraft’s fiction is the stuff of nightmares, not the kind where you accidentally forget to wear your pants to work but the kind when you wake up one morning to discover that everything you know is wrong.

The beautiful thing about the beasts of this brave new world is that they don’t come with easy answers. They don’t seem to want our blood, and they generally can’t be expelled with crosses or silver bullets. They’re difficult if not impossible to figure out, and to make matters worse they aren’t always consistent from story to story. Even their names are impossible to pronounce.

In a universe gone mad, these stories make perfect sense.

 

Nyarlathotep – We’ll begin the list with an “appetizer,” a short piece Lovecraft wrote after awakening from a particularly strange dream. His recording of a nightmare-like parade of bizarre sights and sounds is more poetic than most of his actual poetry.

The Lurking Fear – Having no sooner sung the praises of cosmic horror than I’m forced to admit I like some of his less overwhelming stuff as well. This tale concerns a family so deeply ruined by decadence and inbreeding that they’ve transformed into mole monsters. As a teen I had a great ambition to make a movie out of this, and I still think it has cinematic potential (though the only film version I’ve ever seen suggests otherwise).

Pickman’s Model – Another favorite from my youth. An artist paints pictures of horrible monstrosities that are just a little too realistic for the comfort of the New England art world. This tale is tailor-made for anyone who fancies himself an intense, angry, outsider artist.

The Shadow over Innsmouth – At first I didn’t care much for this one. But like a shambling, gibbering fungus from another dimension, it sort of grew on me. With the dexterity of a paranoid schizophrenic, Lovecraft manages to spin his hatreds of both inbreeding and miscegenation into a single ugly thread. And no matter how many times I read the story, the end just flat out sucks (I even wrote a story – one of my few complete ventures into fiction – exploring how in such a situation a normal human would respond differently than a Lovecraftian narrator). On the other hand, I do like a good sea monster story. And the monsters rock, no matter how creepy their origins might be.

At the Mountains of Madness – This is the longest story Lovecraft wrote (either this or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, I can never remember which one holds the record). And it’s a glaring example of what I said above about the author telegraphing his moves so copiously that he ends up taking far longer than necessary to get where he’s going. On the other hand, it does get off to a heck of a start. I’m a sucker for stories set in Antarctica, so I might have liked this more than I should have. But most of all, this is one of the author’s more successful uses of “cosmic horror.” The protagonists’ discovery of a vast, frozen, empty city leads to some disturbing conclusions about the origins of humanity and the dangerous presence that may still lurk a bit too close for comfort.

The Call of Cthulhu – The list wouldn’t have been complete without this one. Cthulhu has become the Zeus of the “Yog Sothery” pantheon (though I’m not sure Lovecraft intended to place him in that role). This story lends its name to a role-playing game, a video game and at least one really good movie. And of course Cthulhu himself has become a minor pop culture phenomenon, showing up everywhere from the teddy bear aisle at the toy store to strange songs about narwhals. With that in mind, this story might best be considered a “humble origin.” It’s actually three stories in one, each of which would have done just fine on its own. We get strange relics, violent cultists, and an island thrust up from the bottom of the sea bearing with it something that should have stayed drowned and forgotten. I can see why this one is so popular. It’s Lovecraft at his most Lovecraftian.

The Color Out of Space – On the other hand, this one is Lovecraft at his least gothic. “The Color” isn’t even a monster in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s an undefined infection – though even the germ analogy sells it short – that comes to Earth on a meteor and begins to spread. Think “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” only without the comforting familiarity of moss.

The Whisperer in Darkness – With all due respect to the many beloved tales that didn’t make this list of eight, this one’s my favorite. I love the theme (about which I can’t say much without giving too much of the story away). I love the atmosphere. But even more than that, I love the balance. Throughout his career Lovecraft struggled to create just the right mix of reality and horror. Many of his stories are “okay, that’s way too much for me to accept,” while others are “wow, is that all there is to it?” For my taste, The Whisperer is neither too hot nor too cold, neither too hard nor too soft. It’s cosmic horror brought down to a personal level, and that’s where I find it most effective.

Review – The Hot Chick

Okay, I think I have the Happy Madison recipe figured out now. Start with a dozen gallons of stupid. Add a pinch of something “borrowed” from an old SNL sketch. Glaze with a thin topping of Afterschool Special social conscience and bake for an hour and a half. This time around we get some kind of weird message about gender roles out of the tale of a snotty cheerleader (Rachel McAdams) who gets Freaky Friday’d into the body of a petty criminal (Rob Schneider). Hilarity fails to ensue. See if desperate

Review – Robin Hood (2010)

For all the massive amounts of time, effort and money the studio poured into casting, writing, effects and just about every other aspect of this grandiose production, dozens of better movies might have been made. Though this isn’t the worst version of the Robin Hood story I’ve ever seen, it was nowhere near as good as it should have been. I liked the idea of setting this up as a “prequel” explaining ever so slowly just how a kind-hearted archer returning from the crusades ended up as one of history’s most famous outlaws. Unfortunately, the explanation apparently requires a whole lot of English politics, which seriously throws off the production’s pace. Further, Ridley Scott demonstrates once again that he has no idea how to direct a battle scene. I suppose this was entertaining enough for what it was. I just kinda wish it had been something else. Mildly amusing

Review – Above Suspicion

As a horror movie buff, I’m used to Joan Crawford on the aging down slope of her career, taking any crappy job that would pay the bills and keep her in front of the camera a little longer. So it was weird to see her as the young, wise-cracking heroine of a World War Two spy movie. She and Fred MacMurray team up to play a vaguely Nick-and-Nora-Charles-esque couple asked by His Majesty’s government to detour from their European honeymoon to help track down a missing agent. Though they take to the task with brio, the plot swiftly mires in a relentless parade of secret messages stuffed in books, rendezvous triggered by watchwords and other mediocre bits of skullduggery. This isn’t the worst propaganda picture I’ve ever seen, but it isn’t exactly the best either. Mildly amusing

Review – Helter Skelter (1976)

If you see only one movie about the Manson murders, it should probably be this one. To be sure, you have to take this as the one-sided version from then-deputy-DA Vincent Bugliosi (who I think makes an uncredited cameo as a crime scene photographer early in the picture). All the actors playing Family members deliver completely over-the-top performances, and appropriately enough Steve Railsback outdoes them all as the man himself. As one might imagine from a three-hour-long production that originally ran as a two-part miniseries, coverage is reasonably thorough but bogs down in spots. I’m particularly fond of the flat, almost pseudo-documentary feel and the minor-key, 70s-sounding soundtrack. They both served to remind me how much the whole Manson thing freaked me out when I was a kid. Mildly amusing

Review – Red

This plays out like a comic book combination of The A Team and The Bucket List (and if you’re waiting for a link to an 8sails review of The Bucket List, you may be waiting awhile). A superannuated super-operative (Bruce Willis) learns the hard way that he’s on someone’s hit list, so with a woman he’s been pestering in tow he heads out across the country in search of compatriots and answers. Along the way he picks up an old war buddy (Morgan Freeman), a nutcase (John Malkovich) and an assassin (Helen Mirren) who help him set things right. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the action sequences. Mirren was quite good, and everyone else was adequate to the task. Even Willis managed not to offend too badly. Mildly amusing

Abandoned – Freaked

Clever? Stupid? Clever? Stupid? Clever? Nope, sorry. Stupid. 15 minutes.

Review – Return from Witch Mountain

Disney must have hoped for box office success with this witless nonsense based on the popularity of the first Witch Mountain picture and maybe a little boost from the Close Encounters mania. Though the original wasn’t exactly Citizen Kane, the witless script and unenthusiastic performances by the cast doom this effort from the start. Parking their UFO in the middle of the Rose Bowl (which apparently nobody notices), the kids from the first one take a vacation in the big city. They’re swiftly separated when the bad guys kidnap boy and girl falls in with a quartet of street-gang-wannabe nerd brats. The experience is transformed from ordinary Disney 70s live action crappy to genuinely painful by the total squandering of the talents of both Christopher Lee as a mad scientist and Bette Davis as a dotty old villain who absolutely will not shut up about how much she’d like to lay her hands on some money. If you have to do a Witch Mountain picture (and mind you, I said “if”), just stick with number one. See if desperate

Review - Fat Man and Little Boy

Though the title makes it sound like the movie is going to be about the bombs, it actually follows a more predictable route by focusing on the relationship between General Leslie Groves (Paul Newman) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz), the fathers of the atomic bomb. And as one might expect, the main theme is the crisis of conscience experienced by “Oppy” and his egghead crew in the face of the military’s desperate need for the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Production values are good and coverage is thorough, though the tale does tap dance around a few of the more sinister questions raised by this particular union of science and war. Mildly amusing

Review – The Art of Action

Considering the “Starz/Encore presents” up front and Samuel L. Jackson doing the narration, I was expecting another run-of-the-mill assemblage of scenes from martial arts movies I’d seen a hundred times. So I was pleasantly surprised when this turned out to be a thoughtful, interesting documentary about the development of the martial arts genre. Most of the emphasis is on China, but the coverage is thorough, going all the way back to the suppression of the Shaolin temple and the spread of its arts to the Chinese opera. The picture also included footage from the silent era, which showed how little the genre has progressed in many ways. To be sure, Jackson’s pseudo-hip commentary isn’t particularly welcome. But this turns out to be a good movie despite him. Worth seeing

Review – The North Star

In the brief period during World War Two when the Soviets were our allies, Hollywood gave its left wing free reign to make a handful of pictures extolling the virtues of Marxism in the face of Hitler’s advancing armies. This movie is a prime example. For the first third of the movie happy Ukrainian peasants sing and dance with Eastern European ethnic glee so excessively that they left me longing for any disruption. Unfortunately, when it comes it’s one of the few things in the world worse than witless rural proletarian idylls. A cast of minor celebrities – including Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan and Erich von Stroheim – do what they can with the script, but the simple-minded propaganda is more than they can overcome. It didn’t help that TCM’s print wasn’t exactly the best. See if desperate

My eight favorite Edgar Allan Poe stories

Edgar Allan Poe is strongly commended to your attention by three facts: he was a brilliant writer, his writing is almost without exception short, and he’s been dead long enough for the copyright to lapse on his work.

That makes Poe’s stories perfect for Halloween. They’re a great experience whether you’re reading them by yourself or aloud to a group. And thanks to Project Gutenberg, the price is hard to beat.

To be sure, his oh-so-19th-century writing style may be a bit baroque for some modern audiences, particularly the maturity-challenged. And a dictionary is a handy thing to have nearby. On the other hand, Poe is one of a small number of authors who require patience to read and actually reward the effort.

I suppose I’d look more sophisticated if I populated this list with the author’s more obscure tales, long discourses with mummies about modern technology and the like. But his more famous tales are beloved for a reason: in addition to their literary merit, they’re good fun. Or at least good chills.

The Cask of Amontillado – Of all the revenge stories I’ve ever read, this is the revenge-iest. Poe gives us no indication what “the thousand injuries of Fortunado” might have been, but they must have been some bad stuff to merit walling the guy up alive. Still, who among us hasn’t secretly entertained the desire to do something really nasty to one of the jerks in our lives? In addition to the chilling deed itself, this tale also features some of the author’s legendary dry wit (such as the jerk’s repeated insistence that “Luchesi couldn’t tell amontillado from sherry”).

The Pit and the Pendulum – On the other hand, being on the receiving side of the torturer’s art isn’t so great. Poe’s version of the Spanish Inquisition is more artistically inclined – or at least more elaborate – than the real thing. For a short story, this does an excellent job of capturing the “long agony” of waiting to die, sweetened and poisoned by the faint hope that there might be a way to escape the relentless inevitable.

The Imp of the Perverse – Okay, here’s one brief nod to Poe’s more obscure, philosophical stuff. The piece ends with a brief, mediocre tale of a murderer undone by his own weakness. But the rest of the text discusses the peculiar human tendency to do the wrong thing simply because it’s the wrong thing to do. And what a great name for this tricky phenomenon.

Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether – Yeah, this is the original poster child for tales in which the reader figures out what’s going on well before the characters in the story tumble to the truth. Nonetheless, it’s still a bit of good fun. The inmates taking over the asylum, indeed.

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar – Of all Poe’s many weird scenarios, this is one of the weirdest: what would happen if you hypnotized a guy right before he died? This was probably even scarier back when “mesmerism” was new and poorly understood. Because if Valdemar’s awful fate was actually plausible …

Hop-Frog – Misfits of the world, fear no longer. This is the forerunner of “Spurs” (the tale that gave birth to Freaks), all tales of innocent folks picked on by “normal people” for being different. Unlike Fortunado, here we know exactly what the bad guys did to deserve what they get. And boy do they ever get it.

The Tell-Tale Heart – Once again the tables turn. The nameless narrator murders his housemate merely because he can’t stand the old guy’s filmy eye (in the killer’s defense, Poe’s description of the eye does make it sound pretty gross). But then our old friend the Imp starts whispering in his ear.

The Masque of the Red Death – This is hands-down my favorite piece of Poe, the one I would turn into a movie if I had the time and resources. The obnoxious rich jerk who needs a good come-uppance. The bizarre, colorful chambers of the prince’s palace. And of course the Red Death. This is over-wrought gothic prose-poetry at its finest.

Strange things were afoot at the Circle K

This Lens is doubly inappropriate because it’s about baseball and it’s at least two years old. However, I was surprised a couple of days ago when I was asked where it was on the site and it turned out I never posted it. So better late than never.

A couple of years ago the Royals ran a promotion at the stadium in conjunction with Circle K convenience stores. The trick was that the home team’s pitchers had to get a certain number of strikeouts (I think it was six). If they did, everyone in attendance could redeem their ticket stubs for a coffee or soda and some kind of candy. My thinking, as described in the following list, is that they needed to spice up the strikeout promotion by adding some extra layers:

1. Nothing
2. Nothing
3. Nothing
4. Nothing
5. Nothing
6. Gutbuster soda and a Snickers bar
7. Mocha latte and half a box of Junior Mints
8. Carton of orangeade and a Chik-o-Stik
9. Store brand bottled water and the other half of the box of Junior Mints
10. Large frappacino and a bag of off-brand gummi bears
11. Medium Slurpee, bag of Fritos, can of near-expiration Frito bean dip
12. 20 oz. Rooster Booster and bag of barbecue pork cracklins
13. Mountain Dew Code Red and microwavable cheeseburger
14. 2-liter of a Coke product and Baron von CircleK’s Heat n’ Eat Pizza
15. 24-pack Meisterbrau and carton of store brand cigarettes
16. 24-pack Budweiser and carton of Camels
17. One .45 caliber automatic, two boxes of ammunition, four days concentrated emergency rations, one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills, one miniature combination Russian phrasebook and Bible, $100 in rubles, $100 in gold, nine packs of chewing gum, one issue of prophylactics, three lipsticks, and three pairs of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good time in Vegas will all this stuff. (Or look closely at Slim Pickins's lips. I'm pretty sure what he actually says is "Dallas.")
18. Free tank of gas
19. Circle K franchise
20. Circle K franchise, free tank of gas, bag of pork cracklins flavor of your choice

Review – The Mummy’s Shroud

I want to like mummy movies. I really do. And if they can just meet me halfway, I can muster at least a little affection for them. I’m not picky. Give me a new twist on the old back-from-the-dead-to-carry-out-a-curse plot. Give me a character other than the usual cadre of tomb-robbing Brits and sinister Egyptians. Hell, just give me a mummy that’s interesting to look at. Sadly, this production manages to fail on all counts. The mummy himself is particularly disappointing. He looks like a tall man in a white ski mask and jumpsuit. Hammer’s finest hour this ain’t. See if desperate

Abandoned – Assault of the Sasquatch

Redneck hunters, leg-hold traps and bear killing. And that's just before the opening credits finished. I lasted only five minutes.

Review – Manson, My Name Is Evil

The end credits (and at least one promotional poster in the IMDb image collection) identify this as “Leslie, My Name Is Evil.” Though I’m sure the switch increased product recognition considerably, the original moniker was more honest. This over-arty little picture tells the parallel story of Manson girl Leslie Van Houten and a reluctantly square young man picked for the Tate-LaBianca jury. Or is it? Except for the convicted killers, nobody seems to be going by his or her actual name. Even the victims are robbed of their identities. I suspect this must be the result of some quirk in the rules governing use of people’s names in the Great White North; certainly someone in involved with this production is acquainted with Canadian law, particularly the tax code. I’d like to bestow faint praise for the attempt to provide any of Manson’s hapless followers (especially the women) with a back story, but this good intention is swiftly undone by a failed attempt at indie quirkiness. See if desperate

Review – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

This picture enjoys a prominent seat in the pantheon of movies so terrible they actually turn out to be highly entertaining. I don’t even know where to start. The big idea of having the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton do a witless musical based on the Beatles’ music? The small details, such as the decision to have Donald Pleasance sing (sort of)? This fails on so many levels. And yet in so doing it succeeds as a charmingly embarrassing relic of a less cynical bygone age. Mildly amusing

Review – M. Butterfly

Fans of David Cronenberg’s earlier work will probably be deeply disappointed by this odd romance between a French diplomat (Jeremy Irons) and a Chinese opera singer (John Lone) in 1960s Beijing. Sadly for our lovelorn protagonist, he doesn’t seem to know much about traditional Chinese opera performers. Or he simply doesn’t care. In addition to the complex nature of their relationship, the politics of the time add an espionage angle to the mix. The result is a drawn-out portrait of a successful man undone by his own obsessions, a pretty picture with no greater purpose than to make the observation that love tends to follow its own path. Mildly amusing

Review – The Buddy Holly Story

The most remarkable thing about this biopic is that prior to a lot of hard living and a bad head injury or two, Gary Busey actually had some talent. Holly’s music seems pretty tame by 21st century standards, so this story is a good reminder of just how radically brilliant his work was and just how much nonsense – racist and otherwise – he had to go through just to be heard. Unfortunately the final sequence – his very last show – serves as a sad reminder not only of how tragic his loss was but also how greatly his music suffered when it was overproduced and robbed of the simplicity that made it so great. The production values of this picture are fairly mediocre, but the subject is sufficiently fascinating to carry the day. Worth seeing

Review – Incubus (1966)

Sorry, but I just can’t get past the Esperanto. It sounds like a blend of Italian played backward and the nonsense that comes out of Robert Tilton’s mouth when he “speaks in tongues.” Nerd-oriented “secret twin language” aside, this mediocre horror movie is way too arty for its own good. William Shatner and a cadre of fellow Esperantese laconically chew their way through a script packed with boring demons spouting over-wrought dialogue. My cat appeared to really enjoy it, or at least pay close attention to the screen for several minutes. Personally, I found it considerably less engaging. The demon-goat-rape sequence at the end was particularly off-putting. Wish I’d skipped it

Abandoned – Danger Beneath the Waves

Imagine Crimson Tide reshot as a cheap-ass Casper Van Dien movie and estimate how long you could keep watching it. I made it 34 minutes.

My eight favorite movie monsters

I can’t let October go without doing some sort of horror-related movie list. This year we pay tribute to movie monsters, those creature feature creatures that don’t fit easily into one of the genre’s more popular niches (vampires, werewolves and the like). Some might fit into categories – such as “alien” or “zombie” – with a little straining, but for the most part these beasts are one of a kind.

This uniqueness gives them a serious advantage in the scare department. When the protagonists square off against a vampire they go in with a good idea of what they’re up against – what it does, what it wants, how to kill it. Such familiar evils are no match for that scariest of all things: the unknown. A monster that doesn’t play by the rules? What would save us from it?

 

The Thing – Calling this a “space alien” doesn’t even come close to describing it. Instead, it’s the perfect embodiment of Reagan-era paranoia: a mimicking embodiment of the AIDS epidemic, a sentient infection that steals your body from the inside, a deadly menace that could be sitting next to you at the dinner table and you’d never know it until it was far, far too late. The claustrophobic Antarctic setting and the absence of the genre’s usual misogyny were also strong contributing factors.

Godzilla – This guy isn’t The King of the Monsters for nothing. The endless parade of sequels – some better than others – have cemented Godzilla as a pop culture icon. But the original movie – unsophisticated, black-and-white, badly dubbed, intercut with footage of Raymond Burr to help it sell in the States – is a brilliantly-chilling portrait of the Atomic Age gone horribly wrong.

Frankenstein’s monster – Thanks in no small part to James Whale’s clever direction and Boris Karloff’s patient makeup-sporting, Universal Studios transformed Mary Shelly’s “Modern Prometheus” into one of the most recognizable monsters in the world. Unlike most of the rest of the beasts on this list, Frankenstein is multi-dimensional, even sympathetic in parts (not bad for a basket full of sewn-together corpse parts). And though several of his list companions appeared in sequels, the monster enjoys the distinction of putting in a second performance as good as the first.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon – Decades before Jaws, this walking coelacanth posed all the menace of a giant shark with the added threat of being able to chase its victims onto dry land. The movie suffers from some of the usual weaknesses of 50s era horror, particularly rampant sexism and racism. But oh that monster. The underwater sequences are particularly noteworthy examples of edge-of-your-seat menace.

Gremlins – These guys have a few weak spots, particularly their photosensitivity. But their vulnerability is more than made up for by the ease with which they multiply. If they were serious about killing people rather than merely making dangerous trouble, they’d be an awful menace. Even as they are they aren’t anything you’d want to run into in a dark alley.

The Burrowers – Think about it: when was the last time you saw a truly innovative movie monster? These things qualify. Their appearance is bizarre in a way that would have been difficult to achieve – particularly for an independent production – before the age of computer-generated effects. And their modus operandi? Ugh.

Fluffy – This creature is probably better known as the monster in “The Crate,” the fourth segment in Creepshow. It would look like some kind of ridiculous white punk rock simian if not for two things, long claws and a huge mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. It’s strong, it’s fast, and it plays off that deep-seated childhood fear: all it wants to do is eat people, and the more the merrier.

The Id monster – It’s unstoppable. It’s invisible. And it’s been summoned into existence for one purpose alone: slaughtering the heroes. For a chunk of the movie one has to use a little imagination to truly feel the threat. But when it walks through a powerful force field that does nothing to stop it but temporarily renders it visible … nightmare city. And the best part is that it's actually part of a really good movie.

Review – The Accidental Tourist

I can’t say if it was subtle differences between the book and the movie, the passage of time between the two experiences or some other less tangible factor, but I didn’t like the movie anywhere near as much as I liked the book. The characters’ quirks seemed superficial rather than genuine. William Hurt was particularly awful. He’s proven on any number of occasions that he can plan an emotionally distant man, but when he’s called upon to let the wall drop and show some feeling, he looks more as if he’s having a particularly unpleasant hemorrhoidal flare-up. Nor can he make the slightest emotional connection with either fellow Body Heat alum Kathleen Turner as his estranged wife or Geena Davis as his wacky would-be girlfriend. Thus what in the book was a charming little story about an author who writes travel guides for people who hate to travel becomes a muddled mess of a motion picture. See if desperate

Review – Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan

Of all the Star Trek movies, this is the only one with a plot that directly depends on one of the episodes of the original TV series. Ricardo “Mr. Rourke” Montalban’s superman character returns to seek revenge on Captain Kirk for stranding him on a dying planet many years earlier. Though the effects are a little primitive by today’s standards, much of it still holds up; a particular crowd favorite is the earwig sequence. Of course it’s amazing that between Montalban and William Shatner there’s any scenery left at the end of the picture. And the whole subplot with the genesis thing and Kirk’s son just goes nowhere and detracts from the more interesting dramatic points. All that notwithstanding, there have been plenty worse Star Trek movies. Mildly amusing

Review – The Devil's Bride

How can this much devil conjurin’ be this deadly dull? Christopher Lee turns in a rare performance as a good guy, an expert on the occult trying to keep a handful of friends from falling into the clutches of a Satanist circle. The struggle that ensues is clogged with so much silly mumbo jumbo that it’s impossible to take seriously. This might have worked as an episode in a half-hour-format horror series for television, but as a feature-length production it doesn’t make it. See if desperate

Review – Let’s Kill Uncle

Before Uncle kills us. This silly little William Castle production pits a couple of bratty kids against the genteel uncle who wants to kill them so he can inherit his nephew’s fortune. The kids are so obnoxious that I found myself hoping the old guy would get them. This is one of those movies that appear not to have been made for an audience. The plot is too stupid for anyone over the age of 12 or so. For example, one of the picture’s big menaces is a shark that somehow manages to thrive in the weed-clogged swimming pool of an old hotel. And there’s too much murder – or at least attempted murder – for the younger set. As an entry in a William Gaines comic this would have worked well, but it doesn’t function as a movie. See if desperate

Review – 12 Monkeys

Though this is nowhere near Terry Gilliam’s worst effort, it’s still considerably longer and less interesting than the experimental short upon which it’s based. A hapless mook (Bruce Willis) from the future travels back to the early 1990s in search of a cure for a plague that will eventually devastate the human race. In the past – where unsurprisingly he’s taken for a nut – he falls in love with his shrink (Madeline Stowe) and meets a fellow mental patient (Brad Pitt) who may be responsible for bringing about the looming apocalypse. Pitt turns in an entertaining – if over-the-top – performance, and some of the effects are mid-budget good. But the plot bogs down in several spots as the characters slowly tumble to realizations the audience figured out some time ago. The result is uneven, the natural product of making a two-hour production out of a ten-minute movie. Mildly amusing

Review – Daughters of Satan

This pack is lucky to have a father as merciful as Satan. If I’d been their dad, I would have drowned them at birth. This joint United States and Philippines production thoroughly humiliates a young Tom Selleck, who plays a man with amazingly terrible taste in art. He purchases a painting – the likes of which nobody would even bother to paint on the side of a van – of three witches being burned at the stake by the Inquisition, the draw being the middle victim’s resemblance to his wife. So it’s his bad luck that in addition to having one of his walls marred by this travesty it also turns out to be a gateway that allows the local “Satanites” entry to his home. Some of the cult’s rituals come across as torture porn before there even was such a thing, but otherwise this picture is undistinguished from every other bad horror movie from the 1970s. See if desperate

Review – Jabberwocky

This early Terry Gilliam production is typical of the director’s work. He starts out with a good – or at least interesting – intention: trashing the fairytale fantasy genre. Unfortunately, another typical trait emerges: Gilliam’s tendency to be really really annoying. As the monstrous Jabberwocky terrorizes the countryside, a bumpkin (Michael Palin) journeys to the castle in search of work. Along the way he encounters an astounding parade of filth and misfortune. Particularly noteworthy is the huge collection of urination and defecation scenes. This movie has enough excreting to balance out every movie ever made that doesn’t feature any at all. And most of the rest of the humor is on par with that. Though on an intellectual level this could have been a clever jab at a deserving target, the production depends too heavily on childish physical humor to succeed. See if desperate

Abandoned – Dead & Breakfast

Once again horror plus comedy equals stupid. A handful of familiar faces is all this thing has to offer. I made it 23 minutes into this.

Review – Groundhog Day

It’s hard for a movie like this to avoid being swallowed by its own concept. An obnoxious weatherman (Bill Murray, who probably actually is an obnoxious weatherman in an alternate reality somewhere) is forced to cover the annual groundhog festivities in Punxsutawney. He’s rude to everyone and has a wretched day. Then he wakes up the next morning only to find that it’s the title date once again and he has to live the whole day over. And over. And over. Before our reluctant hero learns his lesson in the final frames, he goes through every imaginable variation on how the day could have gone, from unsuccessful attempts to sleep with his producer (Andie MacDowell) to successful – however temporary – efforts to kill himself and take the town groundhog with him. Though they don’t do anything particularly brilliant with the concept, the endless variations alone are enough to keep things moderately interesting most of the way through. Mildly amusing

Review – Psychomania

The IMDb notes about this movie are way more interesting than the movie itself. For example, from the notes I learned that this was originally released as The Death Wheelers (which was at least marginally more descriptive), it was George Sanders’s last feature film (an unworthy end to an illustrious career) and a critic for the London Times called it fit to be shown only at an “SS reunion party” (a little harsh, though I admit I feel the guy’s pain). The obnoxious leader of an English motorcycle gang uses evil magic to come back from the dead and encourages his followers to join him in eternal hooliganism. They could have done a couple of things to make this not stink. First, if the living dead bikers had looked like zombies or vampires or honestly anything besides their same old asshole selves, that might at least have helped. But more to the point, they don’t do anything with immortality that they weren’t doing before their encounter with the dark arts. What kind of idiot plans to spend eternity trashing grocery stores and otherwise annoying the squares? See if desperate

Review – Horror of Dracula

I really like Christopher Lee as Dracula. Even though he has almost no lines (unless evil hissing noises count as dialogue), he still manages to give the role a sense of style and menace that nobody other than the iconic Bela Lugosi has ever equaled. This one sticks closer to Stoker’s original story than any other Hammer production, though even so it takes considerable liberties with the plot and characters. Still, it’s a lot of fun to watch in an it’s-October-so-let’s-watch-some-creaky-old-horror-movies vein. Worth seeing

Review – The Circus

Charlie Chaplin made two somewhat-silent movies after the rest of the world had moved on to sound, but this 1928 production is his last picture of the silent era. It has all the usual elements: the little fellow, the love interest who prefers someone else, the cruel boss, and of course endless opportunities for the physical comedy for which Chaplin had such an immense genius. This time around our hero blunders into a job at the title location, falls in love with the boss’s daughter, gets chased by a mule, ruins everyone else’s acts, and ends up the star of the show. Though The Gold Rush and Modern Times outshine it, this production is still better than most everything else out there. Buy the disc

Review – Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

Yes, indeed he’s back again (though technically he arose from being frozen rather than from an actual grave). Mad at the local monsignor for sticking a cross on his front door, our antihero goes in search of revenge. Christopher Lee does his usual job as the Count, but otherwise this is one of the lesser entries in Hammer Dracula set. Mildly amusing

Review – Blood Creek

Throughout big chunks of this movie I had the nagging feeling that I’d seen it before. Perhaps it was because I’ve seen so many cheap horror movies that they’re starting to blend together in my memory. Or maybe I started watching it sometime in the past, got bored or frustrated, gave up on it and then forgot about it. That certainly would have been an understandable reaction. A couple of rednecks and a family of immortal German farmers square off against an evil Nazi zombie-vampire-whatever trying to use a rune stone to grow a third eye and rule the universe from beyond the grave. The production ruins itself by paying only the scantest attention to plot and character, instead dwelling on fight sequences that seldom rise above a lot of flopping around on the ground. Oh, and violent animal death. Lots and lots of violent animal death. I don’t know why a good horror movie with Nazi occultist villains is so hard to make, but once again the goal proves elusive. Wish I’d skipped it