Color of the Night (1994)

Somehow, the erotic thriller wave of the early 90s even enabled the creation this particular movie, in which psychoanalyst(!) Bruce Willis flees to Los Angeles after a patient traumatized him into red/green colour-blindness by throwing herself through – the film says out of, but she’s going right through the closed thing – his office window, only to get dragged into a series of murders surrounding the hilariously dysfunctional therapy group of his soon to be dead frenemy Scott Bakula (heightening the improbable psychoanalyst stakes quite a bit). Also, he starts an affair with a very young lady (Jane March) he’d recognize from somewhere if he and everyone else in the movie didn’t apparently also suffer from face blindness. Hilarity and a complicated and pretty damn bizarre plot ensue, while director Richard Rush – whose epically long director’s cut is the way to go with this one – overdirects the hell out of the barely comprehensible screenplay by Billy Ray and Matthew Chapman, which treats as a revelation things the film has already shown to the audience ninety minutes earlier.

There’s really no connection to anything amounting to actual psychoanalysis, group therapy or human psychology here, and thus enables a cast filled with beloved character actors - Lance Henriksen! Brad Dourif! Lesley Ann Warren! Eriq La Salle! Rubén Blades! and so on! – to absolutely let loose with every single bit of actorly business they choose to use, because Rush is clearly a “yes, and” and a “yes, yes, yes” kind of guy when presented with any idea anyone could come up with. Plus, if we cast Willis often enough as a psychologist, analyst, etc, people will just have to believe it, right?

At the time, critics mostly focussed on the nonsense – without recognizing its function as beautiful nonsense, of course - and on Willis’s shlong (which makes something of a surprise appearance), but really, this is such a generous and serious attempt at making sweet, sweet love to the aesthetics of the giallo by way of Brian DePalma it seems nearly beside the point that it isn’t actually all that good of a movie.

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Lately, fashion photographer with aspirations towards art Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway), has been running on fumes. It’s no wonder, since her latest and controversial period of work – consisting of tacky and slick “tasteful” sex and violence photos that were in reality shot by the inexplicably respected Helmut Newton – is inspired by visions and nightmares, in which, as she will soon enough learn, sees actual crimes she then feels drawn to restage in her photos. Now, things are getting worse for her when she starts to witness murders apparently live through the Vaseline-smeared eyes of a killer; most of these victims will belong to her associates and hangers-on.

Even before she goes and tells the cops of her visions, the relation to her earlier photos and actual crimes scenes has drawn the interest of one Lieutenant John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones). Neville is understandably sceptical of Laura’s tales of telepathy, as well as of her art, but he is also clearly smitten by her. Plus, given the identity of the new batch of victims, it stands to reason the killer is someone from her entourage too. And really, there are some good candidates there, like her irascible manager/assistant Donald (René Auberjonois), her driver Tommy (Brad Dourif) with his criminal record, and her sleazy parasite of an ex-husband (Raúl Juliá).

Today, Irvin Kershner’s Eyes of Laura Mars is mostly, if at all, mentioned as a footnote in the career of John Carpenter, who wrote the original treatment and script, and then got his first taste of the Hollywood rewriting machine, leaving him typically disgruntled. Given most of Carpenter’s work, I don’t think he’s responsible for the badly dragging middle part of the film that tries to distract the audience from the near total absence of any actual plot development by adding a few more murders.

The film’s not all dragging middle, though, and the first and last act both seem to put this plainly into the realm of American thrillers trying to adopt elements of the giallo. The setting at the borders between fashion industry and art world and the instant glamour this theoretically provides – in practice Mars’s work is ass-ugly – is very typical, as is the film’s focus on visual aesthetics as a way to clue an audience in on characters and theme through mood instead of narrative motion, an approach the more mainstream areas of US genre cinema are often not terribly comfortable with. There are certainly some good moments in this regard in the film - particularly the repeated use of mirror motifs is very effective not just visually but also thematically in its blurring of the line between the seen and the seeing. It also repeatedly suggests the very specific mental illness the killer will turn out to suffer from without clueing this so hard as to be too obvious. Still, the film is never quite consistent in this approach, wavering between Italian stylization and late 70s US grubbiness in rather unproductive ways.

The fine cast are also doing their best to play through and around the often very bland dialogue (the romance scenes between Dunaway and Jones, though for once actually necessary for the narrative to work, are a particularly egregious example), and sinking their teeth into the film’s grittier moments.


Eyes of Laura Mars simply doesn’t come quite together as a movie, not ending up as any real disappointment but promising more than it can actually deliver.

Wildling (2018)

Little Anna (Aviva Winick) has a pretty disturbing childhood. Being kept under lock and key in a cellar room by her “Daddy” (Brad Dourif, starting out wonderfully complicated until the film has him do his usual villain shtick), who likes to tell her frightening tales about a “Wildling” threatening little children is bad already. Once she starts menstruating, though, “Daddy” adds regular injections meant to suppress her cycle, adding a big load of creepiness. But hey, at least he taught her to read and write and never did any of the other things men keeping little children in cellars are wont to do.

When Anna hits about the age of sixteen (and has grown up to be played by Bel Powley), she begins wilting away; “Daddy”, propelled by guilt, clearly wavering between killing her and killing himself. decides to go with himself – though, as we will later learn, is not terribly successful as a suicide. The shot does summon the authorities, though, and Anna is off on her way to learn a lot of things about the bigger world outside. She’s in luck, too, for the local Sheriff Ellen Cooper (Liv Tyler) takes an interest in her and takes her in – at least for a time – for an attempt at a normal teenagehood. Ellen also takes care of her teenage brother Ray (Collin Kelly-Sordelet), their parents being absent for reasons, I guess.

Of course, the obligatory love story between the teens develops, but there’s also the fact that Anna’s not a normal human girl, but someone, something a bit wilder.

On paper, Fritz Böhm’s Wildling has quite a bit going for it – the cast is good to decent, the pictures are pretty, and the whole thing looks and feels slick enough for a film with one foot in horror and the other in the dreaded realm of YA. Alas, the script Böhm and Florian Eder deliver is just not terribly good, suffering from a debilitating vagueness in many things. The problem isn’t only that the film doesn’t really manage to ever do much of interest or insight with Anna’s identity as a furry wood human – it certainly wastes many an opportunity to say something about the connection between Anna’s “wildness”, female teenage sexual awakening, and her identity as something defined as other – it can’t seem to find its way to ever being concrete about anything. And I’m talking vagueness here, not ambiguity or any mystical attempt at touching the numinous.

It’s not just that nothing here is ever explained, the film is usually not even hinting, so if you’d like to know why the massacre of Anna’s people happened in the past you’re completely on your own. One might guess it’s the clichéd “humans hate everything that’s different”, but none of the guys hunting her ever says anything pertinent to the question whatsoever. The closest thing you get is when “Daddy” tells her he swore an oath to kill all of her kin, but why he did that, and to whom he made the oath? Beats me. As does what the actual function of the lifecycle of Anna’s people is, or what’s the deal of the guy dressed in dead wolves (James Le Gros) helping Anna out beyond being a walking talking plot device is.
Characterisation is equally vague: why does “Daddy” change his mind about murder and suicide again? Why does the Sheriff think dead boy next to the ripped dress of a girl spells murder instead of self defence by girl being raped? And so on, and so forth.


It’s all very frustrating, even more so because you could use most of Wildling’s elements to make a damn good film – a horror film, a fantastical coming of age movie, one about not being “normal” – yet the actual film at hand seems to avoid meaning anything concrete in any way possible.

In short: Cult of Chucky (2017)

After the events of Curse of Chucky, surviving heroine Nica (Fiona Dourif) has been shipped off into an institution for the criminally insane. Supposedly, she is responsible for all the deaths in that movie actually committed by everyone’s favourite living murder doll Chucky (as always voiced by Brad Dourif). Clearly, we are not in a CSI show. By now, Nica’s creepy psychiatrist Dr. Foley (Michael Therriault) has her convinced there was indeed no living doll involved in the murders, and that she’s totally bonkers. As a reward for that “insight”, Foley brings Nica to a less strict institution.

Of course, Chucky is very real indeed, and uses the opportunity to make Nica’s life miserable again. Also involved are good old Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent), Chucky’s wife and murder-partner Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), various caricatures of the mentally ill, and a new trick Chucky has learned. Let’s just say the film might as well have been called Army of Chucky.

To be able to enjoy the newest of Don Mancini’s Child’s Play/Chucky movies, the interested viewer needs to be clear about one thing: this is not a movie at all interested in even pretending to take place in the real world. So psychiatric clinics do not work even the tiniest bit like they do in the real world, mental illnesses only have the vaguest connection to any you’d find around here, not to speak of security measures or rescue plans.

If you’re able to get over that – I certainly am – you just might find a lot here to enjoy. Mancini mostly manages to create a mood of proper weirdness, interspersed with quite a few good suspense sequences and bunch of sardonic bloody murders. The pacing is a little off sometimes, particularly when it comes to the scenes with Andy which turn out to be too much build-up to a whole lot of nothing, but there’s always something pleasantly bizarre, outrageous and fun just waiting around the corner of the next scene. Brad Dourif and Jennifer Tilly and their excellent doll bodies are as always a macabre joy, while Fiona Dourif manages to give the whole affair at least some grounding in relatable humanity in what’s a bit of an ultimate straight woman performance, as the supposedly mad (mad!, I tell you) woman who is actually the only sane person in the whole of the film, an irony she and Mancini’s script obviously realize.


This is fun horror of a right now somewhat old-fashioned style that neither properly fits into the realm of slow horror (I’ll call it “post-horror” only if I’m getting paid for that) nor the ultra-calculated house of horrors style of the The Conjuring films and their ilk; despite being the hundredth film in a franchise, this a curiously individual film.

Graveyard Shift (1990)

John Hall (David Andrews) – a drifter running away from a tragic past in the traditional American style – comes to an equally traditional American small town looking for work. In what will turn out not to be too lucky a circumstance, he hires on in the local textile mill run by one Mr Warwick (Stephen Macht, going for a truly bizarre line delivery/voice).

The place is a rat infested crap-hole and Warwick’s a tyrannical sleazebag who’d get me-too’d right quick just now, but a job’s a job, right? Unfortunately, there’s even worse going on than just the worst boss ever and a rat problem the Vietnam vet (of course) exterminator (Brad Dourif) can’t bring under control. When John and some colleagues are sent to clean up the mill’s basement on the Fourth of July weekend, they’ll soon encounter the thing that has been eating various characters while nobody but the audience was looking for the last forty minutes or so.

Ralph S. Singleton’s Graveyard Shift, based on a short story by Stephen King, is generally treated as one of the lesser King adaptations. It’s not difficult to see why: Singleton’s not really the sort of director capable of smoothing out too many budgetary rough edges; indeed, his style is pretty freaking bland. The script, while containing some good ideas, doesn’t really seem to know how to effectively use them, nor how to bring the short story to feature length beyond following the old horror writer adage of “add more murders”, which doesn’t exactly help the pacing along either. The special effects are all over the place: some do look cool and/or effective, and the main monster’s nature does at least win points via its sheer grotesqueness, but a lot of what’s on screen does neither work terribly well nor look interesting enough to make one ignore its somewhat shaky quality.

However, there are some interesting and worthwhile elements on screen. First and foremost, this – like Tobe Hooper’s equally loathed but actually much superior King short story adaptation The Mangler – is another King adaptation that does go the – still not terribly common in horror – road of using working class characters, instead of white collar people, as its central protagonists, automatically winning at least a degree of thematic resonance by entwining its unnatural threat with the more quotidian one of economical exploitation. Of course, the film does tend to fall back on so much standard clichéd shortcuts about how working class people behave, and can’t help itself but give its hero a college degree, so it’s difficult to make out if anyone involved is talking about the plight of the working class on purpose, or only because they were too lazy to change King’s set-up. But hey, it’s still more than The Conjuring has to say.

Depending on your taste, another aspect of the film will either be a great turn-on or turn you off of this completely: it’s the performances by Macht and Dourif. Now, we all know that beloved horror icon Brad Dourif does tend to chew as much scenery as a director will allow him, having learned early on that these are the sort of calories that don’t make a guy fat (unless he’s Orson Welles). Singleton must have told him to go all out or something of that manner, for even Dourif seldom delivers scenery chewing quite as intense as he does here. His Vietnam rat story (and his tobacco chewing) alone is either – if you’re like me - worth the price of admission, or going to drive you batty. Add to that Macht, who here always seems to chomp a cigar even when he has nothing at all in his mouth, and goes for the sort of line delivery that’d make Christopher Walken go “whoa”, and you’re either in heaven, or running away screaming. I suspect you’re not going to scream as entertainingly as Macht does, once he gets really mad, though.

Graveyard Shift also features some scattered moments of actual effective horror (obviously following the nugget theory of horror proposed by King in “Danse Macabre”). There’s one late character death that does indeed come as a bit of a surprise and a shock, for one, but even better is the “Rats in the Wall”-style underground bone hill parts of the finale take place on.


That’s probably not enough to put this into the highlights of anyone’s horror watching year, but I find myself thinking rather fondly of Singleton’s only feature film despite its major flaws.

Three Films Make A Post: From a dimension beyond the living, a terror to scare you to death.

Ghoulies II (1988): The first Ghoulies us the sort of take it or leave it post-Gremlins proposition I’d rather leave than take, but this sequel, directed by producer Charles Band’s father (and veteran low budget director) Albert is rather more entertaining. It does help that it takes place on a carnival – supposed soon to be reorganized by a malevolent money man – and really puts out all the stops when it comes to the positive carny clichés. The film is full of fun (and silly) performances like the one of Phil Fondacaro as small Shakespearean thespian (at least that’s what he says) Sir Nigel Penneyweight that could be cruel and unpleasant but turn out loving and fun. Plus, there aren’t too many horror films in which the demons threatening the heroes are beaten by conjuring up a bigger (adorable) one, or the traditional “last monster nobody manages to kill” hides away in a toilet.

The Gift (2015): This small, LA-set thriller directed by Joel Edgerton (who also plays one of the main characters, together with Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall) is pretty much a perfect example of its genre: it is clever, twisty, ambiguous and often truly disquieting without ever needing to show the worst things going on in it. Thanks to a wonderful script (also by Edgerton), acting and direction, it does manage the particularly fascinating trick of being character-driven while keeping the motivations and true nature of said characters at least partially hidden. I’d say more about it but this one of those films where telling much about anything going on in it really could spoil the first impression needlessly.


Body Parts (1991): Eric Red’s horror film about body part transplantation, mad science, pointless murders, and the question if evil (whatever that may be) sits in the serial killer arm transplanted onto psychologist Jeff Fahey is as entertaining as its basic idea is silly. For most of its running time, it even manages to treat its rather absurd set-up with the utmost seriousness, doing its best to avoid turning out like Oliver Stone’s The Hand. Fahey’s performance is a fine bit of middle class paranoia, and his descent into what we’re actually pretty sure from the outset isn’t madness works particularly well because Red does manage to actually make the family unit threatened this time around sympathetic without getting treacly about it. As a bonus, there’s a bonkers ending and Brad Dourif for once is not playing the killer.

Child’s Play 3 (1991)

It’s been a few years since Child’s Play 2. Andy (now played by Justin Whalin) is sixteen, and he’s had a hard time of it. His mother has never been released from the psychiatric institution she had been dumped in between films number one and two (which is the one plot point of the first three Chucky films I find genuinely horrifying), and Andy’s been going from one foster home to the next, stamped “a troublemaker” by the System. Now, in a move one can only interpret as an attempt to ruin all of his hopes for some sort of normal life forever, Andy’s being interred in a military school where we will never see any actual education going on but a lot of sadistic bullying by older kids being put in charge by the guys supposedly running the school.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the company producing Chucky and his Good Guy Doll non-brethren reintroduces the doll line to the market. In a style rather normal for the company with the least safe production plant not producing crap for Apple/outside of The Mangler, they melt up their old dolls including the dissolved corpse of Chucky to make the new ones. Wouldn’t you know it, Chucky’s serial killer soul (still and always voiced by Brad Dourif, praised be the Gods) revives in one of the MKII Good Guy dolls. His first order of business – after murdering the Good Guy corporation’s CEO for reasons – is to mail himself to the military school to steal Andy’s sweet, sweet body. Don’t ask how he managed to package himself, please.

Anyway, once he’s arrived and has been stolen and unpacked by Tyler (Jeremy Sylvers), a much younger cadet, Chucky very suddenly and conveniently decides that he has got a new doll body, so he doesn’t actually need to possess Andy, but can groom himself a newer, more amiable, and more stupid body. And Tyler is indeed little, and he’s dumb as a rock, so…

However, after one accidentally thwarted attempt at soul transferral into Tyler, Chucky decides to kill people he doesn’t need to kill and makes himself known to the only guy who actually believes in him. He’s a voodoo serial killer in the body of a doll, not a mastermind, after all.

So yeah, the third Child’s Play - this time directed by Jack Bender (of future J.J. Abrams TV show fame) yet still written by Don Mancini - does again, like part two, take place in horror movie land, often letting go of sense (and most probably sensibility) for a joke or plot convenience, leaving the poor audience to ignore these failings as good as possible.

Again like with the second film, and despite my predilection for becoming quite easily annoyed by these needless weaknesses so typical of horror films of this particular era, I actually managed to ignore these parts of the film while watching. For while it is even sillier and more comedic than the last film, Child’s Play 3 also keeps the unpretentious air of its predecessor. So the film features jokes that aren’t meant to demonstrate neither the misanthropy of its makers nor their superiority over their material but are indeed meant to make one chuckle while staying pleasantly macabre. It helps here that Dourif and the new special effects doll are most of the time genuinely funny in a creepy crazy clown way that can still produce a certain feeling of menace in its audience without having to lose itself in contradictions.

Even though the plot is certainly pretty dumb it does set up a handful of fine suspense set pieces realized by Bender with old-fashioned craftsmanship. Sure, nothing happening here will set the world on fire, but there’s more than enough going on to fend off boredom and provide the jaded viewer with a dose of fun. I could imagine a Child’s Play franchise that is much darker, and more interested in the horrible things the original trilogy does to Andy’s mental health, but the one we’ve got is so decent in all the ways that count I find myself liking it more than most other horror franchises by the sheer virtue of every film actually playing as if the filmmakers involved did care about their audience. Plus, the next two films in the series are that most rare beasts, ironic, self-referential 90s horror films I actually like.

Child’s Play 2 (1990)

It’s some months after the end of Child’s Play. Nobody believes the crazy story little Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) and his mother tell about the murders around them having been committed by a doll possessed by a serial killer out to steal Andy’s body, so Mum has been locked up in a psychiatric facility, and Andy is temporarily given into the joyous hands of the foster system. The film never tells us who the police think killed all these people, though they don’t seem to suspect Andy or his mother.

Be that as it may, out to prove that there was nothing at all wrong with their doll Chucky, the company who made him refurbishes the thing, finding nothing (which seems rather curious, what with the thing bleeding in film number one and all), but providing Chucky with the opportunity to live again (and of course to still be voiced by Brad Dourif). Of course, Chucky quickly sneaks and murders his way out.

While that’s going on, Andy is being given to his first foster family. As these things go, Joanne (Jenny Agutter) and Phil Simpson (Gerrit Graham) aren’t bad fosters at all. Well, Joanne’s pretty fantastic at least, while Phil – sceptic of Andy right from the start – will soon show that he’s not the kind of guy you want to have take care of a child with any deeper psychological problems. Andy quickly bonds with Joanne and even more so with the Simpson’s other foster kid, late teen Kyle (Christine Elise) but things take a rather dark turn once Chucky arrives and infiltrates the house as an undercover doll (damn you, mass marketed toys!). Chucky is still attempting to steal Andy’s body, but can’t help killing more people than can be good for his plans.

To enjoy John Lafia’s lesser sequel to that likeable (and sometimes cleverer than people – including myself – give it credit for) semi-classic Child’s Play, one really needs to keep in mind that it doesn’t take place in the real world, not even in the kind of real world where doll-possessing voodoo serial killers are to be found, but in Horror Movie Land.

It’s a place where kids who have gone through a deep trauma are quickly released from an institution to be given in laymen’s hands never to see a psychologist afterwards, where a possessed doll can just phone Foster Central, say it’s a little boy’s uncle, and get all the information about him it needs, where teachers lock unruly little boys up in their classroom (or is that an American thing, like voting insane crypto-fascist billionaires into the highest office?), where factories are built by M.C. Escher and contain absurd health hazards, and where protagonists only ever flee in the most idiotic direction. It is in fact a world where dolls possessed by serial killers are among the more probable things you’ll encounter.

If you’re like me, you can swallow this bizarre nonsense without even having to flinch, and may very well enjoy Child’s Play 2 for its virtues, like the way Don Mancini’s script may contain double the late 80s horror movie stupidity of its predecessor but also features many a clever little flourish to make the main characters a bit more believably human than you’d expect in their surroundings. There’s a sense of respect for the characters (well, most of them) many a horror film of the era lacks to its detriment which helps some of the kills become slightly more than just another murder on the check list. It’s also remarkable how Alex Vincent’s acting has improved in leaps and bounds in comparatively short time.

When that isn’t enough, it is generally a lot of fun to watch Mancini and Lafia (standing before a future of middling TV work) apply all the tricks of the thriller director’s trade to even the most ridiculous of set-ups.

To my own surprise, I even found myself rather pleased with the film’s sense of humour. Late 80s horror movie goofiness abounds, yet Child’s Play 2 never steps over the fine line between silly fun and annoying idiocy (unlike, say, the Nightmare on Elm Street films very quickly did), always realizing when to stop kidding around.

All this doesn’t come together to turn Child’s Play 2 into a masterpiece but it’s an unpretentious and well crafted bit of a good time (with people dying in horrible ways).

In short: Grim Prairie Tales (1990)

Somewhere in the Old West, after the US Civil War. City guy Farley (Brad Dourif), and shaggy rider Morrison (James Earl Jones) encounter each other at the former’s campfire right in the middle of nowhere. After displays of nervousness from Farley (probably induced by the corpse Morrison has packed on his second horse), and of sublime grumpiness by Morrison, the two start to bond by telling each other tales of horror.

The first one concerns an old man paying dearly for desecrating an Indian burial ground, while the second tells of a city guy riding through the prairie who encounters a pregnant woman and the rather absorbing turn their meeting will take. Tale number three – the only one told by Farley – is somewhat more subtle fare about a girl having to learn of her father’s Ku Klux Klan involvement. Last but not least, a gunman loses his nerve and is either haunted or going a bit crazy. These tales are interspersed with Farley and Morris doing prairie literature criticism on the them.

As far as horror anthology movies go, Wayne Coe’s Grim Prairie Tales certainly isn’t one of the most brilliant ones, nor is it one of the most complex. However, Coe (who also wrote the script) is clearly very conscious of what a – in this case very literal - campfire tale is supposed to be and do, how much depth it can carry, and what’s a good point to end such a tale on. There’s a difference between simple-mindedness and simplicity, and the film’s tales are most certainly of the latter type and not the former one, with a certain sardonic wryness in the delivery that echoes EC comics, even though, unlike at EC, not everybody who gets it here actually deserves it, and not everyone who’d deserve it, gets it.

Apart from this approach, Grim Prairie Tales also has two not-so-secret weapons in the forms of James Earl Jones and Brad Dourif, both in full-on larger than life modes, though Dourif (ironically) does a larger than life portrayal of a guy who isn’t really all that larger than life. In any case, if there weren’t any horror stories at all surrounding them, it would still be a joy to watch Jones and Dourif play off each other, both men giving their characters intensity as well as basically sparkling with a sense of fun.

That might not add up to the greatest horror western anthology ever made, but it’s a fun time, indeed.

The Exorcist III (1990)

After studiously sitting out the sequel people don’t like to acknowledge, Police Lieutenant Kinderman (George C. Scott) returns to hold bizarre monologues about carp, stare, then stare and stare some more, shout and do everything else you are wont to do when you’re played by George C. Scott. Oh, and he’s onto a rather interesting case, too, for the serial killer known as the Gemini Killer seems to have returned. The problem is that the Gemini Killer’s been dead for fifteen years; however, the victims are found bearing marks only the cops concerned with the case would know about. And as you know, Jim, no cop would ever commit a crime, so there will be know investigation in that direction during the course of the film.

To be fair, that’d be a cold lead anyway, as Kinderman quickly learns when his old friend Father Dyer – remember him? – (Ed Flanders) is the killer’s next victim while having a bit of a lie down in the bizarro world version of a hospital. In the hospital, Kinderman is soon stumbling onto something rather peculiar – a mysterious patient of the “disturbed ward” looks exactly like The Exorcist’s saintly – and decidedly dead - priest Damian Karras (Jason Miller). When he’s not looking like the Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif) that is. Clearly, the best course for Kinderman is to listen to the Gemini Killer ranting on and on and on and expositing in a very Dourif manner while from time to time the hospital is hit by a jump scare or two, and a murder or three happens. Also on the program: doubting of faith, a random studio-mandated exorcism by Nicol Williamson, and lots of stuff being Catholic probably wouldn’t much help one to understand.

In the last few years, Exorcist writer William Peter Blatty’s second (and until now last) feature, based on his own book “Legion” (which isn’t called “The Exorcist III” for a reason) seems to have had a bit of a critical renaissance as a much overlooked gem. In so far as this means this is a film very well worth watching, I’m rather happy with this fact; if I’m supposed to pretend this is a good one I’ll just have to disagree (probably while snorting disbelievingly). It’s a fascinating film, and probably as close as US studio horror film can get to the often nonsensical glories of Italian horror of the 70s and 80s, but it sure as hell (see what I did there?) doesn’t work as a narrative or as a mood piece. It also has no dramatic pull whatsoever. Or are there really viewers out there who care about what happens to anyone here?

The plot – such as it is – makes little sense outside the obvious basics of it that could be told in half an hour, and the rest of the film’s narrative is filled out/bloated up by scene upon scene of actors making their way through Blatty’s stilted pseudo-intellectual (that is, not as intelligent as it pretends it is beyond quoting better writers than Blatty himself) dialogue, some suggestions of horrible and creepy stuff that usually don’t amount to much beyond a jump scare – and at this point 2005 and later horror cinema has made me practically immune to those apart from provoking annoyance – and Scott and Dourif out-chewing the scenery.

As a director, Blatty tends to the slow and ponderous, preferring long, static, highly composed in a “look, I’m doing art!” way shots broken by fast cuts to other static shots in the same style to just about anything else. Not surprisingly, this approach is not conducive to an emotionally striking film, it does add quite a bit to the film’s odd charm, though. There’s always something to be said for a director (a dilettante as Blatty clearly is in that role) doing things his own way, the rules and logic of filmmaking be damned, and given my love for the Jean Rollins, Jess Francos, Andy Milligans and Lucio Fulcis of this world, I’d be the last to hate Blatty for it. It’s just that the films of the directors I listed often – once you’ve seen enough of their stuff – reach a point where their own logic starts to make sense to me, whereas Blatty’s film stays abstractedly, distantly weird, instead of obsessively personal, and feels rather more interesting than compulsive.

Having said that, I’m still happy I live in a world where a film like The Exorcist 3 exists, and people appreciate it, for while it doesn’t work for me as much as I wish it would, its willingness to go off the reservation as much as it does, to not be the obvious sequel to the Exorcist the studio of course wanted it to be, and to just do its own thing, if an audience will like it or not, is something I can’t help but respect.

Plus, where else can you find George C. Scott holding forth about the horrors of the carp his wife put in the bathtub for what feels like hours (as well as a joke waiting for a punch line)?

In short: Interceptor Force (1999)

With great difficulty, some jets under the command of a slumming Ernie Hudson shoot down a UFO. Alas, it goes down in Mexican territory, or rather in the territory of cartel boss and Spaghetti western reject Rosario (Stefan Lysenko), so Weber (Brad Dourif), a guy we must take to be responsible for the secret US anti-alien effort, doesn’t send out special forces but a trio of mercenaries. These guys suck so much they haven’t even earned themselves stupid call signs, and are instead called Shaun (Olivier Gruner), Dave (William Zabka) and Russell (Glenn Plummer).

Because neither Weber nor I would trust these guys with making a sandwich, he teams them up with science people Jena (Angel Boris Reed) and Perez (Mark Adair-Rioz), who are also the only people involved who know this is to be an alien hunt and not a case of secretly fetching a black box from under a crazy guy’s nose.

Not surprisingly, things don’t go too well on this ill-designed mission, and it might just become necessary for Weber to nuke a small Mexican village lest an alien threat is loosed upon the world.

For those of my readers who haven’t already smelt the crap, let it be known that Phillip J. Roth’s Interceptor Force is indeed a decidedly stupid piece of crap. Though it is one that is perfectly honest about its nature, seeing as we first encounter our Gruner-shaped hero while he’s stealing some secret data a be-suited guy carries around in a hard drive somehow built into his body (what, no flash memory?), one of his nipples replaced by a port, a heist during which our hero only escapes via an intensely bizarre rooftop escape featuring a long pole and a low flying aircraft.

On the other hand, the film sure as hell doesn’t manage to keep its stupidity as awesome as these scenes promise for the whole of its running time, spending a bit too much film on our leads discussing how betrayed they feel because Weber didn’t tell them about the aliens from the start. Which, given their performance throughout the film and that they’re even doing the old “a ga-a-ga-a giiiiirl” thing when Weber informs them about one of their part time partners being, you know, female, is no surprise to anyone. You’d think even in action movie land you might be able to find expendable operatives with a hint of competence about them.

When the film gets its stupid going, it does so very well, delighting with Brad Dourif giving an absurdly intense and utterly weird performance (which is to say, a very typical Dourif performance), Hudson popping in for three scenes of looking professionally concerned, a crap CGI alien that can also turn into crap CGI green energy and into people it has killed to utter crap jokes (and because the CGI truly is an eyesore), a handful of explosions (propane tanks explode when shot at, our genius heroes discover whilst shooting a propane tank), and a bit of competent hand-to-hand choreography so Gruner can show off the stuff he’s actually good at. For my tastes, the film at the very least contains enough of these shenanigans not to drag too painfully, and actually, I found myself mildly entertained for most of its running time, which is more than I can say about a lot of action movies.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,action,sf,phillip j. roth,olivier gruner,brad dourif,angel boris reed

In short: Curse of Chucky (2013)

One of the more peculiar facts in horror films is that the Child's Play/Chucky movies are one of the most consistent franchises in the genre. In quality, at least, the films never tend to disappoint, though they don't reach the quality of the very best entries of the more variable series. But then there aren't that many horror films on a level with the original Halloween. I suspect the main reason for their consistency is that the movies are still written (and in this case directed) by Chucky-creator Don Mancini, and not by some hired hand who couldn't give a damn.

After diving as deeply into the meta humour rabbit hole as possible in the last two movies, the newest Chucky film plays out rather more seriously and tightly, the still sardonic sense of humour this time around standing in service of what mostly is a tight, old-fashioned horror film taking for the most part place during the course of a single night and in a single place. That set-up is most probably just a way to cope with a limited budget, but, as good writers and directors tend to do, Mancini turns the flaw into a virtue and goes all unity of time and place on us, finding joy in perfectly executed old thriller tropes. In fact, the film's only weakness is the coda after the actual plot has run its course and the story of the movie is placed in the Chucky mythology (apparently, all of the films before are supposed to haven taken place in the same world, which leads to questions the film at hand can't even begin to answer) in a way that makes as much sense as anything but that is neither very interesting nor actually seems to belong into the highly focused rest of the film.

That rest, or rather main course, of the film, is very effective for its part, demonstrating what happens when you let a killer doll loose on a dysfunctional family (with Fiona Dourif as an excellent wheelchair bound and ill final girl). A priest is killed, other people are also killed of course, a few expectations are subverted, and Chucky quotes Nietzsche. It's all in a day's work in killer doll land, and it's a rather good day.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,horror,in short,fiona dourif,brad dourif,danielle bisutti,don mancini

Three Films Make A Post: A Blood Chilling-Gut Spilling Challenge To The Death

The Strange And Deadly Occurrence (1974): Totally solid mid-70s TV thriller by totally solid TV (and otherwise) director John Llewellyn Moxey. Lawyer Robert Stack (still using his Eliot Ness voice like in the old days), Vera Miles and her teenage daughter move into their dream home in the country. Strange (and later deadly) things occur that suggest the family's house may be haunted. Or is human interference behind everything?

Despite using one of my least favourite tropes in all of cinema as if it were an Old Dark House movie made in the late 30s, Moxey's film is still pretty entertaining, if not particularly exciting. You can see how it could have been much more effective if it hadn't gone all Scooby Doo on its audience, for the seemingly supernatural moments are clearly playing to Moxey's strength the most, but it's a nice enough way to waste 70 minutes of one's life.

I, Desire aka Desire, the Vampire (1982): Ironically, this later attempt at being all-out supernatural by Moxey is less successful than the older movie. A female vampire working as a hooker and as a nurse (and how's that for mixed signals and/or fetishism?) collides with overly nosy law student and morgue attendant David Naughton. It might be the fact that the script is often rather clumsy and obvious where it seems to think that it's clever and subtle, or that Moxey makes more than one directorial decision that hints at self sabotage (wildcat noises for the vampire? Really?), or that the whole affair just drags a bit too much; in any case, while it's certainly not a horrible effort, the film is nothing to write home about in its inoffensive TV movie way.

The film does, however, contain a bit of choice scenery chewing by good old Brad Dourif, so Dourif completists (I know you're out there) will need to have a look anyhow.

The Attic Expeditions (2001): I can see why and how this film has gained a certain amount of cult traction over the years, what with it playing like a homemade horror film version of David Lynch adapting Philip K. Dick with eternal fan favourites like Jeffrey Combs, Ted Raimi and Wendy Robie in the cast. Unfortunately, the whole affair never really gels for me and seems to assume that being weird for weirdness' sake while pretending to be clever and profound is enough to make me overlook less than elegant direction, an atrocious lead performance by Andras Jones, and the fact that the film really isn't as clever and profound as it would like to be. Of course, even in its state of not being very good at all, The Attic Expeditions is at least trying to be different and clever instead of - say - going the ultra-generic gore route, which makes it difficult to be all that annoyed about it.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american tv,american movies,in short,john llewellyn moxey,jeremy kasten,robert stack,vera miles,david naughton,brad dourif,jeffrey combs,ted raimi,wendy robie,horror,thriller