World War II hasn’t been over for long. A group of old friends and war veterans are invited to the Brooklyn home of Lt. Colonel Clive Hockstatter (house favourite and horror hero Larry Fessenden). It’s not the happiest of reunions: one of the men, Archibald Stanton (Jeremy Holm), is on trial for a rather nasty war crime, and there are other tensions in the group as well. Former interrogation specialist/torturer Marla (Anne Ramsay) has brought her husband Bob (Ron E. Rains) with her, and the men really aren’t keen on a guy who married everyone’s sweetheart, particularly when he’s decidedly lacking in the demonstrative manliness they just love to indulge in.
These and other conflicts will come to the fore soon enough, but the reason Hockstatter has asked them to come is rather different. He wants his friends to take part in a séance meant to conjure up the spirit of his dead wife Susan, who killed herself after nobody believed in her wild tales of some German-born greengrocers in the neighbourhood being Nazi spies.
The séance goes rather well– depending on one’s opinion about being trapped in a room by ghosts. Hockstatter puking up a puddle of ectoplasm from which the arm of his dead wife arises is only the first surprise of the evening, and soon the whole affair turns into a long discussion about the morality of war and duty, and horror cinema’s favourite theme, guilt.
Ted Geoghegan is certainly one of the more interesting directors of low budget horror movies working right now. He doesn’t appear to want to make the same movie again, so he follows the Fulci (etc) homage of We Are Still Here and the Western as horror of Mohawk with what amounts to a filmed stage play.
Not surprisingly, the resulting film is very dialogue heavy, much more focussed on its characters talking through some ethical problems they encounter and slowly revealing some dark secrets/their true selves, while also taking a look at the nasty side of the Dream of America, than it is on its supernatural horror. The supernatural side of the film really is only ever an enabler for what Geoghegan is truly interested in here, and – apart from one pretty outrageous gore gag concerning Larry Fessenden’s head – really takes up very little of the film’s interest.
If you’re hoping the supernatural to be thematically relevant instead of plot convenient, this is certainly not going to make you happy. Given my tastes, I found myself somewhat disappointed by that element of the film – I think the film could have done more to use the supernatural as a way to explore its thematic interests and been all the more interesting for it.
Particularly since the dialogue isn’t always strong enough to carry everything the film is attempting to say about America or its characters. While there are certainly moments with the proper weight and cadence here, there are just as many lines that are simply too stagey and stilted to work as coming out of the mouths of these particular characters. The dialogue also tends to be a bit too clear and obvious. There’s a bluntness to it that sometimes suggests a film a bit afraid of its audience not getting what it is trying to say about its characters, their guilt and their country. Which is a particular problem when what it is trying to say has been said dozens of times before, often with more subtlety and complexity, and when it works with a stable of actors who play their asses off, and would certainly do so as well if the material were just a little more nuanced.
All of which sounds rather more damning than what I actually think of Brooklyn 45. I certainly do respect its willingness to be as stagey as it is, as well as its decision to express what it’s going for in a manner that feels rather old-fashioned today. That its approach doesn’t resonate terribly well with me is more a matter of taste than anything else.
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