Monday, February 6, 2023
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
Snow Hollow, a small mountain community in Utah, is struck by a series of incredibly violent killings. With the ripped apart state of the victims, it isn’t even clear at first if these are animal attacks or products of a really rather mad killer. Given these facts, the wolf-like descriptions coming from witnesses, and the mix of animal ferocity and cleverness in the murders, one might even think the killer is some kind of werewolf.
The local police is ill prepared for this sort of case, and help isn’t even coming once they ask for it. Nominally, the little police department is commanded by Sheriff Hadley (Robert Forster), but the man is ailing in body, mind, and spirit, so the actual work falls on the shoulders of Hadley’s son, John Marshall (Jim Cummings). John, a man barely keeping dry via a twelve step program, fighting against violent urges, a feeling of rage against himself and the world, and all manner of self-destructive behaviour while also attempting to keep the peace with his ex-wife (Rachel Day) and rebuild the cracked relationship with his daughter Jenna (Chloe East), is not actually in any state to withstand the mounting pressures of the investigation. As the number of bodies rises and very few clues that would make any logical sense turn up, he breaks down increasingly. Things aren’t helped by the fact that apart from John, there’s really only one member of the police force qualified for more than writing parking tickets, Julia Robson (Rikki Lindhome). Actually, Julia is rather more qualified and mentally better prepared for the case than John himself, only, she isn’t related to the Sheriff, and woman.
The first time I tried watching Jim Cummings’s The Wolf of Snow Hollow I bounced of it quickly and forcefully. Today, I’d call it one of the best movies of the last ten years or so (at least), so clearly, I can be a bit of a fool sometimes. Of course, the film’s very dry sense of humour, its slow and careful characterisation and its very particular ideas of what can and can not be called a horror movie are the sort of thing not everyone will tune into even on repeated tries, which is neither a failure of the movie nor one of any given viewer.
If and when one starts to get the movie’s – or really Cummings’s given that he directed, wrote and plays the lead – perspective, one begins encountering a film whose horrors are found in more than just its handful of gory corpses and its tale of a werewolf (or is it a serial killer?) murder series taking place in a small town. Rather, the film’s heart lies in its treatment of John’s struggles, a downward spiral he, like many of us with psychological troubles, can see and experience but feels helpless to break free from even though there is help for him to be had, and which eventually leads in a very traditionally male way to a place of violence that can end up set against himself or against others. The film finds moments of humour in John’s increasing self-destructiveness, but it’s never making fun of the psychological struggles and failures themselves. These, it treats with surprising compassion, never excusing some of the shittiness John gets up to, but treating it with a degree of delicacy and sadness you wouldn’t exactly expect in a werewolf movie. Of course there are clear parallels between John and his behaviour and the wolf, both partaking in the same male coded propensity for violence, just not ending up in the same place, exactly. Since the film treats this aspect subtly, it makes a rather more interesting, or really, more personal argument about men and violence than you usually get in this sort of thing. It also suggests a way to betterment for at least one of its violent men.
Also sad and very subtle is the portrayal of the relationship between John and his father. There’s a well-observed understanding of difficult family relations and the pain that’s part of love under these circumstances on display that’s rare and unexpected in any medium. That one half of the father/son duo is portrayed by Robert Forster shortly before his death adds even more poignancy.
Cummings is just as adept at the larger scale of portraying a community under pressure as he is at the micro-scale of family relationships and personal breakdowns. Snow Hollow quickly feels like a real place with real, if slightly grotesque, people, a place that follows recognizable rules of social connections, that feels lived in and believable. It also feels like a physical space, snow and darkness and blood taking on extra weight by it.
That The Wolf of Snow Hollow’s moments of suspense and gore are also rather excellent feels nearly beside the point in this context.
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Three Films Make A Post: Putting the Normal in Paranormal
The film also gets quite some mileage out of old horror comedy chestnuts like the whole virginity business – it turns out real quickies can be a boon when a movie comes to its, ahem, climax – never afraid of going the low humour route, but certainly knowing when to get high in its humour too.
Dark Light (2019): At its beginning, Padraig Reynolds’s horror film about the monster troubles one woman (Jessica Madsen) encounters when she and her little daughter return to the old empty family home following a divorce, feels promising enough, establishing the basics of its plot well enough, and feeling pretty moody even if it is looking a bit cheap. Alas, the visual promise is pretty quickly sabotaged by a script that never bothers to think anything through, full of people whose actions make no frigging sense.
Or can anyone tell my why a disappeared child doesn’t result in a major attempt at finding it even if the local Sheriff thinks the mother killed her and buried her “somewhere very special”, despite there not having been any time for any clever body hiding since someone last saw the kid alive? These things – and this us just one of many examples in the film, don’t even get me started on its terrible portrayal of mental illness even though that’s one of its central plot devices – simply come over as lazy to a viewer, undermining any trust that the thing actually knows where it is going and if that direction is worthwhile. Turns out it doesn’t and it isn’t, by the way.
The Banker (1989): In comparison, William Webb’s movie about rich banker Spaulding Osbourne (Duncan Regehr) murdering prostitutes with a crossbow because he believes he is possessed by some kind of South American God facing up against a cop named Dan (Robert Forster) is downright clever. At least, it hates the rich, which is honestly a step up from Dark Light.
The slashing and the stalking as well as the more typical action movie business are decently realized (you know when it was shot, and you pretty much know how it’ll look), Regehr chews the scenery appropriately, and Robert Forster does his unkempt Robert Forster thing. He also isn’t exactly playing your typical cop on the edge; in fact, even though Dan is a bit of a slop, he seems downright nice and polite in moments where your typical example of the trope would already go berserk, which is a pleasant change from the expected to encounter in a pretty minor film.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Peacemaker (1990)
But don’t you worry, he gets better in the morgue, right in front of coroner Dori Caisson (Hilary Shepard). He kinda-sorta proceeds to kidnap her. On the way to her home – because that’s where aliens bring their kidnapping victims when it’s not an abduction with all the probes and whistles – they are attacked by a charming man (Robert Forster!) with a handgun so large I don’t even need to make any jokes about his manhood. We’ll later learn that he goes by that other popular alien name, Yates. Townshend and Dori escape, and shack up together, or rather, Townshend ties her up and studies TV for a night, from which he learns to speak English. Well, more or less, for Edwards (or whoever) had the brilliant idea to play his new-won language abilities as if he were a mentally handicapped man played by a horrible actor.
Anyway, Townshend exposits that he is an alien cop, a so-called peacemaker, who got sucked into a black hole together with serial killer Yates and somehow landed on Earth. He’s now keen on finding Yates as well as some McGuffin they are both after. The problem is that this is going to be exactly the same story Yates is going to tell Dori when he’s alone with her, only with Yates in the police role, and consequently, she’s going to bounce around between the two like a human yo-yo.
Also involved is an Earth cop (Robert Davi!), who has taken a shine to Dori, as have the two aliens. The problem: Dori has been burned by policemen before and is unwilling to commit to anything beyond bad jokes and a bit of sex under the shower.
There’s a good handful of films with the same basic plot made around the same time as Kevin (S.) Tenney’s Peacemaker (I think somebody in Hollywood must have enjoyed Hal Clement’s “Needle” quite a bit), and while the film at hand is most certainly not the best of the bunch, it may very well be the goofiest. The whole set-up is a bit silly from the outset, but Tenney (who also wrote the script) seems to be hell-bent to always make the silliest choice in any given scene, so we get Dori’s incessant wisecracking even when she’s kidnapped, threatened or shot at, the horrible performance by Edwards that makes one wrong but entertaining acting decision after the next, never shying away from the worst line delivery possible in any given situation, and a plot that never comes up with much more for the characters to do but drag Dori around.
Because Edwards is so goofy (and mildly embarrassing), and Shepard’s Dori is reacting to whatever happens in any given scene in the most insane and illogical manner possible, Forster’s very serious performance of an alien with a very, very, very big gun makes for a particularly hilarious contrast. Now, if you’re me, you’re probably a bit sad the film uses non-actor (sorry, but seriously) Edwards as the other alien when it has a perfectly good Robert Davi around, who’d make such a great counterpart to Forster. Sure, you might have wanted to cut the romance angle from the film in that case, but those parts of the film are so cringeworthy because Dori’s written as such a ditz in them, that would not have been too much of a loss.
Anyway, when the film doesn’t do goofy nonsense, or babbles about black holes and time travel (don’t ask), it does sometimes find the time for a decent if silly action sequence or three, probably delivering what was the actual selling point for this loveable and highly entertaining piece of crap.
Monday, May 13, 2019
Monday, September 14, 2015
Thursday, May 20, 2010
In short: Vigilante (1983)
Industrial electrician Eddie Marino (Robert Forster) is your typical mild-mannered family man, until a gang more or less randomly hurts his wife and kills his little son. Although his colleague Nick (Fred Williamson) tries to recruit Eddie for his own little vigilante crusade, the man decides to let the justice system run its course.
Of course, this being a movie called Vigilante and all, "the system" is totally corrupt, and the only gang member that is indicted at all comes away with a suspended sentence of two years. The only one actually landing in jail is Eddie himself for his violently displeased conduct in the court room. With the help of a randomly helpful Woody Strode, Eddie survives his thirty days in jail.
All the while, the film has kept the audience up to date on the dubious achievement of Nick and his merry band of thugs. They seem quite adept at torturing and killing people. It's the American Way, I know.
When Eddie is released, he at once goes to Nick and asks the chief vigilante for some help in a little murder spree of his own.
William Lustig's Vigilante is a technically well done version of your typical vigilante film, with all the usual problems of the genre, especially an annoying tendency to bore the viewer with long self-righteous speeches that are supposed to convince the viewer of the rightness of going on private killing sprees, but mostly succeed in dragging down the movie's pace and insulting me through their stupidity.
Vigilante isn't all stupid all the time though. The film has a lot of small moments and gestures that strongly hint at a discomfort with the actions of its supposed heroes, suggesting that Nick and Eddie are as violently unhinged as the people they are going after. Which they are. These moments make a strange contrast with Nick's speeches and the emotionally manipulative way Lustig sets up the court session. It feels as if one half of the film is cheerleading for vigilantism and the other, less loud half, is convinced of its utter uselessness.
What the film features in any case are very strong appearances of its lead actors. Forster and Williamson and their all-cult-movie-star supporting cast are giving the sort of shaded performances that hint at disquieting depths and breaking-points in the characters they are playing. This aspect puts Vigilante more in the tradition of Italian cop and vigilante movies of the 70s, and I wouldn't be surprised if Lustig had planned his film as an homage to those films.
Unfortunately, Lustig is no Enzo G. Castellari, and although the film's action is appropriately dry and mean, the American just isn't as good at handling the dramatic parts of the movie, even though the actors are doing everything possible to hand them to him on a silver platter. At times, the film seems to be too interested in bloviating about the evils of "the system", instead of basing its violence on the inner lives of characters who would provide ample opportunity for it.
The pacing of the non-violent scenes is just a little bit off, too, throwing the film out of its rhythm repeatedly by going on just a little too long to keep the film's momentum going.
Lustig's movie is not bad, it's just not as good as the movies it seems to base itself on.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Music friends of taste need to hear this
An absolutely incredible recording of a Robert Forster gig two days ago in New York.
Go there at once to find the download link!
Honestly, it's an absolutely brilliant show that makes me miss the Go-Betweens a little less.
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