In this short film from 1896, Georges Méliès shows off not one magic trick but actually four. He makes a woman disappear. He makes a skeleton appear. Then he makes the skeleton disappear and then he brings the vanishing lady back. Today, of course, we all know how these tricks were done but just imagine how audiences in 1896, many of whom were still amazed that movies could exist at all, would have reacted to this short film. This film provides a look into a simpler and more innocent time. Watching this film, I found myself wishing that I could feel the wonder at a movie that someone in 1896 would have. Sadly, audiences are far more jaded today.
Personally, I liked that both Méliès and the Vanishing Lady stepped back onstage to take a little bow. Even in those early days of cinema, they understood the importance of connecting with the audience.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing One World, which ran on NBC from 1998 to 2001. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
The Cast of One World
This week, the first season of One World ends with a new couple and the second season begins with a shocking break-up. Let’s dive right into it …. because we’re living in one world….
Episode 1.13 “Love is a Many Splintered Thing”
(Directed by Chuck Vinson, originally aired on December 12th, 1998)
As the first season comes to a close, Ben and Jane finally go on their first date together. Unfortunately, because they are both foster kids, they’re not allowed to live under the same roof if they’re dating. Ben is willing to move out but Jane doesn’t want to be responsible for breaking up the Blake family. At first, they decide to set aside their feelings for the good of the family but then they decide, “Eh, who cares?” And good for them! Nothing should stand in the way of true love.
Meanwhile, Sui tries out for the Olympic soccer team and …. doesn’t make it. But she gets a pep talk from an older player, who assures Sui that she is the greatest young soccer player in the world and that she’s destined to be a big star. While discussing knee injuries, the older player says that she’s been to rehab “more times than Robert Downey, Jr.” Ouch! Take that, future Iron Man!
Finally, Neal gets the phone number of a girl named — hey! — Lisa but then he loses it when Cray and Marci accidentally donate his pants to charity. When he sees someone who might be wearing his pants, he enlists Cray to pick the man’s pockets. Cray ends up getting arrested as a result. Are these kids ever going to get off probation?
Anyway, as far as season finales go, this one wasn’t bad. The dialogue got a little bit heavy-handed, as often tended to happen whenever TNBC tried to get dramatic. But, after 12 episodes, the cast definitely felt like a real family and the chemistry between everyone was believable. Jane and Ben seems like they’ll be a great couple!
Or will they? Viewers in 1998 would have to wait an entire spring and summer to find out! However, readers today can find out right now.
Episode 2.1 “Love and Foster Kids Aren’t Always Blind”
(Directed by Mary Lou Belli, originally aired on September 11th, 1999)
Two months after he and Jane became a couple, Ben is no longer living with the Blakes. He’s moved into an apartment so trashy that it floods whenever it rains. However, he and Jane are now a couple. Unfortunately, Jane is no longer in love with Ben. It turns out that, according to Jane, “trust and love aren’t the same thing.” After Jane and Ben break up, Ben can safely move back into the house. Yay!
But wait, the Blakes have adopted another teenager, Eddie. And Eddie’s blind! Surely they’re not going to kick out a blind kid. Oh wait, it turns out that Eddie’s just faking to get special treatment. Once Neal figures out that Eddie can see, it becomes perfectly acceptable to kick Eddie out and back into the system. Ben moves back in and, like magic, the show is back to where it all started. Well, that was convenient….
In fact, it’s all a bit too convenient and considering what a good job the show did bringing Ben and Jane together, it’s hard not to be disappointed with how cavalierly it broke them up. Seriously, if Jane and Ben can’t make it, what hope is there for the rest of the world!?
I don’t care what Stephen King says. Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining is great.
One of King’s big complaints about the film is that Jack is obviously unhinged from the start. King is right that Jack Nicholson plays Jack Torrance as being someone who has a few screws loose even before he starts to work as the caretaker. But it works for the film, as can be seen in this scene in which Stuart Ullman tells Jack about what happened to previous caretaker.
Incidentally, Barry Nelson’s performance as Ullman is seriously underrated. Ullman is a far more interesting character in the movie than he was in King’s book. For that matter, the same can be said of just about every character in the movie as opposed to the way King envisioned them in his novel. Maybe that’s the main reason King doesn’t like this movie. Kubrick understood King’s story better than King himself did.
There are reasons for this. A big one is for the exercise. I’ve always liked my legs. Why wouldn’t I want to take care of them? (As my mom used to say whenever I complained about inheriting her nose, “Yes, but you also inherited my legs so stop crying!”)
As a lover of films, I appreciate the fact that stairwells are very cinematic. When I’m taking the stairs, I’m thinking about Vertigo. Sometimes, if I’m in the right mood, I’m thinking about Barefoot In The Park. I’m thinking about Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I’m thinking about all of the Bond movies that have featured twisty staircases. I’m thinking about all of the romantic comedies that have featured people kissing in the middle of stairwells. I thinking about climbing a fire escape in the rain. I’m thinking about all of the famous shots of people moving up and down staircases.
Another reason why I avoid elevators is that I like the symbolism of going up the stairs. I like the idea of ascending, step-by-step.
Of course, the main reason for taking the stairs is that I find elevators to be incredibly creepy. When I was seven or eight, I heard a story on the news about a woman who got her necklace caught in the doors of an elevator and, as a result, she was decapitated when the elevator started to move. AGCK! I’ve never quite gotten that image out of my head.
The minute those elevator doors close, you’re pretty much trapped until the elevator reaches the next floor. And even then, there’s no guarantee that the doors are actually going to open. There’s always the possibility that the elevator could get stuck between floors and you could be trapped in that little room for hours or even days. Even worse, someone else could be stuck in there with you and that person could be a stranger. That person could be carrying a straight razor or they could just have bad breath but either way, I wouldn’t necessarily want to be trapped in an elevator with them. And don’t even get me started on the possibility of an elevator cable snapping and the elevator plunging down 30 flights at breakneck speed.
Seriously, elevators are scary!
The 1983 Dutch film, The Lift, is all about one very scary elevator. For, instance, the elevator stops moving after a lightning storm takes out all the power in Amsterdam and four people end up trapped inside of it. When the power is finally restored, the elevator doors still refuse to open. Eventually, the doors have to be forced open. Fortunately, the four trapped people are saved before they suffocate but a few others aren’t so lucky. One elderly man falls down an empty elevator shaft. A security guard is decapitated when his head gets stuck in the elevator doors. A janitor vanishes.
Felix (Huub Stabler) is assigned to figure out why the elevator is malfunctioning. What he discovers suggests that the elevator has a mind of its own. Of course, no one believes that and Felix becomes obsessed with proving his theory. He becomes so obsessed with the building and the elevator that his wife leaves him. Felix’s only ally is a reporter named Mieke (Willeke van Ammelrooy), Mieke is investigating Rising Sun, a computer company who was responsible for designing the system that runs the elevator. Are the deaths the result of a corporate incompetence or is Felix correct? Is the elevator alive?
The Lift works precisely because it understands that elevators are creepy. More than being about a haunted elevator, The Lift is actually about the absurd amount of trust that people put into technology. (This is a theme that’s even more relevant today than it probably was in 1983.) People get on the elevator because they’ve been told that it’s safe and that there are safeguards in place to prevent any problems. Even when the elevator starts to malfunction and otherwise behave in a threatening manner, people still assume that it’s a problem that can be easily fixed because they’ve been told that it was designed with the most advanced technology available. More than just being a horror film about a haunted elevator, The Lift is a film about society that has put such blind trust in technology that it doesn’t know how to handle things when the system develops of mind of its own. People may have been conditioned to trust the system but, when the elevator comes to life, everyone’s going down.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films. I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.
Today, we take a look at a very important year: 1980
8 Shots From 8 Horror Films: 1980
Inferno (1980, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Romana Albano)
Without Warning (1980, dir by Greydon Clark, DP: Dean Cundey)
Friday the 13th (1980, dir by Sean S. Cunningham, DP: Barry Abrams)
Maniac (1980, dir. William Lusting, DP: Robert Lindsay)
City of the Living Dead (1980, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP: Sergio Salvati)
Dressed To Kill (1980, dir by Brian De Palma, DP: Ralf D. Bode)
Night of the Hunted (1980, dir by Jean Rollin)
The Shining (1980, directed by Stanley Kubrick, DP: John Alcott)
The 1981 horror film, Dead & Buried, takes place in the small town of Potters Bluff. It seems like it should be a nice place to live. The people are friendly. The scenery is lovely. The town is right on the coast of the ocean so the view is great. It’s a bit of an artist’s colony, the type of place where you would expect to find Elizabeth Taylor painting the sunset while Richard Burton battles a hangover in the beach house. It’s the type of small town that used to by very popular on television. It’s just one Gilmore girl away from being an old CW show.
It’s such a nice town. So, why are so many people dying?
That’s the mystery that Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) has to solve. Actually, it’s one of the many mysteries that Dan has to solve. There’s also the mystery of why his wife, Janet (Melody Anderson), has been acting so strangely. And then there’s the mystery of what happened to the person who, one night, Dan ran into with his car. The person ran away but he left behind his arm. When Dan gets some skin from the arm analyzed, he’s told that the arm belongs to someone who has been dead for at least four months!
Who can explain all of this? How about William G. Dobbs (Jack Albertson), the folksy coroner who seems to enjoy his work just a little bit too much. In fact, Dr. Dobbs seems to be a bit more than just a tad eccentric. One would necessarily expect a coroner to have a somewhat macabre view of life but Dr. Dobbs seems to take things to extreme. Is it possible that Dr. Dobbs knows more than he’s letting on?
Dead & Buried has a reputation for being something of a sleeper, a deliberately-paced and often darky humorous horror film that had the misfortune to be released at a time when most horror audiences were more interested in watching a masked man with a machete kill half-naked teenagers. Because the studio wasn’t sure how exactly to market Dead & Buried, it failed at the box office and it was only years later, after it was released on home video, that people watched the film and realized that it was actually pretty good. And make no mistake about it, Dead & Buried is a fairly clever horror film, one that is full of effective moments and which does a good job of creating a creepy atmosphere. If I’m not quite as enthused about this film as others, that’s because I do think that it’s occasionally a bit too slow and the film’s twist ending, while well-executed, didn’t particularly take me by surprise. This is one of those films that you enjoy despite the fact that you can see the surprise conclusion coming from a mile away.
In the end, Dead & Buried fills like a particularly twisted, extra-long episode of one of those old horror anthology shows, like Night Gallery, Twilight Zone, or maybe even Ghost Story. It’s a nicely done slice of small town horror, featuring a study lead performance from James Farentino and an enjoyably weird one from Jack Albertson. Though the film is not heavy on gore, Stan Winston’s special effects are appropriate macabre. Even if it’s not quite up there with Gary Sherman’s other films (like Vice Squad and Death Line, to name two), Dead & Buried is an entertainingly eccentric offering for Halloween.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? 2011’s Source Code!
Can Jake Gyllenhaal prevent a bombing on a train? That sound like a simple premise but, in Source Code, things get much more complicated. This twisty sci-fi thriller from Duncan Jones was one of my favorite films of 2011 and I look forward to watching it with the Friday Night Flix crew!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Watching The Creeping Terror is an October tradition here at the Shattered Lens. How could anyone resist a film about a killer carpet, especially one that features a random dance party? This film was directed by an enigmatic figure named Vic Savage. No one is really sure who he actually was. No one is sure what happened to him after The Creeping Terror was finally released. But what we do know is that he made a film unlike any other.
All across America (but mainly in Texas and California) people are seeing bright lights in the sky and reporting that they’ve been abducted by aliens. Most of the abductees stop telling their stories after they are visited by mysterious men in black but enough are willing to talk about their experiences that eventually, Both Sides Magazine decides to do a story on it.
Keith and Brad are assigned to the story. Keith is a nice but mild guy who is skeptical about aliens but he’s determined to give everyone a fair hearing, The film suggests that this is perhaps because Keith’s a Christian, even though he doesn’t read his Bible every night and sometimes entertains doubts as to whether he’s truly going to Heaven. Brad, meanwhile, is a hardcore Atheist who is rude to everyone and believes in absolutely nothing. Brad hates the idea of having to do any stories that involve small town America. Go to Texas to talk to UFO abductees? That’s not Brad’s thing. (Brad is supposed to be very unlikable but the actor playing him looks a bit like Owen Wilson so it’s hard to hold anything against him.)
Still, Brad and Keith do talk to an auto mechanic who says that he was abducted. And then they talk to two Louisiana fishermen who were also abducted. Keith thinks that their experiences are worthy of a feature article. Brad vehemently disagrees. Fortunately, it turns out that the magazine’s religion editor, Darren, supports Keith.
Why is the Religion Editor so interested in UFOs? It’s not because he believes in aliens. (“The Bible doesn’t say anything about life on other planets,” he explains.) Instead, it’s because Darren thinks that the UFOs are actually being used by Satan to draw people away from God. He points out that most of the people who have been abducted are either not religious or heavily into the paranormal. Brad thinks that Darren’s full of it but, fortunately, a government informant shows up and reveals that not only is Darren correct but that the UFOs are going to be used as a way to explain away the Rapture!
As you probably guessed, this is a Rich Christiano film. First released in 2006, Unidentified was Christiano’s second feature length film and …. well, it’s not very good. On the one hand, you have to appreciate Christiano’s ambition and his attempt to make a sci-fi film on a low budget. On the other hand, Unidentified is painfully slow, poorly acted, and it’s hard not to notice that, for a major magazine, it appears that only six people work at Both Sides. Let’s just say that this film is no Spotlight when it comes to realistically portraying the life of a journalist. Darren makes it a point to try to convert everyone that he meets while investigating the story. Honestly, this seems like the type of thing that would get most journalists fired from a secular magazine. For whatever it’s worth, I do think the story itself had potential but the execution is definitely lacking. That said, the film does work in a reference to Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast. I’m not sure how Orson would have felt about that.
For the record (and since this review is running a little short), I personally don’t believe in UFOs but I have read several books about them. It amuses me that aliens are apparently always coming to our planet to tell us to stop being so war-like or to take better care of the environment. Hey, Mr. Martian — WORRY ABOUT YOUR OWN PLANET!
Tonight’s episode of Ghost Story stars Patricia Neal as a woman who wakes up one morning in a hotel and discovers that her husband is missing. She’s told that her husband checked out without her but no one will give her a straight answer as to where he went.
This episode was written by Jimmy Sangster, who also wrote several Hammer films. It originally aired on December 22nd, 1972.
Through the Shattered Lens 