Today, Lis and I continued to rewatch the Twilight movies on Netflix.
New Moon was the second part of the Twilight Saga. Because people in town are starting to notice that he hasn’t aged in ten years, Carlisle (Peter Facinelli) decides that the Cullens need to move to a new location. Edward explains to Bella that the worst thing a vampire can do is allow humans to discover that they exist. Edward also says that Bella can’t come with the Cullens because it would raise suspicion and it would also put Bella in danger, since even the members of his family are tempted to drink her blood. Bella says, “Change me!” and Edward says not unless they’re married.
The Cullens leave and Bella has a breakdown, and even her father wants to send her back to Florida to live with her mother. Finally, Bella starts hanging out with Jacob (Taylor Lautner), a member of the Quileute Tribe who is also revealed to be a werewolf. Werewolves and vampires hate each other, but the Forks werewolves had arranged a truce with the Cullens where they wouldn’t attack them as long as the Cullens didn’t bite any humans. If Edward had changed Bella, the truce would have been canceled and the werewolves would have had to attack Bella.
When Alice (Ashley Greene) misinterprets a vision of the future and thinks that Bella is dead, Edward leaves wherever it is he’s living and goes to Italy to ask the ruling vampire council to destroy him. Even though Jacob’s in love with her, Bella goes to Italy to try to save Edward’s life.
I remember really liking New Moon when I saw it because I was in a long-distance relationship and I could relate to what Bella was going through. When we rewatched it, I had forgotten how long the movie was and how little actually happens until Bella goes to Italy, which doesn’t even happen until the movie’s nearly over. The other thing I forgot about this one was that they really overdid the vampire makeup on Robert Pattinson at the start of the movie. He was so pale and wearing so much lipstick that everyone should have been able to figure out that he was a vampire just by looking at him.
When this movie came out, everyone was either Team Jacob or Team Edward. I was Team Edward because, again, I was in a long-distance relationship. But rewatching it, I realized that I should have been Team Jacob because he really was nicer to Bella and he wasn’t constantly sulking about everything like Edward. Jacob came with a lot less baggage and he was part of that tribe where you’re apparently not allowed to wear a shirt. No one in the tribe wore a shirt and they all looked like models. They probably all were models. This movie knew what we wanted to see.
I still enjoyed rewatching the movie. The men were all sexy and brooding. Anna Kendrick was funny. Dakota Fanning had red eyes and sent psychic pain waves. Bella said, “Change me,” and Edward looked tortured. It wasn’t as good as I remembered and it probably could have been cut down to 30 minutes without really losing much of the plot but it’s Twilight. If you know, you know.
I love Jimmy Stewart. He’s one of my favorite actors. If Charles Bronson had never existed, there’s a chance he could be my all-time favorite. I watch IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (and cry) every holiday season, and I believe his series of westerns with Anthony Mann in the 1950s are some of the best ever made. And then there’s his work with Alfred Hitchcock. REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO are movies I discovered as a young and impressionable movie lover. They helped cement Stewart, and Hitchcock, as legends in my mind. In 1958, the same year that he made VERTIGO, Stewart starred in BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE with his VERTIGO co-star Kim Novak. I’ve owned the movie on DVD for years, but I’ve never sat down and watched it before. That changed today!
In this supernatural, romantic comedy, Stewart stars as Shep Henderson, an engaged publisher in New York City who finds himself falling for his beautiful neighbor, Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak). The problem is that Gillian just happens to be a witch, and she has a bad past with Shep’s fiancé, Merle (Janice Rule). What starts as a ruse to get back at an old rival eventually turns into true love and Gillian doesn’t know how to handle these new feelings. Is she willing to confess what she’s done and give up her powers for a chance at love? I guess you’ll just have to watch and see!
Stewart makes almost anything enjoyable just by being himself. That amazing voice, combined with his natural humor and charm, gives me something I can latch ahold of, and I always pull for his characters. Kim Novak is just so beautiful, and downright sexy, as Gillian. This character has spent her life operating by one set of rules and all of a sudden, she’s trying to figure out how to deal with feelings she hasn’t dealt with before. Her ability to cast spells and work magic takes on a different meaning when the hearts of people she loves are at stake, and Gillian soon has a crisis of conscience. Stewart and Novak have incredible chemistry, which goes a long way in helping this complicated romance work.
And then there’s the movie’s setting. I came in October for a romantic story involving witches and warlocks, but I ended up with characters falling in love in New York City at Christmastime. I could see this as a movie I watch every year over the holidays moving forward, especially since Stewart is the star. I know my mom will love it!!
The film also features an incredible supporting cast that includes Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, Hermione Gingold, Howard McNear and Elsa Lanchester, who’s especially effective as Gillian’s Aunt Queenie. If you leave the movie feeling like you want to go back and watch the old show BEWITCHED, starring Elizabeth Montgomery, I’ll just let you know that makes perfect sense. This movie was actually an acknowledged inspiration for that classic series.
BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE may feature a witch as a main character, but this story doesn’t feature any scares. It’s a fun romance with a charming premise and a great cast. Even a witch has a chance for love, and when that chance is with someone played by Jimmy Stewart, that’s about as magical as it gets!
“Ignore It” hit home. For the uninitiated, it was a story about alcoholism, abuse, and the pathological need to ignore it. I know this because I lived it. I can spot an alcoholic miles away. I was so afraid of my father, who was a car guy, that even today, when I smell motor oil or a garage, an icy chill shoots down my spine. He was the beat the snot out of his son type and I ended up being the party guy or isolation varietal.
I watched the film and then confirmed it with the short story “You’re going to notice a woman in your home, you must ignore her” by Jeff Speziale that the story was about a different alcoholic than my dad. In this story, the alcoholic abuser was the mother. An alcoholic mom hits harder because she’s supposed to protect you from everyone. Women are the foundation of a civilized society and family that’s why when men are dying on the battlefield, they cry for their mothers. We see this evidenced in psychology because female psychopaths are underdiagnosed; it is too hard even for a mental health professional to admit that a woman could be an evil pathological liar. We could always accept evil men, but evil women were portrayed as lacking agency- they were possessed or a succubus. In other words, it either was not their fault or they weren’t really human in the first place. Denial, the absolute rejection of an obvious fact, rules the day. Alcoholism lives in denial because it the perfect form of secrecy.
In this short, the father explains to the son that the monster is back and it has to be ignored; so, I read this as mom is on a bender again -the monster is back. During dinner, the father tries to maintain order, but the mother finally gets up and goes to the kitchen because it is the favorite place of the hidden stash. There is also a moment where there is a monster hand on the daughter’s shoulder; it is not a claw. It is a caress, but still terrifying because a drunk mom is unpredictable like dynamite. When the daughter sees the monster and she lets a tear out; it is shame falling down her face, causing an immediate and violent reaction from the monster.
The narrator in the short story tells the reader to share the infection. The narrator’s request has two interpretations: a positive one and a real one. The positive one is that we need to out the disease and take power from it to stop it. The real one is that the pain is too great for him to experience alone; so, if you share it, you lessen his own burden.
Watching the original House on Haunted Hill is a bit of a Halloween tradition here at the Shattered Lens.
First released in 1959, The House on Haunted Hill features Vincent Price as a millionaire who invites five people to a party that he and his wife are throwing in a supposedly haunted house. Price explains that anyone who can actually make it through the entire night will receive $10,000. (That’s the equivalent of a $110,000 today.) Is the house truly haunted? The groundskeeper (Elisha Cook, Jr.) certainly seems to think so!
This is a classic haunted house movie, featuring Price at his best and a number of genuinely fun twists. Even if you’ve seen it a hundred times, you need to watch it again. Here is …. THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL!
Inferno (1980, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Romana Albano)
Today’s horror song of the day comes from Keith Emerson’s soundtrack of Dario Argento’s Inferno. Emerson did not have an enviable task, having to follow up Goblin’s soundtrack for Suspiria. But Emerson pulled it off, crafting a score that compliments Goblin’s earlier work while maintaining an identity of its own.
Convent of Sinners (1986) wants to expose the corruption behind convent walls, but Joe D’Amato keeps getting distracted by what he can undress inside them. That tension defines this erotic nunsploitation horror film, an atmospheric guilty pleasure with enough religious hypocrisy and malicious intrigue to suggest a sharper movie buried beneath the sleaze. D’Amato recognizes the dramatic possibilities of an institution where frustrated desire disguises itself as moral authority. He also leans so heavily on sexual titillation that his criticism struggles to compete with his exploitation instincts. The result is entertainingly disreputable, occasionally disturbing, and considerably less insightful than its premise promises.
Susanna, played by Eva Grimaldi, enters the convent after suffering sexual abuse at home, only to discover that her supposed sanctuary contains another collection of people determined to control her. The Mother Superior develops an attachment to her, a priest offers forbidden affection, and Sister Teresa resents the attention she receives. Loosely adapted from Denis Diderot’s La Religieuse, the story follows a vulnerable woman whose needs remain secondary to the desires of those claiming to protect her. Susanna becomes the object of affection, suspicion, and punishment without gaining much say in any of it. Escape from one abusive environment simply delivers her into another.
There is a strong foundation here for a bitter examination of institutional corruption. The convent’s inhabitants cannot acknowledge their feelings honestly, so attraction becomes favoritism, jealousy becomes accusation, and cruelty becomes spiritual correction. Susanna exposes tensions that already exist, but blaming her allows everyone else to avoid examining themselves. Religious authority gives ordinary resentment extraordinary reach. Someone who merely dislikes you can make life unpleasant; someone who claims your suffering serves God can make resistance look like further evidence against you. The film understands that distinction, even if it does not consistently develop it beyond another opportunity for humiliation.
Its place within the nunsploitation tradition makes that limitation especially noticeable. Ken Russell’s The Devils combines sexual obsession, religious hysteria, and institutional violence with a larger examination of political power. D’Amato uses related ingredients without approaching Russell’s ambition or furious visual imagination. Convent of Sinners concentrates on private jealousies and forbidden attachments, which could have supported a more intimate account of how authority becomes abusive. Instead, its serious implications repeatedly compete with scenes designed primarily to provoke or titillate. The comparison is useful because it demonstrates that lurid material and meaningful criticism can coexist, provided the filmmaking gives both a purpose.
Bruno Mattei’s The Other Hell offers the trashier comparison, turning a convent into a breeding ground for sinister secrets, violence, and supernatural horror. Both films exploit the reversal of sacred refuge into dangerous confinement, but Mattei foregrounds the horror-show possibilities while D’Amato emphasizes erotic melodrama. Convent of Sinners builds on this established genre territory through its mixture of religious imagery, repressed appetites, and punitive authority. Yet its reliance on sexual spectacle makes the corruption feel less like something being investigated than something supplying the next scandalous situation. The convent is an effective setting, but D’Amato does not always look beyond its exploitation value.
Karin Well’s Sister Teresa gives the persecution a concrete emotional motive. She resents the Mother Superior’s interest in Susanna, and her wounded pride feeds her vindictiveness. Underneath the religious vocabulary is someone furious about losing influence. The institution lets her disguise retaliation as moral responsibility, making her more dangerous than an openly spiteful rival. These dynamics provide some of the film’s strongest material because they reveal how easily a hierarchy can accommodate personal grudges. Teresa does not need to confess her jealousy when she can insist that Susanna is the problem. Her authority supplies the explanation her conscience ought to question.
Grimaldi gives Susanna a sympathetic presence, but the screenplay is far more interested in what happens to her than in who she is. Her longing for tenderness is understandable, and apparent affection offers a believable temptation in such an oppressive environment. Unfortunately, every refuge becomes another trap, and the repeated victimization eventually starts to flatten her character. D’Amato leans way too heavily on the sexual titillation and lurid exploitation of Susanna, weighing down whatever commentary he is attempting about religious hypocrisy and institutional corruption. Her suffering becomes an attraction in itself. The film wants us to condemn those treating her as an object while rarely resisting that temptation itself.
That mixture also connects it to The Convent of Hell, the erotic graphic novel written by Ricardo Barreiro and illustrated by Ignacio Noé. Its forbidden appetites, convent confinement, cruelty, and supernatural grotesquerie belong to the same imaginative tradition. Whether or not its creators would acknowledge these particular predecessors, the family resemblance to The Devils, The Other Hell, and Convent of Sinners is persuasive. This is a critical reading of their shared sensibility rather than a documented claim of direct influence from every film. Still, the progression makes sense: sacred imagery becomes a framework for escalating erotic excess, sometimes overshadowing whatever criticism accompanies it.
Ultimately, Convent of Sinners works better as an uneven guilty pleasure than as a convincing indictment of religious abuse. Its period atmosphere and enclosed setting lend weight to the melodrama, while its malicious characters keep the intrigue moving even when the pacing sags. There is enough solemn hypocrisy and shameless sleaze to satisfy a taste for Italian exploitation, but Susanna’s treatment grows repetitive and uncomfortable. D’Amato has found a subject with genuine dramatic bite; he simply keeps sacrificing that bite to another dose of titillation. The film peers behind the convent’s respectable façade, then becomes so absorbed in the scandal that it neglects the corruption it originally promised to expose.
In 2012’s Abel’s Field, Kevin Sorbo plays the role of Abel. He’s the new groundskeeper at a small town high school, one of those places where football is king. No one in town really seems to know much about Abel and that’s fine with Abel. He keeps to himself and he prefers not have long conversations with people. He works hard, he tries to stay out of trouble, and he spends a lot time writing in a notebook on which he keeps a very close eye.
And let’s give credit where credit is due. Kevin Sorbo actually gives a very good performance as Abel. I know that some people will snicker when they read that. At this point, Kevin Sorbo is so associated with a certain type of politics and a certain type of religion and a certain type of movie that merely mentioning his name will send some self-appointed cultural critics into a frothing rage. That said, Sorbo is one of the better actors to have found a niche in the faith-based film industry and he does a good job playing the role of Abel. He’s convincing as a man who doesn’t want to get close to anyone but who is still kind enough to reach out to people who need help.
Seth McArdle (Samuel Davis) is someone who could definitely use some help. A 17 year-old high school senior, Seth has had to step up and take on an enormous amount of responsibility. With his father having vanished and his mother having died, Seth is taking care of his two younger sisters. He attends high school, he works two jobs, and then when he finally returns home, he just hopes that he has enough money to pay the babysitter.
When Seth yells at the arrogant high school quarterback after the latter runs a stop sign and nearly hits Seth’s sisters, the entire football team starts to target Seth. The team is struggling on the field this season so they decide to take their frustrations out on Seth. Seth can’t even walk down the school hallway without the team attacking him. Because Seth fights back, he’s the one who ends up getting in trouble. Seth is told that he has two options. He can either help Abel install a new sprinkler system for the football field or he can just drop out of school.
(Wow, that’s harsh.)
You can guess where this is going. After an awkward beginning, Abel eventually becomes a mentor to Seth. Abel and Seth discover they have something in common. They’re both down-on-their luck and their both kind of miserable. When the bank threatens to foreclose on Seth’s house, Abel is there to try to keep Seth from breaking the law in order to pay. They share a lot of pain but they also share a common faith and, eventually, Abel even shares the dark secret from his past. How much that secret surprises you will depend on how much you know about the stories of the Biblical Cain and Abel and Seth.
Abel’s Field is a surprisingly effective film. Yes, it’s a religious film but it’s nowhere near as preachy as some of the other films of the genre that I’ve seen. The characters are portrayed as being flawed individuals who are trying to do their best in difficult situations. Both Davis and Sorbo give good strong performances. Believe it or not, it’s a good movie.
1957’s Final Curtain is a short, 22-minute film in which a mysterious man (Duke Moore) wanders around a creepy and seemingly abandoned theater. While Dudley Manlove (who played Eros the Alien in Plan Nine From Outer Space) provides narration, the man sees many strange things in the theater. What is real and what is merely a hallucination? Watch to find out!
Final Curtain was envisioned, by director Edward D. Wood, as being the pilot for a horror anthology series. Though none of the networks were interested in buying Wood’s proposed series, Wood considered Final Curtain to be his finest film and it certainly is a bit more atmospheric than the typical Wood film. The role of the mysterious man was written for Bela Lugosi but, after Lugosi passed away, Duke Moore was cast in the role instead.
In his mansion in Alabama, fashion photographer Jack B. Rippington (Blake Bahner) kills people in ways that are cruel and grotesque. He does it with a smile on his face and a spring in his step, and he always remembers to take pictures first because, I guess, he really does take the whole fashion photographer thing seriously. He has standards. He’s a professional. When he meets and starts dating a model named Erica (Ena Henderson), she soon finds herself unwittingly leading victims to their doom.
Why is Jack B. Rippington so obsessed with murdering anyone who comes by his house? Well, you could say that it runs in the family. He’s the great-grandson of Jack the Ripper. He informs the audience of this. Myself, I have to wonder if Rippington is a family name or if it’s just his nom de meurtre. If Jack the Ripper’s last name really was Rippington, that would be a hell of a coincidence, and it would also show that Scotland Yard really wasn’t doing a very good job of investigating the crimes at Whitechapel. I mean, why did they devote so much time to investigating poor Montague John Druitt when there was a guy named Rippington wandering around?
Of course, it’s also possible that Jack the Ripper moved to the United States, had a daughter, and then she married someone named Rippington. Still, that seems like it would be an amazing coincidence.
(For the record, the real Jack the Ripper was some guy that you’ve never heard of and who probably died without ever telling anyone the truth. The fact that he was never captured would seem to indicate that the police were investigating the wrong suspects. And don’t start in with any of that royal conspiracy nonsense either. Honestly, that’s one of the silliest theories that I’ve ever heard.)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Fatal Exposure. Fatal Exposure is a shot-on-video epic that has some surprisingly effective gore effects. Between burning people with acid and chopping off their heads, Jack B. Rippington really gets into his work, and the results are often difficult to look at. If I were to compare this to any other film, it would probably be William Lustig’s Maniac, which featured Joe Spinell playing an equally homicidal photographer whose crimes seemed to owe more than a little to Jack the Ripper. Of course, Jack B. Rippington is much more handsome than Joe Spinell was in Maniac. If Maniac was a plunge into darkness and a trip to the realm of absolute zero, Fatal Exposure tries to be a bit of a comedic romp. Jack B. Rippington may be a murderer, but he also enjoys talking to the audience. In its use of dark humor and its breaking of the fourth wall, the film has quite a bit in common with Lucio Fulci’s Touch of Death.
There’s not really much of a plot to Fatal Exposure. Jack B. Rippington takes pictures of women in lingerie. He kills anyone who comes to the house. Erica eventually gets suspicious. But director Peter B. Good keeps the action moving, and it looks surprisingly good for a SOV film. (Good was best-known as a cinematographer.) Blake Bahner gives a good performance as Jack B. Rippington. It’s not a film for everyone, but, at the very least, it feels like a real movie. That puts it ahead of most SOV productions.
The Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) is back! He’s abandoned North Dakota for Los Angeles, and now he’s looking for Bridget Callum (Shevonne Durkin), the descendant of a woman to whom he was promised centuries ago. The Leprechaun knows how to hold a grudge. Bridget already has a boyfriend named Cody Ingalls (Charlie Heath), who gives tours of celebrity cemeteries for Morty Ingalls (Sandy Baron).
Leprechaun 2 is significantly better than the first Leprechaun, if only because dark and grim Los Angeles seems like a better location for the story than North Dakota. Leprechaun 2 doesn’t get as much attention as the first one because it doesn’t feature Jennifer Aniston, but it does feature Shevonne Durkin, and any ’90s kid can tell you that’s almost as good. The Leprechaun is even nastier in the second film than he was in the first, and Warwick Davis continues to show an admirable dedication to bringing the character to life.
This film is also gorier than the first Leprechaun. The first Leprechaun was made with a younger audience in mind, even if it was an R-rated movie. Leprechaun 2 was clearly made to appeal to the type of teenagers who have always wondered what would happen if someone mistook a lawn mower for a Shevonne Durkin. For me, the most memorable scene is Morty making the mistake of wishing for a pot of gold and then discovering that it’s in his stomach. The Leprechaun offers to dig it out. That scene really stuck with me when I was a kid.
The Leprechaun would have more adventures, but this one was the best.
