The Films of 2024: Late Night With The Devil (dir by Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes)

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Late Night With The Devil is a truly frightening film.

Jack Deloy (David Dastmalchian) is the host of Night Owls, a late-night talk show. Deloy has spent his entire television career competing against The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. Deloy has a loyal audience. He has several Emmy awards. But he has never been able to beat The Tonight Show in the ratings. Even when he interviewed his dying wife (Georgina Haig) and got the biggest ratings of his career, he still finished second to Johnny Carson. After his wife died, Deloy went into seclusion before eventually returning to his show.

It’s Halloween night in 1977 and Deloy is hosting a live broadcast of Night Owls. He and his producer (John Quong Tart) are convinced that they’re finally going to achieve their goal of winning the ratings race. On the show, they have the medium Christou (Faysal Bazzi). They have Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), a pompous former magician who now makes his living by exposing charlatans. They have parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a young woman who claims to be possessed by a demon that she calls Mr. Wiggles. Deloy’s sidekick Gus McConnell (Rhys Auteri) fears that it’s not a good idea to mess with the occult on Halloween night but Deloy is determined to get those ratings. In fact, Deloy is willing to do just about anything for the ratings.

Opening with narration from Michael Ironside and introduced as being a documentary about what happened that mysterious night, Late Night With The Devil is a found footage horror film but, unlike a lot of films of the genre, it doesn’t get bogged down with people saying stuff like, “Are we recording?” or “Are you getting this?” Instead, the film’s directors actually make good use of the format, suggesting that there might still be a spark of inspiration to be found in the found footage genre. The contrast between the grainy color of the show and the stark black-and-white footage of what went on whenever the show went to commercial is one of the things that makes Late Night With The Devil so memorable. It keeps the audience from getting too comfortable with what they’re watching and it’s a reminder that what one sees in a controlled environment (like a talk show) is often meant to hide the chaos lurking under the surface. Towards the end of the episode, when the color footage goes from being grainy to suddenly being very bright and vivid, it’s truly unsettling. (The film does such a good job of keeping the audience off-balance that the directors can even get away with abandoning the found footage format at a key moment.) Late Night With The Devil does a wonderful job recreating the look and feel of an old late night talk show. One look at the Night Owls set and you can literally smell the combination of stale cigarettes and outright desperation. Looking at the ugly set and the tacky clothes, it’s easy to buy that we actually are watching some long-buried archival footage from 1977. One reason why the film is frightening is because it feels authentic.

(And yes, it feels authentic despite the inclusion of some AI-images. AI was used to create the intertitles that appear whenever Night Owls goes to commercial. They appear for less than a minute and, if not for the online controversy, I never would have noticed them.)

David Dastmalchian plays Jack Deloy as being a showman who is an expert at manipulating the audience and who will do anything to get people to watch. Still, even the most jaded horror fan will be shocked to see how far Jack Deloy is willing to go to win the ratings race. (For all the supernatural elements of the film, nothing is more disturbing than its portrayal of human avarice.) A major subplot deals with Jack’s membership in the Grove, a society of the wealthy and powerful that is based on the very real Bohemian Grove. Bohemian Grove is, of course, a favorite of conspiracy theorists who assume that the rich and famous are up to all sorts of nefarious deeds whenever they gather for their annual meeting. Those conspiracy theorists will find much to appreciate about Late Night With The Devil and Dastmalchian’s performance. (Of course, one can also read Jon Ronson’s Them, which features an entire chapter about Ronson traveling to Bohemian Grove and discovering that what was advertised as being a day of dorky fun for the rich and powerful actually was just that.)

Obviously, many films did influence Late Night With The Devil. The end credits begin with a land acknowledgment but it could have just as easily contained a film acknowledgment. “The filmmakers acknowledge the influence of The Exorcist, Cannibal Holocaust, The Last Exorcism, the careers of James Randi, Uri Geller, and Sylvia Browne, Michelle Remembers, The Conjuring franchise, The Larry Sanders Show, the films of David Cronenberg, and Ghostwatch.” It’s a testament to the skill of the directors and the cast that, despite all the obvious influence, Late Night With The Devil stands as an original and genuinely unsettling work of art.

Aftershock (1990, directed by Frank Harris)

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

It’s the future and society has collapsed. America is now controlled by the evil Commander Eastern (Richard Lynch) who, with the help of a propagandist known as Big Sister and a paramilitary leader named Oliver Queen (John Saxon), rules with an iron hand. Colonel Slater (Christopher Mitchum) is the leader of the revolution that threaten to overthrow Eastern’s regime.

Two revolutionaries, Wille (Jay Roberts, Jr.) and Danny (Chuck Jeffreys), are stuck in one of Eastern’s prison. Every day, they fight for their lives and they wait for a chance to escape. That chances come in the form of Sabrina (the beautiful Elizabeth Kaitan), an alien who lands on our planet under the mistaken assumption that Earth is an utopia.

When Sabrina, Willie, and Danny finally manage to escape, they have to make it to Slater’s headquarters while avoiding the bounty hunter (Chris DeRose) who Queen has been sent to capture them.

A fairly standard rip-off of the Mad Max films, the most interesting thing about Aftershock is the cast. I already mentioned Mitchum, Saxon, Lynch, and Elizabeth Kaitan but there are also appearances from Russ Tamblyn, Michael Berryman, Matthias Hues, and Deanna Oliver. For a movie that looks cheap and doesn’t really bring anything new to the postapocalyptic genre, there are a lot of very talented people in this movie. (Even talented people have to pay the bills.) Most of them are only on for a few minutes. The instantly forgettable Jay Roberts, Jr. and Chuck Jeffreys are the actual stars here. Jeffreys was a stunt man who was famous for his resemblance to Eddie Murphy. He looks good in the action scenes but otherwise, he and Roberts don’t make much of an impression.

At least Elizabeth Kaitan gets a decent amount of screentime. Kaitan appeared in a lot of movies in the 80s and 90s. None of the movies were very good. She got stuck with roles like the girlfriend in Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 and a victim in Friday The 13th Part VII. Kaitan got roles primarily because she was beautiful but she had a likable screen presence and more than a little talent. In Aftershock, she gives a convincing performance as a stranger in a strange land, one who has her own eccentric way of viewing things. Her performance is the best thing about Aftershock and the main reason to watch.

The Films of 2024: Unfrosted (dir by Jerry Seinfeld)

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Unfrosted is a thoroughly amiable and goofy comedy about the invention of the Pop Tart.

Taking place in an imaginary 1963, Unfrosted tells the story of the Cereal Wars. Kellog’s and Post are competing for dominance in the kids breakfast food market, dominating the scene while the dour folks at Quaker can only shake their heads in holier-than-thou shame. Bob Cabana (played by the film’s director, Jerry Seinfeld) is a Kellog’s exec who spends his day dealing with pompous cereal mascots (led by a hilarious Hugh Grant) and the somewhat random whims of his boss, Edsel Kellog III (Jim Gaffigan). He dreams of someday having a lawn made out of sod and also having enough money to send his kids to a good college. “Those colleges can cost $200 a year!” he says, at one point.

Life is good until he discovers that Post — headed up by Marjorie Post (Amy Schumer) — is developing a type of new breakfast food that could revolutionize the industry and dethrone Kellog’s as America’s top cereal company. Bob gets Edsel’s permission to try to create something that will beat Post’s new product to the shelves. But first, Bob has to go to NASA and convince brilliant engineer Donna “Stan” Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy) to abandon the moon project and return to Kellog’s. “You know we’re never going to land on the moon,” Bob tells her.

Soon, the entire nation is riveted by the competition between Post and Kellog’s. Walter Cronkite (Kyle Dunnigan) reports on every development, in between complaining about his wife and playing with silly putty. The Russians decide to help Post, leading the world to the brink of nuclear war while President Kennedy (Bill Burr) spends his time with the Doublemint Twins. Harry Friendly (Peter Dinklage), head of the milk syndicate, warns that kids better not stop eating cereal while Bob finds himself being menaced by a sinister milkman (Christian Slater). A German scientist (Thomas Lennon) and Chef Boyardee (Bobby Moynihan) combine a sea monkey with a square of ravioli, leading to a new life form that lives in the Kellog’s ventilation system. Steve Schwinn (Jack McBrayer), the bicycle guy, risks his life to test a prototype while a super computer is shipped to Vietnam and turns into Colonel Kurtz and….

Okay, you’re getting the idea. This is a silly, joke-a-minute film that is in no way meant to be taken seriously. It’s obvious that Seinfeld and his co-writers greatly amused themselves while writing the script and your amusement will depend on whether or not you’re on the same wavelength. I enjoyed the film, because I love history and I love pop culture and I like random homages to other films. Not all of the jokes landed. There’s a lengthy Mad Men parody that, while funny, still feels several years too late. But, for the most part, I enjoyed the amiable goofiness of it all.

Unfrosted is currently getting some savagely negative reviews but that has more to do with Seinfeld’s recent comment that the “extreme left” was ruining comedy. Though most people would probably consider Seinfeld’s comment to be common sense (and would also realize that Seinfeld was condemning the “extreme” as opposed to liberalism in general), the online folks, many of whom were already angry over Seinfeld’s outspoken support of Israel, were scandalized and most mainstream film reviewers today never want to get on the bad side of an online mob, regardless of how annoying that mob may be. (Even a positive review in The Hollywood Reporter contained an odd passage in which the reviewer seemed to beg forgiveness for giving a non-condemnatory review to a film made by someone on the other side.) Of course, there are also some reviewers who are currently overpraising this film as a way to “own the libs.” The fact that a film as silly and inoffensive as this one could suddenly find itself at the center of the culture war tends to prove Seinfeld’s point.

The important thing is that Unfrosted is amusing and, in the end, rather likable. I enjoyed it.

Street (2015, directed by Bradford May)

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

After witnessing a fight between two criminals and a young man in a convenience store, Ozzy (Shashawnee Hall) decides to track the man down. Ozzy owns a gym and he thinks that the man could be one of the next great MMA fighters. When Ozzy finds Remo Street (Casper Smart), he offers Remo a job at his gym. Street will just be cleaning up the place and serving as a sparring partner but he’ll also get to train for free. Street agrees.

Street almost immediately runs afoul Ozzy’s main fighter, Greg (John Brickner). Greg is the son of the gum’s co-owner, James (Gregory Fawcett), a gambling addict who is in debt to the Russian mob. (Those same Russian mobsters are also forcing Street to fight in an underground fight club.) Greg does not appreciate that way that Street looks at his sister, Jasmine (Kate Miner). After Greg injures his usual sparring partner, Ozzy gives the job to Street. Greg and Street have to train hard because the championship is coming up.

Though it may take place in the world of MMA, Street is a typical boxing film and it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. The fight scenes should be the highlight of the movie but they are so poorly edited that it’s hard to keep track of who is fighting who or who is winning. The final fight, which should have been the film’s crowning moment, feels like an anti-climax. The best boxing films emphasize the strategy and the training that the fighter uses to defeat his opponent but, in Street, we don’t even get to know who the fighters are or what their strengths are. Casper Smart gives a likable performance in the title role but Street never scores a knockout.

Retro Television Review: Playmates (dir by Theodore J. Flicker)

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1972’s Playmates! It can be viewed on YouTube.

Playmates tells the story of two divorces.

Marshall Barnett (Alan Alda) is an attorney. He went to Yale and Harvard. He has a successful career. He has rich and educated friends. He has a nice bachelor pad. He also pays hundreds of dollars in alimony. He and Lois (Barbara Feldon) got divorced 3 years ago and Marshall is still bitter. He’s bitter that he has to pay her so much money. He’s bitter that he only gets to see his son on the weekends. He’s bitter that he can’t seem to start a new, meaningful relationship with anyone. He’s bitter that his wife still asks him to critique her modernist paintings.

Kermit Holvey (Doug McClure) is a blue collar welder. He has only been divorced for a few months and his relationship with ex-wife Patti (Connie Stevens) is nowhere near as contentious as Marshall’s relationship with Lois. Still, Kermit is struggling to adjust to being single and to only seeing his son on the weekends.

Marshall and Kermit meet one weekend while they are both taking their sons to the Kiddieland Amusement Park. Marshall is so overjoyed to meet someone else who is dealing with divorce that he comes on a bit strong in trying to get to know Kermit. Kermit, however, does eventually get over his initial weariness and soon, he and Marshall are best friends. It doesn’t matter that Marshall has a tendency to be a little bit condescending and that Kermit often can’t follow what Marshall is talking about. They spend most of their time talking about their ex-wives.

But then Kermit meets Lois and he discovers that her paintings really aren’t as bad as Marshall made them out to be. And Marshall meets Patti and he discovers that she’s not as dumb as Kermit made her out to be. Soon, Kermit is secretly dating Lois and Marshall is secretly dating Patti and anyone who has ever watched a comedy before knows that there is a big mess waiting in the future.

Playmates was one of those films that pretended to be a lot naughtier than it actually was. For all the winking and the occasional sly smiles, all that happens is that Kermit and Marshall both end up going out with women with whom they really don’t have much in common. And while it’s tempting to read a lot into how quickly Kermit and Marshall become friends and how they both end up dating the other’s female equivalent, I think that might be giving this film too much credit. (If it were made today, things might be different.) In the end, the film really has more to say about class than it does marriage, as both Marshall and Lois obviously view spending time with Kermit and Patti as being a way of slumming and building up some working class bona fides without actually having to be working class. Patti, to her credit, calls Marshall out on this. Marshall admits that she has a point but he still come across as if he’s talking down to her, largely because he’s played by Alan Alda, an actor who is a master at being somehow both likable and condescending at the same time.

Playmates is a well-acted film and there are some funny lines. The four main characters are all ultimately likable, even if they all have their moments where you can tell why they would be difficult to live with. It deserves some credit for following its story through to its natural conclusion, with one couple realizing that they still love each other while the other realize that they are better off divorced. The film may not be as radical as it pretends to be but it still doesn’t cop out on the ending. In the end, Playmates is probably best watched as a time capsule. It’s here if you ever want to experience 1972 firsthand.

Insomnia File #65: Girl Lost (dir by Robin Bain)

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have jumped over to Tubi or Prime and watched 2016’s Girl Lost.

Girl Lost tells the story of Shara (Jessica Taylor Haid), who we first see being abused by her mother’s boyfriend and then retreating outside to a pool so that she can run a razor blade over her thigh in peace. Shara is only 15 but she’s had to deal with things that no one should ever have to experience in a lifetime. Her mother, Kim (played by Robin Bain, who also directed the film), is a sex worker who expects her daughter to follow in her footsteps and who encourages Shara to pose for risqué photos that Kim then posts online.

Shara spends almost the entire film fleeing. At first, she and Kim flee Kim’s boyfriend. Eventually, Shara and her boyfriend, the well-meaning but not particularly bright Jamie (Felix Ryan), end up running away from Kim. They live on the streets and discover just how difficult it can be to survive on your own. In the end, no one can survive without money and Shara, just like her mother before her, comes to realize that there’s one guaranteed way to make that money, whether it’s waiting for a creepy guy in a back alley or getting a job talking on the phone to some pervy loser living in his mother’s basement. Eventually, Shara runs away from even Jamie and ends up working at a Russian-owned brothel. Throughout it all, her life continues to unravel. It’s a harsh world that Shara has been born into and it’s one where you either do what you have to do to survive or you end up imprisoned or worse. The film’s ends on a dark note. At first, I thought the ending was perhaps a bit too dark. After all that had happened, I wondered, what it have killed the film to end on a note of hope? But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the film ended in the the only way that the story could have ended. From the minute she was born, poor Shara never really had a chance.

It’s a deeply unsettling film. In fact, if you are trying to find something to help lull you into sleep, this is probably not the best film to go with unless you’re prepared to have some fairly upsetting dreams. Though shot on a low budget, the film captures the harshness of life on the fringes of society and both Jessica Taylor Haid and Robin Bain deserve a lot of credit for their performances as two characters who are not always likable but who are very recognizable. It’s a sad film that also serves as a tribute to every lost and forgotten soul out there.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Story of Mankind
Stag
Love Is A Gun
Nina Takes A Lover
Black Ice
Frogs For Snakes
Fair Game
From The Hip
Born Killers
Eye For An Eye
Summer Catch
Beyond the Law
Spring Broke
Promise
George Wallace
Kill The Messenger
The Suburbans
Only The Strong
Great Expectations
Casual Sex?
Truth
Insomina
Death Do Us Part
A Star is Born
The Winning Season
Rabbit Run
Remember My Name
The Arrangement
Day of the Animals
Still of The Night
Arsenal
Smooth Talk
The Comedian
The Minus Man
Donnie Brasco
Punchline
Evita
Six: The Mark Unleashed
Disclosure
The Spanish Prisoner
Elektra
Revenge
Legend
Cat Run
The Pyramid
Enter the Ninja
Downhill
Malice
Mystery Date
Zola
Ira & Abby
The Next Karate Kid
A Nightmare on Drug Street
Jud
FTA
Exterminators of the Year 3000
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
The Haunting of Helen Walker
True Spirit
Project Kill
Replica
Rollergator
Hillbillys In A Haunted House
Once Upon A Midnight Scary

May Positivity: Round Of Your Life (dir by Dylan Thomas Ellis)

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2019’s Round Of Your Life tells the story of the Collins family.

Carl Collins (Boo Arnold) is a retired PGA golfer who is still considered to be one of the best to ever play the game. He’s put a lot of pressure on his two sons to follow in his footsteps. Tucker (Tim Ogletree), who likes to tell jokes and doesn’t always follow the best golf course etiquette, has just started on the PGA tour. Meanwhile, 15 year-old Taylor (Evan Hara) would rather play video games than stick with all of the hard work needed to become a golf pro.

When Taylor fails to make the Varsity Golf Team at his high school, an angry Carl goes for a late night drive. Unfortunately, his car is hit by another car, this one being driven by a teenage girl who was too busy texting to pay attention to the road. Carl ends up in a coma. And Taylor ends up determined to join the golf team and make his father proud.

Coach Wilson (Richard T. Jones) is skeptical about giving Taylor a second chance to play for the school. But then Wilson sees Taylor playing a round with his best player, Connor (Blair Jackson, who gives the film’s best performance). Realizing that Taylor actually is a good golfer, Wilson allows him to join the junior varsity team. When one of the varsity players is caught cheating, Taylor moves up to varsity. He also starts a tentative relationship with Bailey (Alexandria DeBerry), even though Connor considers Bailey to be his girlfriend.

Tucker, meanwhile, starts going out with Minka (Katie Leclerc), a nurse at the hospital. A surprisingly large amount of screentime is devoted to Tucker and Minka’s romance, despite the fact that there’s not really much of a story there. Both Tucker and Minka are single and they start dating. One gets the feeling that the main reason this storyline was given such prominence in the film is because the actor playing Tucker also wrote the film.

This is a faith-based film, so there’s naturally a lot of emphasis on everyone praying for Carl’s recovery. This is the type of film where people discuss attending a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting without a hint of irony. This is also the rare high school film where no one ever curses, there’s no drinking to be found, and all of the relationships are relatively chaste. Whether or not the viewer finds this to be realistic would depend on what type of high school they went to. My high school experience was a bit different.

When the film started, I had a problem with the amount of pressure that Carl put on his sons to follow in his footsteps. That was especially true in the case of Taylor, who seemed to be a good kid who just happened to be a bit more laid back than either his father or his brother. Though it’s not made apparent until the film is nearly over, Round Of Your Life did share my concerns. Visually, Round of Your Life is fairly bland and the twist at the end won’t be a huge shock to anyone who has ever seen one of these films before. But there is a likable earnestness to this movie. And, needless to say, the golf courses were lovely.

The Films of 2024: Spaceman (dir by Johan Renck)

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

At some point in an unspecified future, Czech cosmonaut Jakub Procházka (Adam Sandler) floats through space in a capsule. He’s on a mission to investigate Chopra, a cloud of dust and debris that has been spotted near Jupiter. On Earth, he’s a hero. People love to watch interviews with him from space, though few realize that the majority of his interviews were actually pre-recorded before he left the planet. Corporations are sponsoring his trip and Jakub is under order to use their marketing slogans as much as possible whenever he communicates with the people back home. Jakob is in a race to reach the cloud before a competing mission from South Korea. One can only guess what’s happened back on Earth to create a situation where the Czech Republic and South Korea are the two countries with a working space program.

Jakub is someone who grew up yearning to leave the planet and escape from the pain of being the son of a “party informer.” Now that he’s in space, he obsesses on how much he misses his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan). He and Lenka used to talk regularly through “CzechConnect” but it’s been a while since she’s answered any of his calls. Lenka was not happy when Jakub accepted the mission to Chopra, accusing him of abandoning her when she needed him most. Considering that she is pregnant (and that a previous pregnancy ended in a miscarriage), she’s absolutely right. What Jakub doesn’t know is that Lenka has decided to leave him. As her mother (Lena Olin) puts it, Jakub will always find an excuse not to return home and deal with their relationship. After he inspects Chopra, who is to say that Jakub won’t want to continue to see what is waiting beyond Jupiter? Lenka’s final message to him is being suppressed by the Czech government (represented here by Isabella Rossellini).

What is it that drives Jakub to separate himself from the rest of the world? Jakub is himself not totally sure. But when a giant space spider (voiced by Paul Dano) shows up in the capsule and explains that it wants to understand the human mind, Jakub starts to learn. The spider, who Jakub names Hanus, becomes Jakub’s companion and his confessor.

I’ve often said that there are two Adam Sandlers. There’s the Adam Sandler who makes goofy comedies with his friends and who mostly seems to view making movies as a working vacation. And then there’s the Adam Sandler who is a sad-eyed character actor who captures regret and spiritual malaise about as well any performer working today. To me, it’s always been interesting how the same actor who starred in something like Jack and Jill could also be absolutely heart-breaking when cast in something like The Meyerowtiz Stories. If the only Sandler films that you ever watched or heard about were his dramatic roles, you would probably assume that he is one of America’s most honored actors. Spaceman finds Adam Sandler in serious actor mode and he does a good job at portraying Jakub’s loneliness and the deep sadness that makes it difficult from him to open up emotionally. That said, I have to admit that, as I watched this deliberately-paced and rather somber film, there were a few times when I found myself thinking about how they should have made a sequel to Happy Gilmore where Happy became the first pro-golfer in space.

Spaceman is a film that I wanted to like more than I did. It’s a well-acted film, with Carey Mulligan again getting a chance to show the depth that she can bring to even a somewhat underwritten role. The Chopra is beautifully rendered. The Giant Spider becomes a fascinating character as the story plays out. The film does a good job of capturing the claustrophobia of being stuck in a space capsule. (Jakub may have escaped Earth but he’s still definitely trapped.) The problem is that the film’s approach is a bit too literal-minded. Instead, of engaging with viewers and letting them discover the film’s themes and solve the story’s mysteries for themselves, Spaceman spells everything out in the most obvious ways. The film, like Jakub, makes the mistake of not trusting the people watching to be able to understand what they’re seeing. 2001: A Space Odyssey was an obvious influence on the film’s final third but, whereas Kubrick took an obvious joy in leaving audiences scratching their heads, Spaceman wraps things up a bit too neatly,

In the end, I think Spaceman will be best-remembered for being the first film in which audiences will not be surprised to see Adam Sandler giving a dramatic performance. After Punch-Drunk Love, The Meyerowtiz Stories, Uncut Gems, and Hustle, we’ve reached the point where the idea of Adam Sandler being a good actor is no longer shocking. Who would have ever guessed?

Spaceballs (1987, directed by Mel Brooks)

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…

President Skroob (Mel Brooks), the evil and incompetent leader of Planet Spaceball, has squandered all of the air on his planet and is planning on stealing the atmosphere of the planet Druida. To pull this off, he arranges for the idiotic Prince Valium (Jim J. Bullock) to marry Vespa (Daphne Zuniga), the princess of Druida. (All together now: “She doesn’t look Druish.”) Vespa and her droid, Dot Matrix (voice by Joan Rivers), flee Druida with Lord Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) in pursuit.

In debt to the intergalactic gangster, Pizza the Hut (voiced by Dom DeLuise), a mercenary named Lone Star (Bill Pullman) and his associate, the man-dog hypbrid Barf (John Candy), accept a contract from Vespa’s father (Dick Van Patten) to track down his daughter. They take off in their space Winnebago to bring Vespa home. Though they start only interested in money, Lone Star and Barf come to learn about love, freedom, and a mystical power known as the Schwartz. (“No, the Schwartz!”)

Back when I was growing up and just being able to have HBO made you the coolest guy on the block, Spaceballs was one of my favorite movies. I watched it every time that it came on cable. As usual with Mel Brooks, there were a lot of double entendres that went over my young head but there was also enough goofy humor that I could laugh at what was going on. I could quote all the lines. I laughed whenever Rick Moranis showed up in his Darth Vader-costume. I laughed at John Candy’s facial expressions. I laughed when Mel Brooks showed up as Yogurt, the Spaceballs version of Yoda. Pizza the Hut? That’s hilarious when you’re a kid!

I recently rewatched the film. Revisiting it was a lesson in how your memory can trick you. I could still quote most of the lines with reasonable accuracy but nothing was quite the way I remembered it. Rick Moranis and John Candy were still hilarious and, being older, I could better appreciated the frustration felt by George Wyner’s Colonel Sandurz. I also realized what a good performance Bill Pullman gave as Lone Star. While everyone else mugged for the camera, Pullman played his role straight.

I also discovered that a lot of the scenes that I remembered as being hilarious were actually just mildly amusing. Mel Brooks was always hit-and-miss as a director, the type who would toss everything and the kitchen sink into his films. Spaceballs has a lot of hilarious scenes but it’s obvious that Brooks didn’t have the same affection for the source material as he did with Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles or even High Anxiety. Brooks is poking fun at Star Wars because it’s popular but he doesn’t seem to have any strong feelings, one way or the other, about George Lucas’s space epic.

I still laughed, though. Even if Spaceballs wasn’t the masterpiece that I remembered it being, I still enjoyed rewatching it. The jokes that hit were funny enough to make up for the ones that missed. Even with his weaker films, Mel Brooks is a national treasure.

The TSL Grindhouse: The Spook Who Sat By The Door (dir by Ivan Dixon)

Posted on May 4, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1973’s The Spook Who Sat By The Door opens with Senator Hennington (Joseph Mascolo) in a panic.

The Senator is running for reelection and is struggling to appeal to white voters and minority voters at the same time. White voters are happy that the Senator recently gave a speech in favor of “law and order” but now, he’s polling weakly with black voters. His wife (Elaine Aiken) suggests that the Senator win back black voters by demanding that the CIA hire more black agents.

The CIA responds to the political pressure by hiring Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook) to be their first black agent. Freeman is given the standard CIA training and taught how to start revolutions in other countries. However, after he completes his training, Freeman is assigned no real responsibilities. He is given a desk job and spends most of his day making copies. Whenever a senator or a reporter visits CIA Headquarters, Freeman is trotted out so that the CIA can claim to be diverse. Freeman understands that he’s a token. He knows that his job is to basically sit by the door and be seen. But Freeman actually has bigger plans.

After spending a few years at the CIA, Freeman resigns and heads back to Chicago to work as a social worker. Using what he learned at the agency, he starts to recruit young black men as freedom fighters. He and the Cobras (as they’re called) launch their own guerilla war against the establishment in Chicago. Some of their tactics are violent and some of them are not. Freeman understands the importance of winning both hearts and minds and he recruits Willy (David Lemieux) to serve as his lead propagandist. Because Willy is light-skinned, he is also assigned to rob a bank because Freeman knows that both the witnesses and the police will mistake him for being white and will be less likely to fire on him. (The other members of the Cobras wear whiteface during the robbery.)

Freeman hopes that he will be able to recruit his childhood friend, Dawson (J.A. Preston), to the cause. Dawson, however, now works as a detective for the Chicago PD and has been assigned to beak up the Cobras. Will Freeman be able to bring over Dawson and what will happen if Dawson resists?

Based on a novel by Sam Greenlee (who was one of the first black men to be recruited to work with the United States Information Agency and who based many of Freeman’s CIA experiences on his own), The Spook Who Sat By The Door has achieved legendary status as a film that the FBI reportedly tried to keep out of theaters. Theater owners were pressured to either not book the film or to only book it for a week before replacing it with a less incendiary film. As a result, The Spook Who Sat By The Door became a difficult film to see. As often happens, the efforts to censor the film only added to its revolutionary mystique.

Of course, in 2024, one can go on YouTube and watch the film for oneself. It’s definitely uneven film, one that has pacing issues (especially at the beginning) and also one that suffers due to its low budget. Depicting the overthrow of the government on a budget will always be a challenge. Some of the acting is a bit amateurish but Lawrence Cook broods convincingly as Freeman and he’s well-matched by J.A. Preston’s portrayal of the more down-to-Earth Dawson. At its best, there’s a raw authenticity and anger to the film that immediately captures the viewer’s attention. It’s the rare political film to actually feature conversations about actual politics and it’s a film that asks how far people would be willing to go to accomplish change. The Spook Who Sat By The Door suggests that the true villains are the members of the establishment who cynically embraced the civil rights struggle in their words but not in their actions. In the end, Dan Freeman becomes a bit of a fanatic but the film suggests that perhaps a fanatic was what the times demanded.