Category Archives: Film Review

Possession (dir. by Andrzej Zulawski)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

After finally watching Warner Herzog’s Nosferatu some years ago, I got into an Isabelle Adjani kick. I found out about Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession via Twitter, and considered picking it up. However, the only copy available at the time on Amazon was the Mondo Vision Special Edition, which clocked in at almost $175 dollars. I haven’t seen a movie priced so high since my Aunt purchased the VHS version of Conan the Barbarian when it was first released at around $80.

Thankfully, Metrograph has the film on rotation in part of their movies at home service since last year. I’ve watched it a few times since it was made available, and perhaps it’s why Titane didn’t bother me as much is it did others. I felt truly uncomfortable with Possession, and it’s not an easy recommendation. I’m not sure I’d refer to it a horror film. It’s more of a supernatural drama, but by the end of it, you may find yourself wanting to wash your eyes out. I guess maybe the closest films I could compare Possession to are Marriage Story and Blue Valentine, but with some darker elements.

I should a moment to warn you now. Possession contains elements of nudity, abuse, creature sex and even a miscarriage. The film was originally banned in the United Kingdom as part of a movement to corral more extreme content in cinema. Films like Faces of Death, Tenebrae, The Evil Dead, Mother’s Day (which my older brother owned), Shogun Assassin and even Suspiria were once on a watch list to be seized if their videos were owned by anyone. This was done under the notion that the content of the films were either offensive or could corrupt the minds of anyone (children, in particular) watching it.

Possession is the story of Anna (Adjani) and Mark (Sam Neill, Thor: Ragnarok). Having recently arrived home from working abroad as an Operative, Mark suspects that Anna is cheating on him. She has found someone else, and it proves to be a major rift in their already damaged relationship. Add to this their son, Bob, and it just grows more complicated. When Mark confronts Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), one of Anna’s lovers, it doesn’t go well for Mark. Try as he might to make amends with Anna, she simply doesn’t feel anything for him anymore or rather, her new relationship is too much to let go. Mark’s attempts to reconcile aren’t exactly working in his favor, as he moves from constant questioning to outright violence in some cases. Mark isn’t exactly innocent either, considering that he’s grown fond of Helen, Bob’s school teacher (also played by Adjani) and reluctantly spends some quiet time with his annoying neighbor, Margit (Margit Carstensen, Martha).

Eventually, Mark hires an investigator (Carl Duering) to follow Anna and track down her lover. The detective manages to find Anna living in a run down building. He discovers who (and more importantly, what) she’s been sleeping with, which prompts Anna to kill him. As curiosity grows over Anna’s new relationship, Heinrich checks in on Anna, only to be attacked. Heinrich returns to Mark for assistance, which leads to some strange events in the last half hour.

Although the film is about 2 hours and 4 minutes, it does takes a while to get to where it needs to go. I’ll admit to having moments of wondering just what was going on, as the film felt like it was looping in circles. Mark wants Anna, Anna hates Mark. Mark loves Bob, so does Anna. Once the detective comes into the picture, things pick up a bit. There’s also a miscarriage sequence that was hard to watch. If you can handle it, so be it, but for me, it was definitely a “What the hell?” moment.

Possession‘s special effects were created by Carlo Rambaldi, who also went on to work on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. The creature in the movie is somewhat menacing in its various forms, with tentacles slithering. I would have loved to see the audience reaction to it on screen. Possession was a hard film to make for both Sam Neill and Isabell Adjani. Supposedly, the movie caused Adjani so much stress that it was rumored she attempted suicide. Neill also had issues working in the film and according to Wikipedia, he considered it one of the “most extreme film” he ever made. It truly shows throughout the movie. Both actors push at each other like an angry married couple, and the interactions between the two are the real shocking elements of Possession. You have thrown chairs, tons of screaming and fighting.

Overall, Possession is a film that isn’t a required watch, but I was curious about the ban behind it. It has some strong and wild performances by both Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani. Adjani’s performance would win her the Best Actress at Cannes, and was well deserved. It’s almost an out of body experience, for the most part.

Horror Film Review: Terror at London Bridge (dir by E.W. Swackhamer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On a foggy London night in 1888, the shadowy killer known as Jack the Ripper is pursued by a combination of police and citizens.  Cornered and facing certain execution if captured, Jack jumps off of London Bridge and disappears into the murky waters of the Thames.

Jump forward to the late 80s.  London Bridge has been transported, brick-by-brick, to a town in Arizona and it now serves as a somewhat tacky tourist attraction.  Unfortunately, it turns out that Jack the Ripper’s spirt is inside in the bricks and transporting the bridge has also transported Jack.  Considering that Jack died in the Thames, I’m not really sure why his spirit will still be trapped in the bricks of the bridge.  It seems like his spirit should still be in the river but whatever.  Let’s just go with it.  One tourist accidentally cuts her finger while walking across the bridge.  Her blood hits the wrong brick and suddenly, Jack the Ripper is alive and killing in Arizona!  Can the murders be stopped before they interfere with the tourist season!?

Only Detective Don Gregory (David “The Hoff” Hasselhoff) thinks that Jack the Ripper has returned to life.  His captain (Clu Gulager) doesn’t believe him.  The sleazy city councilamn (Lane Smith) doesn’t believe him.  His potential girlfriend, Angie (Stepfanie Kramer), has doubts about Don’s theory.  His own partner (Randolph Mantooth) doesn’t buy it.  Even Angie’s best friend, a librarian named Lynn (Adrienne Barbeau), doesn’t think that there’s any connection between Jack the Ripper and the handsome Englishman (Paul Rossilli) who has recently been stopping by the library and flirting with her.

And really, why would anyone believe Don?  His theory makes no sense, even if it does turn out to be true.  Indeed, Don is remarkably quick to accept the idea of Jack the Ripper traveling through time.  Of course, what also doesn’t make sense is the city council’s refusal to shut down the bridge until the killer’s been caught.  It’s the tourist season but seriously, it seems like a serial killer — whether he’s Jack the Ripper or not — would be bad for business!

This 1985 movie was made for television.  The premise is intriguing but the execution is a real let-down.  It’s a 90 minute film and the Hoff doesn’t really seem to get serious about trying to hunt down Jack the Ripper until 60 minutes in.  This is the odd Jack the Ripper film in which the Ripper is often treated as an afterthought.  Instead, the majority of the film is taken up with Don flirting with Angie and trying to come to terms with an accidental shooting that occurred when Don was a cop in Chicago.  The whole Jack the Ripper subplot is almost treated like a red herring, which is an odd way to treat a 19 century villain who can travel through time.  I mean, sometimes, romance has to wait until the time-traveling serial killer has been taken care of.  It’s all about priorities.

In the end, this one is for hardcore Hasselhoff fans only.  Those who want to watch a Jack the Ripper time traveling movie would be better served by watching Time After Time, featuring David Warner as the Ripper and Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells.

Horror Film Review: Cyborg Cop (dir by Sam Firstenberg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1993 film, John Rhys-Davies plays Professor Kissel.  The professor is a mad scientist with a German accent who has taken over a small island in the Caribbean.  From his compound, he has developed a process by which he can turn anyone into a cyborg!  The cyborgs follow his orders and …. well, it’s never quite clear what exactly Professor Kissel plans to do with the cyborgs.  I guess he just wants to keep them around so that they can do random evil things.

DEA agent Philip Ryan is captured by Kissel and transformed into one of those cyborgs!  However, Philip has a brother named Jack (played by martial artist David Bradley).  Jack used to work for the government until he was disillusioned when one of his investigations went terribly wrong.  However, Jack is willing to come out of retirement to save his brother.  Teaming up with a journalist named Cathy (Alonna Shaw), Jack infiltrates Kissel’s compound and battles the cyborgs.  Along the way, Cathy falls in love with Jack.  I’m not sure why that happens as Jack tends to be a bit surly and self-absorbed.  Indeed, he and Cathy somehow manage to have not just zero but less than zero romantic chemistry.

Does this movie sound dumb?  Well, that’s because it was pretty dumb.  It was directed by Sam Firstenberg, who directed the first two American Ninja films.  And it stars David Bradley, who starred in the last three American Ninja films.  The American Ninjas were fun but Cyborg Cop just kind of drags.  A huge part of the problem is that David Bradley was a good martial artist but he was a less than impressive actor.  Seeing as how Jack is trying to save his brother from being turned into an emotionless robot, Cyborg Cop calls for a bit more acting than the American Ninja films did.  Unfortunately, it’s hard to make a film about human emotions when your lead actor isn’t capable of showing them.  It doesn’t help that Jack is written as being someone who is always in a rather foul mood.  Also, from the minute he lands in the islands, he wears a fanny pack around his waist and it just looks so utterly ridiculous.  It’s hard to take a fight seriously when one of the combatants is wearing a leather fanny pack.  The other big issue is that it takes forever to actually get to the cyborg action.  For some reason, the film tries to generate some suspense about what Kissel’s plan is, despite the fact that the word “cyborg” is right there in the title!

On the plus side, the film does feature John Rhys-Davies playing a mad scientist and he’s just the type of cheerfully theatrical actor who can do justice to the role of someone who spends most of his time ranting about how much smarter he is than everyone else in the world.  Rhys-Davies, who is best known for playing Indiana Jones’s friend Sallah and for playing both Gimili and the talking tree in The Lord of the Rings, appears to have had a lot of fun as Prof. Kissel and it’s fun to watch him in the role.  This is a case where most people watching the film will proudly cheer for the bad guy because the bad guy is so much more entertaining than the good guy.

Cyborg Cop somehow led to two sequels.  The work is never done.

Horror Film Review: Last Shift (dir by Anthony DiBlasi)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh no, it’s the cops!

The 2014 film, Last Shift, tells the story of Jessica Loren (Juliana Harkavy).  Like her father, Jessica’s a cop.  Unlike her father, Jessica is hoping that she’ll survive her shift without becoming the victim of some weird cult leader and his followers.  Good luck with that, Jessica!

Jessica’s first assignment is to take the last shift at a police station that is in the process of being shut down.  All Jessica has to do is stay at the front desk for the entire night and answer the phone.  All of the 911 calls have been re-routed to the new station so Jessica’s job is mostly to make sure that no one enters the station who shouldn’t be there.  She’s also told to stay out of the way of a HAZMAT crew, which is showing up to clean out the station’s evidence lockers.

Unfortunately, it turns out that just sitting at the front desk is one of those things that sounds easier than it actually is.  For one thing, a drunk homeless man keeps showing up and, eventually, Jessica is forced to put him in one the station’s cells.  Secondly, the station keeps getting calls from a woman named Monica.  Monica says that she’s been kidnapped by a cult.  Jessica tells Monica to call 911 and tell the police where she is but Monica replies that she is calling 911.  But how can that be if all of the calls have been rerouted to the new station?

On top of all that, Jessica keeps hearing strange singing and seeing out-of-place shadows in the hallways.  Is it just her imagination or is there someone — or something — in the station with her and the HAZMAT team?  A mysterious woman appears, smoking a cigarette outside of the station.  She tells Jessica that, years ago, the same cult that killed her father committed mass suicide in the station.  Shortly afterwards, Jessica is visited by another cop who claims that he knew her father and that he was present when the cult died….

Largely taking place in one location and over the course of one long night, Last Shift is an effectively atmospheric horror film.  The nearly deserted station is creepy and Juliana Harkavy gives a good and sympathetic performance as Jessica.  To a certain extent, the film is a perhaps a bit too quick to make it clear that something supernatural is happening at the station.  I would have liked it if the film had played a little bit more with the idea of all of the strange events just being in Jessica’s head.  (Early on, the film does play with that possibility.)  Instead, by making it a little too obvious what’s happening, this is one of those films that does leave you wondering why Jessica stays in the station for as long as she does.  Every bit of common sense would say to leave and deal with the professional consequences once you’ve escaped from the supernatural horror looking to destroy you.  Losing your job sucks but it’s still preferable to losing your life.  But, if you can overlook that one flaw, Last Shift is a genuinely frightening horror film, one that plays out like a filmed nightmare and which builds up to a surprise ending.

This is one to save for the next time you feel like watching something really scary.  Don’t watch alone!

It Came Nameless in Spring, Review by Case Wright

Posted on by casewright

Happy Halloween! I really tried to contribute as much as possible this year. I’ve been beaten down by really really hard engineering classes and a Professor who shows up slurring words- Bombed. It’s annoying/sad. However, this short film is neither annoying, nor sad. I didn’t know that a person could make an alien invasion boring, but here we are.

There are survivors fighting and killing each other over basic staples. There’s a husband and wife, but he’s ill!!!! So, his wife goes on the hunt for medicine. What medicine? Who knows? Also, how would she know what to give him or how much? These questions aren’t raised or answered. She enters a supposedly empty home and fights the owner in the dumbest way possible. She knocks the owner down, but turns her back on her because it’s gotta be stupid.

Another issue with alien invasions stories I have is disease, people are all surviving. How? Our bacteria and viruses would not be able to compete. War of the World would’ve been mutually assured destruction.

I was always weirded out by Mass Effect that way; Shepard is way to eager to jump the bones of an alien species. We just got exposed to coronavirus, does this horny weirdo think that this hot blue alien wouldn’t have some sort of virus? She’s from another planet, you degenerate weirdo! Things evolved there and it wasn’t us! At the very least, she’ll give you an alien cold sore that’s probably Sapient Space Herpes (SSH), there’s not enough Blistex in the world to fight that!

I can’t stand morons! I was yelling at my computer screen the whole time and not in a good way. Listen, it’s either the apocalypse or not. If the aliens are killing everybody, you either fight or jump to your doom because chances are they will eat us. They’re not here to fall in love with us.

Back to my boring short film, you eventually see the floating alien, which is a big jellyfish. This is just dumb; I can suspend some disbelief for a spaceship, but you’re serving up a big Man-of-War jellyfish to take out humanity. We could just all pee on it! Problem solved!!! I’m sorry, things just float about in the air- stop it! I get Brian Otting slept through physics, but come on – haven’t you ever been on a plane before?! I’ll review something else! I can’t let this be the last of Halloween!

Horror on the Lens: Night of the Living Dead (dir by George Romero)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy Halloween everyone!

Well, as another horrorthon draws to a close, it’s time for another Shattered Lens tradition!  Every Halloween, we share one of the greatest and most iconic horror films ever made.  For your Halloween enjoyment, here is George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead!

(Be sure to read Arleigh’s equally famous review!)

A Blast From The Past: A Trip To The Moon (dir. by Georges Melies)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On October 1st, Case reviewed Moon.  What better way to celebrate October 31st than taking a trip to the moon with classic film that came out 120 years ago?

Directed and written by Georges Melies, A Trip to The Moon is often cited as the first sci-fi film and the image of the capsule crashing into the eye of the man in the moon is one of the most iconic in film history.  Seen today, the film seems both charmingly innocent and remarkably ahead of its time.

For me, it always takes a minute or two to adjust to the aesthetic of early films.  We’ve grown so used to all the editing tricks that modern filmmakers use to tell their stories that these old silent films, with their lack of dramatic camera movement and obvious theatrical origins, often take some effort to get used to.  Still, the effort is often worth it.

Here then is Georges Melies’s 1902 science fiction epic, A Trip To The Moon.

October Positivity: God’s Club (dir by Jared Cohn)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 2015 film, God’s Club, Stephen Baldwin stars as Michael Evens.

Michael is a teacher at the local high school.  His wife is also a teacher and it is quickly established that she is quite a bit more religious than her husband.  In fact, she’s the sponsor of the after-school Christian club.  This club is very controversial because God’s Club is one of those films that takes place in a community where everyone is not only an atheist but also a total jerk about it.  It’s like everyone learned how to be an atheist by watching Richard Dawkins YouTube videos.  At a school board meeting, parents shout about separation of church and state and warn that they are not going to sit by while their children are brainwashed.  Principal Max Graves (Corbin Bernsen, giving the film’s best performance as the sole voice of reason at the high school) explains that no one is being forced to attend the club.  Michael, for his part, remains quiet.  Later, as they’re driving home, Michael and his wife are in a serious accident.  Michael survives.  His wife asks him to pray with her and then promptly dies.

Weeks later, a guilt-stricken Michael returns to school.  It turns out that most of the students are just as jerky as their parents.  When Michael opens his class with a moment of silence for his dead wife, one of his students reports him for praying in class. This leads to the parents demanding that Michael be fired.  Spencer Rivers (played by Lorenzo Lamas) is especially adamant that Michael should not be allowed to teach and he even goes so far as to insult the memory of Michael’s dead wife.  Making things even more tense is Michael’s decision to restart God’s Club himself.  Needless to say, this leads to even more controversy but it also gives Michael a chance to make peace with both himself and his guilt over his wife’s death.

Christian teachers being persecuted by atheist parents and mindless government enforcers is a recurring theme when it comes to faith-based films.  Perhaps the best-known example of this is God’s Not Dead 2, in which Ray Wise literally cackles with delight as he thinks about ruining Melissa Joan Hart’s life.  (“We are going to prove that God is dead,” Wise explains to his legal team, none of whom point out that it would be smarter to just settle the case and move on.)  The debate over whether or not religion should be allowed in schools is a legitimate one but films like God’s Club (and God’s Not Dead 2) tend to approach the subject in such a melodramatic that it’s difficult to really pay much attention to their arguments.  It’s not enough that the parents in God’s Club are perhaps being a little bit paranoid in their belief that their children are going to be preached to.  Instead, the parents are portrayed as being so evil that they can’t even show the least bit of kindness to a man who has just lost his wife in a sudden tragedy.  One thing that all of these films have in common is that they take place in world in which there are no polite atheists.

Stephen Baldwin, who is usually the only lively thing about the films in which appears, gives a rather stilted performance as Michael.  According to the film’s IMDb page, Baldwin was dealing with some health issues while filming God’s Club and perhaps that’s why he seems to be so disinterested in the film.  Baldwin seems to be just as depressed when his wife is alive as he is after the car accident.  At the end of the film, everyone seems to be excited about God’s Club except for him.  It’s hard not to think that maybe Michael would be better off just retiring and maybe moving to Florida.  By the end of the film, he’s earned some time on the beach.

TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Sinister Squad (dir by Jeremy Inman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

A group of cultists who worship Death are threatening to destroy the world so a mysterious operative named Alice (Christina Licciardi) assembles a group of fairy tale villains and heroes to help defeat them. Unfortunately, getting The Big Bad Wolf, Goldilocks, the Mad Hatter, Bluebeard, and a host of others to work together isn’t as easy as it should be.  Complicating things is the evil Rumpelstiltskin (Johnny Rey Diaz), who is imprisoned with a mask over his face to keep him from convincing anyone to say his name.  Just as he is responsible for smashing the magic mirror that unleashed Death and his evil followers on the world, he also might be the only one who can stop the cult.  But at what price?

I watched the 2016 film, Sinister Squad, last night.  I have to admit that I had a pretty difficult time following the plot.  Produced by the Asylum, Sinister Squad is a sequel to Avengers Grimm.  Avengers Grimm was a mockbuster of The Avengers, in which all of the heroes were fairly tale characters.  Sinister Squad is a mockbuster of Suicide Squad, in which a group of fairy tale villains are recruited to save the world.  Avengers Grimm was a surprisingly fun movie but Sinister Squad gets bogged down by its own low budget, with nearly the entire film taking place in one location.  It’s kind of hard to make an epic action film when you can’t afford more than one set.

That set is a warehouse, where the members of the Sinister Squad are imprisoned.  It’s also where Alice is storing Death’s scythe.  Death wants his scythe back so he sends his followers to retrieve it and it leads to a bit of a one-sided battle.  Indeed, none of the members of the Sinister Squad seem to be that effective when it comes to defending the world and it’s hard not to feel that Alice should have made more of an effort to recruit some of Death’s followers.  Probably the most impressive of Death’s acolytes is Bluebeard (Trae Ireland), who can throw knives in slow motion and steal the souls of those he kills.  (He calls them his “wives” because he’s Bluebeard.)  Still, as impressive a bad guy as Bluebeard might be, it’s hard not to wonder why he’s there because it’s not as if Bluebeard is a fairy tale character.  It seems like a waste to have Goldilocks face off against Bluebeard as opposed to three bears.

As I said, the plot of this one is not always easy to follow.  If you haven’t seen Avengers Grimm, you’ll be totally lost.  I have seen Avengers Grimm and I still wasn’t always sure what everyone in Sinister Squad was going on about.  On the plus side, some of the costumes are nicely done.  Bluebeard was properly intimidating.  I sympathized with the Big Bad Wolf, who was apparently just misunderstood.  I respected Alice and her refusal to surrender.  For the most part, though, Sinister Squad was more underwhelming than sinister.

The Falling (1986, directed by Deran Serafian)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

After a piece of the Skylab space station crashes into rural Spain, first the cows and then the wolves are infected by a cosmic virus that turns them into cannibalistic monsters.  Soon, the virus spreads to a nearby town and the villagers also start to transform into mindless flesheaters.  While NASA tries to contain the virus and keep the rest of the world from finding out, three American college students drive their RV into the village.  Damon (Dennis Christopher), Michael (Martin Hewitt), and Samantha (Lynn-Holly Johnson) soon find themselves fighting for survival as they are pursued by both the mutants and the government.  Working with a helpful scientist, they try to recover an antidote before it is too late.

Also released under the title Alien Predator, The Falling deserves a lot of  credit for knowing exactly what it is.  It’s a low budget, B-movie and it doesn’t try to convince us that it’s anything else.  As soon as I saw the red buggy that was hooked up to the book of the RV, I knew that this was going to be good.  Eventually, Michael gets in the dune buggy and gets chased around the village by the flesheaters and the movie starts to feel like an extended episode of Starsky and Hutch.  The three leads are likable, even if they are also too old to be believable college students.  Christopher makes jokes and tries to sound like James Cagney, Hewitt does a Rod Serling impersonation, and Lynn-Holly Johnson looks good while screaming.  People who watch movies like this for the gore will appreciate the exploding head scene.  All in all, The Falling is an enjoyable “bad” movie.