Suspense Film Review: Rope (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Rope, an odd little 1948 experiment from Alfred Hitchcock, opens with a murder.

Two wealthy young men, Brandon (John Dall) and Philip (Farley Granger), invite their friend, David Kentley (Dick Hogan), up to their apartment. When David arrives, they strangle him and hide his body in a wooden chest. As quickly becomes obvious, Brandon and Philip killed David largely to see if they could pull off the perfect murder. Brandon is sure that they did and, that by doing so, they proved the concept of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, The alcoholic Philip is less sure and starts drinking.

Brandon and Philip don’t just have murder planned for the day. They’re also planning on throwing a little dinner party and, among those on the guest list, are David’s parents, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s former boyfriend. Also attending will be Brandon and Philip’s former teacher and housemaster, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart). In fact, Brandon regularly claims that he got the idea to commit the perfect murder as a result of discussing philosophy with Rupert. Apparently, Rupert turned Brandon onto Nietzsche….

AGCK! JIMMY STEWART LEADING YOUNG MEN TO FASCISM!? SAY IT’S NOT SO!

Well, fortunately, the dinner party conversations reveals that Brandon and Philip misunderstood what Rupert was trying to tell them. They assumed, using the same type of logic that currently fuels most debate today, that just because Rupert mentioned something that meant that he approved of it. As it becomes clear that Rupert would not approve of what his students have done and as Rupert himself starts to suspect that something bad has happened at the apartment, Brandon and Philip start to plot against their former mentor….

Now, it can be argued that Rope is not a horror movie. And indeed, if your definition of horror is ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or any other type of paranormal creature than yes, Rope has none of those. Instead, the horror of Rope is the horror of human cruelty. It’s the horror of two privileged young men who have so twisted the words of their mentor that they’ve become monsters. The horror in Rope comes from the fact that, in 1948, Brandon and Philip have embraced the same philosophy that, only a few years earlier, had plunged the entire world into war. While families mourned their dead and Europe struggled to rebuild, Brandon and Philip showed that they had no understanding of or concern for the trauma that humanity had just suffered. And making it even more disturbing is that they found the justification for their crimes in the lessons taught by the epitome of American decency, Jimmy Stewart. The idea of that is more terrifying than any Hammer vampire flick.

Of course, Rope is best known for being a bit of an experiment. Hitchcock edited the film to make it appear as if it was all shot in one take and events, therefore, played out in real time. It’s an interesting idea and, as always, you have to admire Hitchcock’s ingenuity and, even in a film as grim as this one, his playfulness. At the same time, Hitchcock’s technique makes an already stagey story feel even stagier. Some of the actors — like James Stewart, John Dall, and Cedric Hardwicke in the role of David’s father — are able to give naturalistic and convincing performances despite the staginess of the material. Others, like poor Farley Granger, find themselves overshadowed by the film’s one-shot gimmick.

Rope is an experiment that doesn’t quite work but flawed Hitchcock is still a pleasure to watch. The final few minutes, with Stewart and Dall finally confronting each other, are among the best that Hitchcock ever put together. I appreciate Rope, even if it doesn’t quite succeed.

Horror on the Lens: The Lodger (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A serial killer known as “The Avenger” is murdering blonde women in London (which, once again, proves that its better to be a redhead). And while nobody knows the identity of the Avenger, they do know that the enigmatic stranger (Ivor Novello), who has just recently rented a room at boarding house, happens to fit his description. They also know that the lodger’s landlord’s daughter happens to be a blonde…

Released in 1927, the silent The Lodger was Alfred Hitchcock’s third film but, according to the director, this was the first true “Hitchcock film.” Certainly it shows that even at the start of his career, Hitchcock’s famous obsessions were already present — the stranger accused of a crime, the blonde victims, and the link between sex and violence.

Also of note, the credited assistant director — Alma Reville — would become Alma Hitchcock shortly before The Lodger was released.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #216: The Danger Next Door (dir by Bill Corcoran)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime film, The Danger Next Door!

Why Was I Watching It?

Because it was on Lifetime, of course! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a chance to watch a Lifetime film on the night that it aired. Seriously, my DVR is full of Lifetime films right now and waiting for me to dig into them come November.

What Was It About?

After getting mugged, pregnant Robin (Hannah Emily Anderson) and her husband, Ben (Jake Epstein) move to a small town. At first, the town seems perfect but it’s hard not to notice that their next door neighbors, Guy (David Ferry) and Sharon (Kyra Harper), are a little bit too friendly. Anyone who has watched a Lifetime film knows that no one that nice can be trusted and that’s certainly the case here.

What Worked?

I always love a good “small towns are evil” Lifetime film so, in that regard, The Danger Next Door delivered exactly what I wanted. The town was pretty, the houses were big, and the melodrama was embraced. Yay!

The film also featured Jake Epstein, playing a sympathetic character for once! Epstein previously played Craig Manning on Degrassi. I’ve seen him in a lot of other movies and shows since then but he’ll always be Craig to me! Craig was one of the best characters on Degrassi, a bipolar musician with drug problems and a habit of breaking everyone’s heart. I always hoped that Craig and Ellie would get together, though I do think Ashley was Craig’s soul mate. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Jake Epstein was in this movie and it was good to see him!

What Did Not Work?

Towards the end of the movie, there were a few plot twists that demanded a lot of suspension of disbelief, even for a Lifetime film.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

I have never been mugged but, when I was 16 years old, the house that I was living in was burglarized. My mom, my sisters, and I woke up one morning to discover that the garage door was open, the microwave was missing, and someone had emptied out my mom’s purse. Even more than that, though, they stole our feeling of being secure in our home. I had nightmares for weeks afterwards and I even took to sleeping with a baseball bat next to my bed. However, the bat was a bit heavy so, after a few days, I switched it out for a golf club.

One night, I thought I heard someone creeping outside my bedroom door at 3 in the morning. I got up, grabbed my golf club, and creeped over to the door. I took a deep breath, raised the club over my head, threw the door open, and swung at the first dark shadow that I saw.

“What the Hell, Lisa Marie!?” Erin exclaimed, as she (rather easily) avoided the club.

Looking back at it, I’m glad that I didn’t hit my sister in the face with a golf club. I would have felt bad about that. But there’s no worse feeling than having some stranger invade your personal safe place. All these years later, I’m still a fanatic when it comes to locking all the doors, checking all the windows, and making sure I’ve got a golf club near the bed.

The movie did a good job of capturing that trauma. I could definitely relate to Robin’s fears.

Lessons Learned

Never move to a small town. No matter how bad and scary the city gets, it’s still safer than living in a small town.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977, directed by Don Taylor)

Posted on October 24, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

After the ship that he’s working on sinks, engineer Andrew Braddock (Michael York) washes up on an uncharted island. It’s a beautiful island but it quickly proves dangerous as another survivor of the sinking is killed by wild animals. The injured Braddock passes out and when he wakes up, he’s being cared for by a mysterious scientist named Moreau (Burt Lancaster).

Braddock discovers that the island is populated by creatures that are half-human and half-animal. Led by the Sayer of the Law (Richard Basehart), these creatures are the results of experiments conducted by Moreau and his assistant, Montgomery (Nigel Davenport). Moreau’s experiments are expected to obey Moreau’s laws. Should they fail, they will be taken to the House of Pain and punished. When Baddock objects to Moreau playing God, Moreau plots to reverse the experiment on Braddock and turn him into an animal. Even as he falls in love with a former cheetah (played by Barbara Carrera), Braddock realizes that he must escape the Island of Dr. Moeau.

This is the forgotten adaptation of H.G. Wells’s classic novel, as well as being the most faithful. The Island of Lost Souls, from 1932, is considered to be a classic. The third version, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, is a legendary disaster. This version, though, is usually overlooked. It’s also my favorite of the three but that might be because it was the first version that I ever saw. It’s a straight-forward version of H.G. Wells’s story of science gone mad with director Don Taylor not wasting any time getting the action started. Michael York, always an underrated actor, convincingly portrays Braddock’s outrage and his struggle to maintain his humanity after Moreau starts to experiment on him while Carrera is beautiful and mysterious as Maria. Probably the film’s biggest surprise is Burt Lancaster, who turns out to be ideally cast as Moreau. More subdued than either Charles Laughton or Marlon Brando, Lancaster plays Moreau as a brilliant but callous man who is too arrogant to realize that he’s become as much of an animal as those he claims to be perfecting. What makes Lancaster’s Moreau so disturbing is that he doesn’t have the excuse of being insane. Instead, he’s just too stubborn to admit that he’s potentially made a huge mistake.

It may be forgotten but this still the version of The Island of Dr, Moreau that I would recommend.

(Trailer courtesy of Classic Movie Reviews)

Horror on the Lens: Samson vs. The Vampire Women (dir by Alfonso Corona Blake)

Posted on October 24, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If a group of vampires are determined to ruin your night, what should you do? Well, according to the classic Mexican film Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro, your first move should be to call a wrestler.

What to know more? Well, you can read my full review of the film by clicking here!

And you can watch the movie below because it’s today’s horror on the lens!

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Parents (dir by Bob Balaban)

Posted on October 23, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

An odd little film, 1989’s Parents is.

It takes place in the 50s of the pop cultural imagination, with neatly laid out suburban neighborhoods and perfectly mowed lawns and big cars driving down the street. Nick (Randy Quaid) and Lily (Mary Beth Hurt) seem like the perfect couple. Lily stays at home and spends a lot of time in the kitchen. Nick is an engineer who works for a company called Toxico and who is helping to develop what will become known, during the Vietnam War, as Agent Orange. Nick and Lily are friendly, well-mannered, and they love to eat meat. Lily explains, at one point, that she didn’t really love to eat meat until she married Nick and he showed her how wonderful it could be.

Their son, ten year-old Michael (Bryan Madorsky), is a bit less conventional. He’s a quiet boy who never smiles and who, when asked to draw a picture of his family, freaks out his school’s guidance counselor (played by Sandy Dennis). Michael has frequent nightmares. Michael doesn’t like to eat meat and, in fact, it’s hard to think of a single scene in the movie where Michael is seen eating anything. Michael is haunted by the sight of his parents making love in the living room. He’s also haunted by a growing suspicion that his parents are cannibals.

Are they? Perhaps. It’s hard to say. The first time you watch the movie, it seems deceptively obvious that Nick and Lily are exactly what Michael says they are. The second time, you start to notice a few odd things. For one thing, we never see Michael actually going from one location to another. Instead, he just seems to magically show up wherever he needs to be to hear something that will confirm his suspicions. When his teacher and his guidance counselor discuss his home life, Michael just happens to be in a nearby closet. When his mother is preparing something that looks like it might be a human organ, Michael just happens to be standing in the pantry. Are we seeing reality or are we just seeing what Michael thinks is reality? When Nick starts to threaten Michael and later claims that there’s no way Michael is his son, is he really saying that or is Michael just imagining his fatherr confirming all of Michael’s insecurities? How much of the film is real and how much of it is in Michael’s head?

It’s an odd film, Parents. It’s also the directorial debut of character actor Bob Balaban. Balaban has spent the majority of his career playing shy, slightly repressed characters. Parents, with the withdrawn Michael as the main character, is a film that feels autobiographical. That’s not to say that Balaban’s parents were cannibals but the scenes where Nick goes from being a loving father to an abusive monster are too intense and suffused with too much pain for them to be anything other than personal. Balaban’s direction is heavily stylized. At times, it’s a bit too stylized but ultimately, it works. The final 30 minutes of the film feel like a nightmare that has somehow been filmed.

A satire of conformity and suburbia, Parents is also a portrait of an alienated child struggling to figure out where he fits into his family. He’s given the choice of either indulging in his family’s sins or living life alone. Except, of course, it really isn’t a choice. Nick expects Michael to do what he’s been told, no matter what. Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt are both terrifying as the parents but, at the same time, Balaban makes good use of the fact that both of those performers — at least at the time this movie was made — were naturally likable. You want Nick to be the perfect father that he pretends to be and you share Michael’s anger and disillusionment when he turns out to be something very different.

Parents may be a strange film but it’s not one that you’re going to forget.

Red Planet Mars (1952, directed by Harry Horner)

Posted on October 23, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

Chris Cornyn (Peter Graves) and his wife, Linda (Andrea King) are two scientists who have spent the years since World War II listening to transmissions from Mars. The technology that they use was developed by a scientist who may have been a Nazi but the Cornyns feels that the greater good of learning about Mars outweighs the problematic background of their equipment.

One day, the transmitters pick up a message from Mars, announcing that Mars is a Socialist paradise where there is no fear of nuclear war. The Soviets are gleeful because they think the Martian messages will lead to the collapse of NATO. But then the Martians start sending out religious messages, which lead to riots in the USSR and Eastern Europe.

Are the Martians really contacting Earth? Is God really transmitting a message from Mars? Or is a more sinister figure responsible?

Red Planet Mars is one of those films that only could have been made at the height of the Cold War. Despite the title, the film is decidedly Earth-bound and full of stock footage of the nations of the world reacting to the Martians. The main theme is that, Martians or not, nothing is more important than protecting the American way of life. even if that means sacrificing your own life and misleading the world. Even if it is now impossible to listen to his dialogue without thinking about the “Do you like movies about gladiators?” conversations from Airplane!, Peter Graves was the perfect, no-nonsense messenger. An artifact of a different time, the movie’s greatest strength is that it takes its ridiculous story seriously and even today, it leaves you wonder how we would react to messages from Mars. Hopefully, we would today be more skeptical. People in 1953 would believe anything.

International Horror Film Review: The Psychic (a.k.a. Seven Notes In Black) (dir by Lucio Fulci)

Posted on October 23, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Also known as Seven Notes In Black, The Psychic is an Italian paranormal thriller that was made and released in 1977, shortly before the film’s director, Lucio Fulci, reinvented Italian horror with Zombi 2.

For years, Virginia (Jennier O’Neill) has been haunted by visions. When she was a child, she saw a vision of her mother jumping off a cliff. It turned out that, at the same time Virginia had her vision, her mother was doing exactly that. 18 years later, Virginia is living in Rome and she’s married to a wealthy businessman named Francesco Ducci (Gianni Garko, who also starred in several Spaghetti westerns). Virginia would seem to have the perfect life but she’s still haunted by disturbing visions. She sees an old woman murdered. She sees a wall being ripped apart. She sees a discarded letter. Is she seeing the past, the present, or the future? She does not know. Ducci insists that her visions mean nothing but Virginia is convinced that something is reaching out to her.

While Ducci is away on business, Virginia visits an abandoned house that her husband has recently bought. Virginia wants to renovate it but, as soon as she sees it, she realizes that the house previously appeared in her visions. When she investigates, she discovers a skeleton in one of the walls. With the police now convinced that Ducci is a murderer, Virginia tries to figure out the meaning behind her visions and looks for a way to clear Ducci’s name. Strangely, Ducci still doesn’t seem to be that concerned about any of it….

Along with Lizard In A Woman’s Skin and Don’t Torture A Duckling, The Psychic is a film that gets a lot of attention as an example of Fulci’s pre-Zombi 2 horror output. After Zombi 2, Fucli would become best known for making films that were full of gore and that often seemed to be deeply angry with the world. The fact that Fulci was also a brilliant stylist who created some of the most dream-like images ever to be captured on film would often be overlooked in all the controversy over the often violent content of his movies. One thing that makes The Psychic interesting is that, visually, it’s clearly a Fulci film. The cinematography is lush and vibrant. The visions are surreal and disturbing. However, there’s very little of the gore that came to define Fulci’s later films. Instead, the emphasis is on the atmosphere and the mystery. This is one of the few Fulci films that you could safely show an older relative.

Fulci was often (a bit unfairly, in my opinon) portrayed as being a cinematic misanthrope, as a director who little use for the characters that populated his films. That’s certainly not the case with The Psychic, though. Virginia is probably one of the most sympathetic characters to ever appear in a Fulci film and Jennifer O’Neill does a good job in the lead role. Even more importantly, Fulci seems to like her and, from the start, it’s clear that the film is fully on her side. The entire story is told through her eyes and she’s a character who you immediately root for. Like Fulci himself, she’s a visionary whose visions are often underappreciated until it’s too late. Though the film ends on a characteristically downbeat note (happy endings were rare even in Fulci’s pre-Zombi 2 films), Virginia is still allowed her triumph with one final and rather clever little twist.

The Pyschic is a bit slowly-paced but it’s still a far better film that many Fulci critics seem to be willing to acknowledge. (One gets the feeling that many critics resent any film that indicates that there was more to Fulci than eye damage and zombies.) It’s an entertaining and intriguing latter-era giallo and proof that there was more to Fulci than just blood.

Horror Film Review: Shut In (dir by Farren Blackburn)

Posted on October 23, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2016 film, Shut In, is yet another film in which Naomi Watts plays an intelligent woman who is forced to do stupid things because, otherwise, there would be no story.

This time, Watts is cast as Dr. Mary Portman, a psychologist who is taking care of her stepson, Stephen (Charlie Heaton). Stephen was left in a vegatative state by a tragic accident that not only killed Mary’s husband but which also totaled a brand new SUV. Mary and Stephen are in an isolated house so there’s no way anything could go wrong, right?

Mary has a lot on her mind. Not only does she have to take care of Stephen but she’s also starting to date again. Plus, one of her patients, a child named Tom (Jacob Tremblay), has disappeared. She’s worried about Tom. He disappeared near her house and no one has been able to find him. Mary occasionally thinks that she sees Tom but her psychologist (played by poor Oliver Platt, who looks embarrassed to be there) says that Mary is just seeing what she wants to see. And when two little hands come out of the darkness to keep Mary from entering a crawlspace, that’s just a coincidence, too.

Right.

Because it’s not like totally obvious, from the freaking start, that Tom is hiding out in her house.

Now, before anyone gets excited, this film does not feature Jacob Tremblay as an evil child who torments Naomi Watts. (Jacob Tremblay is 15 years old now, just in case you needed an excuse to feel old.) Instead, it turns out that Mary’s tormenter is….

What?

Spoiler alert?

Really, I have to give a spoiler alert before revealing the most obvious twist of all time? How is that fair?

Okay, fine. SPOILER ALERT! Stop crying, you babies.

Mary is being menaced by Stephen, who it turns out woke up from his coma long ago and is now faking his vegetative state. That seems like that would be a difficult thing to fake but, whatever. Anyway, it turns out that Stephen has really enjoyed having Mary all to himself and he’s not really happy about the idea of having to share her with Tom. So, Stephen’s idea is to trap Tom in the crawlspace and hold Mary hostage. Or something. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like Stephen’s really thought this out. Normally, that would be understandable because it takes a lot of planning to trap someone in a crawlspace while pretending to be in a coma. But Stephen spends all day lying around so he should have used that time to give a little more thought to his plan.

Eventually, Oliver Platt realizes that something strange is happening so he goes up the house to rescue her but — surprise! — Stephen kills him. Seriously, Oliver — you deserved better than this movie.

For that matter so does Naomi Watts. Watts is a good actress who can play both comedy and drama and yet, she keeps showing up in these movies where she basically spends the whole movie being held prisoner, either physically or mentally. She always does a good job in them and, when I first heard that Woman In The Window was being turned into a movie, she was my choice for the role played by Amy Adams but, still, Watts definitely deserves better than a by-the-numbers film like Shut In. Too often, the film requires Mary to act in a totally illogical, rather stupid manner. Watts does her best with the character but the script lets her down.

Along with being totally predictable, Shut In moves at a glacial pace. A lot of time is spent in an attempt to establish mood and atmosphere but again, the big twist is so obvious that no amount of mood and Kubrickian atmosphere is going to save it.. Shut In is a movie that very slowly takes us to exactly where we think it’s going to take us. Everyone involved deserved better.

Horror on the Lens: How To Make A Monster (dir by Herbert L. Strock)

Posted on October 23, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You’ve seen I Was A Teenage Werewolf….

You’ve watched I Was A Teenage Frankenstein….

Now, it’s time to watch How To Make A Monster!

Released in 1958, How To Make A Monster is a clever little horror satire from American International Pictures in which the stars of Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein are hypnotized into believing that they actually are the monsters that they played! The main culprit is a movie makeup artist (Robert H. Harris) who has been deemed obsolete by the new bosses at AIP.

Be sure to watch for the finale, which features cameo appearances from several other AIP monsters! And read my full review of the film by clicking here!