Let’s celebrate October by taking a trip to the moon with classic film that came out 123 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.
2006’s HiddenSecrets takes place over the course of one very long weekend.
The death of their friend Chris has reunited a group of acquaintances, who gather for the funeral and then end up staying with Chris’s sister, Sherry (Tracy Melchior), for the weekend. The men gather on her roof and hammer tiles. The women …. well, for the most part, the women are just portrayed as being catty and judgmental.
For instance, Rhonda (Autumn Paul), who is married to Christian book author Harold (Gregg Brinkley), is offended that Gary (John Schneider) is doing stem cell research and is a Jewish agnostic who spends most of his time challenging Rhonda’s super-strict interpretation of the Bible. Interestingly enough, considering that this is a Pureflix film, Rhonda is not portrayed in a positive light and Gary usually gets the better of her in their arguments. Rhonda even apologizes at the end for being so judgmental. Of course, since this is a Pureflix film, Gary still ends up converting.
Pastor Jeremy (David A.R. White) is dating reporter Rachel (Staci Keanan). Rachel suspects that Jeremy is still in love with his ex-girlfriend, Sherry. Rachel is correct. You have to feel bad for Rachel, who certainly deserved better than she got in this movie. Jeremy and Rachel end up sharing a bed at Sherry’s house, which freaks Jeremy out because he’s all about abstinence.
Michael (Corin Nemec) is a gay Christian who practices celibacy and whose main function seems to be to offer people advice.
Anthony (Sean Sedgwick) is a rough and tumble guy who shows up with his latest girlfriend, Sally (Rachael Lampa), and who takes her out dancing for her birthday, even though Rhonda says that Christians shouldn’t dance.
The film follows these characters over the weekend, basically doing a BigChill sort of thing. Rhonda judges everyone. Gary is sarcastic. Jeremy is torn between Sherry and Rachel. The night of dancing for Sally’s birthday turns into an extended scene where Anthony, Jeremy, and Harold take to the stage and perform a song. It all wraps up with everyone confessing their fears during a church service and I have to admit that I felt sorry for all the people at the church who probably didn’t have the slightest idea why one group of people suddenly hijacked the service to discuss their own problems.
As far as PureFlix films go, this one was well-made and it actually did have some potential. No one was completely right and no one was completely wrong. The main message seemed to be accept and love one another. That said, it also had some fairly serious flaws. John Schneider doesn’t give a bad performance but he was still miscast as a Jewish abortionist. I love Corin Nemec and he gave one of the better performances in HiddenSecrets but the film used his character to promote the destructive “ex-gay” movement and it’s difficult not to be bothered by that. And finally, the resolution of Sherry/Jeremy/Rachel love triangle left me feeling that Jeremy was essentially a terrible, self-absorbed person. I don’t think that was what the film was going for but, regardless….
HiddenSecrets is an uneven film, to say the least. At its best, it made me miss some of my old friends. It’s been a while since we’ve all gotten together. Hopefully, when we next see each other, it won’t be at another funeral.
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.
1981’s SouthernComfort takes place in 1973. While America tries to wind down its presence in Vietnam, a squad of nine National Guardsmen take part in war games in the Louisiana bayous. The squad is led by the ineffectual Sgt. Crawford Poole (Peter Coyote) while other members include the trigger-happy Lonnie Reece (Fred Ward), the weed-smoking Tyrone Cribbs (T.K. Carter), the cowardly Private Simms (Franklyn Seales), and the tightly-wound Coach Bowden (Alan Autry). Poole may be in charge but most of the members of the squad seem to look up to the laid-back and friendly Private Spencer (Keith Carradine). The newest member of the squad is Charles Hardin (Powers Boothe), a sober-minded transfer from Texas who doesn’t seem to get along with anyone but Spencer.
With the exception of Poole and Hardin, no one takes the weekend maneuvers seriously until they find themselves lost in the bayou and it becomes obvious that Poole has no idea what he’s doing. When they come across some canoes that belong to some Cajun trappers, they decide to “borrow” them. When the trappers protest, Reece fires his weapon at them. Reece’s gun is loaded with blanks but the trappers don’t know that. They fire back, killing Poole.
The national guardsmen now find themselves lost and being stalked by the trappers, a largely unseen force that always seems to attack out of nowhere. The men have no idea where they are. The trappers, on the other hand, have lived in the swamps their entire lives. The guardsmen bicker and argue over the best way to respond. Some want to fight back and some just want to get back to civilization. One-by-one, the men are picked off until only two remain.
Though the film is a somewhat heavy-handed metaphor for the Vietnam War, SouthernComfort is still a deeply affecting and suspenseful mix of horror and action. Director Walter Hill keeps the action moving at a quick pace and the film, which was shot on location and featured scenes shot during an actual Cajun celebration, perfectly captures the languid yet ominous atmosphere of the bayous. As soon as the men see those canoes unattended, we know that they’re going to steal them and that they are making the biggest mistake of their lives. Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe both give powerful performances in the lead roles and the members of the supporting cast — especially Alan Autry and Fred Ward — make a strong impression as well. I especially liked the performance of Brion James, who has a small role as a one-armed Cajun who is more crafty than he looks.
Being a mix of horror and action, it’s probably not a shock that SouthernComfort was ignored by the Academy. At the very least, I would have found room for Ry Cooder’s original score and Andrew Laszlo’s haunting cinematography.
Filmed in 1972 and subsequently released in 1974, Silent Night Bloody Night is a real treat, an atmospheric thriller that has a wonderfully complicated plot that will keep you guessing.
Silent Night Bloody Night opens with attorney John Carter (Patrick O’Neal) arriving in a small town on Christmas Eve. He’s traveling with his assistant and mistress, Ingrid (Astrid Heeren). He’s been hired by Jeff Butler (James Patterson) to oversee the sell of his grandfather’s home. When Carter arrives, he finds that the town is run by a group of elderly eccentrics, including the mute Charlie Towman (John Carradine). Charlie communicates by ringing a bell and he’s the editor of the town newspaper. Carter convinces the town council to buy the Butler mansion. Then, Carter and Ingrid go to the mansion, make love, and are promptly brutally hacked to death by an unseen assailant with an axe. It’s a shocking moment because, up until their death scene, Carter and Ingrid seemed to be our main characters. Much as with Marion Crane’s shower in Psycho, their murder leaves an absence at the heart of the film.
That night, our new hero, Jeff Butler (James Patterson) comes to the isolated town to check on how the sale is going. He finds the mansion locked up and no one willing to talk about John Carter. With the help of local girl Diane (Mary Woronov), Jeff investigates his grandfather’s death and discovers that the town is full of secrets and people who are willing to kill to maintain them. As we discover through some wonderfully dream-like flashbacks, Jeff’s grandfather died nearly 40 years ago when he was set on fire in his own home. Those aren’t the only flashbacks to the film. In an extended sepia-toned flashback, we learn about the previous inhabitants of the house. They are all played by former Warhol superstars, including Candy Darling, Ondine, Tally Brown, Charlotte Fairchild, Lewis Love, Harvey Cohen, George Trakas, Susan Rothenberg, and Jack Smith. (Mary Woronov was, herself, a former member of Warhol’s entourage.)
Silent Night Bloody Night has a terrible reputation. Mary Woronov, who was married to director Theodore Gershuny at the time she made the film, later described it as being “lousy.” Personally, I think the film’s reputation has more to do with all of the grainy, bad copies of the film that have turned up in various Mill Creek box sets over the years than the quality of the film itself. (Silent Night BloodyNight is in public domain.) The film itself is atmospheric, memorably bloody, and — for those who have the patience to deal with the occasional slow spot — effectively creepy. Mary Woronov is a likable lead and the Warhol superstars definitely make an impression. The film plays out at its own deliberate pace and, at its best, it duplicates the feeling of a particularly macabre holiday dream.
Director Theodore Gershuny uses the low budget to his advantage and the sepia-toned flashbacks are truly disturbing and haunting. Ultimately, Silent Night BloodyNight feels like a dream itself and the mystery’s solution is less important than the journey taken to reach it.
I can still remember the first time that I saw the 1973 film, Messiah of Evil.
It was on a Monday night, many years ago. I had recently picked up a 10-movie DVD box set called Tales of Terror and I was using the movies inside to try to deal with a bout of insomnia. I had already watched The Hatchet Murders (a.k,a. Deep Red) and The House At The Edge of the Park and, at two in the morning, I was faced with a decision. Should I try to sleep or should I watch one more movie?
Naturally, I chose to watch one more movie and the movie I picked was Messiah of Evil. So, there I was at two in the morning, sitting at the edge of my bed in my underwear and watching an obscure horror movie while rain fell outside.
And, seriously — this movie totally FREAKED me out!
Messiah of Evil opens with a man (played by future director Walter Hill) stumbling through the night, obviously trying to escape from something. A mysterious woman appears and kills him. We’re left to wonder who the man was supposed to be as the film doesn’t ever really return to his murder. In most films this would be a weakness but it feels appropriate for Messiah of Evil, a film that plays out with the visual style and fragmented logic of a particularly intense nightmare.
The rest of the story tells the story of Arletty (Marianna Hill), a neurotic woman who drives to an isolated California town in order to visit her father. Her father is an artist who specializes in painting eerie pictures of large groups of black-clad people. However, once she arrives at his home, Arletty discovers that her father has vanished and left behind a diary where he claims that a darkness has overtaken the town. Meanwhile, it sometimes appear as if the people in the paintings are moving or threatening to come out of the walls.
Meanwhile, one crazed man (Elisha Cook, Jr.) explains that “the dark stranger” is returning. An albino (Bennie Robinson) drives a truck up and down the street and talks about how he likes to listen to “Wagner.” The back of the truck is full of blank-faced people staring at the sky and the Albino eats a rat. Finally, a mysterious man named Thom (Michael Greer) is wandering about town with two groupies (played by Anitaa Ford and Joy Bang) and interviewing random townspeople. After meeting Arletty, they all end up moving into her father’s house.
Messiah of Evil is literally one of the strangest films that I’ve ever seen. It’s shot in a dream-like fashion and the much of the film is left open to the viewer’s interpretation. Joy Bang goes to see a Sammy Davis, Jr. western and doesn’t notice as the theater slowly fills up with pale, red-eyed townspeople. Anitra Ford goes to a grocery store late at night and discovers the townspeople indulging in their appetites. If the film was only distinguished by those two scenes, it would still be worth saying. However, Messiah of Evil is a total and complete experience, a film where every scene matters and the audience is tasked with putting the puzzle together.
This film was directed by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, two longtime associates of George Lucas. (They wrote the screenplay for American Graffiti and Huyck directed Howard The Duck.) There’s absolutely nothing else in their filmography that is as surreal as Messiah of Evil, leading me to suspect that the film itself might be a very fortunate accident. Apparently, the production ran out of money before Katz and Huyck finished principal photography, which is what led to the film’s disjointed nature. Accident or not, Messiah of Evil is a masterpiece of surreal horror.
Messiah of Evil (1973, directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz)
I was just a kid, probably too young for the movie. My father rented Aliens from the local Blockbuster. It had been years since the movie had first come out but my father, who went to every Star Trek movie premiere and who still knows the lore of Star Wars better than I do, had never seen it and he was planning on correcting that oversight. My family gathered in the living room. We turned out all the lights. The tape was slipped into the VCR. Play was hit. Our boxy television turned into a movie screen and Aliens began.
And it scared the Hell out of me.
Today, I think people forget just how scary both Alien and Aliens are the first time that you watch them. After the first time, you at least know when the aliens are going to jump out at people and you also know who is going to survive. Today, if I rewatch Aliens, I know not to get to attached to the any of the Colonial Marines. I also know not to trust Carter Burke, even if he is played by Paul Reiser. I watch the movie in anticipation of Bill Paxton’s “Game over, man,” instead of dreading it. When I first watched it, all I knew is that the screen suddenly went dark, the soundtrack was full of screeches and the deaths of the Marines, and that the only thing scarier then being confronted with one alien was being confronted with a hundred of them at once. When I watch today, I know Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is going to prove to be a good android. I didn’t have the assurance when I first watched the movie. For all I knew, he was going to just abandon Ripley (Weave), Newt (Carrie Henn),and Hicks (Michael Biehn) on the planet.
Sigourney Weaver was the heart of that film. She went from being angry and bitter over what happened during then first Alien to still being angry and bitter but willing to risk her life to save Newt. From the start, she alone understood the Xenomorph threat and she was ultimately victorious because she was not only as determined and ruthless as the Queen but she actually had the heart that her opponent lacked. Ripley won because she was actually fighting for something more than just conquest. She was fighting to save Newt from becoming an incubator.
I usually think of Aliens as being the last Ripley film. I don’t acknowledge the third film because I find the idea of killing Newt and Hicks to be a betrayal of what made the first Aliens more than just a scary action movie. The fourth film, I don’t acknowledge because it asks me to believe that Winona Ryder would still be acting like Winona Ryder in the 23rd century. Aliens is a scary movie but it’s also a movie that ends with the promise of hope. After all that she’s been through, Ripley finally has a chance to start again with Newt, Hicks, and Bishop. That hope is something that is too often missing from the follow-ups.
Happy birthday, Sigourney Weaver! I’m going to go watch Aliens.
1993’s Murder So Sweet, also known a Poisoned By The Love: The Kern County Murders (seriously, try to say that ten times fast), tells the story of Steven David Catlin.
Steven David Catlin lived in Bakersfield, California. Catlin was a career criminal who was married six times and who found some personal redemption for himself as a member of the pit crew for a professional race car driver in Fresno. Trust me, I’ve lived in enough small, country towns to know that people will overlook a lot as long as someone knows how to work on a car.
One thing that people noticed about Catlin is that the people around him had a habit of dying of mysterious illnesses. Multiple wives, his adoptive parents, they all died with fluid in their lungs and they left behind not only a medical mystery but also quite a bit of money for Steven David Catlin. Catlin would always insist on holding a cremation just days after his loved ones passed away. Not only did that allow Catlin to move on but also kept anyone from being able to do a thorough autopsy.
Eventually, the police figured out that Catlin was just poisoning anyone who got on his nerves or threatened to divorce him. He wasn’t even a particularly clever poisoner. He used paraquet, a highly toxic herbicide and he kept the bottle sitting in plain view in his garage. He might as well have just labeled it his “Poisoning Thermos.” Catlin was convicted of multiple murders and he was sentenced to die in 1990. Of course, this being California, Catlin is sill alive and sitting in San Quentin. This really is a case of “If you lived in Texas, you’d be dead by now.”
In Murder My Sweet, Catlin is played Harry Hamlin, who steals the film as a dumb but charming redneck who walks with a confident swagger and has no fear of hitting on his ex-wife, even after he realizes that she’s trying to convince the police that he’s a murderer. Helen Shaver played Edie Bellew, the ex who knows better than to trust Catlin. Her current husband is played by Terence Knox and there’s plenty of scenes of him telling Edie that she needs to back off and that everyone knows that Steve Catlin isn’t a murderer. In many ways, this is the ultimate Lifetime film in that Edie Bellew not only gets to put her ex-husband in prison but she also proves that her current husband doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Murder My Sweet takes place in rural California and, as a result, everyone in the film speaks with a shrill country accent and we spend a lot of time in a really tacky beauty parlor. Indeed, the film portrayal of country eccentricity is so over-the-top that I was tempted to say that it seemed as if the director was trying to rip-off David Lynch. However, Lynch may have made films about eccentric characters but he never portrayed them as being caricatures. Lynch loved his eccentrics while this film takes a bit of a condescending attitude towards them. Still, it’s worth watching for Harry Hamlin’s sleazy turn as Steve Catlin, a guy who enjoys fast cars and making ice cream.
That’s really the main message that I took away from the 1982 film, The Seduction. In TheSeduction, Morgan Fairchild stars as Jamie Douglas. Jamie is a anchorwoman for a local news channel in Los Angeles. She has an older boyfriend named Brandon (Michael Sarrazin). She has a sex-crazed best friend named Robin (Colleen Camp). She has a beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills. She’s doing wonderfully for someone whose main talent is the ability to read what’s on the teleprompter. Much like Ron Burgundy, she’ll read whatever is put on that teleprompter without even thinking about it. Some might say that indicates that Jamie is a fairly vacuous character and …. well, they’re right. She is.
Jamie starts receiving flowers at work and mysterious phone calls from someone named Derek. Derek (Andrew Stevens) is a fashion photographer. He’s young. He’s handsome. He’s charismatic. His assistant, Julie (Wendy Smith Howard), is absolutely in love with him. In fact, Derek would seem to have it all but he’s obsessed with Jamie. Soon, he’s breaking into Jamie’s house so that he can watch her undress and then confronting her at the mall. At one point, he shows up in her living room and starts taking pictures of her. Jamie screams. Brandon beats him up. After Derek leaves, Jamie and Brandon go to the police and ask if there’s something that they can do about Derek. The police say that there are not many options because Derek has not technically broken the law …. uhm, what? I get that things were different in the 80s but I still find it hard to believe that showing up in someone else’s living ro0om without an invitation and then refusing to leave would have been considered legal back then. As you probably already guessed, Derek’s obsession soon turns lethal.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about The Seduction is that Derek is basically Jamie’s neighbor but she doesn’t ever seem to realize it. Watching this film, there were time when I really had to wonder if maybe Jamie was just an idiot. As well, throughout the film, Jamie reports on an unknown serial killer who is terrorizing Los Angeles. The killer is dubbed the Sweetheart Killer and, when I watched this film, I wondered if the Sweetheart Killer and Derek were one in the same. I don’t think that they were but, still, why introduce an unknown serial killer without providing any sort of resolution? It’s all indicative of just how sloppy the plotting on TheSeduction truly was. That’s especially true of the ludicrous ending of the film. A murder is committed in Jamie’s hot tub and when Jamie calls the police to report it, she’s put on hold. Meanwhile, Derek buries the body in Jamie’s backyard and somehow manages to do it without really breaking a sweat or being noticed by anyone. Derek’s big secret turns out to be not that much of a shock.
Morgan Fairchild’s performance isn’t great but that’s largely because she’s stuck with a character who is never allowed to behave in a consistent manner. Andrew Stevens is a bit more convincing as Derek, playing him as a photographer who doesn’t need cocaine because he’s already get his obsessive personality keeping up at nights. Michael Sarrazin, as Brandon, bellows nearly all of his lines and gives a performance that just shouts out, “Why did I agree to do this movie!?” He’s amusing. As for director David Schmoeller, he did much better with both Tourist Trap and Crawlspace.
Seriously, though, a lot of the horror and drama in this film could have been avoided by Jamie just getting to know her neighbors. I’ve been very lucky to have some very good neighbors over the years. When my Dad passed away, my neighbors Hunter and Hannah checked in on my nearly every day afterwards and let me use their hot tub whenever I wanted to. Neighbors, they can be pretty special.
The 1958 sci-fi/horror hybrid, It! The Terror From Beyond Space, opens with a NASA press conference. The assembled reporters are reminded that, earlier in the year, America’s first manned mission to Mars was presumed to have been lost. However, a second mission was sent to Mars and they discovered that the commander of the first mission, Edward L. Carruthers (Marshall Thompson), was still alive.
Unfortunately, all of Carruthers’s crewmates were dead. Carruthers claimed that the murders were committed by a monster. The commander of the second mission, Col. Van Heusen (Kim Spalding), instead suspected that Carruthers killed his crewmates when he realized they were stranded on Mars. The ship had enough provisions to last the entire crew for one year or ten years for just one man.
The second mission is now on their way back to Earth, with Carruthers under house arrest. While one crewman does believe that Carruthers’s story could be true, the others are convinced that Carruthers is a murderer. What they don’t know is that the monster from Carruthers’s story is not only real but that it also snuck onto their ship during lift-off. Tall and scaly with huge claws and a permanently angry face, the Monster — It, for lack of a more formal name — is lurking in the lower levels of the ship and hunting for food.
To state what is probably already obvious, It! is not a film that worries much about being scientifically accurate. While it does explain how living on the surface of Mars caused It to develop into the predator that it is, this is also a science fiction film from 1958. It’s a film where, instead of going to the Moon, the first manned spaceflight is to Mars. It’s also a film where there’s no weightlessness in space, the two women on the ship serve everyone coffee, and a nuclear reactor is casually unshielded at one point in an attempt to destroy It. Bullets are fired on the spaceship. Grenades are tossed. Airlocks are rather casually opened.
Fortunately, none of that matters. Clocking in at a mere 69 minutes, It! is a surprisingly suspenseful horror film, one that makes good use of its claustrophobic locations (a lot of the action takes place in an air duct) and which features a surprisingly convincing and, at times, even scary monster. It may be a man in a rubber suit but that doesn’t make it any less shocking when its claw bursts out of an an open hatch and starts trying to grab everything nearby. The cast of It! are all convincing in their roles. Watching them, you really do believe that they are a crew who have seen a lot together and it makes the subsequent deaths all the more effective,
It! was a troubled production, The monster was played by veteran stuntman Ray Corrigan, who reportedly showed up drunk a few times and also managed to damage the monster suit. Many members of the cast were not happy about being cast in a B-movie. (Fortunately, their resentment probably helped their performances as the similarly resentful crew of the second mission to Mars.) Marshall Thompson, who played Carruthers, was one of the few cast members who enjoyed making It! and, perhaps not surprisingly, he also gives the best performance in the film.
Troubled production or not, It! was not only a box office success but, along with Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires, it was later cited as one of the inspiration for Alien. At its best, It! has the same sort of claustrophobic feel as Alien. The scene where one of the crewman is found in an air duct brings to mind the fate of Tom Skerritt’s character in Alien.
It! is still a very effective work of sci-fi horror. Remember, another name for Mars is …. DEATH!
We are NOT powerless! We don’t have to let Alex Magana films happen. Alex Magana films being created is not a requirement of life, unless we permit it! I know that many of you think that he is inevitable like Thanos or getting herpes, BUT it is not! Thanos, herpes, and Alex Magana films don’t have to be part of your life!
Speaking of herpes, we need to go into a deeper dive of our cultural heroes sleeping with Aliens! Whatever they evolved from, it wasn’t on Earth!
You’re gonna give all COVID 1000! They probably have sapient cold sores! Cut it out! The green alien especially because just wait until the Jolly Green Giant gets home! Yes, I did hold myself back from the obvious she is a
Ho Ho Ho
Yes, this was a tangent, but it delayed my review and that is a good thing. The story is very simple a woman does her laundry, the laundry alarm buzzes, and…..nothing just a high pitched boyfriend. The boyfriend investigates the laundry and is eaten by a monster hiding the dryer. She also investigates and the monster is her laundry. I do not understand the monster’s lifecycle or why this movie had to be. We could stop Alex Magana! Think on this, if 100 guys can stop a gorilla, 20 guys could stop Alex! If you want to see something terrible, see below.
Through the Shattered Lens 