Horror Film Review: The Omen (dir by Richard Donner)

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A few days ago, Arleigh shared the theme song from 1976’s The Omen as Monday’s horror song of the day. As I sat there and listened to Jerry Goldsmith’s award-winning hymn to Satan, it occurred to me that I happen to have all five of the Omen films sitting in my movie collection. Seeing as how this is Halloween and how the world seems to be getting closer to ending with each passing day, I decided that this would be the perfect time to rewatch the entire franchise and consider whether or not The Omen films are truly as scary as a lot of people seem to think.

So, that’s what I did.

How did things turn out?

Well, in the long history of sequels and remakes, The Omen franchise is one of the more uneven collections. This is one of those franchises where things tend to get less impressive with each subsequent entry. However, 38 years after its initial release, the first Omen remains effective and, in its way, genuinely scary.

If you’re a horror fan, you probably know the general plot of The Omen regardless of whether you’ve actually watched it or not. It’s one of those films that has been so frequently imitated that it’s almost possible to watch it by osmosis.

The film opens in Rome with diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) being rushed to the hospital where his wife, Kathy (Lee Remick), has just given birth. A priest (Martin Benson) tells him that his son died shortly after being born but that he can always just go home with an orphaned newborn that he just happens to have handy. Robert agrees and decides not to tell his wife the truth about the child. Robert and Kathy raise the boy and they name him Damien. Four years later, the politically ambitious Robert is named as Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

The Thorns move to London and soon, odd things start to happen. Damien (now played by Harvey Spencer Stephens) is a quiet boy with a piercing stare who throws a fit whenever he’s taken inside of a church. When Kathy takes Damien to the zoo, they’re attacked by angry baboons. A large Rottweiler mysteriously appears on the grounds of the Ambassador’s estate. A mysterious and sinister nanny (Billie Whitelaw) shows up and explains that she’s been sent by an “agency.” A crazed priest (Patrick Troughton) starts to stalk the Ambassador, demanding a chance to speak with him and insisting that Damien’s mother was actually a jackal.

Even more mysteriously, people start dying in the strangest of ways. A young woman (Holly Palance) smiles as she shouts, “Damien, it’s all for you!” and then hangs herself, thoroughly ruining Damien’s fifth birthday party. A freak lightning storm leads to a man being impaled by a weather vane. Another person who suspects that there might be something wrong with Damien ends up losing his head in a graphic sequence that — even in this age of Hostel and Saw — is difficult to watch.

The Ambassador is contact by Keith Jennings (David Warner), a nervous photographer who fears that Damien may be planning on killing him. Soon, Thorn and Jennings are flying to Italy and to the Middle East and discovering evidence that five year-old Damien might very well be the Antichrist. Speaking of Damien, he and that nanny have been left alone with poor, victimized Kathy.

(“Oh, leave her alone,” I muttered as Damien attempted to kill Kathy for the hundredth time…)

As I watched The Omen, I tried to figure out why this film has held up so well. It certainly wasn’t due to the performance of Gregory Peck who, quite frankly, seemed to mostly be going through the motions. David Warner, on the other hand, gave such a good performance that it was almost difficult to watch. (Don’t get attached to any character who appears in an Omen film.) Some of the film’s effectiveness was undoubtedly due to Jerry Goldsmith’s intense score. Anything’s scary when you’ve got a hundred voice shouting “Ave Satani” at you.

But, ultimately, I think the reason why The Omen still works is because the film generates such a palpable sense of doom. This is one of those films that leaves you convinced that anyone can die at any minute and, considering that happens to be true in both this movie and in real life, that makes the horror of The Omen feel very real. By the time the film ends, you’re left with little doubt that nobody in the film had the least bit of power or control over his or her own destiny. Instead, they were all just pawns in a game that they had no hope of ever winning or understanding. Is there anything scarier than feeling powerless?

All I know is that, having rewatched The Omen, I will never look at a plane of glass the same way again.

Horror on The Lens: The Masque of the Red Death (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So here we are, 24 days into October, and I have yet to share an old Vincent Price film! It’s not October without at least a little contribution from Vincent. Well, allow me to correct that with today’s horror on the lens, the 1964 Roger Corman film The Masque of the Red Death.

Based on the classic story by Edgar Allan Poe, this film features Vincent Price giving one of his best performances as the doomed and decadent Satanist Prince Prospero. The film’s cinematographer was future director Nicolas Roeg and The Masque of the Red Death is probably one of the most visually impressive of all of Corman’s films.

Enjoy!

Horror on the Lens: Carnival of Souls (dir by Herk Harvey)

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Herk Harvey’s 1962 film Carnival of Souls is a film that we’ve shared on the Shattered Lens before but I have no problem sharing it again. After Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) is involved in an auto accident, she is haunted by frightening visions and finds herself followed by mysterious figures. Directed in a dream-like fashion and featuring an impressive performance from Candace Hilligoss, Carnival of Souls is a classic example of independent American cinema and it’s a bit of a Halloween tradition around these parts.

Enjoy!

Netflix Halloween 2014 : “You’re Next”

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Okay, so here’s the deal : over at my “main” site — http://trashfilmguru.wordpress.com , for those up you not aware — I’m spending the month of October looking at various horror flicks currently available in Netflix’s instant streaming queue. So far there have been some semi-winners, some semi-losers, and some real clunkers, but I promised myself that if I ever found one that was an absolute, indisputable home run, I’d write about here on TTSL and thereby hopefully spread the word about it a bit father and wider than a post on my blog alone would accomplish. I’m pleased to say I’ve found just such a film.

I’m not sure why or how I missed “splat back”/”mumblegore” director Adam Wingard’s 2011 offering, You’re Next, when it hit theaters — I certainly found the ads for it intriguing and meant to go check it out, but I never did. My loss — but not anymore, since I finally caught it the other night and damn, was I impressed.

Seriously, this has everything you want in a horror movie : an involving premise, a few characters you want to see live, even more you’d love to see die, plenty of first-rate gore, suspense, intrigue, and all kinds of ass-kicking. You might ask for more, I suppose, if you’re picky, but come on — how often do you get it?

Anyway, friends, you know how it goes — you’re gathered together for a family reunion full of not-so-subtle tension and disdain (think the kind of situation where everyone would be stabbing each other in the back, except for the fact that they’re doing it out in the open), when suddenly assailants in animal masks armed with crossbows start firing away and, presto! Next thing you know, you’re all under siege and fighting for your lives.

What? That’s never happened to you? Well, it’s what happens to the family here (who, curiously enough, are never given a last name), a very well-heeled clan who have gathered at their family’s palatial “summer estate” to celebrate their mother and father’s 35th wedding anniversary. Roll call : there’s struggling- academic brother Crispian (AJ Bowen) and his Aussie girlfriend, Erin (Sharni Vison); douchebag brother Drake (Joe Swanberg) and his wife, Kelly (Sarah Myers); younger douchebag brother Felix (Nicholas Tucci) and his emo/goth “squeeze,” Zee (Wendy Glenn); darling baby sister Aimee (Amy Seimetz); and presiding over the whole houseful of ungrateful, self-centered whelps we have dad Paul (Rob Moran) and mom Aubrey (the still-drop-dead-gorgeous Barbara Crampton). We get to know each of these characters just enough to give the first half-hour or so a strong dose of Woody Allen-esque upper-class dysfunction when the shit starts hitting the fan.

And when it hits, boy does it ever. Aside from the mere fact that it’s gleeful fun (well, at least for me) to see members of the 1% finally get what’s coming to them, Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett are to be commended for not taking their collective foot off the gas pedal until the end credits are rolling, and while we quickly learn that only Erin has the smarts and guts to survive the situation thanks to her weird survivalist upbringing in the Outback, the other character revelations along the way come in measured steps and and at just the right points (usually as a means of breaking up what would otherwise be a non-stop series of creatively brutal slayings). Still, you probably won’t see the end coming, simply because you’ll figure you’ve got the whole thing sussed out already — even though, trust me, you don’t.

To be completely fair, I do have some relatively minor gripes with said ending — I think there was a way Wingard could have made it even more shocking, but shit, I’m not gonna complain. The conclusion he serves up is still a doozy even if it’s not exactly the one I would have gone for. If I think I’m so fucking good at this kind of thing, then maybe I should just go and direct my own movie, right?

Add in fun little cameos from the likes of fellow “new horror” icon Ti West and some wink-and-nudge homages to other genre classics, throw in a throbbing musical score that’s more than just a bit reminiscent of Goblin (hold your horses, I’m not saying it’s as good as Goblin, only that it’s stylistically similar to their justly- legendary efforts), keep the blood flowing, and you’ve got a recipe for a sure winner. Whatever you’re doing right now can wait — if you’ve got a Netflix subscription, You’re Next deserves your immediate attention.

Horror On The Lens: The Little Shop of Horrors (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Little Shop…Little Shop of Horrors…Little Shop…Little Shop of Terrors…

Watching the original 1960 Little Shop of Horrors is another Halloween tradition here at the Shattered Lens. And why not? It’s a lot of fun! Everyone always mentions the fact that Jack Nicholson pops up in an early role but, for me, the entire film is stolen by the great Dick Miller.

Incidentally, when I was 19, I was a dancer in a community theater production of Little Shop of Horrors. I really should have been cast as Audrey.

Just saying.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: The Judge (dir by David Dobkin)

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hey, everyone!

Remember how, earlier this year, a whole lot of people (like me) figured that The Judge would be a surefire Oscar contender and that Robert Duvall would probably receive an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor?

At the time, it made perfect sense. After all, in the past, courtroom dramas have occasionally been popular with the Academy and, while we all knew that The Judge probably wouldn’t be a modern-day Anatomy of a Murder, there was still reason to hope that the film would turn out to be a watchable melodrama. Add to that, the movie starred Robert Downey, Jr, an actor who is eventually going to win an Academy Award. Perhaps most importantly, the title character was played by Robert Duvall, one of the best American actors of all time and an actor who, having recently turned 83, might not get many more opportunities to win one final career-honoring Oscar.

It only made sense to assume that The Judge would be a contender.

And then the trailer came out and those of us who know our film history were left a little bit confused. It wasn’t that the trailer was necessarily bad. It was just that it made the film seem rather old-fashioned. It didn’t feel like a trailer for a film that was set to be released in 2014. If anything, it almost felt like a parody, as if it was one of those fake, overly Hollywood trailers that appeared at the beginning of Tropic Thunder. (The fact that the trailer featured Robert Downey, Jr. looking haunted only contributed to this feeling.)

And then the film opened and received reviews that were, at best, respectful and, at worst, scathing. And I quickly revised my Oscar predictions.

Despite the bad reviews and my own suspicion that the film would not be very good, I still wanted to see The Judge. I love melodrama. I love courtroom dramas. Even more importantly, the Roberts are two of my favorite actors. Robert Downey, Jr. is always a lot of fun to watch. Robert Duvall began his career playing Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird and, 52 years later, he’s still a great and uniquely American actor.

So, I saw The Judge this weekend and … well, it’s just a weird movie and not in a good way. Instead, it’s one of those movies where almost everything seems to be so strangely miscalculated that you really can’t imagine how it could have possibly happened. The film runs for nearly two and a half hours, despite only having enough plot for maybe an hour-long pilot for a potential mid-season replacement. The script is amazingly overwritten, full of portentous speeches and clichéd characters. It’s not enough that Robert Downey, Jr. has two brothers that he has to reconnect with while defending their father on a murder charge. Instead, one of the brothers also has to be vaguely developmentally challenged so that he can deliver cute lines that are full of “accidental wisdom.” It’s not enough that Downey reunites with his ex-high school girlfriend (Vera Farmiga, who deserves a better role) but she also has to have a daughter who might be his but could be someone else’s. It’s not enough that Billy Bob Thornton’s prosecuting attorney is slick and cunning but he also has to be a self-righteous crusader who has rather silly personal reasons for wanting to defeat Downey in court. It’s not enough that Downey and Duvall eventually end up yelling their personal grievances each other. Instead, they have to do it while a tornado literally tears through the front yard, the type of directorial choice that is so obvious and heavy-handed that it indicates that director David Dobkin (best known for directing comedies like Wedding Crashers) was desperate to prove that he could be dramatic.

Much like the similarly bad Love and Other Drugs, The Judge is one of those films that tries so hard to be all things to all viewers that it’s ultimately just a huge mess. Is it a murder mystery? If so, you have to wonder why we learn so little about the case against Duvall’s judge. Is it a romantic comedy about Robert Downey, Jr. returning to his small hometown and rediscovering what’s important in life? If so, you have to wish that the town had a little bit more character beyond just being a standard Hollywood version of what middle America is like. Is it a family drama? Well, then it would be nice to know more about the family dynamic beyond the fact that Duvall was stern, Downey was rebellious, and Vincent D’Onofrio is stuck playing the brother who never got to leave home. It’s a comedy with few laughs and a drama with few tears and ultimately, The Judge just does not work.

However, both of the Roberts give pretty good performances. That’s what makes The Judge truly frustrating. Duvall and Downey both do such good work but the material ultimately not only lets them down but lets the audiences down as well.

Oh well.

Horror on The Lens: It Conquered The World (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, we present a film from the legendary Roger Corman. First released in 1956, It Conquered The World tells the tragic story of what happens when it … well, conquers the world. It, by the way, is one of the most iconic of the 1950 sci-fi monsters. It is kind of a crab-like thing but … well, just watch the film. It’s kind of hard to describe.

The film also features future spaghetti western star Lee Van Cleef as the human scientist who foolishly helps It conquer the world. Van Cleef’s wife is played by one of the greatest B-movie actresses of all time, Beverly Garland. Hoping to thwart It is Peter Graves who spends the majority of the film riding around on a bicycle. Also keep an eye out for Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze, who both play soldiers here and who would later co-star in tomorrow’s horror on the lens.

Horror On The Lens: Burnt Offerings (dir by Dan Curtis)

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

To be honest, I really don’t like Burnt Offerings, a 1976 film about what happens when an odd family moves into an even odder house. I find it to be slow and predictable and, to be honest, the only part that really works are the flashback scenes that feature a skeletal Anthony James playing a sinister chauffeur.

However, I’ve discovered that there’s a lot of people online who disagree with me and who consider this to be one of the best haunted house movies ever! So, in the spirit of agreeing to disagree, here is Burnt Offerings…

(If nothing else, the film is worth it for the chance to see Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Bette Davis, Anthony James, and Burgess Meredith all in one film together.)

What Horror Lisa and the Snarkalecs Watched Last Night #106: Finders Keepers (dir by Alexander Yellen)

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, the Snarkalecs and I watched the latest SyFy original film, Finders Keepers!

Why Was I Watching It?

I had been watching Big Driver over on Lifetime but that film proved to be unusually disturbing and I really wasn’t in the right mood to deal with it. Sometimes, you need to just be entertained and SyFy original movies are always entertaining! So, after watching an hour of Big Driver, I turned over to SyFy and watched Finders Keepers.

What Was It About?

Recently divorced writer Alyson Smith (Jaime Pressly) moves into a nice, old house with her daughter, Claire (Kylie Rogers). At first the house seems ideal but soon, cracks start to appear on this perfect fantasy of home ownership. Claire starts to act strangely. A crazy old cat lady (Marina Sirtis) keeps coming by the house. Alyson does some research and discovers that the reason the house was empty was because, years before, it was the scene of a brutal mass murder. And, of course, Claire finds a creepy doll in her bedroom and becomes extremely attached to it.

Soon, everyone who knows Alyson and her ex-husband (Patrick Muldoon) is turning up dead. Could it be that the doll is evil or could it all be a coincidence?

Actually, there’s really no question. That is one messed up doll…

What Worked?

SyFy hasn’t been showing as many original movies this year as they did last year. Fortunately, the ones that they have shown have all been excellent and Finders Keepers keeps the streak going. Finders Keepers is an effectively creepy horror film, featuring excellent performances from Jaime Pressly and Patrick Muldoon, atmospheric direction from Alexander Yellen, and a clever script from Peter Sullivan.

Incidentally, Finders Keepers probably featured one of the bigger body counts that I’ve ever seen in a SyFy film. Nobody’s safe from that doll!

What Did Not Work?

Over the course of the film, two cats and a crazy old cat lady are killed. As most of you know, I am about 40 years away from becoming a crazy old cat lady so that was a little bit difficult for me to deal with.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

So, beyond the crazy old cat lady and her two cats, this film also featured a vivacious, 20-something redhead who ended up being murdered by the evil doll. And then, once the redhead and the cat lady had been dispatched, we were introduced to an incredibly efficient office administrator and guess what happened to her? That’s right — murdered by the crazy doll. Speaking as a vivacious and efficient redheaded office administrator and future crazy cat lady, I really have to wonder just what exactly this film had against me!

Lessons Learned

Do not let your daughter keep any creepy old voodoo dolls that she just happens to find in her bedroom. If she won’t get rid of the voodoo doll, consider giving her up for adoption because, seriously — voodoo is nothing to mess with.

Horror Film Review: Big Driver (dir by Mikael Salomon)

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You have to be careful about admitting that you think Stephen King is overrated.

For a year and a half, I’ve been meaning to write a post entitled “10 Reasons Why Stephen King Sucks” but I haven’t. Some of that is because I don’t necessarily think that he does suck. I think he’s a good writer but I also think that he’s overrated and that his novel about the Kennedy assassination got so many details about Texas wrong that I don’t even know where to begin. (However, following the rules of clickbait, “sucks” works better than “overrated.”) Mostly, though, it’s just because Stephen King fans tend to be a bit cult-like. Criticizing King is like saying you don’t care about Beyonce’s marriage or admitting that you find President Obama to be a dull speaker or telling Vermont to go fuck itself or listing 10 Reasons Why You Hated Avatar. You shouldn’t do it unless you want to run the risk of dealing with a lot of angry and irrational true believers.

That said, it’s always a little bit safer to criticize the movies that have been made from Stephen King’s books and short stories. Even King’s most slavish followers will admit that Stephen King films tend to be uneven as far as quality is concerned. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is one of the best horror films of all time but it’s interesting to note that Stephen King himself rarely has a good word to say about Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel. For reasons that I’ve never quite understood, a lot of people love The Shawshank Redemption. Then there are the adaptations that nobody likes, like Bag of Bones and Dreamcatcher.

And then there’s Big Driver, an adaptation of a Stephen King novella that aired on Lifetime last night. For the past two months, Lifetime has been advertising this film with short but effective commercials that featured a bloodied Maria Bello running down a dark road while a gigantic truck ominously followed behind her. I saw the commercials and, seeing as how Maria Bello is a favorite actress of mine and how much I love Lifetime movies in general, I was excited to see Big Driver. Then, I saw another commercial in which Stephen King was quoted as saying, “This is the film that Stephen King fans have been waiting for,” and I have to admit that it left me a little bit less enthused because, quite frankly, I’ve always been under the impression that Stephen King will endorse anything as long as he gets paid and his ass gets kissed. (Someday, we’ll have to do a survey to discover just how many crappy books come with a Stephen King pull quote on the cover describing the book’s author as being “the future of horror!”) And I have to admit that I resented the fact that Lifetime seemed to be assuming that I would ever allow Stephen King to tell me what was good and what was bad. I can decide that for myself without having someone else tell me what I’ve been “waiting for.”

(I have issues with authority. Can you tell?)

Big Driver, incidentally, is Stephen King’s take on I Spit On Your Grave. Mystery writer Tess Thorne (Maria Bello) is raped and left for dead by a serial killer who is known as Big Driver (Will Harris). Feeling that the police would simply say that she was “asking for it”, Tess does not report the attack but instead uses the same techniques that she writes about in her books to track down both Big Driver and his mother (Ann Dowd) and sets out to get both revenge for herself and justice for all of Big Driver’s other victims. (Those detective techniques, by the way, largely seem to consist of knowing how to use Google.) Along the way, Tess hallucinates conversations with both her car’s GPS and with one of the fictional detectives from her books (played by Olympia Dukakis).

When I watched Big Driver last night, I actually had to stop watching after an hour. The film was just too intense and disturbing for me to handle in one sitting. The scene where Tess was raped was too painful to watch and Maria Bello’s performance was so raw and real that I had to change the channel. It wasn’t the film’s fault. It’s just that I wasn’t in the right emotional state to watch the movie. It was a lot more intense than anything that I would have ever expected to see on Lifetime. (Lifetime, after all, is the television equivalent of comfort food.) So, I stopped watching after an hour and I turned over to SyFy so I could watch a much more light-hearted horror film, Finders Keepers. Fortunately, I had the DVR recording Big Driver and I finished watching the film early this morning.

What I discovered, when I watched the rest of the film, is that Big Driver is a frustratingly uneven film. The first half is difficult to watch and that’s the way it should have been. But, as I watched the rest of the film, I found myself growing annoyed with Tess’s imaginary friends. The talking GPS and the spectral presence of the fictional detective all served to make Tess look less like a woman demanding justice and more like the proverbial unstable person who shouldn’t have been messed with. One reason why the original I Spit On Your Grave has recently been reevaluated by several feminist film critics is because the victim in that film is never portrayed as being crazy or unbalanced. Her actions are purely the result of what has been done to her and, as such, that film is ultimately far more empowering than most critics will ever be willing to admit. By calling into question Tess’s grip on reality, Big Driver fails to empower and, if a film like this isn’t going to be empowering, than what is the point?

Big Driver is, however, redeemed by Maria Bello’s fierce performance as Tess. Maria Bello is one of my favorite actresses. When you see that a character is played by Maria Bello, you know that character is not going to put up with any bullshit and she’s not going to be afraid to kick someone’s ass if she has to. Even when the film’s script lets the character down, Maria Bello keeps Tess strong. It’s a great and, I would say, even an important performance.

As for Big Driver‘s place in the pantheon of Stephen King film adaptations, it’s about in the middle. It’s neither as good or as bad as it could have been but it is undeniably effective.