Tag Archives: Bruce Davison

Ghosts of Sundance Past: Longtime Companion (dir by Norman Rene)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Sundance Film Festival is currently underway in Utah.  For the next few days, I’ll be taking a look at some of the films that have previously won awards at Sundance.

First released in 1990, Longtime Companion was one of the first mainstream feature films to deal with the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

The film follows a group of friends and lovers over the course of ten years.  The film opens with a crowded and joyous 4th of July weekend at Fire Island.  Willy (Campbell Scott) is a personal trainer who has just started a relationship with an entertainment lawyer who, due to his beard, is nicknamed Fuzzy (Stephen Caffrey).  Willy’s best friend is the personable and popular John (Dermot Mulroney).  David (Bruce Davison) and Sean (Mark Lamos) are the elder couple of the group.  Sean writes for a soap opera and one of Fuzzy’s clients, Howard (Patrick Cassidy), has just landed a role on the show.  He’ll be playing a gay character, even though everyone warns him that the role will lead to him getting typecast.  The group’s straight friend is Lisa (Mary-Louise Parker), an antique dealer who lives next door to Howard and who is Fuzzy’s sister.  The film takes it times showing us the friendships and the relationships between these characters, allowing us to get to know them all as individuals.

Even as the group celebrates the 4th, they are talking about an article in the New York Times about the rise of a “gay cancer.”  Some members of the group are concerned but the majority simply shrug it off as another out-there rumor.

The movie moves quickly, from one year to another.  John, the youngest of them, is the first member of the group to die, passing away alone in a hospital room while hooked up to a respirator.  (The sound of the respirator is one of the most haunting parts of the film.)  Sean soon becomes ill and starts to dramatically deteriorate.  It falls to David to take care of Sean and to even ghostwrite his scripts for the soap opera.  Howard’s acting career is sabotaged by rumors that he has AIDS while Willy and Fuzzy tentatively try to have a relationship at time when they’re not even sure how AIDS is transmitted.  At one point, Willy visits a friend in the hospital and then furiously scrubs his skin in case he’s somehow been infected.  When one member of the group passes, his lover is referred to as being his “longtime companion” in the obituary.  Even while dealing with tragedy and feeling as if they’ve been shunned and abandoned to die by the rest of America, the characters are expected to hide the details of the lives and their grief.

It’s a poignant and low-key film, one that was originally made for PBS but then given a theatrical release after production was complete.  Seen today, the film feels like a companion piece to Roger Spottiswoode’s And The Band Played On.  If And The Band Played On dealt with the politics around AIDS and the early struggle to get people to even acknowledge that it existed, Longtime Companion is about the human cost of the epidemic.  The film is wonderfully acted by the talented cast.  Bruce Davison was nominated for an Oscar for his sensitive performance as David.  If not for Joe Pesci’s performance in Goodfellas, it’s easy to imagine that Davison would have won.  The scene where he encourages the comatose Sean to pass on will make you cry.  Interestingly, when David gets sick himself, it happens off-screen as if the filmmakers knew there was no way the audience would have been able to emotionally handle watching David suffer any further.

Longtime Companion played at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Dramatic Audience Award.

Horror Film Review: Crimes of Passion (dir by Ken Russell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1984 film, Crimes of Passion, tells the story of three people and their adventures on the fringes of society.  One is just visiting the fringes.  One chooses to work there while living elsewhere.  And the other is a viscous demon of repressed sexuality.

Bobby Grady (John Laughlin) has what would appear to be an ideal life.  He has a nice house in the suburbs.  He appears to have a good job.  He has a lovely wife (Annie Potts) and he has friends who all remember what a wild guy Bobby used to be when he was younger.  Bobby’s grown up and it appears that he’s matured into a life of comfort.  In reality, though, Bobby is frustrated.  He worries that he’s become a boring old suburbanite.  He and his wife rarely have sex.  The commercials on television, all inviting him to dive into the life of middle class ennui, seem to taunt him.  In order to help pay the bills, he has a second job as a surveillance expert.

He’s hired to follow Joanna Crane (Kathleen Turner), an employee at a fashion house who is suspected of stealing her employer’s designs and selling them.  Joanna is describe to Bobby as being cool, ambitious, and always professional.  At work, she always keep her emotions to herself and no one seems to know anything about what she does outside of the office.  There’s no real evidence that Joanna is stealing designs.  Her employer just suspects her because Joanna always seem to be keeping a secret.

Bobby follows Joanna and he discovers that she’s not stealing designs.  Instead, she’s leading a secret life as Chyna Blue, a high-priced prostitute who wears a platinum wig and who tends to talk to like a cynical femme fatale in a film noir.  Bobby becomes obsessed with Chyna, following her as she deals with different johns, the majority of whom are middle class and respected members of society.  Chyna has the ability to know exactly what the men who come to her are secretly looking for.  A cop wants to be humiliated.  A dying man needs someone to care about him.  And one persistent and sweaty customer is obsessed with saving her.

The Reverend Peter Shayne (Anthony Perkins, in twitchy Psycho mode) hangs out on Sunset Strip and tries to save souls.  Those who he can’t save, he kills.  He carries the tools of his trade with him, a bible, a sex doll, and a sharpened dildo.  After Chyna tells him that she doesn’t want anything to do with him or his money or his religion, Shayne grows increasingly more and more obsessed and unbalanced.

The plot is actually pretty simple and not that much different from what one might find in a straight-to-video neo-noir.  What sets Crimes of Passion apart from other films of the genre is the fearless performance of Kathleen Turner and the over-the-top direction of Ken Russell.  Never one to shy away from confusing and potentially offending his audience, Russell fills the film with shocking and frequently surreal imagery.   Grady’s wife would rather watch insanely crass commercials than have sex with him.  (“We just got the cable,” she explains.)  When Shayne first approaches Chyna, the scene plays out in black-and-white and at a pace that would seem more appropriate for a screwball comedy than a graphic horror film.  When Shayne commits one of his first murders, his victim is temporarily transformed into a blow-up doll.  The sex-obsessed dialogue alternates between lines of surprising honesty and moments that are so crudely explicit that it’s clear they were meant to parody what Russell viewed as being America’s puritanical culture.

It’s not a film for everyone, which won’t shock anyone who has ever seen a Ken Russell film.  The film works best when it focuses of Kathleen Turner and her performances as Chyna and Joanna.  John Laughlin is a bit bland as the film’s male lead but that blandness actually provides some grounding for Russell’s more over-the-top impulses.  As for Anthony Perkins, he was reportedly struggling with his own addictions when he appeared in this film and he plays Peter Shayne as being a junkie looking for his next fix.  There’s nothing subtle about Perkins’s performance but then again, there’s nothing subtle about Ken Russell’s vision.

Crimes of Passion has some major pacing issues and, for all of Russell’s flamboyance, his visuals here are not as consistently interesting as they were in films like Altered States and The Devils.  Still, Crimes of Passion is worth seeing for Kathleen Turner’s performance and as a portrait of life on the fringes.  Even a minor Ken Russell film is worth watching at least once.

A Horror Blast From The Past: The Wave (dir by Alexander Grasshoff)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First broadcast in 1981, The Wave stars Bruce Davison as Ben Ross, a high school social studies teacher who conducts a social experiment.

Frustrated by the fact that he can’t answer his students questions of how the German people could have allowed the Holocaust to occur, Ben decides to teach his students a lesson.  He starts by introducing a bunch of seemingly arbitrary rules to his classroom, concerning the proper way for students to sit at their desks and to address the teacher.  Ben is somewhat surprised to see how quickly his students adapt to the new rules, even taking pleasure in showing how quickly and efficiently they can follow orders.  The next day, Ben tells his students that they are now members of The Wave, a national youth organization with membership cards and a secret salute.

And that is when all Hell breaks loose.  Ben only meant to show his students what it’s like to be a member of a mass movement but the students take The Wave far more seriously than Ben was expecting.  Soon, other students are joining The Wave.  When the popular football players announce that they are a part of The Wave, others are quick to flock to the organization.  The formerly likable David turns into a fanatic about bringing people into the organization.  Robert, a formerly unpopular student, revels in his new job of reporting anyone who deviates from the rules of The Wave.  When a student reporter writes an article that is critical of the organization, she and the school paper are targeted.  Has Ben’s social experiment spiraled out of control?

42 years after it was originally produced, The Wave remains a powerful and sobering look at how people can be manipulated into doing things as a mob that they would never do as an individual.  If anything, the film feels more relevant today than it probably did in 1981.  The character of Robert, in particular, is a familiar one.  He’s someone with no self-esteem who latches onto a movement and finds his identity by taking down others and accusing them of failing to follow the rules.  One can find people like Robert all over social media, searching through old posts for any example of wrongthink that they can broadcast all through their social world.  It’s tempting to smirk at how quickly the members of The Wave sacrificed their freedom and their ability to think for themselves but it’s no different from what we see happening in the real world every day.  (Indeed, if the film had been made just two or three years ago, The Wave would probably be the people policing whether or not the rest of us were observing quarantine and wearing our facemasks correctly.)  People like to feel that they belong to something, even if that means sacrificing their humanity in the process.

Featuring a good performance from Bruce Davison as the well-meaning teacher who is both fascinated and terrified by the experiment that he’s set in motion, The Wave can be viewed below:

Corbin Nash (2018, directed by Ben Jagger)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Corbin Nash (Dean S. Jagger) is a New York cop who has been suspended for shooting a rapist.  While he and his stepfather (Bruce Davison, making a cameo appearance) sit in a bar and talk about how much the world sucks, they are approached by a mysterious man (Rutger Hauer, also making a cameo appearance) who explains that Corbin’s father was not just a minor league baseball player but he was also a demon hunter who was murdered by his enemies in Los Angeles.  Jack confirms that what the stranger says is true.

Corbin does what anyone would do.  He moves to Los Angeles, joins the LAPD, and starts to investigate cases of missing children.  This leads to Corbin being captured and held prisoner by two vampires, a drag queen named Queeny (Corey Feldman, camping it up to a cringe-worthy degree) and Queeny’s lover, Vince (Richard Wagner).  Queeny and Vince force their prisoners to participate in cage matches until finally feeding on them.  Corbin escapes but, as the Blind Prophet (Malcolm McDowell, collecting a paycheck) reveals, Corbin is now a vampire.  Like a less memorable version of Blade, vampire Corbin sets out to battle evil.

The film’s overall tone is grim and serious, which makes Corey Feldman’s mincing performance as Queeny feel all the more out-of-place.  Watching him in films like this, it can be easy to forget that Feldman was actually a fairly good actor before his career went off the rails in the 90s.  As a child, he appeared in some classic films and, as a teenager, he often redeemed otherwise subpar material.  But he never made the transition into adult roles.  Being one of “The Two Coreys” didn’t help and he had the misfortune of struggling with drugs before Robert Downey, Jr. made rehab cool.  Well into his 20s, he was still playing high school students and, even today when he’s in his 50s, Corey Feldman still comes across as being the world’s oldest teenager.  That’s certainly the impression that I got from Corbin Nash, where Feldman seems like a high school theater student who is more interested in showing off than actually acting.

Of course, Feldman’s self-indulgence is still more interesting than the rest of the film, which feels like an origin story for a super hero who never really took off.  There are a few interesting idea to be found in the film but mostly, it just feels like a cut-rate version of Blade and a dozen other recent vampire films.  Corbin Nash never creates an identity of its own.

October True Crime: Dahmer (dir by David Jacobson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2002’s Dahmer opens in a chocolate factory.  As the opening credits role, the camera lingers over the machinery effectively pouring, molding, and wrapping chocolate.  Much like the human body, the machines are set to do everything efficiently and automatically.  The only reason anyone works at the factory is to keep an eye on the machines and to make sure that they don’t break down.

A new worker at the factory is introduced to a veteran of the machines, a friendly guy named Jeffrey (Jeremy Renner, in his first starring role).  Jeffrey shows the new guy how the machines work and he flashes a somewhat friendly smile.  He seems like a nice enough human being.

But, of course, we know different.  We know what the title of this film is and, therefore, we know that the smiling man at the factory is also an infamous serial killer and cannibal named Jeffrey Dahmer.  We know enough to be nervous when, in the very next scene, Dahmer is in a department store and asking a young man (Dion Basco) if he wants to come back to Dahmer’s apartment so that Dahmer can take some pictures of him.  The man agrees and we watch as Dahmer drugs the man and then drills into the man’s head.  When the man, in a dazed state, manages to get out of the apartment, the police respond by returning him to Dahmer.

The film flashes back and fourth, between Dahmer’s life as an alcoholic cannibal in Minneapolis and his adolescence as a gay teenager from a dysfunctional family.  In the past, Dahmer steals a mannequin from a department store, tries to hide his homicidal urges from his confused, if well-meaning, father (Bruce Davison), and picks up the hitchhiker who will become his first victim.  In the present, Dahmer invites a man named Rodney (Artel Great) back to his apartment but, instead of automatically killing him, Dahmer instead talks to him about being alienated and shunned by society, almost as if Dahmer is trying to justify his own abhorrent actions to a future victim.  Rodney proves to be a bit more intuitive than Dahmer realized.

In many ways, the structure is similar to Ryan Murphy’s recently Netflix miniseries about Dahmer.  Many of the same incidents are detailed, including the time that Dahmer’s father demanded to see what Dahmer was hiding in a box.  Of course, Dahmer manages to tell the complete story in under two hours while Murphy, for some reason, dragged things out to ten episodes.  If Murphy’s miniseries sometimes came dangerously close to making excuses for Dahmer’s crime, David Jacobson’s film leaves us with no doubt that Jeffrey Dahmer was a monster.  In the film, Dahmer spends his time with Rodney trying to justify his anger and his murderous impulses, just for Rodney to continually shoot him down.  If Murphy’s miniseries often seemed to be too stylized for its own good, Jacobson’s film is directed in a near-documentary fashion, with the grainy and harsh images creating a pervasive atmosphere of evil.  The film may explain the motives behind Dahmer’s crimes but it never attempts to excuse them.

Of course, today, Dahmer is mostly known for being an early film of Jeremy Renner’s.  This was Renner’s first starring role and he received an Independent Spirit nomination for his performance here.  (As well, Kathryn Bigelow cast Renner in The Hurt Locker on the basis of his performance.)  Renner gives a haunting and frightening peformance, playing Dahmer as someone who suspects that his murderous impulses are wrong but who has given up trying to control them.  As played by Renner, Dahmer is friendly and good-looking enough that one can understand why people were willing to go back to his apartment but, at the same time, there’s always something a bit off about him.  Even when he’s surrounded by people, Renner plays Dahmer as someone who knows that he’s destined to be forever alone.

Dahmer is a haunting portrayal of evil.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Bigfoot (dir by Bruce Davison)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 2012 Asylum production, the legendary Bigfoot is revealed to just be a big gorilla who wants to sleep for the winter.  In fact, Bigfoot seems to have more in common with King Kong than the hairy, humanoid that people have been reporting seeing for over a hundred years.  Unfortunately, all of the hunters and the tourists and the noise from a local music festival keep interrupting Bigfoot’s slumber.  It turns out that Bigfoot is not a morning monster and tends to wake up grumpy.  When Bigfoot is in a bad mood, he turns over RVs, steps on hunters, and tries to destroy Mt. Rushmore.

Concert promoter Harley Henderson (Donny Bonaduce) wants to kill Bigfoot and turn his body into a tourist attraction.  Environmental activist Simon Quinn (Barry Williams) wants to not only protect Bigfoot but to also perform protest-themed folk music.  Harley and Simon were once musical partners, until Simon decided that he would rather protect endangered species and Harley decided to become a businessman.  Now, they hate each other and are constantly on the verge of coming to blows.  Meanwhile, Sheriff Alvarez (Sherilyn Fenn) just wants to keep her town safe from the creature’s rampage.  You read that right.  This film is The Partridge Family vs. The Brady Bunch with Twin Peaks trying to keep the peace.  If you’re wondering how The Asylum convinced Bonaduce, Williams, and Sherilyn Fenn to all appear in a low-budget film about a giant gorilla menacing South Dakota, consider that they also convinced Bruce Davison to appear in it as well.  In fact, Bruce not only stars but he directed the film as well!  I mean, Bonaduce and Williams were probably just happy that someone was calling them and this film was made before Twin Peak: The Return reignited Fenn’s career.  Bruce Davison, however, has an Oscar nomination to his name.  Of course, before one gets too snarky, it’s important to remember that actors have bill to pay, just like the rest of us.  Sometimes, those bills are played by appearing in Shakespeare.  Sometimes, they’re paid by appearing in Bigfoot.

Actually, no one should be ashamed about appearing in Bigfoot.  Like most of the films produced by the Asylum, Bigfoot is actually a lot of fun.  It’s not a film that’s meant to be taken seriously.  Instead, it’s basically a parody of the big-budget giant monster movies that come out of Hollywood, complete with a tacked-on environmental subplot and an endangered national monument.  Bigfoot is in on the joke.  The minute that Barry Williams picks up his guitar and starts to sing an insufferable folk song, it’s obvious that this film is laughing along with us.  Bigfoot was designed to be a silly film and it succeeds.  When taken on its own terms, it’s hard not to enjoy it.

Finally, Alice Cooper appears in this film as himself, performing at Bonaduce’s concert.  After Alice complains about the crowd size and bemoans the indignity of going from being one of the world’s biggest stars to performing at a festival in South Dakota, Bigfoot literally kicks him off the stage.  Much like the film, Alice deserves some credit for be willing to poke fun at himself.

Film Review: The Manor (dir by Axelle Croyon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2021’s The Manor, Barbara Hershey plays Judith Albright.  Once a professional dancer, Judith now works as a dance instructor.  Or, at least, she does until she has a sudden stroke at her 70th birthday party.  Judith survives the stroke but it’s discovered that she has Parkinson’s disease.  Judith decides that it’s time to move into a nursing home.  Her grandson, Josh (Nicholas Alexander), disagrees but the rest of Judith’s family thinks that Judith is making the right decision.

At first, the nursing home seems ideal for Judith.  The nurses seem to be friendly.  The home is actually in a stately old manor and Judith has a nice view of the nearby woods from her room.  It’s true that Judith’s roommate seems to think that there’s something sinister happening but Judith (and everyone else) chalks that up to senility.  Judith moves into the Manor and even befriends some of the other residents, including Roland (Bruce Davison).

However, it’s not long before Judith starts to suspect that something strange is happening at the Manor.  She hears strange noises.  There are mysterious deaths.  It turns out that not all of the nurses are as friendly as the originally seem.  Judith starts to have visions of a strange tree-like creature in her room.  When Judith tries to talk to the nursing home’s staff, they dismiss her concerns and condescendingly tell her that she’s just confused.  Some of them even threaten her to keep her from making too much trouble.  Are they just bad nurses or is there something even worse motivating them?  And can Judith discover the Manor’s secret before she becomes the latest victim?

The Manor was the eighth and the last entry in the Welcome to the Blumhouse horror anthology series.  Each of the films premiered on Prime, with The Manor dropping on October 8th, 2021.  For the most part, the quality of the films featured as a part of Welcome to the Blumhouse were uneven.  However, The Manor actually works fairly well.  What the film lacks in budget, it makes up for in atmosphere.  The nursing home is a truly creepy location and director Axelle Croyon does a good job of creating the feeling that there could be something lurking in every shadow.  The scenes were Judith is woken in the night are well-done and the scenes where Judith is told that she is simply confused because she’s elderly are properly infuriating.  Barbara Hershey is well-cast as Judith, giving a good performance as someone who is at peace with being in her twilight years but who still isn’t quite ready to give up on life.  She is well-matched by Bruce Davison, playing a more ambiguous resident of the nursing home.  The ending of The Manor is also a bit unexpected, with Judith making a choice that’s unexpected but which makes sense if you look back over what we’ve learned about her over the course of the film.

In the end, The Manor feels like a modern version of one of those old episodes of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.  Yes, the film does teach an important lesson about aging and respecting our elders but, even more importantly, it adds a slightly unexpected twist to give the story a properly macabre conclusion.  The Manor is an effective little horror tale and one that gives Barbara Hershey a chance to shine.

Film Review: Short Eyes (dir by Robert M. Young)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, fully intent on just viewing one movie before going to bed, I decided to watch the 1977 film, Short Eyes.

Why I thought that was a good idea, I’m not sure. Even though I didn’t know much about the film, I did know that it was a gritty prison drama that was written by an ex-con, filmed in an actual New York prison, and that a few prisoners appeared in small roles in the film. So, I really can’t claim that I didn’t realize that I was about to watch something that probably wasn’t going to be deal with particularly pleasant subject matter. I think my main reason for watching it, to be honest, was just that it had been sitting there on my Prime watchlist for nearly a year. My main motivation can be summed up as “If not now, when?” Of course, if I had know that “Short Eyes’ was apparently prison slang for someone who is a pedophile, I might have thought twice about watching.

The Short Eyes of the title is Clark Davis (Bruce Davison), a young man from a vaguely wealthy background who is being held on charges of raping a young girl. Clark is one of only three white men being housed in his cell block. As Clark soon discovers, everything in prison is determined by your race and what you’re accused of doing. As a white man, he’s already in the minority and, because he’s a “short eyes,” he soon discovers that not even the other whites are willing to watch his back. The only person who is vaguely sympathetic to Clark is Juan (Jose Perez), a longtime prisoner who is determined to not allow prison to turn him into an animal. Juan tells Clark that he needs to get a transfer to protective custody but it soon becomes apparent that’s not going to happen. The prison guards feel no obligation to protect Clark and Clark himself almost seems to have a death wish.

As Clark explains to Juan, he’s not sure whether he’s guilty or not. He says that he blacks out and sometimes, he’s not sure what he did. Clark thinks he’s innocent but, at the same time, he also confessed to Juan that he has molested other girls. Juan knows that Clark’s a dead man if he doesn’t get out of prison but he also know that, even if Clark is innocent this time, he won’t be in the future. When the other prisoners decide to kill Clark, Juan has to decide whether to let it happen or to risk his safety by trying to stop it.

Short Eyes is one of the most thoroughly unpleasant films that I’ve ever watched but that obviously was the point. This is a film about the reality of prison, that it’s a dirty, brutal, and inhumane place where the weak are targeted and anyone who goes against the system — whether it’s the system enforced by the guards or the even more important system created by the prisoners — will be punished. It’s not at all fun to watch but, if anyone wants to know why incarceration tends to just create hardened criminals as opposed to rehabilitating them, they should find some answers in the film’s portrait of prison life.

The film is based on a play and, in many scenes, it’s a bit too theatrical for its own good. Clark delivers a lengthy monologue about his previous actions and, while it’s well-delivered by Davison, it also goes on and on and you never quite understand why he’s opening up to Juan in the first place. (Juan, himself, angrily responds that he never asked to be Clark’s father confessor.) The scenes of the prisoners just hanging out and talking are also well-acted but again, they tend to drag on for a bit too long. Musicians Curtis Mayfield and Freddy Fender both appear as anonymous prisoners and both sing songs, which brings the film’s already uneven narrative momentum to a complete halt. Just as the inmates will never be able to escape prison, the film never escapes its theatrical origins. While the decision to film Short Eyes in an actual operating prison brings a good deal of authenticity to the production, the production’s staginess ultimately works against it.

At its best, this is a well-acted portrait of people trapped in a man-made Hell. Jose Perez gives an excellent performance and Bruce Davison will make your skin crawl as Clark, a character about whom most viewers will have very mixed feelings. Nathan George and Joseph Carberry are both properly intimidating as the heads of, respectively, the black prisoners and the whites.

This is definitely not a film to watch late at night, unless you’re actively trying to generate nightmares. (Of course, if that’s your goal, have it!) As for me, I stayed up an extra two and a half hours just so I could watch another movie after Short Eyes. As a result, I spent all of Saturday tired but I still think I made the right decision.

Robotic Vengeance: Steel and Lace (1991, directed by Ernest Farino)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On trial for raping concert pianist Gally Morton (Clare Wren), evil businessman Daniel Emerson (Michael Cerveris) gets four of his sleazy buddies to provide a fake alibi for him.  After Emerson is acquitted, Gally goes to the roof of the courthouse and leaps to her death.

Five years later, Daniel and his four friends have made a fortune by illegally foreclosing on people’s houses.  They may think that they’ve gotten away with their crimes but what they don’t know is that Gally’s brother, Albert (Bruce Davison), has been building a robot version of his sister.  Soon, Robot Gally is killing off all of Emerson’s friends while a courtroom sketch artist named Alison (Stacy Haiduk) and a detective named Dunn (David Naughton) attempt to figure out what’s going on.

A mix of The Terminator and I Spit On Your Grave, Steel and Lace is a classic of its kind.  While the deaths are inventive and, considering who Robot Gally is killing, deserved, what really sets the film apart is the strong cast and the inventive direction.  Director Ernest Farino wastes no time getting down to business and he inventively opens the film by cutting back and forth between Emerson assaulting Gally and the jury acquitting him of the crime that we just saw him commit.  Davison is not in the film as much as you might expect but he still makes an impression as the fanatical Albert and Naughton and Haiduk are likable even if their scenes sometimes feel like padding.  Best of all is Clare Wren, an actress who deserved to be a bigger star and who is convincing both as the fragile Gally and as the vengeance-driven robot.  Robot Gally eventually comes to question whether justice is truly be served by all of the killings and Wren sells it.  Also be sure to keep an eye out for David L. Lander, playing the prerequisite eccentric coronor.  (Has there ever been a movie coroner who wasn’t an eccentric?)  Finally, Brian Backer — who will be forever known for playing nice guy Mark Ratner in Fast Times At Ridgemont High — is effectively cast against type as one of Emerson’s stooges.

Steel and Lace is one of the best low-budget films to come out of the early 90s, a deeply satisfying tale of robotics and vengeance.

Film Review: Insidious: The Last Key (dir by Adam Robitel)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Traditionally, good films are not released in January.

With most filmgoers more interested in catching up with the probable Oscar nominees and no one wanting to spend too much money after Christmas, January has become the month when the studios release all of the low-budget films that they’re hoping they can make a few bucks off before everyone forgets about them.  January is the month that sees sequels to the franchises that have a small but loyal fan base.  Just as last January saw the release of a new Underworld and a new Resident Evil, this January sees the release of Insidious: The Last Key.

Though it would subsequently be overshadowed by The Conjuring and its sequel, the Insidious franchise got off to a good start with the first film in the series.  Released in 2010, the first Insidious was a genuinely scary movie, one that can still give your nightmares if you watch it on a stormy night.  There are so many moments from that film that have stuck with me: the dancing ghost, the red demon suddenly appearing over Patrick Wilson’s shoulder, and the franchise’s first trip to the Further.  Of course, the thing that really elevated Insidious was the performance of Lin Shaye, in the role of demonologist Elise Rainier.  Lin Shaye played Elise with a combination of eccentricity and quiet authority and, from the minute she first showed up, you wanted to know more about Elise’s paranormal career.  Elise was the most popular character in the movie, which made it unfortunate that she was dead by the end of it.

Despite Elise’s death, she’s continued to be at the center of the Insidious franchise.  The first sequel dealt with her death by having her appear as a spirit, leading the hero through the Further.  The third film in the franchise was actually a prequel, dealing with one of Elise’s earlier investigations and showing how she first met her two comedy relief assistants, Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Leigh Whannell).  The Last Key is another prequel, revealing the details of Elise’s childhood and following her all the way through 2010.  The Last Key ends with a call back to the first Insidious movie, suggesting that the franchise has now come full circle.

The Last Key is another haunted house movie.  This time, the house in question is the one where Elise and her brother (played, as an adult, by Bruce Davison) grew up with their horribly abusive (and possibly demon-possessed) father.  In 2010, the house has been purchased by Ted (Kirk Acevedo).  No sooner has Ted bought the place then it becomes obvious that it’s haunted.  However, Ted can’t just abandon the place because he’s sunk all of his money into this house, which he was hoping to be able to then sell to someone else.  Apparently, you can’t get much money for a haunted house.

(Well, whatever.  I’d pay good money to buy a haunted house and then I would open it to the paying public every October.  I would make a fortune, assuming everyone didn’t get killed.)

Anyway, it all pretty much leads to everything you would expect to happen in an Insidious movie.  Doors open and close.  Malevolent beings appear in the shadows.  Everyone goes to the Further.  Lin Shaye gives another entertaining and fully committed performance, obviously enjoying the chance to be the star of the film.  Nothing about the film is particularly surprising but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t often effective.  Watching this film is a lot like listening to a skilled storyteller tell the story about the girl, her boyfriend, and the escaped mental patient who has a hook for a hand.  You know exactly what’s going to happen.  You know that it none of it really happened.  You know the story is borderline ludicrous.  But you still find yourself jumping at every unexpected sound.  You still find yourself staring into the shadows, wondering if you really saw something moving or if it was just your imagination.

Needless to say, The Last Key is never as effective or as scary as the first Insidious or either of The Conjuring films.  There were a few moments — mostly dealing with Elise’s childhood — where The Last Key showed the potential to be something a little deeper than what I was expecting but those moments were rarely followed up on.  In the end The Last Key is a rather modest and workmanlike horror film, the type that makes you jump while you’re watching it but which you will also probably end up forgetting about a day or two after seeing it. However, for a January horror film, it’s good enough.