The first thing I noticed when I watched this film was – Wow, this subway is nice! It turns out the film is from seven years ago; so, maybe it’s terrible now. I don’t know. The train could be riddled with plague and people running for office. For this moment in history, the subway was clean, people were bantering, and a man was on the phone; then, everyone disappeared.
We see the film through the eyes of a woman who quietly sits and observes her surroundings. She watches the other passengers until she dozes off. When she wakes up, everyone is gone – except for a psychopath.
The film disturbed me because it really made me wish everyone in England carried guns. She was completely alone, stalked, and her government made her completely vulnerable.
In 2002’s The Mothman Prophecies, Richard Gere stars as John Klein, a columnist with the Washington Post. (The film takes place in the 1960s, presumably before the CIA placed Bob Woodward on staff… allegedly.) One night, while driving a car with his wife, Mary (Debra Messing), in the passenger seat, John swerves to avoid crashing into what appears to be a man with wings and glowing red eyes. Mary smashes her head against the car’s window. At the hospital, it’s discovered that she has a brain tumor. Mary dies a few months later, having spent her final days obsessively drawing pictures of the “Mothman.”
Two years later, a still-in-mourning John is assigned to cover a story in Richmond, Virginia. However, he somehow finds himself in a small town in West Virginia. When his car breaks down at two in the morning, John seeks help at an isolated farmhouse and is greeted by an angry farmer named Gordon (Will Patton) who claims that John has knocked on his door at the same time for three nights straight. The local sheriff, Connie (Laura Linney), shows up and calms things down. When Connie tells John that the locals are spooked by reports of a mysterious flying creature with glowing red eyes, John decides to stay in West Virginia and investigate the story. Gordon, it turns out, claims that he’s being stalked by a figure named Indrid Cold who sends him messages that predict future disasters. Soon, John himself is getting phone calls from Mr. Cold.
The Mothman Prophecies is a surprisingly effective horror film. At first, Richard Gere seems to be miscast as the lead of a horror film. The best horror actors have traditionally been touched by a breath of wind from the wings of madness. They carry a hint of instability, all the better to keep you guessing as to whether or not the horror is real or just a product of their imagination. Gere, on the other hand, is an actor who comes across as if he’s never had a moment of doubt or insecurity. His best roles—Days of Heaven, American Gigolo, Internal Affairs, Chicago—featured him playing charismatic but ultimately empty narcissists. The Mothman Prophecies actually puts Gere’s inherent blandness to good use. Gere comes across as being so rationally minded that it actually does make the scenes where he talks to Indrid Cold all the more creepy. A man who works for one of the nation’s most important newspapers comes across a story that cannot be solved through old-fashioned reporting. The supporting cast does a good job as well. That Will Patton is compelling as the paranoid farmer should not be a surprise to anyone who has seen Patton’s work. But Laura Linney, who is usually a bit too studied in her performances, is surprisingly natural and convincing as the sheriff. There are hints of a romantic attraction between Connie and John, but the film is smart enough not to make them the center of the story. The story is about the Mothman and Indrid Cold.
Director Mark Pellington is smart enough to keep Cold and the Mothman off-screen for the most part. The scenes where Cold calls John are frightening specifically because John can’t see Cold but Cold can obviously see him. The Mothman is frightening because the film never explains what the Mothman is or whether it even exists. (Much like the Boggy Creek Monster, both the Mothman and Indrid Cold were a part of the local folklore long before a movie was made about them.) Pellington takes his time telling the story and focuses more on atmosphere than jump scares. At its best, the film plays out like a deliberately paced nightmare, an examination of what might be out there. It’s a film that makes even the most rational of us wonder what might be out there.
Today, we have In Search of Bigfoot, a 1976 documentary about the search for everyone’s favorite backwoods inhabitant. Will our hunters be able to find Bigfoot before the camera runs out of film? Will we hear stories about playing catch with Sasquatch? Watch to find out!
(Personally, I always love these pseudo-scientific documentaries. After the success of The Legend of Boggy Creek, they were apparently all the rage for a little while. Can you prove it didn’t happen?)
As I’ve stated many times on this site, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is one of my favorite horror films and it’s also one of the few horror films that can still scare me even after I’ve seen it hundreds of time. Those two little “Come and play with us” girls still freak me out and I still think about the blood pouring out of that elevator at least one week out of the month.
That said, one of my favorite scenes from The Shining comes early on in the film. It’s the scene where Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson, of course) is driving his family to the Overlook Hotel for the first time. He’s already visited for his job interview but this is the first time that his family is going to see their new home. And, as you can tell in this scene, he already appears to be kind of sick of them.
Seriously, when someone is driving and has that expression on his face, don’t ask him about the Donner Party.
What I love about this scene is Nicholson’s obvious exasperation. You can just tell that he’s thinking, “I’m going to be stuck in a hotel with these two for months.” I especially love the way that he delivers the line about Danny learning about cannibalism from the television. (Of course, I think one reason why Jack is upset is because Wendy’s the one who brought up the Donner Party, in the first place. If you don’t want your child to know about cannibalism, don’t randomly start talking about a famous example of it. That’s parenting 101, I’d think.)
Seriously, if I was a passenger in that car, that is exactly when I would say, “Pull over and let me out. This is not going to end well.”
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
4 Shots From 4 Horror Films
The Shining (1980, dirby Stanley Kubrick, DP: John Alcott)
Swamp Thing (dir by Wes Craven, DP: Robbie Greenberg)
Scalps (1983, dir by Fred Olen Ray, DP: Larry Van Loon and Cynthia Webster)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984, dir by Joseph Zito, DP: João Fernandes)
Shot straight-on-video, 2013’s My Refuge is a film about the end of the world.
Maybe.
It’s actually somewhat difficult to explain what’s going on in My Refuge. It’s an ensemble film, one that is apparently taking place in a small city in Arizona. (That’s according to the plot summary on Tubi. The film itself doesn’t give us as specific location, though it certainly looks like it’s taking place in the arid Southwest.) It’s an ensemble film, one that has a dizzying amount of characters. The majority of the character never meet each other and quite a few are never even named. After reports come in that New York City (which is pretty far away from Arizona) has been hit with a nuclear bomb, the characters all deal with the impending end of the world in their own way.
One woman quit her retail job and makes plan to finally finish that novel that she started years ago.
One teenage girl overdoses and is rushed to the hospital, where her family watches and prays.
A woman obsessively cleans her house and accuses her husband of having an affair. Her husband says that he was tempted but he never actually went through with it but, eventually, he decides that being tempted is just as bad.
A criminal seeks revenge on the cop who shot his best friend.
A married couple look forward to the birth of their first child.
A preacher preaches.
The news reports that more bombs are on the way.
People pray in the street and prepare for the unknowable future.
The film’s message is clear. Even with the world descending into chaos and the end apparently right around the corner, the people in this film find peace and hope through their belief in God. He is their refuge in terrible times. The film itself is not as preachy as I probably just made it sound and it deserves some credit for acknowledging that all of the characters have a good reason to be worried about the future. I mean, nuclear war is a big deal, regardless of what you may believe about the afterlife.
The narrative is difficult to follow. This is a low-budget,straight-to-video film and it’s pretty clear that the majority of the performers were not professionals. There’s a lot of awkward line readings and moments that don’t quite make sense. Everyone tends to blend together. Normally, I would say that would be a problem for an ensemble film but, oddly enough, it kind of works here. In the end, everyone is in the same boat. All of their individual drams are going to reach the same conclusion, regardless of how they may feel about it.
The film is only 79 minutes long but, as is so often the case with earnest , shot-on-video productions, the pace is slow and things aren’t helped by a muddy soundtrack that sometimes makes it a struggle to understand what the characters are saying. Amateur filmmakers often tend to overlook the importance of clean and understandable sound.
My Refuge is flawed but sincere. At its best, it captures the shock and fear that would surround any major calamity. It’s a confusing film but, for many people, these are confusing times.
BLACKTOP opens on stand-up comic David (Lochlyn Munro) in the middle of his act at an out of the way truckers bar. His girlfriend Sylvia (Kristin Davis) is at the show, and she doesn’t look very happy. After the show, we find out that David & Sylvia’s relationship is not in a good place at all. She wants to settle down and get married, and he wants to keep performing his shows even though his career is going nowhere. When he tells her he’s agreed to perform three more nights the next weekend at that same place, she blows a gasket and wants to get out of there. Conveniently, a nice trucker named Jack (Meat Loaf), who she had only just met a little earlier, is there handy, and she asks him for a ride out of town in his truck, Goliath. He happily agrees, almost too happily, because it turns out he just might be a serial killer. Sensing something’s off and wanting to get his girlfriend back, David takes off after them, hoping to find them before she becomes the next victim.
That’s the basis for this “mad trucker” thriller that premiered on HBO back in October of 2000. If the story sounds ludicrous to you, just know that it is. It takes a completely stupid decision to kick off the events of the story. Seriously Sylvia, David may be a bit of a loser, but do you have to abandon him and ride off into the night with a trucker you don’t know, who looks like Meat Loaf, just to make a point?!! Don’t you think you may be overreacting?!! Some might say that I’m making too big of a deal about this, that it’s just a plot device to set the story of “terror in a big rig” in motion. You are correct in some ways, but her moronic decision stuck with me through the rest of the movie. Later, when she was supposed to be tough, smart and resourceful, I kept thinking about her dumb decision that put her in this predicament, and how many people had already been killed or seriously maimed because of it.
The story also includes these silly little details like Jack leaving clues for David along the way so that he can have a chance to find them. Somehow Jack can perfectly predict David’s exact route and speed so he can place all these notes at the perfect places on the road, with some of them pretty complicated. And he does this without Sylvia even noticing. Sylvia isn’t exactly the most observant person around. Nothing proves this any more than a scene where Jack has Sylvia sit close to him so he can show her how to drive the big rig. While he’s giving her tips, David is trying to drive up and save her. The mad trucker does all this swerving and slamming on breaks and sliding and plays it all off like he’s just showing her some easy and safe driving moves. Sylvia never realizes David is anywhere near them, and since Jack hasn’t gone full psycho yet, she doesn’t seem to care. Maybe I’m just not that big of a fan of Kristin Davis, either. I never really liked her on SEX AND THE CITY, and I don’t like her that much in this either, even though I did kind of like the scenes where she took off her shirt and wandered around in her bra.
Not to sound like this is pick on Kristin Davis day, because I didn’t care for Lochlyn Munro as David either. He was supposed to be this stand-up comic, but he wasn’t funny at all. I mean some people were laughing because the script said so, but he’s lucky tomatoes weren’t being thrown at him. I found everything bland and boring about him, even though he drove a Red 1959 Edsel. That was actually kind of funny, as he kept taking on the big rig with it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Edsel / Peterbilt duel in a movie before, but it happens here several times.
By far the best part of BLACKTOP for me was watching Meat Loaf as Trucker Jack. Loaf had played a villainous trucker in BLACK DOG with Patrick Swayze a couple of years earlier, so the filmmakers must have reasoned that the public wanted more. I’ll admit that his character in this does seem awfully nice at first, and the people around seem to think he’s a pretty good guy too. But he also has this look in his eyes, and when he stops turning on the charm, he’s ready to kill. He’s a kind and empathetic ear to Kristin’s character one moment, and then he’s cutting off someone’s ear with his big knife the next. He’s fixing a nice meal for Kristin one moment, and then he’s shooting at David right in front of her with his high-powered rifle the next. Once she sees that side of him, she starts trying to fight back, and that’s when he gets to go over the top. When he gets to be crazy Trucker Jack, the kind of guy who hangs sides of beef along with murdered victims in the freezer in his truck; those were my favorite parts of the movie.
I know my review sounds very critical in places, and I don’t want to come off too hard on the film. If you’re looking for some solid big rig stunt driving work, and a very simple story featuring a psychopathic truck driver, you could have some fun with this one. Meat Loaf has some fun in his role, so if you’re a fan you should enjoy his work. Just keep your expectations low and don’t ever think that any of the characters are about to make some smart decisions. That seems to be the recipe for enjoying this trip down the BLACKTOP!
Today’s Horror on the Lens come to us for director Larry Buchanan.
Larry Buchanan was not only born in Texas but he made most of his films here too. In 1964’s The Naked Witch, a college student is doing a research project on the German-speaking villages in Central Texas. It’s while visiting one such village that this idiot accidentally brings an ancient witch back to life. In many ways, this is a typical Buchanan film. The budget is low and the plot is sometimes incoherent. But the film is also fairly atmospheric. In my case, it helps that I’ve actually spent time in Central Texas and I know how creepy things can sometimes get out there.
The youtuber didn’t have a title card; so, I made a scary ghost. I hope that it didn’t scare you too much! This is a parody of “It Follows”, the horror movie based on an STD that follows the next person and kills them. I always liked “It Follows” because if you were a child of the 90s, AIDS always the big warning that if you had sex, you would die. I would always ask; “why can’t I just use a condom?” and the response was always the same- “You’d risk your life for sex?” and me being me, I would respond with – “I thought that I already established that?” and they would pearl clutch.
In this short, the protagonist is a virgin who no one wants; so, he befriends the “It Follows” puritanical evil spirit and does ride-alongs with it as it explodes its victims. I thought it was fairly funny. There were some actual stars in the films and it appeared to have an actual budget, which gave me some nepobaby vibes. The films were ok, but I couldn’t understand how the budget would be this big, but then I saw that the channel has 1 million subscribers and 1 million views even for this short; so, I guess people have low standards.
I mean, it’s not horrible- just aggressively mediocre. If you’re a wonder bread as a burger bun kind of guy, this is for you.
Hi, everyone! Tonight, on twitter, I will be hosting one of my favorite films for #MondayMania! Join us for 2021’s Cheer For Your Life!
You can find the movie on Prime and then you can join us on twitter at 9 pm central time! (That’s 10 pm for you folks on the East Coast.) See you then!
