Tag Archives: Film

Documentary Review: Ordinary Men (dir by Manfred Oldenburg and Oliver Halmburger)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1942, Hamburg’s Reserve Police Battalion 101 was sent to Poland.  This was not the first time that the battalion was sent to Poland and it would not be the last.  Under the command of Col. Wilhelm Trapp, Reserve Police Battalion 101 was made up of 500 men who were in their 30s and were considered to be too old to serve in the regular army.  Though they were officially assigned to the patrol the streets and keep order in the territories that had recently surrendered to Nazi Germany, their actual assignment was to round up Polish Jews and either send them to the concentration camps or to personally execute them via firing squad.

After the war ended and many (but not all) of the leaders and members of the battalion were put on trial for war crimes, it was noted that the majority of the men in the battalion were well-educated.  Before they had joined the battalion, many of them worked in office jobs and few of them had publicly expressed any anti-Semitic opinions.  Quite a few members of the battalion had families at home.  One of officers actually got married shortly before being sent back to Poland and he even brought his wife along with him so that they could have a working honeymoon.  Only a few members of the battalion were members of the Nazi Party and many had joined simply because being a part of the police meant that they wouldn’t have to go to the front lines.

Perhaps the most shocking thing that was discovered was that, before the first massacre was carried out by the battalion, Wilhelm Trapp called the men together and informed them of what their orders were.  Reportedly, he had tears streaming down his face as he told the men what they had been told to do.  He announced that any man who did not want to take part in the mass killing would not be force to nor would he be punished for refusing to do so.  Essentially, Trapp told the men that they could disobey the orders if they chose to do so and that the men who did follow the orders would essentially be volunteering to do so.  One man stepped to the side and, when another officer started to yell at him, Trapp ordered the officer to stop.  Eventually, 12 of the 500 members of the battalion would decline to take part.  The rest of the battalion, including Trapp, followed orders and gunned down 1,500 Jews from the Józefów ghetto.  The men who refused to take part were not punished, beyond the casual insults of the other members of the battalion.  That these men were allowed to continue to serve without being executed, demoted, or otherwise penalized exposed as a lie one of the major defenses offered up by Nazi war criminals, that they had no choice but to follow orders.  In the end, Reserve Police Battalion 101 is estimated to have been responsible for the death of 83,000 Jews.

Wilhelm Trapp and his superior, Otto Ohlendorf, were executed after the trial.  Trapp expressed remorse even during the war but he never refused to carry out his orders.  Ohlendorf never expressed a moment of sadness, saying that he had done everything for Germany.  Many of the other members of the battalion returned to their “normal” lives after the war, returning to the office or continuing to work as cops.  In 1964, several of them were put on trial for war crimes but only 5 were convicted and the longest sentence handed out was for eight years..

The German documentary, Ordinary Men, presents a sobering look at the men and the crimes of Reserve Police Battalion 101.  It asks a question for which there is no easy answer.  If 12 members of the battalion were willing to refuse to take part in the massacres, why couldn’t the rest of them?  The members of the battalion who took part in the firing squads reported suffering from nightmares and depression afterward, leading to the officers holding frequent parties in an attempt to keep everyone’s spirts up.  But if the killings were so traumatic to the men, why did they continue to participate in them even though they had the option to opt out?  Was it peer pressure?  Was it a misplaced sense of nationalism?  Was it a fanatical hatred of the Jews?  Or were some of the men just sociopaths looking for an excuse to kill?  Ordinary Men suggests that all of these things were factors, just as it also suggests that, for many of the men, the massacres just became a part of the job.  The documentary suggests that the battalion split into three groups.  There was the group that loved their work.  There was the group who followed orders but tried not to think about what they had done afterwards.  And then there were those who opted out and who, at worst, were given latrine duty as a result.  And yet even those who opted out did not chose to desert the battalion nor did they reportedly try to save anyone from being executed.  They refused to take part but they also didn’t do anything to stop it.

Narrated by Brian Cox and featuring interviews with historians and actual historical footage of the members of the battalion, Ordinary Men is a look at the nature of evil and also an important documentation of what human beings are capable of doing to each other.  It’s certainly more than relevant today.

Film Review: The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (dir by William Friedkin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is a film that I wanted to like more than I actually did.

The movie, which is based on a play by Herman Wouk (which was itself based on a novel by Wouk that was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film in 1954), takes place in a Naval courtroom.  Lt. Steven Maryk (Jake Lacey) is on trial, accused of mutiny against his commanding officer.  Maryk claims that, when the ship sailed into a storm, his commanding officer, Philip Francis Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland), was giving orderss that put the entire ship at risk.  With the support of the officers, Maryk relieved Queeg of command.  Maryk claims that he did so with the knowledge that it would lead to him being court-martialed.

Maryk is assigned Lt. Greenwald (Jason Clarke) as his defense counsel.  Greenwald is not happy with his assignment because he think that Maryk is guilty and he believes in the chain of command.  When Maryk and his fellow officers claim that Queeg was showing signs of mental instability, Greenwald wonders how they came to that conclusion.  Whereas Maryk and his fellow officers, including Keith (Tom Riley) and Keefer (Lewis Pullman), claim that Queeg was dangerously unstable, Greenwald sees an insecure commander who was abandoned by his men.  Greenwald comes to realize that keeping Maryk out of the brig will mean destroying Queeg on the stand.

As I said, I wanted to like this film more than I actually did.  The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial was the final film to be directed by William Friedkin.  Friedkin started his career by directing adaptations of plays like The Birthday Party and The Boys In The Band, so another theatrical adaptation does feel like an appropriate bookend for a legendary career.  Friedkin’s best films featured troubled and somewhat obsessive individuals, people who are almost addicted to taking risks.  That’s certainly an accurate description of several of the characters in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, from Queeg to Keefer to even Greenwald himself.  After Friedkin passed away in August, I found myself really hoping that The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial would be one final brilliant Friedkin film.

There’s a lot of good things to be said about The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, including the fact that Jason Clarke is well-cast as Lt. Greenwald.  But, in the end, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is essentially a filmed play and, despite a camera that moves frequently, it all feels rather stagey and, at a time, a bit too theatrical.  As good as Clarke is, some other members of the cast can’t break free of the film’s staginess and their performances often feel disappointingly superficial.  This is especially true of Monica Raymund as the prosecutor and, surprisingly, Kiefer Sutherland as Queeg.  Sutherland, who, when he was younger, would have been the ideal pick for the role of Lt. Keefer, gives an overly mannered performance as Queeg, one that is all tics and nerves but with little of the vulnerability that Humphrey Bogart brought to the role in the 1954 film.

Friedkin’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial takes place in 2022, as opposed to the World War II setting of Wouk’s original novel.  This does lead to an interesting subtext, as Friedkin’s version of the story is set during a time when many people are no longer confident in America’s military leadership.  (Wouk’s novel and play came out while America was still feeling confident after the victory of the Allies in World War II.)  Friedkin takes a direct approach to the material, allowing the audience to decide for themselves whether Maryk did the right thing.

It’s a solid enough film but one that never quite escapes its stage origins.  Friedkin’s respect for the material comes through, even if the film isn’t totally successful.

October Positivity: 2025 — The World Enslaved By A Virus (dir by Joshua Wesley and Simon Wesley)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2021 film, 2025 — The World Enslaved By A Virus, opens with a series of title cards.

We learn that the Coronavirus has raged out of control.

We learn that fear of the virus led to the creation of a one world government.

We learn that “communism is everywhere.”

We also learn that English is now the official language of the world.  (Yay!  Take that, French!)

Finally, we learn that Christianity has been outlawed.

It’s a scary world, one in which everyone is enslaved by the fear of the virus.  It’s a world where free thought is no longer allowed.  It’s a world where everyone is expected to pledge allegiance to the “new Constitution.”  It’s a world where former friends rat each other out to the authorities and privacy is a thing of the past.

As you can probably guess from screenshot above, 2025 is not a particularly expensive-looking film.  This is the end of the world on a budget and one gets the feeling that the majority of that budget went to filming a fairly decent shoot out and car chase that occurs towards the end of the film.  As a result, this is one of those films where our characters spend a lot of time sitting in their apartment and talking about what’s going on in the world and how they feel about it.  We hear about what happens but we rarely get to see it.  Watching the film, one gets the feeling that many of the conversations were improvised, which means that there’s a lot of awkward pauses and meandering sentences.  On the one hand, that doesn’t make for a particularly compelling narrative.  On the other hand, it does capture the feelings of isolation and ennui that haunted many people during the Coronavirus lockdowns.

The film follows a group of Christians as they try to fight back against the one world government.  It starts with them spray painting Jesus fish onto walls and sidewalks.  (One of the sidewalks that they use as a canvas is covered by leaves so you can’t help but feel that one strong gust wind is going to totally destroy all of their work.)  Eventually, a hacker shows up at their apartment and helps them get their message out.  Christians start to meet in secret and our main character (played by one of the film’s two directors, Joshua Wesley) gives a variation of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart speech.

While the Christians are doing that, the government is plotting how to get more people to swear allegiance to the “New Constitution.”  Again, since this is the end of the world on a budget, the government is represented by one small office and a handful men wearing tactical vests.  They’re not extremely intimidating but, just as with the film’s sense of isolation, their incompetence tends to mirror the incompetence of the actual authorities during the lockdowns.

Eventually, even the Christians’s wussy neighbor is showing up at their door and telling them that they need to stop what they’re doing before they make everyone’s life difficult.  They need to accept the new world order.

2025 is indeed a bad movie.  The pace is slow.  The acting is terrible.  The dialogue is risible.  The film has been developing a reputation for being one of the worst ever made and there’s certainly a case to be made.  That said, much like Plan 9 From Outer Space, 2025 has worth as a historical document.  Setting aside the religious aspect of 2025,the film does definitely capture the paranoia that people were feeling during the lockdowns.  Some people were paranoid about the virus and other were paranoid about the government but the important thing is that, in the end, everyone was paranoid.  With all the gaslighting that’s going on from people who desperately want us to believe that the lockdowns actually weren’t as big or traumatic a thing as we all know they were, a film like 2025 serves as a useful historical document.  It’s a recording of the way many people felt about the world just two years ago.

Of course, that doesn’t actually make it a good film.  You can’t have everything.

Horror Film Review: Magic (dir by Richard Attenborough)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There have been many disturbing ventriloquist’s dummies over the years but I don’t know if there’s ever been one who is quite as hateful as Fats, the dummy that is used by Corky Withers (Anthony Hopkins).

Corky and Fats are at the center of the 1978 film, Magic.  When we first meet Corky, he’s an aspiring magician without a dummy.  He’s a talented magician and it’s obvious that performing is one of the only things that brings Corky happiness.  But, from the start, there’s something off about Corky.  There’s a desperation to him and his performance.  He craves the applause of the audience just a bit too much, as if he doesn’t know who he is unless people are clapping for him.  (This performance, from a youngish Anthony Hopkins, is quite a contrast to the characters that Hopkins is today known for playing.)  Corky is told that he needs to get a “gimmick” if he’s ever going to be a success and that gimmick turns out to be Fats, a ventriloquist dummy who is as confident as Corky is insecure.  Whereas Corky often seems to be struggling to find the right thing to say, Fats always has the perfect comeback ready.

Of course, Fats is Corky.  Fats is the self-absorbed and cocky “person” that Corky wishes he could be.  When Fats tells Corky that he’s a useless loser, it’s actually Corky saying that to himself.  When Corky argues with Fats, he’s arguing with himself.  With Fats, Corky has found a way to express himself but he’s also sacrificed half of his identity as a result.  Can Corky survive without Fats?  He’s not sure but he does know that Fats is a hit with audiences.

When Corky’s agent (Burgess Meredith) announces that he has gotten Corky a network television special, Corky panics.  Corky doesn’t want to take the medical or mental exams that the network would probably require before giving him a contract.  He flees to the Catskills, where he grew up.  (Corky’s obsession with performing makes sense when one realizes that he grew up in the Catskills, a region that played home to many aspiring comedians.)

Corky visits Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margaret), with whom Corky went to high school and who he had a huge crush on.  (Imagining Anthony Hopkins in high school — especially an American high school — is not particularly easy.)  Peggy is unhappily married to Duke (Ed Lauter) and she soon finds herself falling in love with Corky.  Corky appears to finally have a chance for happiness but Fats has other plans.  Murder follows and it says something about how well this film is done that we think of Fats as being the mastermind behind the murders even though we know that Fats is really just Corky talking to himself.

Magic is the definitive evil ventriloquist’s dummy film, one that is beautifully shot by Richard Attenborough and which features a great performance from Anthony Hopkins.  It’s a sign of the strength of his performance that we still feel sorry for Corky, even though he ends up killing one of the most likable characters in the film.  Of course, it’s a dual performance for Hopkins because he’s playing both Corky and Fats.  He is excellent and frightening in both roles.

Horror Film Review: Look Away (dir by Assaf Bernstein)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Maria (India Eisley)!

Maria is a 17 year-old high school student in Canada.  She goes to a school where everyone wears a uniform, everyone plays hockey, and everyone is looking forward to a prom that is going to be held on an ice skating rink!  (Personal injury attorneys love this school!)  Everyone is obsessed with living on the ice but Maria can’t even skate.  Popular hockey player Mark (John C. MacDonald) taunts Maria for not being able to maintain her balance.  Her best friend, Lily (Penelope Mitchell) offers to teach Maria how to skate but Lily turns out to be a cruel and taunting teacher, probably because she knows that Maria has a crush on her boyfriend, Sean (Harrison Gilbertson).

Maria’s life at home isn’t any better.  Her mother, Amy (Mira Sorvino), is suffering from crippling depression and often can’t even be bothered to get out of bed or off the couch.  Her father, Dan (Jason Isaacs), is a plastic surgeon who is obsessed with the idea that he can fix any flaw through surgery.  He’s the type who cruelly critiques his daughter’s looks, despite the fact that Maria is actually a very pretty girl whenever she can find the courage to actually look up from the floor.  Dan is also cheating on his wife.  Perhaps the only good thing that Dan does is that he encourages Maria to stay home from school, though his reasoning is that she doesn’t look good on that particular day and she needs to get her “beauty sleep.”

Seriously, watching this movie, your heart truly breaks for Maria.  It’s as if the whole world has been against her since the day she was born.  Everyone gives Maria a hard time for not having more confidence but how can someone be confident when all they hear is about how much of a disappointment they are?  Maria’s only friend is her reflection in the mirror.

At first, Maria freaks out when her reflection starts talking back to her.  Airam, as Maria’s reflection calls herself, may look like Maria but she initially seems to have a totally different personality.  Airam is confident in both her appearance and her sexuality.  Airam is willing to strike back at the people that have hurt her.  Airam is confident where Maria is insecure.  When Maria talks to Airam, she ends up laughing so loudly that Amy actually comes into the bathroom and asks if Maria is smoking weed.  After Maria is cruelly humiliated at prom, Maria agrees to switch places with Airam by kissing the mirror.  Suddenly, Maria is the one in the mirror and Airam is the one who is in the real world, looking for revenge against everyone who has hurt Maria.

Or is she?  Watching the film, I found myself wondering if Maria was just imagining talking to her reflection and perhaps “the switch” was all in Maria’s mind.  Perhaps Airam isn’t some malevolent force that’s brought into the world as much as she’s just Maria having been pushed too far by the cruel taunts of her classmates and her father’s refusal to show her the consideration that he shows to his mistress.  Airam is soon doing everything that Maria wishes she could do but when people start dying, Maria begs Airam to stop.  Is Maria really trapped in the mirror and begging Airam to stop or is she just imagining a conversation with her own conscience?  India Eisley’s performance keeps you guessing.

This is an intriguing film, even if is sometimes a bit too ambiguous for its own good.  (The final shot is artfully done but it still made me want to throw something at the TV.)  The film’s greatest asset is India Eisley, who is convincing whether she’s the mousy Maria or the bold Airam.  Jason Isaacs, as well, gives a strong performance, turning his plastic surgeon into one of the all-time bad fathers.  Watching Isaacs’s performance as Dan, it’s hard not to understand why Dan’s daughter would want to hide in a mirror.

October True Crime: Zodiac (dir by David Fincher)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who was the Zodiac Killer?

That is a question that has haunted journalists, cops, and true crime fans since the late 60s.  It is known that the Zodiac Killer murdered at least five people in Northern California in 1968 and 1969.  He targeted young couples, though he is also thought to have murdered on taxi driver as well.  What set Zodiac apart from other killers is that he was a prolific letter writer, who sent cards and ciphers to the police and the journalists who were reporting on his crimes.  In one of his ciphers, Zodiac claimed that he had killed 37 people.  Cartoonist Robert Graysmith later wrote two books about his personal obsession with the case.  He estimated that the Zodiac may have been responsible for hundred of murders, up through the 80s.  Of course, reading Graysmith’s first Zodiac book, it’s also easy to suspect that Graysmith reached a point where he saw the Zodiac’s hand in every unsolved murder in the San Francisco area.  Of all the unidentified serial killers in American history, Zodiac is one that most haunts us.  Zodiac was a serial killer who operated in an era when such things were still considered to be uncommon.  Much as Jack the Ripper did during the Victorian Age, Zodiac announced the arrival of a new age of evil.

Zodiac wrote about being a film fan and he was probably happy about the fact that he inspired quite a few films.  1971’s The Zodiac Killer came out while Zodiac was still sending letters to the police and cops actually staked out the theaters showing the film just to see if he  would show up.  Dirty Harry‘s Scorpio Killer was also based on Zodiac, right down to the taunting letters that he sent the mayor and again, one has to wonder if Zodiac ever showed up to watch Clint Eastwood take him down.

And, if Zodiac survived into the 21st Century, one has to wonder if he showed up in the theaters for 2007’s Zodiac.

One of the best true crime films ever made, Zodiac not only recreates the crimes of the Zodiac but it also examines the mental price of obsessing over the one unknown force of evil.  Mark Ruffalo plays Dave Toschi, the celebrity cop who nearly sacrificed his professional reputation in his search for the identity of the killer.  Jake Gyllenhaal plays cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who spends over a decade searching for the Zodiac’s identity and who loses his wife (Chloe Sevigny) in the process.  And Robert Downey, Jr. plays Paul Avery, the crime reporter to whom the Zodiac wrote and who sunk into paranoia and addiction as a result.  This is a film that is less about the Zodiac’s crime and more about how this unknown killer seemed to unleash a darkness that would come to envelope first a city and eventually an entire nation.

As one might expect from a film directed by David Fincher, Zodiac plays out like a filmed nightmare with the starkly portrayed murders being all the more disturbing because they often take place outside, where people would think they would be safe.  (The second murder is especially terrifying, as it plays out without even the sound of background music to allow us the escape of remembering that it’s only a movie.)  Fincher heightens our paranoia but having a different actor play the killer in each scene, reminding us that the Zodiac could literally be anyone.  Indeed, one of the scarier things about Zodiac is that, in the course of his investigation, Graysmith meets so many different people who seem like they could be the killer.  Even if they aren’t the Zodiac, the viewer is left with the feeling that the world is full of people who are capable of committing the same crimes.  The film becomes a journey into the heart of darkness, with the Zodiac becoming both a malevolent force and potentially your next door neighbor.  And with the film’s detailed recreation of the 60s and the 70s, the film becomes a portrait of a country on the verge of changing forever with the Zodaic and his crimes representing all the fear waiting in the future.

Again, as one might expect from a Fincher film, it’s a well-acted film, especially by Robert Downey, Jr.  Zodiac came out a year before Iron Man, when Downey was still better known for his personal troubles than for his talent.  Downey perfect captures his character’s descent into self-destruction, as he goes from being cocky and self-assured to being so paranoid that he’s carrying a gun.  (Paul Avery’s actual colleagues have disputed the film’s portrayal of Avery being mentally destroyed by the Zodiac.)  Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal also do a good job of portraying Toschi and Graysmith’s growing obsession with the case while Charles Fleischer and John Carroll Lynch both make strong (and creepy) impressions as two men who might (or might not) be the killer.

Though the film was not a success at the box office and it was totally ignored by the Academy, Zodiac has built up a strong reputation in the years since its released.  It’s inspired a whole new generation of web sleuths to search for the killer’s identity.  Personally, my favored suspect is Robert Ivan Nichols, an enigmatic engineer who abandoned his former life and changed his name to Joseph Newton Chandler III in the 70s and who committed suicide in 2002.  I think much like Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac’s identity will never be definitely known.  There have been many compelling suspects but most of the evidence seems to be circumstantial.  (That’s certainly the case when it comes to Nichols.)  The Zodiac was thought to be in his 30s or even his early 40s in 1969 so it’s doubtful that he’s still alive today.  In all probability, his identity and his motive will forever remain an unsolvable mystery.

Horror Film Review: The Wave (dir by Dennis Gansel)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Thank you shout-out to my friend Mark for recommending this film!)

The 2008 German film, The Wave, opens with history teacher and water polo coach Rainer Wenger (Jurgen Vogel), driving to class while listening to the Ramones’s Rock and Roll High School.  

Rainer may be a middle-aged authority figure who expects his water polo players to train hard and to always put winning above everything but he still considers himself to be a punk rock rebel, an anarchist who brags about all of the protests that he was involved with.  Rainer is upset when he learns that he has been assigned to teach a week-long course on “autocracy.”  He very much wanted to teach a class on “anarchy” but that class has been assigned to the most uptight and autocratic teacher in the school.  Already feeling resentful, Rainer becomes even more annoyed when it becomes clear that the majority of his students are convinced that there will never be another dictatorship in Germany.

Rainer decides to show them how easily fascism can take root by becoming a dictator in his classroom.  Rainer orders the students to call him “Mr. Wegner.”  He tells them to all wear the same uniform of jeans and a white shirt to class and when his most intelligent student shows up for class wearing a red blouse because she “doesn’t look good in white,” Rainer refuses to call on her when she raises her hand in class.  Mr. Wegner institutes assigned seating, controlling who can sit with who.  Everyone is required to stand up if they want to speak.  When one student says that he doesn’t want to do any of this, Rainer kicks him and his friends out of class.  All three of them eventually return.

Rainer’s experiment works a bit too well.  The students come to love being a part of the movement that they come to call The Wave.  The Wave ostracizes outsiders, both in school and outside.  The Wave covers the town in graffiti, announcing their presence.  The Wave doesn’t really have a set goal but the students in Rainer’s class are now obsessed and fanatically loyal to it.  One former outcast, Tim (Frederick Lau), becomes so devoted to the cause that he even starts carrying a gun to school so he can defend the other members of The Wave….

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because The Wave is based on the novelization of the American television special of the same name.  The German version of The Wave, however, is far more cynical than the American version.  Whereas the American version features Bruce Davison as a mild-mannered but always well-intentioned liberal who realizes that his classroom experiment had gone too far, the German version features a teacher who, despite his self-proclaimed radicalism, comes to enjoy the ego boost of being a dictator in the classroom.  (Rainer, of course, puts his fascism in superficial left-wing terms, railing against the corporations that make expensive clothing and the individualism that he claims was keeping his class from coming together.)  Rainer becomes willfully blind to what he has created.  And if the American version of The Wave featured students who eventually learned a lesson and voluntarily walked away from the group they had previous celebrate, the German version presents students who are not willing to abandon their cause, even when their leader tells them that it is time to move on.  If the American version featured students who were just play-acting as fascists, the German version features students who go from being blithely unconcerned with the prospect of dictatorship to being the enthusiastic foot soldiers in a cause that has no reason to exist outside of controlling the lives and thoughts of others.  If The American version ended with hope for the future, the German version ends with tragedy.

It’s a dark film.  Some might claim that The Wave is not a horror film but, by the end of the movie, Rainer’s students have become as relentless and destructive as the zombies from a Romero film or the fanatics who often showed up in Wes Craven’s pre-Scream movies.  It takes just one week to transform them from being ordinary teenagers to being the shock troops in a directionless but destructive revolution.  They are asked to surrender their individuality and their power to think for themselves and all of them do so without much hesitation, with the desire to belong suddenly superseding everything else about which they claimed to care.  Consider this well-acted and disturbing film to be an example of the horror of everyday life.

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: Special Rob Zombie Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 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 is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

This October, I am going to be using our 4 Shots From 4 Films feature to pay tribute to some of my favorite horror directors, in alphabetical order!  That’s right, we’re going from Argento to Zombie in one month!

Our final director: Rob Zombie.

4 Shots From 4 Rob Zombie Films

House of 1000 Corpses (2003, dir by Rob Zombie, DP: Alex Poppas and Tom Richmond)

Halloween II (2009, dir by Rob Zombie, DP: Brandon Trost)

The Lords of Salem (2012, dir by Rob Zombie, DP: Brandon Trost)

3 From Hell (2019, dir by Rob Zombie, DP: David N . Daniel)

 

A Blast From The Past: The Night America Trembled (dir by Tom Donovan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Filmed in 1957 for a television program called Westinghouse Studio One, The Night America Trembled is a dramatization of the night in 1938 when Orson Welles’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds reportedly caused a panic amongst listeners.

For legal reasons, Orson Welles is not portrayed nor is his name mentioned.  Instead, the focus is mostly on the people listening to the broadcast and getting the wrong idea.  That may sound like a comedy but The Night America Trembled takes itself fairly seriously, complete with Edward R. Murrow narrating and taking drags off of a cigarette.

Clocking in at a brisk 60 minutes, The Night America Trembled is an interesting recreation of that October 30th.  Among the people panicking are a large collection of future stars and character actors.  Ed Asner, James Coburn, John Astin, Warren Oates, and Warren Beatty all make early appearances.

It’s an interesting historical document and you can watch it below!