Tag Archives: Film

Lifetime Film Review: His Fatal Fixation (dir by Stuart Acher)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

His Fatal Fixation tells the story of Lilly Abrams, a woman who discovers that not even changing her name can ensure her safety.

Lilly (played by Sarah Fisher) is a physician’s assistant.  When we first meet her, she’s getting ready for a date with the handsome and successful Jason.  However, that date is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Spencer (Stephane Garneau-Monten), Lilly’s stalker.  According to Lilly, she and Spencer went on one date and Spencer has been following her around ever since.  He claims that he just wants to protect her but it’s obvious that the only person that Lilly needs to be protected from is him.

Since Spencer’s arrival ruins dinner, Lilly and Jason go back to her place and order a pizza.  Unfortunately, when there’s a knock at the door, it’s not the deliveryman.  Instead, it’s Spencer!  Spencer promptly stabs Jason to death and, after slashing Lilly’s face, he ends up falling out of a window.  It appears that Spencer’s dead but …. is he?

A few months later, Lilly is trying to rebuild her life.  She’s moved to a new city.  She’s changed her name to Stella Gordon.  She takes medication to help deal with her PTSD.  And, after visiting a plastic surgery clinic, she even manages to get rid of the nasty scar that Spencer previously left on her face.  The folks at the clinic like her so much that they give her a job.  Soon, Stella is even having an adulterous affair with her boss.  You know that you’ve made it once you start cheating with a married man.

Still, Stella is haunted by her past.  She has frequent nightmares and sometimes, she swears that she can feel Spencer watching her.  But isn’t Spencer dead?  Stella knows that he certainly looked like he was dead after he fell out of the window but how can she be sure?

Strange things start happening.  Someone sends her a dozen lilies, just like Spencer used to do.  People die mysteriously.  Is Spencer back or is Stella losing her mind?  While Stella wrestles with that question, she also grows close to a heavily bandaged patient named Joshua.  Soon, Joshua will be removing the bandages and he’s specifically requested that Stella be there to see his repaired face….

His Fatal Fixation is an enjoyably over-the-top melodrama from Canada.  It’s the type of film where it’s best not to worry too much about the plot.  Sure, there’s all types of plot holes and the film’s characters don’t always act in the most logical or reasonable of ways.  But if you treat the film as the cinematic equivalent of a trashy, sex-filled novel, it’s a lot of fun.  The director even manages to craft some genuinely creepy dream sequences.

Sarah Fisher has appeared in a lot of these films and she does a pretty good job of capturing both Stella’s fear and her hope that she’s actually found a new life, away from her stalker.  Before she became a Lifetime mainstay, Sarah Fisher played Becky Baker on Degrassi.  One of the things that I love about Lifetime films is that they often provide a chance to check in on how my favorite Degrassi cast members are doing.  (Since many Lifetime films are Canadian productions, it’s not surprising to that they tend to be full of Degrassi alumni.)  Fisher is not the only former Degrassite to appear in His Fatal Fixation.  Cory Lee, who played Ms. Oh on the series, also has a small but important role.

His Fatal Fixation is an enjoyable Canadian thriller.  See it with someone who isn’t stalking you.

Lifetime Film Review: Secrets In The Woods (dir by Sara Lohman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have mixed feelings when it comes to the idea of camping.

On the one hand, I grew up in the Southwest.  By the time I was 12, I had already lived in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Louisiana.  My family moved a lot and there were times when we did live in the country.  I’ve spent time on farms.  I love the city a bit too much to ever be called a country girl but, at the same time, I could probably adapt if I ever had to enter the witness protection agency and they gave me a new life in rural Arkansas.

And, even though I currently live in the suburbs and spend as much time as I can in the city (or at least I did until this year started), I still enjoy a nice country vacation.  I enjoy going up to the lake.  Jeff and I usually go out to Mt. Nebo at least once a year.

So, camping is not necessarily something that I can’t do.  That said, I would be lying if I said that I’m really an experienced camper.  To be honest, I find the wilderness to be a bit creepy.  I’m the girl who jumps at every sound and who freaks out at the sight of a bug.  I may say that I’m spending the weekend up at the lake but what that means is that I’m spending the weekend in an air-conditioned lake house with WiFi and cable.  By that same token, going up to Mt. Nebo doesn’t mean actually camping out on a mountain.  It means staying in a nice cabin and making sure that there aren’t any wild animals wandering about whenever I step out on the front porch.

My point is that I could relate to Sandra, the main character in the recent Lifetime film, Secrets In The Woods.  As played by Brittany Underwood, Sandra is a smart, independent woman who may not have a lot of experience camping but who is determined to make the most out of the weekend that her boyfriend, Brant (Taylor Frey), has in store for them.  Brant is definitely a country boy and he’s looking forward to showing Sandra around the cabin where he grew up.

Brant seems like a nice guy but, from the start, the camping trip has its problems.  For one thing, a stop at a gas station leads to Sandra meeting a super creepy local who seems like he’s trying a bit too hard to be friendly.  Then, when Sandra arrives at the cabin, she finds a picture of Brant’s dead mom.  Though Sandra may not notice it, those of us watching immediately notice that Sandra and Brant’s mother share a physical resemblance.

A series of unfortunate events leads to Sandra injuring her foot and then losing the bag that not only had all of her clothes but also her shoes and the keys to Brant’s truck.  They’re stranded up at the cabin!  Brant says not to worry because his father will be along soon.  And if Sandra wants to change clothes, she can just wear some of his mother’s old dresses and….

Uhmmm, wait …. what?

Okay, seriously, if a guy tries to get you to wear his mother’s clothes, it’s a huge red flag.  I don’t care what the situation is.  Even if it means spending the entire weekend in just your underwear, you do not agree to your boyfriend suggesting that you wear his mother’s old dress.  YOU JUST DON’T!  Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Anyway, things get even worse when Brant’s father, Langley (Jim Klock), shows up and it turns out that father and son have been looking forward to trapping Sandra in the wilderness….

You’ll probably be able to guess where Secrets In The Woods is heading from the minute that Brant and Sandra first show up at the cabin but no matter.  The fact that movies like this are occasionally predictable is a part of a fun.  We know that Sandra’s making a mistake by trusting Brant and the real suspense comes from waiting for Sandra to figure out what’s going on as well.  Brittany Underwood is a sympathetic lead and she’s ably supported by Kabby Borders, who plays her sister.  Depending on what’s going on at any particular moment, Taylor Frey is both convincingly likable and convincingly creepy as Brant.  Meanwhile, Jim Klock turns Langley into a wonderfully hissable villain.

Secrets In The Woods is fun, as the best Lifetime films tend to be.  See it before you go on your next camping trip.

Film Review: Avalanche (dir by Corey Allen)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1978 film Avalanche tells the story of a beautiful resort that’s been built in the mountains of Colorado.  Self-righteous photographer and activist Nick Thorne (Robert Forster) keeps insisting that it’s not environmentally safe to build a resort up in the mountains.  According to him, there’s too much snow building up and it’s inevitably going to lead to an avalanche.

The owner of the resort, David Shelby (Rock Hudson), insists that Nick doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  Sure, David may have had to cut a few ethical corners to get his resort built and he may currently be under criminal investigation but that doesn’t make David a bad guy.  All he wants is to have a nice and expensive resort located in the most beautiful and dangerous place on Earth.  Does that make him a bad guy?

Unfortunately, if David was watching the film with the rest of us, he would be aware of all the shots of snow ominously building up on the side of the mountain.  However, David would still probably be distracted by the presence of his ex-wife, Caroline (Mia Farrow).  David would love to get back together with Caroline but Caroline finds herself growing attracted to Nick.  When David isn’t chasing after Caroline, he’s trying to keep his mother, Florence (Jeanette Nolan), from drinking all of the liquor in the resort.  Good luck with that!  Florence is an eccentric old person in a disaster film so, of course, she’s going to be drunk off her ass for the majority of the run time.

There are other dramas occurring at the resort, of course.  TV personality Mark Elliott (Barry Primus) is upset because his ex, Tina (Cathey Paine), is hooking up with arrogant skier Bruce Scott (Rick Moses).  Bruce is upset because Tina expects him not to cheat on her.  Ice skater Cathy Jordan (Pat Egan) is hoping to conquer her insecurities.  Rival ice skater Annette River (Peggy Browne) is …. well, she’s there.  To be honest, I’m not really sure what the whole point of the ice skating rivalry was since they all end getting buried in snow regardless.  Then again, maybe that is the point.  An avalanche doesn’t care about your personal dramas.  All it cares about is destroying tacky resorts that overuse wood paneling.

Yes, the avalanche does come crashing down the mountain eventually.  It takes a while, though.  There’s almost an hour of Rock Hudson walking around with a pained look on his face before the snow finally comes crashing down.  For all of Nick’s talk about how the avalanche would probably be the result of too many people skiing, it actually happens because someone crashes a plane into one of the mountains.

Obviously, the avalanche is the main reason why anyone would want to watch a movie called Avalanche.  Anyone with any knowledge of the disaster genre knows that no one watches these movies for the human drama.  They watch them because they want to see at least 10 minutes of solid destruction.  A disaster movie can get away with almost anything as long as the disaster itself looks good.

The disaster in Avalanche does not look particularly good.  This film was directed by Roger Corman and, despite being one of the most expensive films that Corman ever produced, the avalanche effects are definitely a bit cut-rate.  At the same time, the cheapness of the special effects does provide the film with its own odd charm.  Just consider the scene where one of the ice skaters gets covered in snow while spinning around with a triumphant smile on her face.  (Sure, she might be dead and she’ll certainly never make it to the Olympics but at least she finally mastered a fairly basic skating move.)  The avalanche effects are super imposed over the image of the skater spinning but it’s obvious that it didn’t occur to anyone to tell the skater, “Hey, act like there’s a gigantic amount of snow crashing down on you!”  It’s so inept as to be charming, like when a child draws a really ugly picture but it’s cute because at least they tried and, as a result, you wait until the child leaves your house before you throw it away.

The thing I love about Avalanche is how everyone is even more ineffectual after the avalanche than they were before it.  Usually, in a movie like this, the disaster leads to unexpected heroism and the villains getting the comeuppance.  In this one, the avalanche just inspires more stupidity.  Fire trucks and ambulances literally collide with each other while heading for the resort.  At one point, a group of fireman set up a net directly underneath someone falling out of a ski ramp chair just for the person to somehow land a few inches to the left of them.  Though the film sets David Shelby up to be the villain, it’s hard not to feel that everyone at the resort is just an idiot.

Listen, I love Avalanche.  It’s terrible but it’s a lot of fun and the less-than special effects go along perfectly with the overheated (or, in some cases, underheated) performances.  Rock Hudson wanders through the movie with a strained smile on his face that has to be seen to be believed while Mia Farrow and Robert Forster both try so hard to make their underwritten characters credible that you can’t help but kind of appreciate their devotion to a lost cause.  If nothing else, the shots extras reacting to superimposed shots of the avalanche makes this film worth a look.  This is a cheap and silly movie and if you don’t enjoy it, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.

Film Review: Corvette Summer (dir by Matthew Robbins)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1978 film, Corvette Summer, tells the story of Kenny Dantley (Mark Hamill).

Kenny is a student at a high school in Southern California.  He lives in a trailer park and he’s kind of dumb.  He’s the type who rarely shows up to class and, when he does, it’s just to discover that he managed to score a D-minus on his last test.  Kenny doesn’t think school’s important, though.  All Kenny cares about is cars.  He doesn’t date.  He doesn’t have friends.  But he can rebuild a corvette and spend hours talking about why it’s the greatest car in the world.

Yes, Kenny’s an idiot.

Kenny’s auto shop teacher, Mr. McGrath (Eugne Roche), warns Kenny that he’s spending too much obsessing on cars.  Don’t fall in love with a car, Mr. McGrath says.  A car is just a machine and a machine will always let you down.  A machine is something that you build so you can sell it and move on to something else.  To me, Mr. McGrath makes sense but Kenny’s like, “No, that’s totally squaresville.  Real melvin, man.”

(Well, okay, Kenny doesn’t use those exact words but you can tell that he’s thinking them…..)

Anyway, Kenny and the shop class have just rebuilt a red corvette and Kenny’s convinced that it’s the greatest car ever.  However, on the same night that the car makes its debut by cruising down the streets of Kenny’s hometown, it’s stolen!  Maybe Kenny shouldn’t have given the keys to Danny Bonaduce.  Kenny gets so angry that he smashes a cup of coke and attempts to beat up Bonaduce.

Mr. McGrath tells Kenny that these things happen and he suggests that Kenny instead look into enrolling at a community college after high school.  Kenny, however, is too obsessed with finding his car to listen to Mr. McGrath.  He even prints up flyers with a picture of the corvette.  “Have you seen this car?” the flyers ask.  Amazingly, it turns out that someone has.  He tells Kenny that he saw the corvette in Las Vegas.

That’s all it takes for Kenny to head to Nevada.  Of course, since Kenny doesn’t have a car, he has to hitchhiker.  Despite the fact that Kenny looks like a killer hippie and tends to spend a lot of time yelling in a somewhat shrill manner, he’s picked up by Vanessa (Annie Potts).  Vanessa is an “aspiring prostitute” who lives in a van.  “Vanessa” is written on the side of the van, which means that it will be useless if anyone ever needs to use it as a getaway vehicle for a bank robbery.  Way to go, Vanessa.

Once they arrives in Las Vegas, Kenny and Vanessa work a series of different jobs while looking for that corvette.  Along the way, Kenny falls in love, discovers that there’s more to life than just cars, and also suffers a bit of disillusionment when one of his mentors turns out to be not as perfect as Kenny originally believed.

Corvette Summer is best known for being Mark Hamill’s first post-Star Wars role.  He’s in almost every scene of the film and, to be honest, his performance kind of got on my nerves.  Some of that is because, as written, Kenny is almost unbelievably stupid.  But Hamill doesn’t help things by giving a rather shrill performance in the lead role.  Though the film may be a coming-of-age comedy, Hamill is so intense in the role that he comes across as being less like a naive teenager and more like a mentally unbalanced time bomb.  You find yourself hoping that he’ll get the car back before he’s forced to take hostages.  Annie Potts is a bit more likable as Vanessa but her character is dreadfully inconsistent.  One gets the feeling that she’s mostly just there so that Kenny can finally lose his virginity and be a little bit less of a loser by the end of the movie.

I will say that I did really like the performance of Kim Milford, who plays a superslick car thief named Wayne Lowry.  As I watched the film, it took me a few minutes to realize where I recognized Milford from.  He was the star of Laserblast, a film that featured Milford finding a laser gun and using it to blow up a sign advertising Star Wars.  Milford only has a small role in Corvette Summer and we’re not supposed to like him but he’s so handsome and sure-of-himself that it’s hard not to prefer him to the rather histrionic character played by Mark Hamill.

Corvette Summer is such a film of the 70s that watching it is like stepping into a time machine.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course.  Indeed, in 2020, the main appeal of a film like this is a chance to see how people lived in 1978.  (It’s always a bit odd to watch a movie where no one carries a phone or has a twitter account.)  Watching this film in 2020, it’s hard not cringe a little at the sight of not only Kenny hitchhiking but also people stopping to pick him up.  Seriously, are they just trying to get killed?

Here’s The 2nd Trailer For No Time to Die!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here is the 2nd trailer for what will probably be Daniel Craig’s final outing as British secret agent James Bond, No Time To Die!

Speaking as someone who has had mixed feelings about Daniel Craig’s tenure as Bond (I loved Skyfall and I liked Casino Royale but Quantum of Solace and SPECTRE rank as two of the worst Bond films of all time), I have to say that this trailer looks pretty good.  If nothing else, I’m happy to see an emphasis on action as opposed to the whiny angst that overtook SPECTRE.

As critical as I’ve been of Daniel Craig’s interpretation of the character, he’s a good actor and he’s got an underappreciated talent for comedy.  Oddly, the Bond films haven’t really taken advantage of that talent.  Craig has been the grim and serious Bond. which may be true to Ian Fleming’s original conception of the character but which hasn’t always made him a compelling cinematic hero.  Hopefully, Craig will actually get a chance to have some fun with the role in No Time To Die.

 

Here’s The Trailer for Possessor!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Starring Christopher Abbott, Andrea Riseborough, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuppence Middleton and Sean Bean, Possessor is the new film from Canadian filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg!  And yes, if you’re wondering, Brandon is the son of the iconic horror director, David Cronenberg.

Possessor is a film about an elite assassin who can inhabit other people’s bodies.  The film made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, way back in January.  At the time, the critics loved it.  Speaking for myself, I’ve heard wonderful things about the film and I can’t wait to see it.  Possessor will be released on October 9th.

Here’s the trailer!

Here’s The Trailer For Halloween Party!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Just in case you had forgotten that Halloween is just around the corner….

Here’s the trailer for a film called Halloween Party!

Judging from the trailer, this looks a bit like a low-budget film, which can often be a very good thing as far as horror films are concerned.  Too often, spending a lot of money on a horror film will take away the film’s authenticity.  The slicker the movie, the more likely it is that you’ll be reminded that it is just a movie.  Whereas low budget films have a rougher, more authentic feel to them.  You don’t need a lot of money to be scary.  In fact, it helps to have as a little money as possible!

Film Review: Fyre Fraud (dir by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, on Hulu, I watched Fyre Fraud, a 2019 documentary about the disaster that was the Fyre Festival.

With everything’s that going on in the world right now, it can be easy to forget just what a big deal the Fyre Festival was back in 2017.  The Fyre Festival was supposed to be the greatest party of 2017. Influencers played it up on Instagram. A commercial for it, one that featured the world’s top models on a beautiful island, was pretty much inescapable on social media. It was going to be the greatest musical festival of all time, with luxury villas and yachts and private chefs and …. Blink-182? Even before the entire festival was revealed to be a massive fraud, I have to admit that I was kind of like, “All this for Blink-182?”

The festival did turn out to be a disaster. A lot of people paid a lot of money to end up on the beach, staying in rain-soaked FEMA tents and eating pre-packaged sandwiches. The bands cancelled so there wasn’t even any music. After the festival was officially canceled, several people found themselves stranded on the island. Those of us who weren’t there followed the drama on twitter. We joked about the Lord of the of Flies. One of my favorite tweets about the whole mess compared it to an episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. “The Gang Puts On A Music Festival.”

If those two paragraphs above seem familiar, that’s because I copy and pasted them from my review of FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.  The Fyre Festival was such a legendary disaster that it was the subject of not one but two documentaries, both of which were released within days of each other in 2019.  FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened was released on Netflix while Fyre Fraud premiered on Hulu.

Both documentaries tell the same basic story, though each focuses on different aspects of the story.  For instance, FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened featured several interviews with the people who actually lived and worked on the island where the festival was to take place and it revealed that the majority of them went unpaid for their hard work.  (I’ll always remember the restaurant owner who ended up feeding hundreds of stranded festival goers, all of whom had specifically been told not to bring money with them to the island.)  The Greatest Party That Never Happened went into detail about how the festival fell apart during the planning stages and how those involved in putting it on seemed to by fueled by a willful denial of reality.

Fyre Fraud, on the other hand, focuses on FOMO, the fear of missing out that left so many people vulnerable to a con man like the festival’s organizer, Billy McFarland.  Along with various “experts” discussing the power of social media influencers, Fyre Fraud features footage of the festival goers first arriving, via school bus, at the beach and seeing their FEMA tents.  (While most of the festival goers attempt to joke about how terrible the place looks, one woman loudly sobs in the background and begs the bus driver to turn around.)  Fyre Fraud also features an interview with Billy McFarland, in which McFarland says that he’s willing to answer any questions but then refusing to answer several questions and announcing that he needs to take a break.  If The Greatest Party That Never Happened made Billy McFarland look like a douchebag who overpromised and quickly got in over his head, Fyre Fraud makes him look like a con artist who is incapable of feeling guilt or understanding why so many people were angry with him.

Fyre Fraud never really digs as much into the story as you would want it to.  It’s pretty much a surface-level examination of the Fyre Festival, one that acknowledges the fear of missing out without really doing an in depth examination into way that fear is so strong for so many people.  Fortunately, though, the story of the Fyre Festival is so insane that it’s impossible to make a boring documentary about it.  This is one of those stories that just demands to be told and retold.

Film Review: Becoming Bond (dir by Josh Greenbaum)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1968, after Sean Connery announced that he would no longer be playing the role, there was a worldwide search for a new actor to play the role of James Bond.

Several actors were mentioned as a replacement, some of them better known than others.  Future Bonds Timothy Dalton and Roger Moore were both considered.  Oliver Reed was considered but ultimately not chosen because he was considered to be a bit too “rough” for the refined Bond.  Another intriguing possibility was Terrence Stamp but he was ultimately rejected because it was felt he would want too much creative control over the character.  Michael Caine turned down the role because he had already played a secret agent in three films and he didn’t want to run the risk of getting typecast.  As the start date for production on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service approached, the producers needed someone who looked good, was convincing in the action scenes, and who maybe could act.

In the end, they picked George Lazenby, an Australian-born model who had never acted before.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the inexperienced Lazenby’s performance was not critically acclaimed.  After all, he was not only stepping into an iconic role but he was also replacing one of the most charismatic actors around, Sean Connery.  In retrospect, critics have come to appreciate On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and, to a certain extent, even George Lazenby’s performance as well.  Lazenby may not have had Connery’s confidence but On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would not have worked with a confident Bond.  For this film, which found Bond feeling underappreciated by M and retiring from the spy game so he could marry Tracy, a more vulnerable actor was needed and Lazenby fit the bill.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service would be the only time that George Lazenby would play James Bond.  Despite being offered a million pound contract to portray Bond in another film, Lazenby publicly walked away from the role and Sean Connery returned for Diamonds Are Forever.

Why did Lazenby walk away from the role?  It depends on who you ask.  Some say that he was stunned by the bad reviews.  Some say that he let his fame go to his head and he decided that he was bigger than Bond.  At the time, Lazenby said that he considered Bond to be a “brute” and that he was all about peace.  A hippie Bond?  I think even Daniel Craig’s version of the character would take issue with that.

The 2017 documentary, Becoming Bond, takes a look at the events that led to George Lazenby becoming Bond.  The film is framed around a lengthy interview with Lazenby and includes several dramatized recreations of his past life.  (Live and Let Die‘s Jane Seymour appears as Maggie Abbott, the agent who encouraged Lazenby to pursue the role of Bond.)  The film opens with Lazenby’s unruly childhood in Australia and follows him as he goes from being a high school drop out to an auto mechanic to a car salesman.  Eventually, he follows his girlfriend to London and, somewhat randomly, he falls into being a model.  He finds minor fame selling candy in commercials and then, eventually, he finds bigger fame as James Bond before being reduced to being the answer to a trivia question after he walks away from the role.

The film’s biggest strength is that George Lazenby is a charmer.  Still a handsome rouge even in his late 70s, Lazenby narrates his story with the skill of a born raconteur.  Listening to him talk, it’s possible to understand how someone could have looked at the young Lazenby and viewed him as being a potential James Bond.  In fact, he’s got so much charm that it takes a while to realize that his stories occasionally contradict themselves.  At one point, the film’s unseen interviewer stops him to ask if all of his stories are actually true.  Lazenby merely smiles.

The film is full of details about Lazenby’s life before Bond and also all of the the trouble that he went through to even be considered for the role.  (Lazenby claims that he stole one of Sean Connery’s suits and wore it to the audition.)  Unfortunately, it doesn’t really tell us much about why Lazenby left the role, other than the fact that it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Lazenby does talk about the restrictions that were put on him by the film’s producers.  For instance, he was told that he couldn’t come to the film’s premiere unless he cut his hair and shaved his beard because “Bond doesn’t have a beard.”  In the end, though, Lazenby seems just as confused as any of us as to what exactly it was that he was thinking when he turned down a second Bond film.  One gets the feeling that it ultimately came down to not wanting to be told what to do, which is something I can respect even if it does seem like Lazenby was a bit short-sighted.  (Connery had similar objections but still stuck with the role long enough to make enough money to ensure that he could spend the rest of life doing what he wanted to do.)

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t go into much detail about Lazenby’s life after Bond.  He mentions that he got married and he sold real estate.  He doesn’t talk much about the films that he made after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and that’s unfortunate because, even though none of this films were considered to be major productions, it was in those films that Lazenby proved that he actually could act and that he deserved better than to just be remembered as a cautionary tale.  Check out his grieving father in the 1972 giallo, Who Saw Her Die?  Or the blackmailed politician that Lazenby played in 1979’s Saint Jack.  If nothing else, those roles would eventually provide Lazenby with a bit of redemption as modern viewers discovered not only those films but also Lazenby’s talent.  Unfortunately, that part of Lazenby’s story goes untold.

Becoming Bond is available on Hulu.  While I wish it had gone into a bit more details about Lazenby’s post-Bond life, it’s still required viewing for any fan of 007.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Slipping Into Darkness (dir by Eleanor Gaver)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, Jeff and I watched the 1988 film, Slipping Into Darkness.  It’s available on Prime and we watched it because it looked like it was good, old-fashioned revenge flick.  The plot description said something about a former biker kidnapping the three women who he held responsible for the death of his brother.  It sounded trashy and fun and you know what?  It definitely is trashy and fun.

It’s also one of the most thoroughly incoherent film that I’ve ever seen.

If you were to ask me what I learned from watching Slipping Into Darkness, I would say that I was amazed to discover that it doesn’t hurt to get your fingers shot off.  Seriously, one character loses his fingers and, just a few minutes later, he’s hitching a ride out of town.  (Needless to say, he has to use his other hand to flag down a ride.)  Even though he’s with his friends, no one seems to be too concerned with the fact that he’s just had several of his fingers blown off.  No one says, “Hey, you want to go to the hospital before you bleed to death?”  I don’t think it even occurs to anyone to pick up his fingers.  They just leave them in a cornfield.

The other thing that I discovered is that some people can still do stuff for several minutes after having a switchblade thrown straight into their brain.  I mean, I guess maybe that’s true.  I’ve heard of weird stuff like that happening but it still seems like having a knife sticking out of your forehead would be a bigger deal than it appears to be in this film.

Just from reading those two paragraphs, you might think that this is like an over-the-top Evil Dead-style comedy, where the action is deliberately cartoonish.  What’s strange is that it’s not.  Instead, it’s a rather pretentious film from Nebraska that actually seems like it wants to say something about …. well, something.  I mean, it’s either trying to say something about morality or the director just randomly decided to include several nuns standing in the background of several shots.  You tell me.

Anyway, the film is about three best friends, Carlyle (Michelle Johnson), Genevieve (Anastasia Fielding), and Alex (Cristen Kaufman).  Caryle is rich and self-centered.  Genevieve is obsessed with sex.  And Alex is just kind of there.  When we first see them, they’re flirting with some bikers, who turn out to be less than ideal company.  Later, after they get away from the bikers, they accidentally hit a dog with their Mercedes.  Fortunately, the dog lives and they take it to the vet.  They also take the dog’s owner, Ebin (Neil Barry), with them as well.  Ebin is developmentally disabled so they take him to get ice cream.  One jump cut later and Ebin is getting run over by a train.  A coroner who announces that, when he died, Ebin was covered in ice cream and liquor.

Ebin’s older brother, Fritz (John D’Aquino), is convinced that Ebin’s death was no accident because Ebin didn’t drink.  Maybe the ice cream’s a clue?  After Fritz sees Carlyle returning the dog from the vet, he decides to kidnap the three friends and demand to know what happened to his brother.  Helping Carlyle out are T-Bone (David Sherrill) and Otis (Vyto Ruginis), two of the bikers who the girls met earlier but who are now apparently unrecognizable because they’ve shaved and gotten haircuts.

Following this so far?

So, Fritz and his friends kidnap Carlye and her friends.  And, at first, Carlyle and her friends don’t want to be kidnapped but then, about five minutes, the girls and their kidnappers are suddenly best friends and everyone just kind of forgets about Ebin.  Genevieve and Otis go off to the cemetery together and, when the sun rises, it turns out that Otis has accidentally killed her during a sessions of rough graveyard sex.

What’s odd is that no one — not even Genevieve’s two best friends — seems to be particularly upset about Otis having killed her.  Instead, they just bury her in a nearby grave and then they start do discuss how to best protect Otis.  So, I guess the whole kidnapping thing has been resolved and no one cares about Ebin anymore.

However, it turns out that Otis is too paranoid to be protected.  Running off to a farmhouse, he discovers an old farmer who has committed suicide.  “This is a shit world,” Otis declares.  Soon, everyone’s getting chased through a wheat field by Otis, who has commandeered a thrasher….

And the movie’s not over yet!  But I’m not going to spoil any more of it.  It’s on Prime and you can watch it for yourself.  Slipping Into Darkness is one of the most incoherent films that I’ve ever seen and yet it’s such an incomprehensible mess that it’s actually a lot of fun to watch.  The dialogue is frequently ludicrous and is filled with lines that sound like they were written by an Intro to Philosophy student trying to be profound.  The film is full of jump cuts, which makes it increasingly difficult to understand how once scene relates another.  It’s impossible to keep track of who is friends with who or who is investigating what because everyone’s motivation and mood randomly changes from scene to scene.  At one point, Fritz is obsessed with his brother’s death and then, a few minutes later, he no longer seems to care.  Otis feels guilty about killing Genevieve and then, in the next scene, he’s a giggling sociopath making crude jokes about necrophilia.  Alex hates T-Bone and then she loves T-Bone and then she hates him and then she loves him and seriously, who can keep track?  The entire movie plays out like a fever dream.

Interestingly, a lot of the film’s most important events take place off-screen.  I don’t know if the director was trying to make a statement about the randomness of life or if she just ran out of money before filming certain scenes.  “We just got arrested!” a character cries towards the end of the film before then adding that they also got bailed out.  Well, that’s good.  It would have been nice to have seen that but oh well.  As long as everything works out….

What to make of Slipping Into Darkness?  I have no idea.  It’s on Prime.  Go watch it, let me know if you can figure out what the Hell’s going on.