Today, everyone was saddened to hear about the passing of actress Teri Garr. The veteran actress and dancer, who was best-known for her comedic performances but who also showed that she could handle drama, was 79 years old.
Since this is October, it seem fitting to share two scenes from 1974’s Young Frankenstein, featuring Teri Garr as Inga.
Oh no! Halloween might be canceled because people just aren’t scared of the old monsters! Dracula (Judd Hirsch) calls all of the classic creatures to a meeting in his castle (where they all happen to be freeloading) and give them an ultimatum. Be more scary! It turns out to be easier said than done.
This originally aired in 1979 but, for people of a certain age, it achieved a certain immortality thanks to regular airings on the Disney Channel. It’s a cute show. It might seem a little bit corny today but that’s a large part of its appeal. It’s a reminder of a more innocent time.
Warren the Werewolf, by the way, was named after Warren “Werewolves of London” Zevon.
Tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond features the great Donald Pleasence, making it perfect viewing for the Halloween season!
Pleasence plays an attorney who prosecuted a man for a murder that he didn’t commit. Pleasence did so, even though a woman (Adrienne Corri) claiming to be the supposed victim of the crime came to him and said that she had not been murdered. Pleasence refused to believe her. Now, years later, his guilt is driving him mad while host John Newland looks on.
Can you prove it didn’t happen?
This episode originally aired on April 11th, 1961.
Poor West Virginia!
Seriously, I’ve been to West Virginia. It’s a beautiful state and the majority of the people that I met while I was there were just lovely. And before anyone trots out all the usual stereotypes about rural communities, let me say that one of the nicest used book store that I’ve ever been to was in West Virginia. It’s a nice state, one that feels like a throwback to a less cynical universe. Even all of the bridges and the streets named after the loathsome Robert Byrd added to the lovely quaintness of the place.
And yet, when it comes to the entertainment industry, West Virginia is rarely portrayed in a positive light. The coastal elite has never had much use for West Virginia or the surrounding states and that’s something that comes out in the films and television shows that are made in New York and California. Whenever anyone says that they’re from West Virginia in a movie or a television show, you can be sure that they’re either going to be a meth cook or a villainous redneck. West Virginia is one of those regions that’s never given much respect in Hollywood and that’s a shame.
Take Wrong Turn, for instance. First released in 2003, the original Wrong Turn taught an entire generation that West Virginia was full of cannibals and blood farmers. If you’re going to go for a drive in the wilderness of West Virginia, this film tells us, keep an eye out for barb wire booby traps. If you’re going to hiking in the mountains, notify your next of kin because you probably won’t be coming back. Wrong Turn follows a group of friends as they are tracked by a family of cannibal hillbillies and the main message seems to be, “For the love of God, stay out of Appalachia!”
(When I first started writing for this blog, I caused a mini-controversy when I said that no one would pay good money to see a film called The Vermont Chainsaw Massacre. My point was that Texas has a reputation, albeit one that has more to do with fevered imaginings of out-of-staters than anything rooted in reality, that made it the only place where that film could really be effectively set. The same is true of Wrong Turn. It’s a story that people wouldn’t buy if it was happening anywhere other than in Appalachia. Nobody would care about cannibals living in Minnesota, for instance.)
West Virginia slander aside, the original Wrong Turn holds up well. It’s a slasher film from the era right before slasher films started taking themselves so seriously. It’s a throwback to the rural horror films of the 70s, with an attractive cast getting picked off in various gruesome ways. The cannibals are frightening and the victims are all likable without being so likable that you can’t handle seeing them killed off. Jeremy Sisto and Lindy Booth both bring some comic relief to the film before their characters are dispatched. Desmond Harrington is a sold-enough lead. When I first saw Wrong Turn, my main reaction was that Eliza Dushku kicked ass and that was still my reactions when I rewatched it. The film is bloody, shameless, and fully willing to give the audience what it wants without scolding them for it. In short, it’s a perfectly fun slasher film and, watching it, it’s hard not to miss the era before horror films started taking themselves so damn seriously.
Wrong Turn‘s a fun movie. But West Virginia is a lovely state and that should never be forgotten!
The main thing you need to know about 2023’s Don’t Look Away is that the killer looks like this.
Yes, the killer is a mannequin and a rather silly-looking one at that. Silly or not, the mannequin is undeniably creepy, as mannequins tend to be. The mannequin is apparently stalking a group of friends. Frankie (Kelly Bastard) is convinced that the mannequin is alive and possessed by some sort of supernatural power. Her friends disagree …. until they start dying, one-by-one.
Now, I should make clear that, for the majority of the film’s running time, we don’t actually see the mannequin kill anyone. At the most, we see the mannequin suddenly show up behind someone. He evens shows up in a swimming pool at one point. Occasionally, his facial expression seems to change but, for the most, he always has the same goofy smile painted on his face. The mannequin stalks one person-at-a-time and if you see him behind you and then look away, he’ll be closer the second time you look at him.
We do see the aftermath of meeting the mannequin. As silly as it may seem to get killed by a mannequin (and I mean, seriously, how do you handle that shame while waiting in Purgatory), Kelly’s friends are actually dying, though it appears that they could all just be having unfortunate accidents or committing suicide. Is it possible that the mannequin is just a mess delusion and that Kelly’s paranoia has poisoned the group? The thing is, though …. if you were going to imagine a scary mannequin trying to kill you, wouldn’t you actually visualize something a lot more scary than a naked, emasculated wooden man with a silly smile on his face?
Don’t Look Away doesn’t quite work. None of the friends really make a huge impression or even register as anything more than horror movie stereotypes. There’s a scene set in a disco that I appreciated but that’s just because I appreciated anything that’s set in a disco. Don’t Look Away suffers from a common affliction amongst horror films that were made after It Follows, in that the action moves way too slowly. When the film should be fast-paced and silly, it’s somber and strangely self-serious.
The film’s big star, of course, is that mannequin. Here’s another shot of him.
I mean, yeah, he’s creepy. The first few times that you see him, he’s legitimately scary. But then, after a while, he just become silly. There’s only so much you can do with a goofy-looking mannequin. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen some good killer mannequin films. Mannequins can definitely be scary and I wouldn’t want to get locked in a warehouse with them or anything like that. Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil makes wonderful use of the creepiness of mannequins. But the mannequin at the heart of Don’t Look Away becomes less creepy and more goofy every time that you see him. I’ll admit that I looked away a few times in an effort not to laugh.
Hmmm …. that may have been a mistake.
In 18th century Romania, Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a vampire/human hybrid who is being forced to work in a freakshow by Leonid (Meat Loaf). After Rayne escapes, she meets a fortune teller (Geraldine Chaplin) who informs her that her father is the feared king of the vampires, Kagan (Ben Kingsley), and that he raped her mother. Rayne teams up with a group of vampire hunters (Matthew Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Michael Madsen) and sets out to destroy her father once and for all.
BloodRayne is perhaps not the worst film ever made about a vampire/human hybrid in Romania but it’s also nowhere near the best. Instead, it’s another one of Uwe Boll’s cheap-looking video game adaptations where a group of talented actors slum it as action stars. (Michael Pare, Udo Kier, and Billy Zane also appear in the movie.) The movie is full of bad wigs and big swords. Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez are neither convincing as Russians or people who lived in the 18th Century. Geraldine Chaplin tries to keep things interesting, Ben Kingsley doesn’t. Kristanna Loken is actually a good choice for Rayne, in that she’s hot and she’s convincing in the action scenes. This is an easy film to laugh at but it features enough blood and nudity to keep its target audience happy. Don’t try to follow the plot, though. You’ll get a headache.
While we were watching the movie last night, Lisa suggested that Ben Kingsley was using his Gandhi Oscar as a stake. Now that would have been something worth seeing!
As I mentioned earlier, there have been many covers of Donovan’s Season of the Witch. This one is from Lana Del Rey.
“Yeah, they’re dead …. they’re all messed up.”
There’s a lot of disturbing scenes in the original Night of the Living Dead but I’ve always loved this live, televised interview with the chief of police. First, there’s the delivery of that classic line. “….they’re all messed up.” Yes, they are. Then there’s the fact that the chief doesn’t seem to be particularly perturbed by the fact that the dead are coming back to life. Instead, his attitude is very straight-forward. It’s happening, we need to take care of it, let’s arm some civilians.
Of course, this interview sets up the film’s ending, in which we learn that those helpful civilians with guns are a bit trigger happy and sometimes, the living get in the way. When you first see this interview, it’s easy to laugh at the sight of the chief’s posse and everyone’s odd confidence that the dead will somehow just go away. (Death, after all, is the one thing that is guaranteed to happen to everyone eventually.) Once you know how the story’s going to end, though, this scene becomes much more ominous.
In the end, the film suggests that it’s not just dead who are all messed up.
It has always bothered me whenever a long-running franchise decides that the best way to reboot things is to wipe away its own history.
Consider the James Bond films, in which the current producers apparently decided that Daniel Craig’s grim and whiny interpretation of the character was so definitive that it would be no big deal to wipe all of the previous Bond films out of existence. Sorry, Sean Connery. Sorry, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and even George Lazenby. Sorry, everyone who enjoyed the original Bond films and who enjoys spies who are relatively free of angst and self-pity. Your films are now no longer canon, all because someone thought it would be a good idea for Bond and Blofeld to be brothers.
Consider the DC films, in which there are so many different versions of the same characters floating around that it’s next to impossible to keep straight what is an “official” film and what isn’t. Admittedly, the majority of the DC films weren’t that good but still, there’s just something kind of annoying in the way that franchise in particular tends to just shrug and say, “Okay, that film doesn’t really count.” Own your mistakes.
And then there’s my beloved Halloween franchise, ruined by David Gordon Green’s belief that he was better than the genre. After years of brother/sister drama between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, Green simply decided to do away with all of that and, in the process, he made the entire story (and Laurie Strode as a character) far less interesting.
Usually I think of this as being a relatively new phenomena but, as I watched 2000’s Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, I realized that reboots that do away with years of continuity are nothing new. Godzilla vs. Megagurius opens with a narrator literally telling us to forget about all the films that came out after the original Gojira. And we’re also told to forget about the ending of Gojira because that never happened either. The Oxygen Destroyer was not used and Tokyo had to be abandoned. Godzilla survived the end of Gojira and he continues to use Japan as his own personal power source, attacking not only a nuclear reactor but also a plasma reactor. So, sorry, Mothra. Sorry, Rodan. Sorry, all of you fans of Ghidorah. Sorry everyone who enjoyed the classic Godzilla films. We’re now in a universe where none of that happened.
That’s not to say that Godzilla vs. Megagurius is a bad film, of course. The majority of the people who watch these films (and films in general) could hardly care less about continuity. They want to see a fight between giant monsters and they want to hear Godzilla’s roar and this film provides both of them. After Japan attempts to destroy Godzilla with a satellite that shoots — I kid you not — miniature black holes, it finds itself being attacked by prehistoric dragonflys. While Godzilla searches for a new power source, the dragonflys attempt to siphon off Godzilla’s energy for their own uses. As so often happened with these movies, humanity’s attempt to destroy Godzilla actually leads to far more destruction than if they had just left Godzilla alone. It turns out that creating miniature black holes and ripping open the time/space continuum is not the solution to all the world’s problems. It’s the human beings who are ultimately the bigger threat than the giant monsters.
It’s an entertaining film. The Megagurius is a good monster and a worthy opponent to Godzilla. Godzilla does what he does best. The film wiped out a decades worth of continuity but at least it kept the Godzilla roar. In the end, you can’t silence a good giant monster.
Previous Godzilla Reviews:
Right now, on Tubi, you can find a film that the service says is titled Bundy Reborn. It’s a horror film, one that centers on a medical student named David O’Hara (played by the film’s director, Matthan Harris) who turns into a serial killer. Struggling with the trauma of having witnessed his father (Bill Moseley) murder his younger sister, David kidnaps Melissa Daniels (Lindsay Hightower) and then disappears into the night when Melissa is rescued by Inspector Lorenzo (the one and only Giovanni Lombardo Radice). Nine months later, David comes out of hiding after Melissa gives birth to their child. David once again kidnaps Melissa and kills several other people as well.
It’s pretty much a standard serial killer film. Despite the title, it has little to do with Ted Bundy. In fact, Bundy isn’t even mentioned in the film. David, like Bundy, is a handsome serial killer who went to college. But, whereas Bundy killed because he enjoyed it, David is trying to recreate a family that was destroyed by his equally sociopathic father. There’s a germ of an interesting idea to be found in this film. For all of his crimes and his evil actions, David really is just carrying on the family tradition. Can evil be passed down genetically? Or would David be perfectly normal if he just hasn’t witnessed his father killing his sister? Those are legitimate questions that this film raises and then promptly seems to forget about. The title, however, suggests that David is literally Ted Bundy in a new body and that’s simply not the case here.
Indeed, the film was originally released under a totally different title, The Inflicted. That title worked well with this film’s portrayal of a son who inherited his murderous compulsions from his father. David has been inflicted with the same evil that his father carries in his heart. The Inflicted is an honest title but, at the same time, it’s not a title that’s going to grab the audience. It’s a title that feels a bit too generic. Bundy Reborn, on the other hand, is an acknowledgement of the fact that Ted Bundy is a particularly macabre part of the American pop cultural landscape. As evil and worthy of hate as Ted Bundy may have been, viewers just can’t get enough of him. Ted Bundy never had much of a chance to pursue his political ambitions but today, more people probably know who Ted Bundy was then know that Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam.
As for the film, the plot is full of contrivances and moments that just don’t make much sense. For horror fans, it is a chance to see several icons in one film, though most of them have extremely small roles. That said, it’s nice to see a usually villainous actor like Sid Haig cast as a kindly psychiatrist. Bill Moseley is properly menacing as David’s father. Doug Bradley seems to be enjoying himself as an FBI agent. As for Giovanni Lombardo Radice, how can you not smile when he’s onscreen? Radice’s Italian accent may seem out of place in a film that is shot and was made in North Texas. But Radice had an undeniable screen presence and he looked good wearing a trenchcoat and holding a gun. He simply was Lorenzo.
On a persona note, this film was shot in my part of the world. Several scenes were shot in my hometown. Several other scenes were filmed in the town where I went to college. When Inspector Lorenzo gets a call about David’s activities, I immediately yelled, “Oh my God, he’s at the Shops at Legacy!” Later, my heart ached when I saw that the hospital that Melissa was taken to was the same hospital that my father was taken to immediately after his car accident back in May. I recognized almost every location in the film as some place that I had been personally and that was definitely kind of exciting.
Finally, let’s all just be happy that Bundy has not been reborn but instead was apparently cremated and dumped out over some anonymous swimming pool somewhere.
Through the Shattered Lens 