Today would have been the 82nd birthday of the great German actor, Udo Kier.
Today’s scene that I love features Kier in the only version of Suspiria that matters, the original one directed by Dario Argento. In this scene, Kier discusses witchcraft with Jessica Harper.
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 lets the visuals do the talking!
110 years ago today, future director Jack Arnold was born in Connecticut. Arnold started his film career making documentaries and he ended it directing episode of The Brady Bunch and The Love Boat. In between all of that, he directed some of the best-remembered “creature” films of the 1950s. Anytime you see a movie featuring giant monsters, you’re seeing a film that owes a debt to the work of Jack Arnold. Arnold also directed the classic Creature of the Black Lagoon.
Today, in honor of Jack Arnold, TSL is proud to present….
4 Shots From 4 Jack Arnold Films
It Came From Outer Space (1953, dir by Jack Arnold, DP: Clifford Stine)
Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954, dir by Jack Arnold, DP: William E. Snyder)
Tarantula (1955, dir by Jack Arnold, DP: George Robinson)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957, dir by Jack Arnold, DP: Ellis W. Carter)
In 1999’s Limbo, Katherine (Jessica Krause) is a young woman who lives in a city, perhaps in an abandoned warehouse. At night, she goes to the bar, where the regulars eye her with a mix of suspicion and lust. Sometimes, she takes someone home with her. Every night, she appears back at the bar and almost the same dialogue is repeated by those who see her. She takes someone home. She kills them… or does she? The waitress (Tina Krause, who also directed) appears at Katherine’s home. Voices are heard. Sped-up images are randomly spliced through the film. The camera tracks down empty hallways and through desolate alleys. Sometimes, the images are so dark that you can’t even make out what’s happening onscreen. Voices are heard, but it’s not always easy to tell who is speaking or why. The imagery becomes increasingly bizarre. Are we seeing the inside of Katherine’s head, or are we seeing something else? The viewer will have to decide that for themselves…
Actually, for all of the bizarre imagery and strange dialogue, it’s not that hard to figure out what’s happening with Katherine. The film itself is called Limbo, and the film’s final twist isn’t really a surprise. But I also think it’s fairly obvious that this is a film that’s more about visuals and style than anything else. The story is less about what happens and more about how it’s all visualized. The film plays out in a frenetic, dream-like fashion, with the dream sometimes crossing the line and becoming a nightmare. The film’s visual style captures the feeling of being overwhelmed by sensation and giving yourself over to the chaos of everyday life. The film doesn’t always make sense because it takes place in a world that doesn’t particularly make sense. I’ve read a few online reviews that have compared this film’s imagery with the work of David Lynch. I wouldn’t go that far. Lynch may have been a surrealist, but regardless of how odd his films got, there was always a feeling that he was in control and that each image reflected something he wanted to say. Limbo, on the other hand, always feels like it’s one scene away from spinning away from both the cast and the director. Occasionally, that’s kind of exciting.
In many ways, Limbo represents everything I like about SOV filmmaking. It’s a passion project, one made free from the constraints of having to please the biggest possible audience. The stark images capture the grunginess of life on the outskirts of society, and the imperfect sound design fits in perfectly with the bizarre visuals. It’s a film that keeps you off-balance. When Jessica walks along city streets, more than a few passersby stop to stare straight at the camera. It gives the entire production a raw authenticity. Director Tina Krause was herself a veteran of many SOV horror films. For her directorial debut, she took the SOV format to its logical, self-indulgent extreme. The resulting film is occasionally compelling, occasionally annoying, sometimes shallow, and sometimes insightful. It’s a chaotic mess, but it’s also the type of statement that could never be made by a mainstream studio. It’s Limbo.
The 1986 direct-to-video epic Truth or Dare tells the story of Mike Strauber (John Brace). One day, Mike came home from work and discovered his wife (Mary Fanaro) having sex with his best friend, Jerry (Bruce Gold). Needless to say, Mike is not happy about this development. Mike wanders aimlessly around town, thinking about his past with Sharon and also remembering a childhood game of Truth or Dare. (In the flashbacks, young Mike is played by AJ McLean, who would grow up to be a Backstreet Boy.) Mike considers suicide but, instead, he picks up a hitchhiker and then spends a while mutilating himself at her request.
This pretty much sets up the pattern that dominates the rest of the film. Mike mutilates himself and gets sent to a mental hospital. Mike gets released from the mental hospital and immediately does something that gets him sent back. Mike has hallucinations that lead to him mutilating more and more of himself. He cuts off his face and is soon walking around with a copper mask. Mike gets released due to overcrowding and budget cuts. Mike gets sent back to the asylum. Mike goes on a rampage. Eyes are poked out of their sockets, people are run over by Mike’s car, and—in the film’s most infamous scene—Mike drives around while holding a bloody chainsaw right out the driver’s side window. Surprisingly, people are more than willing to stand still and wait for Mike to reach them. This is definitely a case where maybe they shouldn’t have been so polite.
This is one of those independent horror films that wins points on the basis of pure audacity. One gets the feeling that writer/director Tim Ritter was eager to see just how far he could push things and things do indeed get pushed very far. At the same time, the film is so amateurish in its execution that it’s impossible to really get offended by it. Despite some decent self-mutilation effects, you never get the feeling that the movie is trying to trick you into thinking that you’re watching anything that could be considered realistic. It’s an elaborate and, at times, rather juvenile joke. It’s about as pure a film as you can get, one that was made with absolutely no consideration given to what most would consider to be in good taste. Films like this could never be made by a studio but they could be made by someone who had access to a video camera. That was the whole appeal of indie horror filmmaking.
That said, I should note that Tim Ritter has said that he was actually replaced a day into filming by producer Yale Wilson. So, how much of the film’s vision is due to Ritter and how much of it is due to Wilson is anyone’s guess. Tim Ritter was seventeen when he wrote and sold the script and 18 when the film went into production. He’s still making films to this day. The unique aesthetic of Tim Ritter lives on!
Since we started the day with a documentary about Bigfoot, it seems appropriate to toss one in for the end of the day as well! This television show comes from 1976. Leonard Nimoy hosts In Search of Bigfoot!
Can you find him?
Tonight’s televised horror is The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer. Peter Haskell stars as Clifford Swimmer, an angry jerk who is unhappy with his marriage. He’s come up with a plan, though. He’s going to have himself cloned and then, after leaving his clone with his family, he’ll be free to live his life. However, Swimmer discovers that things never work that simply when it comes to creating a clone. This is a clever story with a great twist at the end.
It originally aired on November 1st, 1974 as a part of ABC’s The Wide World of Mystery.
In 1983’s Amityville 3-D, Tony Roberts plays John Baxter, a journalist who is a professional skeptic. He made his fame by exposing con artists who pretend to have had supernatural experiences. He doesn’t buy that the famous house in Amityville is haunted. In fact, he’s so confident that there are no such things as evil spirits that he buys the house and moves in with his teenage daughter, Susan (Lori Loughlin). Soon, Susan and her best friend Lisa (Meg Ryan)—HEY! THAT’S MY NAME!—are fooling around with a Ouija board and people close to John are dying.
Now, I wish I could tell you that this Amityville film featured either Lori Loughlin or Meg Ryan getting possessed by the Amityville demon, because that probably would have made for a cool movie and it would also give me a chance to make some jokes about why Loughlin was later cursed to appear on Full House. (No, I would not have made any jokes about the college acceptance scandal because, as far as I’m concerned, Loughlin did nothing wrong.) Playing a teenager possessed by a demon would have also been quite a way for Meg Ryan to make her film debut. Unfortunately, neither one of them gets possessed. Instead, the evil in the Amityville house all has to do with a haunted well in the basement. A lot of people do die in this film. The deaths, though, tend to be a bit random. None of them are as disturbing as the deaths from the second film. That’s probably a good thing, as Amityville II is one of the few horror films that I really have a hard time watching.
When Amityville III went into production, Orion Pictures was being sued by George and Kathy Lutz, the two people who lied about the house being possessed in the first place. The Lutzes claimed they owned the term “Amityville.” Eventually, a court ruled that you can’t own the name of a town, especially one that you fled because the Devil was after you. Still, because of the lawsuit, Amityville III was specifically written to avoid mentioning anything specific that happened in the previous films. I guess the studio did this so that the film could be sold as just another haunted house film if the court ruled in favor of the Lutzes. As a result, Amityville III feels rather generic. There’s really only one scene that works, in which the ghost of a character who has just died makes a sudden appearance and smiles sadly before going on their way. Otherwise, things are pretty dull. Not even the presence of Robert Joy can liven things up.
Realizing that they would need a gimmick to get audiences to sit through another Amityville film, Orion decided to shoot this film in 3-D! Just imagine that Amityville Realty sign swinging back and forth and nearly taking off someone’s head in the audience. Scary! This movie came out around the same time as Friday the 13th 3-D and Jaws 3-D. Wow! I hope everyone kept those cardboard glasses that they used back in the day. It’s good to have a souvenir.
The third Amityville film was panned by critics and, while it made money, it didn’t make that much money. Still, the Amityville franchise continued. There are now probably over a hundred Amityville films out there and, God help me, I’m going to watch every one of them.
Previous TSL Amityville Reviews:
I love Alfred Hitchcock. And I really love Charles Bronson. When you consider that Bronson was featured three times in ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, you know I’m all in. Bronson first appeared in the season 1 episode, “And So Died Riabouchinska” which starred the Invisible Man himself, Claude Rains! Now seemed like a good time for a rewatch!
When a juggler named Ockman is found dead in the basement of a vaudeville theater, Detective Krovitch (Charles Bronson), is on the case. The prime suspect is John Fabian (Claude Rains), a ventriloquist whose act revolves around his beautiful female dummy, Riabouchinska, who we find out is modeled after a long, lost love. As Krovitch interrogates Fabian and many others, including his embittered wife Alyce (Wynne Miller), and her lover, the shady manager Douglas, it becomes clear that the ventriloquist has a dark past. We discover a Fabian who is lost in a world of obsession, self delusion and perversion, a world that the victim was threatening to expose. Without giving too much away, this episode blends psychological horror with police procedural and spits out quite the freaky story.
Adapted by Mel Dinelli from Ray Bradbury’s short story, “And So Died Riabouchinska” is an exceptional entry in Season 1 of the ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS TV series. Claude Rains is incredible as Fabian. It’s a thespian tour-de-force, with Rains creating a role that’s creepy, pathetic, and oddly relatable all at the same time. I haven’t seen many of Rains’ most notable works, but based on his performance here, I need to. Charles Bronson, whose strong screen presence was obvious from the beginning of his career, goes toe to toe with Rains (and Riabouchinska) and helps ground the episode in something resembling the real world. It’s not a showy role for the icon, but he conveys the toughness and authority that would go on to define his career. But what sets this episode truly apart is a storyline that explores the human psyche in a way that seems daring for 1956 television. There are parts of this episode that will definitely make you uncomfortable.
Overall, in my opinion, “And So Died Riabouchinska” is an essential episode of the ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS series. It’s a lot of fun seeing Hitchcock introduce the show at the beginning and wrap it up at the end, but the best part is the fact that the story that takes place in-between is creepy, clever, and very re-watchable.
Earlier today, Lis and I watched the second-to-last Twilight film, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part One.
The movie starts with Bella (Kristen Stewart) finally marrying Edward (Robert Pattinson). They get married in the woods, and almost everyone from the entire saga is there, including Bella’s mother. Bella’s father (Billy Burke) and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) don’t approve of her marrying Edward, and Jessica (Anna Kendrick) thinks Bella is pregnant—why else would she be getting married at 18? I probably would have thought the same thing if I were at the wedding, but actually, Bella and Edward are virgins when they marry. Even though Jacob warns that a human could die having sex with a vampire because of how strong vampires are, Bella and Edward still consummate their marriage without Edward turning Bella into a vampire. Edward does not want to turn Bella for some reason. Lis and I agreed that Edward probably wants Bella to get old and die so that he can find someone else. There’s also a weird scene when Edward confesses to Bella that he briefly rebelled against his father and drank the blood of men in the 1920s. Bella says that’s fine because all the men were bad. Team Jacob is looking better and better.
Bella ends up getting pregnant with a hybrid baby. The pregnancy progresses at a faster rate than Bella’s body is prepared for. Edward tries to talk Bella into having an abortion, but Bella refuses. Instead, they return to Forks and stay with Edward’s family. Bella starts to drink blood so that the fetus will stop feasting on her. Jacob, meanwhile, tries to keep the wolf pack from killing Bella to prevent her half-vampire baby from harming anyone.
I have to respect that Twilight built an entire movie around one very difficult pregnancy. That’s probably why the acting in Breaking Dawn is considerably better than in the previous Twilight movies—there’s more at stake than just Bella missing her boyfriend or trying to decide between Edward and Jacob. Though I didn’t realize it until I rewatched the movie, Taylor Lautner really poured his heart into Jacob in this film. I also remember that, when I first saw this movie, I wasn’t comfortable with the “imprinting” scene, and watching it again, I still wasn’t comfortable with it. If you’ve seen the movie or read the books, you know what I mean.
After all this time, I don’t know if it’s really a spoiler to say that this movie ends with Bella opening her eyes and revealing that she is now a vampire. She got a husband, a baby, and immortality! Way to go, Bella!
Tomorrow, we’ll be finishing things up with Breaking Dawn: Part Two.
Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) has devoted his life to creating artificial blood, but he publicly declines to accept the Nobel Prize because he still hasn’t found a cure for the rare blood disease that is affecting not only him but also his best friend, a man he calls Milo (Matt Smith) for reasons that are too stupid to get into. Using the genes of Costa Rican bats, Morbius finally develops a cure, but there’s a side effect. Taking the cure transforms someone into a living vampire. Morbius is now strong and fast, but he also has a craving for blood. Morbius knows that the cure is even worse than the disease, but Milo doesn’t care and takes it anyway. Now, there are two living vampires wreaking havoc in New York City.
It’s not just New York that suffers due to Morbius. It’s also Sony Pictures, which released the film to terrible reviews and bad box office on April 1st, 2022. After the film was yanked out of theaters, someone at Sony noticed that a lot of people on Twitter were posting a meme that featured Morbius. Mistakenly thinking that this meant Morbius had become a so-bad-it’s-good cult phenomenon, Sony rereleased Morbius in theaters on June 3rd, and the film flopped a second time.
I know that I groaned when I first read that Sony was developing a Morbius film to be a part of their “extended Spider-Man universe.” That’s because Morbius was always one of my favorite Marvel characters, and I knew Sony would probably never be able to do the character justice. I was right. Morbius is mostly interesting as a throwback to what comic book films were like before the MCU and Zack Snyder came along. There’s no real affection for the characters and none of the type of big moments that usually made even the least inspired of the MCU films worth watching. It looks cheap, it feels cheap, and the whole thing is totally by the numbers. Matt Smith is given little to do as the villain, and, for all of his reputation for eccentricity, Jared Leto gives an anemic performance. He lets his beard and his hair do most of the acting. The worst thing about it is that it’s just boring. In the comic books, Morbius mixed his brilliance with a feral bloodlust. That’s what made him such a memorable character. In the movie, he’s just Jared Leto.
Morbius the Living Vampire deserved better.
