October True Crime: Deranged (dir by Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby)

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1974, Deranged tells the story of Ezra Cobb (Roberts Blossom).

In the 1950s, Ezra is a shy and withdrawn farmer who lives in Wisconsin with his elderly mother (Cosette Lee). Ezra’s mother has raised Ezra to view all other women as being evil and to view sex as being sinful. The end result is that the middle-aged Ezra is absolutely devoted to his mother but he also has no idea what to do with himself after she dies and is buried in the nearby cemetery. After a year of being alone in the farm house, Ezra starts to hear voices telling him to dig up his mother. Ezra does so but, disappointed to see how much her body has decayed over the past few months, he decides that he should start digging up fresher bodies so that he can “rebuild” his mother.

Eeeek!

Yes, it’s a creepy story and it’s all the more creepy for being true. Ezra Cobb is based on Ed Gein, the farmer, grave robber, and serial killer whose actions not only shocked the town of Plainfield but which also inspired Robert Bloch to create the character of Norman Bates. Psycho was based on Ed Gein’s crimes. So was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with the bone-strewn home and Leatherface’s habit of wearing other people’s faces lifted directly from some of the more sordid details of what was found at Gein’s home. By the time the police discovered what had been happening at the farm, Ed Gein had moved on from grave robbing to committing murders. It’s known that Ed Gein killed at least three people. It’s suspected that he was responsible for more. Interestingly enough, Ed Gein was described as being very friendly and helpful after he was captured. He spent the rest of his life in various mental hospitals, where he was described as being a model patient.

A low-budget Canadian production, Deranged plays out in a documentary fashion, featuring enough gore that the film was actually banned in some countries. That said, as bloody as certain scenes are, there’s a strong strain of dark humor running through Deranged. As played by character actor Roberts Blossom, the dazed but always polite Ezra never makes much of an attempt to hide his activities. When Ezra’s friend, Harlan (Robert Warner), reads aloud an article about a missing barmaid, Ezra replies that the barmaid is over at his place. Harlan has a good laugh at the idea and Ezra responds with a somewhat shy smile. No one in town suspects Ezra, largely because he doesn’t hunt and he always seem to be so quiet and mild-mannered. Even when Ezra points a rifle at a store clerk, she laughs and asks, “What are you doing, Ez?” and, given that Ezra looks so harmless, it’s easy to understand why. Ezra? Why, he wouldn’t hurt a fly! Interestingly enough, everyone around Ezra is far more openly violent and misogynistic than Ezra. Harlan brags about his ability as a hunter. A man in a bar makes misogynistic comments about the bar maid who has become Ezra’s latest obsession. Though Ezra is the one who acts on his impulses, the film suggests that Ezra isn’t that different from the other men in town.

In a rare starring role, Roberts Blossom gives a strong performance as Ezra, playing him as someone who is so far divorced from reality that he actually seems to be genuinely offended when one of his victims tries to escape from the barn. Blossom plays Ezra as someone who alternates between being a violent madman and someone who has an almost childlike need for approval.

Ed Gein was one of the first serial killers to become national news and Deranged acknowledges this by featuring a newsman (Leslie Carlson) who not only serves as the film’s narrator but who also occasionally shows up in Gein’s farmhouse, speaking directly to the camera and explaining what was going on in Gein’s life at the time. It’s actually an effective technique, one that acknowledges the media obsession with the crimes of men like Ed Gein. That obsession, of course, led to movies, including Deranged. In many ways, Deranged’s use of the newsman is prophetic. It predicted a future in which the media would play their part into turning serial killers into almost mythological figures, sneaking their way through the more shadowy parts of American history.

Deranged is an effective film. For a long time, it was also believed to be a lost film. After the film’s 1974 run, all prints of the film disappeared. Fortunately, in the mid-90s, a copy was found in Florida and both the film and Roberts Blossoms’s performances got the reevaluation and appreciation that they deserved.

Film Review: Escape From Alcatraz (dir by Don Siegel)

Posted on May 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1979 film, Escape from Alcatraz, opens with Clint Eastwood and a group of policeman taking a barge across San Francisco Bay, heading towards Alcatraz Island. As any fan of Eastwood’s 1970s film work can tell attest, this is hardly the first time that Eastwood has gone across the bay to Alcatraz. In The Enforcer, Eastwood went to Alcatraz to kill a bunch of hippies and save the Mayor of San Francisco. It wasn’t easy but, fortunately, Clint found a rocket launcher.

However, in Escape from Alcatraz, it’s hard not to notice that Clint is wearing handcuffs. And the cops beat him up while traveling to the island. And once they reach the prison …. oh my God, they’re making Clint Eastwood walk down a prison hallway naked and shoving him into a cell! Is this some early form of 60 Days In or could it be that Clint Eastwood is playing a convict? After starting the 70s in the role of Dirty Harry Callahan, Clint Eastwood ended the 70s playing one of the people who Callahan would have arrested. (Or, if we’re going to be totally honest, shot.)

Specifically, Clint Eastwood is playing Frank Morris. The real-life Morris was a career criminal. He had a genius IQ but he loved to steal and he spent most of his known life in prison. He was specifically sent to Alcatraz because he had a history of escaping from other prisons. Because Alcatraz was sitting on an island in the middle of the difficult-to-cross San Francisco Bay, it had a reputation for being inescapable and, indeed, every previous escape attempt had failed and led to someone getting gunned down by the guards. Morris, of course, immediately started to plot his escape. Working with three other prisoners, Morris managed to tunnel his way out of the prison. (Famously, Morris and his accomplices also managed to create papier-mâché dummy heads, which were left in their beds and kept the guards from realizing that they had escaped from their cells.) No one knows whether Morris and his accomplices managed to cross the bay, though I think most people would prefer to think that they made it to freedom. Our natural tendency is to root for the underdog, even if they are a group of car thieves fleeing from a federal prison.

For the most part, Escape from Alcatraz sticks to the facts of Morris’s escape. Of course, because Frank Morris is played by Clint Eastwood, there’s never really much doubt as to whether or not he’s going to figure out a way to get out of the prison. There’s not a prison in the world that could hold 70s-era Clint Eastwood!

The casting of Eastwood, however, adds another layer to the story because Eastwood, especially at the time that Escape from Alcatraz was made, was the ideal representation of individualism. From the minute the smug warden (played by Patrick McGoohan) tells Morris that it will be impossible to escape from Alcatraz, it becomes obvious why Morris has no other option but to escape. The warden thinks that he can tell the prisoners what to do, when to talk, and what to think. The warden expects his prisoners to live and act like monks who have taken a vow of silence but, instead of offering the hope of salvation, the warden is more concerned with exercising his own power. The warden doesn’t flinch at taking away the rights of the prisoners, even after his actions lead to an otherwise harmless prisoner having a mental breakdown and chopping off his own fingers. As such, Escape from Alctraz is not just another mid-budget, 70s action movie. Instead, it’s the story of the State (represented by McGoohan) vs the Individual (represented by Eastwood). It’s a film that says that yes, Frank Morris may be a criminal but he still has a right to his humanity. Society may want to forget about the prisoners in Alcatraz but Frank Morris has no intention of being forgotten,

Escape from Alcatraz was Eastwood’s final collaboration with the director Don Siegel. Siegel instinctively understood how to best use Eastwood’s laconic presence. Siegel previously directed Eastwood in Dirty Harry, another film that featured a conflict between the State and the Individual. Perhaps even more importantly, Siegel directed the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, another film in which one man struggles to maintain his humanity and his sense of self. In many ways, both Alcatraz’s warden and the alien body snatchers are portrayed as having the same goal. They both want to eliminate free will and human emotion. In the end, the viewer doesn’t just want Morris to escape because he’s Clint Eastwood. Instead, the viewer knows that Morris has to escape before he’s robbed of his soul.

(Sadly, Siegel and Eastwood had a bit of a falling out during the direction of Escape from Alcatraz, with Siegel apparently buying the rights to the story before Eastwood could purchase them in order to make sure that Siegel and not Eastwood would be credited as the film’s producer. This led to a rift between the two men, one that was wasn’t healed before Siegel’s death in 1991. However, even after their rift, Eastwood continued to say that everything he knew about directing, he learned from watching Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. Unforgiven was dedicated to both of them.)

Escape from Alcatraz is an enjoyable and entertainingly tense action film, one that convinces us that prison is Hell and which also features one of Eastwood’s best performances. (Like many actors, Eastwood seems to have more fun playing a rule-breaking rebel as opposed to an upholder of law and order.) The supporting cast is also great, with McGoohan turning the warden into a truly hissable villain. Fred Ward, Jack Thibeau, and Larry Hankin all make good impressions as Morris’s accomplices while Roberts Blossom will break your heart as a prisoner who just wants to be allowed to paint.

Personally, I don’t know if Frank Morris survived his escape attempt but I know that Clint Eastwood definitely did.

Horror Review: Christine (dir. by John Carpenter)

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Arleigh

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, one could hardly step into a theater during the fall or winter movie season without seeing a trailer for the newest Stephen King adaptation. His name had become synonymous with cinematic horror, and nearly every year brought a new film promising supernatural terror or psychological unease.

Among this wave of adaptations came a 1983 film that united two masters of the genre—Stephen King, the reigning literary giant of horror, and John Carpenter, the filmmaker who had already cemented his reputation with Halloween and The Thing. Their collaboration resulted in the sleek, deadly story of a boy and his car: Christine.

The film opens on the assembly line of a Plymouth factory in 1957, immediately signaling that something is off about this particular 1958 Plymouth Fury. From the first note of the retro rock soundtrack to the gleam of that deep crimson paint, Carpenter frames the car with both nostalgia and menace. The lighting in this opening feels almost clinical—bright, sterile, mechanical—yet Christine’s red sheen cuts violently through it, a visual omen that this machine is infused with something beyond metal and chrome. Carpenter wastes no time making it clear that this car is not an inanimate prop; it’s a living entity from the moment it’s born.

We’re soon introduced to the film’s human core—Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon), a shy, bookish teenager tormented by bullies and smothered by his controlling parents, and his best friend Dennis Guilder (John Stockwell), the confident star athlete who often looks out for him. One afternoon, during their drive home from school, Arnie spots a rusting, decrepit Plymouth Fury in the front yard of an old man named Roland D. LeBay. Where Dennis sees a heap of junk, Arnie sees perfection. Ignoring his friend’s concerns—and later, his parents’ outrage—Arnie buys the car and names it Christine.

As Arnie begins restoring Christine to her former glory, a transformation occurs—not just in the car, but in Arnie himself. The once timid, acne-scarred teenager grows into a confident, even arrogant young man, donning slicker clothes, sharper speech, and a darker aura. Christine becomes his obsession, his refuge, and ultimately, his identity.

Carpenter crafts this metamorphosis with eerie precision, pairing the car’s physical renewal with Arnie’s psychological decay. The cinematography shifts accordingly—the lighting grows darker, drenched in neon reds and shadowy blues, mirroring Christine’s two faces: seductive allure and demonic possession. Carpenter’s score, a pulsing blend of electronic rhythm and minimalistic dread, underscores these shifts. It functions almost like Christine’s heartbeat—steady, mechanical, and ominously sensual.

Between the vintage rock tracks that accompany Arnie’s moments of infatuation and the electronic motifs that follow Christine’s predatory stalks, Carpenter manipulates sound to blur the lines between teenage romance and supernatural horror. Every rev of the engine feels rhythmic, almost musical, as if the car itself communicates through vibration and tone rather than words.

Arnie’s newfound confidence even earns him Leigh Cabot (Alexandra Paul), the most desired girl in school—a relationship that initially feels like a symbol of his triumph. But Christine is no fairy tale. When Arnie’s bullies vandalize his beloved car, the story turns from eerie to vengeful.

In a now-iconic sequence, Christine repairs herself before Arnie’s stunned eyes—the crumpled metal expands, glass re-forms, headlights ignite like eyes opening from a nightmare. Carpenter lights the scene with a soft, golden underglow that turns mechanical resurrection into a hauntingly beautiful transformation. It’s both horrifying and hypnotic—a perfectly scored ballet of vengeance set to the hum of machinery and the director’s unmistakable electronic pulse.

What follows is a furious killing spree. Christine prowls the night streets for retribution, a creature of fire and gasoline more alive than metal should ever be.

While Carpenter’s adaptation diverges from King’s novel, it remains faithful to its emotional and thematic essence. King’s book delves deeply into the idea of objects absorbing the evil of their owners, suggesting that malevolence can linger in things as much as in people. Carpenter, however, turns the focus inward.

His version becomes a tragic character study—a battle for Arnie’s soul between the cold, seductive power of obsession and the fragile warmth of human connection. In one corner stands Christine, the car that offers Arnie unconditional love but demands total possession. In the other are Dennis and Leigh, desperate to save the friend they’re rapidly losing to something they can’t fully understand.

Carpenter’s signature touches—his electronic score, minimalist framing, and cynical tone—imbue the film with a dark romanticism. Christine is less a haunted object than a femme fatale: a mechanized embodiment of jealousy and desire. The film’s atmosphere bridges two eras, combining the nostalgic vibe of 1950s Americana with the grim realism of Reagan-era suburbia.

By the end, Christine becomes both a story of supernatural obsession and a commentary on teenage identity—the hunger to shed weakness, to command respect, and to control one’s fate, even at the cost of one’s soul.

Upon its release in December 1983, Christine performed modestly at the box office but was far from a failure. Over time, it has developed a strong cult following, cherished by both Carpenter devotees and Stephen King fans. Though often overshadowed by Carpenter’s heavier-hitting works like The Thing or Escape from New York, Christine remains one of his most technically polished films. It also stands as a fascinating bridge between studio horror and Carpenter’s independent sensibilities—where the shine of a Hollywood production mingles with the grit of a B-movie heart.

If Christine teaches any lesson, it’s that love and possession are two sides of the same coin. Arnie’s tragedy lies not in falling for the wrong woman, but in falling for one that burns with literal hellfire. In Carpenter’s vision, the road to damnation isn’t paved with good intentions—it’s lined with chrome, lit by headlights, and always hungry for one more ride.