Many years ago, back in the 80’s I believe, I spent a week on Martha’s Vineyard. It was early in the morning on a gorgeous summer day, and as my friend was still crashed from the previous evening’s debauchery, I decided to walk down to the beach and catch some rays. I strolled past a particularly marshy stretch when, out of nowhere, a seagull buzzed by my head. Then another. And another. And soon there were about ten of the nasty flying rats swooping down at me, screeching and dive-bombing toward my long-haired dome (this was back when I actually had hair!). I ducked and dodged, yelling and snapping my beach towel at the airborne devils, and ran as fast as I could away from the area, scared to death one of these buzzards was going to peck my eyeballs out! It was like something straight out of Alfred Hitchcock’s
If there’s an Eye Rolling Hall of Fame, the recent Lifetime film Mommy, I Didn’t Do It definitely has earned inclusion.
Seriously, this film was full of some championship-level eye rolling. It’s a courtroom drama and a murder mystery. Ellen Plainview (Danica McKellar) is an attorney whose teenager daughter, Julie (Paige Searcy) is on trail for murdering one of her former teachers. When Julie is first arrested, Ellen rolls her eyes. When Ellen visits Julie in jail and explains that they don’t have the money to bail her out, Julie rolls her eyes and sighs. You can just tell she’s thinking, “My God, mom, you’re so lame!” When Detective Hamer (Jaleel White) explains why all the evidence points to Julie, Ellen again rolls her eyes and Detective Hamer counters her by rolling his own eyes. When Ellen approaches the dead man’s wife (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), the wife not only rolls her eyes but narrows them as well.
It gets even better once the trial begins. The prosecutor, Kimberly Bains (Jen Lilley), rolls her eyes whenever Ellen makes an objection. Whenever a witness testifies that Julie was obsessed with the victim, Ellen rolls her eyes and then Julie rolls her eyes at her mother rolling her eyes and then Kimberly rolls her eyes at both of them. When the weird boy who is obsessed with her tries to save Julie by confessing to the murder, the amount of eye rolling probably sets a world record. In the real world, of course, this type of courtroom behavior gets people cited for contempt but, in the world of Lifetime, it’s just the way that people communicate.
Don’t get me wrong. The film itself did not make me roll my eyes. Yes, it was totally implausible and it was full of silly scenes but it’s a Lifetime film. That’s what we expect Lifetime. Even more importantly, that’s what we want from Lifetime. When it comes to a quality Lifetime film, there’s really only two rules: 1) the more ludicrous, the better and 2) the more melodramatic, the more entertaining.
While the film’s story might be ludicrous, the mother-daughter relationship between Ellen and Julie felt very real and both Danica McKellar and Paige Searcy gave sincere and believable performances as mother and daughter, which went a long way towards explaining all the eye rolling. Seriously, when I was Julie Plainview’s age, I rolled my eyes for 24 hours a day and I wasn’t even accused of murder.
Mommy, I Didn’t Do It is actually a sequel to a previous Lifetime movie, The Wrong Woman. In that one, Ellen was wrongly accused of murder and was arrested by the same idiot detective who arrests her daughter in Mommy, I Didn’t Do It. (If nothing else, these two films show how vindictive authority figures can be.) As long as this is going to be a franchise, I’d like to suggest that the next installment could feature Eric Roberts, recreating his role from Stalked By My Doctor and its sequel. Maybe he could treat Julie while Ellen defend him in court.
Ted Scott (Patrick Cassidy), a White House press aide, is contacted by his former professor, Dr. Bauman (Donald Davis). Bauman gives Ted a file that he claims will prove that not only did Adolf Hitler have a daughter but she was subsequently smuggled into America and is now on the verge of occupying the White House. Ted thinks that Bauman’s crazy but then Bauman is murdered and Ted is framed for the crime. With both the police and the bad guys after him and with time running out, Ted must now figure out who is Hitler’s daughter. Is it Sharon Franklin (Melody Anderson), the famous TV anchorwoman who is having an affair with a Senator? Is it Patricia Benedict (Veronica Cartwright), the wife of the Vice President? Or is it Senator Leona Crawford Gordon (Kay Lenz), who has just been put on the opposition party’s presidential ticket?
Hitler’s Daughter was originally made for the USA Network and, throughout the 1990s, it would frequently air late at night. As far as the film’s quality is concerned, Kay Lenz was beautiful as ever but otherwise, Hitler’s Daughter was a typically forgettable low-budget made-for-tv thriller, complete with bad guys who can shoot everyone but the main character, exploding cars, and villains who carefully explain their plans before trying to kill the heroes. It does end on a down note, with almost everyone dead. This probably seemed edgy in 1990 but it seems predictable today. Exactly ten years after this otherwise forgotten movie aired, Hitler’s Daughter was briefly again in the public spotlight a group of online conspiracy nuts claimed that Hillary Clinton was trying to suppress the movie’s release on video would harm her chances of getting elected to the Senate.
We found out tonight that the great Sir John Hurt passed away at the age of 77.
For some their memory of him was in the role of the Elephant Man. For the younger set it might be as Hellboy’s adopted father Professor Broom. Some might even remember him as Chancellor Sutler from V for Vendetta. They were all great roles, but my very first memory of him is from a film that helped shaped my love for horror and sci-fi. It was a film that was influenced the impressionable mind of a pre-teen.
This film is and will always be Ridley Scott’s haunted house in space sci-fi horror film, Alien.
Sir John Hurt as the doomed crew-member Kane would make such an impact in my impressionable mind as a child not when he first appears on-screen, but when the titular creature makes it’s first appearance in what I can only describe as an explosive birthing scene.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown is the latest classic horror remake. In this case, it’s a remake of a 1976 docudrama about a real-life serial killer who, shortly after World War II, haunted the streets of my former hometown of Texarkana, Texas. (You can read my review here.) The original was a low-budget but effectively creepy little film that was shot on the streets of Texarkana and was full of authentic Texas atmosphere. (It helped that it was directed by Charles B. Pierce, a Texarkana native, as opposed to some jerk from up north.) What made the film all the more haunting was the fact that — in both the movie and in real life — the Phantom Killer was never captured.
So, how does the remake compare?
*Sigh*
(For the record, I’m not only signing but I’m also massively rolling my mismatched, heterochromatic eyes.)
Listen, I will give this film credit for attempting to be something more than just your usual horror remake. It actually does have a fairly clever premise. Instead of retelling the original story, the remake of The Town That Dreaded Sundown begins with a bunch of people in present-day Texarkana sitting around and watching the original film. There’s even an eccentric character named Charles B. Pierce, Jr. (Denis O’Hare) who we are told is the son of the original director. It’s a clever idea, one that wisely acknowledges the effectiveness of the original film while also commenting on the continuing mystery surrounding both the identity and the fate of the Phantom Killer.
And, when someone dressed like the original Phantom Killer starts to murder young couples in Texarkana, we — just like the characters — are left to wonder whether it’s the spirit of the Phantom or if it’s someone imitating the murders from the original film or whether it’s something else altogether.
That’s certainly the question faced by Jami (Addison Timlin), who survives being attacked by this new Phantom but then grows obsessed with trying to discover who he is. Addison Timlin gives a really good performance here. She’s likable and sympathetic, the perfect “final girl.”
In fact, the entire film is well-cast. Anthony Anderson is a lot of fun as a cocky Texas Ranger while Gary Cole and Joshua Leonard do good work as members of local law enforcement. Denis O’Hare, who I will always think of as being Russell on True Blood, brings a certain dissipated nobility to his role. The victims are all sympathetic and the killer is creepy.
But, with all that in mind, I was disappointed with the remake of The Town That Dreaded Sundown. The reason the original film worked is because it was made by a member of the Texarkana community. Charles B. Pierce knew the town and he understood why the Phantom Killer continued to haunt the citizens. What his movie lacked in technical polish, it made up for in authenticity.
Though the remake features a narrator and duplicates the original’s obsession with letting us know whether each scene is taking place on the Texas-side or the Arkansas-side of the town, there’s still absolutely nothing authentic about it. Whereas the original was filmed entirely on location, the remake was mostly filmed in Shreveport with only three days devoted to getting some location footage of downtown Texarkana. As someone who has lived in both Shreveport and Texarkana, allow me to assure you that you can totally tell the difference.
The remake was produced by Ryan Murphy (of Glee and American Horror Story fame) and the film really does feel like a lesser season of American Horror Story. It’s a film that has so little use for subtlety (just check out Edward Herrmann going totally overboard as a hypocritical preacher) that its creepy moments are totally smothered by all the heavy-handed cartoonishness that surrounds them.
Ultimately, the remake fails because it has no feel for or understanding for my homestate. It was made by people who obviously know nothing about Texas or Arkansas beyond what they’ve seen in other movies produced, directed, and written by other northerners.
The 1976 Town That Dreaded Sundown worked because it was authentic. Despite a few good ideas, the remake is just too generic to do justice to the original.
Lisa Marie Bowman had chosen her favorite scene from Dario Argento’s Suspiria as her latest “Scenes I Love” post and it’s quite the scene. I will match her choice with a horror scene which remains one of my favorite scenes in film history. It is also a scene from one of the best scifi-horror films ever made and, I would dare to even say, one of the best films ever created. The scene I speak of comes from Ridley Scott’s classic and iconic film Alien.
Anyone who has ever watched this classic scifi-horror will always gravitate towards talking about one particular scene. The scene is the first time the crew of the space tug Nostromo gets together to a meal as a group after the crisis which saw one of their own crew members attacked by an alien creature. This scene started off quite normal. Professionals enjoying food and good company. It’s through Ridley Scott’s direction and the exceptional performances of all involved which elevates the scene to one of the greatest. Through the scene’s depiction of normalcy we start to get a sense that something may not be right even before Kane begins to cough and have convulsions. For me it was a prolonged shot of crew member Ash during the banter around the table. His expression is all subdued smile then for just a split second we see him glance at Kane eating and being merry but he knows something is wrong and about to happen.
Even if people didn’t pick up that moment from Ash it still created a subconscious effect on the audience so that when Kane did begin to cough and convulse uncontrollably the audience was already on the razor’s edge. When the climactic event which punctuates this scene finally occurs the surprise on all the actors, especially that of actress Veronica Cartwright, has gone done as in film history as a classic. It helped that their reactions were quite genuine. Even knowing that the chestburster alien would pop out it was not being told that fake blood would squirt out that made their reaction of surprise and disgust so real. The extended version of this scene even had Cartwright slipping and falling as she screamed in horror at all the blood which had splashed on her.
One last thing which made this scene one I love and also one which I think makes it one of the greatest scenes in film history is that it was done in one take and that single take came out perfectly. This is a scene that has influenced many filmmakers since but its effect has never been fully replicated.
Ted Scott (Patrick Cassidy), a White House press aide, is contacted by his former professor, Dr. Bauman (Donald Davis). Bauman gives Ted a file that he claims will prove that not only did Adolf Hitler have a daughter but she was subsequently smuggled into America and is now on the verge of occupying the White House. Ted thinks that Bauman’s crazy but then Bauman is murdered and Ted is framed for the crime. With both the police and the bad guys after him and with time running out, Ted must now figure out who is Hitler’s daughter. Is it Sharon Franklin (Melody Anderson), the famous TV anchorwoman who is having an affair with a Senator? Is it Patricia Benedict (Veronica Cartwright), the wife of the Vice President? Or is it Senator Leona Crawford Gordon (Kay Lenz), who has just been put on the opposition party’s presidential ticket?
Through the Shattered Lens 