Tormented (1960, Bert I. Gordon)

Tormented is the story of how the world’s greatest jazz pianist (Richard Carlson) lost it all because he wasn’t a forty-eight-year-old virgin. I mean, also because he let his former lover, played by Juli Reding, fall to her death without trying to help her. Good thing they’re on an island where any peculiar death results in a ghost haunting. Hence, Reding can take her vengeance while also revealing Carlson’s skinny moral fiber.

Carlson’s on the island preparing for his big Carnegie Hall debut. At some point, he met and fell in love with local girl Lugene Sanders. She’s from a wealthy family and is “young,” according to Reding. Sanders is actually older than Reding, but… Sanders is virginal, and Reding is in showbiz. They’re a week away from the wedding, so many scenes involve Sanders being interested in the preparation and Carlson not being very interested.

Sanders’s little sister (daughter of director Gordon, Susan Gordon) thinks Carlson’s just the best and wishes he’d marry her but he can’t because she’s only ten. Too bad they don’t live in one of those places where you can get married at twelve. Yow and double yow.

Most of Carlson’s scenes are by himself, looking around for Reding’s ghost, who starts haunting him the day after her death. It takes him a few close encounters to believe it’s real, but then he spends a long stretch trying to ignore the haunting. If it weren’t for meddling water taxi captain Joe Turkel, he’d have gotten away with it, too.

Turkel shows up around halfway through the movie and, poking around, realizes either Carlson has Reding in some pleasure hideaway… or she might just not be anywhere anymore. That kind of information should be worth some money, shouldn’t it? Especially since Sanders’s parents are rich (the actor playing her father, Harry Fleer, is younger than Carlson, but mom Vera Marshe is actually older than Carlson, who’d have thunk).

At a certain point, the blackmail plot takes over from the haunting plot. Island horticulturist Lillian Adams seems to know what’s going on—even threatening Reding’s (unseen) presence—but then immediately disappears from the movie so Turkel can come in. Adams doesn’t even come back for the big wedding scene. The character is a blind person, and Adams does a lot of work for it, but there’s a scene where it’s apparent none of that work includes using the cane. See, Reding fell off a lighthouse, so everyone in the cast has to go to the lighthouse at one point or another.

The special effects are, frankly, too cheesy to be taken seriously, but they’re not poorly done. Some of them are okay. And Tormented’s got great cinematography from Ernest Laszlo. Most of the movie is profile two-shots, but they fine.

The same cannot be said for the music, composed by Albert Glasser. It’s a jazz score, but not a jazz piano score, and it seems like it’s for a beach party spoof version of the film.

Carlson’s not good, but rather convincing as a very bad dude as the film progresses. Gordon gets a bunch, and she’s terrible–though with all of the ten-year-old’s dialogue being upset about not being a sexual object yet, did she have a chance? Yow, yikes, and yuck.

Turkel is awesome. Sometimes, he’s good, and sometimes, he’s as good as the material lets him get, but he’s always awesome.

Tormented’s too long at seventy-five minutes, but the various curiosity factors keep it going until Turkel shows up and takes over.

Devil’s Partner (1960, Charles R. Rondeau)

Devil’s Partner opens with an old man in his shack killing a goat to seal a deal with Old Scratch. The man’s arrangement is simple—his soul for two years.

Wait, two years of what? Shh, watch the movie.

We also never get to see any more of Old Scratch than his hand. It’s effective but given how well the movie does with the makeup—Ed Nelson plays the protagonist, the old man’s nephew, and puts on makeup for the old man part, too–it might’ve been nice to see a more full-bodied cameo.

Anyway.

Cut to nephew Nelson appearing in town, showing up late after his uncle sent him a plea for help. Too late, it turns out. Nelson charms the local lunch counter owner (Claire Carleton, who quickly establishes Partner’s supporting cast is going to put in the acting work) before the sheriff hauls him in. Just to go immediately back on the previous statement—sheriff Spencer Carlisle is pretty bad. Partner’s got some caricature performances, but they’re good ones, and much of the acting is caveat-free solid. But Carlisle’s terrible. He tries, but it doesn’t help.

Carlisle will also have some exceptional leans throughout the film when he plays stoic. While they film something terrible, his ability to lean so hard on air is impressive.

Nelson quickly becomes a trusted neighbor. When service station owner Richard Crane finds himself unable to run the station for a while, Nelson steps up and fills in, mainly as a favor to Crane’s fiancée, Jean Allison, the only person in town Nelson’s uncle liked.

However, as someone points out, Nelson’s dirty old man uncle liked Allison because she’s a comely lass.

We don’t get much insight into the uncle’s character—or lack thereof—but it sure seems like he was an ornery old asshole; no one in town, save Allison, seems to miss him. Not even town doctor Edgar Buchanan, Allison’s dad, who had an arrangement with the old uncle for goats’ milk to alleviate the symptoms of TB patients. It’s kind of wild how unpleasant townsfolk get to one another.

At least before Nelson arrived; he has a way of calming everyone around him, including Allison. Crane’s inability to work and his concerns about some medical issues cause him to retract from Allison, with Nelson awkwardly finding himself filling a similar space in her life as he comforts her. Well, it’s more awkward for Allison because Nelson’s motives are never exactly clear. Occasionally, he’ll have situations where he’s got to take a more active hand, like when town-drunk Byron Foulger (who’s not good so much as delightful) betrays Nelson’s trust, which could potentially lead to trouble with the local constabulary.

It all works out in the end, nice and wrapped up, with Nelson, Allison, and Buchanan giving sturdy and better performances throughout. Crane’s fine at the start, but his arc’s noisy and slight, and Crane’s got no volume control. There’s only so much time the script can give him; maybe it’s more at fault (a lot of his drama occurs off-screen, with Allison recounting it to others).

Other than Crane and Carlisle, all the acting’s fine.

Rondeau’s direction is competent, especially given the budget and limitations. He gives the actors time, but never too much time. Edward Cronjager’s black-and-white photography is gorgeous. It’s a shame Rondeau doesn’t give him anything better to shoot because Cronjager’s clearly on it here. The day for night’s not great, obviously, but when Cronjager gets to really light, he really lights.

Devil’s Partner is a surprisingly competent little horror picture. Nelson and Allison are compelling, sometimes in unison, sometimes at odds, and Rondeau runs it lean.

The Terror (1963, Roger Corman)

The Terror is not camp, which is bewildering, not just because it’d be better if it were camp, but because, based on its vitals, it seems like it can’t not be camp.

The film stars Jack Nicholson as a Napoleonic officer—he does not attempt an accent, thank goodness—who gets involved with some supernatural goings-on involving a European noble (Boris Karloff), the single servant in his giant castle (Dick Miller), a witch (Dorothy Neumann), her sidekick (Jonathan Haze), and a beautiful ghost girl (Sandra Knight). None of the people who presumably grew up in the same area speak with the same accent; Haze whispers all the time (Neumann thinks he’s unable to speak, but really he just doesn’t want her knowing his business), which is more effort than anyone else puts in. Miller plays the whole thing so delightfully straight-faced it’s like he’s doing Shakespeare. Karloff plays it like he’s doing someone a favor.

Karloff’s pretty game throughout, of course. Despite his top-billing, he’s never the protagonist, never even—it’ll turn out by the end—gets an honest scene. The animated opening titles of Terror give away most of the set pieces, just without any context. Also, with less disintegrating flesh slime. And the bird is white. It’s very detailed—visually—so it doesn’t not look like a dove. So, for most of the credits, there’s the white dove of peace flying around disintegrating zombies and whatnot. It’s strange. And ought to be camp. But still isn’t.

The actual bird is a falcon of some kind (maybe?). Shockingly little details out there, even now. The bird is Neumann’s familiar. Maybe? The only thing the script gets specific about, in terms of supernatural rules, is Neumann’s devil-powered, and the best revenge you can get on someone is having them commit suicide because it’ll damn their immortal soul. Also, there’s some heavenly intervention at points, and the interventionist God is a weird flex, considering the villains are trying to trick their prey into committing suicide, but when things go wrong, they get very active in it.

I guess they figured God wasn’t going to pay close attention.

Speaking of not paying close attention… I just realized the movie left a major subplot door open. The script—Leo Gordon and Jack Hill—does not give a hoot about making sense. Terror infamously took ages to complete; despite filming on set for all of Karloff’s material, there was second unit shooting going on for almost a year to pad it out. The film runs just under eighty minutes. They’ve got enough story for thirty, maybe forty. The rest is misdirection, exposition, and Nicholson roaming the countryside looking for Knight.

Knight’s terrible. Like, other people are not good, but they’re amusing. It’s fun to watch Nicholson muscle his way through the part, and Miller’s incredibly compelling. And Karloff, Neumann, and Haze all have a certain amount of charm. But Knight’s terrible. It’s a bad part—she’s either a falcon woman, a vengeful ghost, a possessed innocent, or a reincarnation. She’s either Karloff or Nicholson’s property, though Neumann points out if Knight is a vengeful ghost, she belongs to Neumann, so back off, boys. Knight and Nicholson were real-life newlyweds during filming, and she’s just a couple years younger than him, but she’s also playing like Karloff is the hottest dude she’s ever seen. Knight’s sexy killer ghost is just hot for old British dude bod.

Again, ought to be camp.

The troubled production leads to wanting photography from John M. Nickolaus Jr. (the day for night is ambitious; unsuccessful, but ambitious), as well as Stuart O'Brien’s cutting adding an uncanny mood. O’Brien doesn’t have coverage, and they just weren’t able to get that Nicholson vs. bird effects sequence down, so Terror often comes off as vaguely existential at times. Existential or camp-ready. Nothing in between.

Well, except the occasional gore. There are a couple very gory sequences.

The Terror is a tedious seventy-nine minutes, with some aggravating logic jumps (Knight acts without purpose for most of the film, like they only remembered to give the killer ghost a mission in the third act). It’s never rewarding (it gets closest, thanks to Miller), but it is a singularly weird experience. And the plot twists are goofy enough they’re usually a surprise.

The Plague of the Zombies (1966, John Gilling)

The Plague of the Zombies opens at its lowest point—the film involves Haitian-style voodoo (not really, the movie’s version of Haitian-style voodoo) being practiced in a Cornish village, and the high priest has a trio of Black men drumming. Throughout the film, we’ll learn about the voodoo setup (though not a lot, including what they wanted women for after a year of killing dudes), and various participants in the voodoo rituals will have day jobs. Not the drummers, though. They apparently just stay in the ritual cave, slicked up in oil, waiting for the high priest to need accompaniment.

Otherwise, with some exceptions, usually for budget, sometimes for colonialism, and then poor Brook Williams’s acting, Plague’s a great time. After the opening voodoo sequence, the action heads to André Morell’s house, where he’s getting ready for his holiday. We’ll find out he’s a professor at a medical school in London. It’s 1860 (the film’s got a solid drinking game in “spot the anachronisms”). Williams is Morrell’s former star pupil who has set up a practice in our unnamed Cornish village. His wife, Jacqueline Pearce, happens to be Morell’s daughter’s best friend. Diane Clare plays the daughter. She’s a trooper.

Morell gets a weird letter from Williams about all the people who have died. Now, we’ll later learn it’s twelve over twelve months, minus the film’s present action fatalities, so it never makes sense why Williams waited so long to ask someone for help. Especially when we learn he’s not so much having a medical knowledge crisis as a political one—village squire John Carson won’t back Williams in investigating any of the deaths. No autopsies.

Clare convinces Morell they should go visit—and Morell can fish while they’re there. The lack of a fishing subplot is one of the film’s only real disappointments. I desperately wanted to watch Morell fish. He acts the heck out of Plague, always active, always evaluating, always calculating. The character’s a smart cookie, and Morell wants everyone to know how hard he works at it.

When they get to the village, Morell and Clare immediately discover multiple red flags. Carson’s houseguests—led by Alexander Davion—intentionally disrupt a funeral procession and get away with it. Carson de facto directs the local constabulary (run by delightful Michael Ripper), so there are no consequences. Then Pearce is so out of it she barely recognizes them (the audience has the benefit of knowing the voodoo cult is after her). And Williams is….

So, Williams’s character is drowning in the stress and liquoring his way through it. Williams’s performance is drowning in inability, and director Gilling is just making him do it all anyway. Clare’s always a strong character, but when she eventually has to play damsel, and Williams gets to play prince; definitely should’ve been reversed. Williams is so incapable he very quickly becomes sympathetic just for sticking with it. He’s a trooper in a different way than Clare, however. She has to navigate spoken and unspoken societal horrors for the lady folk; Williams just has to keep attempting and failing, over and over.

Besides Williams, all Plague’s acting is (well, okay, low) fine or better. But the better ranges up to Morell, who’s awesome—it’s a shame he and Clare didn’t do a Victorian supernatural sleuthing franchise—and Carson, who’s almost as awesome. Clare’s pretty good. The damsel stuff doesn’t do her any favors, dramatically speaking, but she’s ahead of the curve. Pearce is fine. And then Ripper’s such low-key fun when he shows up. He and Morell play great off one another.

Despite whatever mistakes he makes with Williams, director Gilling does a decent job. Especially considering how much of it’s bad day for night–cinematographer Arthur Grant doesn’t even try compensating, though there’s usually at least one bit of nice photography in every scene. Grant does much better indoors. The special effects have a wide quality range, but they’re always effective. Peter Bryan’s script emphasizes the characters, not the zombies; it might be a budgetary decision, but it’s also a successful one.

Plague of the Zombies is far better than it ought to be, all things considered, with that outstanding Morell performance anchoring it and then its handful of other significant pluses.

I wish there’d been a sequel.

This post is part of the Hammer-Amicus Blogathon IV hosted by Barry of Cinematic Catharsis and Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews.

Day of the Dead (1985, George A. Romero)

Day of the Dead is a nightmare. Occasionally literally, with writer and director Romero not afraid to rely on a recurring “it was just a nightmare” bit. But more symbolically… Day is about a group of scientists working in a secured location in the Florida Everglades, ostensibly protected by the U.S. Army; they’re on a mission from the government, which started in the early days of the undead plague. It’s unclear how long they’ve been at it—at least a month (Romero’s got a great calendar device). Long enough scientist Lori Cardille has had time to get romantic with soldier Anthony Dileo Jr. and long enough the group has lost something like six men.

There’s a helicopter and its pilot (Terry Alexander, the only Black non-zombie), a radio operator (Jarlath Conroy), the soldiers, the scientists, the zombies they’ve captured, and the zombies above waiting to get into their bunker. The movie opens with Alexander, Conroy, Cardille, and Dileo on a search mission to Fort Myers. Real impressive empty street shots, but it’s the only time the movie’s out of the bunker until the end. As usual, Romero’s got to do what he can on a budget.

We get some of the team dynamic, but mostly Dileo going through a mental breakdown and Cardille unintentionally aggravating the situation. Dileo and Cardille’s relationship status is never important to the plot, but since the other soldiers really hate Dileo and really want to rape Cardille, it gets an early emphasis. The soldiers in question are mostly bully Gary Howard Klar and comical(?) dipshit Ralph Marrero. Klar’s super-duper racist towards Dileo (for being Hispanic, though Klar seemingly has no issues with other Hispanic soldier Taso N. Stavrakis; well, playing Hispanic). It doesn’t help the situation Dileo’s falling apart and can’t do his job, which usually involves keeping zombies from eating his fellow soldiers.

When the helicopter expedition returns to base, we find out the Major has died and, now, Joseph Pilato is in command. Pilato thinks the scientists are wasting everyone’s time and making things more dangerous. Given what it’ll turn out lead scientist Richard Liberty has been doing… Pilato’s not exactly wrong. Cardille’s trying to either reverse the zombie process or at least prevent the continued contagion, while Liberty’s training the zombies as pets. His main project is played by Sherman Howard. Howard won’t single-handedly save the film, but he gives its only transcendent performance. There will be other good performances—there will be abysmal performances—but Howard’s is singular.

The majority of Day is the human drama. It’s the end of the world, you get eaten when you die, there’s nothing to eat but beans. Everyone’s on edge. Romero’s script keeps moving pretty well, but he gives his actors dialogue they can’t possibly essay. Like, again, there’s bad acting. But, holy cow, is Romero’s writing a lot at times. It’s like he’s compensating for the lack of budget both in scope and casting—why give Liberty great (or even good) dialogue when he’s just going to play it like he’s cutting prices on a used car commercial. Eventually, Alexander will get to walk off with the movie (for the humans), but Romero spends a lot of time focused on “protagonist” Cardille. Cardille’s always fine, often good, especially considering how bad the other acting gets.

Pilato’s amazingly bad. Klar, Marrero, and Dileo are all varying degrees of bad, but Pilato turns it into an art form. Day’s all about how much you don’t want the U.S. Army involved in anything. No lies detected and all, but they’re still cartoonish.

Of course, one can easily make the argument no one knows how living in a zombie apocalypse is going to affect id vs. superego when communicating with others (i.e., the Howard Hawks “no one knows how Ancient Egyptians talked” argument from Land of the Pharaohs). It also doesn’t matter because the human drama’s real enough, and the zombie horror is exceptional. Once things go wrong, they go spectacularly wrong. And there’s such good gore. Day’s mesmerizingly revolting.

Exceptional editing from Pasquale Buba is a plus, but the technicals are all solid. Michael Gornick’s photography’s always at least good, sometimes better (though he can’t hide some reused locations), and John Harrison’s score is outstanding. And Romero’s direction’s exceptional.

If only he had the budget to hire some better actors. At that level, he’d presumably have the time to fix the dialogue too. But still, good show. Day of the Dead’s an exceptionally human (and humane) nightmare.

Night of the Lepus (1972, William F. Claxton)

Night of the Lepus is about giant bunny rabbits. The movie’s got lousy special effects. The composite shots of regular-sized bunny rabbits blown up to giant-ish size are bad, but the life-size giant killer bunny rabbit arms and body parts—only used for rapid-cut action sequences—are worse. When they have the bunny rabbits run around on model train sets and pretend they’re big, it’s the best (of the film’s options) because you get to see the bunny rabbits. They’re adorable.

With these special effects, Lepus doesn’t have a chance. It doesn’t have a chance for many reasons, but the special effects are the most obvious (and adorable). Otherwise, all the failings are boring and mundane. Director Claxton barely keeps the eighty-eight-minute movie running. Someone—Claxton, maybe producer A.C. Lyles (who, shockingly, is not an Australian who made Lepus to say “yes, bunnies are too dangerous” to his doubting Hollywood chums)—decided to let editor John McSweeney Jr. do rapid-fire cutting to cover: bad special effects, lousy acting, reused footage of the actors, reused special effects footage, boring scenes, nonsensical scenes, and stock footage. Lots of stock footage in Lepus.

The film only always uses the rapid cutting for action scenes. It’s predictable. But then, towards the third act, they start using it everywhere and anywhere. It’s an assault on the senses. And the cuts are way too fast to see the cute widdle bunny wabbits.

Then there’s the script, which manages to be joyless in its stupidity. It’s just bad writing, poorly adapted for its cast. The first actor we see is Rory Calhoun. He’s a man’s man rancher who intentionally rides his horse through a bunny rabbit burrow, breaking the horse’s leg, so he kills it and doesn’t even care. Manly.

Calhoun’s bad, but he’s so much better than eventual lead Stuart Whitman; he’ll eventually be a welcome sight. Whitman’s a bug scientist who wants to kill them off without using chemicals. Instead, he wants to do it naturally, like causing a bat plague or something. See, Calhoun goes to the local university to see DeForest Kelley (who, despite a happening wardrobe and a very seventies mustache, looks embarrassed much sooner than anyone else). Calhoun wants someone to kill off the bunny rabbits but without poison. Kelley suggests anti-poison Whitman, who travels around in a camper with wife Janet Leigh and daughter Melanie Fullerton.

Even Fullerton can tell acting off Whitman is pointless. Even in the scenes where Whitman is doing science exposition, he can’t carry the scene. It becomes about the people listening to him, waiting for him to stop talking so they can get on with it.

Leigh doesn’t embarrass herself, which is almost more embarrassing. She can weather stepping in giant bunny rabbit turds without it phasing her. It’s a compliment to her professionalism, but damn sad.

There are a bunch of other characters. They’re mostly bad, but what are you going to do about acting when it’s pretending there are giant killer bunny rabbits who eat Brussels sprouts like they’re heads of lettuce and cherry tomatoes like they’re… giant tomatoes, I guess.

Paul Fix plays the sheriff. He’s the best performance in the movie. Paul Fix isn’t going to let this Lepus nonsense get in the way of his performance, not even when he’s waiting for the other actors to remember their lines and getting visibly frustrated with them.

Ted Voigtlander’s photography is surprisingly competent. Not with the effects shots but the other times. Terrible sound design—the bunnies do phone perv heavy breathing to show they’re mean—and a weird, lousy score from Jimmie Haskell.

Lepus is the pits. But it is a movie about giant adorable bunny rabbits, so it’s at least a fun time at the pits.

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977, John ‘Bud’ Cardos)

Kingdom of the Spiders opens with some scary music for the title reveal, then an original country song by Dorsey Burnette starts playing over the titles, extolling the virtues of Verde Valley, where Kingdom takes place. It’s a terrible opening titles sequence, followed by the film’s first failed attempt at suspense. Unfortunately, it will not have any successful ones. This first one, involving a bunch of spiders attacking a cow, forecasts the film’s lack of ability for suspense, humor, or anything whatsoever. I mean, there’s good photography from John Arthur Merrill and a handful of affable or inoffensive performances, but otherwise, Kingdom hasn’t got it. It doesn’t even have a kingdom.

After the spider attack—entirely from the spiders’ points of view, so we don’t know it’s spiders yet—the film introduces leading man William Shatner. He’s just a small-town, rural vet, but he carries a lot of sway. He could quarantine the farmers, and wouldn’t it be too bad if he did, what with the County Fair coming up? Shatner’s actually pretty good as the town vet. He and Woody Strode have decent chemistry, even though neither is doing a particularly good (or bad) job. Of course, Shatner’s first scene involves his widowed sister-in-law Marcy Lafferty (married to Shatner in real-life at the time, which ends up being awkward given the love triangle). Shatner gets to ride a horse and do his own stunts, so he’s having fun. Then Lafferty comes on to him because all the ladies love Shatner in Kingdom, only she moans her dead husband’s name (his little brother who died in “‘Nam.”). Shatner tosses her off him—not the last time Shatner tosses a costar violently in the film—and heads off, but not before shaming her a little for her behavior.

Shatner heads off to the state lab to turn in the cow’s blood for testing in what seems the set-up for a scene at a university, but the action just cuts to Strode and wife Altovise Davis having a quiet night at home. Strode and Davis are fine in the movie, but they give off big “Davis married her dad’s best friend Strode” vibes. Or “Davis married Strode in exchange for Strode giving Pa some acreage.” It never feels quite right. But then the movie treats them like they’re living in the thirties, so maybe Strode’s lying to Davis about the state of reality. So it would track, especially for Davis’s frontier woman costumes.

Pretty soon—in time to threaten the County Fair, natch—big city spider scientist Tiffany Bolling comes to town to see what’s happening with these spiders. She’s snooty to Shatner, who mocks her, but then once they’re working together, he just constantly sexually harasses her, sometimes physically, as he makes it clear they need to find the nearest bed or sleeping bag. Bolling manages to churn out endless expository passages while Shatner’s mooning at her, touching her, or otherwise distracting her. Bolling’s not exactly good. The writing on her part’s lousy and director Cardos doesn’t do anything for his actors, but Bolling’s got great timing. Up until she falls for Shatner’s macho charm, anyway. Until then, which is when he starts bossing her around like a possession, Bolling’s the only one who seems to know how to keep Kingdom moving.

Because, otherwise, it’s a slog. An intentional one. Cardos and editors Igo Kantor (the film’s producer) and Steven Zaillian (Oscar-winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List) belabor every action beat, drag out every shot, and just generally pace Kingdom like a slow roll through a rock pile.

There are some other surprises. Bolling and Lieux Dressler pass Bechdel in their first scene. They never do in any other scenes, quite the opposite, but it’s initially pretty cool.

Did I say “surprises” plural? It’s the only surprise. Except when Shatner flaunts Bolling to Lafferty almost immediately after telling Lafferty he’d eventually get horny enough he doesn’t care she’s his dead little brother’s wife, so he’d knock on her door. The longer the movie goes on, the less likable Shatner becomes. By the third act, you’re just waiting for a spider to get him.

Or for anything to happen, which it doesn’t. Except for a bewilderingly inept town panic scene.

With a better director, better script, better editors but the same cinematographer, and maybe even Shatner, Kingdom could be a fun homage to fifties sci-fi. Instead, it’s a dull, joyless turd.

Hereditary (2018, Ari Aster)

For better or worse, once the film proper starts, Hereditary doesn’t have a single wasted moment. Every little thing is important in the end, whether it’s how dead grandma wanted favorite grandchild Milly Shapiro to be a boy or Toni Collette’s justified fears of hereditary schizophrenia. I mean, the title’s Hereditary and she’s got a first act monologue about her brother suffering when he was in high school. And, wait, isn’t Collette’s son, played by Alex Wolff, about the right age for a similar ailment?

Maybe it’s Hereditary.

There are three big plot “twists” in the film, but writer and director Aster wants everyone on the lookout for more. Colin Stetson’s music sets them up, scene after scene. When the film’s building through the first and second acts, it seems like it’s heading somewhere unexpected. By the third act, it’s clear the film’s heading exactly where it said it was heading and why would anyone get distracted by the red herrings, especially since they usually involve dad Gabriel Byrne being suspicious and Byrne’s a red herring himself.

But the red herrings aren’t wasted moments. They’re in the film to confuse both the characters and the audience. It seems to work on the characters, though they have help from Aster intentionally casting doubt on them, but once Hereditary is on the horror movie rails it gets on, it never deviates. The third act’s rote, duplicating story beats from other films in the same sub-genre. It also upends the regular cast, meaning Hereditary doesn’t give Collette a great role. She gives a great performance, but it’s not a great role.

The film opens with its only superfluous moment—an obituary for dead grandma, introducing the characters by name and some general ground situation stuff. Collette’s eulogy covers the same material, so it’s just for mood, only then not. It’s just there to be ominous, not figure into a late-second-act character thread, like everything else in the film. It also stands out because it’s not visual, and director Aster is all about the visuals. Collette’s an acclaimed miniaturist who makes scenes from her tragic, terrifying life as dioramas for wealthy New Yorkers. The film shot in Utah, but there’s no specific location mentioned (if there’s a Mormon subtext besides them being secret Satanists, it’s too subtle).

Anyway.

Aster does a great job transitioning between the doll house rooms and the actual rooms of the house, maintaining the same narrative distance and style throughout. Hereditary’s a great-looking film, with cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski and Aster always gently implying the uncanny. While Stetson’s music hammers in the uncanny. Besides the music (and maybe Jennifer Lame and Lucian Johnstown’s cuts), the film’s pieces are all subtle. Brought together, they’re anvils.

So while Collette’s trying to reconnect with daughter Shapiro, she’s also got this weird relationship with Wolff, which gets explained somewhere in the second act, but by then, it’s a little too late. The film obscures the ground situation for later impact; it ought to be able to cover for it, thanks to the quality of the filmmaking and then Collette and Wolff being terrific, but then they’re stuck with Byrne.

Byrne’s fine. It’s the part. He’s got no chemistry with any of the family members. Aster writes him as detached and obtuse, but he’s actually doting. It’s a weird fail. Fixing Byrne’s part might fix the movie. It also might not.

Shapiro’s good. It’s a slightly less thankless part than Byrne’s, but only slightly. Ditto Ann Dowd as Collette’s new friend from grief anonymous.

Hereditary looks and sounds great, with seventy percent of a phenomenal Collette showcase, but it is very much what it is and not an iota more.

Dracula (1979, John Badham)

This Dracula adaptation takes place in 1913, which is only important so leading lady Kate Nelligan (battling and sometimes winning her English accent) can be a suffragette, and her beau, Trevor Eve, can drive a motorcar. So there can be a car chase. Or three.

The film begins already in England. A ship is having trouble at sea; the crew is trying to get a wooden crate overboard, but they’re too late, and a wolf attacks them. On land, Nelligan lives with her father, Donald Pleasence, who runs a mental institution. Her sickly friend Jan Francis is staying with them. Nelligan helps out in the institution, where the patients aren’t so much violent as profoundly tragic.

After the boat crashes, Francis goes down to the shore and discovers a lone survivor and apparently the ship’s only passenger, a Transylvanian count. We don’t get to see him for a while; Dracula, down to the John Williams score, is a late seventies studio blockbuster. The height of pre-ILM special effects, many smartly executed composite shots, exquisite matte paintings, and Superman: The Movie moments. Down to Laurence Olivier’s stunt cast as Van Helsing, who isn’t a vampire hunter, just a grieving father. Francis is his daughter, and she’s not long for the world. Or movie.

The film’s first hour is moving the pieces around so Langella and Nelligan can have a romance. They need to overcome hurdles, like her presumed engagement to Eve (apparently, they both were just fooling around) and Langella’s desire to create a vampire army to destroy the humans. Starting with Francis.

But since Nelligan disappears in the second half of the film—she’s the vampire’s victim, the fair maiden the men must protect—the film loses its romance angle. Langella hangs out to menace the good guys, but he also vanishes for a stretch. The third act misses them, particularly Nelligan, who never gets to sit with her burgeoning vampiric attributes.

Instead, it’s all about Olivier, Pleasence, and Eve teaming up, though in stages. Olivier and Pleasence get one set piece, then Olivier gets another, then Eve finally gets to team up for the car chases. Despite the good guy plot being Olivier’s movie, he makes room for his costars. He and Pleasence have a delightful rapport; before Olivier arrives to check on Francis, Pleasence is an absent-minded dad-type. He relies on Nelligan for a lot of the institution work, and he’s settled into fine country living when he’s off the clock. He doesn’t even remember how to help someone choking; it’s been so long since he’s practiced real medicine.

When Olivier arrives, Pleasence becomes his Watson. At least until the third act, when there’s not enough room for Pleasence anymore.

Director Badham is often ostentatious; despite the English shooting locations, Dracula’s very American—just listen to Langella’s accent (or lack thereof). Or, really, Nelligan’s English one. Olivier does a heavy accent, which is fine; his performance just doesn’t have any nuance. He doesn’t need it, I suppose. Francis’s accent’s terrible, though. It always sounds like she’s mumbling.

The film wraps up with a conflicted statement about Nelligan’s agency under the patriarchy—Langella’s offering her real power; she just has to eat people—but it’s a reasonably successful adaptation. Langella’s mesmerizing as a dashing Dracula, and he and Nelligan’s chemistry is good. Pleasence and Olivier are fun. Eve’s fine. Tony Haygarth’s a relatively harmless but still terrifying Renfield.

Lovely photography from Gilbert Taylor and good editing from John Bloom. The Williams score is just okay; he doesn’t have a good “Dracula theme,” which he needs.

Great costumes from Julie Harris and production design from Peter Murton. Dracula’s often sumptuous. It’s a little slow, but it’s all right.

This post is part of the Devilishly Delightful Donald Pleasence Blogathon hosted by Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews and Barry of Cinematic Catharsis.

Halloween Ends (2022, David Gordon Green)

While I had some expectations about Halloween Ends’s plot going in, based on the previous entry, the franchise, and behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt, nothing prepared me for a soft remake of Nightmare on Elm Street II.

Halloween Ends is not about Jamie Lee Curtis getting out the butcher knife granddaughter Andi Matichak gave her in the last movie to kill Michael Myers (once again James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) with Will Patton helping like they’re an adorable old couple hunting serial killers. It’s about local boy Rohan Campbell who accidentally killed a little kid he was babysitting a year after the last movie’s events. On Halloween, obviously. So, Ends’s opening kill is a child’s graphic, accidental death.

It’s incredibly manipulative but also really compelling.

The action then moves ahead three more years. Curtis has given up the prepper life (which seems entirely unlikely given Ends would then take place in 2022, post-Covid—but just like with its immortal septuagenarian spree killers, it doesn’t take place in the real world). She and granddaughter Matichak live together in a charming house where Curtis works on her true crime memoir. Matichak’s a nurse, so she didn’t slow down with college after her entire life was destroyed. Despite being Matichak’s best performance in the series, she and Curtis still don’t have a rewarding cinematic relationship. They’re just too slasher movie broken for it to work, and the movie doesn’t even try.

Curtis happens across Campbell in the present—some high school seniors in the marching band are bullying him—and introduces him to Matichak, who’s apparently been dating a bunch of dudes since Courtney murdered her boyfriend last movie. Her most recent beau is a shitty cop—shitty even for cops—Jesse C. Boyd. Luckily for Matichak, thanks to the bullying, Campbell’s about to snap and has no qualms about picking fights with a cop. Not when he’s a bad boy who zooms around town real fast on the motorcycle he’s fixed up.

Ends fearlessly rides a motorcycle over its shark tank, no qualms about all the eighties horror movie tropes it implements (in addition to Nightmare II, Boyd also does a Christine-esque transformation). It’s shameless, which works for it. Especially since Matichak finds her newest Bonnie in Campbell, and they have eighties teen movie montages riding around on his bike, trying to escape their respective traumas.

The movie pays a lot of lip service to trauma and recovering from it. Curtis has a bunch of narration about it, including narrating clips from the other Halloween movies. It’s a little weird to have a forty-year-old franchise, but they’re only using the clips from the first one, H40, and Kills. They should’ve CGI’ed something else together for it. There’s not a lot of flash in Ends, all things considered. It’s a muted finale.

Albeit one with some bizarre plot decisions. Like having everyone in town hate Curtis for the 2018 massacre—she spent her life bullying a man with brain damage, what did she think would happen—or Patton basically being a cameo. If it weren’t this Halloween series with its deceptive opening titles vise a vie cast importance, he’d be unbilled.

Best music of the H40 trilogy from Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter, and Daniel A. Davies. Solid photography from Michael Simmonds and especially editing from Timothy Alverson. Green’s direction is fine. He’s not mimicking the original movie anymore, not with Campbell as the new protagonist, which helps.

It’s not good or successful, but it’s also not terrible, and it’s definitely the most engaging of the H40 series.