Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman (2023, Kim Seong-sik)

Until the third act, when it suddenly becomes clear the film never really had anywhere to go (at least not in this installment), Dr. Cheon is mostly delightful. Even the listless ending isn’t not entertaining, it’s just listless.

After a magic-heavy dream sequence opening, Cheon settles into the gag–Gang Dong-won is a “doctor” who solves hauntings for his YouTube channel. Lee Dong-hwi plays his faithful sidekick, who does all the editing, takes the pay, doesn’t ask too many questions. Not even about Gang’s actual scheme: he’s a trained psychiatrist who knows he can’t cure people’s cultural beliefs in ghosts but can address the symptoms.

Or something. Lee doesn’t care as long as the checks clear.

It will turn out Gang’s actually using the actual mental health help racket to track down the very real, very evil shaman who killed his little brother and grandfather. Huh Joon-ho plays the evil shaman, who can possess people with ease, which makes for numerous good chase sequences and fight scenes. Dr. Cheon’s least realistic element might be Gang’s adeptness as a combination street and sword fighter. While the film hints at his quest to identify Huh (whose existence is something of a theory between Gang and his mentor, Kim Jong-soo), there’s no indication Gang’s been training.

Maybe it just comes with the magic.

The setup involves Gang and Lee taking damsel-in-distress Esom’s case and heading to a remote village. Esom can see dead people all around her and so on, including the evil spirit inhabiting her little sister, Park So-yi. Esom’s ostensibly going to be Lee’s love interest (Gang’s got no time for love), but no one told Esom. And then the movie itself forgets about it towards the end. Dr. Cheon only runs ninety-eight minutes, and they’re clawing for that runtime; there’s lots of delay. Good thing the cast’s so fun.

Well, Gang, Lee, and Kim. And Park to some degree. Since Esom’s in the place of Gang’s love interest but isn’t, she’s missing traditional functions. For a while, it seems like she might have more significance than a plot delivery device.

She does not.

Huh’s a threatening villain, but still cartoonish.

For most of the film, director Kim keeps a fine pace going, balancing the comic and action sequences. The story’s small but big, with the second act dipping into the flashback well a little at a time until the whole story finally comes out. But the geography–Esom and Park’s haunted village and its immediate surroundings (well, drivable immediate surroundings)–is rather finite. And since the movie spends the first half pretending Gang shouldn’t have a plan for this eventuality (one of his “fake” exorcisms leading to the real magic bad guy), it starts feeling cramped.

So instead of focusing on Gang, Dr. Cheon leans heavily on everyone else. Esom’s got damsel stuff, Lee and Kim have sidekick stuff, Huh’s got evil stuff. Gang’s around a lot and gets to charm a lot, but he doesn’t have a character arc. Not even the foreboding revenge arc; Kim warns Gang not to act with vengeance in his heart and whatnot, but it doesn’t even matter. Especially not once the film goes all out with the CGI in the third act. There’s a lot of smart, action-oriented magic on display in the set pieces in the first and second acts, but the third act decides it’s time to unlock the secrets of the universe onscreen.

It’s way too much for such little emotional stakes, derailing the film. And there’s not time to get it back on track. Dr. Cheon goes out with a bang, which is not what it needs.

Hopefully, they’ll figure out something for Gang to do in the next one.

Even if they don’t, get enough of the cast back, and it won’t matter.

Dr. Cheon’s a fun ride, but it’s (too?) determined just to be the beginning.

The Swiss Conspiracy (1975, Jack Arnold)

The Swiss Conspiracy opens with a lengthy title card and voice-over explaining—broadly—the Swiss banking system. Then, the movie’s opening titles, an absurdist, almost silly montage of Swiss postcards, set to composer Klaus Doldinger’s least funky music in the film. Doldinger’s score is always fun and cool (and often quite good), even when it doesn’t precisely match the onscreen action. Swiss is a budget-conscious, European location thriller. There are picturesque car chases, there’s even choreographed fisticuffs (with able stuntmen), but there aren’t pyrotechnics.

After the titles, we get a scene with a guy in a restaurant getting murdered. The film doesn’t spend any time contextualizing it, and when it turns out to be important later (well, qualified important), they still don’t know how to tie it in. The victim is a blackmail victim. There are five more. They’re all customers at Ray Milland’s Swiss bank. Milland and his uneasy vice president Anton Diffring bring in David Janssen to investigate.

Janssen’s a disgraced Justice Department official who had a run-in with the Chicago mob and somehow ended up living it up in Switzerland, consulting when it suits him, otherwise content to zoom around in his Ferrari with his shirt unbuttoned past his navel. Upon arriving at the bank, Janssen gets into a parking space squabble with Senta Berger. She’ll turn out to be not just one of the blackmail victims but also Janssen’s love interest. Berger’s thirty-four. Janssen’s forty-four. He looks early sixties (except, oddly, in their canoodling scenes). So it’s not inappropriate or even weird—other than Berger being interested in brusk, condescending Janssen—but the optics are constantly askew.

Janssen also immediately meets Chicago mobster John Saxon, who’s in town to report his own blackmailing to Diffring. And someone followed Saxon from the airport. Saxon and Janssen know each other—Janssen’s got a great line explaining it’s not a “social” relationship—and there’s immediate conflict. We meet almost the entire supporting cast before Milland gets around to explaining the blackmail scheme to Janssen. It’s an incredibly stagey approach, contrasting how director Arnold shoots it and the film in general. Swiss makes a big deal out of its locations, whether where the mountaintops are alive with the sound of music or the scenic architecture. So when it suddenly slows down to be a corporate office drama… it’s weird.

Because Swiss is a weird movie. Janssen investigates, romances Berger, squabbles with Saxon, meets other blackmail victims John Ireland and Curt Lowens, trades barbs with local cop Inigo Gallo (never seeing the police department is a big tell on the budget’s limits), and runs from hitmen Arthur Brauss and David Hess. Oh, and then occasionally just shoots the shit with Milland. The movie got Ray Milland; they’re going to use Ray Milland.

Then the only running subplot without Janssen is about Diffring and his too-hot-for-him-so-something-must-be-up girlfriend Elke Sommer.

Excellent location shooting, game cast—while Berger easily gives the best performance, no one’s actually bad except Ireland. Saxon’s iffy a lot of the time, but then he’ll have this or that good moment. Ireland doesn’t have any good moments.

Janssen plays his part like he’s in the ensemble, even if Arnold (though more the script) tries to focus in on him. Janssen’s sturdy more than capable, but he’s enthusiastic. Enthusiasm helps.

Right up until the third act, when the film starts deflating all the tires, one lackluster reveal after another. It’s a bummer of a finish, but then there’s a quick, welcome partial save.

For a less than ninety-minute thriller on a budget (in more ways than one), Swiss Conspiracy’s far from bad.

And that Doldinger score is dynamite.

The Childe (2023, Park Hoon-jung)

For the first half or so, The Childe ostensibly has three lead characters. The protagonist is Kang Tae-ju; he’s a half-Korean, half-Filipino illegitimate son of a Korean rich guy. Life has sucked, leading to Kang becoming an underground boxing champ (which has so shockingly little to do with the movie it’s like they forgot it was a thing), which keeps him and Mom going, but then she gets sick. She needs an operation, so he starts trying to track down Dad in Korea.

For a while, Dad doesn’t want to be found, but just as things get worse, Dad sends his lawyer (Heo Joon-seok, who—at forty-two—is the old square in Childe) to whisk Kang to Korea. See, Dad’s sick and wants Kang to be there. For sure, they’ll pay for Mom’s surgery, and everything will be fine.

Except Childe doesn’t start with Kang’s only boxing match; it starts with the runaway star of the film, Kim Seon-ho, taking out a room of bad guys in spectacularly bloody fashion. Kim’s been tracking Kang, adding another ominous layer, and then shows up on the plane to Korea, now directly interacting with Kang. At this point, the film starts giving Kang a lot less to do. Based on this less-is-more approach, I wonder if maybe Kang wasn’t able to keep up with Kim, so they quieted him down instead of having him outdone, charismatically speaking.

Anyway.

Then comes Kim Kang-woo, who’s also overtly charismatic. Kim has the most challenging part in the film because he’s playing a nepo-baby vicious gangster. He’s Kang’s half-brother, and he’s got his reasons for being happy (and not happy) they’re bringing Kang over. Kim’s simultaneously a dipshit, a monster, and comic relief (he berates his staff, basically, because they’re dumb thugs). It’s a rocky part, but Kim hangs on through all the plot twists and frankly bat shit plot developments (whenever Childe gets bored, it brings out the ultra-violence, like writer and director Park is just reminding everyone they might want to leave if they don’t like actual buckets of blood); he’s great.

The film somewhat balances between Kang, Kim Seon-ho, and Kim Kang-woo until Go Ara comes back in. Go’s a Korean tourist whom Kang meets in the Philippines, and they get off on the wrong foot (for a South Korean film, Childe’s subtext is South Koreans are racist, materialistic bastards and should be avoided at all costs). In the second half, the film’s going to sap Kang’s agency entirely. Kim Seon-ho gets most of it, but Go will get a bit too. Then it’ll turn out to be a red herring—Go’s return to the story—and we’ll go back to Kim Seon-ho and Kim Kang-woo pretending Kang matters when really it’s just about them spitting chunks of scenery at each other.

Solid direction from Park, some great photography from Shin Tae-ho, and a nice soundtrack (both Mowg’s score and the song selections).

The Childe needed to figure out something to give Kang to do throughout, especially considering how little his first act turns out to matter, but otherwise, it’s a reasonably nail-biting action picture. Lots of blood, some quickly cut (or heavily implied) gore, but also lots of humor, dark and light. Kim Seon-ho’s spellbinding.

It’s good stuff.

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961, Roger Corman)

If Creature from the Haunted Sea weren’t atrocious, it’d have to be fantastic. There’s no possible in between for the film, which is high concept, no budget.

The film starts as a political spoof about Cuban generals fleeing the revolution with gold. They enlist the aid of gambling gangster Antony Carbone, who has a yacht. Carbone’s also got a wacky crew—Southern belle girlfriend Betsy Jones-Moreland, her goofy younger brother (Robert Bean), an undercover agent (Robert Towne), and a… guy who does animal noises (Beach Dickerson). Only Dickerson doesn’t make the noises; they’re playback. He just makes gestures.

Again, it’d have to be good if it weren’t terrible.

Towne narrates the film. He’s a manic jackass who’s in love with Jones-Moreland, convinced she’s just down on her luck and not Carbone’s accomplice. Carbone’s going to double-cross the Cubans, of course, with the most excellent plan anyone’s ever concocted—he’s going to pretend there’s a sea monster killing off the Cuban soldiers. Eventually, the General (Edmundo Rivera Álvarez, who keeps it together quite well) will agree to change course to avoid further attacks.

Hence the title of the film.

There’s one night of sea monster attacks before Carbone convinces Álvarez to change course. Haunted Sea runs just over an hour; there’s no time for skepticism, further attacks, nothing. Let’s just move right along.

Right up until they land and—thanks to Carbone contriving a silly reason to dump the gold—hang out while going diving for the gold every couple scenes. In between, Esther Sandoval joins the film as a love interest for Towne—he’s just as disinterested in her as Jones-Moreland’s disinterested in him, wokka wokka—and Dickerson finds his soulmate in Blanquita Romero (a local woman who can also mimic animal noises). Except Bean brought Sandoval into the movie and he’s bummed he’s out a love interest, so Romero introduces him to her daughter—Sonia Noemí González—who doesn’t understand mom has taken up with this weird Americans and is just planning on buttering Bean up to sell him some coconut art.

Once again, if it weren’t terrible, it’d have to be good. Writer Charles B. Griffith has lots and lots of ideas. All of them just happen to flop.

Some of the problem is the acting, and some of it is the directing. And maybe some of it is the audio looping. Lots of Haunted Sea is looped. Carbone’s a little too charmless, even as a lousy heavy. Jones-Moreland might have the best acting in the film outside Puerto Rican actors, who play it straight and find the joke, but there’s no competition. Towne’s almost likably bad. Dickerson gets better once Romero shows up. And Bean… well, Bean’s just around.

There’s some solid day-for-night from cinematographer Jacques R. Marquette and an almost successful chase scene.

Haunted Sea definitely rallies somewhere after the first act, but it still doesn’t add up. Cute last shot, though.

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 Magnificent Fraud (1939, Robert Florey)

The Magnificent Fraud tells the unlikely tale of an actor on the run who just happens to be in the right place at the right time for the role of a lifetime. Akim Tamiroff’s stage actor’s enjoying a residency of sorts in San Cristobal’s hottest nightclub, one maybe owned by the president’s troubleshooter, Lloyd Nolan. We get to see Tamiroff do Cyrano, then Napoleon. The latter performance is a particular plot point because it’s where Nolan convinces his co-conspirators, Robert Warwick and Frank Reicher, they should hire Tamiroff to impersonate the president.

See, the president—also Tamiroff—is on his deathbed, only there’s an American lawyer on the way with ten million bucks for the local economy, and the deal would die with him. President Tamiroff’s a benevolent, progressive leader who just happens to employ Chicago fixer Nolan. Tamiroff’s sure Nolan’s secretly got a heart of gold, and he plays good interference against Warwick and Reicher.

No wonder he’s nimble at throwing in with them to ensure the money comes through. President Tamiroff’s actual chosen successor, George Zucco, is too honest.

Complicating matters is the banker, played by Ralph Forbes. Forbes just happens to be engaged to Patricia Morison, who just happens to be Mary Boland’s niece, and Boland just happens to be an old flame of president Tamiroff’s. Surely actor Tamiroff’s not going to be able to get away with an impersonation, not when French policeman Ernest Cossart arrives—after tracking Tamiroff across the globe for seven years—ready to take him back to stand trial for murder in Paris.

It sure would complicate things if Cossart knew both the president and the actor.

And it sure would complicate things if ladies man Nolan set his sights on Morison, only to discover she’s probably the only girl he’d ever be happy with and, even worse, he’s the only guy she’ll ever be happy with.

After a somewhat bumpy first act—establishing Nolan as a lousy fella to regular gal Steffi Dina (a dancer at the club) and some lazy costume choices. San Cristobal’s citizenry seems to wear whatever was left in the Paramount costume department after the Westerns got their pick. All of the credited parts are European or North Americans (ahem, very white North Americans and Europeans), and all but four are playing indigenous peoples. Surely, the film wouldn’t make it more awkward with some brown makeup on people’s bodies.

Well, it sure would, actually. And then there’s the detail of Nolan only cheating on local girl Duna with the white girl tourists. He sure seems like a heel, especially when he sets his sights on Morison. Their romance subplot—played straight but with comedic timing—ends up unexpectedly anchoring Fraud. Tamiroff’s mesmerizing, whether he’s playing it straight, monologuing in character (in character), or doing a bit. He and Boland are delightful together. So there’s never anything to worry about when he’s around.

So scoring with the entirely superfluous romance subplot is a plus for Fraud, as is Cossart’s subplot trying to investigate the palace and the supposedly infirm Tamiroff. See, Boland tagging along was an intentional surprise on her part; entertaining an old romantic friend wasn’t in Nolan’s scheme.

Fraud’s a speedy eighty-ish minutes, with director Florey keeping Gilbert Gabriel and Walter Ferris’s screenplay moving at a good pace. Florey doesn’t take much time with anything (except when he and cinematographer William C. Mellor give Morison some extra attention during a moonlight mooning with Nolan), but he gives time to the entire cast. If Fraud’s got a pacing problem, it’s in Florey letting Tamiroff, Nolan, Boland, and Cossart (in particular) more time than they need to get through their deliveries. And James Smith’s cuts then lag. They probably could’ve cut out four minutes just by snipping the dead air.

But the cast’s charming (or doing great work, in Tamiroff’s case); it evens out.

Magnificent Fraud’s a good time with a show-stopping performance from Tamiroff.

This post is part of the Party Like It’s 1899 Blogathon hosted by Erica of Poppity Talks Classic Film.

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.

In the Line of Fire (1993, Wolfgang Petersen)

In the Line of Fire is about bad use of taxpayer funds. President Jim Curley is on the campaign trail, trying to shore up support in ten states in nine days or something, and his chief of staff, Fred Thompson, doesn’t want to listen to any nonsense from the Secret Service about a viable threat. Now, Fire’s a lot of things. It’s a gentle reckoning with history as lead Clint Eastwood deconstructs the naive heroism of pre-1963 United States (very gentle, don’t dwell too much); Eastwood was one of the agents with JFK that day, and now he’s got to stop another assassin—a scenery inhaling John Malkovich—from doing a repeat.

Malkovich is a very dangerous man (with a very particular set of skills, if you know what I mean), and there’s a relatively high collateral damage body count in Fire. Because no one listens to Eastwood. Or when they do listen to Eastwood, like lady agent Rene Russo, who has to admit even though he’s a Greatest Generation edge lord, Eastwood knows his stuff, they get in trouble for siding with him.

The movie makes a big deal out of how Eastwood’s a burnout, one of the oldest field agents, doing counterfeit investigations to stay out of anyone important’s hair. A random tip brings him into Malkovich’s master plan, which involves lots of disguises, modeling composite, and a shocking amount of petty cash. Malkovich’s finances and how he uses them to further his goals are the most interesting part of his scheme, and they get very little attention. Though there are a handful of guest stars involved.

See, despite “who’s that” Jim Curley as the President of the United States, Fire features a litany of familiar faces, ranging from Tobin Bell to Patrika Darbo, John Mahoney to John Heard. There are so many people in it. But not the big guy because Eastwood doesn’t want to get to know Curley. He got to know JFK, which obviously didn’t work out, but—as Eastwood tells Russo at one point—sometimes you get to know the people and decide you’re not willing to take a bullet for them. Oh, the naivety of the nineties. Miss it.

The film’s split between Eastwood’s “I’m too old for this shit” protecting the President plot, which gives him the opportunity to bump heads with young whippersnapper boss Gary Cole and flirt with colleague Russo, Eastwood and likable but too bland sidekick Dylan McDermott (whose agent should’ve reminded him it wasn’t actually a Dirty Harry movie) trying to figure out Malkovich’s plan, and then Malkovich either executing the scheme or calling up Eastwood to chit-chat about the old days. Eastwood gets to do some good acting listening to Malkovich monologue, lips quivering, and so on, as Malkovich dregs up all Eastwood’s trauma for Russo to empathize with and literally all the other guys to mock. Not McDermott, but only because McDermott doesn’t get to play with the regular fancy supporting cast.

McDermott’s absence is indicative of the problem with Jeff Maguire’s screenplay—there’s no balance in the second half. Eastwood starts with McDermott and then graduates to the big leagues with Russo and Cole, only to go back with McDermott and forget the rest exists. Or happened. It can play into Eastwood’s stoicism for a bit, but not forever, not with some of the plot developments. And there’s no real reintegration later on, either. Eastwood should just be joining the plot already in progress, but Maguire then needs to jumpstart that plot. They’d been idling it too long.

Okay direction from Petersen. The film’s technical star is Anne V. Coates’s cutting. Fire’s an expertly edited action picture. Everything else goes off the rails a bit—Petersen’s direction, John Bailey’s photography, even Ennio Morricone’s score is a little much at times—but Coates does a phenomenal job every time. Even during the final when they either don’t have the budget—or the stunt people—for the showdown. Coates makes it work as much as anyone can. However, she can’t do anything to make the composites look better. And Petersen and Bailey really seem to like their composites. They have a bunch of needless composites to make it look like they had the first unit on all the locations.

It’s a good time—even if it is all about Curley wasting taxpayer money (not just on the Secret Service expenses, but really, why do we pay politicians to campaign for re-election)—with good star performances from Eastwood, Malkovich, and Russo. It’s fairly lean goings by the finish, with Russo left with very little, but it’s a good time.

And that Morricone score’s usually beautiful.

This post is part of the Two Jacks Blogathon hosted by Rebecca of Taking Up Room.

The Book of Life (2014, Jorge R. Gutiérrez)

The Book of Life has a very nice style once the story starts. Everything looks like it’s a miniature, like Life is a CG Rankin/Bass “Animagic.” Not quite as good, but there’s a charm to it. To the style. Not to the movie. Life’s oddly and relentlessly charmless.

It begins with the first bookend device: a group of behavior disorder kids arrive late for the school trip to the museum. They bully the first tour guide, but then a smoking hot lady tour guide winks at them the right way, and they’re all entranced. Life’s not going to get better about objectification of women. It’s the plot, actually.

Christina Applegate voices the tour guide. Why? No reason. She’s not good. She doesn’t have any personality. There’s not a deep “Married With Children” cut involving her character. There is a deep Labyrinth cut, so maybe someone else dropped out or turned them down. Doesn’t matter. The bookending device is just so the behavior disorder kids can mouth off. They range in age from toddler to tween, and their character design ranges from seventies theatrical Charlie Brown doofus villains to Baby Huey in drag. Also, they’re a drag.

Then Applegate starts reading to them from the Book of Life, mentioning far more interesting stories than the one we’ll watch. I foolishly thought it would be an anthology of Mexican folk tales. Instead, it’s all about how Zoe Saldana needs to marry Diego Luna or Channing Tatum so Ron Perlman can get a job transfer.

Perlman’s Xibalba, lord of the Land of the Forgotten. His lady love is La Muerte, the lord of the Land of the Remembered. Kate del Castillo voices her. Del Castillo de facto gives the second-best performance in the film. Luna’s a great lead. When he’s talking, you forget what you’re watching and think it might actually be all right. Then Saldana shows up, and that all right gets qualified. Then Tatum shows up, and that all right becomes impossible. Tatum isn’t even particularly bad—Saldana’s worse—but he’s charmless. His character is the town hero; he’s only the town hero because he has a magic tchotchke. It makes him invincible. When it looks like Saldana is going to marry Luna because of true love and all that jazz, Tatum says he’ll abandon the town and stop protecting it unless she marries him.

Luna’s the hero of the movie, but Tatum’s a good guy. Everyone trading Saldana is a good guy. She may spout off about her independence, but she’ll always immediately relinquish it. Director Gutiérrez and co-writer Doug Langdale don’t write a character capable of withstanding a gentle breeze. They’re all so thin.

Life’s got some original songs. Luna’s okay at them, but not any good. Then again, the songs aren’t good; some are better than others. All of them, much like the film itself, are tedious.

Gutiérrez’s direction peaks at middling. There are some rather poorly directed sequences; Gutiérrez’s always in a hurry like he’s convinced there’s nothing worth seeing anywhere in the film, which is funny because the production design is far more compelling than the story. Ahren Shaw’s editing doesn’t help things.

Book of Life seems like Luna’s charm will somehow carry it, but then it doesn’t. By the third act, Luna can’t hold it up anymore, not with everyone else pounding down on it.

Life’s a long ninety-five minutes.