Gregory Peck is Abraham Lincoln as Capt. Ahab in...

Moby Dick (1956) is another classic movie I never got to see. So we did. 

It starts with Richard Basehart doing "Call me Ishmael" in voice over. He heads for New Bedford, gets a bunk with Queequeg (Friedrich von Ledebur) at Peter Coffin's inn, and goes to see Orson Welles preach at the whaler's chapel. Then he and Queequeg sign on with Captain Ahab on the Pequod.

When Ahab finally emerges from his cabin (after building some suspense), he is Gregory Peck with an Abe Lincoln chinstrap beard and stovepipe hat. He offers up a Spanish gold piece to the man who first spots Moby Dick, the whale that took his leg.

The Pequod looks like a real ship, not a model or soundstage. There are a few whale hunts that appear to be real (filmed in the Madieras). Then the great white whale - a series of life-sized rubber models that are quite realistic. I liked the script (by Ray Bradbury), too. It had to rely on voice-over to wedge in some Melville, but I don't mind and I like Melville.

Unfortunately, the whole thing is scuttled by the acting, especially Peck's. We are led to believe that he held a hypnotic sway over his men, but you couldn't see it. Some of his best lines ("From Hell's heart, I stab at thee!") are sort of thrown away. Maybe Peck was trying to be restrained, but it came across to me as wooden. Richard Basehart, not a notably skilled actor, didn't really rise to the occasion either. In Ice Station Zebra, I think he was supposed to be a more or less unimaginative, solid sort. Here, he just kind of is. 

I guess director John Huston gets points for all the non-actor related stuff - this is pretty cool as an adventure movie, with some poetic touches. I also assign him the blame for the acting. 

Early Monarch

We were never big kaiju fans. We never watched modern King Kong or Godzilla remakes, like Godzilla (2014). It was Kong: Skull Island that got us interested. But that isn't why we queued up the 2014 Godzilla. We saw a preview and thought it looked fun. It wasn't until we saw "Project Monarch" on a memo that we realized.

It starts in Tokyo, with Bryan Cranston as the scientist in charge of a Japanese nuclear power station. He is concerned about odd seismographic readings, to the point of obsessions. He sends his wife (Juliette Binoche), a safety inspector, into the reactor to check it out. Then things start blowing up, and he has to lock her in the reactor, for reasons. So she dies.

In present day, Cranston's son is all grown up, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Quicksilver). He is a soldier whose deployment has just ended, letting him go home to see his wife and son. But just as he gets home, he is called to Japan because his father, now nuts, is trespassing on the closed-down reactor.

So he goes to Japan and his father convinces him to check out the reactor. They find out that it isn't radioactive - that's a cover story to conceal the fact that a giant parasite has been growing off the nuke plant's radioactivity. So Ken Watanabe and his assistant Sally Hawkins take them into the secret Monarch program, and tell him all about the nuke test at Bikini. Godzilla and the MUTOs.

There is a lot of family drama in this monster movie. Eventually, we get Godzilla fighting the MUTO parasites, and stomping on cities, etc. And the style is very modern, sort of documentary almost. (Although there was a lot of rainy night scenes to cover up the CGI.) So we liked the action, didn't take to the whole multigenerational Daddy Issues stuff. 

I don't know what the rest of the world thought, but this movie didn't really spark the whole Monsterverse thing. Everyone took a step back, and deep breath, and knocked it out of the park with the next few movies. Glad they stuck to it.

Central Tenet

The ongoing COVID health crisis prevented us from going to see Tenet (2020) in the theater. That, and the fact that we never go to movie theaters, even when there isn't a damn crisis. We don't even pay for them on streaming. We wait until Netflix gets the DVDs. This definitely lowers the stakes.

It starts with the protagonist, John David Washington, who is apparently just called "Protagonist", going into a hostage situation: Terrorists have taken over an Eastern European Opera House. Prot is part of a group going in in the uniform of the state police, but actually not. Inside, they fentantyl gas the audience (like in Moscow 2002 - it didn't work that great that time...) and start fighting. Washington meets up with someone who is moving strangely, and seems to suck a bullet out of a seat and into his gun - killing the guy in between.

After some contretemps, Michael Caine inducts Washington into Tenet, an organization based on the secret of time-reversal. He is shown several bullets that move backwards in time: They roll around on the table and then jump up into your hand. He gets sort of swishy Robert Pattinson as a handler, and a mission: To get the guy who has the McGuffin. To do that, they need to get at his wife, Elizabeth Debicky. To do that, they need to get a Goya drawing out off a Freeport storage facility...

So we're a little ways into this time-travel movie, and we find ourselves in a heist film. Here's where I am scratching my head, but, you know, it's pretty good for a heist film, so I'm rolling with it. Then a time reversed guy comes through the door and there's a big fight scene, with one guy going backwards in time, and the other going forward.

First of all, this is quite a cinematic trick. And --SPOILER-- you get the same scene later, but from the point of view of the guy going backward. I'm pretty sure this effect is the reason Christopher Nolan made this movie. Unfortunately, at least for me, watching for the first time, it just barely works. Like the Michael Bay Transformer movies (I've heard), the cutting/editing makes it too hard to follow the awesome action, so you never really quite get what's going on - except ACTION!

It isn't as bad as all that - I actually like the action. Nolan is a good director, I guess. He also got some good actors in small parts (Kenneth Branagh is the big bad). He gets a solid performance out of Washington, although he's kind of a cypher - he doesn't even get a real name. 

So this was far from our idea of Nolan's best movie. It wasn't as clever or as personal as Memento, or iconic as the Batman movies. I kind of felt the same way about Inception - looks good, nice gimmick, hollow in the center. But it turns out I kind of like that kind of movie. So no complaints - at least I didn't see it at a theater

The Giant Rat of Sumatra

We wound up watching this in a funny way: I'm a bit of a Deadhead, and I was listening to the Good Ol' Grateful Dead podcast about the song "Dire Wolf".  It seems the Jerry, Hunter and Mountain Girl were up late one night watching The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939). They speculated on what the mysterious beast could be, and MG suggested it was a Dire Wolf. That night, Hunter wrote Dire Wolf, and the rest is recording history. When I heard this, I recalled that we had seen the movie, but maybe slept through it. So I queued it up.

This is a classic Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes movie. Lionel Atwill calls on the pair with a story of the legend of the Baskervilles - how an ancient ancestor had kidnapped and abused a woman, and when she escaped, he hunted her down. But she was found killed by a great beast, who has haunted the family ever since. Atwill tells this story with such dramatic gusto, I immediately suspect him - or is he just a bit over the top?

Any way, the last Baskerville died on the moors, and the heir, Richard Greene, is coming to take over. Holmes sends Watson up to Baskerville to watch over him, then sneaks up in disguise. There is a love interest for Baskerville (Wendy Barrie, a delightful stage name), a séance, several shifty neighbors and John Carradine as a butler. 

It's a fun, campy movie, full of spooky soundstage moors and mires. It even has some action at the end. We enjoyed it a lot and we're glad we stayed awake for it. 

All the Rajah

I know I've mentioned our love for the terrible Peter Lorre Mr. Moto series. Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938) may be our favorite yet.

It starts with a woman, Rochelle Hudson, flying over Angkor Wat, then setting her plane on fire and bailing out. She lands near where Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre in lamentable yellowface) is excavating an ancient temple. There are also a couple of newsreel photographers in French Indochina on spec: Robert Kent and Chick Chandler.

They all get taken to see the Rajah, chubby J. Edward Bromberg. He is pretty well disposed towards the foreigners, but the priest, George Regas, claims they are trouble. When the Rajah's first wife dies suddenly, the priest gets the two photographers condemned to death.

As the sentence is about to be carried out, an old guru comes out of the temple to ask them to spare these men. He does a few tricks and convinces even the priest. He even pretends to be on the side of the traditional priest as opposed to the modernizing Rajah and the French. He is also clearly Mr. Moto in disguise.

It turns out Moto is on a mission to find the weapons that the priest has been stockpiling to overthrow the Rajah. He has figures out that pilot Hudson is on the same mission. As Moto, he is a slightly greasy archeologist who never gets involved with other cultures. As the guru, he is a mysterious ancient seer. He often eggs on a character in one guise while taking the opposite view in the other.

There's a good deal of action in this, plus the comic Rajah who turns out to be ahead of Moto in some ways. But I mostly liked the exotic locale, north of Angkor. There are nice touches like kris daggers, gong orchestras with Thai/Balinese dancing, etc. Even one or two Asian cast members. I'm not sure this is the first one to check out, but watch it before deciding that the series is too silly to watch.

Bingo

 The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1976) is another movie that I've known about for ever, but kind of put in a category with sports movies, or maybe barnstorming movies (The Great Waldo Pepper?). But Ms. Spenser had never heard of it and wanted to know why I was holding out on her.

It starts with newsreel footage of the actual 1930s Negro League, including Satchel Paige. We then move to Billy Dee Williams, Bingo Long, pitching for his Negro League team against slugger James Earl Jones' team. It's a wild game, with Williams sending his team off the field for his "Invite Pitch". But off the field, the team owner, Ted Ross, mistreats them, firing a batter who gets concussed by a beanball and docking everyone's pay $5 to send him back home. So Williams decides to form his own team of all stars from the Negro League: the Bingo Long Traveling etc. Since they won't be in the league, they'll have to barnstorm - travel around the country playing local high-school teams and the like. 

He doesn't have much trouble recruiting other players, including Jones. He picks up one guy because he wants to get away from the overweight man-eating team owner Mabel King. He picks Richard Pryor because he has a car. Pryor is studying Spanish and plans to sneak into the Major Leagues as Cuban. And he takes Rainbow (DeWayne Jessie), the concussed player who has been stricken mute by his injury, as batboy. 

For their first game, they ask an older black man for directions to the ball field and he tells them to do it right - go through town on mainstreet, high-steppin' and cake-walkin' - he calls it "kickin' the mule". When they try this, the white folk look suspicious and the black folk shake their heads. So they try harder, kick a little higher, swing a bat like a baton, and soon everybody is into it. There's even a song "Kick That Mule".

I'll skip over the highs and lows, the hi-jinks and the troubles. The owners association tries to get them back, and even sends thugs out after them. In the end, they play a game versus Williams' old team. Win, they join the Negro League. Lose, they go back to their old teams at half salary. You guess how it comes out.

This is very much a feel-good movie. The team gets called the N-word, but doesn't seem face real segregation - they eat, drink, and go to ball games with the white folk. Pryor gets in trouble sleeping with a white prostitute, but it was a setup by the owners thugs. And in the end, one of the team even gets scouted for the Majors. Pessimistic Jones figures the end of the color line means the death of the Negro League. Ever-optimistic Williams has great plans for the team. The movie fades to a sketch of the two and the credits role. They don't even know that WWII is right around the corner.

This is a great movie, with fine turns from Williams, Jones and the rest of the cast. There is some goofy clowning on and off the field, and it doesn't seem like there's any problem Bingo can't work around. Racism was a fact of life, but not something that could crush a man's soul. Maybe a bit of a fantasy, but who doesn't like fantasy? 

Ice Stripes

I've mentioned that Ms. Spenser likes horror movies. Did I mention she likes Arctic movies too? She also likes Patrick McGoohan - we've been watching The Prisoner. That's how she found out about Ice Station Zebra (1968), and she asked me to queue it up.

It starts with a group of Soviets and a group of Americans watching a satellite re-enter the atmosphere and land in the Arctic, where one man goes to pick it up, while another lurks. It cuts to star submarine captain Rock Hudson meeting Admiral Lloyd Nolan incognito in a pub in Scotland. He gets secret orders to rescue the crew of a weather station near the North Pole. The satellite is not discussed.

Before they take off, they take on a mysterious team member, Patrick McGoohan. He gives his name as "Jones" and refuses politely to give any other information. He is tense and sweaty and almost kills his roommate when he is woken up suddenly. After they are underway, a helicopter delivers two others: Russian spy (working for the West) Ernest Borgnine. He is as cheerful and talkative as McGoohan is tightlipped. The other is the supremely bad-ass Jim Brown, who will be commanding the squad of Marines on board. 

Soon, they are in Arctic waters. There is some great scenes of a (model) sub under the ice, all blue light and icy canyons. Hudson tries to break through the ice but can't find a thin enough spot. This is about the only characterization he gets - he is a steady commander, but sometimes finds himself helpless against the elements. 

He tries to torpedo the ice, but there is sabotage. When they finally get to the surface, they have to hike to the station, and there is one of those crevasse scenes. One of the roped-together crew falls in, pulling another one in, while another tries to hold them up, then falls in until there are like seven people down there. Then the ice starts shifting and closing in on them... Very tense. I think one of my friends saw this when I was a kid and told me all about this scene.

Actually, this movie has a lot of tension. McGoohan being all twitchy is fun, and contrasts nicely with his always cool No. 6. Borgnine is pretty hard to buy as a Russian, but his chatty, inoffensive style of spycraft is fun. Jim Brown doesn't get enough to do, but does it all very well. The sub sets are pretty cool, especially when it's full of sailors, marines, and spies. The real and model exterior shots are all cool as well.

This was directed by John Sturges (The Great Escape), based on the book by Alistair MacLean (Where Eagles Dare). If those credentials sound good, you'll like this. But, hey, you probably have already seen this.

Mother Night

I've been trying to watch Remember the Night (1940) for a couple of years, but this is the first Christmas it has been available. Last year, we watched I'll Be Seeing You under the impression that it was this movie. After all, they are both about women released from prison to go home to their small home towns.

Remember stars Barbara Stanwyck as a classy woman a little down on her luck. She steals a bracelet from a 5th Ave jewelry store and tries to hock it on 3rd. She is promptly arrested. Her trial is prosecuted by hot-shot Fred MacMurray. Since it is just before Christmas, he knows the jury will be sympathetic, so he gets the trial held over to bring in expert testimony. He realizes that this means Stanwyck will be in jail over the holidays, so he gets her bailed out, then goes home to get ready to drive home to Ma's farm in Indiana.

The bondsman thinks he is bailing her out for non-humanitarian reasons, and delivers her to MacMurray's apartment, where his man, Fred 'Snowflake' Toones, seems to have the same idea. MacMurray feels sorry for her (but not exactly responsible), and offers her a nice dinner. So they go out, have some dinner, dance a little and talk. When he discovers that she is a Hoosier, too, he offers to drop her off to see her mom.

They have an eventful trip, and wind up running off the road in Pennsylvania and sleeping in a farmer's field. In the morning, the farmer gets nasty and runs them into the sheriff for trespassing and breaking his fence. MacMurray trues to joke his way out, but Stanwyck is more practical. She lights the wastebasket on fire and they run out. Now they are fugitives.

In a chilling scene, Stanwyck's mom, Georgia Caine, calls her evil and won't have her in her house. MacMurray defends her and invites her to his Ma's. Ma, Beulah Bondi, her spinster sister, Elizabeth Patterson, and MacMurray's somewhat dim cousin, Sterling Holloway (!) all greet her warmly and include her in the festivities. But MacMurray has to be honest with his mother and tells her about Stanwyck's past.

By the end of the holiday, they are clearly getting closer. But before they can come clean about their feelings, Ma has to have a talk with Stanwyck. She says she can see how they look at each other, but she also knows neither she nor Stanwyck would ever want to hurt MacMurray, with her past and his job... It's a stunning scene, with Bondi holding Stanwyck tenderly, speaking sweetly and telling her to gets lost almost as brutally as her own mother did. Maybe more, because Stanwyck feels it is true.

They drive home to New York through Canada (to avoid Pennsylvania, where they are fugitives. In Niagra Falls, MacMurray tries to convince her to jump bail and stay in Canada. When she refuses, he asks her to marry him right there. She turns this down as well, but since they are already in Niagra Falls, maybe they can have a honeymoon. Racy stuff. 

In the end, MacMurray tries to throw the trial by being too hard on her, to make the jury more sympathetic. But she cracks and changes her plea to guilty. So she will serve her time, and if MacMurray is still waiting, he can marry her when she gets out.

Directed by Michael Leisen, this was written by Preston Sturges, and it has a bit of that flavor. MacMurray is a standup guy, not mean or selfish, but he's kind of oblivious - at first, Stanwyck is just another statistic. Then, at dinner, he treats her like a social acquaintance, forgetting that he is going to try to imprison her after the holidays. Stanwyck is a bit of free spirit, a bit of a realist. She doesn't feel guilt the same way as other people, says she is just wired different. I don't know if this is true. 

I loved this, but Ms. Spenser couldn't get over the 1 or 2 scenes where Snowflake's character (who is black) is portrayed as a clown. It wasn't great, but on the other hand, he is pretty good at clowning. Sterling Holloway, of course, is best - and he gets to deliver a beautiful rendition of the song, "At the End of a Perfect Day."

Slow Zombies

I have told you that Ms. Spenser likes scary movies, and I don't. One of the ways I've been compromising is with horror-comedy, but I just realized something: they don't count. That is, she doesn't mind horror-comedies, but considers them comedies, not horror movies. Still, if they are good, she still likes them as comedies. Thus, Cockneys vs Zombies (2012).

It starts on a construction site, where workers find a vault sealed by Charles II in 1661. It's full of skeletons, and one of them bites a workers, starting a zombie infestation. But we are really interested in Rasmus Hardiker and Harry Treadway, two cockney youths who plan to rob a bank. They need the money so that their granddad's old age home won't be demolished. We meet his granddad, played by Alan Ford, looking and sounding very Michael Caine, his sort-of girlfriend Honor Blackman, and the whole crew, gathered round the piano singing "Knees Up Mother Brown". They are a rowdy, feisty lot.

Meanwhile, Hardiker and Treadaway pick up the other gang members: Their cousin Michelle Ryan, a not-very bright security expert and convicted thief played by Jack Doolan, and Mental Mickey (Ashley Thomas), a heavily armed Iraq war vet with anger management issues and a plate in his head. 

They dress in construction worker outfits and enter the bank, where the manager assumes they are part of a pickup for the money the construction company. She's about to hand over a million pounds, but gets suspicious, so Mental Mickey hauls out a gun and takes her and another banker hostage. 

But when they leave the bank, they find desolation - OK, it's East London, so maybe it always looks like that. But there are zombies wandering around, so our friends need to get out fast. They bring the hostages to a warehouse, but there are zombies everywhere. They are slow and stupid, but there are a lot of them. Mickey gets bit, but he still wants to hold onto the hostages.

And now the zombies are menacing the old folks. Alan Ford is pretty tough - he fought in WWII. But they aren't armed, and most of them are only partially ambulatory. Will they hold out until the kids get it together?

And so on. This is a fun movie, not hilarious, but cute - sort of like Juan of the Dead. Plus one of the old geezers keeps using cockney rhyming slang that none of the other cockneys have ever heard. So, even though I can't count it as a horror movie, Ms. Spenser was happy with the choice.

Not Brand-X

I'm old, so to me, the X-Men are the original five: Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Angel, and Jean Grey. I had never even heard of Wolverine until the movies. But a few years ago, I got a big iPad and a subscription to the Marvel U and read most of the New Mutants run. So I was ready for the movie The New Mutants (2020).

It starts with Blu Hunt running from her house as it is destoyed from within. Her father encourages her to run, then gets killed. She passes out as the monster approached and wakes up strapped to a hospital bed in a sort of old-fashioned hospital. It turns out to be run by Alice Braga, who is sympathetic but strict. She doesn't really explain anything, but invites Blu to a group therapy session where she meets the other inmates.

• Maisie Williams, a shy but sweet Scots girl 
• Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things), a West Virginia bad boy with a broken arm and trucker hat. I kept thinking it was a strangely de-aged Kevin Bacon until Ms. Spenser told me who it was.
• Henry Zaga, an egotistical Brazilian
• Anya Taylor-Joy (Emma.), a very sarcastic Russian. She has a plush puppet dragon, named Lockheed (after Kitty Pryde's dragon)

The session doesn't go well, and Blu isn't very happy, so she tries to run away. At Taylor-Joy's urging, she runs full-tilt into a force field. When she tries to fight Taylor-Joy, she discovers her power - she can vanish and teleport. As is the current convention, super-hero names are rarely mentioned, but she is Illyana Rasputin, Magik.

Also, a wolf running nearby hints at Maisie Williams power - she's a werewolf.

We also see Heaton tethered to a concrete block, zooming around like a tetherball - he's Cannonball.

The idea is that this hospital (Medfield State Hospital, also seen in Shutter Island) is for the training of mutants whose powers are dangerous or out of control. It slowly becomes clear that the monster that destroyed her village, the Demon Bear, was summoned by her, leaving her wracked with guilt. She tries to kill herself, but Maisie talks her out of it, and they become friends and soon, lovers. But more and more the kids are menaced by creatures out of their nightmares. 

The story is that if they learn to control their powers, they can join the X-Men. But Dr. Braga doesn't seem to be that trustworthy or sympatico. She keeps referring to them as "patients" in a condescending way. Finally, she gets instructions from her superiors (NOT Prof. X) that Blu is too dangerous, and must be put down. That triggers worse monsters, because her power is to manifest people's worst fears -including her own fear of demon bear. 

There are strong elements of horror in this version of the story. The decrepit hospital, the monsters from the id, the evil doctor who wants to control or kill. There's even a scene in the closed school pool, like in It Follows. But it's fairly light, as horror goes. The lesbian love theme is also not really pounded on. It's mostly just a regular superhero origin story. 

This movie had a rough production history, with years of anticipation, false starts, new directions, and so on - finally being released into the mouth of the COVID lockdown. It was, as far as I can tell, completely ignored. But I liked it. Blu and Maisie had a tough sweetness, and Anya T-J is a great bad-ass Illyana. Heaton gets an interesting back story - I know his as a goofy farmboy, but here he killed his father and a bunch of miners going off underground. Zaga doesn't get much more than a moment, but maybe that's for the best. 

I'm guessing that this will be a one-off, which is too bad. I wouldn't mind seeing them, and maybe a couple more members in later movies. 

Tales of Brave Ulysses, That Jerk

A film about Ulysses (1954) with Kirk Douglas in the leading role? That pretty much launched the peplum (sword and sandal) craze? Sign me up!

It starts with Silvana Mangano as Penelope, suffering the suitors as she wove and unraveled her tapestry, along with old Mentor and young Telemachus. Then we find Douglas as Ulysses, washing up on shore, all by himself. He has lost his memory, but is comforted by Rossana Podesta as Nausicaa. At this point, I'm a little miffed - the Odyssey is almost over. But after they fall in love and are about to be married, he gazes out to sea and remembers.

We get a quick rundown on the Trojan Horse, then the men set sail for home. But since they defiled the temple of Poseidon, their ship is thrown off course. Desperate for supplies, they find an island with a cave filled with sheep and set to work on them. This is, of course, the cave of the Cyclops, who eats one of them and traps the rest. Ulysses does the wine and blinding trick, but not the "My name is No Man" gag. Too bad, it's a favorite.

We also get the adventure of the Sirens and Circe's Isle (with Silvana Mangana also as Circe). Meanwhile, Anthony Quinn shows up as Antinous to woo Penelope, and he isn't some rude jerk - he's a powerful warlord who gets what he wants. 

When Ulysses finally gets back to Ithaca, though, watch out.

Once I realized that this story would be told largely in flashback, I settled down - of course the Odyssey traditionally has a full recap of the story every now and then, so that fits. I liked the the whole sword and sandals spectacle, especially the Cyclops, which was directed by Mario Bava, uncredited. Unfortunately, I didn't like wily Ulysses. His outright theft of the sheep, his years of dalliance with various babes on islands when he should have been attending to business - I suppose some of this was to show that things were different then, and some was in the original material. But it all left kind of a bad taste in my mouth. And it was worse for Ms. Spenser, who found the whole thing annoying.  

Annus Horribilis

2067 (2020) is a low-budget time-travel film, that, like at least one character, makes every mistake. 

It is set in the year Eponymous. The world has gone to hell, with all plant life wiped out. That drastically reduces the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, so people have to use artificial oxygen. That's my first gripe. Artificial oxygen isn't and shouldn't be a thing. It's just a simple atom or two. But the artificial stuff is bad for you, and can give you the Sickness. This trope isn't stupid, but it isn't what I want right now.

It stars Kodi Smit-McPhee (the latest Nightcrawler) as a tunnel worker, maintaining the dangerous and clunky yet high-tech nuclear power system. I guess that's a trope I have no real problem with. He has a wife he dearly loves (Sana'a Shaik) who is coming down with the Sickness. 

Then he gets a call from ChronoCorp, the corporation that runs everything. From its name you might guess it has something to do with time travel, and you would be right. But so far, they have only sent something into the future, and that was when Kodi was a kid. Not much to base a corporate empire on.

Kodi has a grudge against time travel and his dad. You see, he used to love his scientist father - he wanted to grow up to be a "science man". Then one day, his father came home, and locked a bracelet on his wrist, one that drew blood and had a red LED. Then his father disappeared for a while, then called his mother to meet him somewhere dodgy, leading her to get killed (we don't learn this all at once). Well done, science man.

It turned out his father went forward in time with the upstream time machine, which then failed. He might have been a rotten father, but wasn't very good at science either? But now, with Kodi all grown up, the time machine in 2067 receives a message, saying "Send Ethan Whyte", Kodi's character. 

Kodi is completely against this, wanting to stay with his sick wife, not abandon her like his dad. But she convinces him to go into the future and send back a cure. Of course everyone assumes there is a cure in the future, not like, some new plants or something.

And when he gets to the future, he finds a lush jungle, but everyone is dead. There's so much oxygen that all his equipment burns up. (Nice touch, I'll grant that.) In short order, he poisons himself on mushrooms, and his buddy Ryan Kwanten pops out of the time machine to save him. The time machine that could only send ONE person. So they just changed their story - it could only send two people.

Anyway, is he here to help Kodi? Kodi has found a skeleton of himself with a bullet through the skull, and Kwanten has the only gun. But wait, how did they get into the past for Kodi to get shot? Never mind.

As you can tell, I was kind of annoyed by this movie. The design was good - director Seth Larney did visual effects for a Matrix sequel and an X-Men movie. The acting was fine, although it gets a little fraught in the climactic crazy scenes. But the plot is just all over the place. The whole father thing, the artificial oxygen, the clunky time travel, just a mess. At least it looked good.

King of Hearts of Darkness

Although I'd heard a lot about how terrible Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration (1980) is, one or two good mentions and I put it on the queue. Maybe I'm just not ready to watch The Exorcist.

It is set in a castle in Oregon (shot in Hungary, because PepsiCo was funding, and had some money there they couldn't get out). This castle was being used as an asylum for soldiers driven mad by the Vietnam War. The opening scenes show Sergeant Tom Atkins trying to get the motley crew of crazily dressed soldiers to line up at attention. Arriving is Stacey Keach, the new commanding officer and chief psychiatrist of this madhouse. He seems withdrawn and melancholy, but is willing to humor the men.

And what a wacky assortment: Moses Gunn thinks he's Superman. Joe Spinell is staging Shakespeare with dogs. Scott Wilson was an astronaut who had a screaming panic attack just before his launch. And the psychiatrist, Ed Flanders, is just about as bad, walking around with no pants because the patients took his only clean pair. 

So the first half is about the kooky goings-on in Castle Nutbar. But Keach is slowly coming out of his shell. He talks a little about his brother, a vicious killer, "Killer" Kane, now dead. Then a new soldier is admitted and recognized Keach as "Killer" Kane. Flanders ("Hi-diddly-ho!") explains that Kane is the killer, who decapitated enemy soldiers in Vietnam. He had a breakdown and believes he is his brother, who is a psychiatrist - wanting to heal people, not kill them, And yes, Flanders is actually Keach's brother, which almost explains why they are letting him get away with all this.

Then it gets dark. But not the way I expected. You see, this being Peter Blatty, I assumed that the occult would make an appearance. Probably involving ancient evil beings living on the moon that the astronaut was so afraid of. But - SPOILER - no. The evil is all in the hearts of men.

When I was in high school, our psych class went to see King of Hearts, about an Allied soldier who comes upon an Italian town that the fascists have retreated from. But first they let out the inmates of the local sanitarium. You see, war is madness, and in war, madmen are the only sane ones, etc. I might have bought this as a high-school kid, but not anymore. Insanity, and in particular, "battle fatigue" doesn't work that way. Of course, they might have been malingering. The castle was a pretty good deal.

Anyway. I mainly wanted to see it for Tom Atkins ("Thrill me!"). And he was barely in it.

No Tribble at All

Save Yourselves! (2020) is a pretty timely movie. The concept it simple: a couple goes to the woods for a digital detox, and doesn't realize that the aliens have conquered the earth while they were away.

It stars Sunita Mari and John Paul Reynolds as a typical high-tech couple. They are always exhausted from their (undefined) high-tech jobs, so they spend all their time staring at their phones. One night they meet up with their much more cool friend, who gave up his job in venture capital to 3D print surf boards in Nicaragua. He offers to let them borrow his upstate cabin to get away from it all. 

They promise they will turn off their phones when they get there. And as they drive up, we notice, but they don't, that odd things are falling from the sky. Then, while Reynolds is trying to figure out man things like chopping wood, Mari sneaks a glance at her phone. She has a lot of messages - mostly panicked texts from her mother about something on the news. But she's always upset about something in the news. When Reynolds comes back in, she hides her phone and they go back to having relationship discussions. 

But in the morning, they discover that all the liquor is gone, and the sourdough starter too. Also, the big round fuzzy pillow they have been calling a pouffe as moved. Mari breaks down and admits that she checked her phone, and when they both do, they find out that alien invaders, who live off ethanol and look like big tribbles, have conquered the earth.

So they fight some of the aliens, and try to escape, but the pouffes have drunk all the cars gas for the ethanol. The cabin has a diesel car, so they do get away - only to spot another car being attacked by pouffes. They can't save anyone in the car, except a baby. They don't want to save it, but they do. And then another survivor steals their car.

Carless and stuck with a baby, they wander into the woods. When they try to change the baby, the smell sends them into sick hallucinations for a while. Yet somehow they survive, but not save themselves. 

This was somewhat funny, but suffered from a common problem - unlikable leads. Reynolds and Mari play completely un-self-aware characters, who really can barely relate to each other. Mari wants to do relationship quizzes she downloaded from online. Reynolds wants to do ... something ... Maybe start a community garden. They aren't evil or spectacularly selfish, but they aren't much fun to be around. And it isn't very funny, just kind of real. The space aliens are more fun, for sure.

Wild Again

Theodora Goes Wild/Together Again (1936) is a nice Irene Dunne double bill. Theodora might have been the first movie I saw at the Stanford Theater, and this was my first time for Together.

In Theodora Goes Wild, Dunne is Theodora, the respectable daughter of a family of small-town Connecticut big shots. Secretly, she is also the author of a scandalous best-seller, which the newspaper is serializing, and the literary society (of which she is a member) deplores. 

She visits New York to see her rakish uncle Robert Grieg, but also to see her publisher. Hanging around the office is Melvyn Douglas, a sort of hanger-on who always shows up uninvited when there's a chance of free food. He accuses Dunne of being a prude who doesn't know anything about the lurid life she writes about. To prove him wrong, she has him take her out carousing.

There's a great couple of nightclub scenes, including a hula show, but she manages to survive and make it back to her respectable Connecticut home. But look who's coming up the sidewalk? It's Douglas, pretending to be a tramp looking for work. To keep her secret, she has to offer him a gardening job and a bed in the shed out back.

So Douglas is hanging around, being annoying (he whistles constantly, making sure Dunne can't ignore him). But of course, through all of this she is slowly falling in love with him. He encourages her to stop living according to other people's expectations and live her own life. Which she finally does - telling everyone in the literary society that she wrote that book, and that she is in love with the gardener.

But instead of being the happy ending, Douglas gets quiet and sour and disappears. So in the next act, Dunne hunts him up in New York. It turns out that he is married (unhappily) and he can't get divorced because his father is running for office. So Dunne moves into his apartment and starts tormenting him. It's a nice twist.

Together Again (1944) is set in another small town, with Dunne again one of the first citizens. Here she is the widowed wife of a much beloved mayor, with a teenaged daughter (Mona Freeman) who dotes on a statue of her father in the park, and shows distain for her boyfriend.

When lightning strikes the head off of the statue, Dunne travels to New York to hire a sculptor to make a new one. She finds Charles Boyer. He takes her out for some gay nightlife, including a visit to a strip club. When she spills something on her dress, a washroom attendant has her take it off to touch it up. And then the police raid the joint, a stripper grabs her dress and jumps out the window, and she gets photographed in her slip (fortunately with her hand in front of her face).

She goes back to her town, and finds that they have all seen the picture of the raid in the papers. She tells everyone that the sculptor is too busy, and by the way, he's old and ugly. Then he shows up. He even moves into her shed to work on the sculpture. There's a merry mix up with the daughter setting her hat for Boyer, which makes Dunne pretend to go for her boyfriend. All the while, Charles Coburn, the dead mayor's father, is trying to get Dunne to be a human and marry Boyer.

Pretty similar to Theodora - there's even a newspaper editor subplot in both. But in place of the twist where Dunne tortures Douglas, we have the cross-generational mixup, which frankly belongs in a 50s TV sit-com. Still, there's a lot to like about it, even if it isn't quite the classic Theodora is. It does have Charles Coburn, plus the washroom attendant is Nina Mae McKinney, a beautiful black woman who get very few roles. . 

Skunk-Ape!

The concept behind Monster Beach Party (2005) - a 1950s-style teensploitation monster movie can be made just as cheaply in the 2000s.

It stars Claire Johnson, Cynthia Evans, and Mary Kraft as a Bangles/Go-Gos 80s girl group (that's a lot of decades...), the Violas. The movie starts with them singing "Shout, Stomp, Scream". After the show, when they are loading up their gear, a fan (Travis Young) tries to chat them up, but they politely blow him off. 

Meanwhile, two deputies in a small beach town are investigating a call about a smelly pile of debris on the beach. They find a small girl wandering with a dazed expression and discover her family brutally killed. The girl won't speak, until she screams: "Them!".

Wait, no, that's Them!

One deputy calls in his nephew, Jonathan Michael Green, who is a scientist, to help out.

Anyhow, the next day we find the Violas cruising along in their aqua station wagon on their way to a gig in Florida. Their car breaks down outside the very town the killings took place in, and get a ride into town by the (very handsome) scientist. And it turns out the town's garage is owned by Young, the fan from the last gig. The girls don't really want to stay in a town with mysterious murders going on, but they don't have any money to fix the car. Young offers to fix it in exchange for them playing at his party that night. The Florida gig is cancelled due to hurricane, I think - which isn't a plot point, but it should have been.

It's no spoiler to let on that the killings are caused by a bipedal cryptid, known to folklore as a Skunk-Ape, a smelly sasquatch. It's also not much of a spoiler if I tell you Claire Johnson, the guitarist and lead singer of the Violas, has sworn off men, but is getting interested in Young. It would be a spoiler to tell you why she swore off men, but they reveal it in a song ("He gave her syph-syph-syph-syphilis...").

I was prepared not to be impressed by this movie. The Coming Attractions on the disc looked terrible. But it was actually a lot of fun and kind of sweet. The Violas are a decent band, and I loved the great psychedelic rave-up at the end of "Hands OFf My Man." Maybe not as great as the Del-Aires in Horror of Party Beach (the first horror-musical), but who are? The men who court Johnson are all respectful, not gross. The sheriff and his deputies are almost as much fun as Ed Wood's cops. All in all, I recommend it. 

Go Take a Flying Dutchman

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) seems to be well known and well loved (I read about it in Farran Nehme's blog. But it took Netflix a long time to serve up. Once it came off of the Saved list, I ordered it up.

It was made on location on the coast of Spain. Some fishermen are chatting in dialect when they find something washed up on the beach - two bodies, a man and a woman. English ex-pat archeologist Harold Warrender, who has been watching from his villa, tells us the story.

Eva Gardner plays Pandora, a nightclub signer and playgirl. Warrender flashes back to an evening in a restaurant when a young poet (Marius Goring), desperately in love with her, kills himself when she won't marry him. She doesn't exactly laugh it off, but it doesn't seem to affect her deeply, either.

One of the other men hopelessly in love with her is Nigel Patrick, a racecar driver aiming to beat the land speed record. She lets him take her driving in his racecar, and they park overlooking the ocean. She asks him what he would sacrifice for her. When he says "anything", she asks him to push his car over the cliff. He does and she agrees to marry him.

But on their way home, after meeting with Warrender, she spots a yacht offshore. When the men decline to row her out to it to meet the owner, she strips naked and swims out. There, soaking wet and wrapped in a sail cover, she meets this mysterious man. It is James Mason, a Dutch ship-owner, painting a portrait of a woman in the style of de Cirico (although it was actually painted by Man Ray) - a rather stiff woman on a perspective-lined plain. The woman has Pandora's face.

So Gardner and Mason begin to fall in love, although she has already promised to marry Patrick. Warrender, the archeologist, asks Mason for some help on translating an old Dutch journal, which turns out to be the journal of the Flying Dutchman - a sailor who killed his wife and blasphemed against God. He was cursed to sail the seas eternally, allowed to land every 7 years. In that time, if he can find a woman willing to die for him, he can be set free. Guess who turns out to be the Dutchman? And who will sacrifice herself for him? It's no spoiler, it's the movie's opening scene.

This is an incredibly lush and romantic movie. It was directed by Albert Lewin (Picture of Dorian Grey) but Jack Cardiff was the cinematographer. Lewin supplied the symbolism and surrealism (he was a collector of modern art) and Cardiff the rich technicolor, and a few process shots. 

This is also a somewhat silly movie, with quotes from the Rubaiyat (the Moving Finger verse) and made up quotes from Greek philosophers. There is even a bullfighter, one of Gardner's conquests, come back to claim her. But I, at least, got swept up in the passion and the grandeur. Or maybe I just like Ava Gardner's face, like everyone else. 

Ghost Wife

Extra Ordinary (2019) almost fits into our Heavy Metal Horror Comedy festival - missing the Heavy Metal though. 

It stars Maeve Higgins, an ordinary, heavy-set Irish woman who has a one-woman driving school. She gets home to listen to her voice mails - her outgoing messages tells callers to leave a message if they want driving lessons, but not about "that other thing" - she doesn't do that any more. That other thing turns out to be laying ghosts to rest. Her dad was a ghost expert with a line of VHS lectures, who was killed in an exorcism gone wrong that Higgins blames herself for.

Meanwhile, Barry Ward is at home getting ready for work, and being haunted by the ghost of his dead wife. Ward is also an ordinary guy, a woodworking instructor named Martin Martin (possibly because he is sort of playing Martin Freeman - the same kind of slightly annoyed everyman). His teen daughter, Claudia O'Doherty, wants him to find a ghost expert to get her mom laid to rest. Having a ghost around is kind of annoying.

The last thread involves Will Forte, as the singer of the one-hit wonder "Cosmic Lady". He needs another hit and the only way to get it is to sacrifice a verge to Satan. His virgin detector leads him to O'Doherty.

So Ward tries to get Higgins to deal with his dead wife, while Forte is scheming to get at O'Doherty. Higgins is also kind of falling for Ward - or at least wouldn't mind if he took an interest in her. She also needs to team up with him, because he can detect ghosts. He will let the ghosts inhabit his body, and then she can lay them, releasing them from this plane. One problem that arises - Ward's wife inhabits his body, and she's an evil-tempered, chain-smoking shrew, who thinks Higgins is a loose hussy after her Martin. 

The humor in this comedy is mostly mild and situational. Higgins' single woman with father issues gets interesting when ghosts are added to the mix. Ward's absolutely ordinary life with a ghost wife is cute too. This kind of low-key deadpan humor suits Will Forte of course, as well. The main joke is that these people are extremely ordinary - extra ordinary. 

SPOILER - it has a happy ending: Higgins doesn't marry Ward.

Dystopian Roller Disco

I had never heard of Solarbabies (1986) when I heard its How Did This Get Made episode (now behind paywall?). It sounded bonkers - but the back story is maybe even better.

The capsule description is teen roller-skaters in post-apocalyptic dystopia meet mystic orb. It takes place in a future where the rains have stopped and water scarcity controls the populace. All children are rounded up and placed into militaristic orphanages. We meet our heroes playing a late night game of centrifugal bumble-puppy - or maybe it's skate lacrosse: two teams on skates with hockey sticks with cups on the blade. You have to pick up the ball and deposit it in a central basket. This is done with much care and very little athleticism. 

Anyway, the orphanage heat, known as the ePolice, show up and our team scatters into the mines they are skating around. By the way, there are a lot of "eSomethings" in this movie, but it stands for "eco". not "electronic". The young deaf team mascot, Lukas Haas, discovers a glowing orb that seems to talk to him, and also cures his deafness. This orb is called Bodhi, which he pronounces to rhyme with "Lodi". He makes this point several times, but it isn't any kind of plot point. He takes this back to the barracks. 

Somehow, the faux-Native American kid, Darkstar (Adrian Pasdar) steals the orb to take back to his gypsy tribe. The voice in his head tells Haas to go rescue the orb. And so our gang goes after him. Although the land is supposed to be a lifeless desert, they do meet up with a number of communities, although none are as colorful as Bartertown.

I haven't mentioned many of the actors involved, because they seem to be pretty much non-entities. The Girl in the group is Jami Gertz. The slightly sympathetic warden of the orphanage is a sweaty Charles Durning. That's about it. 

Now, the backstory. The podcasters got an interview with producer Mel Brooks - yes, that one. It was one of his first projects, and looked like a nice, cheap script for a first time director Alan Johnson. Because Johnson was a first-timer, his costs spun out of control, and Brooks wound up mortgaging his house and putting up a ton of his own money to finish the movie. He wound up $9 million in the hole. But there's a happy ending: little by little over the years, the residuals have come in, and he figures that he finally broke even. 

So go out and buy a copy - Brooks could use the dough.

The Man and Then the Lady Vanishes

Not sequels to the recent Leigh Whannel movie, we watched an invisible black and white double bill: The Invisible Man Returns / The Invisible Woman (1940).

Returns stars Vincent Price, a beloved owner of a coal mine. He is in prison for the murder of his brother. At the last minute, his friend, the Invisible Man's brother John Sutton, slips him the potion, allowing him to escape. Invisible Price flees naked to be with his betrothed, Nan Grey. Then he sets out to find the true murderer. But will he be able to before the invisibility drives him mad?

Chief suspects include Alan Napier (Alfred the butler) and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, while Cecil Kellaway plays the police detective looking for Price. We enjoyed this, although it is a little busy. Also, a disappointingly happy ending. Not much of a horror movie at all.

Woman is definitely not a horror movie - it's straight up comedy. John Howard is a playboy, spending vast sums of money to make women go away. He also supports the sciences, as in mad sciences. He pays John Barrymore to do unspecified research. But when his account Charles Ruggles tells him he is broke, he has to tell Barrymore that the experiments are over.

However, Barrymore has discovered the secret of invisibility, which will make Howard a fortune. They just need a human guinea pig. Virginia Bruce, recently unemployed model, answers the advert. However, as soon as she's invisible, she heads out to torment her old boss, Charles Lane. 

Meanwhile, gangster Oscar Homolka and his thugs Shemp Howard, Ed Brophy,  and Donald MacBride steal the invisibility machine. The effects have worn off for Bruce, but she discovers that alcohol, applied topically or ingested, brings it back. So it thugs vs. invisible drunk woman. 

You might have noticed a pretty formidable lineup of character actors in this (as in the previous), but aside from Barrymore, they don't have much to do. Bruce is beautiful, but I'm not sure she's a great comedian. The writing is pretty scattershot, anyway. So this was a bit of a bagatelle. Not great but fun enough. 

Very Nice?

We watched Nomad (2005) mainly for Mark Dacascos, one of our favorite martial artists. It's too bad, he is barely recognizable in it. But it was worth watching for the novelty: a movie about the Kazakh national hero myth, filmed in Kazahkstan in the Kazakh language.

It starts with wandering wise man Jason Scott Lee looking for the child of prophecy, who can unite the tribes of the Kazakh people to fight the Jungars. The Kazakhs are too independent to get together like that, but Lee sets up a warrior school for the prophetic child and the children from all the other tribes. The child, Kuno Becker, is best buds with another kid, Jay Hernandez. They grow up together, fight together, and are the strongest and fastest of their little group. They are also both sweet on Dilnaz Akhmadieva.

It all culminates with a big Jungar attack on Turkestan, the Kazakh fortified city. There's lots of extras, lots of action, etc.

In fact, the whole movie is full of action, beautiful scenery, and good looking actors. It's a little short on acting and writing. I also had a hard time with the whole Chosen One narrative. When Hernandez wants to be recognized, everyone is like - no, Becker is the chosen one, just support him, OK? Mostly, it seems like Kazakhs are kind of jerks.

I haven't seen any Borat, so I'm not being influenced by his Kazakhstan. And this isn't a bad B-grade action/martial arts/costume drama. The setting is new and interesting, and it's fun to hear the movie in Kazakh with subtitles. But it just isn't great.

Oh, and Mark Dacascos? He plays the villain and gets killed pretty early on, with no really good fight scenes. Tough luck.

Fisher Queen

I don't know if there are any fans for Phryne Fisher out there, but for you, Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020) is a must.

If you don't know, Phryne Fisher is the star of a series of mystery novels written by Kerry Greenwood, and the TV series based on them, starring Essie Davis. The series is set in Australia, between the wars. Ms. Fisher is a somewhat older flapper from a Bohemian family who inherited a lot of money when WWI killed off most of her richer relatives. She lives the life of a wild adventuress, solving crimes and bedding lovers, with the help of her maid Dot, her commie union red ragger mates Bert and Cec, Constable Hugh, who is Dot's fiancee and the handsome but grumpy Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page) - who has been very slowly falling for her.

But this movie starts in the Palestine, under the British mandate (shooting Australia for Middle East, I think). Miss Fisher (Davis) is retrieving the daughter of a sheik who lives in England, and is a friend of a friend of Miss Fisher. The daughter is suspected of political intrigue, but Miss Fisher just busts her out. She makes it safely away, but Miss Fisher is killed in the attempt.

Very sad. There's a funeral in England, and Dot is pregnant by Hugh, and can't attend. Neither can Bert or Cec - they're just workers, not the type to go flying to England. Sadly, that's the last we see of them in this movie at least. But Robinson does go.

When he gets there, the funeral is buzzed by a small airplane, which lands on the grounds, and the pilot is - Phryne Fisher of course! No explanation for how she escaped or why she played dead, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is that Robinson is very put out. He came all the way for a funeral and what does he get?

But no matter how mad he gets, he has to back up Miss Fisher when it looks like she's going to get into trouble. So he joins her on this preposterous adventure. It winds its way through England and back to the Palestine, with ancient amulets and astrolabes and the extremely made up crypt of tears. 

Now, this whole movie is full of nonsense - made up legends, a setting fraught with political intrigue that is ignored to focus on the made up stuff, obvious but poorly motivated villains, etc. But it does have Essie Davis and Nathan Page doing their thing as Jack and Phryne. And Davis is wonderful. She is blithe, fearless and sexy, even though she is a bit too old to be a Bright Young Thing. It may be that Davis is getting too old for the part - but that's part of the allure. She is ageless, and even death doesn't slow her down. 

I kind of doubt that you would get much out of this without having watched the series (and possibly reading the novels). But if you're a fan, you'll want to watch this. Even if you can't buy the nonsense, the final kiss makes it all worthwhile.

Horror Strikes Out!

It's a new film quiz! This one looks very tricky - it's baseball-horror themed, and I don't know anything about baseball.

1) Ricky Vaughan or Nuke LaLoosh? (question courtesy of our main Maine monster, Patrick Robbins)

I said, I don't know anything about baseball! But you've got to love a name like Nuke LaLoosh.

2) Best moment in the Friday the 13th film series.

Also, I've never watched any Friday the 13th films.

3) Henry Hull or Oliver Reed?

Uncle Frank and Athos - Oliver Reed.

4) What is the last movie you saw in a theater?

In the pandemic?!? Just joking, we don't go to movie theaters.

5) Best movie casting for a real-life baseball player, or best casting of a real-life baseball player in a movie.

Gary Cooper in Damn Yankees. What - I told you know don't know anything about baseball or baseball movies.

6) D.B. Sweeney or Ray Liotta?

Haven't seen Sweeney in anything, as far as I can tell. Ray Liotta has a small part in Smokin' Aces, so him.

7) Given that the fear factor in 2020 is already alarmingly high, is there a film or a genre which you would hesitate to revisit right now?

Although Ms. Spenser like horror more than me, she goes pretty easy on me. So most of what we've watched we would watch again (if it was good). 

Sometimes movies with crowds make me a little nervous, but it's not that bad,

8) The Natural (1984)-- yes or no?

Did not see.

9) Peter Cushing or Colin Clive?

Clive for Dr. Frank, Cushing for body of work.

10) What’s the lamest water-cooler hit you can think of? Of course, define “lamest” however you will, but for “water-cooler hit” Dr. Savaard is thinking about something zeitgeist-y, something everyone was talking about the weekend it opened and beyond, something everyone seemingly had to see—The Other Side of Midnight residing at #1 in 1977 for two weeks is not what the professor has in mind.

Ms. Spenser says: Happyness. In the same vein, I thought of Crash.

11) Greatest single performance in horror movie history.

Boris Karloff, in The Black Cat. The scene where he sits up in bed, next to the sleeping beauty is so striking.

12) Ingrid Pitt or the Collinson Twins?

I'm not a Hammerhead, but Pitt has a certain something. 

13) Name one lesser-known horror film that you think everyone should see. State your reason.

How about language-is-a-virus zombie movie Pontypool? I'm not sure it's actually for everyone, though. How about Annihilation?

14) Do the same for an underseen or underappreciated baseball movie.

OK, here's a baseball movie question I can answer: Rhubarb. It's the story of a cat, Rhubarb, who inherits a baseball team. The cat is played by Orangey, also seen in Comedy of Terrors, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. 

I saw this as a kid hoe sick from school on Dialing for Dollars. It's stuck to me all this time

15) William Bendix or Leslie Nielsen?

Bendix for so many reasons, like Jeff in The Glass Key. "He went and t'rowed another Joe."

16) Would you go back to a theater this weekend if one reopened near you?

Ha! I'd rather lick the floor of a 2019 movie theater than attend one now. Also, we never go to the movies.

17) Your favorite horror movie TV show/host, either running currently or one from the past.

Can I say Count Floyd? If not, Mr, Lobo from Cinema Insomnia. We never saw him on TV, but he sometimes co-hosts Foothill College's Psychotronic Film Festivals - 16-mm fun for the whole family. 

18) The Sentinel (1977)—yes or no?

Never heard of it, but it looks bonkers.

19) Second-favorite Ron Shelton movie.

I've only seen Bull Durham, so there is no second favorite.

20) Disclaimer warnings attached to  broadcasts of films like Gone With the Wind and Blazing Saddles-- yes or no?

This is actually a tough question. Maybe before all movies - except ones I approve of.

21) In the World Series of baseball movies, who are your NL and AL champs?

I still don't watch baseball movies.

22) What was the last horror film you saw?

Depends on what you mean by "horror". We watched the DVD double-feature Invisible Man Returns and The Invisible Woman. I think the first counts, the second is really a comedy, not even comedy-horror.

23) Geena Davis or Tatum O’Neal?

I suspect O'Neal is a stronger actor, but I might not have ever seen her in anything. I haven't seen a lot of Davis, but I just like her wide-mouthed charm.

24) AMC is now renting theaters for $100 - $350, promising a more “private,” catered party-movie experience. What do you like or dislike about this idea? 

It's fine if you like that kind of thing. I'll watch at home, thanks.

25) Name the scariest performance in a baseball movie.

Sigh.

26) Second-favorite Jack Arnold movie.

I'm going to say The Mouse that Roared. First is, of course, Space Children (MST3K version).

27) What would be the top five films of 2020 you’ve seen so far?

• The Invisible Man - Maybe the best
• Fantasy Island - Better than I expected, and pretty funny
• Underwater - Interesting addition to the undersea monster genre but not that good
• Color Out of Space - Pretty bad, but since Nic Cage is in it, that's sort of baked in
• Emma - This one doesn't seem to fit...

28) What are your top three pandemic-restricted movie viewing experiences so far in this... unusual year?

I'm going to say watching all the Marx Bros movies on discs we've bought, all of the Thin Man movies from the boxed set we ordered, and The Mad Miss Manton, which we also now own.

Ms. Spenser says watching the Alien movies and Prometheus, in her Weyland-Yutani tee-shirt - which she wears all the time because she doesn't have to dress for work.

And now the host has put his answers up! Read them all!

All Horror's Eve

So after a full month of OctoBoo, how did we celebrate All Horror's Eve? With a double-bill of cheesy horror classics: Dr. Cyclops/Cult of the Cobra.

Cult of the Cobra (1955) starts in the mysterious Orient, as a group of six soldiers checking out a bazaar. The gang includes David Jansenn and Marshall Thompson (Daktari, Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion). A snake charmer (Leonard Strong, the Craw from Get Smart) offers to let them see a "Lamian" ritual never before seen by outsiders. "Lamians" believe that some humans can turn into deadly cobras. But if they are caught, they will be killed. The ritual involves a girl in a snake body suit doing some interpretative dance. Of course, one of the guys takes a flash photo and they have to fight their way out. And high priest Ed Platt puts a curse on them.

On the way out, he grabs a basket with a cobra in it (he's pretty drunk) - the basket the girl came out of. The other guys escape and find him snake-bit by the side of the road. And they see a cloaked figure running away. They get him to a hospital, and he seems ok, but someone left a window open - and he is dead of snake venom in the morning.

Back in his stateside apartment, Thompson hears a scream from next door. He finds exotic Faith Domergue frightened by an intruder. He calms her down, and gets a date from her. That goes well, but she puts him off when he tries (pretty aggressively) to kiss her.

While he is wooing Domergue, his buddies are being picked off one by one, in not necessarily snake-oriented ways. Will Thompson figure out who is doing the killing (Domergue, who is a Lamian) before he gets it? Or will love change her mind?

This clearly gets a lot from Cat People. Both have beautiful, exotic, mysterious women who can ambiguously change into beasts. They share the ambiguity - they both avoid showing the beast or the transformation, both to create mystery and to lower the budget. But Faith Domergue (This Island Earth) is truly beautiful and uses it well here. This was fun.

Dr. Cyclops (1940) was, too. Mad scientist Albert Dekker has summoned three scientists (and an uninvited mule rental agent) to his laboratory deep in the Amazonian jungle. When they get there, he explains that his eyes are going bad, and needs them to check a sample under the microscope. They look, and identify it as iron contamination. So he thanks them for their help and sends them away.

Short movie, huh?

Of course not. They refuse to leave until he tells them what his research is all about, and he refuses to tell them. When they start to get a clue, he shows them - he is shrinking living creatures to a 10th of their size. And he shrinks them, and then decides to hunt them down. Their only chance will be to smash his glasses (the old Polyphemus trick).

Part of the charm of this is the special effects, which are really quite good. But Dekker's mad scientist is equally great. He's a bald, round-faced man with coke-bottle-bottom glasses, wearing a very shabby chic tobacco linen tropical suit, usually with the lapels turned up. I don't know, I just like the look. Also, it's an early Technicolor film. 

But I have to admit, we slept through a lot of it. We got exactly one trick or treater - down from our usual 5 or 6. Darn pandemic.

For Dia de los Muertos, we watched Coco, already blogged. The season is now over, but there's plenty more horror to come. Stay cool, ghouls.

Pair of Twos

We have had Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) on our queue for awhile, so it's nice they decided to send it the day before Halloween.

In this outing, Daniel Boland, Sprague Grey, and their daughter Molly Ephraim start by videoing the arrival of their new baby. We get quite a bit of random video of their life and pool parties - where we find that Grey is sister to Katie Featherstone from PA1. We also meet the nanny, Vivis Cortez, who speaks only Spanish while they all speak English to her. Like Katie and Micah from PA1, a family of rich assholes.

One video clip is for police and insurance purposes - their house has been trashed while they were out (except the baby's room). So they get a full set of security cameras, covering the whole house. Now we get a long series of daily life and security footage from the nights - with nothing happening. I came up with a term for this: "Negative scares". Like negative space, these can build tension, letting the real scares really stand out. But there are a LOT of them before much happens. When Leigh Whannel used this technique in Invisible Man, it was effective because he didn't overuse it - and because we suspected an evil presence. So far, we've just seen a normal family with a single break-in.

When things start to get a little dicey (doors closing mysteriously, for ex), nanny Cortez starts burning sage all around the house. Boland isn't having this kind of pagan superstition and fires her. Bad move. Because when things really go tits up, there's no one to help.

This is sort of a prequel to PA1, as well as a side-quel - stuff taking place at the same time but from the point of view of other characters. We find out where the demon came from and why it was going after Katie and Micah in the first movie. Of course, we found that out in the first movie and it was different - at least according to Ms. Spenser. I had already forgotten the main plot points. 

Anyway, before we saw this, we watched Paranormal Activity 3, but I didn't blog it because it was streaming (this blog is about Netflix DVDs and cocktails, and not so much about cocktails). I guess that was a prequel to both 1 and 2. I think I liked it best because it isn't about all rich assholes. 

Morning of the Carnival

Can Black Orpheus (1959) be considered a Horrorween movie? The season is all wrong of course, since it takes place at Carnival, in the spring (or fall, because Brazil is in the southern hemisphere?). But it does have a mysterious deadly figure and some voodoo. Anyway, it's just a great movie.

Marpessa Dawn, Eurydice, arrives in Rio by ferry and takes a streetcar to Babylon - a little neighborhood high on a hill. The conductor, Breno Mello, Orfeu, flirts with her, and introduces her to Hermes, a railroad worker who knows everything about the neighborhood. She is staying with her cousin, because a strange man is threatening to kill her. 

It turns out that Orfeu lives next door. He is getting marries to Mira, although he is pretty blase about it. He refuses to get her a ring, needing the money to get his guitar out of hock for the festival. But he lets her take him to get the license, where the clerk asks Mira if she is Eurydice. Isn't that who marries Orfeu? Orfeu hasn't even learned the name of the girl he flirted with.

But he finds out when Eurydice's tormentor, masked and dressed as a skeleton, attacks her and Orfeu runs him off. When Eurydice's cousin's boyfriend comes home, Orfeu invites Eurydice to stay in his bed - he will sleep outside of course. But that doesn't last very long.

It is now the morning of the carnival. Orfeu is leading the Babylon crew (if that's what they are called in Brazil), and Eurydice's cousin decides to stay home with her man, sending Eurydice in her place. And so the man with the skeleton costume finds her and kills her.

Orfeu goes to see her at the morgue, but a janitor tells him he won't find her there. He takes him to a voodoo ceremony, where he hears her voice telling him not to turn around. He looks behind and finds an old woman speaking in her voice. She is lost to him forever.

But two little boys who have been following Orfeu the whole movie now have his guitar. One says that Orfeu's playing makes the sun come up and encourages his friend to play. He plays for a little girl and his friend, and the sun does rise. As he says, Orfeu is not the first of that name, and won't be the last.

All this leaves out the Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfa music, samba and Bossa Nova, and tons of percussion in the streets. That and the beauty and soul of Rio and it's people are the best parts of this classic.

Scary Movie

Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971) is an interesting case - vintage (non-camp) hippy horror. 

Jessica, played by Zohra Lampert, has just been released from a mental institution. Her husband Barton Heyman and his long-haired friend Kevin O'Connor are driving her to their new home in rural Connecticut in their bitchin' hearse. They stop in a graveyard so she can make a rubbing of a gravestone, and she sees a mysterious figure in white. But she doesn't mention it because she assumes it is a hallucination and she doesn't want to go back to the institution.

Their new house is a fog-shrouded old mansion that the locals all shun. They shun our friends as well, because they are dirty hearse-driving hippies. In the house, Jessica again sees a fleeting figure, but this time, the guys see it too. It turns out to be Gretchen Corbett, a pretty red-headed drifter who is squatting there. She promises to move on, but they invite her to stay for dinner. O'Connor seems taken with her, which Jessica likes, but so does her husband, which makes the voices in head jealous. Nonetheless, she gets the gang to invite her to stay on indefinitely.

But weird stuff is happening. The woman in white appears underwater when Jessica is swimming and tries to pull her under. Later, this figure shows her the corpse of the town's antique dealer below a dam, but it's gone when she tries to show people. It looks like she's cracking up again, and the more it looks like that, the worse the voices get.

Then she notices all the people in town with bites or scratches. And she finds a very old family portrait that seems to include Corbett. An ancestor? Or is Corbett a vampire?

The whole "Is the house haunted or is she crazy" theme comes from The Innocents, of course, but it plays very well here. The look at a group of people who left New York for the peace of country life and found trouble is bit more original. Living as a group, inviting in squatters, farming. Although they aren't organic at all - O'Connor sprays a ton of poison on the orchard. It's funny that poisoned apples aren't used as a theme at all.

Due to the title, I sort of thought that this was going to be a Diabolique situation. SPOILER - it wasn't.

Edward Gunhands

Calling Guns Akimbo (2020) a horror movie is kind of stretching things. It's gory enough, and there's a bit of body horror, but I mainly queued it up because it looked like fun. Stupid fun.

The movie sets up the premise quickly: An underground fight club/most dangerous game called Skizm is live streaming death matches. It becomes insanely popular, with everyone watching it, especially when Samara Weaving is competing and killing. Daniel Radcliffe is a regular shlub who works at a computer gaming company and has a beautiful Instagram model (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) as an ex-girlfriend. In his spare time, he likes to troll message boards, and is pretty good at it. So good that he gets the leader of the Skizm crew, Ned Dennehy, mad at him. Dennehy is a skinny older psycho with a face full of crude tattoos. This won't be good.

So Radcliffe is attacked, beaten, and drugged. When he wakes up, he finds two guns bolted to his hands. I mean bolted right through the palm and out the back, with each finger screwed down as well. He has also been entered into a death match, versus the ever-victorious Weaving.

But first he has to figure out how to pee with guns for hands - without shooting anything off.

He goes to the police, but they just see a guy with two guns, and tase him - which causes him to involuntarily fire, killing one of the cops. He runs to his ex-girlfriend, who doesn't want to get involved. He goes to his office, but all he gets is grief from his obnoxious boss - until he starts waving his guns around. Then Weaving shows up and shoots up the place. The only person who is at all helpful is the homeless loony Rhys Darby, who gives him something to eat - which of course he has to feed him by hand.

So the first couple of acts are a series of fast-paced chases and shoot-em-ups. At some point, Radcliffe is going to have to stop reacting and somehow fight back. How it all wraps up isn't exactly clever, or particularly character driven. But it work well enough - better than if he suddenly becomes a crack shot.

Well, I wasn't expecting it to be clever, I was expecting it to be stupid. I don't think you could function for long with guns bolted to your hands. Not even stapled. I don't think you could pull the triggers. But at least in the end, he doesn't get the girl. His ex stays ex, although she may dine out on having known him when.

Other People's Probems

 The Others (2001) looked like just another haunted house movie, and worse, one with kids. For a while, I had it as a backup movie for our month of Spooktober. But a random comment about the movie, and maybe Nicole Kidman in the starring role changed my mind.

It starts with Kidman waking up screaming - just a nightmare, never mentioned. She is living in a mansion shrouded in fog on the island of Jersey just after WWII. There is a knock on the door, and she assumes the party knocking are answering her ad for servants. The previous servants just vanished one night - "And were never seen again," says Kidman, not the least bit ominous. The new servants are Fionnula Flanagan, an old gardener, Eric Sykes, and a mute girl, Elaine Cassidy. (Odd side note: I just mentioned Flanagan in this blog.) 

Kidman explains to this new crew that there are 14 doors in this house, and each one must be locked before the next is opened. She has two children who are extremely photosensitive. If they are exposed to any light stronger than an oil lamp, they could die. So that explains a little bit about why she is so tightly wound. Also, her husband was a pilot in the war (Jersey was German occupied) and never came back. 

The kids are a young boy who sees ghosts and an older sister who likes to tell him ghost stories. Kidman is pretty strict with them, and feeds them lots of Bible stories. The kids are kind of over this, laughing at the story of children who refused to renounce Jesus and were martyred. They say they would just lie about it. When Kidman tries to tell them that is wicked, they agree and recant. They are, of course, lying.

Kidman begins to hear sounds, crying, stomping and so forth, even someone playing the piano. Since she keeps all the doors locked, she can't figure out what's going on. We hear the servants talk about some graves, and hiding them for now. But when Kidman demands the keys from them at shotgun-point and kicks them out, they decide to let her figure it out.

SPOILER - She, the kids, the servants, all ghosts, haunting the house. The ghosts she hears and the kids see are the new owners of the house, the living. But they won't be living there long, because the house is plainly haunted.

I enjoyed this a lot, although I kind of anticipated the twists (actually, I guessed several twists, but not all of them actually happened). Although Kidman's character wasn't very likable, when she starts storming through the house with her shotgun and rosary, well, it's pretty cool. Also, her husband shows up out of the fog, and he's Christopher Eccleston. He stays a night and vanishes again. But nobody seems to mind much or expect anything different. 

Invisible Touch

I had sort of forgotten that Leigh Whannel had released The Invisible Man (2020). But once I remembered, I queued it right up.

It starts in an expensive modern bedroom, where Elisabeth Moss is laying awake next to Oliver Jackson-Cohen (although we barely see him - hint). After checking his bedside water glass to make sure he drank the drugged water, she starts to sneak out of the house. She makes it to the Uber, but Jackson-Cohen comes out of the house screaming, and she barely makes it away.

She stays with her friend, police detective Aldis Hodge (Leverage) and his teen daughter Storm Reid (Don't Let Go). She's shell-shocked, desperate to avoid being found by her abuser. So when her sister shows up, she is very upset. What if Jackson-Cohen has her followed? No problem, says sis - he's dead.

In fact, it turns out that he left everything to Moss, as long as she stays out of trouble. Clouds are beginning to lift. Or are they? Moss is noticing odd sounds and things like a small kitchen fire. But it's probably just the trauma. 

Or did Jackson-Cohen fake his death and design an invisibility suit? After all, he was CEO of an optics company. One night when she's alone, she becomes sure of it, dumping coffee grounds on the floor to check for footprints, and finally dumping paint on something - the Invisible Man! Of course, no one believes her. She sneaks into his house and finds another suit, which she carefully hides.

Then one day she is at a restaurant with her sister, who believes Moss wanted her dead (more of Jackson-Cohen's manipulation). Relations between them have started to thaw, when a knife moves under its own power, slits sister's throat and jumps into Moss' hand. Nobody is going to believe her story about this one.

This is an interesting framing of the Invisible Man story - from the point of view of a woman who has been abused, manipulated and gaslit. Because Moss runs away from Jackson-Cohen at the start, then him dying, he does sort of seem invisible in his own movie. It also makes him a monster - one of the problems with the base story is: Why does being invisible make you evil? What about if you start out that way?

Whannel does an unusually fine job on directing, getting a lot out of the modern mansion, luxurious and cold, plus filled with surveillance. He does some interesting things with atmosphere, killing the background music and letting the camera linger, looking for someone who isn't there - or is he? There's a scene where he holds on an empty kitchen for an uncomfortable amount of time, with no jump scare at the end. 

He gets great performances from Moss, Hodge, and Reid, although some of that might be just casting the right people and getting out of their way. Moss is both beaten down and terrified, but with an inextinguishable core of courage. The twists in last act are good, in my opinion, especially the last one. (Spoiler - she does to him what he did to her sister, and gets it on tape). And it sets up a great sequel, The Invisible Woman. 

Never Sleep

Another episode of stuff we hadn't seen yet, even though it's our kind of thing: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1953). We did see the 1978 remake when it came out, but mostly because of Jerry Garcia's banjo.

It starts with Dr. Whit Bissel calling in Dr. Mel Cooley (Richard Deacon) to consult about a raving madman. The madman, Kevin McCarthy is trying to warn the world, and tells his tale in flashback.

He has just come back to the small So Cal town of Santa Mira from a trip, and his nurse tells him he has a lot of patients waiting - patients who won't say what their problem is. But all of them cancel before coming in.

His old flame, Dana Wynter, is back in town from jetsetting around, and they tentatively start up their old relationship. And why not? They are both divorced and she always seems to be wearing cocktail dresses. She's upset because her cousin seems to think her uncle, an ordinary guy who raised her, is not her uncle. She thinks he's a perfect replica, with all his memories and mannerisms - but it isn't him.

It turns out that a lot of people have this same delusion - but a little while later most of them say that it was nothing. But when McCarthy and Wynter are hanging out with their friends King Donovan and Carolyn Jones (Morticia!), they discover a pod that contains a half-formed body - that looks a lot like Donovan.

They quickly figure out that somehow, perfect replicas are being formed in giant seed pods. When you fall asleep, they replace you. Not sure how this works - it seems like they take over your brain in your old body, so why do they need the spares? Oh well. 

This is all shown with great economy. It clearly establishes the small town locale, but gets to the pods within about 20 minutes. The whole thing is over in 80 minutes. Director Don Siegel keeps things moving along and lets the paranoia build. You could not fall asleep if you want to stay human, so everyone gets a little frazzled. In one of the final scenes, McCarthy kisses Wynter, and you can feel, just like he does, that she has fallen asleep and been taken over - she's no longer human. You can see the spark go out of her eyes. 

The studio forced a happy ending, and I was actually glad. Otherwise, it would be just too much.

World War B

Funny enough, I'd never seen The War of the Worlds (1953) or it's later incarnations, including radio plays. Reason enough to queue it up for Horrorween.

It starts with Sir Cedric Hardwicke giving a tour of the Solar System, illustrated by space artist Chesley Bonestell. He lets us know that Mars is a dying planet, and the inhabitants picked Earth as their new home. Soon, meteors are landing all over. In particular, in Southern California, near where nuclear scientist Gene Barry (Burke's Law) is fishing with some fellow scientists. After they and some local Army men poke at it a little, they put it under guard. I swear, if it hadn't been so hot, they probably would have licked it.

Anyway, a hatch in the meteor unscrewed, and out came a cute little flying metal manta ray, with a cobra head and a heat ray. This little fellow started killing everything around it, including a nice old pastor trying to reason with it. This sets up Barry as protector for his niece, Ann Robinson.

The Martians land all over the world, giving director Byron Haskin and particularly producer George Pal to destroy some miniatures and use some stock footage. Our weapons are powerless against them, and the world seems lost. Then, a miracle - you know the rest.

If you like 1950s scifi, you'll probably like this - I do and I did. It isn't great, but a lot of fun, especially Gene Barry's stolid cheesiness. Best of all for you MST3K fans, his character is named Dr. Clayton Forrester - first in a long line of mad scientists!

Juan for the Money

Juan of the Dead (2012) is another one of Ms. Spenser's choices. A Cuban zombie comedy.

It starts with our hero Juan (Alexis Diaz de Villegas) and his sidekick Lazaro (Jorge Molina) fishing on a crude raft in the Bay of Havana. They reel in a corpse, which is bad enough, but it comes back to life and starts attacking them. Lazaro shoots it through the head with a spear gun and they think no more about it.

Juan doesn't seem to do much except fish and fool around with women. They are friends with an outrageous transvestite La China (Jazz Villa) and her enormous boyfriend El Primo. Lazaro tries to be a father to his grownup son Vladi California (Andros Perugorria), a handsome blond surfer looking dude, but he just wants to chase girls and do petty crimes. Juan has a daughter, Camila (Andrea Doro), who is young, beautiful and cultured, and of course wants nothing to do with her deadbeat dad - she has been living with Mom in Miami.

It soon becomes clear that the zombie in the bay wasn't a one off. More and more Cubans are becoming ravenous undead beasts. Juan thinks they are likely capitalist dissidents, like the government is always talking about. And he has a plan.

The plan is to start a zombie eradication company, Juan of the Dead - "We Kill Your Loved Ones". His daughter is disappointed at his lack of civic spirit so he does some community training as well. But things don't look so good, and get worse.

This is fun in a lot of ways. Diaz de Villagas has a worn hangdog face that's ideal for this kind of humor. There are plenty of dark jokes (fair amount of friendly fire) and some tributes to Bruce Lee, etc. Some of the shots seemed a little amateurish or cheap, but heck, this is director Alejandro Brugués second feature, and it was pretty cheap. 

Maybe not as great as, say, Sean of the Dead, but a lot of fun.

Daily Grind

We finally decided to watch Grindhouse: Planet Terror (2007), and I don't know why we waited. As I'm sure you know, Grindhouse was a double bill B-movie extravaganza, with one movie directed by Quentin Tarantino, and this one by Robert Rodriguez.

It starts with stripper Rose McGowan quitting her job and getting stuck at a lonesome BBQ joint run by Jeff Fahey. By coincidence, her old boyfriend, Freddy Rodriguez (no relation) comes by in his "Wray's Wreckage" truck - but his friends call him "El Raye". 

Meanwhile, a bunch of soldiers led by civilian (?) Bruce Willis are picking up a mysterious gas from Naveen Andrews. When it goes sideways and some one is about to get their balls chopped off, that someone releases the gas, and everyone starts going crazy and eating each other. Seems bad.

Meanwhile again, Dr. Josh Brolin and his cold wife Marley Shelton are on the night shift at the hospital. They begin to notice people coming in with scratches that become necrotic as the patients become aggressive and bitey. 

Eventually McGowan gets a scratch on her leg and has to come in to get it amputated. If you've seen the poster, you know that eventually she gets a machine gun prosthetic. 

This is a good old-fashioned stupid gore fest. And by old-fashioned I mean the film is scratched and there's a reel missing (handy for "With a leap they were free" cliffhanger solutions). There is a trailer and the classic "Our Feature Presentation" bumper. The trailer was for Machete, which looked so good, they actually made it. 

So, a total ball. Freddy makes a great hero - just a working stiff with an ex-stripper ex-girlfriend who busts his chops, but he steps up when he needs to. Also, he is a firearms expert who never misses - and the police won't let him have a gun for most of the movie. In fact, they cuff him for about the first half. McGowan is a stripper with a lot of useless talents that actually come in handy. The Brolin/Shelton subplot was maybe more than we needed, and I have no idea what we were supposed to think of Fahey's BBQ. Everyone said it was the best in Texas, but no one would touch it. Except maybe the zombies.

Also, Bruce Willis is not in most of the movie, so it's even got that going for it.

Should we watch the other half of the double bill. Deathproof? I think we like Rodriguez more thar we like Tarantino.

Normal Pair

Although I am the Queue Master, I do let Ms. Spenser have some input, especially during OctoBoo. And speaking of found footage, she suggested Paranormal Activity (2007).

PA is about a young couple. He (Micah Sloat) has just bought a fancy video camera, partly just because it's a fun toy. But she (Katie Featherston) has been haunted since childhood by a mysterious presence, and he thinks he might be able to detect something with the camera. So he sets it up in the bedroom to monitor the house while they sleep.

Katie invites a psychic over, and he says he thinks it isn't a ghost, but a demon. This calls for a whole different skill set. He recommends a demonologist, but Micah doesn't take it seriously and won't call. Meanwhile the camera is picking up a few things while they sleep. It starts with little things - noises, a door swinging, but gets more and more scary. 

As Micah discovers these things reviewing the tapes, his attitude is more, hey cool, than oh shit. He shouts at the demon, asks what it wants, and suggests they use a Ouija board to contact it. The psychic specifically said no Ouija boards - that's just inviting the demon in. So what does Micah do?

Of course, things get worse and worse, and they call the demonologist - who is out of the country for the week. They call the psychic back, and he won't even go into the house, due to the bad vibes. And then things get really scary.

It's interesting what you can do with a camcorder and a couple of characters. Some of the shots and styles of this movie are now kind of cliches - like the fast forward scenes of the couple in bed, until something spooky happens. But it's also kind of a good story: Katie and Micah have moved to Santa Barbara from Nebraska, maybe so she can get away from her troubled past. He is a day-trader, rich enough to buy a big house and expensive electronics. He is also kind of a dick, not taking Katie's fear seriously (also trying to get her to make a sex tape). 

However, I don't buy one of the central premises of the movie: that trying to film demons causes them to become more bold and present. I thought that trying to record them made them shy. Or is that only ghosts?