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.