The Tingler (1959)

Director: William Castle

Cast: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman, Patricia Cutts

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Matinee (1993) always left it as something of a curiosity, but I took my damn time, figuring that without the jolting presence of the PERCEPTO system, what would the film have to offer? Wouldn’t it be watching an endless array of nonsensical jump scares, not unlike trying to watch any number of objects flying to the camera in B-movies built for anaglyph 3D in the era*?

Did I Like It: I’m surprised to say I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, it’s a B Movie with nearly no budget. The titular Tingler (say that five time fast, I dare you) is just a piece of rubber dragged along by a string. The cast is populated with bland day players, save for the always dependable gravitas offered by Price. It will never be considered a great film, nor was it probably much more than a curiosity during the original, wired theatrical exhibition.

The novelty is more clever than annoying. You can see in the sequence where the Tingler accidentally falls into the theater the beginnings of the most fun parts in both Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). I always applaud more modern films for embracing the chaos of Joe Dante, I’ve got to be willing to give the same praise to his forebears.

But the film does oddly play without its novelty. It is an interesting meditation—despite its pulpy foundations—on the usefulness of fear. It makes that which startles us useful in the attempt to destroy that which we truly dread.

Am I suddenly advocating for a modern-day remake of this? No, I don’t think I would go that far. We don’t really scream at horrific things anymore.

Maybe we should.

*To say nothing of the vast majority of 3D movies produced since Avatar (2009).

The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

Director: Roger Corman

Cast: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles, Dick Miller, Jack Nicholson*

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I mean, obviously I’ve seen the eventual musical remake, but never the original. Oddly enough, the version currently available on Amazon Prime is a colorized version of the film. My immediate instinct was to run in the other direction, as colorization of black and white films always strikes me as a bit overtly odious. Then again, I can’t honestly say I’ve ever actually sat down and watched a colorized version of a black and white film, so why not? Could it really be that bad?

Did I Like It: Yep. Colorization is very, very bad. Maybe other endeavors have been even marginally less distracting, but this job done on a film now in the public domain was not doing anyone any favors. Those colors injected into the proceedings were too muted to add anything to what Corman and company had already created, and if that weren’t enough those long-since-abandoned attempts at colorization really didn’t have the whole thing figured out. Occasional frames would occasionally revert back to the black and white original, perpetually giving this viewer a disoriented feeling which in no sense was designed by the filmmakers.

Aside from presentation problems, any sort of B-movie has to be approached less as something more than the sum of its parts, and more a search for those parts which might transcend the limitations. The whole package may not be completely satisfying, but there are moments of fun. Some of the dialogue is deeply deranged in a way that makes one a little uncertain they heard what they actually heard. As mentioned in that footnote, any time spent with Dick Miller (and Jackie Jospeh, no less!) or Jack Nicholson** js always a good time.

But still, if you’re ever stumped for trying to find an example of a remake that is better than the original from which it sprang, I think I may have cracked the case for you.

*Genuinely, desperately torn about who should get the fourth billing in this review between Miller and Nicholson. I have a tremendous affection for both. Eventually opted for both. I can make those kind of in-house style changes on the fly: I’m good with the owner.

**Playing delightfully against type, probably because

Holiday Inn (1942)

Director: Mark Sandrich

Cast: Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds, Virginia Dale

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Somehow, I managed to skip it in my nearly 40 years of life, made all the more incredible considering how improbably large a part of my life White Christmas (1954) has become.

Did I Like It: Maybe this will be viewed as borderline sacrilegious by some, but since I’d hardly be considered a true believer, I’m going to say it anyway. There’s something so distressingly flat about a musical in black and white. This film is retroactively saddled with competing with the later, more famous film*. None of this may be my genre, but if you’re going to be singing to me at Christmas, I need bright colors. Technicolor preferred, Vistavision accepted, but something along those lines is absolutely needed.

Then again, it may not be unfair to stack these two films up against one another and find one of them wanting. I remember watching White Christmas for the first time in a number of years recently, and when they get to the dress rehearsal for the Minstrel Number, clenching reflexively at what was about to come. There, it turned out to be not so bad. Here? Well, let’s just say that if you are of a mind to roll through this film, just brace yourself for the number during Lincoln’s Birthday. It’s a symphony of 21st century horrors.

*Oddly enough—and one assumes you’ll forgive me for getting a head start on the yearly trove of Bing and Company trivia, but the Columbia Inn in White Christmas and the titular Holiday Inn here are the same set. I can’t help but marvel at the fact that Paramount was able to preserve such a thing for those particular years. Makes one wonder what reassures might be holed up in warehouse space in any of the major studios.

Prom Night (1980)

Director: Paul Lynch

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Stevens, Michael Tough

Have I Seen it Before: Never. In the last few months I’ve been trawling the world for new movies to suggest for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods but have been coming up a little bit short. Movies recommended against all odds don’t play the same decades later. Others that are curiosities remain only that, curiosities.

Did I Like It: And I’m not much of a fan of this film either. I’m going to have a hard time not thinking about how much I would rather be watching Halloween (1978) whenever I’m watching any slasher film, and Curtis’ presence only makes the comparisons impossible to overcome. This is not nearly the ruthless thriller that made her a star. It’s got much more in common with the Friday the 13th series, even if it winds up being marginally more satisfying than any of those films. I even find it wanting in comparison to Halloween II (1981), but that’s probably more a measure of my unreasonable nostalgia for that film than anything else.

The film doesn’t try to avoid those comparisons, either. Further problems are added when it does absolutely nothing to avoid comparisons to both Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Carrie (1976). It’s trying to eat the leftovers of so many different contemporary films that it might as well be a Bond film. I’m surprised the students of Hamilton High didn’t end up in outer space by the end of the film, as the kids must have been real wild about Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) right about that moment.

And yet, I may end up recommending the film to the podcast. As I mentioned, I kind of liked it for its schlocky self more than any attempt from Jason Voorhees, and we’ve already done the original entry of that series on the show. Leslie Nielsen is there, and that’s always good to see. It’s also a little less consumed with the onslaught of mayhem for which other films in the genre desperately reach. It is a legitimate attempt at a revenge thriller story, even if it isn’t the best it possibly could be.

The Fearless Vampire Hunters (1967)

Director: Roman Polanski

Cast: Jack MacGowran, Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, Alfie Bass

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Everyone keeps muttering about it as a good example of the horror chops that Polanski would eventually bring to bear on Rosemary’s Baby (1968) with the absurdist comic instincts turned up. This doesn’t even cover it being the only film featuring Tate directed by her husband before her murder. It remains as a pop cultural curiosity for those reasons alone, and definitely stayed on the radar for me as a potential movie to recommend for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods.

Did I Like It: Not really, no. I’m resolutely of the opinion having now seen the film that it is a pop cultural curiosity not because of its place in Tate or Polanski’s career, but just because it is the one moment of intersection. I’ll admit that Polanski does create a visually interesting style and mood for his vampire comedy, and indeed more so than any other horror comedy of the era outside of Young Frankenstein (1974). The cold Transylvania night depicted here is merciless and frightening, perhaps even more so than a lot of straight horror films.

I think the problem is that for all his skills as a filmmaker (and despite his failings as a person) Polanski isn’t much of a leading man, and even less of a comedic one. He hasn’t done much acting beyond the stray cameo since this film, so I tend to believe that he would agree with me on that assessment.

A weak performance at the center of the film would be difficult to overcome, but I’m not finding hardly anyone else very funny as the film unfurls. Tate had been funny in other films, notably in The Wrecking Crew (1968), but she is an object to be simultaneously worshipped and feared here. The rest of the cast mumbles their way through the assignment, but I couldn’t find a truly comedic performance in the lot. The only time I chuckled was an extended bit in an atrium. If you find yourself watching the film, you’ll know the scene I’m talking about and can be reasonably confident you don’t need to watch much further.

Flesh and the Devil (1926)

Director: Clarence Brown

Cast: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lars Hanson, Barbara Kent

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: This is the first review I’m writing since the 2024 Presidential Election, so here’s hoping that I’ll be able to keep things on point as I go on.

I always tend to turn my nose up at people who poo-poo the prospect of silent cinema. Take the prospect of artificial dialogue out of the equation, and the whole thing can be reduced down to its most basic elements. On the other hand, watching a story play out from nearly 100 years ago with some missing context can leave one disconnected from the whole affair. I can see from where these people are coming.

But some silent movies—or at least occasional elements of those films—can transcend even the most skeptical among us. Chaplin and Keaton can make us laugh while simultaneously make us wonder if they have a death wish. F.W. Murnau can manipulate light and shadows to the point where we in the 21st might think they are out to get us. Even when D.W. Griffith shows us our inherent ugliness despite himself, he paints it on such a grand scale that our CGI-sodden age needs to take an extra moment to figure out how he did it, before we ever reckon with why.

So, what does this film offer? Why does it survive when so many other films of the era have evaporated with their nitrate stock? The answer is Garbo. Any number of the screen beauties before Garbo were photographed as if they were porcelain statues. Garbo comes on the screen—and for many people, this was the first time to see her—she is the first sex symbol of the screen. It has almost nothing to do with her looks necessarily, either. The subtlety of her face moves the leading lady from artwork in the background to an imaginary figure in our own fantasies. The movies as we understand them now may not have existed if Garbo hadn’t accidentally (and by all indications, against her better judgment) created it herself.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the multiple endings for the film. They’re roughly similar, if one had an additional beat. In the original ending favored by director Brown, von Harden (Gilbert) and von Eltz (Hanson) reconcile before blowing each other away in a duel, while Felicitas (Garbo) drowns in the ice just beyond. Credits. The “happy” ending favored by MGM extends the story an additional moment, where von Harden and Hertha (Barbara Kent) are reconciled. The theater showed both endings to us, leaving the entire affair in a quantum state of uncertainty with both endings. Both are sort of miserable though, with Garbo perishing in the ice. You can live with the possibility of a happy ending or a tragic ending, but the tragedy is still inevitable. So much for quantum uncertainty.

Look at that. I did end up making it about the election a little bit.

Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

Director: Michael Patrick Jann

Cast: Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin, Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards

Have I Seen It Before: Pretty sure I have, although memory has faded. There was definitely a time where I was taking in every mockumentary I could get my hands on, and the sight of a beer can welded to the remains of Ellen Barkin’s hand is not one would just forget.

Did I Like It: It is regularly very funny, and with a pitch-black quality to the proceedings that in my own head this film and Fargo (1996) take place in the same universe*.

But there’s got to be some kind of problem, right?

If one were to get within striking range of watching this now, especially with people who love the film—as I did during a late-night screening at the Circle—there are always whispers that the film couldn’t possibly be made today**, for fear of it being immediately cancelled. I tend to think that for every pitch-black joke on display, its horrifyingly funny not because we are laughing at someone’s plight, but more because we realize that the only reason these characters are as miserable as they are is because the myopic conservatism that passes for some sense of community in Mount Rose obliterates any degree of human kindness and will inevitably destroy everyone it touches. I’m laughing at Kirstie Alley and Denise Richards, not so much Will Sasso or Alexandra Holden.

Then again, maybe it’s the day before the election, and I’m reaching.

*Aside from a blink-and-you-miss-it (and I sincerely hope you don’t miss it) appearance by Kristin Rudrüd as “Pork Products Lady”, there’s no cast overlap. There’s almost as much connective tissue between these two movies as there is between Fargo on film and TV.

**When did 1999 become so long ago? Oh. Sometime between numbers starting with “2” and it being a quarter of century ago. Got it.

Wendell & Wild (2022)

Director: Henry Selick

Cast: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Lyric Ross, Angela Bassett

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Still on the lookout for potential Cabin movies, and with Peele’s latest effort pushed from this holiday season to sometime next fall, I went about widening the lens a bit.

Did I Like It: All of the elements are there. Key and Peele have created the most consistently satisfying sketch comedy show of the last twenty years, and that doesn’t even begin to cover Peele’s current metamorphosis into the legitimate heir to both Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling. Throw in Selick, whose The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) remains the gold standard of spook stop motion animation, and the entire affair seems destined for greatness.

And yet, the film is kind of a miss. I’m willing to write most of that off to pacing issues. Key and Peele play off of each other with the easy chemistry they brought to their sketches*, but every other character feels like they are reading their lines alone in a an undisclosed location, likely because they probably were. There’s a way to make dialogue recorded separately sound like it has the life of real conversation, but it is rarely on display here. Here, most lines have the self-aware delivery of someone reciting a monologue.

I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed in the design of things, too. Things are moody and creepy, but the titular characters come across as nothing much more imaginative than light pointy-eared caricatures of their performers.

Ultimately, if the pitch for this movie appeals to you, you might be better off watching any of Selick’s, Peele’s, or Key and Peele’s work. It’s heart is in the right place, just not quite its craft.

*I still marvel a little bit that they got their start on MadTV, a show I found to be an absolute chore to watch after attaining the age of 11. Maybe their years—towards the end of the show’s run—are better? I may never know.

Village of the Damned (1960)

Director: Wolf Rilla

Cast: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Michael Gwynn, Martin Stephens

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I mean, it had to be better than the mangled, abortive mis-cast John Carpenter* remake, right? And yet… I mean, I guess it has that certain stripped down ruthlessness that would make one think of Carpenter for a remake, but is that mainly because the whole movie barely clocks in at an hour and a quarter?

That gives the whole thing a bit of an overlong Twilight Zone episode feel, which can be charming, but if that 1:15 feels, indeed, “overlong”? That has to be deathly.

It’s thoroughly British, which is usually more than enough to recommend a movie. Unfortunately, it’s not British in that eccentric way that keeps we Americans from having to come up with our own sitcom ideas. It deals more with a stoic set of British characters who don’t seem so surprised that alien children are going to bring the world to its end in fire. They lived through the Blitz. Glowy eyes ain’t nothing.

The bigger problem I think comes from where the film really wants to harness. I can imagine a person finding the prospect of parenthood more than a little frightening even in the most banal of circumstances. The loss of control of one’s life, the endless arguments, the staring. I would imagine that can be very unnerving.

The problem is, I can only imagine it. Don’t have kids, and the whole thing loses its bite. Now, if you can find me a movie dealing with anxiety about vasectomies from another planet, then you’d really have something.

*I feel okay saying these sorts of thing about a man I deeply respect. He would say the same things, and probably already has on Letterboxd.

The Funhouse (1981)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Cast: Elizabeth Berridge, Cooper Huckabee, William Finley, Kevin Conway

Have I Seen It Before: No. Somewhere along the line it had been recommended to me as a potential Beyond the Cabin in the Woods movie. I don’t remember how it came to me, whether we discussed it off-mic among the panel, whether somebody mentioned it to me, or it was (improbably) recommended in an old episode by either Siskel or Ebert*. We’ve got a rule on the show that I have to, you know… actually see the film in question before I recommend it for the show.

Did I Like It: Not really. It’s probably best that I can’t for the life of me remember who recommended it, as I can now think almost anybody made the recommendation**. It’s not as brazenly cheap and sleazy as Friday the 13th (1980) or any of its sequels. It’s nowhere near as classy as even some of the worst sequels for Halloween (1978). It does try to be visually interesting in its banal exploration of 80s horror, which might put it in the same pantheon of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), or any of its better sequels, but it doesn’t quite measure up in that regard, either. Its opening minutes reach for something approaching meta horror, but the entire sequence only left me wondering why the parents wouldn’t let Joey (Shawn Carson) stay up to watch the end of Bride of Frankenstein (1935) when he is demonstrably a fan. No wonder he left the house.

I suppose it’s interesting to see the progress of a filmmaker. This doesn’t have the relentless discomfort of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). It’s not hard to draw a line from Hooper’s explosive introduction to the movie world, to this, to Poltergeist (1982), where people are still trying to work out whether he was at all up to directing the film in the first place.

*As I look into info for the film it turns out that it was indeed a Siskel—yes, you read that right—liked it quite a bit. Sometimes I can’t quite account for much in the world.

**Pay no attention to the man behind the footnotes. I had started writing that sentence before tripping over that little Siskel nugget. A Sugget, if you will. (You shouldn’t.)

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

Director: Danny Steinmann

Cast: Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, Shavar Ross, Corey Feldman

Have I Seen it Before: I dunno… Maybe? The odds of me drifting to this thing for a few minutes on cable at some point in the 90s are nowhere near zero.

Did I Like It: Had I watched the entire movie, one would think I wouldn’t remember it much. I had a sort of mildly above negative reaction to Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), in as much as the series had spent any number of movies wandering around a concept, only to become what the uninitiated might recognize as a movie with Jason Voorhees (here played by no one; I’ll probably get to that in a minute). As this movie opens, Feldman returns and it feels like the series will drift into a comfortable pattern.

But no. Somebody, and it feels like the Paramount brass looking out for their reliable low-risk ongoing investment have decided that their audience wouldn’t accept more entries of the series which just allow for the fact that Jason can die in one film and then reappear in the next*, so the sequel involves… some guy who wears a hockey mask. The film is supremely disinterested in any mystery regarding who has taken up Jason’ mantle, or in any kind of meditation on what Jason’s terror can do to the survivors**. It’s just interested in an array of boobs, a couple of axe and machete shots and… nothing. If those were the only things that brought you—whether enthusiastically or begrudgingly—to a Friday the 13th film, then you’ll get what you ordered from the Paramount warehouse. If you’re looking for anything else, you might want to skip the movie. If you’re looking for a lot more, you’re probably well-advised to skip the series entirely.

*The Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween series have been able to do this with far greater effect. Yes, I know. Don’t come at me with your Season of the Witch references, at the least that off-series interlude had the good sense to try and being completely divorced from the continuity before or since. None of them tried to do a sequel but forget to bring their antagonist with them.

**For a better shot at that, you’ll really have to go back to Halloween Ends (2022), a movie you all rejected and were, frankly, wrong in that assessment.

Trumbo (2015)

Director: Jay Roach*

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Louis C.K.

Have I Seen it Before: Oddly enough, never. You’d think it would be right up my alley, but I just missed it. I’d say the way I eventually saw it was an odd way to finally take it in, as the climax of the Santa Fe International Film Festival nine years after the film was released. Bryan Cranston himself seemed to be a little confused by the choice, and he was there receiving a lifetime achievement award. I mean, sure Cranston’s connections to New Mexico are unassailable, and Roach hails from the Land of Enchantment, but can a pointedly political film from shortly after the golden escalator mean much in the here and now?

Did I Like It: There’s plenty in the film that is catering directly to me. Hollywood lore. Typewriter porn. Political contrariness. Cranston swinging for the fences without an ounce of ego in tow. These are the kind of things I like to see in movies.

Glossy and inherently abbreviated in the fine tradition of award-hunting biopics, I’d actually venture to say that as the film played at the Lensic concert hall**, the film means more to 2024 than it probably did to 2015. In 2015, we had what we thought was unrelenting political polarization, but we didn’t know how good we had it. One can’t help but watch Trumbo now and dwell on the possible sacrifices we may just have to make in the years to come.

*Remember when that guy had a whole career of doing whatever Mike Myers told him to? Kids, ask your parents.

**A concert hall is always, always a weird venue in which to see a film. Although, I think most large scale venues should probably be re-committed to movie screenings. Who really wants to see live music? Not I.

The Day After Trinity (1981)

Director: Jon H. Else

Cast: Hanse Bethe, Robert Serber, Robert Wilson, Frank Oppenheimer

Have I Seen it Before: Never. On that note, one more anecdote from film festival land: The film runs, and one guy gets up to leave for a moment. One of the volunteers for the festival—who wasn’t there for the intro to the film—asks where the guy is going (which is kind of a weird flex, I’ll admit) and the guy replies, “I’ve seen it before.” That guy was the director of the film.

Did I Like It: Why bring up such a story? Well, it’s not even my story. Lora was closer to the incident, and I didn’t hear it at all, as I was too engrossed with the film as it was playing out.  The Manhattan Project can sometimes be overblown to the point where each element is inflated to the explosive level of the participants’ eventual successful work. This was true even before Christopher Nolan made the entire affair pure explosive Oscar bait in Oppenheimer (2023).

But here, the people—J. Robert Oppenheimer being the notable exception, as he was notablly dead before the cameras started rolling—who built the bombs that hung over the second half of the twentieth century are real people. They have plenty of insights into their work, the events of their lives, and the people who influenced both, but they are also allowed to be slightly banal, even boring figures. That might sound like faintly damning the film, but the more regular these people are depicted, the more fascinating they become.

One might remark that the film ages a little roughly around the edges, viewing the creation of the bomb through the lens of the disarmament-focused 80s, but zeroing in in the back half of the film not just on the tragedy not of Oppenheimer’s eventual political exile, but also on the uncontrollable nature of what they wrought has more potency for the current political age than one might have thought.

Superboys of Malegaon (2024)

Director: Reema Kagti

Cast: Adarsh Gourav, Vineet Kumar Singh, Shashank Akora, Riddhi Kumar

Have I Seen It Before: Nope! Neither have you, probably.

Did I Like It: On first view, I probably have nothing in common with the characters—pulled from real life and based on the documentary Supermen of Maleagon (2008)—in the film. They live in a mostly rural, conservative (likely too conservative) area. They dream of making movies. Through a series of misadventures and increasingly desperate turns of fate, they resolve to make a cheap, amusing pastiche that owes more to Superman: The Movie (1978) than anything else.

Ahem.

That’s the easy, obvious charm of the movie. These men may come from a place that is unrecognizable to my own experience, but I see myself in them. Roger Ebert once called the movies an empathy machine, and the birth of the Malegaon movie industry feels largely like experience I’ve had in Oklahoma. Twain may have called travel fatal to prejudice, but movies from another place are almost as good. I don’t think I would have had the same close connection to the people of Malegaon by visiting there than I would immersing myself in their story.

That feeling of identification isn’t the only thing the movie has to offer. The performances are good, and their interactions are often quite amusing. It’s a good time at the movies. The movie is not without its flaws, though. It runs a bit too long. One gets the sense that the film is a just on the wrong side of too attached to its documentary source material. Elements of their relationships with one another are introduced—seemingly in the service of authentically depicting their subjects—but never quite connect or properly pay off with the narrative constructed here. It’s early goings, though. By the time you might see the film, it might be a little more pared down and committed to its underlying story.

The Strike (2024)

Director: Lukas Guilkey, JoeBill Muñoz

Cast: Jack Morris, Dolores Morris, Ernesto Lira, Paul Redd

Have I Seen it Before: Oddly enough, yes. I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to talk about that, now that I think about it. It is also the first and only time I am likely to see a film for the first time while exercising around the house, and seeing it the second time with director sitting right behind me.

Did I Like It: It will be very difficult to not be somehow both cynical and naively hopeful throughout this review, but I will try.

The Strike is easily my favorite documentary of the year. Offering macro analysis and first-hand testimonials in perfectly calibrated balance, we hear the stories of inmates in the Security Housing Unit or SHU of California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. I imagine it is impossible for anyone who hasn’t been in that kind of a situation to imagine what it must be like. While the film does depict that hell with all of the tools at its disposal, cinema may just be unequal to the task.

The film isn’t focused on that bleak, impenetrable reality, though. Depicting the events leading up to and ensuing from the 2013 prisoner hunger strike, we see these incarcerated people take their lives into their own hands in the only way they possibly could. You will march through the film increasingly confident that positive social change is just out of reach in our current age, but both you and I were wrong. There is still a long way to go in the cause against mass incarceration and the overuse of solitary confinement, but by the end of the film real progress is made.

Then again, the last real progress on the issue happened in 2015. Maybe our current era is still just out of reach.

Turns out I didn’t try all that hard to avoid being cynical and hopeful in the same instant.

Saturday Night (2024)

Director: Jason Reitman

Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt

Have I Seen it Before: I’ve heard all the stories before, if not quite in this combination. I’ve seen the documentaries, and I’ve read Live from New York*. I know all about everyone hating the Muppets, and Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) almost being a part of show one, and even Milton Berle’s (J.K. Simmons) penis*.

One might wonder why I watched a new release right in the middle of catching movies at a film festival. I may have really wanted to go see the 70th anniversary revival of Seven Samurai (1954), but as it turned out, so did everyone else at the festival. We had to make quick changes, and this was a pretty good consolation prize.

Did I Like It: That is all to say, I generally liked the film very much.

The casting is unassailably great. I struggle to find a weak link in the entire ensemble. Matt Wood is the embodiment of John Belushi, to the point where I wondered if they somehow resurrected him. Others may not be quite as spooky, but Cory Michael Smith’s channeling the soul of Chevy Chase, and Dylan O’Brien’s mastering of the Dan Aykroyd cadence are certainly highlights. I love any opportunity to see Lamorne Morris at work, and having him play Garrett Morris is maybe the only obvious note of casting in the whole affair, but all is forgiven when its a running race between him and Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun, who also plays perpetually put-upon Jim Henson) for which depiction I like the most. While Matthew Rhys’ performance as George Carlin (the first guest host of the program) is serviceable, the makeup job to make Rhys look like Carlin is more than worthy of some Academy attention in the spring.

The story’s breakneck pace guarantees that certain liberties are taken with the fall of 1975, but many, many of them can be forgiven. While the show existing in the first place as a byproduct of a Johnny Carson powerplay is true, it wasn’t like it went up to the last minute before they were going to decide to even air the show, but it feels right. The moments that ring less thematically true pile up in the film’s final act. Hunt is tragically underused as Gilda Radner (especially as he performance taps well into the manic sweetness that made Radner a star), chiefly musing with Belushi about how they might look back on this night in twenty years, when neither of them were going to make it that far. This, shortly after Lorne Michaels (LaBelle, little Sammy Fabelman no longer) hires longtime writer Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener) minutes before showtime. It’s a one-two punch of supreme based-on-a-true-story bullshit. If we had gotten to see Zweibel already a part of the writing staff, we could have seen the truly lovely friendship between him and Radner. It’s a huge missed opportunity for the movie.

*Although I am reading the recent revision. There’s probably some good stories in the last few years, not the least of which would include the absolutely lame horror of having certain politicians (you know who you are…) hosting in the new millennium.

**In the movie, he shows it to Chevy, but I’m almost sure he actually showed it to one of the writers, probably Zweibel. Thematically, it somehow feels right to show it to Chase.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis. John Williams

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know, I’m not very happy with myself, either. Luckily, tripping over it during a rainy Santa Fe day (they exist, I assure you) on vacation recorded from TCM was something of a coup, as this one is somehow missing from all the Hitchcock collections I can’t help buying.

Did I Like It: Even the master has to have a weak one, right? I start a Hitchcock film expecting it to be a finely tuned plot machine designed to deliver thrill after thrill. That’s just not the case here. Grant and Kelly are nice to look at, and nice to see play off of one another. The locations are the kind of pure movie escapism that usually keep the worst of the James Bond films from being complete bores. But is the movie thrilling? Does it insist you look at the story without blinking for fear of missing something key to set up the surprises that are to come? Is there even that much jewel thievery going on?

The film is charming, but low on thrills. One wonders how Hitchcock got through the exercise, relying solely on the charms of his two leads to get the film over the hump. I would say watch the film, but marshal expectations. Or maybe opt for North by Northwest (1959). It’s got all the charm and all the thrills. You don’t have to settle for one or the other.

And now I would be remiss if I didn’t say a word about motion blurring. As a movie seen at my parents’ house, the movie played less like a Vistavision wonder of the 50s, and more like an Eastern European soap opera shot sometime earlier that afternoon. Normally, I would have made a stink about the matter. I merely asked if they knew about motion blurring, they said they didn’t, and I let the matter lie there. Be nice to your parents, but if they’re not involved, turn off your motion blurring, would ya?

The Piano Lesson (2024)

Director: Malcolm Washington

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Ray Fisher, Danielle Deadwyler

Have I Seen It Before: No. This was the first film I saw for the Santa Fe International Film Festival this year. A full-week pass to a film festival is a strange thing. You look at a list, see a quick description of a film (or a series of films, if it’s an exhibition of short subjects), see if tickets are still available (they often aren’t, I missed a few things over the week to this struggle), see if it conflicts with anything else that you’re wanting to see or support, and then see if you’re interested in the film.

Did I Like It: A stage play adapted to film is always a tricky thing. Something like Dracula (1931)--which has far more to do with the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston than it did Stoker’s novel—came so early in the era of the talking picture that the camera just sort of sits there while the play is performed in front of it. The big musicals of the turn of the centuries knew they had to embrace the trappings of the big screen and delivered their spectacle. I can’t help but watch this film and feel as if the act of adaptation was not fully fulfilled. Pointedly cinematic scenes are added that I can’t imagine existed in the original August Wilson play—mainly depicting the creation and heist of the titular piano—but these feel somewhat tacked on.

The cast is terrific, but the majority of them are transplants from a recent Broadway revival of the play.

The themes are well constructed, and I’ve been thinking about them for most of the week since screening it. Are the ghosts real, or is the metaphor of being haunted by your past more potent? The film manages to not conclusively answer the question, while at the same time not feeling as if the story is cheating in the ambiguity.

And yet, would I have been better off watching a staging of the play? I wonder.

Sisters (1972)

Director: Brian De Palma

Cast: Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning, Bill Finley

Have I Seen it Before: Never. The film always exists just on my periphery, being a fan of De Palma’s later work as I am. Always on the lookout for more movies to cover on Beyond the Cabin in the Woods, but I have long since learned that I probably need to see the movie before I actually recommend it to the others.

Did I Like It: So, then this review attempts to tackle two questions. First, am I going to push for it to be covered by the show, and do I recommend it for the movie viewer at large. It’s entirely possible for a film to not quite live up to the horror genre entirely, but still be a necessary film, or even a film worth your time.

I’m of a somewhat conflicted mind on both questions. The film plays with slasher conventions—indeed, before the genre really exists outside of Psycho (1960)—in a way that keeps things interesting, especially for the film’s first half. If that first half had been the whole movie, you’d probably be hearing a charming back and forth unpacking the film sometime next year, but I would have already told you to go watch it.

But, unfortunately, every film that has a a strong first half has to be judged at least partially on the basis of its second half as well. The really great thrillers sell themselves on their second half, and this one becomes too jarringly unfocused to really get behind. When the film is less about a man meeting a woman to whom he’s attracted, only to find her home life to be a horror show is good. The investigative journalist who just happens to see the murder take place might feel a little clockworky, but it does deftly set up her challenge to get authorities to believe her. Then things become a little less Psycho and a little more some variation of later Halloween sequels. That might ring a little unfair, and while the final scenes are visually interesting, they can’t help but weigh down the thrills by buttressing them with excessive backstory.

Totally Killer (2023)

Director: Nahnatchka Khan

Cast: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Charlie Gillespie, Lochlyn Munro

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Feels like I’ve been spending most of the last year having everyone I know recommend the film, but never quite making the time to get it done, outside of the tail end of our Beyond the Cabin in the Woods season.

Did I Like It: I’m going to start the review by saying I liked the film very much, but I recommend you stop reading this review and take that recommendation before I let loose with any of the film’s surprises.

Now I know why everyone has been recommending the film. I’ll admit that somewhere along the way I got this film conflated with Mandy (2018) or more likely Freaky (2020) and had no idea what I was going to be in for as things unfolded. That all being said, being surprised that a film is actually about time travel is one of my personal favorite experience to have a with a movie. To construct a movie whose pitch almost had to be Back to the Future (1985) meets Halloween (1978) not only feels like a winner, but would have guaranteed I would have forked over whatever resources I had to get the thing made, were I in that position, or I’d be secretly mad that I hadn’t come up with the idea first. I can only hope that I didn’t spoil the surprise for you.

That begin said, I think it wouldn’t be terribly controversial to say that the film succeeds more as a teen time travel fantasy-comedy, and less as a slasher. While the Sweet 16 Killer* has a better mask than Michael Myers does in most of the Halloween series, the killings often feel perfunctory. I never once feel the dread that Carpenter and company wield with such deceptive ease. This would doom the whole affair to be just another bland entry in the slasher genre, classier than anything spawned from Friday the 13th (1980), but less enjoyable than Scream (1996) or its sequels. Thankfully, it does wind up being one of the more satisfying time travel comedies in recent memory, more than living up to its obligations to be a riff on Back to the Future.

*Form dictates I identify the actor in the role here, but that would constitute at least something of a spoiler, to say nothing of the fact that I’m not sure I can succinctly answer that question at any given moment in the film.