Val Lewton was the producer of low-budget movies for RKO during the 1940s. But while his movies were made for very little money, they never looked cheap. Many of them are true classics.
The Criterion Collection is releasing two of Lewton’s best films in a nice little double-bill. I Walked With a Zombie is one of the first films to feature the walking dead, though they are decidedly different here than they would become in the films popularized by George A. Romero. Here they are bound up in a story about voodoo and melodrama.
The Seventh Victim finds a woman looking for her lost sister and discovering a satanic cult. Both films are pretty terrific and Criterion has loaded them with their usual extras.
Also out this week that looks interesting:
A Quiet Place: Day One: A Quiet Place is a pretty terrific horror film in which John Krasinski and Emily Blunt battle aliens with super hearing. This is the third film in the series that shows us the initial invasion. But instead of the quiet farm in which the first two films take place, this one is set in New York City. Lupita Nyong’o stars.
MaXXXine: The third film in Ti West’s X trilogy (X and Pearl being the other two). Once again Mia Goth stars as Maxine a porn star with dreams of crossing over into Hollywood. In X she was just getting started but here she’s found success in the X-rated industry but has yet to get a shot at making mainstream films. But there is a killer on her trail and things get weird. This is still a fun film, but it doesn’t lean hard enough into its 1980s setting and three films into the series, and things feel more adrift than ever.
Late Night with the Devil: Pretty good little horror flick about a late-night TV host who unleashes evil into the world (don’t they all?) You can read my full review here.
Sleepy Hollow: Tim Burton’s underrated The Legend of Sleep Hollow story has Johnny Depp in the Ichabod Crane role. Paramount Pictures is giving it the 4K UHD treatment for its 25th anniversary.
Kinds of Kindness: Yorgos Lanthimos is the maker of eccentric, funny, utterly bizarre films. His latest tells a trio of stories that I don’t want to know anything about. I find it is best to go into these things not knowing. It stars Emma Stone, Jesse Plemmons, and Willem Dafoe.
Robot Dreams: Animated film about a dog that builds a robot companion. I’ve been hearing good things about it.
Thelma: Delightful story about an elderly woman (June Squibb) who is conned out of a bunch of money over the phone and sets off to find the culprit.
Subservience: Megan Fox is an evil robot helper. You can read my full review here.
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