The Friday Night Horror Movie: Crooked House (2008)

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We have now moved from our beloved Awesome ’80s in April to Mysteries in May. When I started this theme last year, I entitled it Murder Mysteries in May. I think I liked the aliteration more than anything, but I also seem to have known I would probably move from Murder Mysteries to just Mysteries, as when I created the category for it, I did not include “Murder.”

The thing, of course, is that you can have a mystery without there being a murder. I imagine that the majority of mysteries involve solving some sort of crime, often a murder, and Lord knows I love a good Murder Mystery, but I think I like broadening it up to other types of mysteries as well. So here we are. I’ll likely write more about that tomorrow in my normal opening salvo for the month’s theme, so I’ll move on.

It is easy to find a mystery that is also a horror film. Lots of murder mysteries have horror elements mixed in, and a good haunted house story is also mysterious. Tonight I wanted to watch something with my wife, and as she doesn’t like the hard horror stuff, I went looking for a nice mystery with just a touch of horror. It took forever, and when I finally found something, our internet went bad, so I had to find something else.

I landed on a movie called Crooked House from 2017. It is based on an Agatha Christie story, it was scripted by Julian Fellowes, and stars Glenn Close, Terrence Stamp, Julian Sands, Gillian Anderson, and Christina Hendricks. The trailer looked fun, and my Fire Stick indicated it was available on Prime.

I pressed play, and an opening scene had Marc Gatiss in it. That was a nice surprise, and I was pleased to have yet another actor I enjoy in this thing. Then the opening credits rolled, and none of the other names were familiar to me. None of those stars I just rattled off appeared either.

This was the wrong film. I backed out and looked at it again. The title card indicated the movie I wanted, and the trailer too. But pressing “play” again yielded the same results. I then searched for “Crooked House” on my Fire Stick, and now Amazon indicated that the film I wanted was not available to me.

Figuring the Mark Gatiss film was just an older adaptation of the same story, I decided to go ahead and watch.

It is not the same story. It isn’t even a movie. This Crooked House was a television series created by Mark Gatiss, who also wrote it. It ran for three episodes in 2008. Presumably, someone put the episodes together and made them into a movie. It works like an anthology series, which fits the premise well.

Gatiss conceived it as a homage to both the stories of M.R. James and the films of Amicus Productions. I’ve not read anything by James, but I am quite familiar with Amicus, which made a bunch of low-budget horror films in the 1970s that feel like low-rent Hammer Horror knock-offs.

A high school history teacher, Ben Morris (Lee Ingleby), brings an ancient door knocker he’s recently discovered to the local museum, where he presents it to the curator (Mark Gatiss). He says it must be from the old Geap Manor and proceeds to tell him two ghost stories about the place.

The first story finds an old miser restoring the Manor after he got rich on an investment that ruined the other speculators. Soon enough, he’s hearing loud knocks coming from the walls, which seem to turn to blood in the wee hours of the night.

The second story takes place in the Roaring Twenties, with a wild party going on in the manor. The new owner announces his engagement to the daughter of a tradesman, much to the chagrin of his ex-girlfriend and grandmother. The ex is jealous, but the grandmother tells a story of a terrible suicide that happened to her sister on her wedding day. And the curse the woman put upon all new brides in that house.

Our final story involves Ben Morris as he takes the knocker home and puts it on his own door, only to begin hearing creepy knocking at 3 every morning and finding his house transformed into the old manor.

None of the stories is particularly good, but they do have a certain creepy charm to them, and there are a couple of good scares to be found. The fact that it was initially a television series somehow makes it better. I can totally see myself enjoying it that way. And I do dig that Amicus vibe.

The Totally Awesome ’80s in April: All the Movies

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8 Million Ways to Die (1986)
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1983)
The Bedroom Window (1987)
The Big Red One (1980)
Black Moon Rising (1986)
Breathless (1983)
Call Me (1985)
Castle In the Sky (1986)
Child’s Play (1988)
Dead Calm (1989)
Death Spa (1988)
Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
Dolls (1987)
Dune (1984)
Entity (1982)
The Final Countdown (1980)
Firestarter (1984)
Flash Gordon (1980)
Flashdance (1983)
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981)
Highlander (1986)
Initiation (1984)
Innerspace (1987)
The Killer (1989)
Mad Max (1981)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Monkeyshines (1988)

Night Game (1989)
Night of the Comet (1984)
Night of the Demons (1988)
Nighthawks (1981)
Presidio (1988)
Purple Rain (1984)
Rambo Trilogy (1982-1988)
A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)
Robocop (1987)
Silver Bullet (1985)
Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity (1987)
Starman (1984)
Three Amigos (1986)
X-Ray (1981)
Yes, Madam! (1985)

The Movie Journal: April 2024

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I watched 34 films in April. Twenty-six of them were new to me. Five of them were made before I was born. The theme for the month was Awesome ’80s in April, and I watched 12 movies from that decade.

It was a bit of an odd month. I had a lot of review stuff to watch, and I continued watching more TV than I have in the past. I should really start writing about that more. I’ve also not been following my rule of watching at least 75% new movies. Out of the 122 movies I’ve watched this year, only 88 (or 72%) have been new to me.

I did a great job of reviewing the movies I watched this month, though I did better in the beginning than the end.

My actors and directors lists are finally starting to look like something.

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I’ve got a big five-way tie for top actor with three films each. ’80s in April helped Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid jump in, and the death of Val Kilmer prompted me to watch some of his films.

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The wife and I always love Studio Ghibli films, and that is becoming a weekend staple, which puts Miyazaki in a tie for first place alongside John H. Auer, who directed all the films in the latest noir set from Kino Lorber.

For May, we are once again doing Mysteries in May so that should be fun.

D.O.A. (1988) ***
Magnificent Wanderers (1977) ***
Anna Karenina (1935) ***1/2
What a Way to Go! (1964) **1/2
Sinners (2025) ****1/2
Invitation to a Murder (2023) **
Tombstone (1993) ****
Career Opportunities (1991)
Night of the Demons (1988) ***1/2
The Magnificent Trio (1966) ***1/2
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) ****
Thunderheart (1992) ***1/2
Kill Me Again (1989) ****
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) ***
Burn After Reading (2008) ****
The Spanish Apartment (2002) *1/2
The Initiation (1984)
Black Moon Rising (1986) *
Castle in the Sky (1986) ****1/2
City That Never Sleeps (1953) ****
¡Three Amigos! (1986) ***
Dolls (1986) ***
The Flame (1947) **
Hell’s Half Acre (1954) ****
Danger Point: The Road to Hell (1991) ***1/2
The Hitman Blood Smells Like Roses (1991) ****
Carlos (1991) ****
Innerspace (1987) ****
Flashdance (1983) ***
Stranger (1991) ***1/2
Highlander (1986) ***1/2
Scorpion Woman Prisoner: Death Threat (1991) **
Companion (2025) ***1/2
Burning Dog (1991) ***1/2

Three Clint Eastwood Steelbook 4K UHDs are the Pick(s) of the Week

Typically, I choose but one film or boxed set as my pick of the week. But every now and again, I simply can’t choose just one film, and I have to go with multiple picks. This week, three Clint Eastwood classics are getting UHD upgrades with nice-looking Steelbook cases, and I want them all.

Clint Eastwood is one of the great actors and directors out there. He’s been consistently making good films for sixty years, and he doesn’t seem to be willing to stop.

The three films – Dirty Harry (1971), Pale Rider (1985), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) aren’t necessarily the very best of Clint Eastwood but they are all good films in their way (if I’m being honest I’ve not seen either of them in a long while so I don’t have anything intelligent to say about them at the moment) and they will make a nice addition to anyones collection.

Also out this week that looks interesting:

Anora 4K UHD: This Oscar-winning film from last year is about a sex worker who marries an Oligarch and then faces the consequences when her husband’s family finds out.

Paddington in Peru: I’ve not seen any of the Paddington films but everyone says they are delightful.

Star Trek: Section 31: Michelle Yeoh stars in this Star Trek film about a secret division of Starfleet tasked to protect the United Federation of planets, but she must also learn to deal with some dark secrets. The reviews have been savage.

V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal: Arrow Video presents this collection of straight-to-video films from Japan. You can read my review here.

Murderrock 4K UHD: Vinegar Syndrome presents this ridiculously silly, gory, and surprisingly beautiful Giallo of Lucio Fulci in UHD. You can read my review of the movie here.

Awesome ’80s in April: Black Moon Rising (1986)

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This theme always makes me think about what makes an ’80s movie so 1980s? There are lots of ways you could answer that from certain visual styles, to the excessive use of those lightning bolt effects. There are themes and motifs films from the 1980s reflected on regularly, and genres that elevated the box office (think slashers and action flicks).

You could turn on your TV right now and find a movie already in progress that you’ve never seen before and determine pretty quickly that it was made in the 1980s.

Certainly, if the film you put on was Black Moon Rising and you saw this car roll across the screen, you’d know you were watching an ’80s movie.

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And if there were any doubts after that, once you caught wind of Linda Hamilton’s hair, you would know with absolute certainty.

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The film itself is a great big pile of 1980s cheese. Tommy Lee Jones plays Sam Quint a thief turned FBI subcontractor hired to steal a computer disk containing damning information about some big Las Vegas corporation. He easily steals the disk, but when he’s chased down by some goons, he slips it behind the tag of that totally awesome car pictured above.

That car is a prototype made by some super-smart nerds, and it can travel up to 350 MPH and runs on water. Before Sam can get his disk back, a thief named Nina (Linda Hamilton) steals the car.

Actually, she steals a lot of cars. She’s part of a car-stealing ring that is so bold they show up at a fancy restaurant, lock all the doors then drive away with a couple of dozen cars at a time. The ring is run by Ed Ryland (Robert Vaughn), who is so bold that he’s building two massive high-rises to run his car-stealing operation out of.

Naturally, Sam has to break into the well-secured high rises and steal the car back. Naturally, he romances Nina in the process.

It is all very silly and rather dumb, but Tommy Lee Jones makes it worth the watching. He could elevate even the stupidest material. I’d watch him in anything. The car is pretty fun too.

The Friday Night Horror Movie – Awesome ’80s in April Edition: Night of the Demons (1988)

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These days I meticulously log all the films I watch on Letterboxd. Before that I used to have a blog post where I listed out everything I watched. I also marked the films on IMDB as I watched them, and I often tried to remember everything I had ever seen and marked them as watched and rated them as best I could remember.

Often, after I’d watch a movie, I’d click on an actor and then scroll through all the films they’d ever been in, carefully marking the ones I’d seen as watched and rating them. It wasn’t a perfect system. I’m sure there are lots of films I never marked down – movies that I watched as a kid and have long since forgotten, etc. And there are probably some movies I marked as watched that maybe I hadn’t actually seen. Memories are weird like that.

As I get older, I find there are a lot of films I’ve marked as watched, but then when I sit down with them again I realize not a single scene is familiar. I have no idea if I actually did watch them and have just forgotten everything in the film, or if I somehow thought I had seen it but actually had not.

Night of the Demons is a film I would have sworn that I had seen before. I remember watching it. Okay, I remember watching some of it. Well, alright, I remember one particular scene in which one of the actresses got topless. What can I say? I would have been about 14 at the time, pubescent and horny.

But watching it tonight there wasn’t a single moment that seemed familiar. Most of the actresses do get topless, but none of them rang that memory bell. And it seems like I would have probably remembered multiple instances of sex and nudity and not just one scene. So maybe I watched one of the sequels. Or maybe it was something else and I somehow conflated it with this film. Possibly I remember the movie poster for this (which I definitely saw many times at the local video store) and watched something else and my memories of the film got mixed in with the cover art. Or maybe I just watched part of the movie and had to turn if off for some reason (possibly my mother caught the nudity and yelled at me for watching it).

None of this matters, of course. You’re probably wondering why I’m spending so much time talking about this. I’m just forever fascinated by how my brain processes all the movies I’ve seen.

The film itself is a silly bit of 1980s horror. Some dumb teenagers (all played by actors who are clearly well out of high school) go to a party in an abandoned funeral parlor and accidentally unleash a demon which, one-by-one, possesses them and does a bit of light murdering.

The film isn’t big on specifics. There are some vague murmurings about the place being haunted due to some crazy murder taking place there sometime in the past. They unleash the demon by doing a half-assed seance and looking into a mirror.

The kids are all paper thin in their development and they are almost all obnoxious. Especially Stooge (Hal Havins) who loudly complains all the time, calling all the girls, “Bitch.” 1980s horror icon Linea Quigley is probably the most interesting, but that might just be because I know her from other films.

But the special effects are good. I’m a sucker for practical horror effects and there are some good ones here. Quigley’s character has a scene where she rubs red lipstick over her chest in circles and then pushes it completely into her breast. Which has got to be the most low-budget 1980s horror special effect ever.

I have no idea if I watched this movie back when I was a kid. But I’ll definitely be watching it again. It is by no means a great movie, or even a good one. The plot is barely there, the characters are annoying, but it’s still quite entertaining in that dumb ’80s horror way.

The Awesome ’80s in May: Castle in the Sky (1986)

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I feel like I don’t talk enough about Studio Ghibli. As I say this I look back and see that I’ve written about four of their films and not a single movie from Pixar so maybe I’m not quite telling the truth. But I do love Ghibli and I watch their films over and over again, moreso than pretty much any studio.

Castle in the Sky was the very first film produced by Studio Ghibli and it was directed by one of its founders (and its most famous name) Hayao Miyazaki. It was not the first film directed by Miyazaki (he’d been in the industry by this point for over a decade, working in television and as an animator in movies – he’d also directed a few feature films) but it was still early days in terms of him having full control over what he wanted to make.

You can already see the themes and characterizations he’d carry with him throughout his career being formed. This is a film that is anti-war, pro-nature, with a strong female protagonist. It also does something really interesting with its antagonist. It begins making you think one group of pirates are the enemies, but soon enough they’ve become friends with our heroes. Miyazaki is famous for having sympathetic antagonists. Here he does find some true enemies, but that switch with the pirates is wonderful.

I actually wrote about the time I got to see this film on the big screen a few years ago for Cinema Sentries so I don’t feel I need to talk about it much more, but it is a wonderful film and I do recommend it highly.

V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayals

I grew up in the late 1980s/early 1990s and I have many, many fond memories of going to the video rental store looking for something interesting to watch. I went enough that I had generally seen all the big new releases so I often went digging through the old stuff. I loved finding weird, low-budget genre films full of sex, and violence, and goofy action.

In Japan these straight-to-video releases were called V-Cinema and Arrow Video has just put out a cool little boxed set full of them. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

The Last of Us: Season One

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Just in time for Season Two hitting the small screen Season One of this terrific television series dropped a couple of weeks ago in a swell looking 4K UHD steelbook.

If you don’t know, The Last of Us is based on a popular video game series about a zombie like apocalypse and how two people – a middle-aged man and a teenage girl – survive it. I’ve never played the game but I love the series. You can read my full review over at Cinema Sentries.

Tombstone 4K UHD Is the New Blu-ray Pick of the Week

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My admission with this week’s pick is that I’ve never been a huge fan of Tombstone. I remember when it came out all of my friends just loved it. They constantly quoted it. I was late to watching it and I remember when I finally caught up with it I thought to myself, “this is it?” I’ve seen it a couple of times since then and it has grown on me.

Val Kilmer gives a terrific performance and there is some good stuff in their. I think it was a case of it being hyped so much that it just couldn’t be as good as it had been built up to me in my mind.

I do think it is about time for me to try it again, and this nice looking disc might be the way to do it. You can read all of my thoughts here.