The Friday Night Horror Movie: Down (2001)

down

Friday night comes and I need a horror movie to watch. I really want to watch something I’ve not seen before, but scrolling through my current streaming services doesn’t turn up much. I start to put on The Ring (2002) the American remake of the excellent Japanese film Ringu (1988) with Naomi Watts, but I’ve seen it before, and as I said I’m wanting something new. I land on this film which also stars Naomi Watts. It is about an evil elevator in a New York skyrise and that sounds like fun.

Sometimes when you randomly watch something after flipping through the streaming channels you discover something really good. Sometimes, like tonight, you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake.

Down is a remake of a Dutch film called The Lift which is something of a cult classic. Dick Maas directed both of them. I haven’t seen the original but if the remake is anything like it I won’t be bothering with it at all.

It seems to be trying for some sort of blending of horror and comedy but it fails at both. The comedy is broad and bad and not all of the actors seem to understand they should be going for laughs, while others seem to think they are in a Marx Brothers film. It was made just before Watts became a star so while she is featured prominently in all the promotional material she actually isn’t the lead. That role goes to James Marshall who, if you are like me, you’ll stare at for a long time trying to remember where you know him from before you finally look it up and realize he was in Twin Peaks. He plays everything quite straight whereas Naomi Watts seems to have walked in from some SNL skit from the early 1990s. She lays it on thick and broad and sports the worst Brooklyn accent I’ve heard in a while.

The film has great character actors like Dan Hedaya and Michael Ironside, Ron Perlman and Edward Hermann in small roles, all of which seem to be playing in different movies.

This is a movie that begins with two security mooks looking through those tourist telescope things on the observation deck of this big skyscraper. They are looking into the window of a nearby window watching a couple of prostitutes get sexy with some dude. It is played for laughs like it’s one of those low-budget comedies the USA Network used to play on Friday nights. It goes downhill from there.

While the comedy is bad the horror is worse. It builds very little suspense, the deaths are sometimes gruesome but never effective. I’d say it was more of a supernatural thriller instead of horror but it isn’t very thrilling either. In the last 15 minutes or so it does switch from just bad to so-bad-its-good territory but by then I was just ready for it to be over.

As an interesting bit of trivia, the film was scheduled for a 2001 release but then 9/11 happened and for obvious reasons, it got pushed back into oblivion. At some point, they think the elevator mishaps are caused by terrorists. There are actually characters who talk about how Bin Laden tried to take down the twin towers which is now kind of creepy. And that’s about as creepy at the film gets.

Lone Star (1996)

lone star

I have a very distinct memory of watching this movie. I saw it with my mother. This isn’t the sort of movie we’d normally watch together which means there must have been a good review in the local paper. I think we showed up late because I remember we had to sit up close. We were maybe in the third row and off to the side. It was very uncomfortable watching from that spot.

I remember liking the movie, but not much else about it. Except for the crick in my neck. It wasn’t like any movie I’d ever seen before so my feelings were skewed. Or rather I didn’t know exactly why I liked it, except that it was really interesting. In my memory, I’m in high school, but by 1996 I would have been in college, so I must have been home for winter break, or maybe the summer.

A corpse is discovered in the desert outside a small border town in South Texas. It has been there so long nothing is left but bones, a Mason’s ring, and a sheriff’s badge. The current sheriff, Sam (Chris Cooper) determines that the dead man was Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson) the former sheriff. He went missing decades ago after getting into an argument with Sam’s father, Buddy (Matthew McConaughey). Buddy then became sheriff and was and is beloved by the town.

On the surface, the film is a murder mystery. But there is so much below the surface. As Sam searches for the killer (who he thinks just might be his father) he digs up the past. His past, his father’s past, and the town’s past. As a border town sitting right on the river that divides Mexico from the US the town is full of whites, blacks, Indians and Mexicans. Racial relations have changed over time as well.

The film moves between the present and the past in a most interesting way. The camera will move in on one character, say Sam talking to someone about Charlie, then it will slowly move away and the characters from the past will be there acting out the scene. It blurs the lines between the past and present, memory and history.

Sam runs into his high school sweetheart and they rekindle their relationship. An Army Colonel is transferred to a nearby base. His estranged father runs the local bar, the only place blacks felt welcome in the town for decades. The past meeting the present again, and again.

Director John Sayles weaves this tale full of side stories and numerous characters like an enormous tapestry. Long after watching the film I’m still thinking about it. I don’t know why it took me nearly 25 years to watch it a second time, but I’m quite sure I’ll see it again before another quarter century rolls around.

Noirvember 2022

the blue dahlia

I watched 35 movies in November. 27 of those films were new to me. 22 of them were made before I was born. 18 of them could be considered noirs, two of which would be categorized as neo-noirs.

Because I was seeking out lesser-known film noirs, and thus was watching films that were less than extraordinary, I got a little burned out on the genre a little more than halfway through the month and so my watching of said genre slowed down a bit. And then I got sick and I reverted to some comfort movies to get me through.

Still, it was a good movie month overall, and I did see some very good noirs.

Anyway, here’s the list:

Le Doulos (1962) – ***1/2
The Blue Dahlia (1946) – ****1/2
Kiss of Death (1947) – ***1/2
After Dark, My Sweet (1990) – **1/2
The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) – ***
In a Lonely Place (1950) – ****1/2
Sorcerer (1977) – ****1/2
The Dark Corner (1946) – ***1/2
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) – **1/2
The Dark Mirror (1946) – ***1/2
Johnny Allegro (1949) – ***1/2
Fallen Angel (1945) – ***1/2
This Gun for Hire (1942) – ****
Reign of Terror (1949) – ****
Face the Music (1954) – ***
A Blueprint for Murder (1953) – ***
The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) – ***
The Big Clock (1948) – ****

My favorites were:

The Blue Dahlia. Written by the hard-boiled Raymond Chandler this one stars Alan Ladd as a veteran who returns home to find out that his wife has been cheating on him, when she turns up dead the cops naturally suspect he killed her. Veronica Lake is the classic femme fatale and William Bendix is the pal who has a few screws loose. It had some classic Chandler one-liners and plenty of twists and turns.

Sorcerer. William Friedkin’s fantastic remake of the classic French film Wages of Fear updates the politics a bit, and moves the setting to the jungle, but it keeps all the intense tension.

In a Lonely Place. I’d seen this one before and didn’t love it, but after reading the book I decided to give the film another chance. I’m glad I did because I loved it this time. The movie changes the story quite a bit, turning it into something of a mystery (in the book the character played by Bogart in the film is fore sure a serial killer, but in the movie he maybe, just maybe killed one girl). Bogart is terrific as is Gloria Grahame.

The Big Clock. I wrote about this one in full here.

Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman

cold war creatures

You know that I love horror movies and film noir, but I also have a soft spot for really low-budget science fiction flicks, especially those made in the 1950s. I love alien invasions from space and giant creatures made from atomic radiation. Way back in October of last year I reviewed a three-film boxed set from Arrow Video. It is filled with giant birds, atomic brains and crazy zombies. Check it out.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema IX

film noir

Kino Lorber released two of their film noir sets in October which seemed weird to me since Noirvember was just a month later. But maybe they wanted to get them on the shelves a few weeks before the holiday so that fans would be ready to watch once November rolled around.

I watched these so long ago I had to read my own review just to remember if I liked this one (I did). You can do the same here.

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema X

film noir

I’ve fallen behind in posting links to my reviews over at Cinema Sentries. I wrote this one for Kino Lorber’s latest film noir boxed sets back in October, but what better time to share it than the tail end of Noirvember? To be honest this set was probably my least favorite one they’ve done. Mostly because the three films are boxing movies and not really noir. But whatever, you can read my review here.

The Flash (2014): The Complete Eighth Season

the flash season 8

I’ve mentioned before that we are big fans of The Flash in my house, and I believe I also mentioned that the show was starting to wear thin. Season Eight furthered my thoughts in this regard. It is really starting to become a chore to sit through and that’s not good for any show. Season Nine will be its final season and I’m definitely glad. I’m sure I’ll watch it because I’d like to see it through to the end, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, which is such a shame.

Anyway, here’s my review of the entire season eight.

Sorry For the Lack of Posting

My family and I were down and out all last week with…something. We ran light fevers, had heads full of gunk, felt achy and our heads hurt, and we coughed our bloody lungs out. It wasn’t COVID, we tested negative for that. I’m guessing it was a mild case of the flu since that’s been going around. Whatever it was it made me not want to do anything more than lay on the couch and moan. Luckily I had already planned on a four-day weekend so I didn’t miss too much work. Unluckily that four-day weekend coincided with Thanksgiving and I spent it doing the aforementioned moaning on the couch.

I’m feeling quite a bit better now, though I am still coughing quite a bit. So, I’ll try to resume some regular posting again. I had several more Noirvember postings that I wanted to get to, but at this point, I’ll probably just do some kind of overview of what I watched in a few days. I know at least two of you will be interested in that LOL.

I do not have a movie theme for December yet. I’m not a huge fan of Christmas movies so I won’t be doing that. I might not do anything. After two theme months it might be nice to just watch whatever I want. I’ll still do the occasional review, and I’ll definitely be making public my old reviews again.

On the music organizational front, I can officially say I am done with Bob Dylan. If I remember I’ll post a list of all my Bob shows for you all to look at with envy. I’m now working my way through various other artists that I’m moving off of a hard drive that will be solely dedicated to Bob. Then I’ll finally get to that hard drive my friend sent me many years ago. That’s the Peter Gabriel, Queen, Pink Floyd, etc. drive that I’ve been feeding off of for a long time. So, I am making good progress.

I’m still aiming to be done in April when my Amazon Drive goes dark. Then I’ll start posting music downloads again, at least in some fashion.

Anyway, I hope everyone else is well and happy.