Venom is basically your standard hostage-taking gone wrong thriller by way of The Desperate Hours with a poisonous snake thrown in for good measure. I love it when movies do that – take a pretty basic plot and then add something nutty to make it interesting. This one would be pretty forgettable except it stars Klaus Kinski and Oliver Reed as the villains and Sterling Hayden as the good guy. Plus Sarah Miles is the snake doctor.
Anyway, you can read my full review here.
My birthday is coming up and thus I’ve been making lists of things to give to my wife so that she might purchase me gifts. Whenever I have a little bit of spending money or a presents-for-me opportunity I always debate whether I’d like to get a bunch of smaller items or one big (and expensive) thing. Smaller things aren’t as individually exciting, but it is super fun receiving lots of different things. A single expensive item can be amazing, but then it’s all you get.
I still haven’t made my decision for this year’s birthday, and it won’t be this week’s pick (mainly because I’ve never seen any of the films) but I do love big boxed sets of relatively obscure films. Besides all the nonsense going on in the world I still find it magical that someone is releasing a set of goofy-looking horror films from Brazil and they are pulling out all the stops in terms of audio/video quality, extras, and packaging.
You can read all about this set and everything else coming out this week here.
Groundhog Day meets Scream is a good way to describe Happy Death Day. With maybe a touch of Heathers and Clueless. It doesn’t break any new ground, but it has a great lead performance by Jessica Rothe and I thought it was a lot of fun.
Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) wakes up from a night of partying with a hangover and no idea where she is. There is a boy who says his name is Carter (Israel Broussard) but she doesn’t know who he is. Since she’s in his dorm, sleeping in his bed and she’s not wearing any pants she figures she must have slept with him, but she doesn’t remember that either.
He is polite, if perhaps a bit embarrassed by this ordeal (we’ll find out later he did not sleep with her and he does become a romantic interest), but she wants nothing to do with him. She is, in a word, a bitch. A mean girl. She’s rude to everyone. We’ll discover later it is her birthday and the anniversary of her mother’s death and her meanness is in part a way for her to distance herself from her grief. But like her namesake, she needs to grow up.
Her walk of shame takes her across the campus commons. There she will cross paths with a number of memorable things – a weird goth dude stares at her, an eager woman tries to get her to sign a petition, a car alarm goes off, and some sprinklers spray a couple of picnickers. Etc. These are the types of things that will alert her to the fact that she’s reliving the same day over and over again.
The film nearly winks at the audience during this scene. We know what kind of film we’re getting into. It knows we know and welcomes us with a smile.
She’ll then meet our cast of characters who will become suspects in her murder. There’s the sorority Queen Bee, the put-upon roommate, the married doctor she’s sleeping with, etc. Then on her way to a party that evening, someone wearing a weird baby mask (the school’s mascot is apparently a baby!?) stabs her to death.
Bam. She wakes back up in Carter’s room, reliving the same day all over again. Getting murdered no matter what she does. Groundhog Day wasn’t the first film to put its character into a time loop, but it is probably the best and it is certainly the most popular. Many films have taken that premise and installed it into different genres. Slashers tend to be rather cookie-cutter in similarity so it makes perfect sense to apply the Groundhog Day scenario to it.
One of the interesting additions to the story is how her violent deaths begin taking a toll on her body. She’s stabbed numerous times and they begin to leave internal scars even as her life continues to recycle each day.
Happy Death Day relies more on the murder mystery angle than the horror. It isn’t particularly scary and the violence is decidedly PG-13. But it has fun with its premise and Jessica Rothe is wonderful. She nails the bitchiness, the pathos, and ultimately the warmth of the character.
There is a sequel and I sort-of wrote a little bit about it here.
It is time for another five things. This time I’m talking about Porco Rosso, the animated film from Studio Ghibli, a wonderful episode of The Last of Us, Taskmaster my new favorite British Panel Show, a silly 1980s horror film called Trick or Treat, and one of my favorite 1980s movies, Heathers, which I shared with my daughter. Plus R.E.M. got back together for a single song with Michael Shannon. You can read all about it here.
The public library in Bloomington, Indiana is an amazing place. I lived near there for a time and I always loved visiting. It was larger than any public library I’d ever been to before and it was well stacked with all sorts of books. Even more impressive was their collection of movies and music. Rumor had it that they had purchased all the movies some local video rental store had when that store went out of business. That must have been some cool rental store as the movies the library had were awesome.
They had foreign films, arthouse films, lots of cool British TV, and a solid collection from Criterion before I even knew what the Criterion Collection was. I became a true cinephile in that library and I’m forever grateful for it.
One of the movies I borrowed from there was Wages of Fear. I’m embarrassed to say that I did not finish it the first time I borrowed it. The film is one of the tensest films ever made and I have to admit I found it boring. In my defense, it does take a while to get going. There is a long section in the beginning that introduces our characters and the setting and it is intentionally paced slow.
But once it gets going oh man does it ever get going. In some backwater South American town, four desperate men drive two trucks loaded with nitroglycerin across treacherous mountain roads. It is a suicide mission but the men have no other choice. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot fills every second of their journey with fear and tension.
It is a fantastic film and the Criterion is releasing it on 4K UHD. I can’t wait to see it.
Also out this week that looks interesting:
Akira 4K UHD: One of the greatest animated movies ever made is getting the Ultra High-Def treatment from Crunchyroll.
Gladiator II 4K UHD: The original Gladiator film is a terrific bit of sword and sandal fun with some great action sequences and a fantastic performance from Russell Crowe. The sequel is a big fat dud. At least Denzel Washington appears to have had fun making it.
Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXIV: Everytime Kino Lorber puts out one of these sets I always think that they must surely be getting close to running out of films they can release and then they put out another one. This one has three films – Union Station / Jennifer / The Crooked Circle.
Play it Cool: Arrow Video is releasing this Japanese melodrama about the exploits of a Geisha.
When my copy of this disc arrived in the mail, I was confused and a little disappointed. Confused because I couldn’t remember ordering it and disappointed because I knew I had to review it. I do that sometimes – I’ll get a series of PR emails offering all sorts of discs and that little kid inside of me who can’t believe they actually send me free movies if I’ll just write a few paragraphs about them gets all excited. I say “yes” to everything and then when they arrive I wonder what the heck I’m doing.
Generally, I love getting movies in the mail – watching them and reviewing them. But sometimes I get a little overwhelmed with them and I start thinking about the other movies I want to watch. Movies that might fit my monthly theme or something and I’m annoyed at being forced to do something. It is like in school when the teacher makes you read a book. You don’t want to do it even if it sounds interesting.
I was disappointed at receiving My Girl because my memory of it (admittedly a very vague one) was that I didn’t really like the film. Looking at Letterboxd confirmed that opinion with the general consensus being that it wasn’t great.
But I had to watch it and so I did. It was better than I remembered. It is a cute little coming-of-age tale set in the 1970s with a strong performance by the central moppet. It isn’t amazing or anything, but I’m glad I watched it again.
You can read my full review here.
I watched 29 movies in February. 21 of them were new to me. Seven of them were made before I was born. It was Foreign Film February, and I watched eleven films that were not made by Americans. I’ve intentionally slowed my movie-watching down this year. I decided I wanted to catch up on some television viewing.
As always I intended to watch more movies within my theme and write about them, and as always I got distracted by a lot of other things. I’m especially disappointed that I didn’t make any of my Friday Night Horror Movies fit because there are lots of great foreign horror films. But here we are.
The director and actor categories are still not really worth talking about. There are only four directors that I’ve watched more than a single film of and the actors have not risen above that number either.
I do plan on doing Westerns In March again this year. I’ve already watched Hombre in preparation for it. Anyway, here’s the full list.
Nightbreed (1990) **
Prince of Darkness (1987) ****
My Girl (1991) ***
The Long Night (1947) ***1/2
Danger: Diabolik (1968) ****
Le Corbeau (1943) ****
Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose (2023) **
The Woman in Black (2012) **1/2
The Magician (1958) ****
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) ****
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) ****
The Outlaw (1943) ***
For Your Eyes Only (1981) ****
Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) ***
The Lost King (2022) ***1/2
Choke (2008) ***
House (1985) ***
Eden Lake (2008) **
Drunken Master (1978) ***1/2
The Substance (2024) ****
Conclave (2024) ****
Porco Rosso (1992) ****
Hokuriku Proxy War (1977) ****
Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) ***1/2
Certified Copy (2010) ***1/2
When Harry Met Sally… (1989) ****1/2
Keep an Eye Out (2018) ***1/2
The Third Murder (2017) ***1/2
The Vanished Elephant (2014) ***
A priest dies. With him is a cylinder that contains a key and diary. Another priest (Donald Pleasence) is called in. he discovers the key and opens the door to a basement inside an old, abandoned church. Inside he finds a large cylinder filled with swirling liquid. The priest calls his friend Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong), a quantum physicist to investigate. He calls in a bunch of graduate students.
They discover the cylinder is ancient. The diary is coded, written in multiple languages, and full of equations. Decoded it says that the cylinder literally contains Satan and that Jesus Christ was an alien who came to Earth to warn humans about the cylinder. Jesus was killed by humans who thought he was insane.
The priest questions his faith. In some ways, Prince of Darkness is yet another inquiry into the age-old question of science versus faith. But told by horror maestro John Carpenter by way of B-movie genre cinema. It totally works for me.
Outside the church, a group of people (including a dude played by Alice Cooper) gather. They simply stand there and stare. Later one of the students will try to escape and he’ll be righteously killed by those people (and then somehow reanimated by bugs). Some of the canister goo will pour into another student’s mouth turning her into a Satan zombie. Or something. She’ll spit in other people’s mouths turning them into zombies as well.
Meanwhile, the priest, the professor, and the remaining students try to figure out how to keep the Satan goo from taking over the world.
As you can tell the plot of Prince of Darkness is pure schlock. It is goofy and weird, silly, and quite a bit dumb. But it looks great. Cinematographer Gary B. Kibbe lights the film to perfection, filling the screen with lots of beautiful candle-lit shots. And Carpenter is a master of this stuff.
It is a little disappointing that a film that promises Satan and the Apocalypse never gives us much more than goo in a jar and some silly zombies, but it doesn’t really matter. This is John Carpenter, genre master, having lots of fun. I did too.
Weak Spot is a film that is difficult to explain or sum up. I reviewed it for Cinema Sentries a little over a month ago. I’ve been meaning to link to that review in these pages. I’ve literally queued it up at least four different times. But each time I’ve stared at this blank page not knowing how to write this little summary to get you interested enough to click over and read my review.
It is a French-Italian-German coproduction based on a Greek novel. It takes place in an unnamed location that is under totalitarian rule. It follows a man who may or may not be a subversive who is caught possibly passing a secret message onto another subversive. He is very casually taken to the capital city for questions by police who don’t seem all that interested in their jobs.
It is full of ridiculous situations played totally straight. It is confusing and weird and rather delightful.
I recommend watching it. I hope this intrigues you enough to click on this link and read my full review.
In a small French town, someone calling themselves The Raven (or Le Corbeau in French) is sending out poison pen letters – gossipy missives accusing various townsfolk of scandalous goings-on. Though letters are sent to nearly everyone in town, accusing loads of people of all sorts of terrible things, they concentrate on Dr. Rémy Germain (Pierre Fresnay) accusing him of having an illicit affair and of performing illegal abortions.
At first, the letters are kind of funny, at least to those who are not being accused, but as more and more of the townsfolk are being accused things become serious quickly. One man commits suicide after being told something in a letter. Fingers get pointed. Demands are made to those in power. The letters must be stopped.
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot who also helmed the masterful Diabolique (1955) and The Wages of Fear (1953) Le Corbeau is a terrific little mystery in which the answer to who The Raven really is doesn’t matter nearly as much as what those letters do to the townspeople.
Made in the middle of the Nazi occupation of France the film can be seen as a commentary of the paranoia many French people felt during this period. Never knowing who to trust or what to believe. Interestingly, it also caused problems for its directors since it was produced by a German company, and the French were none too accepting of Germany-made things after the war. They eventually got over it.
It is sometimes called the first French film noir and I can totally see that with the moody black-and-white photography and Dutch angles. It falls just short of being the masterpiece that the two other films of his I mentioned earlier in this review, but Le Corbeau is still a wonderful film deserving your attention.
themidnightcafe.org 