Weak Spot (1975) Blu-ray Review

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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.

Se7en (1995) 4K UHD Review

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As I mentioned in this week’s Pick of the Week I’m a big fan of David Fincher’s Se7en. What’s astonishing is that this was just his second feature film. He’d made numerous music videos before entering the world of movies, so he knew his way around a set and behind a camera. But his first feature film, Alien3, was a disaster. The studio constantly interfered, the box office was disappointing and critics mostly hated it (there has since been a “Director’s Cut” of sorts and it’s actually pretty good).

My point is that it is something of a small miracle he was able to make another film at all, that he made something so audacious, so freaking good as Se7en is a testament to Fincher’s confidence and vision so early in his career.

They just released a nice 4k UHD version of the film and it looks amazing. You can read my full review here.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Girl in the Pool (2024)

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Tom (Freddie Prinze, Jr) lives in a nice house in the suburbs. He’s got a beautiful wife (Monica Potter) and a couple of teenage kids. On paper, he’s got it all together. So, why is he so unhappy? In an early scene, we’ll see him on the phone with a friend and Tom asks, “Am I a good person?” We’ll quickly learn the answer to that question.

No. No he is not a good person.

Tom is having an affair with a much younger woman (Gabrielle Haugh). On his birthday he slips off work a little early and she comes over for a little fun in the pool. But they have an argument over whether or not he’ll ever leave his wife, and what her husband would do if he found out about them. Before too long she finds herself dead and he finds himself hiding her body in a pool cubby.

Before he can do anything else a bunch of people come over for a surprise birthday party.

We see the events with the mistress in choppy flashbacks. The film is coy about exactly what happened to her and why. In the present Tom slowly goes mad having to deal with a myriad of party guests, his spiteful father-in-law (Kevin Pollak), and a wife who increasingly thinks something is up.

That’s a good plot and it could be either a truly entertaining thriller or a very dark satiric comedy, but unfortunately, it is neither. Mostly it is just bland.

The thing is Tom is kind of an asshole. One of the first things we know about him is that he’s cheating on his wife with a girl who is his daughter’s age. He doesn’t seem to know half the people invited to his own birthday party and the ones he does know he doesn’t seem to like (and most of those are bros he works with). He’s hapless and sad. He’s the kind of guy who keeps thinking he has a plan to solve all his problems, but he can’t actually come up with anything other than yell at everybody.

But he’s not the kind of asshole you can love either. This isn’t Walter White or Tony Soprano – horrible people who we, if not identify with at least we can love to watch.

Every character in this film is kind of awful if I’m being honest. His friends are obnoxious, and his father-in-law is actively hateful. Even his wife and kids come off as disinterested.

You can make a great film filled with terrible people – Goodfellas comes immediately to mind. But I just never cared about any of these people, especially Tom. I never cared who killed the girl, or why he was hiding the body. I didn’t care if he got caught. So there was no real tension or interest.

Freddie Prinze, Jr. is one of a slew of actors including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, Josh Hartnett, and Jennifer Love Hewitt who were huge in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But unlike those other actors, I never liked Freddie Prinze, Jr. I never thought he was a good actor. But his low-key woodenness works for him here. The rest of the cast is fine as well, so I think it is the script and direction that just didn’t work for me.

Bring Out the Perverts: What Have They Done To Your Daughters? (1974)

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Italian Cinema was dominated by two genres in the 1970s – the Poliziotteschi and the Giallo. The Poliziotteschi was a particular type of crime drama that is noted for its gritty, down-and-dirty take on police work featuring loads of violence and action sequences, highlighted by corruption at the highest levels. Gialli were murder mysteries featuring graphic violence, hyper-stylization, overt sexuality, and wild soundtracks.

What Have They Done To Your Daughters? is an interesting blending of both genres. Plotwise it is very Poliziotteschi as it follows the police as they try to catch a killer and are then pulled into a child prostitution ring with ties to the upper echelon of the city’s political sphere. Stylistically it is mostly gritty like a Poliziotteschi, and it features a couple of terrific chase sequences, but it also has a few stylish Giallo-esque moments.

There is also a black-gloved, motorcycle helmet-wearing, hatched-yielding psycho going around hacking people to death, and a few moments of sleaze where the camera lingers on naked female bodies (one of which is supposed to be a 15-year-old girl – the actress is of age – which makes it particularly gross).

I cover the basic details of the plot in my old review of the Arrow Video Blu-ray release (which you can read at Cinema Sentries) so I’ll skip them in this write-up.

I mostly really dug the film this go-around. I think I enjoyed the Poliziotteschi elements more than the Giallo. The story is good, the investigative elements are interesting, and the action sequences are top-notch. It is not unusual for this type of crime drama to dive into underage sex rings, but it still grosses me out, especially now that I have a young daughter. And this film gets a bit skeevy in that area.

I did dig the hatched-wielding killer, but like, why is he running around in a motorcycle helmet (other than the film keeping us from seeing his face I mean)? It is especially weird since the cops figure out who he is fairly early in the film (it is the guys who hired him that remain a mystery).

Overall, a very enjoyable cinematic experience.

Single White Female (1992)

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One of the things I enjoy about not having a movie theme on some months is that it allows me to follow random rabbit holes for a little while. Friday night I watched Subservience a film in which Megan Fox plays a sexy robot maid who wreaks havoc on a traditional suburban home.

Numerous people noted that its plot was similar to The Hand that Rocks the Cradle in which Rebecca DeMornay plays a sexy nanny who wreaks havoc on a traditional suburban home.

This in turn led me to Single White Female in which Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a sexy roommate who wreaks havoc on an almost traditional New York City home.

It is by far the trashiest of the three films and the most fun.

Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda) is a young, hip New Yorker who runs a start-up software company and lives in a swanky rent-controlled apartment with her fiancee Sam (Steven Weber). Late one night the phone rings and it is Sam’s ex-wife. At first, he doesn’t answer the phone letting the answering machine get it. As she starts ranting and raving he answers, but by then the machine has picked her up on speakerphone. When she berates Sam for not answering her calls even after they slept together recently, Allie flips out and kicks him out.

Now she needs a roommate. After a few interviews, she lands on Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who is a bit shy, and quite a bit weird, but she seems nice. At first, they get along quite well and it seems like everything is going to work out. And then, of course, they don’t.

Hedy is a manipulator. She constantly maneuvers situations to turn herself into Allie’s best friend while turning all others against her. At the same time, she is turning herself into an Allie clone. She borrows her clothes and then purchases exact copies. Then she gets a similar haircut. The two actresses look similar enough that there are times when it is difficult to tell them apart.

When Sam reenters the pictures Hedy gets crazy.

This is a film full of crazy. And gratuitous nudity. And a gay best friend. And a sexual assault by Stephen Tobolowsky. And a murder through the eye with a high heel.

It is so trashy and so much fun. It is best watched with a couple of hilarious, drunken friends.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)

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While reading reviews of Subservience, I noticed quite a few people referencing The Hand That Rocks the Cradle as a clear influence. I couldn’t remember if I had watched that one before so I queued it Saturday morning.

It is a movie I distinctly remember knowing about when it came out. I remember the trailers and people talking about it. It was a part of a slew of films that came out in the early 1990s that were like big-budgeted, R-rated Lifetime movies. They usually featured Rockwell-esque domestic life being shattered by some pretty, young woman.

Directed by Curtis Hanson, this film is better than most of those films. It sometimes subverts the genre in interesting ways, but even when it plays it straight, Hanson is a good enough director to make it rise above.

Claire Bartell (Annabella Sciorra) is a happy housewife. She has a loving husband, Michael (Matt McCoy), a young daughter Emma (Madeline Zima – who played the mother in Subservience which is a nice bit of casting), and a baby on the way.

When she is sexually assaulted by her obstetrician (in a scene that foreshadows its creepiness so much that my wife left the room before anything untoward actually happened) she comes forward. Other women come forward after that and the Doctor decides to kill himself before he can be arrested. The doctor’s wife, Peyton (Rebecca DeMornay) miscarriages when she learns the news.

Flash forward a few months. The baby is born and Claire decides she wants a nanny. Not to go back to some job, mind you, but she volunteers at a nursery and she wants to build a greenhouse in her backyard. So she’ll be close by, but it would be nice to have someone watch the kids, clean up a little, and maybe cook once in a while.

Enter Peyton and her devious ways. What’s interesting about the film is that it doesn’t do what you expect it to. In most films like this Peyton would seduce the husband, then turn him against the wife. But here, despite nearly every other male character saying something about how beautiful Peyton is and how they wish she was their nanny, and despite Peyton actually trying, Michael will not give in to temptation.

Likewise rather than attempting to turn the family against Claire, she turns Claire against everyone close to her. The local handyman (Ernie Hudson) who dotes on Emma, might just be a pervert. The friendly relationship between Michael and her best friend Marlene (Julianne Moore) might have turned into an affair. Peyton manipulates every situation to make Claire feel like she’s going crazy.

The film begins with the handyman riding his bike in a hoodie. He stops by the Bartell house and knocks on the door. Nobody hears the knock or answers the door. He walks around the house and looks through the windows. When Claire sees him she screams and panics. Suburban white woman screams as an unknown black man stands outside her house.

But he was expected. Claire had requested a handyman be sent to her house. The film doesn’t directly comment on her inherent racism in this scene, but it is certainly there. When we see him riding that bike the music is peaceful. When he approaches the house and looks through the windows the film doesn’t make it menacing. So that when she screams and when he is recognized as a kind person, it is surprising. It is just another way the film lightly subverts our expectations of the genre.

It is still a white, suburban family being, um, rocked by a beautiful, young woman, so it doesn’t stray too far from the formula, but I appreciate that it was at least trying to do something different.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Subservience (2024)

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I don’t pay super close attention to what new movies are coming out and when. I follow enough movie critics on social media that I hear some of the buzz, but I really don’t give it much heed. I don’t spend a lot of time watching new movie trailers or reading reviews, etc. But I have a general idea of what movies people are talking about.

The Substance is a new horror movie starring Demi Moore. It is getting a lot of good buzz and is definitely on my radar. Subservience is a new horror movie starring Megan Fox. It is not getting good buzz, but rather a lot of panning when anyone is talking about it at all.

Because I don’t pay close attention to these things I got these two movies mixed up. I put on Subservience thinking it was getting a good buzz. Within twenty minutes of watching it, I was confused.

People are really liking this movie? Maybe it gets better towards the end.

My friends, it did not get better towards the end, or at the end, or after the credits rolled. It is a stupid, stupid movie. It takes a old, dumb trope, and does nothing new with it. I should have realized something was up the moment I saw it was directed by S.K. Dale who also helmed Til Death which was just as dumb.

But it is also kind of fun? It reminded me a little of those dumb erotic thrillers I used to watch in the 1990s.

Nick (Michele Morrone) is a decent dude. He has a good job, a loving wife, a precocious daughter, and a baby boy. He’s living the American Dream. Except for that loving wife, she’s dying. She desperately needs a heart transplant.

Working that good job while taking care of those two kids and trying to be there for his wife is a little more than he can handle. So he does what anyone in that situation would do. He buys a super hot robot to handle the domestic chores.

Her name is Alice (Megan Fox) and she’s programmed to take care of his every need and desire (wink, wink, nudge nudge.) He doesn’t bother to tell his wife, Maggie (Madeline Zima) who is basically a permanent resident at the hospital that the robot he bought looks like Megan Fox. The look on her face when she first sees Alice is precious.

Alice is good with the kids, she’s great at cleaning up, and she’s a pretty good cook (though her lasagna is nothing like mom’s.) She can tell Nick is stressed out and would do anything to help relieve it for him.

You can see where this is going. Alice’s programming gets mucked up causing her to go haywire. If Nick is stressed then she’ll take off her robe and give him a release. If some guy at work is causing problems then she’ll go to his house and shoot him in the face. If Maggie’s health problems are causing trouble then she has to go to.

It is the kind of film where you have to just enjoy the ride. Because if you start thinking about it you’ll start to wonder things like: How can a guy with a relatively low-level construction job afford a big house, what must be enormous medical bills, and what can only be an incredibly expensive robot? Or why is the robot anatomically correct in every way? Are they all programmed to seduce? Or how can a person who just had a heart transplant do all that running and sexing and fighting?

Those aren’t questions the film is prepared to answer. It is better to just enjoy the not-particularly talented Megan Fox give a robotic performance that actually works in her favor for once. Or dig into the nostalgic vibe this thing is giving off. They don’t really make erotic thrillers like this anymore (even if the erotic aspects are fairly tame and it never quite thrills like you want it to.)

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Trap (2024)

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I watched The Sixth Sense in the theatre when it first came out. I managed to see it before the surprise ending was ruined for me. I remember liking it that first viewing quite a lot. But then some friends of mine wanted to see it and I was visiting them in Arkansas so I felt like I couldn’t say no. Even though I was pretty sure that the film would disappoint since I now knew the surprise. It did disappoint. I was bored during that second viewing.

That whole day was weird. I was good friends with her in high school. But since going away for college I hadn’t talked to her in over a year. Her husband I didn’t know at all. So the day was full of awkward conversations and then this movie I didn’t want to see. I also randomly remember her listening to The Eagle’s greatest hits on cassette and I hate the freaking Eagles.

Anyway, The Sixth Sense was of course an enormous hit and made M. Night Shyamalan an instant celebrity director. He followed it up with the underrated Unbreakable and then the quite fun but rather ridiculous Signs, and then the very creepy but completely dumb after the trick ending is revealed The Village.

By this point, he was starting to feel like a one-trick pony where every movie had a surprise ending. Everybody hated Lady in the Water and The Happening became an instant joke.

Shyamalan was on the outs. But then a funny thing happened on the way to career suicide. People started liking him again. It was as if after all the hype died down, and expectations became low, people realized he was actually a pretty good stylist and while his scripts were often ridiculous, his films were rather fun.

Or maybe that’s just me. I like most of his movies. They are dumb, but he’s a skilled enough director to keep me interested.

Trap is an absolutely stupid movie. There are so many instances in the film where I kept shouting at the screen that whatever was happening wasn’t the way things work. People don’t behave like that. Concerts don’t have multiple random intermissions. Police don’t let serial killers hug their daughters and play with their son’s bicycles.

And yet, I still quite enjoyed myself.

The plot involves a serial killer named Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett), known as “The Butcher,” (and this isn’t a spoiler as it was revealed in all the trailers, reviews, and the first ten minutes of the film). He’s kidnapped at least a dozen people, then killed them, then chopped them up into pieces and displayed their parts in public. But he’s also a decent family guy.

He’s taken his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to see pop star Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan – the director’s real-life daughter who is in fact a real singer – you gotta love a dad who basically makes a movie to show off his daughter’s talents). But the cops and the feds have been clued into the fact that The Butcher is gonna be there so the entire concert is one big trap for him.

Cooper must find a way to escape so he can continue killing. And being a family guy. It is a testament to Hartnett’s skill as an actor and Shyamalan as a director that I found myself rooting for a serial killer for most of the film’s runtime.

Truly this is one of the most ridiculous films I’ve seen in a long time. Ridiculous decision after ridiculous decision is made by Cooper, the police, Lady Raven, and everyone really. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and then fell right out.

And yet, again, I quite enjoyed myself. Shyamalan never takes anything too seriously. He’s quite aware his film is dumb. But he’s having fun. And so was I.

Door-to-Door Maniac (1961)

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Johnny Cash was a huge country and western star in 1961 but he wanted to branch out. He wanted to more famous. Hollywood seemed like a good place to make that happen. But Hollywood wasn’t exactly foaming at the mouth for Cash as an actor so he found himself starring in this super low-budget thriller. He’s pretty good in it, though that might partially be because he was strung out from partying all night which fits the character well. The movie would have been completely forgotten were it not for Cash.

This Blu-ray also contains a film Right Hand of the Devil which is what makes it worth the price of admission. It isn’t that good either, but it is weird and fascinating. It was made by a hairdresser named Aram Katcher who desperately wanted to be an auteur. He put his savings into the film and it is full of his idiosyncracies, which makes it a great little midnight movie.

You can read my full review of both films at Cinema Sentries.

The Deep End (2001)

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I love crime thrillers but I’m the first to admit they aren’t always realistic. Detectives make unbelievable leaps of logic to solve the crime, and seemingly normal people suddenly turn into superheroes when they or their families are threatened.

The Deep End is a film that puts a normal, average housewife (played by the always wonderful Tilda Swinton) and then puts her into an extraordinary situation. But she doesn’t instantly become an amazing crime fighter, she behaves like a normal person would. Dealing with blackmailers – coming up with the cash they are asking for – becomes just another task on his long list of “to-dos” for the day.

It is a very good movie and you can read my full review here.