Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Sextette

 

    If you don't enjoy Mae West, you might as well leave this website, because she was the ultimate Queen of Camp, at least in her later years.  This was a woman who basically saved Paramount Studios from complete bankruptcy and single-handedly brought feminism to its height of appreciation.  She didn't need a man, but constantly talked about them anyway.  "Men are like linoleum floors, lay 'em right and you can walk all over them for years'.  Her quotes are as funny as they are timeless, and she had a million of them, all of which she wrote herself!  "Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"  Miss West definitely had her time in the spotlight, making hit after hit while in her heyday, but after a while, she'd basically had enough and lived quietly in the apartment building (that she purchased simply because the manager didn't care for her type of friends) called The Ravenwood.  She even bought the building across the street because she didn't like the color and after buying it, she had it repainted.  


     Anyway, after years of being in retirement, Mae West was drawn back out into the spotlight to star in the camp classic Myra Breckinridge.  A movie that even though it had Mae West, Raquel Welch, Farrah Fawcett, and a young Tom Selleck starring in it, tanked worse than most of the movies ever made at that point (1970).  And even though it really isn't that great of a movie, it's still enjoyed for its trashy campiness and unbelievable storyline, not to mention the bad acting.  But most of all, we got to see what became of the powerhouse we all knew as the incomparable Mae West, who was the real star of the film even though she probably had the least screen time of all the actors in the entire movie.  


     Even after the disastrous Myra Breckinridge had completely tanked at the box office, it still reminded Mae West that she was a star and had reignited her desire to be seen in films again, even though she was over 80 years old at that point.  So she dug out an old play that she had written almost 20 years prior, that people had told her could never be filmed due to its sexual overtones, but it was now the late 1970s, and scripts like the ones Mae wrote were no longer seen as jailable offenses.  Mae was always ahead of her time.  I mean, this was a woman who wrote a play all about gay men, simply titled "Sex"...back in the 1920s!


       So Mae West dug out an old script, revamped it, and hired literally EVERYBODY to star in it, and I do mean EVERYBODY.  Timothy Dalton, Dom Deluise, Tony Curtis, Ringo Starr, Regis Philbin, George Hamilton, and Alice Cooper, just to name a few!  And these were just the people who accepted a role in the film, dozens of other actors were offered roles and (wisely) turned them down.  And even though it still had (almost) every star that was somewhat popular at the time, it STILL tanked at the box office, shockingly worse than Myra Breckinridge did, which people didn't think was cinematically possible.  Proving that no matter how many wonderful actors you insert into a film it can still be a piece of crap.


      Even though the plot is paper thin, and the acting is horrendous, I still loved it.  Just to see how good Mae West still looked at 84 years old.  Speaking of the plot, it was obviously geared to function as a showcase of stars instead of an actual movie.  The entire story revolves around a woman named Marlo Manners (Mae West) who has recently married Sir Michael Barrington (Timothy Dalton) and no one even bats an eyelash despite the 60-year age difference between them.  It just so happens that there is an international conference happening at the very hotel where Marlo and her new husband (#6) are now spending their honeymoon.  Husbands 1-5 are all there and one of them, a Russian delegate I think, decides that he wants one last fling with his old flame Marlo.  Meanwhile, her current husband spends the entire movie in an interview trying desperately to prove he's not gay ("Where's my husband?  He's downstairs trying to save his reputation.  Oh, well he should be up here with me trying to ruin it")


     Madness erupts when it's discovered that Marlo has made a cassette recording of all her scandalous affairs, that her manager is trying to destroy but it keeps slipping through his fingers and makes its way all around the hotel in various sorts of mishaps.  This little pink tape ends up everywhere from being stuck in a muscleman's pecs to one of the building's gargoyles.  Not such a long story made even shorter, he gets it back, and the world (and Marlo's reputation) is saved.  Not that she really cares.  She's too busy trying on new outfits in her hotel room the entire time.


     Most assuredly a movie that has more trivia than it does storyline.  Mae West was basically blind, deaf, and senile when the movie was made and apparently needed an earpiece hidden in her wig to help her remember her lines.  Sandbags were placed on the floor so that she would know when she'd hit her mark since she couldn't see two inches in front of her due to having severe cataracts.  Such a terrible movie, but it does fall into that wonderful category of "so bad that it's good".  And even though it got awful reviews, hardly made a dime, and was a temporary demise for many up-and-coming actors, there isn't one person who says that they had less than a marvelous time making it, proving that even when she was already half dead, Mae West could still be the life of the party.




The Baby


      I can say that I personally really love this movie.  It was SO not what I thought it was gonna be when I started watching it.  I can't even remember where I originally heard about this film, only that I managed to find it on YouTube and thought it was wonderful.  Strange as it is, I think it's actually really well done and the premise is completely original in so many ways.  Made in 1973, it took a while for this film to catch on cuz it was just so damn weird, but it had at least one famous actress in it and a few then-unknown actresses in it that would become semi-famous down the road.  Ruth Roman had been in a hundred different movies by the time she made The Baby, mostly Westerns and several TV shows like The Outer Limits, I Spy, and Mission Impossible.  But I think by the time she made this film, she was just trying to pay the rent.  Anjenette Comer had done some television before making this film but gained a decently respectable resume' after starring in The Baby.  Susanne Zenor didn't do much during or after this film but she was the original actress chosen to play Chrissie Snow on Three's Company but lost out at the last minute to another blonde bimbo named Suzanne (Somers).  She eventually did get to have a brief walk-on part in Three's Company as a character named Samantha.  Shame though, I think she would've taken that role to a whole new interesting level.


     Anyway, on with the story.  Ann Gentry (Anjenette Comer) is a social worker who is looking for something, a particular kind of client, at first we're not sure why yet, but the reason is definitely there.  She meets the Wadsworth family, an odd bunch of ladies consisting of Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman) and her two daughters, Alba (Susanne Zenor), a suspiciously happy girl (at first) who gives tennis lessons in the afternoon, and Germaine, who looks like an Elvira knockoff with a devious glare that sets your nerves on end the moment you see her.  She obsessively cleans all day (and occasionally does TV commercials).  But when it's time for Ann to meet her client though, the weirdness picks up pace.  


     Ann's client is a grown man who is completely infantile, sleeps in a giant crib, sucks on a pacifier, can only utter the occasional gaga and googoo, and is always simply referred to as "Baby".  Although Ann seems taken aback by this, she doesn't shy away from it and takes a liking to him almost immediately.  In fact, Ann starts to become a little bit obsessed with Baby, showing up several times a week, way more than the typical social worker who may drop in a mere three to four times in an entire year.  She attempts to get Baby to improve beyond his infantile state by trying to get him to stand on his own, possibly even walk but is suspiciously held back from doing so by the entire family.  


     After one of Anns attempts at getting Baby to "grow up" a little, we find that behind closed doors, the entire family is keeping Baby in his infantile state by torturing him with cattle prods and other evil tactics when he shows any sign of improvement, therefore making damn sure that he is never anything more than a "baby".  But Ann is smart and though she doesn't witness the abuse firsthand, she definitely has figured out what's going on.  She tries to get Baby put into a hospital for the mentally delayed but the Wadsworth women are not interested.  It seems that this family of women is pretty hateful towards men, especially Baby, mostly because the mother was deserted by a different husband after each child was born.


     Ann knows that she can help Baby and threatens to use the Public Guardian Office to take Baby away from the abuse that he suffers from almost daily.  At first, all three women are disgusted and dismissive of Ann's threats, declare Baby as theirs and throw her off the property, but later on, they think better of it because they realize that they don't want Baby's abuse to be discovered.  So they hatch a plan to lure Ann over to their house for Baby's birthday party and somehow get rid of her.  Ann shows up, but she's a smart cookie and is prepared for pretty much anything.  


     During this party, one that is clearly for adults on drugs, without a single child (or adult children) in sight, some drunk prick keeps hitting on Ann and she declares that she is happily married and isn't interested.  In fact, Ann is asked about her husband several times throughout the movie and is intentionally vague, not really saying that he's dead, but won't verify his existence either.  


   At first, the family is nice to Ann and seems like they genuinely want to make up, but during an innocent game of darts, Ann's punch is spiked and she becomes intoxicated.  When she begins staggering, they take her to the basement and tie her up, with the intention of doing away with her meddling ass entirely after the party ends.  Unfortunately for them, they leave the basement door ajar and Baby makes his way down to where Ann is being held captive.  Because Baby has by now grown rather fond of Ann, he helps (or at least watches) as she manages to escape.  But she ain't leaving here alone, not until she gets what she came after.  She bails out of the party, takes Baby with her, and slashes the tires in the family car before she leaves so they can't come after her.  Told ya she was a smart cookie.


     The Wadsworth women are defeated, Baby is finally in Ann's safeguard, but this chicken hasn't been cooked yet.  Ann sends a picture of Baby to the Wadsworth family, all dressed in a suit, standing tall and looking all grown up.  This enrages Baby's mother and his demented sisters so they decide that they must find Baby and get him back, at any cost.


     They manage to locate where Ann lives and sneak into the house with knives like some kind of Manson Family hippies and prepare to kill Ann and bring Baby home.  After Alba and Germaine go into the house but don't return, the mother grows impatient and enters the house herself, but when she does find her daughters, they've already been murdered.  She doesn't have much time to mourn though before Ann comes out of the darkness with an ax and attacks the mother.  They battle for a few minutes before Mrs. Wadsworth falls from the staircase and breaks both legs.  Instead of killing her though, Ann has a much better plan.  You see, Ann has been having a swimming pool built in the backyard, but it isn't quite completed yet.  She drags the entire Wadsworth family out to the backyard and buries them right where the pool is being dug.  At least the daughters are already dead, but Mama Wadsworth gets to be buried alive.  As she begs for her life, she demands to know why Ann wanted her Baby so badly as to go to such measures to get him.  She replies, "I plan to give him nothing but the deepest of love".


     A few weeks pass, the swimming pool is completed, and Ann goes into what looks like a nursery that we assume has been intended for Baby, but all along there has been another adult baby there...Anns husband.  He apparently has had some kind of head injury that has rendered him infantile and Ann has been planning this entire time to find him the most appropriate playmate, hence the lengths she was willing to go to in order to have Baby all to herself.  Being a social worker, Ann has seen the improvement that can occur when delayed individuals, mostly children, can have when socialized with others like themselves.


     The last scene is tremendously happy but has a really creepy vibe to it.  Ann, her infantile husband, and Baby are all playing in the pool, one big happy family...with three dead bodies buried just beneath them.  Ann was a woman with a plan, keenly executed from the very beginning.





     



The Exorcist


      Okay, so The Exorcist isn't necessarily a cult film because it had a HUGE theatrical opening and pretty much everyone in the world saw it when it came out and proceeded to pass out, freak out, and then run to their nearest church to repent their sins.  It did follow the cult film strategy though, albeit at a sincerely rapid pace.  It only took one viewing at one theater for everyone who saw it to tell all their friends about it.  And before you could say "Your Mother Sucks Cocks In Hell" theaters across America began to be overrun with people dying to view what was then labeled as the scariest film ever made.  And that's a hard statement to back up because scary movies were a dime a dozen and it would have to take a really scarier-than-shit movie to live up to that kind of competition.  Well, it did.  People ran out of the theaters screaming, and people were fainting in the aisles and lobbies, but this only made more viewers flock to the local cinema in enormous crowds, waiting in line for hours to see what all the fuss was about.  


     I think the truly scariest aspect of The Exorcist is that it took you off guard because it involved a child, an innocent-looking little girl (brilliantly played by Linda Blair) who transformed into the most vile thing people could have possibly imagined.  Possession and exorcism weren't a new concept by any means but had been restricted to rare cultures in Third World countries and the only time it was ever talked about in the United States was by elderly Catholic priests who considered it an embarrassment to religion in general, kept it in the closet and regarded it as a simply a mental health issue that belonged more in the realm of medicine than religion.  A belief that still exists today even though the topic of exorcism has spawned more horror movies now than ever before, mostly attributed to movies like The Exorcist.  Ever since it was released in 1973, there have been more copycat films dealing with the topic of exorcism than anyone could possibly count.


     The basic story sort of makes a circle, basically ending where it began.  A tired and reclusive priest named Father Merrin is in Iraq overseeing an archaeological dig when he comes across a statue of a demon named Pazuzu. After unearthing this find, he notices dogs violently fighting, clocks suddenly stop, and is almost run over by a horse-drawn carriage.  The story then travels to the other side of the world and ends up in Georgetown Washington D.C. where a famous actress named Christine McNeil lives with her young daughter Regan.  Christine begins hearing scratching on the walls, and mysterious sounds in the attic, and her daughter begins complaining that her bed keeps shaking.


     Slowly, Regan's condition begins to worsen.  In front of a bunch of people at one of her mother's celebrity parties, Regan comes downstairs, rambles a little, and then lets loose a stream of green slime from between her legs.  Christine and her friends look mortified and Regan is rushed upstairs to the bath.  Shortly after this incident, when Christine thinks Regan is finally settled into bed for the night she suddenly hears her daughter screaming.  Upon opening the door, she sees her daughter's bed violently shaking up and down with no explanation for it.  She takes Regan to a doctor but he is dismissive of her despite her insistence that her daughter couldn't possibly have been solely responsible for the bed shaking.  The doctor convinces Christine that the problem is in Regans' head and not her bed.


     Regan is then put through every grueling medical test known to mankind, with the doctors finding no explanation for her behavior which has by now become increasingly violent.  Regan is brought home because her mother has flat-out refused to institutionalize her, even though that's basically all the doctors can offer.  When a few of Regan's doctors are examining x-rays of an arteriogram of Regans' brain, finding nothing wrong at all, a frantic call from Christine comes through, begging the doctors to come to the house as Regan's behavior has exceeded violence and is now completely unreal.  Regan spews profanities in a deep voice, is slapped across the face by unseen hands, and is basically getting the shit beaten out of her by something that no one else can see.  She's promptly sedated and the doctors continue to try and convince Christine that it's all in Regan's head, even though it clearly is not.


     There are a tremendous amount of scenes in this movie that are quite disturbing.  Regan is found stabbing herself in the crotch while a deep voice coming from inside her keeps telling her to "Let Jesus Fuck You" while poltergeist activity begins occurring and random objects are thrown about.  Regan forces her mother's face into her bloody crotch and then proceeds to slap her so hard that she flies across the room.  A heavy dresser begins moving towards Christine all on its own, a chair flies against the door, blocking help from entering and in a completely shocking moment, Regan's head turns to look backward without breaking a single bone, and with the voice of Christine's friend and film director who has recently died while babysitting Regan, says "Do You Know What She Did, Your Cunting Daughter?"


     There's a side story about a detective investigating a desecrating vandalism at the local church and the mysterious death of the movie director that Christine is currently working with, but the main side story is about a priest named Father Karras who is gradually losing his faith, mostly due to the death of his elderly mother.  When all else seems lost, Christine contacts this priest because she is now convinced that her daughter's condition is not medical, but rather demonic in nature.  As much as he really doesn't want to help her with this situation, he agrees to at least see Regan and give his advice because he is not just a priest but a doctor as well.  


     Upon arriving, he sees that Regan is worse than ever.  She only speaks in a deep growling voice, uttering phrases in Latin as well as other languages, Poltergeist-like activity is still happening, and when Holy Water is sprinkled on her she reacts violently and before long she vomits directly in his face.  He feels that exorcism may actually be needed after all and brings this to the attention of the church but is deemed unfit to perform the exorcism himself.  This brings us back to the beginning with the elderly priest Father Merrin, who is located and brought in to perform the exorcism with Father Karras as his helper.  Apparently, Father Merrin has performed exorcisms before and is seen as the perfect person for the job even though he's basically 108 years old, has heart problems, and the previous exorcisms he has performed have nearly killed him.


     The exorcism is performed while Regan continuously vomits more green slime, levitates, and performs amazing feats of strength, all climaxing with her head rotating completely around in a circle in a scene that will live in infamy among horror films forever.  


     While both priests are taking a break, Father Merrin tries once more on his own to exorcise the demon, who then suffers a heart attack and dies.  Father Karras becomes completely enraged when he sees Regan laughing at Father Merrin's death, so he beats her, strangles her, and begs the demon to enter him and spare this child from any further torment.  We see his eyes begin to change to the rancid green that Regan's eyes have been since her possession.  Knowing he is becoming possessed himself, he flings himself out of Regan's bedroom window and down a flight of stairs where he lands in a pool of blood and dies.


     Regan begins crying for her mother in her own voice and Christine rushes to her side, who then sees instantly that Regan is "back" and that the vile demon possessing her has gone.  Wanting to make a fresh start now that Regan is better, albeit pretty scarred from her ordeal, they both leave Georgetown and never look back.  


     I'd call this the end but it wasn't.  An endless amount of attempts were made at having a successful sequel, including its immediate follow-up, Exorcist II: The Heretic.  Exorcist III was only somewhat of a success, but only because it was based on a direct sequel to the book by William Peter Blatty who hated the theatrical sequel with a mad passion so he wrote his own sequel and they just used this newly written sequel as the screenplay for Exorcist III.  Part IV was made, but deemed a disaster by all who were involved in making it, so it was basically remade with a more predictable ending, but still sucked beyond belief.  A TV series was made, and now a direct movie sequel is coming out soon, starring the original main actresses Ellen Burstyn (Christine McNeil) and Linda Blair (Regan).  It remains to be seen whether it will fall victim to the "shitty Exorcist sequel curse".


     This movie has more trivia behind it than I could ever possibly list, literally HUNDREDS of juicy items could be discussed.  Many people associated with its filming were either badly hurt or even died.  Sets caught fire, actual paranormal activity was supposed to have happened, etc.  And even though the movie was banned from being shown in different places all over the world and nearly acquired an X-rating, it still went on to win two Oscars and became Warner Brothers' highest-grossing movie ever made (when adjusted for inflation).  Given the amount of exorcism/possession movies that have been released since, rewatching The Exorcist these days may not have the traumatizing effect it used to have, but when it was released in 1973, nothing like it had ever been seen before and it really was absolutely terrifying!







     

Thursday, August 3, 2023

Session 9

     Session 9 is a complicated movie, but once you've figured out what has really happened, it becomes a puzzle well worth solving. An asbestos removal crew is hired for a job at an abandoned insane asylum. Crew leader Gordon seems unusually tired and complains that his infant daughter has an ear infection and cries constantly. His partners are Phil, a family friend who is distant and suspicious of Gordon's overwhelming need to land this job even though it's extremely rushed, Mike, a curious law school dropout, Hank, a somewhat sleazy guy who's recently stolen Phil's girlfriend, and Jeff, a mullet headed dunce that has a fear of the dark. 

      Tensions abound from the start as no two crew members necessarily like each other and the rushed job proves rather exhausting. Gordon reveals to Phil that there are problems at home and that he is basically living in his van because he recently lost his temper and hit his wife. Hank's enjoyment when talking about stealing Phil's girlfriend makes the tension even worse. 

      After a generator fails, Mike goes down to the basement to fix it and finds a box marked as evidence, which has audiotapes in it labeled sessions 1-9. As he begins to listen to them, he learns that they are the taped therapy sessions of a woman named Mary Hobbes with Multiple Personality Disorder (patient #444). She has three personalities. There's Princess, which is an innocent female childlike personality that lives in the tongue because she's always talking. Billy is a male personality that lives in the eyes because he sees everything and seems like a protector of sorts. There's also a personality named Simon that the other personalities seem to be afraid to talk about. Upon reading Mary's file, it appears that she was given a china doll for Xmas when she was young and her brother was given a brand new hunting knife. Her brother plays a joke on Mary by jumping out of the darkness and scaring her on Xmas night causing her to fall on her doll which breaks and cuts her up pretty badly, she has a mental breakdown and grabs her brother's new knife and murders her family with it. With each tape, we hear more from her different personalities concerning what happened that night, as the doctor continues to ask about the third personality named Simon which the others are still reluctant to talk about. 

      Mike continues to find reasons to stop working on the asbestos job and to keep going to the basement to listen to one session tape after another while Gordon seems to be losing his grip on reality due to the stress of the job. We also notice a few other strange things about Gordon. He has a terrible burn on his leg, he often talks to his wife Wendy on a cell phone that obviously has no battery, and there are times when we notice he has things in common with the multiple personality patient Mary. Such as when he's on the phone with no battery, Mary's tombstone #444 (all graves at the asylum have just numbers, no names) is shown broken underneath the tree that Gordon is sitting on while "talking to his wife". We also see him stop and take a poignant moment to look at the magazine clippings on the wall of a patient's cell, when he leaves, we notice the patient's cell number is 444. Random suspicions arise among the crew, such as why Mike isn't around much, why Gordon has blood under his fingernails, why Phil is secretly meeting with some neighborhood punks, and Hank ends up disappearing altogether and needs to be replaced. A deep voice sometimes speaks to Gordon saying "welcome home" and we're left wondering what events are real and what events are not. 

      At the beginning of the film, a guard has to let the crew in and they ask why a guard is needed because it's not like patients are gonna be escaping. He tells the crew that it is more about keeping patients out since many of them return to the hospital after it closed because it was the only home they knew. The correlation between patient Mary Hobbes and Gordon slowly becomes clear when we learn that the burn on Gordon's leg was the result of a pot of boiling water that spills on him while trying to talk to his wife about the baby screaming. Turns out he didn't just hit her, he's actually murdered his wife and infant daughter. This was the breakdown that caused him to be sent to the asylum, just like Mary. Gordon had been a patient at the asylum when it closed down and was desperate to return to the only home he knew. We know this because he looks into another cell that has pictures of his family on the walls, letting us know that this was his cell while at the hospital. As a beautiful overhead shot of the hospital slowly drifts by, we hear the voice of the doctor asking Simon where he lives. In an eerie deep voice, Simon finally replies, "I live in the weak and in the wounded, doc". Both Gordon and Mary were weak and wounded, causing them to both have mental breakdowns and be sent to the asylum. I suppose the personality of Simon could reside in each and every one of us. Suffering a terrible wound while in a weak state of mind is a possibility that could occur at any time, and who knows what consequences that may have? 

      A fascinating side note about this movie is that no sets were needed at all because it was filmed entirely at the abandoned Danvers State Lunatic Asylum. A hospital that was not only huge in size but strangely beautiful. Despite being on the registry of historic buildings it was demolished with the exception of the front facade and was turned into some very cheap and ugly apartments that people have nothing good to say about. Surprisingly, hauntings weren't among the many complaints.

Saturday, January 29, 2022

The Poughkeepsie Tapes

     Ok, so most cult films tend to be more on the older side because a cult following usually takes time, but now and then a cult film can be relatively new if it manages to get enough of a following within just a few years. In this case, The Poughkeepsie Tapes definitively achieved this. It was filmed and ready for release in 2007, but for unknown reasons, it was pulled from theaters and held for four years until being released as a video on demand, but it wasn't until a full ten years after being made that it finally got a DVD release. This is what makes it a cult film, one person heard about it, then told someone else, and so on until enough people had complained about wanting to see it but not being able to find it that it had to be widely released. And even now it's still a bit hard to find, but definitely worth the effort of trying.  

     It's a found footage film, which is a genre that may sound a bit overdone at this point but can still be pulled off if it's original enough. This one works because it resides in an area between being completely believable and totally disturbing, a combination that can easily ride the line between whether it's real or not. It begins with a criminology class discussing the events that led to the discovery of 500 videotapes left behind by a serial killer. The tapes are beyond disturbing and what's discussed about them in class is almost as freaky as what is actually shown on the tapes. 

      The killers' first few tapes are filled with strange balloon porn, such as women being made to sit on balloons and bounce up and down till they popped, etc. Around the fifth or sixth tape, the real scariness begins when the killer approaches an 8-year-old girl and abducts her, we learn afterward that she was found raped and murdered later that day. 

      The murders progress in increasingly disturbing ways. The killer pretends to have a broken-down car and hitches a ride with a man and his pregnant wife. Then on one of the tapes, the woman is awoken from being drugged only to find that her baby has been cut out and that her husband's severed head has been placed in her belly. 

      The tapes get worse when a 17-year-old girl named Cheryl Dempsey is filmed being abducted, hogtied, and forced to repeat over and over that her name is no longer Cheryl but is now "slave". She's brought to the killer's basement where he tortures her relentlessly into complete submission, and forces her to wear a rubber maid's outfit with a mask, leaving us to only be able to see her terrified eyes underneath. More tapes are shown where Cheryl is made to assist in the murders of other victims in increasingly violent ways. 

      The acting is so convincing that the viewer is sometimes left wondering how on Earth they were able to film it without the actors suffering an equal amount of actual torture. More victims fill the tapes, dismemberments are shown, and the fear starts feeling very genuine. 

      Through the criminology class, we learn that a policeman is eventually arrested for the crimes as his semen is found at several of the crime scenes. He is eventually put to death by lethal injection. A few days after the execution more murders are committed and it becomes obvious that the wrong man was put to death. It turns out that the actual killer had somehow gotten hold of the cops' donation to a fertility clinic and used it to plant his DNA at various crime scenes. The wrongly executed cop is posthumously exonerated but no one really pays attention to this news because the terrorist attack on 9/11 occurred the day before and this news completely dominated the airwaves and overshadowed what had happened with the falsely accused policeman. 

      More tapes are watched, showing more victims murdered in increasingly gruesome ways. We learn that the tapes were found at a house in which not a single fingerprint was discovered, the only thing left behind is a wooden box the size of a coffin containing what is assumed to be the corpse of Cheryl Dempsey, shockingly she is found to be alive but in horrible shape, too disturbing to even be described. We do learn that while in the hospital recuperating Cheryl mysteriously continues to show recent injuries and that she is so mentally disturbed by over ten years of constant torture that she compulsively continues to injure herself, thinking that this is what is normal and expected of her. An interview with her later shows what can only be described as the shell of a human who doesn't know how to think for herself and can only ask what the interviewer wants her to say, as this has become her normal existence. We also notice she is missing a hand along with other scars and somewhat healed injuries. A caption displayed after the failed interview lets the audience knows that Cheryl soon after committed suicide leaving a note stating that she loved her torturer, that he loved her, and that she believed he would return for her someday. 

      A new film is then shown of a rope being tied to the neck of a recently buried corpse that we can only assume is Cheryl being pulled from her grave and taken away. After the movie's credits, there is a short film of a woman whose mouth is taped shut and who is told that as long as she doesn't blink, she'll live. After a few very tense moments, she blinks and is stabbed in the neck. 

      As gruesome as the tapes are, there are still about 27 tapes unaccounted for and we're left to assume that the killer took these with him and contain footage so horrifying as to make all the others seem tame by comparison. 

      This is an extremely disturbing movie and I can see why its release was probably delayed due to its subject matter. What is shown on the tapes has such a feeling of intense realness that it's actually very believable and what isn't shown and simply described can only be visually imagined by the sickest of minds. A terrifying film to say the least, and even though we know it's just a movie, it's somehow believable enough to leave a very nasty taste in your mouth.

Friday, January 28, 2022

Salem's Lot

     Salem's Lot is a miniseries made from Stephen King's second book. In my opinion, the miniseries was just as scary as the book, it did have some changes but the changes made were actually a lot scarier when seen on film. Salem's Lot was made in the 1970s for people who were too lazy to just read the damn book. Fortunately, it turned out very well and personally scared the hell out of me. 

      Stephen King often wondered what would happen if you took Dracula and dropped him in the middle of modern-day suburbia, and the book Salem's Lot was the result. Since this is a blog about movies I won't go into all the differences between the movie and the book and just concentrate on the masterpiece that resulted when this miniseries was created. 

      David Soul was a huge star at the time so he landed the main character role of Ben Mears, a tormented writer who left the sleepy town of Jerusalem's Lot, shortened by its residents to "Salem's Lot", to achieve his dream of being a famous author who never really became that famous. It was directed by Tobe Hooper who had recently made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and was itching to take on a Stephen King novel and make a great miniseries out of it. He succeeded and it was a huge success. It's been remade a few times, one version with Rob Lowe that adhered a lot closer to the novel, but this version from 1979 has gained a huge cult following and is by far the scariest version out there. 

      Ben Mears has returned to write a story about the Marsten House, the old and supposedly haunted house on the hill at the edge of town. Upon arriving in town and attempting to rent the Marsten House to write a book about it, he soon learns that two mysterious antique dealers have just recently rented the house themselves and plan to open an antique shop in town. Sounds very gay, which is where I was hoping the story was going but alas, it did not. Mr. Straker is an English gentleman who definitely stands out in a town full of rather ordinary and mundane people. His partner Mr. Barlow is never seen but only heard about, and is told will soon arrive from a buying trip overseas. 

      Soon a young boy goes missing and a mysterious blood-related illness begins to affect some of the residents of the Lot. Friends and family of the missing and deceased begin having dreams of their loved ones and become unusually tired and develop mysterious marks on their necks. 

      What I like most about this story is that the vampire is rarely seen and the main story deals with the relationships of the people in the town. Ben meets up with Susan Norton, the local librarian and they begin a relationship, much to the dismay of her ex-boyfriend who is constantly dead set on beating the hell out of Ben, as you do in small towns. Mark Petrie is a high school student obsessed with horror and magic who sees his missing best friend floating outside his window one night begging to be let in. Having some knowledge of vampires and already being pretty sure his friend is dead since he attended his funeral a few days prior, refuses and busts out with a plastic cross from a graveyard model, sending his friend hissing into the night. Ben and Mark team up with a few other random characters to solve the mystery of what's going on in the Lot and soon find out that Mr. Straker has been kidnapping kids and feeding them to Mr. Barlow who is a pretty terrifying bald blue vampire with eerie glowing eyes, very much in the vein of Nosferatu, which is probably the biggest change from the book, but a change that scared me half to death the first time I saw him. 

      There's a back story about the Marsten House and an experience Ben had there as a child. Ben assumes that since the house is inherently evil and therefore attracts evil, why then did it attract him? We eventually learn that all the missing or dead people from the town are now bluish-colored vampires who now reside in the house's basement. Ben and Mark finally destroy Straker and Barlow and burn down the Marsten House, starting a fire that eventually sweeps through the entire town. 

      We learn from a few book references by Stephen King that vampires still reside in the Lot after the fire and it becomes known as a place you really don't wanna be caught in after dark. A truly creepy movie with some terrifying scenes and some pretty decent acting by some and some really bad acting by others. After it aired on television it became really hard to find until the miracle of DVD brought it back to life for fans who'd been completely scarred by it when it originally came out.

Fire Walk With Me

     Fire Walk With Me is a prequel film to the hit TV series Twin Peaks from the early '90s. Since Twin Peaks was mostly the story of who killed Laura Palmer, the prequel is naturally about the last week of Laura Palmer's life. We didn't see much of Laura in the series obviously because it starts off with her death, so getting to see her acting out all the things we already knew she did was really cool. I mean, we already knew that although Laura was the homecoming queen and did honorable things like helping with Meals on Wheels, tutoring Josie Packard with her English, and helping the mentally challenged Johnny Horne, she was also into drugs, prostitution, and S&M. The mystery of who killed her captivated the nation and had everyone wondering who the hell killed her. Around episodes 17-18 we finally find out that her father had been molesting her for years and finally killed her because he was possessed by an inhabiting spirit called Bob. 

      The main protagonist of the TV series is Special Agent Dale Cooper played by Kyle MacLachlan, and even though he was the main character in the series, he doesn't play a huge role in the film because Laura isn't dead yet so he has no real reason to be there. Plus, he didn't really want to be in the movie for fear of being typecast since he was trying to be considered a serious film actor. Instead, we have Special Agents Chester Desmond and Sam Stanley, played by Chris Isaak and Keifer Sutherland respectively. Both are investigating the murder of Teresa Banks, who is the murder victim just before Laura is killed. Only through the prequel though do we learn that Teresa and Laura were both prostitutes who sometimes worked together. 

      Many people weren't exactly fans of the movie because they thought it lacked the taste and class that the TV series had. After all, as a feature film, it was allowed the courtesy of profanity and nudity.  But in my opinion, it didn't really take away from the story. I mean, Laura did a lot of salacious things, and if we're gonna see her doing all the things we only heard about in the series, it's gonna have some scenes that are a little more intense. Sheryl Lee who plays Laura does an incredible job and acted her tush off in this role, and really gave the character some serious depth by giving it her all. 

      The movie premiered in 1992 about a year after the TV series finished its second season and was canceled. Many characters were written out of the movie, mostly because they either didn't have much to do with Laura's death or just didn't care to reprise their roles for the film. Another reason that most characters didn't show up was that the original version of the movie ran just over five hours long, but was cut down to just over two hours due to the restraints that were put on director David Lynch to keep the film a little shorter than that. This caused a lot of continuity errors and subplots that had no resolution or just plain didn't make sense. Personally, I thought this added to the mystery that Twin Peaks already had and matched the series quite well. Years later, a lot of outtakes and extended scenes were assembled together to form a movie of sorts called "The Missing Pieces" which was released as a feature film, one that doesn't actually resemble a film at all and just looks like what it was, a random collection of unneeded scenes that would've just slowed the movie down had they remained in the final version. Hopefully, fans will someday put the movie and missing pieces together in addition to the other 2-3 hours of missing footage that David Lynch was forced to cut from Fire Walk With Me in order to finally realize his original vision of the film. 

      One glaring change in the film is the replacement of Lara Flynn Boyle as Donna Hayward with actress Moira Kelly. Rumor has it that Lara didn't want to film the nude scenes, but she soon afterward starred in the movie The Road to Wellville in which she appeared topless, so nobody really knows her true reasons for declining to appear in Fire Walk With Me. The character of Donna Hayward was crucial to Laura's story though so her character couldn't be written out. Fortunately, Moira Kelly did a pretty good job playing the part so I can't complain. 

      I was one of the few people who saw the prequel movie before actually watching the TV series, which just made me more of a fan of the whole Twin Peaks phenomenon. There's much more backward talk in the movie too which I always thought was a really cool idea, by having the actors speak phonetically backward, then running the film backward so that the actors sounded strange and ethereal. Altogether I thought the movie was very well done despite the flaws that fans of the series love to complain about.