Month: October 2024

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

This is not the first time I’ve elected to watch a Halloween film on Halloween itself; indeed, the last review I posted on my old film blog was Halloween II on October 31, 2021. This is also not the first time I’ve regretted that decision, too… at least there’s no “Sam Hain” nonsense in this one, someone clearly got handed a note this time round. Anyway, John Carpenter and Debra Hill hadn’t wanted to do a Halloween sequel in the first place, and they were even less excited by the prospect of another one, so they insisted it not actually be a sequel at all… which was a really interesting idea, potentially opening the series up to being more of an anthology thing telling different stories around the Halloween theme. Alas, however, this wasn’t what audiences wanted from the series; they wanted a big goon in a William Shatner mask getting stabby, not these androids in suits ripping people’s heads off, and so number four in the series wouldn’t happen for several years. It didn’t help that the film itself wasn’t much good, either; Nigel Kneale was drafted to write the script, which was then so reworked he demanded his name be taken off it, and the end result was not the most coherent film ever made. What exactly was the point of the androids, for one thing, what was Cochrane’s broader plan there? How do the chips in the mask medallions have… you know, that effect? And I’ll allow some credit for the mass murder of children as a plot device, that’s darker than most horror usually goes, but what was it for? Ropey dialogue, ropey pacing, ropey acting… that fucking ad jingle… the film’s IMDB entry has a good selection of plot holes, too. There is a school of thought that says, with hindsight and now that we know what Carpenter wanted to do with the series, that HIII was actually much better than its early critics said it was. I am not part of this school, and really didn’t like this at all. Also, I rather doubt I’ll be watching any future installments of the series on future Halloweens…

Rock off, Tommy!

In news that I do not find unpleasant, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon just got 18 months in jail for contempt of court.

The hearing on Monday was the culmination of events that date back to October 2018.
That month, a video went viral showing how Jamal Hijazi, a Syrian in West Yorkshire, had been attacked by another teenager at school.
Yaxley-Lennon then posted his own response to one million Facebook followers alleging that his investigation had established that Mr Hijazi was a violent thug, a claim that was untrue.
The Yaxley-Lennon video spread widely and the Syrian teenager and his family received death threats.
Three years later, Mr Hijazi won £100,000 in damages when the High Court ruled the Yaxley-Lennon’s claims against him had amounted to defamation.
The court imposed an injunction on Yaxley-Lennon, banning him from making the false claims again.
In February 2023, Yaxley-Lennon began repeating the claims and went on to post online a film claiming he had been “silenced” by the state.
That film may have been viewed at least 47 million times.
Eventually, this July, Yaxley-Lennon showed the film to thousands of his supporters in Trafalgar Square, saying he would not be silenced. The following day he left the country.

I am greatly amused that the BBC also refuse to call him “Tommy Robinson”. Nice to see fuck-around-find-out working…

Dark Waters (1993)

Just in time for Severin’s second folk horror box set, I’ve finally made inroads into the first volume… never let it be said that I am especially current or up to date in any way with these things. Anyway, this is a film I’ve been curious about for literally decades; I first read about it in Andy Black’s old Necronomicon journal which came out in 1996, so it must’ve been about that time when I did, with the first volume having contained an article by Black himself on “Lovecraftian” cinema… and Dark Waters being hailed as having the most “Lovecraftian” aura on film yet (i.e. to the mid-90s) in said article. To be perfectly honest, having finally seen the thing, I’m not really sure what Black saw in it on that front; for me it was far more reminiscent of other Italian horror than anything in HPL, especially Michele Soavi’s The Church, which has a similar theme (the church/monastery containing a monstrous demonic presence). Add in a whiff of Argento (Suspiria with nuns, sort of) and Fulci (the general befuddling disregard for plot coherence), and Dark Waters is kind of what you get, I suppose…

Black acknowledges the film is more style than substance, but as I said of Opera the other day, it’s quite some style; director Mariano Baino shot the film in Ukraine (one of the first Western productions there after the fall of the USSR), which made for immensely difficult conditions given the region’s wobbly politics but offered spectacular locations. Alex Howe’s cinematography does most of the heavy lifting in this film, along with the foul weather that most of it takes place in, and the general atmosphere is super-strong; alas that Dark Waters is severely let down by its lead actress, Louise Salter as the young woman who discovers her late father has been paying for this mysterious Ukrainian monastery and wants to know why, and I suspect there’s a reason why her career since this film has been so limited… I don’t think it’s just the fault of post-synchronisation. Not a great film, after all this time, but fascinating to watch nevertheless… even if, frankly, I’m not sure what’s so “Lovecraftian” about it.

Wokeness still killing comedy

To be honest it’s been nice having other stuff to post (all these film reviews, for example) than political bullshit; the political bullshit has obviously been flowing freely all this month and smelling increasingly repugnant as November 5th looms (ONLY ONE MORE WEEK!), but I’ve had no desire to talk about it. Things have been ugly and stupid and, well, today’s been ugly and stupid enough that I have to say something at last. Cos Drumpf held a big rally at Madison Square Garden… no, wait, that link goes to the Wiki entry about the 1939 Nazi rally there… eh, fuck it, same difference. Howw are people responding? Well, Geraldo Rivera at least is pissed:

Now Geraldo is kind of weird as Republicans go, but even so. In fairness to Trump, he didn’t actually say that “floating island of garbage” bit himself; that was Tony Hinchcliffe, one of the opening acts, an alleged comedian whose set apparently also encompassed jokes against Jews and Blacks…, cos

This is bullshit, of course, cos Trump has said the other things Geraldo cited, and Hinchcliffe’s jokes seem to have kind of set the tone; when Dampnut finally showed up two hours late to do his own speech which was apparently full of anti-immigrant bullshit. They’re not courting anything except the white racist vote, and they’re not exactly hiding it. If we ever had doubts…

On the plus side, Candace Owens just got refused entry to Australia for being a piece of shit:

Immigration Minister Tony Burke confirmed the conservative online influencer would not be granted a visa, saying “Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else”.
“From downplaying the impact of the Holocaust with comments about [Nazi physician Josef] Mengele through to claims that Muslims started slavery, Candace Owens has the capacity to incite discord in almost every direction,” Mr Burke said.

I have no particular problems with this. Too many Hitlerites in this country as it is.

The Love Witch (2016)

I have maintained for several years now that horror films don’t do well if they’re allowed to go on for too long (Mr Romero’s Dawn of the Dead being a notable exception), and I think I’ve just found more supporting evidence; at a shade over two hours, The Love Witch is a lot longer than it has any business being. The film is celebrated for its fetishisation of 60s/70s film style, which seems to be a large part of what draws people to it (and I’ll confess to that being the case with me too); it is apparently one of the last films to have been not only shot on 35mm film but edited on film and printed to film from that negative too, there was no digital tomfoolery and the singular look of the film is down to the stock and the camera filters used. I completely understand this visual appeal—which is enhanced aurally by the generous amount of Ennio Morricone music from actual 70s gialli—cos the film does look amazing, and I respect Anna Biller’s grind in getting things exactly how she wanted even if she had to make some bits of furniture herself (e.g. the pentagram rug that apparently took her six months to make). It’s just… the rest of it? There’s an element of somewhat strange humour to the film, with a semi-parodic aspect to proceedings, and I appreciate that Biller is doing a sort of feminist reclamation of period melodrama camp… but the humour here is on a wavelength I clearly don’t share, and the artifice of the enterprise extends into the performances to the extent that I genuinely can’t tell if they’re good or not. Especially Samantha Robinson as the titular witch. And if this were an actual 60s/70s horror, it probably wouldn’t have such withering pacing and it’d be over and done with in about 85-90 minutes. A considerable disappointment.

“Morals”?

I’ve never actually heard a note of As I Lay Dying’s music, cos metalcore just isn’t really my thing, but I know all about their… difficult history; it’s not every band whose lead singer causes the breakup of the band by hiring a hitman to kill his wife, then reforms the band after getting out of jail and carrying on his career… but over the years most of the rest of the band got jack of him, and now the ringers he replaced them with have done the same…

American metalcore band As I Lay Dying now contains just two members after guitarist Ken Susi, drummer Nick Pierce, and bassist/singer Ryan Neff departed the band. At the time of publication, As I Lay Dying now consists of vocalist Tim Lambesis and rhythm guitarist Phil Sgrosso. […]
“My time playing with As I Lay Dying has come to an end today,” Susi wrote, adding that he left with “so much gratitude” for everyone who’s supported his career to date.
Explaining that he had “full knowledge” of the band’s “heightened dramatic history” before he joined, he said that he had a “drive” to play “great music with great friends.”
His statement continued, “Unfortunately, my personal morals have recently been tested to a breaking point, and it’s now the saddest ending to what could have been the greatest second chance for this band.”

Ken, my brother in metal, FUCK YOUR PERSONAL MORALS. You knew the band’s history, by your own admission, and you were still happy to join it. Where were your personal morals two years ago when you did that? I mean, I don’t respect ANY of the other band members for rejoining Lambesis (I do think it’s faintly hilarious that the only one apparently still with him is the one who reportedly took the most convincing to come back to the band), except insofar as three of them quit again later, but I respect these other three replacement characters even less. Morals? Morals had piss all to do with it…

The Invisible Ray (1936)

Can’t really have a horror “festival” without Karloff or Lugosi, can we? Consequently, let’s have them both together! This was the third, and I think the last, of their jointly starring vehicles for Universal, with Karloff slightly taking the lead in this one; he’s the not-yet-but-eventually-will-be mad scientist who uses the titular ray to look back millions of years in time to observe a meteorite crashing into Africa, which he deduces contains a new form of power, which leads him to join Lugosi in an expedition to Africa to find the thing. Unfortunately, as Orwell observed nearly a decade later, power corrupts, and while Lugosi uses the power for good, Karloff is more inclined the other way… The pseudoscience in this film is particularly pseudo, with Lugosi’s own work on “astro-chemistry” being something that could’ve made a film of its own, and the pacing feels odd in a way I can’t quite describe, like the film’s in two parts but the connection between the two isn’t as strong as it could be. I don’t know. But look, it’s Karloff and Lugosi in their peak period, which is not a bad thing at all (the latter could struggle as an actor, but he’s pretty solid here); and while the production seems to have been difficult (with original director Stuart Walker harrumphing off the lot when Universal wouldn’t give him time to do rewrites) and went massively over budget, you can see that money in the finished product, particularly the amazing laboratory set in the beginning of the film. The Invisible Ray is basically a superior B-film with two genre icons in the main roles, some vintage pseudoscience, and happily little comic relief, and I am very much in favour of that sort of thing. Enjoyed a lot.

Murders in the Zoo (1933)

By now I’ve seen most of the big titles from the 1930s’ horror boom that Wm. Everson covers in Classics of the Horror Film (indeed, on checking the book again, I think Murder by the Clock might be the last of the 1930s left; still got some of the 40s titles to go, though), but for whatever reason this one has proven elusive until now… but recently I discovered Eureka had it on blu-ray as part of a set of these things; I duly invested in it, it duly arrived the other day, and I duly watched it tonight. Duly enjoyed it, too, although I find myself a bit perplexed by Paramount’s decision to assign it to Eddie Sutherland… the latter was much more of a comedy specialist (having started in the business as a Keystone Kop) and I don’t see anything else horror-adjacent in his filmography. I wonder if that’s why the film leans so much on top-billed Charlie Ruggles’ comedy relief (cos Ruggles is a secondary character at best); I mean, so many of these films did back then, but it feels even more so than usual here… But despite that, the film nonetheless has some quite nasty business going on, starting as it does with Lionel Atwill (the real star and villain of the piece) sewing a man’s mouth shut and leaving him to be eaten by jungle animals; that’s not the only thing about the film where I’m amazed it passed the Production Code (I know the latter wasn’t yet enforced and wouldn’t be until the following year, but even so). Atwill gives good heavy in Murders, whose main sticking point is its typically “early talkie” lack of incidental music; there is some scoring but not when the film could really have done with it… King Kong premiered the day after this did, and revolutionised the use of music in films; alas that Murders in the Zoo was a bit too late to benefit from that. Still, had Paramount waited much longer to make it, the Hays office might’ve stopped it being made at all…