Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

MARE'S NEST (2025): Experimental art film about the adventures of a young girl wandering some kind of post-apocalyptic world without adults. Presented in chapters which makes it seem like an anthology of short films; young Moon Guo Barker is appealing (and delivers an impressively long monologue about evolution to a turtle), but the film is uneven, with fascinating early scenes yielding to long, silent stretches that try the patience. 3/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Brains for dinner, brains for lunch

The Alien Report (2024) - Alien found footage is a sub genre of a sub genre that I've had a little bit of luck with. "I'm here in the spaceship with my go pro" bad potential aside, I've seen a couple good ones now: Phoenix Forgotten, this one, and who can forget Cloverfield? Actually, I can't remember if I saw that, but anyway...

A troubled, paranoid sort of guy is convinced that aliens have been following him around his whole life, so he covers himself with cameras and attempts to catch them. Along the way he get harassed at a skate park, smashes the wrong car windows, and generally has a bad time.

This seems like it would appeal equally to hipsters and juggalos, or maybe those are the same thing now. The main actor is believable as a paranoid every-dude and you get caught up in the story enough that you don't think about the fact that it's ultimately not really a found footage movie so much as a movie that uses a found footage aspect, which with a worse story would be confusing and annoying.

4.65 / 5 The credits indicate that there were actually a lot of people/ work involved in this. Would make a good double bill with "They Live".

[M.10rda]

Bruno VeSota first came to my attention in Attack of the Giant Leeches. If you look at the films he was in, it is no wonder that at one point he thought 'I can do this just as well'

I'll attest that actors in bad movies and actors in bad plays definitely do this.

Also I forgot to mention that BRAIN-EATERS is the source of one of my all-time favorite (stoopid) audio samples - where the mayor's lame adult son asks if the brain-eaters turn their victims into a "ROW-bit".  I very much wanted the cool greaser scientist to put the son in a vicious headlock and scream "There is no such thing as a ROW-bit!"

[Rev. Powell]

RIFFTRAX: GRIM TRAX: A collection of "grim" shorts dealing with subjects like aging, death, stranger danger, grisly workplace accidents (one for the gore fans), and a childhood existential crisis. Very grim indeed, but I laughed, because it was happening to someone else (and it helps that it was all happening to bad actors). It was only an hour long, so I watched a couple of additional shorts, notably "Steamboat Willie," which I'd never seen before in its entirety. 3/5.

[M.10rda]

NOSFERATU (1922):
Third (?) viewing of this silent classic. Okay, bear with me here... I almost put this in the other section.  But I didn't. Here are the good or great things about NOSFERATU - it's a real silent horror movie, it moves at a good clip and is never boring, some of the images are really creepy and well-constructed, and Max Shreck is, well - timeless, iconic, canonical, epochal. There's only one Lon Chaney Phantom but every subsequent nosferatu is Count Orlok. The only scarier one is Kurt Barlow, but even Kurt Barlow is Count Orlok. (Let us say nothing of dopey-looking nosferati in walrus-moustaches.) That counts for something or for a lot.

That said, Max Shreck is also... very funny besides being very scary. The eyes, eyebrows, and nose invite pure Comedy vibes. There are also some janky moments in the film that emphasize (intentionally or otherwise) Shreck's amusing qualities. When the coach arrives to pick up Jonathan/"Hutter", the driver is clearly Orlok - which is in and of itself funny in an obviously-fake-moustache kinda' way Then the coach drops him off at the castle and drives out of sight, and then the gates open and Orlok greets Hutter. Why???  Why not just pick your guest up and introduce yourself? But then later, Hutter sees Orlock load a coffin on the back of the coach, climb  and close himself in... and then the coach drives away! Who is driving the coach??? Orlok's identical yet purely incidental brother?     

Those moments would be hilarious in a "bad"/MST3K movie... and they're hilarious here! But, they only gesture towards a much bigger problem in NOSFERATU's logic, and my huge issue w/ this classic film....... one which, to the credit of the film's reputation, I either never noticed previously or somehow this never bothered me:

We all know how Orlok is defeated at the end. Whether intentional or otherwise, a fairly big deal is made of "Ellen's" role in Orlok's defeat. SPOILERS for this 104-year old film: he hangs out too long and the sunlight kills him. Great - except we've already seen Orlok in the sun 3 or 4 times in previous scenes!      The initial coach/greeting scene - the "loading the coffin" scene - the "appearing on the deck of the plague ship" scene - and then the long scene where he carries his own coffin through the city to his new house!

I realize that Murnau likely intended these scenes to take place at night. I am likewise confident that Ed Wood intended for the strings which held up the flying saucers in PLAN 9 to be less visible.    But what's the difference? Murnau clearly didn't have the money or technology to properly shoot at night, and nor had he figured out DFN shooting at this point in film history. Thus in the plague ship scene, the sky is bright white and the sun is clearly reflected in water in the foreground of an establishing shot, and then Orlok strolls right out on deck.  Was there anything Murnau might've done to ameliorate this issue? There sure was - he might have rewritten the ending of the film so that it wasn't strictly premised on the destructive properties of sunlight on nosferati.     

When Harvey Keitel holds the lighter up to his cigarette in RESERVOIR DOGS and the flame doesn't even come close to his cigarette but he stills pretends to smoke it for the rest of the shot, that's a minor flub - it has nothing to do with the resolution of the film. In this case, Murnau pooped the bed pretty badly.

3/5    It's a testament to the cool things about NOSFERATU that no one ever talks about this monolithic screw-up (except me, of course).

[M.10rda]

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER (2023):
Although technically this is a "Dracula" movie (the ship was named "Empusa" in off-brand knock-off NOSFERATU), Count Dracula looks and acts more like a nosferatu. And you know what? LAST VOYAGE OTD is at least a better made film than Murnau's original...  ...at the very very least, it provides not one but two plausible explanations for how a vampire might be exposed to indirect sunlight w/o bursting into flames! LAST VOYAGE also has a great high-concept - ALIEN on a 19th century freighter. And it does two other potentially positive things - though those two things are implemented in ways that compromise the film's overall success.

Double-Edged Stake #1: LAST VOYAGE often pulls off the neat trick that the original ALIEN achieved - it gets you scanning every inch of its shadowy widescreen compositions to see if Nosferatu is hiding somewhere in the scenery. On the occasions when he reveals himself, it can be quite scary - momentarily. But ALIEN famously worked because it kept all but fleeting glimpses of the Xenomorph offscreen until the end; LAST VOYAGE puzzlingly (and regrettably) shows you the Full Monty immediately and consistently. When the Nosferatu is mostly unseen, he's scary; when you can see him, though, he's much less scary and really just a loathsome punchable jerk.  Bad move.

Double-Edged Stake #2: LAST VOYAGE gives us an extremely well-developed, compelling, and likeable protagonist in Corey Hawkins' black physician... but it spends so much time building him up that it becomes impossible to imagine that the film will kill him off before the very end, or ever. Meanwhile most of the other 10 human characters get two dimensions or less. LAST VOYAGE runs almost exactly as long as ALIEN, but ALIEN was at most 25% dialogue and 75% silent suspense and action. LAST VOYAGE lets its characters talk and talk and talk and talk unnecessarily and it's simply too much. Although (at great length) it creates a convincing picture of life at sea - who cares? I don't need to believe in naval life anymore than I need to believe in life in outer space - I just need to buy into the high-stakes conflict of Crew v. Monster.

A lot of money and effort clearly went into LAST VOYAGE and it seems clear the producers hoped for a sequel. (THE NEXT VOYAGE AFTER THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER?) Besides being technically more accomplished and well-thought-out than Murnau's original, I also thought this was sturdier than Eggars' frivolous, hysterical remake.      3/5    #nomoustacheonnosferatu

[Dr. Whom]

A lot of money and effort clearly went into LAST VOYAGE and it seems clear the producers hoped for a sequel. (THE NEXT VOYAGE AFTER THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER?)

Or a prequel: THE NEXT TO LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER

[M.10rda]

The final scene sets up a sequel. A prequel would be even funnier - all the human characters from the original (except the doctor, who is new to the crew) sail from one port to another, deliver their freight, and absolutely nothing goes awry. 

[Dalmatian Bobby Samaritan]

We used to have a Golden Corral in these here parts. I only went once or twice but I miss it now. I'm a big man and I love a good buffet. Still got plenty of Indian and Chinese buffets and all-you-can-eat sushi around    but pretty much no American buffets anymore. Sigh. Anyway,

I went to a church and the church I went to changed locations and they bought an out of business Car dealership. And then that building became the new church. Everyone was so pumped up and excited about it. But not me. You could still see the old car dealership decals or washed away logos on the front of the Building. It was sort of like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. This is supposedly an upgrade but I couldn't help but feel like something was taken away or stolen. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee I think works good as a metaphor for anybody you don't have to be Indian or Native America. Some older way of life that you liked (even though it wasn't perfect but still you could manage I mean when you move a muscle you want to pretend at least that you aren't Paul Verhoeven when he made that dust to dust movie Hollow man.) But yeah an older way of life changed like overnight. And now for some reason you feel really depressed. What makes a war. Drilling exploration equipment, says Kenneth Katzman.

I am trying to limit my Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee experiences these days. I know that the next one is going to come anyway, it is inevitable. Saw the movie WhaleFall and walked out at about the thirty minute mark. I think I am definitely officially going to take a Bye for the next underwater creature film.
Sigh..And all of these people who complain about how badly creatures in the wild are being treated. I don't see how making a movie like what I saw helps that cause. It actually hurts it. Perhaps this is just the beginning of a Domino effect in hollywood films about some kind of underwater monster. Maybe it really should have happened in the 1980s and it is just some kind of miracle that it kept going this long. Yeah Mark A. Hall eat your heart out.

[M.10rda]

Yeah, sort of expected that about WHALEFALL. The trailer seemed to reveal too much of the film and it seemed like a feature-length anxiety attack/no fun... similar vibes to James Franco stuck w/ his arm under a boulder for two hours or Ryan Reynolds buried alive for 90 minutes. No thanks.

[Dalmatian Bobby Samaritan]

Leprechaun: Back 2 the Hood.  This one is also bad.  David is still pretty good, in his final appearance.  The lead girl actually is a decent actress I guess, but man this is badly written and kind of lackluster.  It's not super boring.  I don't know.  Two more to go.

I envy in a way Warwick Davis and those Leprechaun movie. Sometimes I unconsciously go to libraries and go to these cryptid books and start writing down names of all of the cultures who claim that they have legends and stories of little people and then I go on some berserk rage and write them down. The Yunwi Tsunsdi' those are cherkokee. And Kalanoro in Madagascar. What is going on. Leprechaun scares the crap out of me. Even the bad ones, because it is still the same theme and the same darn character. I feel like literally I might be the next one. That the Leprechaun has to encounter.

I feel like the Wishmaster movies (even though kind of similar in theme) were better. Wishmaster 3 was garbage, or basically redefined what the meaning of garbage is. And that horrible British actor. If you want proof that British aren't always better actors than Americans, watch Wishmaster 3. And that droid looking Blonde british guy with the goatee that is a different hair color. He is basically Hugh Newman. And if you don't know who that is, don't bother. You have lowlifes and you have Hugh Newman. Actually the british actor from Wishmaster 3 is kind of a spitting clone of Hugh Newman.

And who knows. I have never been to that country. Perhaps that is what they are doing there. Warrick Davis or him as Leprechaun should be our Border Security. We could drastically reduce the workforce and just have him. My guess though is that since he is evil (or his character) then he would be working for the other side. Oh shoot. So much for that romanticism.

[lester1/2jr]

Apollo 18 (2011) - Space found footage weekend continues with this pretty well known one that I never saw. The generic title has probably led to some people missing it and others who wanted to see something like Apollo 11 being disappointed. I had a cold and it's mellow but sinister, Outer Limits like presentation (one episode in particular, if you know you know) ended up being a good choice. Its not the most amazing story ever told and it's low budget shows, but the simple story stays focused and the men on the moon don't have pointless conversations about life and stuff.

4.5 /5

[M.10rda]

THE BAT (1926):
Yep, one more silent horror movie that isn't horror, though it is well-made and decently entertaining. THE BAT is an Old Dark House flick w/ a murderous masked criminal prowling about wreaking occasional havoc. He's dressed in black and wears a cape and a giant mask that kinda' makes him look like a mangy version of DJ Deadmau5. THE BAT was an acknowledged inspiration for Batman, but the guy in this movie acts more like the Joker.

THE BAT was directed by Roland West, who also directed 1925's THE MONSTER, a pretty wild Old Dark House horror/thriller w/ Lon Chaney as the Bad Guy. I rec'd THE MONSTER as kinda' underwhelming a year ago, but after watching a ton of way less eventful silent "horrors" this year I've come to appreciate it more. THE BAT isn't nearly as wild as THE MONSTER, but West has a bigger budget and the whole production is quite slick and accomplished. There are a few moments where lighting plays a huge role in suspense - nice stuff.

There's a good-sized cast of characters wandering around the mansion, some of whom are distinct and interesting, some of whom are bland and forgettable. THE BAT would've benefitted from a higher kill-count, as not all of these folks needed to stick around until the end. The screenplay traffics more in comedy than horror, but some of the comedy is actually funny. One of the detectives (there are three!) is a largely incompetent/cowardly blowhard, which is amusing. There's also an Irish maid who ends up being one of the most prominent characters. In spite of always being around the action, she never has quite enough to do - but the actress, Louise Fazenda, is quite amiable at making do w/ what she's got. She has a lot of quippy dialogue in intertitles, which somehow she's able to sell through her visual performance. Ultimately the maid comes off as a white female version of the Mantan Moreland character (always my favorite character in any movie anyway).

3/5    Breezy fun. There's also an Asian butler, who is treated somewhat insensitively but at least he's played by a real Asian guy.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Tales of Halloween" (2015)
A horror anthology film consisting of ten spooky stories that all take place around the same town on Halloween night. Segments include a kidnapping plot that goes very wrong, a Jason-style slasher who meets his match, and Jack O' Lanterns developing a taste for human flesh!
Not every tale is a winner but overall this is a cool flick full of creepy atmosphere and homages to past horror classics. Lots of fun!