Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE (2025): The story of Lilly, who began as a serious scientist studying dolphin communication but, driven by experiments with isolation tanks and LSD, gradually drifted into fringe theories (believing himself in contact with the extraterrestrials of the titular office). Lilly is a fascinating character (he was the basis for the scientists in Mike Nicholls' THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN and Ken Russell's ALTERED STATES); this nonjudgmental documentary by Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens covers the bases. 3/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Zombie Holocaust" (aka "Dr. Butcher M.D.," 1981)
An anthropologist and a doctor investigate crimes involving cannibalism in New York hospitals. This somehow prompts them to travel to a remote island in the tropics, where a mad doctor has been experimenting on the natives, turning them into zombies.
Silly, sleazy Italian splatter schlock that doesn't make much sense but the gross out effects are impressive.

[M.10rda]

THE RED SPECTRE [LE SPECTRE ROUGE] (1907):
My fourth (?) Segundo de Chomon flick. Like his other ones, it's "real" horror, at least by the standards of the silent era. Letterboxd has a brief description of the plot which would have one believe that this 8-minute short has... a plot. I dunno about all that - what I saw was a guy in a skeleton costume and devil horns performing a magic act w/ three female assistants. But - even if that's all THE RED SPECTRE is - it's very impressive.

De Chomon's special effects are quite cool in LE MAISON ENSORCELEE and to a lesser extent in some of his other shorts. However THE RED SPECTRE is all FX. It's as if de Chomon watched some Melies and promptly called for a beer-holder.  At first all of the "magic" in RED SPECTRE is the standard jump cuts and dissolves and even good ol' Ed Wood wires lifting stuff in the air. Then de Chomon starts running film backwards, which is still a good trick in the era of David Lynch. But then at last, the final couple of "tricks" performed by the Spectre involve either on-camera projection and/or reflective surfaces (almost early green screen) and/or double- and triple-exposures, and........ by the end, I was ensorcelled indeed by "tricks" I couldn't quite explain in a nearly 120-year old film.

If you like movie SFX, this is one you ought to check out.    4/5