Monthly Archives: April 2015

Horns (2013)

Posted on by
Reply

horns01Ignatius Perrish awakens and the crowd of reporters has already gathered around his house, asking him how it feels to get away with the murder of his girlfriend Merrin.  He threads through them alone (not having a friend like Robert Kardashian) and gets into his red AMC Gremlin.

There is a candlelight vigil for Merrin at the treehouse where she was raped and killed. Unknown to them, Ig is watching from above in the treehouse.  After the crowd leaves, he descends and takes a whiz on the flowers and candles.

The next morning, he begins growing the titular horns.  The skank he spent the night with begins acting crazy.  She seems cool with the horns, and also has a strange obsession for donuts, stuffing her face into the box; which might have just been payback for the previous night.

The horns also have an effect on a screeching kid in the doctor’s office.  The mother admits she’d like to kick her kid’s ass, or just drive off and leave her there.  Then she feels compelled to tell Ig that she is having an affair with her “jigboo” golf pro, and it’s true what they say about black cock.  She seems to think it is clever to call it her “5-iron.” While iron is certainly an admirable adjective, I’m not sure her golf pro would appreciate the five reference.  8  or 9-iron would be impressive, but they are ironically known as the “short irons.”

horns03Ig grabs the mother’s hand and has a Johnny Smith moment, seeing flashes from her life, mostly consisting of the golf pro humping her from behind.  Even her daughter is affected by the horns, saying she wants to get matches and set mommy’s bed on fire. Good luck finding a dry spot.  Even the nurse and doctor get a little crazy.

As he drifts off under the anesthetic, he remembers back to his youth, blowing up cherry bombs.  On a dare, he rides a shopping cart down a coal chute, and ends up almost drowning under some logs.  And meeting young Mirren.  They go to the treehouse, have their first kiss, and in a unfortunate edit, if you happen to reach for a beer at the right time, 13-year-old Mirren seems to get naked.  I did have to rewind it to realize their was a 5 year flash-forward that I missed.  When Ig wakes up, his doctor is humping the nurse.

horns07This goes on with very revealing embarrassing and uncomfortable truths thanks to the horns.  Ig finally wises up and uses his truth-inducing horns to learn what really happened to Mirren.  Along the way, he learns he has another talent involving snakes.

Using these new skills leads to some great scenes, great twists & surprises, and a couple of times where I actually gave an audible “whoa!”

Strangely, with a lot going for it, the movie the movie, as a whole, didn’t entirely work for me, but I’m not sure why.  Daniel Radcliffe is adequate,but nothing more.  The tone is a little too meandering even for a horror/comedy.  Definitely a thumbs-up, but less than the sum of its parts.  And there are some great parts.

It did make me want to read the book though

horns06Post-Post:

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Together (S3E15)

Posted on by
4

ahptogether06It is the office Christmas Party, and being 1958, it is still called a Christmas Party (and even though this aired in mid-January).  Presents are being exchanged, everyone is smoking like a chimney with care, and men are making general louts of themselves.

While everyone else is having fun, Shelly is trying to get through to her boyfriend Tony Gould (Joseph Cotton) on the phone.  She gives up and goes into the boss’s office to use his phone. She finally gets him and asks if he has already told his wife about them, because a few days before Christmas really would be the ideal time.  Gould assures Shelly that everything is all set for them to be together.  He tells Shelly he will pick her up at the office.

Once at the office, Gould suggests welllllll, maybe he should stay with his wife a little while longer . . . maybe after her annual trip downtown.  Actually, Gould’s arguments for waiting all involve his wife’s feelings.  That seems to anger Shelly even more.  Finally, fed up with Gould’s dithering, she picks up the phone with him standing there and calls his wife to break the news herself.  Gould, quite reasonably, stabs her.

When he tries to unlock the office door, he breaks the key off in the lock.  He checks an internal office window, but there are bars on it — that must be a rough crowd.  He tries another window, but it is three stories up.

This is what I appreciate about AHP — I know locked-room mysteries are a distinct genre, but I’m not sure how many of them involve the murderer actually being locked in.  Someday I am going to order that big-ass book of locked-room mysteries (if I ever finish that big-ass book of pulp stories).

Gould calls his buddy Charles.  He tells Charles that Shelly has passed out and he is locked in the office.  Despite being drunk, Charles says he will be right over.

Gould finally gets the attention of a woman in the window across the alley and asks her to call a locksmith.  It is clear that Sir Alfred did not direct this one as surely he would have put a hottie across the alley like Miss Torso in Rear Window.  Gould is acting so creepy, though, she actually calls the police.  Seeing the police questioning her across the alley,

ahptogether20

Shockingly, this guy died at 28. More shockingly, he was only 26 in this episode.

Gould puts on Shelly’s boss’s coat and glasses, hoping to escape in disguise when the cops inevitably arrive.

The police kick the door in and the ruse works as he leads them out of the office. They are about to leave when Gould’s drunk friend Charlie finally shows up.  Just as Gould was about to get away with murder, Charlie staggers past the group, presumably looking for a place to throw up.  He goes into the bathroom and finds Shelly’s dead body.

 

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  One Survivor.
  • Directed by Robert Altman.
  • For a more in-depth look at the story, performers and production, head over to bare bones ezine.

Mr. Jones (2013)

Posted on by
Reply

mrjones02I’m not sure I can be unbiased.  I started watching Cam2Cam and got so bored in the first 5 minutes that I had to bail — and I never do that.  Switching to Mr. Jones, in the first 15 seconds, I had a fun couple who don’t seem to hate each other, and even more rare, I didn’t hate them.  It banked about 20 minutes of goodwill immediately.  It would need them later.

Scott and Penny are on a road trip, and I am encouraged by the fact that they are lost. How quaint, to be lost on a paved road in daylight in the age of GPS.  The next morning, they arrive at their destination, a cabin not quite in the woods, but in a rural area.  I am again encouraged by a title card which says “DAY 1” as that always means the characters are going to start ramping up (or is it down) to Hell in a day or two.

The first day starts pleasantly enough with a lot of magic-hour photography, heavenly choir type music, and philosophical questions from Scott.  They have come to the woods for a year to “work on their relationship,” or was it to make a documentary?  I feel vindicated in fleeing Cam2Cam.

Frankly, this did not pan out as I had hoped.

Frankly, this did not pan out as I had hoped.

DAY 51 — wait, what?  That’s quite a leap.  Scott tells Penny that he stopped taking his meds, but we never learn what they were.  Possibly some of the last act could be attributed to that, but it really only seems to cloud an ending that wasn’t sky-blue to begin with.  Penny starts nagging him that she gave up everything to come out here with him, and he better start working on that documentary.  Maybe he just ran out of of meds, having doubled up listening to 51 days of that shit.

They do manage to get to sleep — in the same Queen size bed, so things aren’t too bad yet — but are awakened by noises downstairs.  Turns out to be birds flying into the side of the house and occasionally breaking through a window.

The next morning, Scott is giving a Survivor-style confessional to the camera, in the background we see a black-clothed figure steal his pack.  Going in search of the pack, they discover another house is near theirs.  Getting no answer, they go in and find a very junky house with parts of walls and the ceiling missing.  Luckily Scott has a special camera that can film both frontward and backward.  On the upside, we should never miss anything; on the downside, lots of distorted super close-ups of his face.

mrjones21Scott discovers a cellar door and asks Penny to be his lookout.  Scott quickly finds his pack, but now it is Penny that wants to stick around and look at the grotesque figures handing in the cellar.  Naturally the owner comes back, but they are able to escape.  Penny recognizes the figures as being the work of the reclusive artist Mr. Jones.  Penny compares it to living next door to JD Salinger or Banksy.  You know, if they lived in hovels and created creepy scarecrows out of branches and parts of animals.  Who’s to say there isn’t a first draft called Butcher in the Rye under Salingers’s floorboards?

Scott goes back to NYC and starts interviewing scholars and critics about Mr. Jones for the documentary.  Over the years, nine random people have received packages from Mr. Jones containing his artwork.  Those receiving the gifts seem to have nothing in common, but the works are valued in the six figures.

Penny stays in the woods, taking pictures of Mr. Jones works which are hanging from trees in the woods.  As Penny takes pictures, he creeps up behind her.  She asks him for an interview but is startled when he looks a little like one of his scarecrows.

When Scott comes back from New York, they discuss a plan to break into the cellar again to film.  I’m not sure why just knocking on the guy’s door is not an option.  The scarecrows are gone from the woods.  Scott returns to the basement and discovers another sub-basement.  He finds chambers with burning scarecrows, but has lost walkie-talkie contact with Penny.

mrjones34Scott finally finds his way out of the basement and goes back tom their house which has been decorated with scarecrows.  They decide to make a run for it in the morning, but by 9:30, it still is not light.

The old night never becoming day trope is one of my favorites, but it just does nothing for me here.  I leads into a very ambiguous final act which could be hallucinations, the supernatural, the missing meds?  The overlapping dialogue, callbacks to earlier scenes, and light shows are really in service of nothing.

Frankly, they would have been better off keeping it simple and making the sub-basement with the flaming dolls and shifting passageways be the final act.

There was one interesting concept, that Mr. Jones was actually a protector rather than the real threat.  Again, though, not enough, was done with this theory to even make it a good thought experiment.

So, decent couple, nice set-up, huge let-down in the final act.  The potential was there, though.

Post-Post:

  • From the writer of The Divide, which I don’t remember hating.

Night Gallery – The Girl with the Hungry Eyes (S3E2)

Posted on by
2

Lots to be thankful for:  This is the beginning of the last season of Night Gallery . . . I get to skip the execrable first episode as it was inexplicably put on the Season One DVD . . . Joanna Pettet is making her fourth appearance.

On the downside, they have done away with Gil Mellé’s theme which was almost as unnerving as TZ’s.  And Serling’s intro is shamefully weak:  “Let me welcome you to this parlor of paintings . . .”  But the play is the thing, so let’s get to it.

Photographer David Faulkner (James Farentino) is developing film in is darkroom when he sees a picture of a hot babe that he doesn’t remember shooting.  The girl in the photo (Joanna Pettet) walks into his darkroom, but now the picture is not of her anymore.  He doesn’t complain about her opening the door and exposing the other negatives, but who would?  He invites her back the next morning for test shots.

The next day, he fires off hundreds of pictures of her, using the time-honored TV style of photography — constantly moving the camera so it would be impossible to get a focused shot unless he has the shutter speed at 1/30000000.  He should really get a tripod; and during the bikini shots, maybe did.  Heyoooooo!

The next day, he has a meeting with Mr. Munsch from Munsch Beer who is looking for just the right girl to be Miss Munsch in his ad campaign.  He even has a miniature billboard mocked up with a white outline reserved for the perfect white model.  None of the usual suspects in Faulkner’s portfolio excite him until he gets to Joanna.  And we’ll stick with calling her Joanna because she has no name in the episode.

Soon, Joanna’s picture is adorning beer billboards all over the city.  His pal Harry is steamed that Faulkner has not introduced him to her.  When he sees her billboards, it’s like she’s looking back at him.  He is drawn by her eyes that seem to know things about him that she could not possibly know.  Faulkner throws Harry out and makes an early night of it.

Joanna apparently plans to make an early night of it also as she hooks up with Harry downstairs.  Faulkner notices the two of them walking down the sidewalk together.  He goes down to follow them but only sees her running away alone.  He also remembers her ominous admonishment to him that she is never to be followed.  So he returns to his studio as Harry rolls down a ditch, dead.

nghungryeyes20

Joanna Pettet, also figuratively hot

The next morning Munsch says he wants to meet the mysterious Joanna.  That night, Faulkner sees her kissing another man who collapses on the sidewalk.  She tries to use her magic eyes on Faulkner, but he runs back to his studio.

As soon as he enters, Joanna is already there.  He is starting to realize this is no ordinary girl, and I don’t just mean her smoking body.  He takes all her negatives from his file cabinets and throws then on the floor.  He dowses them with lighter fluid as she screams, and he sets them on fire.  She curls up like an old negative and burns.

Outside trying to get some fresh air, he sees a billboard of her bursting into flames  It would be fun the think every picture of her on billboards and in magazines is also bursting into flames across the country, but the writer lacked even the imagination of Come Back to Me‘s scribe.  Or more likely, lacked the budget.

OK, so she was a vampire who reeled guys in with her looks and hypnotic eyes — pretty standard vampire tropes for both vampires and vampirettes.  Originality is over-rated, I always say.  But where did she come from?  Why did she pick Faulkner?  Why did she let him set the photos on fire?  Why did that result in her dying?  What if the billboard had been set on fire first,would that have also killed her?  Why doesn’t she ever get that hair cut?  Good performances, but ultimately pointless.

For some reason, I think this shot was intended to be a shocker.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy: John Astin was in A Hundred Yards over the Rim.

Travelling Salesman (2012)

Posted on by
Reply

travellingsalesman10“In 1956, renowned mathematician Kurt Gödel wrote a letter to John von Neumann postulating the existence of a single proof that could unlock the fundamental laws that bind our universe . . . Today it is considered the most important unsolved problem in computer science.  It is simply know as P vs NP.”

Well, it’s P = NP not P vs NP on the cover art, so maybe that’s the problem right there.

Four of the world’s greatest mathematicians are summoned to a tin shack.  Their research has produced the most dangerous weapon in history.  So they are meeting in a tin building with one glass wall.  While waiting for the team leader, the great minds get into a pedantic argument over whether all of the members had seen the addendum, as was the original agreement.

This is inter-cut with tape of a symposium introduction of the brilliant Dr. Timothy Horton, winner of the 2008 Fields Medal (also purveyor of a damn fine cup of coffee).

travellingsalesman11

When Mr. Big (a Mitt Romney doppelganger) arrives, he gives each of the men paperwork to sign to receive their $10 million per year’s work.  This is in addition to their hefty annual stipends for food, lodging and presumably hookers.  This is also tied to a non-disclosure agreement which effectively renders their discoveries top secret.

He tells the men this that the new cold war has begun and it won’t be fought with nuclear weapons.  It will be “a penny here, a penny there, an unresponsive power grid, a subverted stock exchange  The cumulative effect spirals the world economy and when the dust settles, the world is divied up.”  This new algorithm is the key to penetrating any encryption, rendering it as useless as Hillary’s firewall system.

There are extended discussions of the morality of their work, how it can be used to invade the privacy of citizens.  Mr. Big makes the absurd claim that because the four math geeks had the restraint to not abuse this power, then the government will also have enough self-control to refrain from using this technology against private citizens.

travellingsalesman12The four are also concerned that they will be identified by their peers as the ones who unleashed this monster.  In one of the few missteps, they trot out the old trope that the Los Alamos scientists are seen as evil for creating the A-Bomb that saved thousands of lives in WWII.  How many people outside of MSNBC believe still that?

I did appreciate that, for the most part, the discussions were not loaded West Wing style straw man harangues against the evil Republicans.  The discussion was political, but not partisan.  All of the mathematicians understand that giving this kind of power to the government is crazy (OK, maybe it was a little partisan, but not overtly stated).  After Mr. Big gets serious with threats to their families, they all sign the papers.

We see that later, Horton gets a letter from the White House signed by Obama thanking him for his service.  Holding it up to the light, we can see it has an Illuminati watermark.  This was the other misstep as it takes the film into the conspiracy theory arena.  Up to that point, it all felt very real-world.

Horton, has his revenge though.  Like Stephen Falken or Alan Turing, he has left a backdoor open.  He takes it upon himself to shut down the planet’s electrical grids, stock markets, airports and apparently trains like Snake Plissken.  So maybe Mr. Big wasn’t the biggest dick at the table.

These is a LOT of talking as you can infer from the action shots above.  But it reminded me of Primer or Margin Call — no traditional action, but it kept me glued to the screen for the entire run-time, even if I didn’t understand a lot of it.  Good stuff.

Post-Post:

  • Wow — what a cheap shot at Alan Turning!
  • The four greatest mathematicians in the country, and not an Asian or Indian among them?
  • Traveling has one L in US usage, but 2 L’s in other English speaking countries.
  • There could be no 2008 Fields Medal because it is awarded every four years, and 2008 was an off-year; even for the Winter Fields Medal.