Thriller – Well of Doom (02/28/61)

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twellofdoom01A long-nosed chauffeur is driving two men in suits through a thick fog.  As they are discussing the dangers of the Moors, Penrose laments that they are going to be late to his bachelor party.  The driver slams on the brakes as there is a giant standing in the road.

He has his arms raised menacingly and is wearing one of those tinker-bell jerkins with the little tutu-like ruffles around the waist.  Who decided this was the official uniform for giants? Obviously they are custom-made; there are no Giant and Fat man stores selling them.  If they are custom made — bespoke, if you will — why not order a f***ing pair of proper trousers and a snappy blazer?

twellofdoom02And who decided to start stores that catered only to the Tall and Fat like they were freaks to be segregated from decent — though in need of new clothing — people?  C’mon, #talllivesmatter.  OK, I’m not so worried about the fat ones.  I just lost 65 pounds — it ain’t rocket science; well maybe a little physics.

The giant pulls the chauffeur out of the car.  Fearing a bad Uber passenger rating, the two other men — Penrose and his estranged butler Teal —  gamely get out of the car to help the driver.  It’s only a giant, after all; it’s not Ferguson MO.

Before they have a chance to have their heads ripped off, the giant’s equally creepy boss shows up.  He coyly throws out devilish names they might use for him — Beelzebub, Baal, Moloch.  Moloch seems to stick, and his giant is named Styx.  Presumably still carrying a lot of anger from a childhood where the other kids called him The Stygian Fairy, he kills the chauffeur and drives off with the three men.

twellofdoom03Flashback:  Earlier that day, Teal had dropped in to toast Penrose’s upcoming nuptials, despite some sort of falling out.  Although I’m not sure how you have a falling out with a butler — you just buttle his ass right out the door.  They toast the bride Laura and throw their glasses in the fire.  Laura calls and tries to talk Penrose out of attending the stag party, but he refuses.

Back in the car, Penrose believes this is just a stag party prank.  Moloch is in the front seat pointing a gun at him.  One pothole and he could have ended up like Marvin in Pulp Fiction.  As it is, Moloch puts a slug in the seat next to Penrose just to let him know this is not prank.  Penrose offers him his entire net worth — a little prematurely in my opinion — but Moloch says it is not enough.  In an ill-fated escape attempt, Moloch kills Teal.

twellofdoom05Penrose is locked in a cell with the titular Well of Doom.  He claims that Penrose’s father threw the rightful owners of the castle down the well to their doom and usurped their position; although did not usurp their source of fresh water – idiot!

And Moloch should know because it was he who was killed!  Bwah-ha-ha-ha.  Oh, and Styx has kidnapped Laura and she is in the cell across the hall, gagged and naked — er, bound.

Moloch presents Penrose with a contract to sign over all his possessions.  Penrose refuses, suspecting he and Laura will be killed anyway.  Moloch, in true Bondian style leaves him alone to contemplate his doom.  Penrose rigs an escape plan from the Well involving a device a Bondian device worthy of Q — a rope.

twellofdoom08When Moloch returns, he finally relents in order to save Laura’s life. Of course, after signing, Styx tosses him in the well anyway.  After they leave, Penrose is able to climb up the rope which would have been perfectly visible to Moloch and Styx.

Finding Laura’s cell empty, he goes back up into the castle and finds Moloch and Styx stripping off their make-up.  He also sees that his former butler Teal is still alive and is really the ringleader.  With Penrose dead, he will claim Penrose and his wife are on an extended honeymoon and will enjoy the estate as overseer.  Yeah, that honeymoon story should satisfy the neighbors for years.

He says that document Penrose signed is going to “make up for years of humiliation . . . have you ever thought what it is like to be a man’s man and live in a household where they give you orders day after day?”  Maybe he really is a man’s man, he’s sure never lived with a woman.

twellofdoom09In a nice bit of luck, and by “bit”, I mean a Rock of Gibraltar sized bit of luck, Moloch and Teal shoot and kill each other; and Styx falls from a balcony thinking Penrose is a ghost.

Several reviews give high praise to this episode, but it wasn’t really anything special.  The high point was the make-up on Moloch and Styx.  Its effectiveness is especially obvious when we get a scene of them without it late in the episode.

Penrose, Laura, Teal and the story are only adequate.  But the show really belongs to Moloch, Styx, the make-up department, and the cinematographer — all outstanding.

Thus concludes the ten episode run of the Thriller Fan Favorites Collection.  At first, I thought I had found a show that possibly even trumped The Twilight Zone.  But, like any show, the quality was a bell curve — just seems like the curve would have been a little more subtle if you’re cherry-picking 10 episodes.

On the plus side, the screeching score was effective, there were some good scripts, and it rarely dragged or seemed padded out like the hour-long TZ season.  But Boris Karloff brought nothing to the show except his name, and presumably the 57 remaining episodes would all be lesser efforts.  But they are on You-Tube, so who knows.

Post-Post:

  • Richard Kiel (Styx) was best known as Jaws in a couple of James Bond joints.
  • Thriller filled the Outer Limits slot after the rest of the episodes went behind the paywall.  The question now is do I want to shell out for Hulu.
  • Hulu sucks.

The Cry (2007)

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Can it be an Urban Legend if it started in 1500 AD?

Can it be an Urban Legend if it started in 1500 AD?

20 Horror Movies for $7.50 — Part XVI.  

Title Card:  La Llorona is based on a Mexican legend of a woman who drowned her kids in the river after her husband left her for a younger woman [1].

You lost me at the title sequence.  First we get the preceding on-screen explanation which is generally not necessary in a good movie.  It is followed my by a montage of poorly composed pictures and cacophonous music.  However, it is quite brief, so I was relieved to quickly see an opening shot labelled as Mexico circa 1500 AD; although it really had a 1510 AD vibe to it.

We a hear a titular cry as a young child is — I’m guessing here — drowned. Unfortunately, due to more godawful camera work behind the credits, I couldn’t say for sure.  In the pre-title sequence there are even a couple of shots of kids swimming away — why would those shots have been chosen for a film whose entire premise is based on kids being drowned?  Again, it is mercifully quick; for both us and hopefully the child.

thecry02The next scene is showing the presumably present day (2007 AD) New York skyline.   We can, at least, be confident in saying it is later than 2001 AD.  After an interminable flyover of Manhattan, we end up in an apartment where a woman is frantically making charcoal drawings, the latest of a boy with a red ball. Minutes later, the boy with the red ball is attacked by something with bad eyesight in the park.

This is the 9th kid that has gone missing in the last 3 weeks in Spanish Harlem.  But this was a white kid, so things get serious.

thecry03

Trivia: All evil entities have poor eyesight.

The wooden Detective Scott is listening to the radio about the case, but turns it off — because why would a detective be interested in hearing about the cases?

Distracted, he nearly hits the artist-woman pushing her kid in a stroller across a cross-walk.  After the fright, the woman stops — in the middle of the crosswalk — to give her kid a hit off his inhaler.  So neither of these two lead characters are particularly likable or smart, but at least one of them does look hot in a wife-beater.  For some reason — possibly lack of talent — the detective just stares her down as she does this.  No apology, no remorse, just a dead-eye stare.

thecry04A woman jogging in the park hears some ominous whispers and her eyes get all red.  She goes home to her 9-month old baby and hears more whispers.  She calmly turns on the bath, carries the baby off-screen and drowns it.  To her credit, she does go straight to the police and confesses.

Perez and Scott go to a fortune teller to get the scoop on La Llorona.  Her extensive answers in Spanish with no subtitles do not help the film. We do learn that La Llorona is now stalking New York because the artist’s son is the reincarnation of of he child La Llorona drowned.  Finally, we get a little meat to the movie.

The artist has asked to see Detective Scott at the park.  Meanwhile, La Llorona is on quite a spree in the park.  She kills Scott’s partner.  We get a blurry POV of him pointing a gun and firing at this . . . what, ghost?  This clod could be chief security officer on the USS Enterprise 1701-D.  Then she kills off a couple of yahoos who try to help Maria and her son.

We finally learn through flashbacks that Scott was a stockbroker whose son was drowned by his ex-wife (grounds for the divorce are not mentioned).  So apparently, Scott quit stockbroking, went to the police academy, made detective, and was lucky enough to be assigned to the unit that would get this case.  La LLorona had been on a bloody rampage lately, but where was she during the 10 years it must have taken Scott to make this career change?

Literally the creepiest shot and best performance in the movie.

The artist loses track of her child after Scott insists at gunpoint that she put him down. She finds later him in the lake, but drops him as her eyes go all red.  Scott saves the boy, but the artist for some reason jams two branches into her eye sockets, leaving bloody holes.

How did the kid survive underwater?  Why did his mother blind herself?  Is La Llorona still out there?  Why did she kill the other kids if they weren’t the reincarnation of her son?  We’ll never know, but at 83 minutes, I think we’ve put enough time into the investigation.

Just really a nothing of a movie with some terrible performances and camerawork  There was the germ of a good idea in the screenplay, but it was squandered with dull characters, coincidences and unanswered questions.

Post-Post:

  • [1] In the legend, the ghost of La LLorona searches the earth killing other children to take the place of her own when she is judged at the Pearly Gates.  Wouldn’t she get more satisfaction killing off married men who cheat with younger women?  Does she not have access to the Ashley Madison list?
  • It is interesting that the movie ties its theme into real cases like Andrea Yates and Susan Smith.  It would have been more acceptable in a better movie — here it just seems exploitative.
  • I would never have guessed that Detective Scott played Dexter’s brother.  So he can act; he just chose not to do so here.
  • Carlos Leon knocked up Madonna.

Ray Bradbury Theater – Silent Towns (10/10/92)

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We open on a rocky red landscape but we know this is Mars because there are blue skies and this is Ray Bradbury Theater.  The barren Martian desert gives way to a small frontier town.  It has been deserted, and we know this because a lone newspaper sheet is blowing down the street.

The camera stops at the Mars Irrigation Board.  Employee Walter Grip is calling in to complain that no one has come to relieve him in 2 weeks.  He tells the answering machine he’s coming in to town to rip somebody a new one.  We see him hustling through sewers and treatment plants and up ladders, finally exiting on the side of a red mountain.  Whether this is a real location or a model, it is one of the most impressive things seen in this series.

Image 021In a car that seems to be made from corrugated Quonset hut surplus metal, he tears through some rugged terrain to get to the town.  The art direction on this episode really is a step up.  Along the way, he notices that, like NASA, there is not a single rocket left at the base.

Seeing the town completely empty and with newspapers frequently blowing by, he pulls over to the curb. Getting out, he notices a sign that says MARS EVACUATION DEADLINE SET, and decides he needs a drink.  He has quite a few and begins a conversation with himself like Nicholson in The Shining, about how beautiful his girl Clara is.  Although, to be fair, Nicholson did not have such a conversation about Shelley Duvall.

Image 024After making himself a salami sandwich with meat that has been sitting out for God knows how long, he goes back out into the street, where the newspapers continue to blow by.  Wouldn’t they all eventually be on the other side of town?  They are not a renewable eyesore like tumbleweeds.

Trudging past some Mars tract housing, he hears a phone ringing.  By the time he gets to it, it is dead.  He hears another phone down the street, several houses down.  He breaks a window to get in, but again just misses the connection.  Apparently star-69 is not a thing on Mars; but phones that can be heard a quarter-mile away are huge.  A few more houses down, another call.  It is a recorded message about the last rocket leaving Mars.  I wonder if the politicians would have carved out an exemption for this in the Do Not Call Registry?  Sure, it would save lives, but there’s no real opportunity for graft.

Grip decides to be proactive and goes to some sort of station where he is able to scroll through the names and numbers of all of the rImage 037esidents.  It sounds much more daunting than it really is — the phone numbers on the screen appear to only have 3 digits.

He is desperate to find his beautiful girlfriend Clara, but strangely never seems to call her number.  He gives up before he is out of the A’s and thinks to himself, “Where would Clara go?  Where would she be?” Despite all his big talk about how beautiful she is, his bright idea is to begin calling beauty salons.

He gets several recorded messages — just to let patrons know the shop will be closed. You know, what with the planet being evacuated.  However, he does miraculously reach a live woman, the last one on Mars.

The other big face on Mars.

The woman is thrilled to hear him. He is happy to hear that she is named Genevieve because all Genevieves are hot.  Also Heathers — you could look it up.  Walter immediately forgets Clara and sets out on the 900 mile journey to meet Genevieve.

He leaps from the car and enters the Martian Mystery Beauty Salon.  He calls for Genevieve and . . . well, apparently the hot-Genevieve rule only applies on earth.  It is interesting that they didn’t make her grotesque or morbidly obese, but she would definitely be a disappointment to any blind date.

She leads him to a cafe where she has set up a little dinner for two, although I suspect she was having a dinner for 2 every night before she met him.  She asks him to wait, and she returns a few minutes later wearing a wedding gown.

Gripp, not one to settle, high-tails it back to his Quonset car and speeds back home leaving her standing in the street in her wedding gown.

Post-Post:

  • An unusually cruel story from Bradbury who is usually so naïve and goodhearted that it’s like he was born in another century.  I mean millennium.  I mean . . .aw crap.
  • Kudos for the local newspaper being called The Martian Chronicle.
  • Walter Gripp also gets a mention in short story The Long Years, but oddly, no connection is made to his actions here.

Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation

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missionimpossible501As usual, my lousy memory prevents me from getting too detailed, but a few observations:

My usual routine is to arrive at a movie 10-15 minutes late to avoid the too-loud, spoilery, misleadingly-cut trailers.  Lately they have been running an absurd 17 to 20 minutes. However, at both this movie and and Edge of Tomorrow (also starring Tom Cruise) last year, there have only been 5 to 10 minutes of trailers. Does Tom Cruise have that much power?

I was immediately not crazy about the opening arrangement of the iconic score, however, patriot that I am, something else disturbed me more.  Movies’ interminable production companies and logos are getting very tedious.  In the first few seconds of the film, I was presented with China Movie Channel, Alibaba Pictures Group, and Alec Baldwin — all three names have the connotation of hair-trigger hatred of Americans.  I have never heard of these companies, they might be perfectly fine fellows.  Seriously, Baldwin is a dick, though.

Just one more complaint:  It really is a great scene (that has been spoiled to death in marketing) where Tom Cruise is hanging off the side of the plane.  And make no mistake, it is thrilling not because it is Ethan Hunt, but because it is Tom Cruise — this has nothing to do with acting.  This guy knows how to put on a show.  That’s not the complaint.

No, once Cruise gets into the plane — as you knew he would — he finds himself discovered by a guard.  Defenseless against the armed soldier, he always finds a way — he pulls the parachute deployment handle, pulling him and the canisters of toxic gas out of the back hatch of the airplane.  What really bugged me was that we literally get about one frame of the crate moving toward the back of the plane, then cut to credits.  Blink and you’ll miss it.

No shot of him clinging to the crate as it falls, no shot of him standing triumphantly on top of it after the parachute deploys?   Seemed like some great potential shots wasted there.

Other than that, excellent.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Bull in a China Shop (03/30/58)

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ahpbull03Sweet Jeebus!  I take a few weeks months off and Netflix removes seasons 2 and 3 from streaming.  Hulu did the same thing with Outer Limits last year.  Oh the humanity!  The nooses are tightening, sheeple.  Hulu, as always, sucks.

Mr. O’Finn goes to see his neighbor Miss Hildy-Lou across the court, at her invitation.  She is 75 years old — 30 years older than O’Finn — but can’t stop making googly cataracts at him.  She invites him into the parlor where her similarly old friends are just as enamored of their hunky young neighbor.  There is Miss Bessie (83), Miss Birdie (76), and Miss Samantha (47).

Wait, what?  This is strange — she is only 2 years older than O’Finn but fits right in with the other much older ladies.  I would suspect an error on IMBd or that she lied about her age, but IMDb has her dying at 88 in 1999.  So unless she really lived to be 108, 47 would be about right.  Safe to say Miss Samantha was not aging gracefully.

ahpbull02

The Walkers Dead

The ladies know his morning work-out routine and know that he is a homicide detective.  That is why they invited him over.  Not for some squat-thrusts, but because another of their superannuated friends (Miss Elizabeth, uncredited, but probably about 103) is dead on the sofa.

They are disappointed when he tells them to call a doctor to get a death certificate. They were hoping to be questioned by him, but he says his business is murder.  They try their best to get him to stay, but he wants to get back to investigating more alluring women like gun-molls, hookers, and crack-whores [1].

ahpbull04Back at the station, he tells his partner he “felt like a bull in a china shop in that place,” speaking the title, but lending it no more logic.  He gets a call from the crime lab — Miss Elizabeth was poisoned with arsenic.

The old girls get giddy when O’Finn comes back to, you know, investigate the death.  They explain that the arsenic is kept in a sugar bowl as rat poison.  Once O’Finn determines that the death was an accident, he begins to leave, breaking the hearts of the giddy bitties that they won’t see him again.  But Miss Hildy-Lou has a plan.

When O’Finn sees the ladies spying on him through his window, he pulls the shades. Completely cut off from him, they must come up with a new plan to reel in this handsome devil.  But how . . . oh yeah, kill Miss Samantha.

ahpbull05No dummy, O’Finn — except for not seeing the first death was murder, and not getting that leaving your bathroom window wide open just invites peepers — he announces that Miss Samantha’s death by tea deserves a full investigation.  The olden girls are giddy to have his attention again . . . well, the ones still alive are.

O’Finn cracks the case and comes to arrest Hildy-Lou.  At the announcement, she goes all giddy again.  He asks if she understands what he is saying, since dementia is a strong possibility.  “Oh, yes,” she swoons.  “And I think it was very clever of you to have found out.”  When he tells her he must take her to the station, she runs to her room and comes out dolled up in a fancy new hat like they’re going out on a date.

ahpbull07For the two murders, she’ll probably get life — which in her case would be about 3 weeks.[2]

This is all pretty silly stuff, but there is a nice twist at the end.

Post-Post:

  • [1] OK, there were no crack-whores in 1958, but the word just has a great sound.
  • [2] Actually the actress lived another 26 years, dying at age 101.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.  But, Christ, how could there be?
  • Title Analysis:  Hunh?  I guess is O’Finn is the bull, but he isn’t reckless as the cliche suggests, I doubt it was a reference to bullshit, and I can’t imagine what else it would be.
  • Hulu sucks.