Night Shadow (1989)

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nightshadow0220 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong.  Part XII.

Infobabe Alex Jung is shown leaving KLOF studios.  There is a KLOF in Wyoming, but this seems to be California.  Also, KLOF is a radio station.

Having been offered a big promotion, she is heading back to her hometown of Danford to mull it over.  Reaching the town, she sees a Mansonesque man on the side of the road beside a car.  She wisely drives on.  An old friend of hers stops to help and is killed for his friendliness.

In the next scene, we are introduced to Kato Kaelin, best known as a friend of OJ Simpson during his murder trial.  Sadly for him, it is impossible for anyone of a certain age not to make that association.  He doesn’t help himself here with the giant mullet, but it was the 80’s.

While he is making out with his girlfriend, a couple of guys burst through the front door.  One is wielding a rifle, the other is wearing a Freddy Krueger bladed glove, and both have stockings over their faces.  After briefly scaring the couple to death, the two reveal themselves to be Kato’s friends and they all have a good laugh . . .  at them peeking in at the couple making out; and eavesdropping; and breaking down the door; and pointing a rifle at them.  In the friend department, that Kato sure has a type.

nightshadow03

Christ, if there were pasta in the fridge, they’d be going all Lady and the Tramp.

The scariest part is the er, camaraderie of the three guys.  For a bunch of 30 year old guys, they are they most giggly bunch of 12 year old girls I’ve ever seen.  By that age, my father had been in 2 wars.  I had been in no wars by 30, but did shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

The one minor spark of life in the entire movie is when they close the front door and it falls off the hinges.  That’s it.  That’s the high point.  Of the whole movie.

Alex meets her brother at the local diner.  For reasons unexplained, he is Chinese.  In a good movie, that might be an interesting quirk, even more-so if uncommented upon.  Here, it mostly annoyed me.  I suspect they hired a Chinese actor just because the role called for some chop-socky later.  Across the diner, Alex locks eyes with Manson-man again.  There is clearly some sort of connection because there are several seconds of their faces with lightning bolts appearing in front of them.

nightshadow06The Sheriff happens by and breaks the trance.  When Alex looks back at the bar, Manson-man is gone.

Three bodies have shown up in Danford bearing signs of an animal attack; although one of them animals what throws his leftovers in a dumpster or car trunk.  By this point, some sort of hint of what this movie is about is long overdue for the audience.  However, rather than any exposition or foreshadowing, we get another shot of Alex and Manson-man locking lightning eyes.

Finally at 58 minutes in, the film decides it is about a wolfman.  Kato Kaelin does an excruciating homage to Bill Murray from Caddyshack.  The wolfman then kills Kaelin by . . . slashing his jugular?  Biting a chunk out of his neck?  Disemboweling him with a razor-sharp claw?  No, the wolfman runs him through with a pipe.  Don’t get me wrong, I think we were all happy to see it, and it was long overdue.  It just doesn’t exactly play to the strengths of a wolfman-American.

Eventually the wolfman is pinned against a building by a police car.  Alex’s brother takes a few shots at the car, and is able cause the gas tank to burst into flames.  So we don’t even get a silver bullet for our 90 minutes.

Trying to be positive, Brenda Vance as Alex was very watchable; given some decent material, she could have had a solid career.  Beyond her, there is not much to like.  Not the script, not the infantile acting, not the effects.  This movie has pretty much gotten the resting place it deserves.

Post-Post:

  • As long as the OJ trial was mentioned, I feel compelled to point out the role that Kim Kardashian’s father had in getting him acquitted.
  • I can’t find a single US city named Danford, which seems odd.
  • Stuart Quan had quite the career in acting and stunt work.  Sad that of this mediocre bunch, he was the one to die young.  At 43, he lost consciousness after snowboarding and died.
  • In retrospect, I might have hard that Reno thing in a song.
  • OK, this guy wasn’t bad:

nightshadow09

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Malice Domestic (S2E20)

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ahbabysitter03Carl and Annette Borden are at a going-away party for career girl Lorna.  She is moving to San Francisco and leaving her enormous dog Cassandra with the Bordens.

The Bordens have their friend Perry over for dinner.  Carl has stomach pains which Annette oddly attributes to strawberry shortcake.  In the kitchen, Carl doubles over and calls an ambulance.  His doctor agrees that it could have been the strawberries in combination with some other rich foods.  Not since The Caine Mutiny have strawberries been involved in such nefarious events.

The next day, Annette finds Carl passed out on the floor of her studio.  The doctor later determines that he ingested arsenic.  Although, it could have been that big-ass bong Annette is making.  Both times he has taken ill, Annette prepared the meals.

He throws the doctor out at his implication of Annette.  He looks through the studio and notices some of the paint is made with arsenic.  When Annette offers him some juice, he reluctantly drinks it.

ahpmalice02

My God! Look at the size of that bong!

They decide to take a vacation.  While Carl is packing the car,  Annette drinks from the wrong coffee mug, and Carl finds her dead on the floor.  Having established himself as the victim, it is easy for everyone to believe that Annette accidentally poisoned herself.

Quick cut to Carl in a car with Lauren and Cassandra explaining how he pulled it off.

The episode doesn’t play completely fair, but it gets the job done.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch: No survivors.
  • Phyllis Thaxter played Ma Kent in Superman.  The good one.
  • Not sure what’s going on with that title.  It kinda seems like Latin for “evil in the home,” an approximation of Hitchcock’s description of his series.  But it also sounds like a breed of dog.  Or cat.
  • John Meredyth Lucas wrote the Star Trek episode where they went to the Nazi planet.  That episode starred Skip Homeier from Momentum.

Under the Bed (2012)

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underthebed03If I’ve learned anything from watching Bates Motel, it is that if you are a rebellious teen guy, new in town, who has emotional and criminal problems possibly involving death, the hottest girls in town will be all over you.  Smoking Marlboros is a bonus.  Actually, I think I already mostly knew that.

Teen Neal Hausman is being driven back home by his father after spending a couple of years with his aunt.  Seems that Neal had some problems after the death of his mother in a mysterious fire.

Mr. Hausman, who looks distractingly like Zach Galifianakis, is bringing Neal home to meet the new Mrs. Hausman and to reunite with his little brother Paulie.  At a party in his honor, he meets new-mother Angela, played MILFtacularly by Musetta Vander, the she-mantis teacher from Buffy.  He also sees one of the aforementioned red-hot teen babes, Cara; and her brothers who are the live action versions of Rod & Todd Flanders.  Actually, their dad is not far off from Ned, either, so maybe it was intentional

underthebed04

Hot babe #1

Neal finds Paulie upstairs.  After not-Zach yells at them for reasons I still don’t understand, Natalie gives them some cash to go to the local diner.  Neal proclaims it to be the coolest place in town which is a pretty sad commentary on this burg.  The waitress is hot teen babe #2 who is all over Neal.

That night, Neal and Paulie begin confronting the thing under the bed.  Using weapons that range from a mop with flashlights attached to it to a chainsaw, they joust with the reptilian / alien / demon / humanoid creature.  The problem is more than a mere portal to hell that can be covered over.  During a sleepover at the Flanderses, the monster makes its usual foggy entrance from beneath the neighbor’s bed.

underthebed05The final 30 minutes ratchets everything up 1000%.  There is suddenly more danger, higher stakes, and no shortage of dead bodies.  Perhaps most tragically, Angela spends the entire last act in a robe, and the opportunity is squandered.

Pauly is dragged under the bed to “the other side”.  This is right out of Insidious, Poltergeist, TZ’s Little Girl Lost and countless others (which is what you say when you can’t think of even one more).  Not much time or effort is spent on the hellish other side, but that is fine.  It is other-worldly enough and gives Neal a chance to be a hero.  Ultimately, they are saved by Mom.  Not Angela, but their dead  biological Mom.

This Kind of movie movie both excites and pisses me off.  Expecting it to be mediocre, I let it tie up one of my Netflix slots for a week.  But then when I watched it — gold!  I could nitpick the origin, motivation and design of the creature.  I could also question why the father was such a jerk.  But I’m just looking to be entertained, and it delivered.

I rate this one King-Size

Post-Post:

  • Also worth checking out is director Steven C. Miller’s previous film The Aggression Scale.  Much lower budget and less polish, but a fun ride.  I look forward to more work from him.
  • Written by Eric Stolze, not Eric Stoltz.  I thought Stoltz had dropped off the face of the earth, but he is all over the place — just nowhere I ever see him.

Night Gallery – Eyes (S1P2)

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ngeyes03

Yikes!

aka The one Steven Spielberg directed.  No doubt Rod Serling was the draw for this movie when it aired, and maybe there were some lingering Joan Crawford fans.  But a few years later, Steven Spielberg is the main reason anyone would remember this episode, and he maybe serves as a gateway for the entire series.

Joan Crawford is “a blind queen who reigns in a carpeted penthouse on 5th Avenue.  An imperious, predatory dowager.”  She has summoned her personal doctor to her apartment building where she is the only resident.  It is not clear whether this is by design or just no other tenants would be willing to live this close to her.

She has read about heard of a new procedure that could possibly restore her sight.  It has only been attempted on a chimp and a dog, and restored their sight for just a few hours.  The doctor says it is still experimental, but Joan is convinced it will work on a human.  And, by the way, she would need a donor willing to give up their sight for the rest of their life to provide her a few hours of sight.

Her lawyer has found a man who would donate his eyes for the grand sum of $9,000.  The doctor is repulsed by the thought, but Joan blackmails him into performing the surgery.

ngeyes04We cut to Tom Bosley channeling Lou Costello.  He is in a playground explaining to the world’s least intimidating loan-shark why he doesn’t have his cash.  The knuckle-breaker has him on a kid’s Lazy Susan spinning him around; if he doesn’t come up with the dough, it could result in a Dutch Rub.

Bosley tells him that he has $9,000 coming to him which will exactly clear his debt.  Bosley later makes it clear that he will commit suicide after the operation.  So he is a real sport to take care of his gambling debt first.  Some pricks might have stiffed the bookie and left the cash to a children’s hospital.

Apparently hospitals back then were just like today — hours after having experimental surgery on her eyes, Crawford is discharged and sent home.

She begins unwrapping the bandages and when her eyes are exposed, she is able to see for the first time in her life.  This being a Rod Serling joint, that can’t be allowed to stand.  In a twist very reminiscent of TZ’s Time Enough at Last, there is a blackout of the city which again plunges her into darkness.  NYC had just had a massive blackout four years earlier, so this was not a crazy concept to the audience.

ngeyes02It is possible to be churlish and point out the flaws in what follows.   So I will.  OK, there is a blackout, but how did it become bottom-of-a-coal-mine-pitch-black?  Her apartment has windows.  She even stumbles down the stairs and outside, but is stopped by a fence.  Panning up a few feet over the fence, a street scene shows plenty of light from the moon and car headlights.

Distraught, she is furious at the doctor as she believes he botched the operation.  She makes her way back up to her apartment.  She wakes up in the morning, and is able to see the sun rising over the New York skyline.  She is enthralled by its beauty, but it is short-lived as her sight begins to fade.  Her sight lasted 11 hours and it was stolen by the blackout and squandered on sleep.

In several ways, it is easy to believe this is the work of a 21 year old first-time director — but I mean that in the best possible way.  There are shots and camera tricks here that a veteran — including the older Spielberg — might have avoided:  Jump cuts, shooting a reflection through a bead on the chandelier, a spinning chair fading into the Lazy Susan, the stark color of Joan Crawford in a red dress stumbling around a totally black background to indicate her blindness, focusing on innocuous items such as a manila envelope or light switch.

My favorite is the scene above where Spielberg allows it to play out with the blind Joan Crawford addressing the doctor at the spot where he had stood earlier, not realizing he has moved.  Would Grampa Spielberg have left that in?  I’m not sure.  I am baffled why artists tend to smooth everything out as they age.  Writers seem to think a plot cheapens a novel, composers plod along and never establish a tune, and directors avoid the flair that makes movies fun.

I rate it a 20/20.

Post-Post:

  • Maybe Joan Crawford considered this slumming after her stellar movie career.  But she could have gone out on a high note had she not made one last movie after this one.
  • She has great blue eyes and spent 99% of her career in B&W movies.  No wonder she was so pissed all the time.
  • Crawford plays Claudia Menlo; Thomas Edison was known as “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”
  • Steven Spielberg talking about the episode:

 

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

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dayearth201Making this up as I go, I am invoking the haven’t-seen-in-20-years clause in order to qualify this film.  And by invoking, I mean inventing.

From the opening seconds, with the blocky title and the weirdo theremin music, this is chewy 50’s sci-fi goodness.  It is already more interesting than the remake, if only as a piece of history.

A UFO is approaching the earth at 4,000 MPH.  This is really poking along compared to the 18,6000 miles per second velocity in remake.  All over the world, dames and men in hats are listening to the radio for updates on the bogey.

On a lovely day in Washington DC, a saucer flies past several monuments, and lands in a park near the White House.  As a behatted newsman is describing the scene, a ramp extends from the saucer and a doorway opens up.

dayearth203A humanoid in a spacesuit walks out and says, “We have come to visit you in peace and with goodwill.”  He pulls something out of his pocket, and is shot by one of the soldiers.  Suddenly the robot GORT emerges from the ship.  The spaceship and the alien just seemed to reel in the crowd, but GORT gets the civilians running and the soldiers backing up.  GORT’s visor opens, and shoots beams at the weapons, destroying them.  The wounded spaceman orders him to stop.

He stands and hands the damaged gift to a soldier.  He says it was a gift to enable the president to study life on other planets, then is taken to Walter Reed Hospital.  Ignorant of our ways, he believes checking into the V.A. will actually improve his chances of survival.

The spaceman, Klaatu, says he has traveled for 5 months and 250 million miles to reach earth.   He says we are neighbors, and it is assumed by the hat-wearing press that he is from Mars or Venus.  250M miles is too far for either of those planets.  I know there was no internet, but did the writer not have an almanac, or did noone involved remember basic science from elementary school?  Twilight Zone had this problem too.

Apparently wanting to address all world leaders in the most corrupt and ineffectual setting possible, he asks for an audience with the United Nations.

Meanwhile, since Klaatu foolishly left his saucer in downtown DC overnight, it is getting blowtorched, and GORT is being roughed up with a diamond drill.  Unlike AL GORT in the remake, the drill has no effect on this GORT.

Klaatu heals his wound by applying a miracle salve, just as in the remake.  He escapes from the hospital and takes a room at a boarding house.  One of the other residents shares the name Helen Benson with Jennifer Carpenter in the remake.  Both Helens have a son, although the name was changed from Bobby to Jacob in the remake, and he was made completely obnoxious.

In both movies, the kid drags Klaatu to his father’s grave.  Bobby trades $2 for 2 diamonds.  So he is not only less obnoxious than Jacob, but smarter.  They go to Lincoln Memorial.

Klaatu and Bobby go to see professional smart guy Professor Barnhardt (whose first name Jacob was mysteriously used for the Bobby character in the remake).  In both movies, Klaatu goes all Good Will Hunting on a blackboard.

He says that we have started using atomic power and will soon apply it to space travel, endangering other planets.  If earth does not listen, it may be necessary to for his race to take action.  The professor asks if a demonstration is possible.

dayearth202Klaatu sneaks back to his ship, and signals GORT to knock out the guards.  Bobby’s sees this and tells him mom.

The next day all motors and electricity on earth stop, trapping Klaatu in an elevator with Helen. Unlike the remake, exceptions were made for hospitals and planes in flight.

On his way back to the ship, Klaatu is shot.  Again.  Helen delivers the message to GORT, Klaatu Barada Nikto.  GORT carries her into the ship.  He also retrieves Klaatu’s body, which he is able to resurrect.

As Professor Barnhardt is addressing the crowd, Klaatu emerges from the ship. He says the threat of human aggression can no longer be tolerated.  If earth is not less aggressive, they will burn our planet to a cinder.

Maybe they can make some krazee ships and robots, but we’re miles ahead of them in irony.

Post-Post:

  • Writer Edmund H. North won an Oscar for the screenplay for Patton.
  • Not to blame the victim, but Klaatu clearly did not need the helmet and spacesuit when he emerged from the ship.  Maybe he wouldn’t have been shot if he had looked a little more human.