jhausler3 Reviews

Giant from the Unknown (1958)

Invented the 1980s slasher movie... in 1958!

[7/10 · 23 May 2024]

This movie that was kind of fascinating, not from being an inherently good movie, but as a clear precursor to almost every slasher film made in the 1980s and after.

The plot involves a handsome geologist, an older archaeologist, and the archaeologist's pretty young daughter who all take a trip into the mountains together in search of the burial grounds of a particularly violent Spanish conquistador and his men. It turns out that the ground there has special properties that can cause suspended animation, and wouldn't you know it, the conquistador was playing possum for nearly 400 years, the scamp! Anyway, the long nap didn't improve his disposition at all, and he wakes up ready to inflict bloody murder on anyone and everyone. Did I mention he's at least 7 feet tall?

This movie is a curious mix of being "of its time" and "before its time", because it's both of those to an extreme degree. In terms of being a 50s horror movie, there's a compulsion to explain the conquistador's revivified existence as something scientific rather than supernatural or magical. You have lots of 50s archetypes... the scientists nobody believes, the hard-headed local sheriff, and the chaste blonde heroine who's relegated to making sandwiches and coffee as a masked murderer stalks about whenever she's not busy fainting and getting carried around by him. (And like most monsters of the time, he seems drawn to beautiful women but seems a bit confused on what to do with them after picking them up, wandering about aimlessly.) We also have the actor Morris Ankrum playing the archaeologist, which is a treat because I immediately recognized him as the General from "The Giant Claw" (1957), one of my all-time favorite 50s B-movies. That poor guy just couldn't seem to land in a good movie around this period, but he always put 110% into his performances. So, it was very much a movie of the 50s.

It was also a 1980s slasher movie if ever I saw one, though! The film is about a bunch of people having a nice time in the woods next to a lake until a giant, hulking, partially-undead monster of a man starts stalking through the woods and killing everyone with an ax. He's a practical bullet-sponge who just won't seem to die no matter how much you shoot him. He kills some of his victims, sometimes with an ax and sometimes with his bare hands, in manners so grisly I don't recall seeing them again in horror movies until at least the 1970s. He rises to life from a lightning strike to his weapon (Friday 13th: Part 6) and (SPOILER ALERT) can only seem to be vanquished by sinking him to a lake bottom (Friday 13th: Part 7). The movie complements its violence with sex (less overt than in the 80s, but pretty risque for 50s stuff) and has a surprisingly high death count for a film like this.

I don't want to oversell this film's influence, because I not sure it actually *had* any. I can't recall hearing anyone talk about this movie as a conscious influence on the slasher genre, nor is it famous. It's also pretty slow for most of its runtime, only launching into the horror elements with any regularity in the second half. There are also some clear callbacks here to even earlier movies, especially the Frankenstein films of the 1930s and 1940s. Still, this flick deserves credit for establishing a certain type of horror villain in an certain type of setting with a certain subset of supporting elements, over two decades before every low budget horror director in America copied its playbook. Some movies are Columbuses that discover a new creative continent and receive credit for discovering a new world; others are more like the nameless Vikings (or maybe conquistadors) who landed on American shores a few hundred years earlier, ate some good grapes, and sailed home with almost no fanfare. Still, the fact remains that the latter got there *first*, and that's the credit "Giant From the Unknown Deserves". This stupid little flick invented the modern slasher film... and that's pretty neat!

Antibirth (2016)

There is no payoff to this mess

[1/10 · 3 April 2023]

This flick was an absolute chore to watch -- every single miserable minute of it. At its core, "Antibirth" is almost sort of an allegory about addiction and how putting unknown bad things in your body has bad results. However, calling it an "allegory" gives it way too much credit, because that would imply that there was a lesson to be learned or a point to be made. There is no higher message here about either being sympathetic with addicts or condemning addiction, nor is there anything worthwhile related to aliens and the paranormal -- despite both of those themes being the topic of the film.

Instead, we get about 20 minutes of plot stretched into 94 minutes of movie, fluffed out by endless scenes of people getting high in disgusting environments that look like they'd give you cholera if you ate an M&M off the floor. The movie doesn't have a large cast, but the plot still somehow doesn't really require even half of them, and the rest are there to pad out the movie's runtime. None of them are particularly likeable or sympathetic. Pretty much the only things I can say positive about this movie is that the first (and probably only) time you watch it, it is somewhat good about making you a little curious about what's really going on. As I said in my review title, though, there is no payoff in the end. The end is gross and probably took up most of the film's special effects budget, but it's nonsensical and absolutely not worth the hour and a half of your life you spent on it and will never get back.

Last thing -- in point of objective fairness, I can see how there MIGHT be an audience for this film. If you were or are eyeball-deep in drug and party culture and like to see it shown onscreen to trippy visuals, perhaps you might find a little to like here. But for me personally, this was a one-star experience for sure. I regret watching it.

Madelines (2022)

Explaining the complicated ending

[7/10 · 18 March 2023]

This movie gets pretty poor reviews, and a lot of that seems to be connected with the broad sentiment among reviewers that the ending doesn't make sense. I'll grant that it's complicated, and I had to rewatch the last 15 minutes a time or two to work it out in my head, but I think I finally understand it well enough to explain it. It *does* make sense for the most part. It's just quite convoluted.

**SPOILERS** Most people's confusion (understandably) begins about the time that Madeline 51 rescues Owen and the two agree on the plan to send Owen back to the past to stop Original Madeline before she ever starts the time loop. From there, Owen is shocked to find himself instead sent to the bleak, desert "future zone" the Madelines kept spawning to and got stuck in until they finally made their round trips to the present. He walks into their camper to find Madeline 115 (the mean/villain one) waiting for him with a knife, saying she'd been warned he was killing her and the other time-clones, so she wants to kill him first. She stabs Owen, but not before receiving the facial scar that we first met her with when she appeared in the present. Then Owen *himself* respawns in an injured state right outside the camper. He sees to his horror an entire army of Madelines marching toward him in the desert to presumably kill him. Then, we get a slip-away to a "BEFORE" scene where a Madeline clone seems to stop Original Madeline from ever creating the loop, ending with an arial shot and a gasp right before the credits.

"What-the-huh?!", right? I had a lot of questions initially. How did Madeline 115 "leave herself a note" when she presumably only made the one round trip through time? Why did she want to kill Owen, anyway? Why did the time machine misfire like that, and who was behind the "override" briefly mentioned onscreen? Who was the Madeline that showed up in the "before" scene at the end? Well... here's what I believe is going on that (mostly) explains the ending.

Right as Madeline 51 is pressing the button to send Owen to the past as intended, the screen on the computer turns red and the words "Madeline Override Sequence" appear on the screen. Earlier, in the present-day after multiple Madelines started arriving and took Owen prisoner and took over the house, we saw that Madeline 115 (the villain) was spending a lot of time alone in the lab or in the camper with the time machine by herself. Specifically, she was messing around with some of the code in the USB drive. I believe she knew herself (or rather, the other versions of her) well enough to think there was a reasonable chance that one of them would do exactly what they did -- rescue Owen and try to use the time machine to alter the past and end the loop.

As a failsafe for that contingency, Madeline 115 did two things. First, she traveled to the "future zone" herself in secret in the dead of night and briefly left a message before making a return trip to the present, writing on the camper's counter that "He's killing us" to rile up the slightly-past version of 115 and to convince her and the other Madelines to punish Owen's interference (if he ever came there) with death. Second, she reprogrammed the time machine itself with an override sequence so that if Owen ever *did* attempt to correct the past, he'd be sent to the future zone instead, where past-future-her and the other Madelines would deal with him. In a bit of poetic revenge, she apparently created some sort of respawn sequence so the Madelines still there could even kill him over and over, as he did her.

The scene with the army of Madelines was impressive, but I suspect the director or writer might have thought it was too bleak an ending. Therefore we got Madeline 51 -- who you as the viewer are supposed to know because she's the only one with a twin-bun hairstyle and who was shown wearing that particular scarf earlier in the film -- saving the day by travelling to the past herself and stopping Original Madeline from ever pressing the button. We know she's clearly smart enough to fix the code, and she was right there with the machine and (by that point in the movie) seemed sincere about wanting to help Owen end the miserable cycle of clonings and killings. Ergo, we get a happy... ending?

Look, I'm not going to completely justify the convoluted ending, because it still does contain some logical holes no matter how you look at it. There's no explanation for how or why Owen would respawn outside of the camper after being stabbed without benefit of the time machine -- none of the many Madeline clones did that after their demises. If original-him, armed with a knife, had been the one to respawn like that, that would have been a different story but also wouldn't have made much sense as a good evil plan for Madeline 115. The "good ending" with Madeline 51 also felt very tacked-on, and the gasp right before the credits doesn't seem to serve *any* purpose that would make in-world sense. (Unless, perhaps, it's Madeline 51 poofing into nonexistence after altering the timeline. I'm thinking more likely it was just a lame throwback jump-scare sound effect to recall the Madelines' first sound upon respawning earlier in the film.) It was also never exactly clear what Madeline 115 thought she was going to do with an army of herself, and the presence of the camper in the future zone was a permanent puzzle.

All told, there are much better ways this film could have ended. I think there was a real missed opportunity for a darkly funny and trippy "Multiplicity" ending with several good Madelines saving the day and deciding to share their life and lover, compromising between their identity as a collective "person" and as individuals (my preference), or they could have focused on a sweet "message" ending with Owen and Original Madeline having some sort of emotional thing to work through on dreams and what sacrifices are and aren't worth it (also acceptable). Instead, we got an EXTREMELY plot-heavy, mystery-style ending that played out like an Agatha Christie novel but with the loose ends much less neatly cinched-together.

But... yeah. The "true" ending was that Owen went through a harrowing time and possible murder in the future zone thanks to Madeline 115's masterful snare, but that Madeline 51 fixed the past on her own and saved the day.

And as a micro-review for the movie itself, I feel it's much better than its low IMDB score makes it look. I found it trippy, exciting, occasionally very funny, with special effects that weren't amazing but also were adequate and not-half-bad for this film's likely budget. The lighting and some of the cinematography were great, and I enjoyed the music, though it as a smidge too loud in some scenes. I also thought all three of the tiny cast of regulars did great jobs, and I actually kind of liked the ending (or at least appreciated it as an adequate wrap-up) once I finally understood it. The film just made things way too hard on themselves and their viewers by not shooting for an ending that was emotionally or thematically satisfying rather than trying to be too clever by half with an overly twisty finale. Worth watching at least once!

The Lost City (I) (1935)

The Fever Dream of a Depression-Era Seven Year Old

[6/10 · 10 June 2022]

I've been watching a lot of serials lately, but I don't think any of the others I've seen come close to approaching "The Lost City" in terms of sheer oddity. It feels like the troubled fever dream of some kid in 1935 who went to a Tarzan and Flash Gordon double feature at the movies on Halloween afternoon, binged on candy till they passed out that night, and dreamt this up in a fit of Tootsie-Roll-fueled delirium. It feels like what an imaginative Depression-era kid's idea of Africa probably looked like... just... weirder.

The ostensible premise (more on that qualifier in a second) is that a series of inexplicable weather events are wrecking the globe, and a team of scientists led by electrical engineer Bruce Gordon and his friend Jerry discover that the disturbance is somehow coming from the center of Africa, and appears to be man-made. When their safari arrives there, they discover that a lost, technologically-advanced city led by a dictator named Zolok is behind the threat, thanks largely to the slave labor of a brilliant scientist named Manyus. But WAIT, there's MORE! It turns out that the bigger local concern is the fact that he can somehow turn regular African natives into "giants" (NBA player sized at most, but tall nonetheless), and everyone wants their hands on that power. From local white guy head honcho Butterfield to Arabian slave trader Ben Ali to Amazon temptress Queen Rama to a crew of "Spider-People", everyone seems to want a giant, and there's only one Dr. Manyus to go around. Accordingly, better than 80% of the serial doesn't have much of anything to do with the Lost City or the weather events, and is all about who's kidnapped Dr. Manyus and his daughter Nachya most recently.

The lack of focus and constantly-shifting threat makes this serial a very hard one to follow, though it is helped somewhat by the fact that each "arc" feels pretty self-contained. Sadly, upon reading more about this serial's history on IMDB, I suspect that another key word related to its production may have been "troubled", which may explain a lot of the rest of its general craziness. The actor who played Zolok, William "Stage" Boyd, was apparently so deep into drugs and alcohol that he was court-ordered to add his "Stage" nickname so as to not slander an identically-named actor at the time with his misbehavior. Boyd died from his drug habit later this same year, and what I initially thought might be hammy acting in the final episode was actually him being as high as a kite. Apparently none of the other actors wanted to be around him while he was like this, and the reason that almost none of "The Lost City" takes place in the Lost City might be so they could have as little interaction with him as possible, and minimal responsibility for the production placed on him. If all he did was bark into a microphone for a scene each episode for most of the serial, they could muddle through, and that's apparently just what they did. If this required an on-the-spot rewrite of the script, that might also explain some of the other plot weirdness.

The general weirdness of this serial is its main draw, and the reason anyone today would want to watch it. The plot is nuts, the costuming is even more nuts, the old-fashioned exoticism is kind of appealing, and the very in-your-face old fashioned racism dips into feeling more comedic than offensive because it (and the production as a whole) is so impossible to take seriously. Surprisingly, two characters receive some character development during the serial, which I thought was refreshing. One other odd trait of the film is that despite being in the mid-30s when "talkies" were well underway, the production and several of the actors have a very 1920s silent-film vibe to them. The actor who played Manyus was apparently a silent era veteran... Nachya feels and looks that way, but doesn't have the same excuse.

The middle of the road rating I'm giving "Lost City" reflects an appreciation for its camp, but an honest appraisal that it's hard to deem it "good" by most objective measures. Recommended for die-hard serial fans, fans of camp with a lot of patience, and people with an appreciation for the West's exotic, thoroughly unrealistic, yet somehow intriguing fictional image of Africa in the early 20th Century. Everyone else, stick to better serials like "The Adventures of Captain Marvel" or "The Whispering Shadow".

As Hugo might say, this gets six "OOOAAAOOH!!!"s out of ten!

Zombie 3 (1988)

A "Zombi" movie improbably reanimated, against all odds

[5/10 · 22 April 2022]

This Italian, tropical ripoff of "Return of the Living Dead" by Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei was an awful, awful movie, but the story of its troubled production is much more interesting than the film itself.

Back in the 80s, some Italian filmmakers figured out that you could hang out in the Philippines to make movies incredibly cheap, all while blissfully ignoring every OSHA rule in the book. None were more successful at this than the studio employing director Bruno Mattei and writers Claudio Fragasso and Rosella Druidi. They made "Terminator 2" (no connection to Terminator), "Cruel Jaws" (no connection to Jaws), and countless other crazy, ballsy knock-offs of Hollywood hits. But their producer suddenly had a bout of ambition and wanted to produce a sequel to Lucio Fulci's legendary "Zombi 2" (which itself had no connection to Zombi, Italy's rename for Romero's "Dawn of the Dead"). So he dispatched Fragrasso and Druidi to Italy to write a script for "Zombi 3" and convince Fulci to direct it. Amazingly, they succeeded on both counts.

However, the problems began as soon as Fulci arrived in the Philippines. First, he was handed a budget many times smaller than he had been promised -- too small to complete the script as he, Fragrasso, and Druidi had envisioned it. Preparation was all over the place. He also had terminal liver cancer and other health problems, and the tropical heat and humidity was almost more than his failing body could handle. There was even an armed revolution going on in the country during the shoot, though not near the places where they were filming. In the end, the movie Fulci shot was still only about 70 minutes long (too short for the 90-minute minimum), so in a moment of legendary pettiness, he apparently filmed 20 minutes of footage of characters rowing canoes around and hopped back on a plane to Italy with two middle fingers proverbially in the air at the Filipino/Italian producers.

The producers were horrified at the extended canoe footage, which they knew was unusably boring, so they asked their mainstays Mattei, Fragrasso, and Druidi to do their magic and somehow redo enough of the movie to finish it. This required Fragrasso and Druidi to add scenes that fit with what Fulci shot -- but not the expensive scenes that they originally envisioned that had to be cut. They had to come up with something new on the spot to fit the bastardized end product. Somehow, they succeeded. Meanwhile, Mattei had an even bigger problem -- of the entire cast of the original movie, he was only able to convince 2 or 3 actors to return to the Philippines to do the reshoot. Amazingly, like an absolute madman, he managed to successfully add 20-30 minutes to the movie using only those three actors, an extended prologue, and many scenes with masked military personnel. Against incredible odds, the movie was successfully finished and released.

To be clear, it's a TERRIBLE movie, and not especially enjoyable even in the "so bad it's good" kind of way. "Zombi 3" has excellent makeup and special effects and a killer soundtrack, but those aren't enough to counteract its negatives. There is zero internal consistency with what the zombies can do or how they behave, disbelief gets snapped so often that it sounds like a bowl of wet Rice Crispies, and many scenes with the masked military personnel have them lining up like they're almost too tired to walk before lining up to shoot down zombies. (In that heat, wearing overalls, it was entirely possible the exhaustion was real.) In the commentaries I watched after the film, everyone gives Fulci credit for the heart and soul of the film... which, if I were them, I wouldn't want to claim it, either. It should not be possible for a movie with this many explosions and death to be tedious, but somehow it manages it for long stretches. Yet, at the end of the day, it's a *finished* film, and I believe one that made a decent profit.

In my book, this movie is a true credit to Mattei, Fragrasso, and Druidi, and a black mark against Fulci. I am far less impressed by the lackluster film he mostly put together and left to rot than by their herculean rescue of a seemingly-doomed project. Sometimes the ones who get a production over the finish line are not the sensitive artists, but the commercial workmen with a gift at getting things done on time and under budget... no matter how many zombies, actors, and vital plot points they have to blow up to do it. If you see this film, I highly recommend the outstanding release by Severin Films that contains extensive behind-the-scenes commentaries that tell the tale I mentioned above, plus more besides.

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

Visually impressive, but otherwise pretty terrible

[3/10 · 22 April 2022]

"Murder in the Rue Morgue" is a Universal horror film that set my expectations very high considering who worked on it... but nah. Even Bela Lugosi's uncanny ability to elevate terrible scripts couldn't save this roiling mess.

At no point in the movie was it ever even remotely clear what Lugosi's mad scientist character (Dr. Mirakle) was trying to do. Create a human-gorilla hybrid? Turn a woman into a gorilla or half-gorilla so his ape wouldn't get lonely? Turn the gorilla into a human man? Invent some new and impressively useless field of phlebotomy? It wasn't helped by the fact that the movie's hero was a bland, undercooked slab of Transatlantic weinerschnitzel with a screen presence about as imposing as his drawn-on moustache.

The only credit rightly to be given in this movie goes to the set designers, who created a weird and really cool Caligari-esque urban hellscape, and the photography director, who pulled off some neat shots and angles. The movie also deserves credit for using an actual ape for the gorilla's face close-up shots rather than a gorilla costume, but it would have been better yet if it had used an actual gorilla instead of a chimp. Even at only 61 minutes, this film wasted my time.

The Phantom Creeps (1939)

Bonkers 30s serial that feels like a campy 50s flick

[8/10 · 22 April 2022]

I'm a fellow of pretty meager talents as both an amateur critic and a creative artist, but one thing I AM quite good at is spotting and appreciating the kernel of goodness in media so creaky and weird that almost everyone else writes it off. So, it's with the confidence of a crazy man about to declare the sky is green that I say that the 1939 Bela Lugosi serial/movie "The Phantom Creeps" could be AMAZING if remade for a modern audience with modern effects. I've been watching it bit by bit over the past two weeks, and it's a hoot.

Here's the thing: I could fill a book with everything that's technically wrong with "The Phantom Creeps". It's so supremely bonkers and contains so many outlandish plot elements that you have to wonder what Depression-era screenwriters were smoking back in 1939. But I'll be darned if it isn't extremely entertaining, and 90% of that is due to the presence of one of the few true "chaotic neutral" characters I have ever witnessed in entertainment.

The short version of this story, if that's possible, is that a mad scientist has discovered a mysterious meteorite that's so powerful that it could allow its owner to take over the world. The mad scientist wants it, the US government wants it, and foreign spies want it... only, now it seems the mad scientist died in a freak car accident. Or did he? (HINT: Nope.)

Like many action-serials of its time, it features a chisel-chinned, hard-punching "man of action" lawman hero, a beautiful reporter dame who keeps sticking her nose into danger, and a cadre of typical villainous spies and gangsters. But you also have Bela Lugosi's character, Dr. Zorka, the mad scientist who is ostensibly the villain of the show and the "Phantom" of its title. The weird thing is that he's a *secret* villain the entire series; everyone but his assistant believes he's dead! He's just a regular, middle-aged dude with no special powers and below-average fighting ability, and his entire success or failure hinges on everyone continuing to believe he's deceased. His put-upon assistant and goon (Monk) is an escaped convict of equally low caliber as a fighter and is liable to getting thrown in jail at any moment, making him even more vulnerable than his boss.

However, thanks to his insane arsenal of cool inventions (including exploding spiders, an invisibility belt, and the ugliest giant robot you've ever seen) Zorka is a real threat... maybe THE major threat. You're obviously supposed to consider him the villain of the series due to his desire to take over the world, but it's almost impossible not to root for him as the smartest character in the room and a fascinatingly amoral (not immoral) underdog. As long as the Phantom creeps around corners and stays in the shadows... he's got a chance. And maybe the world would be better off if it *was* run by this eccentric genius.

If remade in the modern era, I think this series would do best to amp up the campiness if it decided to keep all of the bizarre trappings of the original (in terms of Zorka's inventions), but it could also be a very loose adaptation that just kept his invisibility belt. In any case, the whole aspect of having this believed-dead mad scientist act as a chaos agent who is using his brain and cunning to screw with significantly more powerful forces of "vanilla" good and evil really works. And although he was a delight in the role, it's an idea that doesn't require an actor of Bela Lugosi's caliber to make it a winner.

Getting back to the original serial and away from hypotheticals, though, it was loads of fun, providing the viewer can appreciate camp in high doses. This serial is absolutely ridiculous, and is all the better for it. As with many serials of this era, you can either watch the full 12-episode series or a "summary" movie released later that pares the whole thing down to just 60 minutes. If you enjoy Lugosi or this kind of campy sci-fi, give the full series a watch. If you're just wanting to get the flavor of the thing, the movie will do.

The Return of Chandu (1934)

Bravo for Bela, but... not much else

[6/10 · 22 April 2022]

To be honest, this serial was a bit disappointing, but had just enough good stuff going for it to keep the experience from feeling totally without merit.

Chandu was a 1930s radio and movie character who served as the inspiration for Marvel's Dr. Strange and also has echoes of the Shadow of pulp fame. His stories tell the adventures of Frank Chandler (Chandu), a man who went to the Far East to study the mystic arts under an ancient and good sorcerer called the Yogi, and came back with the ability to hypnotize, briefly turn invisible, and more. This serial was the second entry in the series, and it followed Chandu as he tried to defend Nadji, the princess of Egypt and his sweetheart, from a sect of dark magicians who wanted to sacrifice her to revive an ancient sorcerer-queen. Chandu's sister, niece, and nephew tagged along throughout and alternately helped or got themselves in deep trouble.

First, the good: it was a rare and pleasant surprise to watch Bela Lugosi in the role of the hero instead of an antihero or villain. This particular type of hero (vaguely Eastern, brain-over-brawn) seemed tailor-made for the Hungarian actor, and he generally did a pretty good job with it. The other actors, including the lovely Maria Alba (Nadji, whose cute accent reminds me of a 1930s Sofia Vergara) and those playing Chandu's family, also put in great performances. The whole story is also completely saturated in a certain retro pulp exoticism that I have to admit I really, REALLY love, and it does most of it in a way that's at least somewhat respectful the non-American cultures it pulls from, if in no way actually interested in depicting them accurately. They also showcased some very impressive, expensive-looking sets at times, especially several they borrowed secondhand from the original "King Kong" movie made just one year before.

Unfortunately, the bad makes up a much longer list, especially in the latter half of the serial. The second 2/3 of the serial gets extremely redundant, with the "last-episode recaps" sometimes lasting 5 minutes. Much of the dialogue is creaky and awful, with all of the villains aping King James English with "thees" and "thous" in botched attempts to uplift dull, bad writing. There's an obnoxious "jungle drum" that plays over the music and the dialogue any time the villains are featured, making much of it barely audible. There are also some extremely cringe-worthy "native savages" who serve as bad guys for parts of the serial, highlighting the dark side of that pulp exoticism I mentioned earlier.

The plot is full of little holes and deus ex machinas, and the direction is so bad that it actually makes Ed Wood's much later work with Lugosi look good by comparison. The director (Ray Taylor) has the lead male hero swooning under torture in a style that went out with the silent movie, and manages to give us multiple camera angles that look right up Bela's rather angular nose. (Talk about catching an actor's bad side!) Finally, though a lesser sin than the rest, I thought it was a waste that we didn't see more of Chandu's supernatural powers at work. For much of the serial, he's just a regular guy, and not even an especially capable one.

All told, I don't regret watching it once (with Bela Lugosi as the hero being the main draw), but the 12-part serial version of this story honestly wasn't worth the time investment. If the good parts intrigued you enough to want to watch it, there was a movie based on the first 4 chapters of the serial that I kind of wish I had stuck with myself in retrospect. That was easily the most interesting section of the serial with the tightest story, the best dialogue and direction, and the most interesting use of supernatural abilities. You do miss out on the cool "King Kong" sets, but it's well-worth it to avoid the meandering, frustrating, and often draggy latter half of the serial (and the cringey cannibal islanders, to boot).

Bottom line: "The Return of Chandu" is an okay story with an interesting role for its iconic lead actor, but stick with the movie on this one, not the full serial.

The Whispering Shadow (1933)

Outstanding action-mystery serial for the ages

[9/10 · 22 April 2022]

I've been continuing my hobby of watching old movie serials (the predecessor to TV, but shown in 13-episode weekly series at movie theaters), and "The Whispering Shadow" (1933) established itself as one of my favorites. This one was another Bela Lugosi star vehicle, but Lugosi himself was only one element among several that made this one a winner.

The Whispering Shadow essentially reimagines the pulp superhero "The Shadow" if he were a villain leading a criminal gang. This criminal is never seen directly by either his gang or his victims -- the Shadow uses the futuristic technologies of radio and television to make his demands known in an evil hiss. He and his gang have been targeting and robbing the Empire Transport and Storage Company, and in the process kill the brother of employee Jack Norton, who vows revenge. It appears the Shadow wants the jewels of the slain Russian czar, hidden somewhere in the warehouse. Empire's HR department has really been lying down on the job, because they employ a cadre of seedy characters who all seem to want the jewels for themself and might possibly be the Shadow. Joining the fray are Professor Strang (Lugosi) and his lovely daughter Vera, two suspicious foreigners who run a wax museum, and the escaped convict who stole the jewels originally. All of it adds up to a lot of cloak and dagger and one lingering, critical, all-important question: who *is* the Shadow?

There are a lot of things that make "The Whispering Shadow" appealing, but I think its best aspect is easily the fact that it's a whodunnit, and (more importantly) an actually *good* whodunnit. I found myself fooled multiple times when I thought I had the most likely culprit nailed down, a neat and refreshing feeling to have in the normally predictable and formulaic world of serials. I don't want to spoil anything, but the ultimate reveal was quite a thing.

I also thought that the "retro futurism" of this serial was really nice. The Shadow deals death from above with not only radio, but with electrical signals that can literally fry his own men or others who oppose or betray him. The action is good, the sets are neat and exude a 1930s noir atmosphere, and most of the acting is really solid. The serial did do a surprising amount of recap, which annoyed me a bit at first, but after I reflected on how dizzyingly chaotic it was as a whole, I decided that it actually felt nice to regroup.

In terms of negatives, I really only have two to mention, and neither are very damning. First, I found it unintentionally hilarious how much of a human dynamo Jack Norton was. The man spent the first five episodes of the serial practically running at a sprint. He was incredibly fond of reminding us that he was "after the Shadow, the man who killed my brotha!" and we'd be off the the races. If he'd been told that the Shadow was across the continent in Los Angeles, I'm fully convinced he would have run there on foot, passing many cars along the way. I also thought it was a bit of a shame that Lugosi himself doesn't have much actual acting to do, spending most of his time scowling down at a TV set and looking mighty suspicious, rather than delivering creepy or campy lines of dialogue. The actress playing his daughter also didn't do a bang-up job in the acting department and was really only notable for being willing to go along with her dad's shadier schemes, which was a nice change of pace and cast her as something of an anti-heroine.

All told, "The Whispering Shadow" was easily one of my favorite serials that I have watched, and probably exceeds even "The Phantom Creeps" as my favorite one starring Bela Lugosi, even if Lugosi himself wasn't a standout in this one. Like many other serials of the 1930s, this one is available as either a 12-episode serial or a highly condensed 60-minute movie. For anyone with even passing interest in the serial genre, PLEASE watch the full serial -- it's well-worth your time and tells the story in a much more organic and rewarding way. If you don't feel you can justify the 3+ hour commitment, though, the chopped down movie is an option. Just bear in mind that you're getting a highly abridged project that may feel like a hamburger reduced to just a meat patty.

The Night Sitter (2018)

A Christmas homage to Dario Argento

[8/10 · 22 April 2022]

If you find this film physically somewhere, don't judge a movie by its cover. "The Night Sitter" (2018) has much, much higher production values than its questionable DVD design would lead you to believe. This one looks like an on-brand Hollywood production in terms of the quality of the actual film.

In a nutshell, our story is about a babysitter who's angling to rob the house she's sitting more-or-less accidentally befriends the boy in her charge, which leads her to some tough moral and survival choices when he accidentally awakens three ancient witches intent on draining every drop of blood from his body.

I honestly have nothing bad to say about this excellent horror film. It's stylish, very well-acted, well-written, and surprisingly funny. The gore factor is pretty high on this one, which will be a plus for some and a minus for others. It also pulls no punches in terms of not sparing the usual categories who get out of these movies without a hair on their head harmed, which I appreciated.

Visually and audially, it leans really hard into its homage of Italian supernatural horror, and specifically the "Three Mothers" horror trilogy of Dario Argento ("Suspiria", "Inferno", and "Mother of Tears"). This is reflected not only in the "Three Mothers" named as the villains of this film, but in less over-the-head ways as well. To explain, Argento was noted for creating vivid "Technicolor nightmares" where scenes awash in bright color and pounding synth music created a building sense of horror. This movie tries to do the same, while marrying it up with a more modern sense of humor that reminded me of Blumhouse's "Happy Death Day".

While I appreciated what it was doing, "Night Sitter" borders on leaning a little *too* hard into its Argento homage, as the film's use of vibrant colored lighting borders on overbearing at times. Still, I would much rather see a film go all-in on an aesthetic rather than halfheartedly do it, so overall I support this artistic choice with no reservations.

I will mention an important caveat here: while I loved the movie, my brother absolutely hated it when we watched it together. This caused (and causes) me some confusion, but I think he may have misread some of the humor and camp on a literal basis, and I know for a fact that the Argento connections were completely lost on him. Fans of Italian horror who can appreciate low-budget camp and bold artistic choices, I think you're going to have a *great* time with this. For anyone who falls outside of one or more of those categories, you might not have as good a time with it. Chalk it up to different witches for different... uh, folks.

Chemical Peel (2014)

Sticky, sick, and absolutely riveting

[8/10 · 22 April 2022]

You know you have a good horror movie on your hands when you find yourself talking to the television: "No, no, don't go in there!" "Don't do that, short-hair girl! You'll die!" Haha... Well, that was me at about 1 AM yesterday with the movie "Chemical Peel" (2014). This film gave this horror movie veteran serious heebie-jeebies, which is not an easy feat.

It starts with a group of 20-something women getting together at a cabin-like house out in the woods for a bachelorette party. They're all friends, but there's some friction due to a tragic accident a few years prior where the younger sister of two of the girls got killed. That particular bit of drama fades into the background when the following morning, they find their cabin surrounded by a bad-smelling mist and a lot of dead birds. They soon discover that a deadly chemical spill happened in the area, and the fumes have settled in the valley. The girls are trapped together in a house that is *not* meant to shield them from a disaster of this sort, and a combination of bad luck and tragic character flaws soon make the situation go from bad to cataclysmic.

"Chemical Peel" borrows a LOT from "Cabin Fever" (2002) in terms of both its setting and the source of its horror: being trapped alone with friends who start to turn on you when a contagion or chemical starts to make your very body peel and rot away. It's an incredibly effective and gut-churning brand of body horror, and this movie has plenty of moments to make you wince or squirm. "Peel" has a leg-up as a horror experience on "Fever" in one respect, which is that it avoids the trips into almost comedic bizarro-land that "Fever" explored in its finale. The tension is palpable, the cast is great, and you just feel *bad* for these girls. The film is honestly also a tragedy in the classic sense, in that certain character flaws are crucial to causing the chain of events that unfolds.

There were really only two nitpicks I had about the film. One was that there's a certain character who is a stereotypical "mean girl" to an almost caricatured degree. Anything bad she does, you're honestly expecting after a point. Having her be a bit more nuanced would have made any of her betrayals feel a bit more shocking. I also thought the last 30 seconds of the movie, pre-credits, were a major misstep. Without spoiling anything, the film accomplishes something akin to a jump-scare, but it does so at the cost of likely severely undermining the satisfying personal growth of one of the characters we watched during the movie. You'll get what I mean if you watch it.

Anyway, if you're looking to be genuinely scared or grossed-out, this one gets my seal of approval. "Chemical Peel" is a claustrophobic nightmare that works in large part because it presents a horrific event that *could* actually happen, given the right set of Murphy's Law developments. Not for the squeamish, though.

Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972)

Solid giallo, but not a revolutionary one

[7/10 · 22 April 2022]

In this film, women keep getting murdered after receiving a phone call to ascertain their whereabouts, and each time, a crescent moon medallion is left in their hands. At first there seems to be no connection, until it's realized that all of the women happened to stay at the same hotel one night several years earlier. One victim escapes, fakes her own death, and sets off to find the killer... but will he find her first?

The main strength of "Seven Blood-Stained Orchids" was its tightly-woven "whodunnit" mystery plot, which contained tons of red herrings but felt much more coherent than many other movies in this genre. It played out in such a way that there was no real way the viewer could beat the camera to the big reveal in terms of deduction, but it still felt engaging throughout. I also thought the main characters were all quite likeable, and I especially appreciated the surprisingly good survival instincts of the main hero and heroine -- not a trait this type of character often has. The kills were suitably thrilling, the acting was good, and the music was solid without being a standout. The opening title track, "Ozarks", might be an exception to that statement, as its groovy base line strikes a great balance between sinister menace and smooth funk.

The only real negative I have to say about it is that the movie felt a bit lacking in artistry on the visual front. Most of my prior experience with gialli is that they're visually incredible, but the plot is a bit of a mess. This movie takes the polar opposite route, with almost no memorable or striking visual moments but a plot that feels tightly-scripted. Also, because so much of the film relies on the "whodunnit" element, I can't imagine that this movie would be particularly engaging as a rewatch in the same way that something like "Blood Red" or "All The Colors of the Dark" are.

All told, maybe not one to buy sight-unseen, but if you can rent or stream it somewhere, it's absolutely worth a watch at least once.