Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich

I am blown away by how excellent this first movie-watching experience was. Finally we get a reboot that delivers by creating a new continuity without plagiarizing or disrupting the source material. And unlike the well-meaning but unoriginal and lazy reboots coming out of Hollywood, "The Littlest Reich" isn't stifled by political correctness and trying to please everyone. Yet it doesn't sacrifice intelligent morals for its shock value.

Its a simple yet clever premise based on the essential ingredients of a classic modern tale. Essentially its a dark spoof of the original film with the same motives but its own voice, style, universe, politics and point of view. Most importantly it only strengthens the subtext of the original story and showers it in obvious fandom.

Where I think the screenwriter struck genius is making this a film for fans of the original first and foremost but still accessible to wider tastes, not the opposite. Too many reboots and sequels throw out the appeal of the old for eager accessibility by not studying the story mechanics that do or do not still work. This fella knows you have to have Nazis, puppets, slasher victims and 80s fanboy chic, but he finds new uses for all of these things. He fashions something personal from the first film and transplants it to a modern platform. The Puppet Master mythos is reinvigorated but NOT re-purposed.

TLR echos the many obsessions, themes, tropes, aesthetics & appeal of the entire PM catalog, so it fits in like a jewel among its dated and meager family to uplift them to younger, hipper and maybe less educated critics who wouldn't expect so much value from a reboot of an 80s horror cheapie about killer dolls. This is why its not just great cinema, its a great meta meditation and pop cultural commentary on cinema itself. And I'm grateful that a modest indie production could still accomplish this in 2018.

Made 2001 / Astronaut's Daughter 1999 / The Ninth Gate 1999 / Waking Life 2001

Made is the first film directed by Jon Favreau, the longtime character actor who became an indie darling when he wrote and starred in Swingers. While it becomes obvious the directing of Swingers by Doug Liman was possibly the real reason Swingers worked, Favreau and his Swingers co-star Vince Vaughn recapture some of the old magic. Vaughn deserves most of the credit with his self-deprecating comedic improvising and Favreau gets credit for knowing how to support his star and humanize the rather plotless, pointless story. Its all saved with some smooth cinematography and a sincere working class sentimental gritty romanticism. Its a bit of a waste of some veteran & future acting stars, but its a very enjoyable directorial debut if still a disappointing sophomore script.

Astronaut's Daughter is a bad mega budget high concept ripoff of Rosemary's Baby and Hitchcock's Suspicion. Pre-fame Charlize Theron carries the evil baby of peak-fame Johnny Depp's alien-possessed astronaut. Its full of genre cliches, Depp's horrid fake Southern accent and stylized but braindead commercial directing. I still think its a high kitsch affair that is enjoyable. The DP and Production Designer are the true stars and the whole affair is a great mirror of moody Y2K shallowness and pop culture nostalgia. Also, given recent allegations of Depp's domestic abuse and his all-but-confirmed Luciferian status, this has a few moments of convincing menace. I actually think Depp should switch to playing villains now that his youth and sex appeal is long gone.

Released the same fucking year as Astronaut's Daughter, Ninth Gate is Roman Polanski's return to Hollywood filmmaking and another Johnny Depp vehicle based on Satanism. Thankfully its a much better film. Polanski paints a dark camp hybrid of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, his two biggest 70s successes. Its a brilliant way to tie the films together and reveal the shared subtexts. Its wonderfully directed, shot, plotted and Polanski pulls one of the best performances from the wooden Depp (who is doing a rather lazy impression of Jack Nicholson throughout). Whereas Astronaut's is a lukewarm Hollywood meditation on Freemason subversion, Gate is a fearless celebration of mythic Satan worship in cinema as well as a aggressively respectful examination of real world Luciferianism as a philosophy. It can't be as shocking or clever as Polanski's early horror films, but its anti-Christian themes are even more pronounced and playful.

Waking Life is a wonderful, overwhelming and life-affirming celebration of pop existentialism from Richard Linklater, Generation X's cinematic hippie philosopher extraordinaire. Feeling like a Brechtian documentary or simply a psychedelic dream, Linklater keeps it accessible, warm, fun and constantly enlightening. The film features a totally new form of storytelling with diverse influences with heavy subject matter but retains a quality of unpretentiousness. The best film on this short list.

Black Moon 1975 / The Strange Case if Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne 1981 / Messiah of Evil 1973 / Bloodsucking Freaks 1976 / The Devils 1971

"Black Moon" is a Dadaist dream about a young girl who is fleeing a war between men & women. She seeks solace in a dreary country farm occupied by an old woman who knows everything about her and an incestuous mute brother & sister. The film is full of abstract episodes that are probably clever statements on female sexual maturity a'la Alice in Wonderland, but I didn't recognize them. Overall, the experience is rather grating. Its studiously composed but the film feels pretentious with its abundance of cruelty to animal actors, boring metaphors and faux-educational exploitation of its extremely young actress' sexuality. Its worth a watch because it is so unique and its frequently entertaining, but its no lost gem. My impression of director Louis Malle is a wannabe Godard/Bunuel without much originality or talent.

Walerian Borowczyk is much more impressive with his loose adaptation of a classic horror novel. He brings so much voyeuristic intensity and expressive technique to what has to be a minuscule period piece production. The film is a rare accomplishment in balancing erotic and horror tension so well. This is truly one of the most sensual and glossy films of its period (or any period) but it has a grisly urgency. It walks that fine line between art and exploitation beautifully. Seek this movie out.

Messiah of Evil is a film by the couple who wrote Temple of Doom & Howard the Duck for George Lucas. Its a post-hippie horror "feature" about a young woman in a spooky seaside town of zombies. Its freakishly similar to Franco's Virgin Among the Living Dead but they were released the same year (but, Virgin was shot in '71). Its a decent snapshot of a time and generation but its not effective on scares or mood beyond some stylish lighting and minimalist staging. It feels like an arty cash-in on drive-in films without any respect for its audience. Its determined to show off its own intelligence, but there isn't much. To its credit, the film features production design by Jack Fisk, husband of Sissy Spacek and lifelong friend of David Lynch. There is actually a HUGE impression of Twin Peaks in the setting of this story, so its memorable and important for that.

Bloodsucking Freaks could be the best film Troma ever released, alongside The Toxic Avenger and maybe The Last Horror Film. Like those movies, it is a lurid portrait of NY independent filmmaking from a bygone era of sleaze, art and political dissidence. This is the most extreme of its kind, a satire about white slavery full of cannibalism, torture, murder and brainwashing. A decade ago, this film made me queasy to watch. Now I appreciate the immense intelligence and bravery in pulling off such a disturbing but complex little exploitation. A film like this is looking to make a statement more than a profit.

I finally watched Ken Russell's The Devils. Besides maybe a snippet of Tommy, this is my first film by popular British cult director. Wow. What a brilliant technical director and stylist he is. His camera is so alive and magnetized by every action on the screen. There isn't one lazy performance or dull scene or false moment in this classic story of religious persecution and moral corruption. The story itself is a great and bold attack on Catholicism, but it avoids tempting melodrama or bland tragedy by setting us up with so many laughs and spectacles. Russell's film has a broad irony that had to be a game-changer then. He really reflects the Mod sensibility of his generation and marries it with the most classic but unsuspecting narrative tropes. And its more than just a bunch of clever tricks. It moves you and haunts you.

Sgt Kabukiman NYPD 1990 / The Evil Dead 1981 / Monty Python & The Holy Grail 1975

Kabukiman is Lloyd Kaufman & Michael Herz' comeback film after the drizzling Toxic Avenger 3 and is their last directing collaboration to date (with Herz becoming the primary producer). Kabukiman tweaks the Troma formula by satirizing/exploiting a big budget film (Batman) and toning down the sex & violence. Its more of a return to the screwball comedies Troma produced pre-Toxic Avenger. The film is low on laughs and the action is amateurish, but its heavy on social commentary and low budget charm.

Troma films have this unique quality of mixing slapstick violence and realistic violence, which is very surreal and creates a meaningful conflict in style. At the same time, you can't take the drama seriously or the comedy lightly (perfectly realized in the fist two Toxic Avenger films and the original Class of Nuke 'Em High). I actually think this element works better in SK than in Toxie 3. Whereas that film had a moody aura that was actually missing humor, SKN is humor with a dash of realism. It plays as a very modern film because of this gritty slapstick and artificial realism. Let's face it: Guardians of the Galaxy movies are Troma films minus the political activism, risky jokes or modest production. Kabukiman is not one of Troma's best but its one of their most sincere and least offensive.

The Evil Dead is not a masterpiece in my eyes, but its one of the most impressive debuts of a director to date. The technical know-how, genre-savvy and inventive low-budget creativity is almost unparalleled. The plot is a more conservative, lowbrow, exploitative remix of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist, the early work of Wes Craven, an obscure film called Equinox and a few others (the nod to  Rosemary's Baby is almost groan-inducing). But the postmodern genre of "fan film" owes a lot to Evil Dead. Raimi takes what could've been absolutely absurd and kitsch and makes it absurdist and camp. The poor continuity, cheap FX and amateur performances work cohesively to create a Gonzo style. I've never found Evil Dead to be the emotionally intense or haunting commentary that truly great horror films are, but it has a claustrophobic mood and grim surrealism that perfectly bridges the 1970s to the 1980s. Its artistic entertainment, not entertaining art. Thats okay for such a small project and its still the best thing Raimi has ever done.

I grew up loving Holy Grail for its downbeat rhythm and strange, inexplicable laughs but only now do I recognize the intelligent design and commentary behind the carefully crafted surrealism. Holy Grail works as a series of deconstructionist sketches, each applying the group's shared Marxist philosophy to a different subject: monarchy, feminism, nationalism, militarism, homophobia, racism, generational transition, existentialism, nihilists etc. Cleverly the postmodernists tackle British modernism by starting at the source, the ridiculous legend of King Arthur and his insane, murderous, superstitious and literally criminal Knights of the Round Table. By today's standards, some of the humor might verge on insensitive, ex. the somewhat racist Black Knight skit is amended in Meaning of Life's Zulu skit. But overall its a witty, next-level and quite elementary guide to Western intellectualism.

Famously, Lorne Michaels and Chevy Chase met at a screening of Holy Grail and basically conceived SNL as the American "Flying Circus". Watching Holy Grail you find everything SNL lacked as a totally poser, hipster, neoliberal misreading of surrealist political satire. That show was more diverse, more populist and more upbeat, but not nearly as enlightened, dangerous or moralistic. I'm kind of tired of SNL being honored as such a groundbreaking institution of comedy when it never surpassed Python in the most important element: humor. 

Count Dracula 1970 / Night Has a Thousand Desires 1984

Christopher Lee played Dracula many times for Hammer Studios but famously disliked their treatment of the character. Franco directs Lee's single non-Hammer Dracula film and, because of its faithfulness to the plot and tone of the source material, this became Lee's favorite outing as the count. And its easy to see why. Lee shows off some fearsome acting that brings a deadness and evil that is lacking in his more famous roles. The entire film is modestly budgeted, but the minimalism serves the foggy atmosphere and Gothic staging. This is one of Franco's finest examples of restrained directing. His touch is evident in the moments of extreme horror (like Dracula's brides eating a baby) and his excellent use of inner montage through zooms and understated motion. The highlight of this impeccable production is probably the fine casting, including Soledad Miranda in her first vampire role. From the get-go, she is as elegant and seductive as possible. Her tragic aura was never more pronounced and useful to a film and you can see Franco slowly falling for her beauty. This film is an important step in Franco's career as he finds a special muse and gravitates to truly tonal, disturbing horror and away from the simpler, poppier horror stylings of his Orloff films.

I revisited "Other Side of the Mirror" and it feels like a tone poem to Soledad's abrupt death and the dashed romantic feelings he held for her. Its interesting how that film is the rare example of Franco indulging in realism and overt dialogue about philosophy. I bring that film up to highlight that Franco's spacey minimalist indulgence in imagery was a concentrated style that he could break away from if he desired. That helps process his more extreme explorations in style. He knew exactly what he was doing.

NHATD is the most extreme work of cinematic style Franco ever gave us. It makes Diabolical Dr Z look like a Dragnet episode. Its essential in understanding Franco's aims and roots as an artist. The entire experience is not dependent on its thin plot for anything but visual tone and a physical stage for his actor subjects. Almost nothing of incident or attraction happens. I'm blanking on anything happening at all besides some love-making and a 30 second shot of Lina Romay walking slowly towards frame. How is this the most beautiful film I've seen? Because its almost pure documentary of reality except for Franco's experiment with time and editing. All actors are shown lifeless, tranced, ghostly, subjected. Are they in a dream or a ghost world? By simply erasing the action, cutting and sounds we expect, Franco uses our expectations against us and lets our imagination create its own sense of dream space. Its comparable to the effect of Charleton Heston spending reels of "The Omega Man" wandering alone through a psychological warzone to minimalist jazz. But this is way more radical. Franco doesn't give us any surreal or supernatural reason for this affected realism. Its simply his darkly romantic vision of life.

My theory is that Franco's entire aesthetic derives from Soviet montage theorists like Eisenstein and Pudovkin. Franco, perhaps more than any director ever, synthesized their unique views into a style of montage adaptable to any and all narratives. His entire career is practice in applying his profound knowledge of montage to as many films as possible but as economically as possible. NHATD is maybe the culmination of a lifetime of craft and his analysis of the very hypnotic effect of cinema itself. He is asking "What is cinema"? At the depths of finance and obscurity, he finally has the courage to make a film that is anti-commercial and only interested in exploring the power of the camera. And it is triumphant & transcendent.

Faceless 1988

I started this year (and this blog) with a review of Jess Franco's Faceless. Now lets come full circle and re-review it. If 2017 taught me anything its that Franco was ahead of his time.

Faceless is still his masterpiece for me. Its extremely well-made but the script gives him the most substance to explore his established vocabulary. In the DVD commentary, he reveals that it was written by producer Rene Chateau for his aesthetic exactly. Chateau was a pure Franco fan so this obviously is the film for Franco fans. Franco is forced to stick to his better judgment and not lose sight of his audience with excessive sex or minimal plot. Its the commercial version of Franco's usual Dr. Orloff plot, but its so much stronger as Chateau organizes Franco's psychological obsessions and political leanings into something his haters can understand. Franco admitted that he didn't work with conscious meanings while shooting. But he read and contributed to Faceless and agreed that it is his story. He understood all of the symbolism, helped build its language and cosigned it as true to his vision. In commentary he even shoots down the claim that this is not a true Franco film.

All of that is preface for exploring the deep messages that make this the purest example of Franco's worldview. The script deconstructs his style exactly so the master can apply his aesthetic to where it belongs.

The plot of Faceless is based not on Orloff or the eerily similar French horror film Eyes Without A Face, but on the obscure novel that inspired both. Body snatchers are abducting and killing women to provide the flesh for a plastic surgeon's scarred sister. This thin premise is the groundwork for a Freudian labyrinth of psycho-sexual fracturing of the psyche.

The ultimate metaphor of the film is the Faceless Woman as the ultimate victim of capitalism's "sex sells" culture. Without a face, she has no identity, no love, no validation and cannot enter the world. Finding a new face = filling non-existence. No capital, no communism creates a violent search, a consuming passion for blood driving her to evil exploitation and fantasy fulfillment. Capitalism is built on the pain of the public for the privately wealthy. This is all from Eyes Without A Face, but the script takes some liberties. Prostitutes and Johns are shown as equal victims of the elite's hierarchy. Franco sees sex and drugs as instruments of the same hypocrisy, both independent occupations. Cocaine is how the film's damsel is seduced by our villains. This is the horror of a system where the working class aren't allowed to thrive but are demonized for using the only means they have. The horror of no communism is community goes to Hell where its "dog eat dog" and the artificial surface rules and spirituality is lost, sex is corrupted and cosmetic surgery is an enterprise.

Finding her New Face becomes the obsession of her plastic surgeon brother, the Ego - a cold Germanic genius, amoral, perverse and bourgeois in taste - a perfect example of Franco's villains. He is assisted by his cold blonde female nurse who represents Franco's feminine side - dangerous, anti-aging, anti-reproduction, a Lolita. The Id is represented by their manservant who is innocent, manipulated, confused but full of savage violence and obedient loyalty. They drag beautiful working class girls to their Parisian clinic to be diced up for old women to become beautiful again... until they abduct a rich daughter of a powerful elite man (the ultimate crime).

From the beginning, the Ego is torn between Sister and his nurse, the Other Woman. He is happy with both until an older woman whose beauty he damaged (representing The Mother) destroys his sister's face and ruins the balance of female energy in his psyche. With his beloved sister's life destroyed and the reality of aging clear, he is driven mad trying to resurrect his childhood memory of her. But the Other Woman become jealous of this incestuous obsession.  He is torn between two vampire females who drive him to seek blood and become a vampire himself. The female assistant symbolizes Lina Romay, the famous life partner of Jess. Her character is always that of a Frozen Image, a memory, a "dream girl" he cannot satisfy. Dream Girl turned Nightmare Girl. In a brief cameo, Lina appears as a photograph! One amazing sequence has the surgeon and nurse hunting a girl in a disco. The young woman rejects this aging man and his nurse uses false lesbian wiles to seduce the victim. Another great cinematic reflection of Franco and Lina's arrangement. Franco's women are often the slasher in his stories (Bloody Moon) Perhaps she was jealous of the grief Franco expressed for his original love and leading lady Soledad Miranda, who is represented by The Damsel the Ego keeps locked away.

The Damsel is in the mold of classic Franco girls. She is his version of The Virgin, but a coke-taking "daddy's girl" whore who sleeps with all races of men. Franco defends and praises her for this. The SuperEgo, a detective assigned by her Father, pursues her. He is flippant, bored, a hotshot Americanized tool of authority wunderkind destined to fall. This is the archetypal Franco male hero. Franco pokes fun at his younger self, the stifled commercial director who learned under Orson Welles but was barred from Hollywood success. At one point, Franco self-identifies with a stereotypically gay photographer of cokehead models, the best summary of his extremely castrated aesthetic fetishization of the female image in film. This gay Id combats the SuperEgo with a muscle man named "Doo Doo". Project what you will.

Franco belongs to that group of psychoanalytical directors including Hitchcock, Lynch, Maya Deren, DePalma, Fellini, Argento, Bunuel (call them the "Caligari Club") who use cinema as a dreamscape. They use so may of the same tropes like Blonde vs Brunette, Virgin or Whore, The Father-In-Law's Challenge, Familial sexual tension. Its about the sex NOT shown. Romantic Horror + Sexual Horror. The quest for hidden desire and the fear of exposed fetish. When the Ego's female slaves are discovered by a woman, the Id overreacts and tortures her. This mistake haunts him in the end and destroys him (finally stopped by spikes to the base of the brain by the SuperEgo).

Even with its luxurious surface and fantastic budget, the film is crude, abstract and obsessed with The Primal. I find the commercialism's contrast only raises the darkness and animal magnetism in Franco's style. Unable to use his own experimental jazz, Franco makes ironic use of pop songs to attack consumerism (notice in which scenes they play). Franco satirizes the style of other directors with a style purposely static. The uniqueness of scenes lies in the details and deviations, which he learned as a jazz musician. He is free from the storytelling and experimentation to have fun with each scene. He wants you to grade each individually on execution as he sprinkles weirdness in each scene but only extends himself when it counts. This film follows his hardcore porn days so it has a heavy softcore vibe that is soothing enough to be disarming. The gory scenes replace the "money shots".

In the end, this film is about the creation of a perfect Frankenstien woman: a beautiful stranger's face on one's defaced sister. The vampire Sister buys her new face - the final capitalist prize for jealousy, murder and illegal gain - becoming the ultimate kinky love object. Freud's nightmare. In maybe the greatest ending to a Franco film, the SuperEgo fails to save The Virginal "dream girl" because of her rich vacationing Father. The Father-in-Law's false hopes doom them. He kills his own daughter by raising her to be the cokeheaded sexual victim of capitalist vampires. Its slut-shaming, victim-blaming perhaps, but Franco still damns the "predators of the night" but puts the blame back on the corrupt authority father figure who lost control. It, like the work of David Lynch and Hitchcock, may be mistaken for rape apologizing, but these "meninist" Marxists were simply showing the intersectionality of sexual abuse and the abuse of power from the leaders of state and business. This is Franco's last smoldering attack on Generalismo Franco, the fascist dictator who defined the cynical worldview and radical politics of Spain and his own life path. In the end, maybe all of his work was psychologically about Replacing The Father. This was his struggle. He was left so damaged, so anti-mother, anti-reproduction, anti-children, anti-Nazi and thus anti-women he was naturally drawn to (blond women). He found solace in a sister fetish for darker, younger women. "Faceless" is a perverted biographical confession to this sexual damage.

Jess Franco is an artist who psychoanalyzes himself brutally with every personal film. With 100+ films made, he became more self-aware than almost anyone. He contextualized his beliefs and prejudices into his work effortlessly and could still make a deceptively commercial film. As bizarre, excessive, mad, drug-damaged or awkward as it might get, he owns his funny psyche because he knows it compares favorably to the collective man's.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974

2017 ends and we say goodbye to Tobe Hooper, one of the most gifted but under-recognized directors of the 20th century. I'm a huge fan of the man and professed for years there are deep levels to his work that were overlooked as kooky paranoid drugginess until our current political hellstorm. Now that he's dead it seems the world is waking up and cinema is catching up to his vision.

The clearest example of this is Get Out, the critic's and audience's favorite this year. The American horror fandom's white male minority were quick to label it "liberal propaganda" and "too funny to be horror". Little do this backwards simpletons understand Get Out is a postmodern remake of their holy Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Because so many still don't realize TCM is a fierce, focused satire on rightwing politics in America.

While Get Out is a game-changing liberal-friendly attack on neoliberalism, TCM was the original. Hooper and screenwriter Kim Henkel were two jaded Texas radicals feeling the effects of the collective bad LSD trip that killed Flower Power and gave power to corrupt capitalist authoritarians. Henkel's script is a harsh Marxist criticism of hippies and their blissful ignorance and cooperation with conservatism, but Hooper directs it with a game self-deprecating empathy with these goofy hippie victims and a kind of morbid sympathy for the backwoods cannibal hillbillies who are tools of the bourgeoisie. This collaboration birthed the first Libertarian horror film; "Easy Rider" meets "Psycho".

I would say Hooper is the Leftist Libertarian, as his sequel TCM2 is a trashing of yuppies and warning of neoliberalism and Reagan republicans. Henkel is the more Right Libertarian, not trusting the CIA at all and casting a young libertarian Matthew McConaughey in his TCM4. Both films are radical politically, just as feminist as the first Massacre but really work best in tandem aesthetically.

Where Henkel is ultraviolent, nihilistic, political, symbolic, mystical, minimalist, primal, politically incorrect, transgressive, Jungian and naturalistic, Hooper counters with a style that is "staged", ironic, operatic, stoned, satirical, logical, optmistic, technical, cartooned, perverse, expressionist, Freudian and romantic. Seperate one from the other and you get their respective sequels.

But where do they agree? The negative direction of our country. They each shift the blame more on the other but find both at fault. Hooper finds the rednecks the more absurd & dangerous threat and I suspect Henkel finds them a byproduct of the hippies' isolating classism. The film is a comedy that laughs at both sides of this family rivalry and illustrates a reflection and relation between Sally and Leatherface. They live right next door, both lose a brother (Vietnam reference) and are both getting screwed by "The Man". Its the pointlessness of their violence and separation that is tragic. What probably hatched as a white male's dark fantasy of torturing his little sister on-screen developed into a transcendent confession of an impossible union between Beauty and Beast. The story expresses the personal pain of these two scruffy Texan boys never being able to bring the rich blond girl home to "meet the family". Leatherface and The Hitchhiker are the yin and yang of the creators, the Id and SuperEgo. The Old Man is a crazed, shame-filled mixture of both, the Ego.

This confused moral grayness creates the transgressive use of black & white throughout the film. The "White House" turns out to be a slaughterhouse of teenage hippies. The white damsel is saved by a chubby black protector (as Get Out would play off of). Repeatedly, there is great horror shown in daylight The Sun is shown as an evil force.

And there is more meaning to the production design. Sally comes to the White House later for sanctuary only to find it full of dead bodies in the attic - a rejection of The Church. Immediately after, she tries The Gas Station that has no gas left. This could be a reference to concentration camps or the Middle East.

So much of the Normal gets subverted: family dinner, the kitchen, patriarchy, white men, meat-eating, capitalism, the South, victimhood, the very idea of hippies as useful, the binary. This is hardcore cynical Marxist stuff. The writers are out for blood and pissed off at everyone. This informs the now famous formula of Scare-Laugh-Scare-Laugh that this film popularized. It can't be overstated how archetypal this script has become. Every year it looks more and more tame because fan works like Get Out & True Detective spread its influence. But its most famous for spawning the basic slasher formula. Isn't Halloween just an unofficial sequel where Leatherface breaks out into suburbia? (the unintentional effect the TCM had on mainstream audiences that made it a frightening hit with teens) No one would argue that its not a horror film, but its creators maintain TCM was a dark satire first.

Here we are going into 2018. Tobe Hooper has passed on, the Leatherface franchise seems massacred after the latest installment and the most popular film of the year is a postmodernist retelling of this film. Is the TCM now a classic film and its more of a history lesson than a relevant commentary? No way. Get Out's evil family make sexual objects out of black people for business. Very topical. But TCM's evil family make food out of the poor and less fortunate for business. That message is more encompassing and even more pressing as its no longer the stupid hippies we must fear in political power but the evil cannibal white trash themselves. This explains the popularity of Leatherface during the George W Bush era and I hope TCM becomes a beacon for resistance to fascist tyranny again. With each film, Leatherface's world opens up more, exposing his insulated world of lawless slavery, inbred mania and capitalist brutality to new generations. The story has never been completed and its culmination might bring needed positive closure to the real world. Its become an American film institution, more than a franchise, with power to attack the highest criminals in our society.

I hear the film rights are back on the market. Maybe now we have artists worthy enough of doing Mr. Hooper & Mr. Henkel proud.

John Wick 2 / Raw

I skipped 2014's John Wick, but this year's sequel left a big impression. Now it feels like sequel because it has a semi-stock plot and Keanu Reeves is comfortable but maybe not as engaged as he can be. But the film overall is a thrilling, intelligent, non-cliche ode to Cold War espionage and modern gangster films. All with the Eastern religious principles and universal themes Reeves includes in most of his major work. The script again is clever and the directing is quite dazzling at times, making incredible use of the action and beautiful locations, but Reeves has become one of the true auteurist actors whose strong voice is unmistakable and very helpful. You can tell how hard he works on the quality action choreography, ironing out the script and keeping other actors on their toes.

In many ways, it feels like a showcase of ingredients sorely missing from other action franchises, a highlight reel of high action movie IQ styled into a film. But it doesn't feel like boring aesthetic exercise or pretentious masturbatory machismo. Its old school and very faithful to its inspirations (Bond, Punisher, Death Wish, Beverly Hills Cop, Cobra, Commando), but totally open to the ideas of Kubrick, Refn and more risky filmmakers. The film exemplifies its class with a great nod to The Shining, basing the look of a character on another, but NOT the personality. Thats how nostalgic influences should be incorporated. Creatively, distinctly and respectfully.

But films are ideological and I dig the message. Here is a person haunted by who he was. Unlike the Bourne films, he knows who he is now and has to fight to continue being that good person. But he also accepts the killing machine he still is and uses it as a weapon. This is kung fu Jesus, which Keanu has trailblazed and owned as a character archetype. Somewhere between Zen master and vigilante superhero, while weighed to a realistic world thats logical and pessimistic. And the whole ride ends with a fantastic cliffhanger that matches its unique worldview. I'm now a big fan of this movie's world.

Raw was not so fun. Its a bland "horror lite" story about the savagery of sisters and how awkward college age is. Indie horror has become saturated in films like this (Ginger Snaps, Excision, Tale of Two Sisters, Takashi Miike's chapter of Three Extremes). Its supposed to be a disturbing critique of Millennial morality (or amorality) but it comes off like a stuffy conservative exploitation of young people. Boring rave music, young girl's asses in the camera, candy colored blood all over the screen and a bizarre treatment of vegetarianism that is supposed to be mocking and supportive but just comes across boneheaded. The script is paper thin and minus its 2017 characterizations of young women and gays, its like any shitty slasher cash-in out of Europe from the 1980s except devoid of the softcore sexuality or moments of macabre or grue. I was surprised how tame this experience was after hearing it made audiences sick. Pussies.

Films like this are so typical of digital age indie filmmaking: focused so much on brief moments of visual splendor or "shocking" a soccer mom audience who will never watch this (except maybe the director's) that it can't be bothered on logical characters or creative shots or sustaining interest at all. On its most successful level its a dark satire about young women finding wild abandon after adolescent repression, but it never comes off dark enough or funny enough. The recently ended TV show Girls did it so much better, nailed a dozen of the same scenes and ideas too. And that show is quite passe now. I don't think its crazy to find influence in that show but this is a weak tribute.

Get Out 2017

I saved this film for the last weeks of 2017 as a Christmas gift to myself. I was quite delighted by what I watched.

Get Out is a dark satire casting the experience of being black in a white society with classic horror film tropes. Its already been compared to the Stepford Wives and described as a cynical spoof of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Fair. But I'm more reminded of the Wes Craven film "The People Under The Stairs". The film lays out the mental exploitation, dehumanization and utilitarian mental slavery of blacks in Western culture with a kind of domestic thriller that only lampshades the violence of slavery and being ghettoized. All while remaining a flippant, hip date movie for blacks and whites to empathize over. Its kinda "Gone Girl" for Obama-loving Millennials.

Its actually a thin plot given a very smart, dynamic and bold treatment. Its not too cynical or disturbing, always remaining light and fun as the films listed above. Writer/director Jordan Peele is a real film student who combined some topical references to say something necessary in a fresh way. Would I call it a masterpiece? I don't know. Its themes were heavy, heartbreaking and finally cathartic to me, a person who has lived painful experiences like this. But the masterstroke is that it paints an optimistic crowd-pleasing climax that doesn't go for melodrama or grand spectacle or epic tragedy. This story rightly sticks to a happy ending thats earned and not beyond realism.

On objective technical merits, its a wonderfully directed film with expert acting, beautifully integrated plotting and non-traditional cinematography and a memorably original soundtrack. And thankfully there is no cliffhanger for a sequel. Imagine a film that completes itself!

This is a strong contender for Best of 2017 and already has the popular vote with critics. Its miles ahead of just about everything else I saw and its the most satisfactory and positive of the best films. You'll just have to see how I rank it on the year-end list :)

Phantasm 5: Ravager

While the original Phantasm has sentimental value to me and is a good example of low budget 70s genre filmmaking, its far from a great film. The plot is paper thin, its dated in the best and worst ways and its a bit slow and dry. But the film that is essentially a horror-movie-for-kids-about-PTSD spawned a world famous franchise thanks to its iconic villains, charming FX and cool soundtrack. But the sequels kinda suck.

Phantasm 5: Ravager is the final chapter to a saga that was best left at one story and the best entry since the original because its only focused on deconstructing its origins, ignoring the unnecessary and finishing what it started. Ravager reduces all of the sequels to "bad dreams", which would be upsetting and ludicrous in any other sequel, but this is the forgotten motif of the 1st film. This thematic continuity is what makes all great sequels work. Add the fact that this is the most grungy, cheap and personal film since the 70s as creator Don Coscarelli lets a new director make this a fan film and not a commercial cash-in like the rest. Ravager looks back at the series with fondness for the journey, apologizes for the schlockiness and redeems its fans for their loyalty by expanding on the artistic credibility of the original, at least narratively (the production is far below the original's standards). Its a moving tribute to a series that helped define an era and I'm very glad they said their peace and ended it properly before central star Angus Scrimm passed away.

This is my favorite low budget exploitation film of 2016 btw. For a series and era that was defined by its adolescence, this is a mature farewell.

Annabelle Creation 2017

I watched almost all of the first Annabelle and found it to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen, given that its from this decade, well financed and yet remained a racist, rightwing propaganda piece exploiting 20 decent horror films unknown to a mass audience. But the people who hated the original said this was a "superior sequel". It was superior in its rightwing extremism, lack of substance, exploitation of old movies and general evil.

Refresher: Annabelle 1 followed a Conservative couple in the early 1960s starting their family but haunted by the evil spirit of a hippie girl who died. Their black female "friend"/servant gives her life to protect the family and atone for her own race's savage religion. The end.

The "self-sacrificing coon" is a favorite trope for Conservatives

Now the people who love this sequel are the mindless social liberals who are really conservative but vote democrat and like Beyonce. So when they say its better they mean the cinematography and money is greater. And it sure is. The D.P. has the talent for a better film but he brings the flavor of good films like The Reflecting Skin and Days of Heaven to this nightmare. I kinda hate him for that. Anabelle 2 or The Conjuring 4 is 2 boring hours of gorgeous production design and high tech effects sold as a film. The plot, acting and directing is non-existent. Its needlessly slow & uneventful to trick its already bought and paid for critics to claim it has "dread" or a "European sensibility".

The most defining and distressing thing about this film and many other faux-hipster cinema coming out of Hollywood is an open fetishization and obsession with female children. Dressing them up in fetish-y costumes, making them objects and not characters and just staging them in sadistic, meaningless power fantasies. Stranger Things, Logan, Fury Road, It Follows, Amityville Awakening, Wonder Woman all have these physically frail childlike or child actresses playing naive almost primitive Barbies with no spectrum of emotion, a kind of oblivious and damning virginity and a canned feminine submissive "strength". They are cast and directed to be these pretty dolls for ogling and nothing more.

This is the Hollywood exec's ideal female image

 Annabelle Creation takes it further by literally making the film a feature length warning to young girls to follow Christian patriarchy or you will be possessed and your murder justified. Also gotta love the Nazism of deeming the handicapped protagonist as bitter, vengeful and ultimately better off dead. This is woman-hating, liberal-hating religious propaganda on a mass scale and its no shock. The moronic rightwing public fear Hollywood is run by evil liberal Jews yet what real Leftist films have been released by a major studio lately? Any true leftist is anti-capitalist, so the major schlock makers are obviously Far Right capitalist statists totally relieved by this dark Trump age or bullshit-filled Anarchist Capitalists who rather feed their bank accounts than fight the power.

On a somewhat cheerier note, I marvel that this film broke records and its essentially the same formula as the films Charles Band has produced with Full Moon. All of the Blumhouse crap and James Wan garbage: criminally cheap, unoriginal productions based around dolls & off-screen supernatural hijinks with a Conservative, retro aesthetic. But Full Moon was always quirkier, more experimental and modest in their conservativism. They tended to make fun of their own party and own up and disown the Nazism and McCarthyism. Now Hollywood's rightwing indulge in it thanks to dog whistles from Mel Gibson and our president. What a bleak future for the big studio movies. TV, comics and literature are guaranteed to gain the monopoly on progressive storytelling.

The mantra of this new Conservative cinema is appropriating mainstream genres, preaching a more inclusive facade but working to dismantle feminism, multiculturalism, atheism, anything too "arty". They are trying to give us Liberal filmmaking minus all the nasty Liberalism.

Creepshow 1982

I popped in some "comfort food" last night, a film I've watched maybe 100 times. Creepshow doesn't hold up too well by 2017 standards but its still an easy watch. I got the impression George Romero just scraped this together to pay some bills and try out ideas for Day of the Dead. He and Stephen King deserve credit for being the first filmmakers to translate the campy EC comics style to screen, inspiring TV shows like Monsters & Tales from the Crypt (and Tales from the Darkside: The Movie started as Creepshow 3). But Romero & King are merely serviceable and half-inspired here. The best features are John Harrison's beautifully creepy score, Tom Savini's FX and great Tobe Hooper/Dario Argento-esque cinematography from Michael Gornick. Creepshow would inspire so much of the look & tone of 2nd wave slashers like the NOES sequels and Return of the Living Dead. I have to say Creepshow retains more style & wit than most of the 80s horror in its wake. I think its importance is overshadowed by the much better films these guys made, but this was the "Grindhouse" of its day: a dream collaboration for genre fans that educated a new generation on pulpy horror.

One of the big knocks Creepshow has had is the standard knock on anthology films - Some stories are better than others, so viewers might not sit through those again to see the better sequences. I find this logic so dumb. Every film ever made has reels that are better than others. At least anthology films end the weak stories quickly and these films were a godsend to indie filmmakers like Romero who probably only had enough money to shoot so often. He could switch cast and locations at leisure and when he could borrow top talent. And the film has a spectacular cast. Adrienne Barbeau, Carrie Nye & Leslie Nielsen are excellent.

So the fashions and ideas are dated, the FX are far from cutting edge and the scares probably won't work on children today, but in context, this was a game-changer and very radical in some ways. Compare it to earlier horror films and you will appreciate it. And, without seeing 2017's version of IT, I already know that it is a pastiche of classic Stephen King films. They borrow the aesthetics of The Shining, Carrie, Creepshow, Stand By Me and slap them into a nostalgia ride for 80s horror fans and look like geniuses to the uninformed. Can't knock it because thats pretty much what Creepshow is. But its disparate inspirations are much cooler. M.R. James meets Lovecraft meets Vault of Horror meets Hammer, etc. I think it would be a much better film if King actually deconstructed these tropes more instead of just updating and crossbreeding them and Romero's directing is always a bit too uniform and commercial for my tastes, but he is a great example of a director who knew when to get out the way of his D.P., FX department and editor. So its a great education in low budget filmmaking, pop genre history & a cute nostalgic time-waster. A typical horror movie.

Amityville: The Awakening 2017

I checked this out because I was raised on low budget horror films. Amityville: The Awakening is like a culmination of where the genre is for better and worse. The film was shot in 2014, faced 2016 reshoots because of "negative" test screenings and was a sizable success in foreign theaters. In America it was just dumped out on streaming with no fanfare. Its a shame because this film is a great example of low budget TECHNOLOGY today. I'm talking practical gear like the excellent camera, lighting and editing we now have.

But its also so streamlined that basically every film produced on this economic level is the very same in aesthetics. Worse the budget & technical aspects determine the creative. This film is automatically stunted by the minimal script, shooting days, casting, FX, etc. And this is bare bones. The film is a Frankenstein of stale cliches dressed up in some modestly modern direction. The score is dead, the pace is too tranquil for a horror film and its an identical experience of the big budget exploitation that inspires it. Awakening has no respect for its shared history with the rest of cinema. Its a cold commercial enterprise with no morals or values to share. It sets up a lot of gritty, dark, nihilist tropes and then feeds you kind of warmed over, totally utilitarian philosophy about nothing. Its a great showing of materialism, escapism and maybe its a bit more progressive than horror films from 40 years ago look today, but its not as experimental or energized or focused on entertaining or engaging you in some beauty of its art.

Despite all of that I think Bella Thorne & Jennifer Jason Leigh do a lot to inject some life and honor in this bad movie. Its a waste of Thorne to be honest because she has too much range for such bad scripts but she makes it an opportunity to show her acting chops, which are still green but. being a child actor, she's definitely learned a lot from other actors. She gets a lot to sponge from Leigh who has always been a tragically powerful and very capable B-movie actress. I think Leigh is stronger than this film which hurts her performance a bit. There's no range to the character so her forceful acting seems campy & hammy, which she's done well avoiding in her career.

Do we blame the producer & director or the production company? I think we blame the banks that invest in these films. They demand films fit something old & popular over potentially being important & entertaining. "Awakening" is so beholden to the past and playing safe, just making a cheap buck and exploiting its workers. Also the film has a disgusting number of gratuitously sexual shots of an underage lead actress. No surprise that this has ties to the Weinsteins. And again its the same dreck they've put out for 20 years. So maybe the fault lies with the current studio heads running the film business into the ground.

Novocaine 2001 / The Fearless Vampire Killers 1967 / The House on Skull Mountain 1974

After 3 glowing reviews for 3 fun watches, here are the less favorable reviews. But these were interesting enough to write about (and not painful to watch). I wasn't shocked these films weren't successful but I'm glad they have some cache value now.

Novocaine is a weird comedy from the same year as 9/11. It represents that cold, moody, protestant (in the political & religious sense) era where the flippant, firm-standing 1990s became the wary, depressive, chaotic first decade of the 21st century. Now it was probably filmed in 2000, a very celebratory, radically progressive & casual time. Bill Clinton was a popular & socially melding president for most people, but he faced a tough scandal and society was very jaded & shaken up again. It was a flashback to Nixon's discrepancies and a quieted minority saw the dark cloud forming in the Middle East, Russia, Asia and within powerful Western institutions. It was a gray period where there wasn't much unrest or commotion but there was smoke still in the air.

Novocaine brought all of the mystique back. Its in every level of the production and the 1st time director David Atkins (who also wrote the film) knows that this moment is important. He makes it as ephemeral as possible, presenting a cartooned vision of the Y2K era. Stylistically, it almost reaches the clean design of a work of futurism or an avant garde play. And that was the actual commercial style of TV & film at that time. Its European, independent, retro, experimental. MTV video techniques mixed with French New Wave references and slasher film tropes pureed with primetime sitcom cues. It was just a surreal time for audiences. It was a collected & shared enterprise globally where everyone was happy and putting out the content they wanted and audiences respected.

While Novocaine isn't the best film of that year, its unique & full of ideas. It seems amateur by standards now and thats whats refreshing. This film is evidence that Hollywood can abandon the cookie cutter formula of glossy factory "product" and let movie-lovers make love movies for movie-lovers. Novocaine has its warts, but it doesn't offend the audience's intelligence ever. It might be a bit drab compared to fratboy comedies or too highfalutin for families. Its a tad derivative but its wide influences are a nice salad of Hitchcock, Tarantino, Wilder & Coen Bros. "Crime comedy" was kind of a saturated genre then, but at least Atkins nails the noir tones & gives his characters life. Watching the film in 2017, I'm reminded of most television now by the serio-comic aspects, the Euro-techno-Goth visuals. Its interesting how mediocrity from some years will stand up to the best work of other years, at least in films.

With all of the sexual abuse claims in Hollywood, I dared myself to review films from some controversial names this past month (strangely, TV was more than game to show these films despite the ostracization of current stars by Hollywood & streaming). I'm hesitant to cast out Woody Allen and I don't think Victor Salva is a threat to worry about, but Roman Polanski is a much scarier name now. He is a confirmed criminal who took illegal advantage of a VERY underage prostitute. But he is also a special case with uniquely tragic & unrepeatable circumstances. To complicate matters, he's regarded as one of the most important stylists and voices in Hollywood's modern golden age.

Now I've never been the biggest fan of him. I can dissect the brilliant economy and freshly gritty subtext of "Repulsion" but despite its towering influence, I think some parts of it are backwards and maybe offensive or toxic in their wrongness. Polanski injects his films with a sadistic, cynical, pessimistic & somewhat abusive philosophy. It wouldn't bother me too much but you can't divorce his films from the tragedy that derailed his career & the resulting crimes he committed.

FVK is a great snapshot of an enthusiastic, educated and subversive young talent. The film itself is a cynical exercise in deconstructing the vampire genre without much blood or brains beyond tricky technical shots and stunning, sometimes sexually perverse eye candy. Its a lot of surface without much substance. Really Polanski doesn't seem in love with the material, just using it as a stepping stone or calling card. It reminds me of newer directors like Denis Villeneuve and Damien Chazelle who think being stylish and sour is all it takes to be compared to  Kubrick or even a David Fincher. And an ignorant film public fell for it n 1967. To be fair, Polanski deserves high esteem for Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown. Polanski could make enlightened, important works of art when he was at his peak. But this isn't peak. Just a warm up for a star who burned out too soon.

The House on Skull Mountain is like so many blaxploitation films not made by black filmmakers or fans of the genre. Its conservative, pandering, backhanded & a brainless exploitation for profit. But sometimes these hired filmmakers found inspiration in the totally radicalized and relieved black talent of the post-Civil Rights era. Skull is taken with its subject matter of black lives, culture, religion and spirituality. Mostly the sexuality and heathen/dangerous persona inherited from white racism. Racism is never addressed here which may generalize it for some but legitimizes it for its target audience.

So few "black films" were allowed to embrace the honesty & grit of the Neorealists films that inspired the world at that time. Black films had to be gratuitous, simple and commercial by not shaking things up and usually playing to the status quo of white patrons. Skull Mountain would be remembered fondly if it had some of the black ideals that made 70s black culture so influential. The film cops out but its a fun disaster. Its kitschy, dated, too obtuse and half-baked. But there is an elevated air about it. The cast especially give 110% and you wonder why it didn't lead to better work for the cast, D.P., production design & special effects. But the answer is obvious when you consider the bland director, writer and producer probably got their positions from privilege and not talent or dedication.

T2 Trainspotting (2017) / Willard (1971) / The Passenger (1975)

Danny Boyle scored a real winner with T2, the best sequel/spinoff film I've seen this year. It respects the original so much because its a totally natural progression as a story & personal meta-narrative. T2 succeeds because its not someone new giving their version of the old vision. Its the original vision just 20 years more mature and established. So many corporate reboots fail because they decide on a fresh update and re-treading. Boyle makes a great theme out of the past and uses his first entry as a stylistic gimmick, but he (and the material itself) clearly state that they are not suckered by a cheap nostalgia tour. The film is helped tremendously thats its working off a sequel novel, but only loosely.

T2 won't get its props because its one of the rare higher profiled films this year that wasn't for kids, teens or families. This was the only mature 2017 film I've seen that wasn't partly trying to pass itself off as exploitation or a "popcorn film with a message". But the film isn't overly bleak. Its fun, gorgeous, experimental, sincere, thoughtful and a bit abrasive. Its a self-aware mid life crisis for the characters within and outside of it, including our society. Its not interested in returning to the70s, 80s & 90s but analyzing the changes, positive and negative, and celebrating LIFE 20 years later. Its so grateful for its audience and the opportunity to step back into its rare lot in cinema history.

I won't say its better than the original but maybe equal. I didn't want a Trainspotting sequel but this is the film I didn't know I needed. It totally recontextualizes and romanticizes and in some ways eclipses the original. Maybe this is easier to find in European cinema than in American when I think about the charming and welcomed Ab Fab film from a few years back. They are more accustomed to picking up stories again and respecting the virtues of storytelling in commercial filmmaking.

Willard took me by surprise too. I remember the stylish but hollow remake from the 2000s and that both films follow a 1967 novel. I expected a brainless Psycho ripoff with rats eating people. This is much more sophisticated, at least the script is. Its a very introspective study of society's victims and the realistic circumstances that leave them reduced to animal behavior to survive. Willard creates a complex, intelligent metaphor out of its title character. He's a true anti-hero or tragic hero. And the actor Bruce Davison does a lot of good work in the role.

Now the production is not so ambitious but quite memorable. Produced as studios faced a recession, Willard is shot closer to a B&W 1960s thriller TV series like Twilight Zone or Hitchcock Presents. Its very bare bones and muted, but this serves the tone of the film. There isn't much on suspense or action, so we the directing is focused on fleshed out performances and a sense of nerve that creeps up.

But the film is more than a serviceable adaptation of a good story. It surpasses the original text from my understanding in that Willard becomes a catalyst for the zeitgeist of angry youth. It worked well for the political climate then & now. Millennials will relate to the economic and generational abuse this character suffers. He rises into an avenging arm of rebellion, a Marxist. And he suffers a fate that is more poetic and radically leftist than his modest Poe-esque fate in the original tale. He becomes a mirror for the failures of the Love generation and a casualty of class warfare, selling out his own ideals by following the cycle of abuse he set out to destroy. Its heady, very appropriate and shocking for a low budget horror film that could've wasted effort on FX and decor (like the remake and surely the upcoming re-remake).

Jack Nicholson might be the greatest film actor of all-time by body of work. He's made a long list of excellent films because he's worked with some of the best directors of his era: Kubrick, Mike Nichols, Roger Corman, Polanski, Tim Burton, Scorsese and fit all of their esteemed aesthetics. The Passenger unites Jack with influential director Michelangelo Antonioni for a political/existentialist/postmodern/travelogue about identity and freedom. Antonioni loves to create surrogate characters of himself who take on harsh journeys into themselves to either triumph or crumble from their own reflection.

This is the 3rd Antonioni film I've watched and the 3rd in that timeline. Following Il Grido and Blow Up, The Passenger is an even wider and more abstract pilgrimage into the cinematic form. The director is fine playing off established tropes and motifs because he bends them in new ways, like he's revising a world view by performing the same story in vastly different ways. One big distinction is the change in female perspectives in these stories. In this one, Maria Schneider plays a radical youth who acts as a spirit guide or perhaps a siren who leads him to one of two fates. Antonioni might've been a Hitchcock fan because the film builds to an incredibly intense climax loaded with meanings.

"The Passenger" is a sure masterpiece like Blow Up before it, "Willard" is a very tuned in piece of mainstream-meets-counterculture that has aged terrifically & "T2" is a spiritual poem that lives up to the spiritual poem that inspired it. 3 great movies to enjoy forever.

Jeepers Creepers 3

I caught this despite the serious controversy around it. I knew the director served time for sex with a minor, but I didn't know that when I became a fan of the 1st film. It disturbs me but I trust the director is sorry for what he did and is probably just another artist trying to survive. I will feel terrible if Victor De Silva turns out to be some awful predator still, but I want to see new art so I watched his piece. Its a frigging free watch on cable, I'm not paying the guy. But it is odd that SyFy's politics allowed this. Progressive or just weird?

Anyway, its a decent sleepy watch. Not scary. Not overly entertaining. Not above the quality of a lot of "prestige" TV shows. It reminded me of bad straight-to-video horror sequels in the 1990s. Its the same kinda aesthetic & economic resources. The big difference is low budget technology has evolved and old cinematic tricks haven't aged. De Silva deserves credit for making a film that is well-crafted.

Thats about all I can say about it. I reviewed this film because I want to prove I'm fair. If I loved it I'd say it & if I hated it I would say it. This was super mediocre. The first film was a genuinely creepy minimalist horror film from the bleakness of the 9/11 era. The 2nd film was a campy, pervy softcore teen porno spoofing the sado porn of straight teen horror softcore pornos. Neither is great, but its unique and darkly human.

Pt 3 was hollow, stilted, gratuitous, depressive, uninformative and a little uniform. Its better than much of 2010s' ' horror, but its so dependent on Netflix, Hollywood, old horror classics, some obscure foreign influences & ESPECIALLY The Walking Dead.

This film wasn't as creative or worthwhile (or cinematic) as Cult of Chucky. Stick with that film. JC3 is just kinda gross & creepy and not in the good & honest way. We can pull the plug on this kinda Hollywood surviving.

Cult of Chucky 2017

The Child's Play franchise will go down as the best of the 80s slasher franchises that dominated pop culture once. Chucky has outlived & outclassed the likes of Freddy, Jason, Pinhead & the others. Only Leatherface stands next to Chucky as both had new films this year, but Child's Play has retained most of its first predecessor's charm, intelligence & horror credibility by keeping the voice of its creator. No, the Child's Play producers have gone a step further and given the auteurist credit solely to the writer by letting him direct. And Don Mancini has evolved into a formidable & singular talent. He's already one of the supreme directors of low budget horror IMO.

"Cult" follows the very strong "Curse of Chucky" from 2013 (the same year as TC3D hmm). That film was a pseudo-reboot that returned the film to its Urban Gothic roots as a serious mind-bending supernatural stalker film with a psychotic twist. That film was also built on Mancini's economical crafting of a vintage Hammer Studio-like atmosphere & VERY sharp social awareness and genre postmodernism & it was a much more successful experiment than the misunderstood and less popular Seed of Chucky.

Cult is not as successful as Curse, but there is so much to recommend. The plot is cleverly weaved, witty in its plot twists, surprisingly lyrical for a Chucky film and very hard to classify. Like Antonioni's Blow Up, the films of David Lynch & many European styled films, the main gimmick is perception. This is the most essential but underutilized theme in telling a story on film. Mancini has done his homework and even stretches it a bit. He makes some interesting comments about the nature of truth, reality, sanity, society & morality. The film works like an old school art film, not like a killer doll movie. In fact, there might not be enough Chucky for slasher fans. I think its an okay trade-off.

It fun to let the other characters in the Chucky myth basically drive the entire plot. Chucky becomes a Hitchcockian "McGuffin". He ties these vastly different perspectives together and represents different psychological traumas for them & that works best after 6 movies. These characters being the leads in different chapters all meeting for the first time. Very cool.

I was a bit disappointed in the resolution. It was more neat, bleak and open-ended than the previous endings. Even that is a twist on typical slasher sequel expectations. It leaves us in a new territory thats more abstract and gritty than anything in the other Chucky stories. I'm totally sold on Mancini's direction for the next film as its shaping up to be a very personal epic saga of his own demons & angels. 

THX 1138 (Director's Cut) / Urban Cowboy / Night of the Demon

Watched the good part of THX 1138, the re-edited version from the 2000s. I didn't like my experience but I'm intrigued by the original 70s footage. I haven't seen the original film (but I do like the short film that inspired it), but this seems like a warped experience of a decent esoteric "futurist" film. A lot of it is lost with too much deleted footage of nothingness and pretty shiny objects. Very Kenneth Anger. Obviously very similar to Lucas' student films of cars driving. He's a technician who writes about technology so he can film technology. Thankfully he writes about the dangers to be avoided. He tries to make some political statement. Its topical, generational and not evergreen humor or referencing, but the rest of the film is so innovative and oddly moving, that I give it a pass. Hopefully the 70s cut is more watchable and less ridiculous and pretentious. Like WB took the film from Lucas when they saw how extreme & crazed his vision was. So this new version is the matured, successful, commercialized Lucas trying to correct his old mistakes or insert new theories. He's a fascinating director. As experimental as can be, yet as commercial as can be. I might re-review the Lucas remix after watching the original.

Urban Cowboy was a bore for me because it too predictable in its wholesomeness. And its wholesomeness seemed a bit cheated and dishonest. It tries to be Earthy and only erects a Broadway style of artificiality that is aesthetically tranquil but also lifeless dramatically. The plot is low on conflict and the resolution is ambiguous, tame and not even hopeful. The concept of the plot is good: two people marry quickly and then wonder if they should get divorced. They both find the ideal partner they've always lusted, but realize its better to settle for less because they belong together.

Both characters are written as dumb, impulsive, naive, selfish, incompetent and unaware of love's meaning. But they find love together. Thats a warm romantic type plot of the 1950s. But its dressed up in the culture of honky tonk big city cowboy culture. It paints a picture of accepted hopelessness and insulated ignorance. But its never satirical or cruel to them for being so imperfect. The kinds of films Robert Evans and other Hollywood filmmakers were starting to make after Coppola's Godfather were based on the realism and post-structuralism of the arthouse. But few grasped the original Neorealist movement and interpreted badly, Urban Cowboy being one.

Its glossy, crafted simply and somewhat true to its sources. But its not provoking thought, addressing issues or mining for truth outside of its inherited tropes & cliches. There are lots of films like this where Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney types, "All-American kids" triumph over the complex, damaged, truly vulnerable figures explored in foreign films. This is rightwing propaganda made in reaction to true art of radicals who were fighting oppression and economic ruin elsewhere. Hollywood films like this are sour and it highlights the drastic decline of quality after the 70s boom. Where everything became dumbed down beer for the masses to sleep easier. Lets study films like these but not give them too much credit beyond "pretty, watchable pap".

My horror pick was Night of the Demon (Curse of the Demon in America because they still missed using the N-word). I've watched this film a few times as I've aged and it only grows bigger and better. This is a very, very classy, thoughtful, open-minded, fair study of the power of dark occult knowledge. Unfortunately, it was sold as a money-making popcorn horror film and the producer inserted some gratuitous, extremely dating monster footage in what was a pretty undated work of cinema from Jacques Tournier of "Cat People" fame. This truncated version isn't at all bad because of it, but you thirst for the original vision, especially when the significant edge of the final scene is lost because of too many dollars thrown at the screen. Check it out the UK version first and then move on to the U.S., trust me!

Curse of the Cat People 1944

This review ties into my recent musings on sequels & reboots. Here is a sequel made 70 years ago that stands perfectly as its own film AND as an original continuation.

"Curse" was commissioned because Cat People was a massive low budget hit and producer Val Lewton saw a great opportunity to use the publicity of the first film to make something even more radical and personal. Its so far removed from the first Cat People in genre, structure, casting and message. Its the opposite of the carbon copy reboots we are subjected to now.

The original was an erotic thriller about "the were-cat" that kept its supernatural elements ambiguous. The sequel is a sentimental ghost story/character study about children that also keeps its supernatural elements ambiguous. Curse never contradicts or reduces or copies the original. The best way to look at it is an origin story told through another character. Both of these protagonists are damaged young women and while the first is an epic tragedy, the sequel is an epilogue that offers some redemption for our fallen heroine.

Ya know, factoring in Paul Schrader's remake from the 1980s, Cat People is the most artful and rewarding franchise in horror. All 3 films are delicious, respectful exercises in film poetry that redefine their expected place in canon. Its also one of the few franchises that has some basic aesthetic lineage throughout the films, probably because it takes a higher class of filmmaker to make them & we weren't bogged down in endless, exploitative entries.

Check this one out. Not your average horror film. Its flawlessly shot, lovingly produced, competently directed, etc etc. It fits in with The Godfather 2 & The Road Warrior as one of the most perfect sequels yet made. 

Leatherface 2017

I caught this last month and let it gel in my psyche a bit. The film was shot in 2015 and the anticipation was unbearable for me. I love the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre as much as I love any film and I have issues with all of its sequels/side-quels/requels/reboots/remakes/pre-boots. Can you believe this is TCM 8? Sigh.

So its an atmospheric, sadistic, kitschy, pretentious type of horror movie. Thats actually not that unusual these days. I actually wished they kept the uber-modern "popcorn" Saw vibe of TC3D, but no go. Stylistically this is the film that the franchise needed a few movies back. Its got way more teeth & class than the influential but numb 2003 remake. And its actually a psychological thriller unlike half the damn movies. Most important, Leatherface has the most original Chainsaw plot since the original. All of the other films are light remakes with varying degrees of original execution. LF fails on that front. It could've worked commercially or artistically if it had a more unusual approach instead of the "let's be 1970s! lets be as faithful as possible!" thing.

Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury are a pair of remodernist fanboy directors from France. They make Alexandre Aja style gore films (a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox...), each a take off of some great horror director. They made a really crappy Tobe Hooper-inspired film called Among the Living, so they got this job. If you've seen their Argento-inspired film "Inside" or the... Argento-inspired "Livid", you know these guys are great stylists who have no concept of realism, logic or storytelling. But they can light the Hell out of a scene and squirt blood everywhere. Oddly, even with a semi-Hollywood budget, this is not the bloodbath or visual feast I expected. Bummer.

Redeeming it is the script by some Millennial screenwriting teacher. Its more of a deconstruction of modern teen horror, backwoods slashers and "Badlands" style hostage films. Yeah, its basically a poor man's Devil's Rejects, which wasn't a good film itself. At least this film isn't so gimmicky. Or its gimmicks are more interesting. This is a very nasty film. Lots of gross setpieces and inexplicably evil or stupid cartoon characters everywhere. Maybe its just the lifeless interpretation of the directors tho. Apparently the film was supposed to end with an elaborate massacre inspired by Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. So it was supposed to be campy. The whole thing would've worked if it didn't try to make a serious film out of such a tired and illogical premise. Again, this is hardly based on TCM. You get the impression it was an original script that had Leatherface & fam shoehorned in. That actually worked with a couple Hellraiser sequels and could've worked here if the writer were more original and the directors camped it up.

Fanboy note, the origin given is hilariously lame but also effective in the sincerity of its "14 year old at Hot Topic" angst. This is going to become a bonehead classic to the next generation of horror fans and thats serviceable. Tobe Hooper died the week that this thing debuted which is meaningful in some way. Maybe this is the last Massacre. Eh, I'm cool with that.

*In retrospect, I'm quite fond of this modest low budget film. Mainly for its style and production, but also the hammy acting, the muddled occult references and a genuine obtuseness that shines compared to something like "Amityville: The Awakening". Leatherface is a mixed bag with some great parts and hopefully its enough to re-energize the franchise and get these directors some real work.