Underwater

Underwater

2020

Director- William Eubank

Cast- Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick, T.J. Miller, John Gallagher Jr., Mamoudou Athie

   

    O.K. disclaimer, I may or may not have a bit of a crush on Kristen Stewart that clouds my judgment when appraising this film. Now that my journalistic integrity is still intact, let us proceed.

            

    This film is exactly what you think it is. A group of people are trapped underwater and plagued by monsters.  If you are expecting more than that, you will disappointed. I don’t want to give anything away more than that as far as the plot goes because you may be planning to see it soon and I don’t want to spoil anything, except to say that the scale of the monsters is such that if you can see it while It’s on the big screen, all the better.

            

     I’ve read a lot of comparisons of this to Alien which I think is an unfair comparison. Alien is one of the best (maybe THE best) sci-fi / horror films ever. Comparing anything to that is like comparing something to Seven Samurai or Casablanca. While the film is obviously visually influenced by Alien (the costumes and set designs specifically), you can say the same thing for most of the sci-fi horror films that have come out since Alien (take for instance Event Horizon).  The aesthetics aside, the film is nothing like Alien. Alien builds the tension slowly, revealing one new horror only after we think we have gotten over the previous one. Underwater gets to the action quickly. Within the first five minutes of the film, calamity has hit and people are dying.  If Alien is like a haunted house, Underwater is more like a disaster movie (with monsters).

            

   It offers a lot to scare you with; extreme claustrophobia, the fears of drowning, darkness, suffocation, isolation and gruesome death from either being devoured or crushed by the ocean depths. The film moves along very quickly and intensely, so you better hit the bathroom before you go in.

            

     It has a very small cast which helps because you can get to know everyone quickly. Vincent Cassel as the captain was a great choice to play the older, wizened veteran amongst a younger crew. Kristen Stewart, as the protagonist, does the heavy lifting appearing in every scene. She does a good job and I want lie, seeing her in a skimpy outfit didn’t hurt my opinion.

           

     Looking at Kristen’s short blonde hair, you’d think this film was shot back to back with the ill-fated Charlie’s Angel reboot from 2019. But no, this film was actually completed, and has been sitting on a shelf since 2017. Like many films made recently by Fox, when the Disney buy out was looming, many projects just got put on hold until the new corporate masters could decide what they wanted to do (the hopefully upcoming New Mutants is another one in that same category). I have to wonder if Disney was actually planning on making money on this film or just using it as a tax write off. Releasing it opposite of this year’s Oscar magnet, 1917, WHILE Star Wars and Frozen 2 are still in the theatre (both Disney movies that have each made over a billion dollars each) makes me wonder how serious they were about getting their money back. The film will most likely bomb in the theatre, but perhaps it can still find a fan base.

            

The good- It moves at a very swift pace. Also, there is no explanation of what the monsters are, which I think adds to the film. Are they mutants? The spawn of Cthulhu? You decide.

            

The bad- It feels like there is about 15 or 20 minutes missing. 

            

The Ugly- A close-up of T.J. Miller’s ass in a pair of shredded underwear.

            

     Conclusion- Don’t expect The Abyss. There are only so many James Camerons in the world. However, if you like aquatic monster films like Leviathan, Deepstar Six and Deep Rising, you will like Underwater.

The Dead Zone

  

The Dead Zone

1983

Director- David Cronenberg

Cast- Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen, Nicholas Campbell, Simon Craig, Géza Kovác

            

     Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter, Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow) plays Johnny Smith, a high school English teacher. He is very much in love with his fellow teacher Sarah (Brooke Adams, probably best known as Elizabeth from Invasion of the Body Snatchers). On his way home from dropping her off after a date, he has an accident and crashes his car. The next thing he knows, he is waking up in some kind of hospital. Much to his surprise, he finds out that he has been in a coma for five years!

            

     Along with his body deteriorating, he has to face the fact that he has lost his job and worst of all, his girlfriend. Sarah has long since moved on, having married and given birth to a child. While convalescing in his bed he makes physical contact with a nurse attending to him and he has a vision of her house burning, her daughter trapped inside. Appropriately freaked out, Johnny tells the nurse and she races home, just in time to save her daughter.

            

     Johnny’s doctor is intrigued by this (played by the wonderful character actor Herbert Lom who starred in Spartacus, Mark of the Devil, 99 Women, and a hundred other things). After doing some research, he is convinced that Johnny has developed some kind of precognitive ability. Word gets out about Johnny’s power and he becomes a local celebrity (or freak depending on your point of view). 

            

      A string of brutal murders has been plaguing the town, stretching back to when Johnny was still in his coma. The town sheriff (Tom Skerritt from Alien and Top Gun) asks Johnny to use his special talents to help him solve the crime. He initially refuses but later agrees after a brief but passionate reunion with Sarah. After the murder is solved, and Sarah has left his life again, Johnny decides to move to another town in order to escape his notoriety.

           

      A local millionaire (Anthony Zarbe from The Omega Man and the Matrix trilogy) has a son who is withdrawn and hopes that Johnny can reach him. Johnny is able to and while visiting, sees the kid’s father having a meeting with a loud mouth politician (played by Martin Sheen). Another chance meeting with the politician allows Johnny a vision of the future and he sees that the man will one day be President and start World War 3. Johnny is faced with the dilemma of what to do.

            

     The movie was based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. Interestingly, before Christopher Walken was cast, Bill Murry was considered for the role and was, in fact, who King had in mind. I would love to have seen that take on the film!

            

     David Cronenberg (Shivers, The Fly, Video Drome) is best known as the father of body horror. The Dead Zone differs from most of his other films of the 70s and 80s as the terror is not an alteration of the body but of the mind. Johnny doesn’t just flirt with madness, we see the toll that his gift takes as he becomes depressed and worn down.

            

    Likewise, this was a departure for Christopher Walken as well. He usually plays very intense, animated characters. Here, he turns in a very nuanced ,at times touching, performance.

            

     Of the many adaptations of King’s works, The Dead Zone remains one of the most respected and best loved. Whereas with It, the strength is in the power of the source material, with The Dead Zone, I think its power comes from its strong cast and direction. Ultimately, it is less of a plot driven movie and more of a character study. Not a scary movie, but a thought provoking thriller.

 

Not of This Earth

 

Not of This Earth

1988

Director- Jim Wynorski

Cast- Traci Lords, Arthur Robert, Lenny Juliano, Ace Mask, Roger Lodge, Rebecca Perle, Michael Delano, Becky LeBeau, Monique Gabrielle, Monique Gabrielle, Kelli Maroney

            

     An alien who looks like one of the MIBs lands on Earth and the first thing he does is kill a couple of kids engaging in some premarital sex and drain them of their blood. The second thing that he does is burst into a doctor’s office and demand a blood transfusion. The nurse, Nadine, (Traci Lords) tries asking him some questions but he refuses to give any answers.

            

     The stranger (Arthur Robert), going by the name of “Mr. Johnson” does the Jedi mind trick on Nadine’s boss, Dr. Rochelle. Rochelle agrees to perform the transfusion and to study Mr. Johnson’s blood for anomalies. Johnson offers Nadine a job as his in-home nurse for the sum of 2 grand a week.  Nadine arrives at Johnson’s mansion and meets Jeremy (Lenny Juliano) a charming con who serves as Johnson’s chauffer, cook, and guard.

            

    Nadine gives Johnson daily transfusions of blood while Jeremy minds the house but they both notice strange things going on. As Jeremy puts it, the house is a roach motel where people check in but they don’t check out. Nadine and Jeremy decide to do some clandestine snooping but they won’t like what they find out.

           

     Johnson is from a planet where the population has been poisoned by radiation. They have all developed a disorder that causes their blood to dry up, hence Johnson’s need for transfusions. Johnson’s job is to find a suitable planet for the survivors of his race to relocate to, a place where they can live off of the blood of the inhabitants.

           

    Not of this Earth forms a kind of intersection for various parts of B-movie culture. It is a remake of the 1957 Roger Corman film of the same name. In fact, the movie began as a bet that the director made that he could remake the film for same budget as the original (inflation adjusted) and on the same schedule (12 days).

   As for the director, even if you don’t know his name, you are familiar with Jim Wynorski’s works (if you like B-movies that is).  In the 80s and 90s he directed Chopping Mall, Return of the Swamp Thing, Transylvania Twist, and Sorority House Massacre II. In the years since he has specialized in naughty nudy pics like The Bare Wench Project franchise and Syfy animal mashups like Piranhaconda and Cobragator.

Of course, the main attraction here was Traci Lords. This movie marked her transition into “mainstream” movies after her much publicized exit from porn. Obviously her name recognition was meant to increase interest in the movie and it worked. The film was very successful, especially in the home video market. But Lords brought a lot to the film besides her obvious tangible charms. She took to the role of leading lady easily and convincingly. Granted, the part wasn’t Lady Macbeth, but she seemed a natural. Lords’ initial film trajectory seemed certain to make her either a Scream Queen or an independent film icon. She starred in the comedy Fast Food (1989) with Earnest himself Jim Varney, the John Waters film Cry Baby (1990), the B-movie Shock ‘Em Dead (1991), The Tommyknockers (1993), a small role in the Denzel Washington sci-fi thriller Virtuosity (1995) and a small but very memorable role in the awesome Blade (1998).Although Lords has maintained steady work, she never really became the Scream Queen that she could have. I don’t know if that was Traci’s choice or just the way things worked out.

            

    This is a fun film and the best kind of B-movie. It takes the art of film making seriously but doesn’t take itself seriously. The actors turn in good performances, the effects are adequate for the budget, it has witty dialogue, a good soundtrack, good editing etc. but the movie never tries to be more than what it is; a low budget sci-fi horror-comedy. It is very tongue in cheek and not scary at all, but it keeps your interest throughout.

                     

Shivers

Shivers (The Parasite Murders ,They Came from Within)

1975

Director- David Cronenberg

Cast- Paul Hampton, Lynn Lowry, Joe Silver, Alan Migicovsky, Susan Petrie, Barara Steele, Ronald Mlodzik, Barry Boldero, Cathy Graham, Fred Doederlein

From Canada

          

  

   The story opens, alternating between two scenes, one wholesome, one disturbing.  A young couple, looking for a home, is being shown around an apartment building by a broker, extolling the virtues of the apartment complex. Meanwhile, in one of the apartments, a middle aged man is brutalizing a young girl in a school uniform. He incapacitates her, strips her, and then starts performing surgery. After he’s done, he slits his own throat.

            

   The story takes place over the course of a day in a luxury apartment building on an island in Canada. The apartment is a self-contained community with shops, recreational areas, and its own medical facilities. Roger St. Luc (Peter Hampton) is the doctor at the clinic, attended by his nurse/ girlfriend, Forsythe (Lynn Lowry, who couldn’t have been sexier if she had tried). He becomes aware, though various intersecting circumstances, of a potential outbreak.

            

    The middle aged man that we saw at the beginning of the film was Dr. Hobbs. He was working on a breakthrough procedure for people with organ failure. Rather than a transplant, they would receive a special parasite. This parasite would make its way to the failing organ, and replace it. As it turns out, Dr.Hobbs may have had some other plans for the parasite as well as it is contagious, spread through sex, and has aphrodisiac powers. The girl he murdered was his test subject, and sex partner, Annabelle. The parasite apparently turned up Annabelle’s sex drive because she infected several men in the apartment complex before Hobbs could kill her.

            

    One of the men she infected was Nicholas (Alan Migicovsky, who looked so much like David Schwimmer that I kept thinking it was him though the whole film). Nicholas seems to have become a breeding factory for the parasites. He vomits them up and they scurry through the building, infecting new hosts. One of the people that gets infected is a single lady (played by horror legend Barbara Steele) who seems to have the hots for Nicholas’ wife.

            

    The contagion spreads geometrically through the building turning each person into a lust driven maniac capable of rape and murder. The apartment complex degenerates into a violent orgy. Meanwhile Roger and Forsythe try to get a handle on what’s happening while trying to avoid infection themselves.

            

    David Cronenberg is the patriarch of the body horror genre. Shivers was not the first film in the genre, but it was the first film to explore the ideas so effectively and thoroughly. The idea of infection is pretty standard in horror today thanks to the Romero zombie, but Shivers was ahead of its time, predating public awareness of HIV, Ebola and all of the micro-organisms that fuel our subconscious fears of contamination. The real genius of this film is making the infection an STD. Sex brings in religious and moral elements not associated with other infections. By turning the infected maniacs into rapists, violation is added to the contamination.

           

   Though the film was financially successful it was panned by critics and denounced by members of the press and the Canadian Parliament for its sex and violence. Not only did this make it harder for Cronenberg (initially) to get funding for future films, his landlord kicked him out of his apartment! Well, the joke is on all of them because now Cronenberg is a respected elder statesman of horror and has directed many influential films (the most influential probably being his remake of The Fly).

Fun fact: Outside of acting, Paul Hampton, the film’s protagonist, had a very successful career as a song writer. His most famous song is “Sea of Heartbreak” (heard at the beginning of the Clint Eastwood movie, Heartbreak Ridge).

Fun fact #2: This was not Lynn Lowry’s first “infection” movie, it was her third! She also starred in I Drink Your Blood in 1970 and George Romero’s The Crazies in 1973.

  

New Year's Evil

 

New Year’s Evil

1980

Director- Emmett Alston

Cast- Roz Kelly, Kip Niven, Chris Wallace, Grant Cramer, Jennie Franks

            

    This convoluted slasher is just what you need if you are craving some cheesy 80s horror. It’s from Cannon so you know you’re in for something entertaining, if cheap.

           

     Dianne (Roz Kelly) is a celebrity hosting a televised New Year’s Eve party that will ring in the year 4 times, once for each time zone in the continental U.S. She gets a phone call from a deranged sounding man (Kip Niven) saying that he is going to kill someone for each hour of the New Year.

            

      Sure enough, as the New Year rings in on the East Coast, he murders someone, tapes it, and plays the recording to Dianne over the phone. The police get involved and the killer strikes again when the New Year hits the Central time zone. Will he be caught before he finishes his plan? Why is he doing this? Mixed in with this clever plot is an unnecessary distracting family side plot about an unloved son who likes to wear stockings on his head.

            

     At first glance, this is a low budget slasher. At second glance, it is still a low budget slasher. But on third glance, the genius of this movie becomes evident. Now don’t get me wrong. This isn’t Psycho or Silence of the Lambs. This is a Cannon film, after all. What makes this movie different from the mountain of other 80s slashers is that the slasher is the protagonist! Dianne and her New Year’s party are just the plot device, the slasher is the focus, not the “final girl.”

            

     As he is trying to carry out his second murder he runs into complications. He’s stuck in traffic with an airhead girl blathering on about “trancendental meditation” and “transactional analysis” (that’s about as early 80s as you can get). Anyone who has ever been pressed for time on a deadline can totally relate to his frustration. When he runs afoul of a biker gang, his intricate plot unravels and he has to make do with what he can. Watching it, you are rooting for him to get away from them, if for no other reason than to see how he will finish his plan.

           

     Its cleverness aside, the movie is a time capsule of late 70s / early 80s pop culture. Roz Kelly, who plays Dianne, is best known as Pinky Tusccadero from Happy Days, but she also made appearances on Love Boat, Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, The Dukes of Hazzard and Fantasy Island. Kip Niven, who plays the killer starred in several episodes of Alice and The Waltons. Louisa Moritz, one of his victims, made appearances on The Rockford Files, M.A.S.H. and The Incredible Hulk. Taaffe O'Connell, another of the victims, starred in Galaxy of Terror the following year.  Teri Copley, the buxom girl who escapes the killer, was the star of the 80s sitcom, We Got it Made , and a ton of TV movies before appearing on the cover of Playboy.

Fun Fact: the director, Emmett Alston, directed not one, not two, but three different ninja movies!

 

An Angel for Satan

  

An Angel for Satan

1966

Director- Camillo Mastrocinque

Cast- Barbara Steele, Claudio Gora, Anthony Steffen, Marina Berti, Ursula Davis, Vassili Karis, Mario Brega, Aldo Berti

From Italy

            

    Roberto (Steffen) ,an artist who specializes in restorations, has been summoned to a lakeside village by the local aristocrat, Conte Montebruno (Gora). A drought has caused the lake to drop revealing a long lost statue. The Conte wants the statue restored but the local villagers believe that the statue is cursed and that restoring it will only bring misfortune. Naturally, Roebrto is met with suspicion and aggression. Meanwhile, the Conte’s niece, Harriet (Barbara Steele) has recently arrived. She has been away since she was a child and, having now come of age, is about to receive an inheritance.

            

     As we find out, the statue is cursed. Or so it seems. Harriet bears a striking resemblance to the figure and the Conte tells her that the statue is the likeness of one of her ancestors. Roberto is visited by a vision that tells him that the spirit of a woman named Belinda is attached to the statue. Belinda was always jealous of the woman who inspired the statue. All of the men ignored her for the more beautiful woman and Belinda died, drowned, pushing the statue into the lake. Now Belinda has possessed Harriet and is exacting her revenge.

         

      Harriet /Belinda goes through the town seducing various people and enticing them to do evil. She seduces the town bully and drives him to murder his family, drives the town idiot wild with lust pushing him to murder a young girl, seduces her maid and convinces her to dump her boyfriend which drives him to suicide and toys with Roberto’s emotions. The villagers accuse Harriet of being a witch and want her head. Only Roberto suspects that things are not as they seem. It reminded me of Needful Things in that she isn’t really doing the horrible deeds as much as providing the motivation for others to do them.

           

     There is a “twist” ending that (in my opinion) detracts from the overall story, but this is still a movie worth seeing, especially for Barbara Steele fans. This was the fourth movie where she played multiple characters (Black Sunday ,Nightmare Castle and The Long Hair of Death being the others). Like Black Sunday, she alternates between virtuous and vile and Steele had a real knack for this.

    I think this was her best performance after Black Sunday. She really turns on the erotic charm. She is not coquettish or demure. She seems to take a real pleasure in watching the men debase themselves. One particularly erotic scene is just her looking in the mirror, very much in love with ,and turned on by, her own reflection.

            

     This was the last of Barbara’s Italian gothic movies. Whether this was by design or not, I don’t know. It also served as the zenith of her career. The American and British film makers never utilized her as effectively and her movies after this were in smaller supporting roles.

  

The Ghost

 

The Ghost

1963

Director- Riccardo Freda

Cast- Barbara Steele, Peter Baldwin, Elio Jotta, Harriet Medin, Carol Bennet, Carlo Kechler

            

    Dr. Hichcock has been stricken with a debilitating disease that has bound him to a wheelchair. He has developed a type of chemotherapy that he believes will cure him though it makes him deathly ill. This predicament seems to have left him a bit morose and death obsessed. He contemplates suicide and regularly participates in séances.

            

    Well, be careful what you wish for I guess. His wife Margaret (played by Barbara Steele) is tired of playing nurse maid and is having an affair with her husband’s doctor. They conspire and murder her husband. The last laugh may be on them though. His safe containing millions of dollars in jewels is locked and apparently the key was buried with him. What’s worse are the foreboding signs of the supernatural; bells ringing, dogs howling, the maid in a trance, speaking with Dr. Hichcock’s voice.

            

   A bit of grave robbing to retrieve the safe key reveals a rotting corpse but the old man is still having his revenge as the safe turns out to be empty. Tension is rising between the lovers as the murder is not paying off the way they had hoped.  One night her rotting husband appears before her and Margaret tries to shoot him and only succeeds in filling the wall with bullet holes. The pair become paranoid, turning on each other. But what is behind all of this? Has her husband returned from the grave or is someone conning them? Are they conning each other?

            

    The film is one of the many movies influenced by the 1955 French film, Les Diaboliques. The revenge from beyond the grave plot was used in several Barbara Steele movies  so it can be a little hard to tell them apart. Despite the name of her husband, the film has nothing to do with another Barbara Steele movie, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock.

            

     A predictable movie if you are familiar with Italian gothic horror but good for some surprises.  It does have one big saving grace ; it offers the rare chance to see a young Barbara Steele in glorious color!