Month: April 2022

  • Living with the Dead (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) By the time some movies show up on French-Canadian TV, a lot of the context around them has been removed, changed or evolved beyond initial intentions. This is not necessarily a bad thing: The steamroller effect of presenting everything as just another TV guide entry is like a bulldozer flattening preconceptions about what’s a prestige big-budget release, a direct-to-streaming cheap production or something even stranger. For Living with the Dead, for instance, it pops up on a horror-dedicated channel as a single staggering four-hour-long film, with a cast including well-known names such as Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Ladd, Jack Palance and Queen Latifah (in an admittedly early role). What this obscures is that it began life as a two-part made-for-network-TV film, with some marquee names in small quick roles. As such, it does present a different kind of experience than a quick 90-minute horror film, and one that works to the film’s advantage in many ways. Adapted from a “true story,” Living with the Dead follows a man as he realizes that he can see and communicate with the ghosts of dead people, and tell the future from touching other (living) people. Far from immediately focusing on the horrific potential, the film is at its best and most distinctive in how it presents this ability as comforting – a way to warn, to make things right with the living, to resolve long-standing questions. The made-for-TV slow pacing of the story is most appropriate to those early and middle segments of the film, with overlapping episodes that don’t necessarily rush from one plot point to another – this isn’t structured along a familiar three-act pattern. Of course, that doesn’t make for much drama over the long-term, and that’s how a much grimmer story of child abduction keeps brewing throughout the film, finally becoming the dominant plotline in the last half-hour of the show. While the length of the result will prove overpowering if you’re expecting a short and snappy horror film, the result is not bad if you approach it with the right expectations. Danson is better than usual (especially at that time in his filmography) in a non-comedic role, while Steenburgen is just as compelling as usual as a police detective. Horror fans can tune out for much of Living with the Dead and have their attention snap back by the end. A better-than-average “made-for-TV” movie, especially if you can make your peace with the running time.

  • Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) Now here’s a weird one – a very low-budget science fiction film blending semi-philosophical themes with stoner comedy and elementary thriller elements. We begin in a dorm room, where an absurdly intelligent young man wakes up next to a naked and equally brainy young woman. So far so good – except when it looks as if they’re the last remaining people on campus, that it becomes clear that the young man is trying to escape Earth, that the young woman has unresolved issues echoing from her past as a devout Catholic, and that men-in-black “agents” are after them with unfriendly intentions. Clearly put together with twine and good intentions, Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime is a film that seems to have one set (the dorm room), access to a campus for some early-morning location shooting, and one green screen used for everything else. Half the cast of six are also producers or writers-directors (Jonathan T. Baker and Bo D.) Most of the film is a running dialogue between Lexie Lowell and Jeff Kenny, as the film plays with science fiction tropes in decidedly irreverent terms, clearly stemming from a tradition of stoner comedies more than anything else. A strange fog permeates the cinematography (it may be a digitally-added fog, and this is not an exaggeration), which reflects the aimless, sometimes amiable way the film goes about telling its story, moving from the dorm room to a car and then again to the dorm room in time for the universe-saving climax. Scatological humour becomes as important as digressions about the nature of time, multiverses, religion and quantum physics – while sitting on the toilet to save the universe. It’s cheap, incoherent, and probably not as clever as it thinks it is and yet Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime does make for interesting viewing. It’s got an endearing DIY energy to it, some rough 1980s-style charm and a willingness to go down some strange pathways, despite having only a faction of the means required to do justice to its vision. Lowell looks cute in thigh-high white stockings and makes a great straight-woman to the wild antics of her on-screen partner, while Kenny looks as if he digested everything from Young Einstein to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to Real Genius in his quest to play a stoner genius. This is not a movie for everyone, but if you happen to be on or around the same strange vibe as its creators, then there’s a chance you’ll keep watching just to see where it’s going. (The answer, a Russian rap video, is not at all what was expected.)  Putting on my (retired) Science Fiction movie critic’s hat, I find that Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime is one more good example of how SF tropes are making their way not just in the mainstream, but in other subcultures that are ready to put their own spin on them. The result is a fascinating cross-hybridization of themes and approaches. At least for some viewers.

  • Goodbye Again (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) There is a lot in Goodbye Again that I like, so it would make sense that I’d like it all, right? Take middle-aged Ingrid Bergman (a beauty at any age) as a Frenchwoman, a prime-era Yves Montand as her philandering boyfriend, a young and not-yet-typecast Anthony Perkins as her younger lover, the atmosphere of early-1960s Paris, Classic Hollywood Francophilia and, logically, the film should be at least the sum of its parts. Alas… Goodbye Again, while not a bad movie, does aim for a very specific kind of romantic drama, gender-flipping familiar tropes to show a woman hesitating between an age-appropriate but unfaithful partner and a much younger one. It’s not a bad premise (and there’s certainly an appreciative audience for such can’t-win situations) but the execution can be trying at times – the situation is clear early but the film continues to trample that familiar ground until it ends. The mood is glum, which marks a contrast with the rather free-wheeling atmosphere of Paris as depicted in the film (with none other than Diahann Carroll showing up briefly as a nightclub singer). Black-and-while cinematography, while the norm for such character-based dramas at the time, also takes away from what should be a colourful setting. Perkins is a bit too perky to be fully believable, even if Bergman is her irreproachable self and Montand is up to his usual standards, especially in playing a cad. So, I remain only half-satisfied by Goodbye Again and its inevitable downbeat ending – it gets what it goes for, but what it goes for is not as impressive as what it could have gone for.

  • House of Good and Evil (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) From the get-go, House of Good and Evil has a cheap-and-fast feeling that doesn’t bode well: As an urban couple moves to the countryside to save their marriage after a miscarriage and some domestic violence, the film’s accidental cinematography and harsh images don’t set an auspicious tone. Neither do the various dumb character decisions that only make sense in contrived horror movies. (So, there’s a mysterious locked door – yeah, the realtor will be back at the end of the week with the key. No worries.)  Then the horror ramps up, as there’s no electricity and no phone (probably no water either) and the house has a separate apartment with apparently no one answering the door to their new landlords – why would anyone but the protagonists of a horror film want to live there? Here’s a hint: don’t get too attached to the characters or to the concept of an objective reality, because the film eventually gets to a point of trickery mocking much of the middle act. It doesn’t add much. In fact, thanks to Blu de Golyer’s script, the film ends with an impression of pointlessness – having explained how much of the story was in the protagonist’s head, the revelation doesn’t really add anything to the result. It just makes it feel even cheaper and dumber than it already felt. I’m always a sucker for a good haunted-house story, but the operative word here is “sucker” – sometimes you get a good movie, and sometimes you get suckered into disappointment. In that scheme, clearly, House of Good and Evil is not a good movie.

  • Being the Ricardos (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, April 2022) Nobody ever sees the same movie. No, I’m not questioning the permanence of films as objects or artifacts – no spooky Mandela Effect theories from me. But even in considering unchangeable spools of celluloid or digital files with certified checksums, no viewer brings the exact same set of knowledge, assumptions and expectations to any viewing of any film. Even a second viewing can be a radically different experience. Maybe you’ve seen Being the Ricardos without any knowledge of Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz and I Love Lucy. Or maybe, like me, you have approached it with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of 1940s Hollywood after the full eight-hour TCM podcast on Ball’s life. I don’t seriously believe that too much knowledge can be a bad thing, but it certainly colours the viewing experience in a different way – both appreciative and irritated. Writer-director Aaron Sorkin goes for a compressed biographical snapshot here – picking a specific date in the life of the Ball/Arnaz couple, and turbocharging it with as much drama as could be plausibly inserted in the specific time-frame, even if a few years have to be collapsed in order to do so. We find ourselves on the set of I Love Lucy during a particularly eventful week in which Ball is accused of Communist activities, in which she has to confront Arnaz about his infidelities, and in which she must announce to everyone that she’s pregnant at a time when such things were unmentionable on TV. A rather weak framing device (by actors pretending they’re the real older people we follow in flashbacks) provides historical material and context. Let’s get something out of the way first: Neither Nicole Kidman nor Javier Bardem are much of a match for the real-life Lucille ball or Desi Arnaz: They can certainly act, but the film is not going for close physical resemblance (which is also true for Nina Arianda and J. K. Simmons in supporting roles). Also, Being the Ricardos is definitely, almost obstinately, determined not to make its audience laugh. Aside from brief black-and-white staging of a few of the show’s moments, it doesn’t really try to convey Ball’s gift for comedy as much as her keen understanding of how comedy works. A justifiable choice if you assume that people are familiar with the show (still funny in reruns seventy years later!) or that it doesn’t want to expose Kidman to the task of being as funny as Ball, but it’s still an eyebrow raiser. Sorkin would rather focus on the drama of being Lucille Ball when the cameras aren’t rolling – her professionalism in analyzing what’s funny or not, her sometimes-curt manners, and her complex relationship with Arnaz even through his infidelities. (It’s a measure of the film’s unorthodox touch that it resists the easy impulse of making Arnaz the out-and-out villain for cheating on her – although Bardem’s considerable charisma has a lot to do with that.)  As a big Classic Hollywood buff, I was very impressed by much of the period detail – all the way to having someone play Ann Miller’s legs (and namechecking her on the set of Too Many Girls). On the other hand, I was also able to spot a few details that were strikingly out of place (that anachronistic Stromboli poster bothered me a lot, even if I can guess the thematic reason for showing it). Still, compared to many “snapshot biographies,” Being the Ricardos gets the basics right, shoehorns its references rather gracefully, and does mix its elements well. Sorkin’s dialogue isn’t quite as showy as usual, and I’m always up for more Alia Shawkat. I would have changed a few elements of the climax, but I’m generally happy at how it all turned out despite a few unusual choices, and how much of a rather good homage it is to the Ball/Arnaz couple. But my reading of the film is likely to be very different from yours.

  • Mr. Stitch (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s an intriguing experimental aspect to the first half of Mr. Stitch that makes it feel more interesting than most other direct-to-video 1990s Science Fiction films: we’re in a white room, looking at a protagonist visibly (if implausibly) stitched together from dozens of other people, with a rather impressive make-up job to sell the patchwork effect. Wil Wheaton plays the creature as it tries to understand what it is, and rebels against its creators before they terminate the experiment. Coming from high-concept writer-director-producer Roger Avary, Mr. Stitch looks more ambitious than usual, even if some of the mid-1990s digital special effects are less than convincing. Rutger Hauer plays the mandatory mad scientist leading the project, while Nia Peeples is the just-as-mandatory kind-hearted scientist who helps the protagonist. Unfortunately, the mandatory elements soon overwhelm the unusual approach of the film’s first half, while flashbacks become more numerous, the action moves outside the white cell and we’re back to a far more conventional film. Eventually more bland than bad, Mr. Stitch struggles to have anything interesting to say once it gets going – although seeing Ron Perlman in a supporting role as an earnest, soft-spoken scientist is a fun piece of casting, considering the rest of Perlman’s filmography. Like many, many low-end movies, Mr. Stitch becomes less distinctive the longer it goes on, with contrived yet cliché plotting taking over whatever strengths it may have at first. As a Frankenstein take-off, it’s better than many – but it’s still limited by increasingly convenient screenwriting tricks. Digging into the film’s production history reveals that it was affected by creative differences between Avery and Hauer and a project inception that may or may not have been a pilot for a TV series. Whatever the source of the problems, the result lives on – and it remains disappointing.

  • The In-Laws (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) As far as buddy comedies go, The In-Laws makes a lot out of the elements at its disposal. The key to this is casting, of course: Alan Alda is not bad as a dentist who gets swept into the machinations of his new daughter-in-law’s father, but the spotlight here goes to Peter Falk as the other man, a CIA agent who may or may not be running rogue after being kicked out of the agency for recklessness. There’s a nice straight-man / wild-card dynamic at play, but more remarkably, a steady escalation of comedy as their adventures get wilder and further away from our dentist-protagonist’s comfort zone. Director Arthur Hiller makes the most out of Andrew Bergman’s script, but the actors are up to the task set out before them. The comedy still works pretty well, with Falk driving most of it but Alda getting the laughs by reacting (badly) to it all. Don’t worry – The In-Laws ends well. There was a remake in the 2000s that didn’t work so well, so don’t let that affect your intention of seeing the original.

  • Gold (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) I can’t be the only viewer left uneasy by Gold. It is, after all, a thriller that takes place in South Africa during the Apartheid years, with Roger Moore and other white characters having a jolly good time… and the sole black character sacrificing himself for them. Harrumph. There is, to be fair, an interesting hook to it all – rapacious, psychopathic owners of a gold mine engineering a major disaster (i.e.: drilling into a water reservoir, flooding the mine) in order to boost profits or something like that. The owners are British; the mine is in South Africa and at its best Gold offers a quasi-documentary circa-1974 look at gold mining, going deep on footage that details the mine’s operations without contributing much to the plot. Meanwhile, we have Moore playing an engineer with a shady past (more an attempt at pumping up a character than setting up anything that happens on-screen) who, being a Roger Moore character, is debonair enough to seduce the wife of a superior – but that’s OK, since he’s one of the psychopathic executives out to sacrifice lives for profit. The South African scenery is quite beautiful (especially once the characters fly around the countryside) but there are are many unexamined assumptions in Gold when it comes to black majority portrayal, or even the protagonist’s morality. Much of it probably stems from the control that the apartheid regime imposed on film productions at the time – anything that did not reflect well on the South African regime simply did not get approval to shoot in the country. Some of it probably stems from Moore’s weight as a leading man: newly minted as James Bond, probably central to the film’s financing, it made sense to give him a likable cad role and not ask too many questions. It doesn’t help that much of Gold is low-octane as far as thrills and suspense are concerned: despite the ticking time bomb of deliberate sabotage by the owners, the film is more amiable than urgent. There’s one unexpectedly fun scene involving a small airplane making a difficult landing, but the film then loses itself in an overdrawn underground sequence that leads to a bitter (black) sacrifice and more roses for our impeccable (white) protagonist. Gold, despite some unusual potential, hasn’t aged very well – and as a period piece, it acts more like a reminder of what has thankfully been deemed unacceptable.

  • The Big Lift (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) History often repeats itself. As the saying goes, “Amateurs talk strategy while professionals talk logistics” and as I write this, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has clearly shown the quasi-amateurish limitations of the once-fabled Red Army in ensuring its own supply lines, while Ukraine is supported by a sophisticated supply of weapons and disciplined efforts. But this isn’t the first time the West has bested the Bear in logistical matters, and The Big Lift does a competent job at taking us back to one such time: the Berlin blockade of 1948–1950. This oft-forgotten piece of Cold War history gets increasingly fascinating the more you read about it: In the aftermath of WW2 and the division of Germany between the winners, the Soviets tried a power play and blocked all terrestrial routes to Berlin (which was then far behind the Iron Curtain separating West and East Germany). The allies, unwilling to give up Berlin to the Soviets, decided to flex their airlift capabilities instead. For more than 18 months, every single piece of food and merchandise that made its way inside Berlin was carried by plane – at such a staggering pace that, at the height of the airlift operation, a plane was landing in Berlin every thirty seconds. It saved Berlin from being absorbed in East Germany, and proved that the West could hold its own supply lines. The Big Lift, which began production during the blockade, is an echo of the WW2 military propaganda film in more ways than one: taking a real-life situation and shooting as much documentary footage as possible, it then inserted a fictional storyline in-between the footage, and clearly affirmed America as the better choice. It half-works, in that the opening half-hour of the film as orchestrated by director George Seaton, is a mesmerizing immersion in the reality of the times, showing the real bombed-out Berlin and hair-raising footage of planes flying low above the rooftops of the city. Real military personnel are shown going through the mechanics of the airlift, and there’s some real tension to the task being proposed in order to keep Berlin supplied. It’s later on that the film loses much of its interest, as we go to more fictional situations, romantic tension, Constitution-tapping American boosterism and a lessened focus on the blockade. The tension and interest rise again later on as the difficulties of maintaining an airlift in a period of heavy fog are explored, but the conclusion misses some kind of bigger climax – probably not helped along by the film being completed as the blockage was tentatively lifted. As a way to get back to a specific period of time, The Big Lift is not bad, but it loses itself once it strays away from that urgency. I would not be surprised to see a remake, especially as the historical facts find relevance to current events. Don’t mess with the West when it comes to consumption!

  • Baby Doll (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I’m not sure how many Tennessee Williams-inspired 1950s black-and-white dramas I still have to watch, but Baby Doll isn’t going to become one of my favourite Williams adaptations. Much of my reluctance comes from a refusal to engage with a story in which nearly everyone is nasty to everyone else all the time. That gets old, and I’m on the market for more uplifting material at the moment. The story takes us in deep rural Mississippi, where two feuding cotton farmers take escalating means toward each other – one burns the other’s field down, which is met by the other farmer seducing the first farmer’s teenage bride. But don’t feel too sorry for her given the bad treatment she gives to her husband and the overall nastiness of the film. As with other Williams-inspired dramas, Baby Doll was a bit of a sensation back in the 1950s – the topic matter went beyond what was considered acceptable, and having a teenage actress parade in a babydoll nightgown (legend has it that the film named the clothing) while the narrative repeatedly insisted on the seduction of the childlike character had authorities in a moral tizzy. (I suspect it would be even worse today.) Director Elia Kazan handles everything with his usual touch, allowing the three main actors — Karl Malden, Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach—to bite into the dramatic material. Baby Doll is a drama all right, but it may take a specific frame of mind to get the most out of it.

  • Keys to the City (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) My reaction in watching the first few moments of Keys to the City on BET Channel was one of surprise – a political movie about a mayoral campaign? On my trashy-thriller BET? What’s the catch? I thought I was getting a better handle on the film once it revealed that our likable young protagonist was running against his own father – aha, family drama! But that merely completed the log-line of the film: it didn’t quite reveal what the story was really about. That comes maybe 20–30 minutes in the film, as our mayoral candidate gets involved with a campaign staffer with underlying issues. What could have been interpreted as a kinda-cute romantic obsession with the protagonist eventually reveals itself to be a violent lust for revenge, and that’s when we finally recognize Keys to the City as the kind of film we love to watch on BET – a slightly unhinged thriller that doesn’t really care about plausibility as long as the basic components of suspense are in place. Once you figure that out, the rest of the film becomes more entertaining. This isn’t about politics (especially at the most surface level) as much as it’s about family drama and a psychotic stalker – very familiar territory for BET channel. Kamal Angelo Bolden stars as the political hopeful, with Isaiah Washington as the mentor/opponent and the attractive Felisha Cooper as the romantic threat. Writer-director Tangie B. Moore gets the plot pieces moving slowly, but eventually works the film to a frenzied pitch of insanity right in time for the over-the-top finale, complete with an extra twist revelation that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but works within the wild context of the film. Slightly better-than-average-for-BET production values make the film acceptable to watch on a technical level. Keys to the City isn’t meant to be serious, respectable or particularly refined – the antagonist is crazy for the sake of being crazy and while that’s fun, it’s not exactly the kind of thing that elevates the material. I don’t care all that much, though: the BET Channel brand of films (whether they’re made exclusively for the channel, or put in regular rotation) is about fun thrillers not to be taken seriously, and I got that in spades here… even if it kept me guessing for a few delicious minutes.

  • Down aka The Shaft (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) I originally planned to begin this review with a remark on how many “killer elevator” movies there were in between Der Lift, Devil, Blackout, (a few more I’ve only heard about) and now Down. But then I learned that Down was a remake of the original Dutch film Der Lift by the same writer-director Dick Maas, and then there was something more interesting to say in comparing the remake with its inspiration. It’s not just about the Americanization of a very European film – there’s a world of difference between a science-fictional premise made in 1983 versus a horrific rehashing in 2001. In this remake, the action has been moved to a fictional Manhattan high-rise, with different characters and some clear differences in plotting. The deaths are wilder, the cinematography far more expensive, and there are even a few known names in the cast. (Although I doubt Naomi Watts often talks about this early effort when there’s The Ring to highlight.)  Down does have a definite entertainment value to it, but it deflates the longer it goes on, as the plotting gets more ludicrous and the film goes out of its way to privilege wild moments over coherence. There’s a skateboarder death, for instance, that confounds most of the rules the film should have set for itself in playing around with a malevolent elevator, but the film makes a joke about it and simply moves on, at which point viewers can be forgiven for shrugging at a film with no intention of remaining internally coherent. There’s also a lessened impact from the revelation about the roots of the elevator malfunctions – it was an intriguing science-fictional prospect in techno-anxious 1983 (the same year as Wargames, Videodrome and Brainstorm), but it feels cheap in 2001, especially as the script is very loose about consistency. (And I’m not getting into the film’s tonal discontinuities.)  Down remains fun to watch, but it’s not particularly gripping – and it doesn’t have the same impact as its earlier, rougher but more controlled inspiration.

  • Moonfleet (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I would really like to have better things to say about wannabe-swashbuckler Moonfleet. It is, after all, a late-career Fritz Lang film, one of the last he completed in Hollywood and one of the few to feature colour cinematography. It features the always-fun George Sanders, smugglers, gothic adventure and a kid protagonist that underlines how it’s supposed to be an adventure for the entire family. Unfortunately, the reality of the film is far less than its promise. Despite it supposed to be an adventure tale, there simply isn’t much fun to be found here. Moonfleet feels gloomy, moody, glum and cold at once, with very few of the elements coming together into an entertaining package. The studio-bound shooting looks unacceptably fake and limp, while the script doesn’t offer much in terms of strengths that would offset the lack of action. The cinematography is so sombre and monotone that the film might as well been shot in black-and-white. Sanders feels wasted in a dull role, although Liliane Montevecchi does earn a good look during her dancing sequence. It’s not enough to save the film, though – Moonfleet does feel like a singularly wasted set of opportunities, unable to make the most out of what it could have done. It’s a reminder that Lang’s talent did not extend to all genres of filmmaking – a terrific director for downbeat noir, not so much for more entertaining material.

  • Dummy (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) One of the fascinating things about small low-budget independent movies is that, from time to time, some of them can have a second life as a showcase for actors who became famous much later. I should be careful in talking about Dummy as an ensemble cast of then-unknowns –at the time, Milla Jovovich was already well-known, Adrien Brody was on the upward trajectory of his career (and about to hit the big time thanks to The Pianist) and Ileana Douglas had a long filmography. On the other hand, Vera Farmiga and Jared Harris were in their first years in the movie business – and that clearly shows in how nearly unrecognizably young they look compared to their later high-profile years. But yeah: five actors, many of them used in ways not necessarily associated with their best-known screen persona. It’s quite a trip to see Jovovich as an emo-type struggling singer with a tendency to fly off in a rage, or Harris as a young man with stalking issues. Brody, on the other hand, is playing to type as a socially awkward young man who finds ways of expressing himself through ventriloquism. There’s a low-key comedy tone running through the film even as it focuses on some miserable characters – the upbeat ending ensures that viewers will get a good feeling from this quirky film. Dummy is a bit of a surprise – not a big one, but a low-profile independent film that managed to cast five actors of interest in the service of an ultimately feel-good film. I’ve seen much worse.

  • Faust: Love of the Damned (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) Seeing that Brian Yuzna was Faust: Love of the Damned’s director was enough to convince me to record and watch the film. Yuzna is a proud-and-loud proponent of wild horror movies: he produced, wrote or directed several very enjoyable genre classics between 1985 and 2005(ish), and while some of his films are far better regarded than others (anyone with Re-Animator, From Beyond, Society and Return of the Living Dead 3 on their resume is someone worth noticing), there’s usually something interesting in even the weakest of his films. Such is the case with Faust: Love of the Damned, a horror film that sometimes plays like an energetic remake of Batman (down to a very similar “character swoops down from a rotunda” shot) with added gore, nudity and a deal with the devil. It’s not a great movie – but at its best you can see it as a successor to the wilder horror movies of the 1980s (many of them from Yuzna). The plot describes the deal that our protagonist makes with a supernatural entity in order to be able to avenge the death of his girlfriend at the hands of underworld hoodlums. The protagonist predictably gets more and more demon-like as the story progresses. The nudity is punishing, as the film’s biggest special effect showcase is a grotesque body-horror riff that starts with a naked woman and then makes it worse and worse. (And that’s not even covering the semi-comic makeup for the main character.) But while Yuzna is willing to go wild in helming the film, he’s not quite as good in realizing the potential of his material – many of the action sequences are shot in a very dull fashion that doesn’t impress not capitalize on the film’s assets – and the biggest exception seems taken from 1989’s Batman. Still, I had more fun watching Faust: Love of the Damned than many other horror movies of that era: it’s not respectable, not refined and not subtle at all, but it doesn’t intend to be. Watch a Yuzna film, and dive into the more insane end of the horror pool.