Author: Christian Sauvé

  • The Verdict (1982)

    The Verdict (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, August 2021) The unsung hero of The Verdict is whoever who took the decision to cast Paul Newman in the lead role — what best way to portray a lawyer past his prime than to cast an aging movie idol? Newman still looks fantastic, of course (compare and contrast with how he looks in the roughly contemporary Absence of Malice), but the deliberate grey hairs, added fat and slower demeanour tell us everything we need to know, even before his character gets thrown out of a funeral in the opening scene. What follows, in keeping with the tone set early on, is an examination of justice with a jaundiced but not entirely cynical eye — as our burnt-out protagonist is handed an easy settlement but decides to push matters to a civil trial, and quickly gets enmeshed in dirty tactics and counter-tactics. If The Verdict remains compelling viewing today, it’s how it skirts the edges of an uplifting film with a gritty look at the less admirable aspects of civil law. Our protagonist isn’t above stealing mail; his opponent will spy on him; and in the film’s defining sequence, a slam-dunk testimony and piece of evidence that would, in another film, be the final blow are here (with some heavy dramatic license) judged inadmissible and struck from the record. But to get back to a crowd-friendly idealistic finale, it turns out that even inadmissible evidence can’t just be erased from memory. While the pacing of the film is a bit slow, especially at first, veteran director Sidney Lumet does keep good control over his material, gradually unfolding the layers of complexity in David Mamet’s narrative. (Unusually for Mamet, this first screenplay is adapted from existing material, and so his distinctive dialogue is not really present.)  Good supporting turns from Charlotte Rampling and the irreplaceable James Mason help round out the acting talent involved. The Verdict, then a box-office success and Oscar favourite from cerebral material and a strong narrative, is almost unusual today — but fret not, it’s still very enjoyable and the circa-1980 period has aged rather well… like its star.

  • Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

    Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) We’re now up to four movies in the modern “monsterverse,” and a pattern is already clear: odd entries disappointing, even entries better than expected. Godzilla was OK without being good; Kong: Skull Island was surprisingly well-done; Godzilla: King of the Monsters was an overstuffed disappointment but here is Godzilla vs. Kong to make up for it. Arguably the climax to the series, this entry has King Kong and Godzilla squaring off around the planet, then briefly teaming up to take on an even worse threat. I was rather amused at the willingness of the film to go for wild world-building all the way to a hollow planetary core, although that amusement was tempered by the bad decision to make conspiracy theorists the heroes of one subplot. Still, it takes a special kind of audacity to have Kong and Godzilla square off on the deck of an aircraft carrier, as if it was a too-little surfboard on which to fight. Director Adam Wingard is a long way from the modest horror films that first made his reputation, but he’s up to the task of orchestrating a modern special-effects spectacle: by the time the two titular monsters and their foe duke it out in brightly-lit Hong Kong, it’s clear that he’s making a play for the ultimate kaiju fight sequence. The flip side of that success is that the film becomes duller the longer it stays away from the monsters. I enjoy seeing Rebecca Hall in anything, even as a walking exposition device, but Godzilla vs. Kong makes some curiously bad choices when it comes to its human characters. We don’t need conspiracy podcasters as heroes, considering how many problems we’re already having in clinging to the truth. Most other characters are vapid or insipid — although the chief antagonist has a few solid motivations in his favour. I’m also not quite as happy with the delirious nature of the film’s inventions: everything seems to be taking place in an alternate reality with inconsistent fantasy science with antigravity reactors, planetary tunnels, a hollow planet on one side, and a giant ape strapped to a ship on the other. But then again— trying to find too much scientific plausibility in a film designed to have King Kong and Godzilla bash each other is expecting too much. We should just be happy that Godzilla vs. Kong exists and somehow holds together. I’m not sure where they can go after this, though. But that’s their job, not mine.

  • 3 Men and a Baby (1987)

    3 Men and a Baby (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, August 2021) Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of 3 Men and a Baby now is outside the film itself, as an evocative example of box-office irrelevance. Upon release, it became the highest-grossing Hollywood movie of the year, outclassing such films as Full Metal Jacket, The Princess Bride, Predator, Lethal Weapon, RoboCop, Spaceballs, Evil Dead II or Wall Street. Of course, the irony today is that any of those movies are significantly better-known than 3 Men and a Baby, and for good cause: they all still have a daring, distinctive quality, whereas 3 Men and a Baby was always meant as a common-denominator kind of comedy, the type of film that families grudgingly compromise on seeing together, especially at Christmastime, which was the film’s savvily-targeted release season. To be fair, it’s not a bad film: The plot seems custom-made for the Christmas season as well, as three bachelors are abruptly forced to take care of a baby, the result of one of their casual romantic trysts. Directed by Leonard Nimoy (a fascinating piece of trivia by itself), 3 Men and a Baby makes good use of the charms of co-leads Steve Guttenberg (in one of his best movies), Ted Danson and Tom Selleck, who’s particularly good at selling the emotional core of the story. The dynamic opening sequence sets the tone of a bachelor’s utopia with a great apartment and a wild party — but the real fun begins as a baby is dropped on their doorstep and they need to figure out everything with minimal female supervision. I’m not sure I ever watched the entire film before, because even if some elements were familiar, the entire criminal subplot felt newish (and unnecessary, even if something had to bring the film to 102 minutes). Otherwise, 3 Men and a Baby is predictable, with big plot strings seen well in advance, and a feeling of comfort amply fulfilled by the big happy finale. You can see why it made so much money… and also why it slipped away from the collective unconscious even as its contemporaries have shown stronger staying power. Here is something to consider when you see dull or terrible films rake in the money even as some fan favourites languish: you can’t always tell what will endure and what won’t.

  • The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

    The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, August 2021) The mid-1980s were not the best of time for Disney Animation Studios, but The Great Mouse Detective was something of a shot in the arm after the lack of success, critical or commercial, of 1985’s The Black Cauldron — and pointing the way to the renaissance sparked by The Little Mermaid three years. Later. Narratively, it does feel familiar — essentially a Sherlock Holmes remix featuring anthropomorphic mice, with a classic portrayal of mouse-Watson as a bit useless, and mouse-Holmes as the thinker who gets out of various scrapes. (The film takes pains to show that this isn’t an anthropomorphic world — the mice live in human-Holmes’s basement.)  There isn’t much to the plot or the running time at barely 74 minutes, although the film is notable for starting to integrate 3D computer imagery in an animated cartoon thanks to a climax set in the Big Ben clocktower. The Great Mouse Detective is not bad, but it did leave me wanting just a bit more — more of Watson being competent, more details about the mouse society underneath London and more substantial plotting. Still, the result is not too bad: it compares advantageously to many preceding Disney animated features, and to the less-than-stellar sequels that came out at roughly the same time. It’s fun, short and amusing to Holmes fans (albeit probably not as special now, considering the recent glut of Sherlockania in cinema and TV) and the animation quality is higher than some of the 1970s–1980s Disney films. The Great Mouse Detective is certainly not as memorable as other later Disney films, but it generally works.

  • The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

    The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, August 2021) Renaissances are not necessarily binary — it’s not because suddenly you get one hit that you’re on your way back, and sometimes it takes a while to get on track. Looking at the history of the Disney Animation Studio, for instance, everyone can agree that their Renaissance was sparked by 1989’s The Little Mermaid and everyone remembers 1991’s The Lion King. But in-between them? Not-so-fondly-remembered sequel (the first one in their history, notwithstanding the more recent hubbub about Frozen II) The Rescuers Down Under, taking its characters on an Australian adventure capitalizing on the Crocodile Dundee-led success of all things Australian in the late 1980s. As someone who’s not that fond of The Rescuers in the first place, I’m already not starting from a place of goodwill. That goodwill was further extinguished by a rather long and dull setup delaying the entrance of the titular Rescuers by nearly half an hour, and then a story that simply didn’t do all that much with the Australian setting. While the film feels slightly less dark than the original (which was remarkably dark for a Disney film), it’s still not a lot of fun and surprisingly mean-spirited at times. Put all of that together and you don’t exactly end with one of the hidden gems of Disney Animation Studios’ history. No wonder The Rescuers Down Under didn’t get much notice back then (although opening on the same day as Home Alone wasn’t a good idea) and gets scarcely more than a side glance when Disney historians talk about the transformation of the studio as the 1980s closed. It’s a lower-tier Disney, not helped in the least by its proximity to much-better movies.

  • The New Mutants (2020)

    The New Mutants (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, August 2021) Cinephiles waited more than two years to see The New Mutants — the delay between its initial release date (April 2018) and the time at which it finally ambled in theatres (August 2020). The wait was not worth it, something that nearly everyone expected, considering the lacklustre trailers, plans for extensive reshoots (which, worse of all, never took place), major corporate changes when Disney bought 20th Century Fox, and an ongoing pandemic sharply decreasing the attraction of any movie making it to big screens. For anyone outside the film’s teenage audience, the problem starts with the premise: What if we took the X-Men franchise, but sucked out all of the fun, iconic protagonists, affirmed themes or action scenes and replaced with teenage angst, paranoid plotting and unlikable characters? Putting X-Men in the typical Young Adult plotting blender maybe could have worked in better hands, but writer-director Josh Boone (despite promising credentials) is not one of them: The New Mutants staggers from one plot point to another without grace, remains grim-faced throughout and throws severe childhood trauma and a same-sex romance in the mix as if they were contractual obligations. It’s all exceptionally boring despite some interesting elements: it feels like a slog even only a few minutes into the film and that impression never lets up. As far as spinoffs go, it’s as if they managed to hit the trifecta of a bad premise, bad execution and bad polish all at once. Considering the pitiful result, it’s no wonder Disney decided to jettison the film in theatres (pushed more by contractual obligations than any kind of confidence in its prospects) before quietly releasing it on its streaming service. It’s a sad footnote to a series that had its ups and downs, but it’s not all bad news: the bad performance of The New Mutants virtually assures that there will never, ever be a sequel despite initial plans to make this the first in a trilogy. We have been given swill, but spared the indignity of having even more of it.

  • Inshite miru: 7-kakan no desu gêmu [The Incite Mill] (2010)

    Inshite miru: 7-kakan no desu gêmu [The Incite Mill] (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) Modern anxieties know no frontiers, and considering that “protagonists are unwitting participants in a Dark Web snuff show” has quickly become a 2010s horror cliché, it shouldn’t be surprising if the Japanese got there first in 2010 with The Incite Mill. Here, we have a few strangers walking in a strange facility and being told about the rules of a detective game. But don’t fret: Before long, the detecting focuses on actual murders, and the protagonists discover that (drum roll) they are unwitting participants in a Dark Web snuff show. As far as the narrative is concerned, The Incite Mill is messy — in-between the game organizers, traitors in their midst, opportunists and clearly defined protagonists to cheer for (plus a robot and an unexplainable Native American figurine explaining the rules of the game), director Hideo Nakata does lose control at times, never playing fair with the mystery nor being all that interested in rigour when there’s an Internet murder show to feed. I did like that, while the characters are often stereotypes with maybe one layer of complexity, they’re Japanese stock characters, meaning that they at least offer something more than Anglosphere films. (I particularly liked the older characters — both Katahira Nagisa and Kitaoji Kinya seem to ground the film in the middle of several younger characters, and that’s something I wouldn’t mind seeing in other horror movies.)  Still, it doesn’t help that The Incite Mill follows the usual narrative trajectory of bad-to-middling horror films: Beyond the intriguing premise, it can’t quite do justice to its own ideas and becomes more conventional in terms of structure, meaning that the beginning is vivid but the ending is forgettable. Perhaps slightly more thriller than horror (and that’s a good thing), The Incite Mill is certainly watchable, although not exceptional.

  • This Time for Keeps (1947)

    This Time for Keeps (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) While I like the idea of Esther Williams successfully transitioning from an Olympic medallist to a musical film lead, she wasn’t necessarily a compelling performer out of the water. Competent, sure, but not exceptionally beautiful, dramatically powerful or able to sing or dance at another level. But she did embody that idea of the girl-next-door with a special talent, and MGM liked it so much that they invested heavily in the things that made her special, including creating a very specific subgenre, the aqua-musical, around her. This Time for Keeps may not be a particularly good movie, but it’s a great example of the form: Here we have Williams as a swimming professional surrounded by far more talented vocalists as a way to introduce music in the film. This includes Jimmy Durante as an older family friend, who gets an excuse to play around the piano for performances of “A Little Bit This and a Little Bit That” (leading into his classic “Inka Dinka Doo”) and a fun performance piece called “I’m the Guy Who Found the Lost Chord” — his overall performance is more dramatic than in most films, but he lets comedically loose as soon as he approaches a piano. More serious performers include co-star Johnny Johnston, singing in a very conventional fashion, and opera signer Lauritz Melchior — leading to a blend of musical styles that may or may not be too heavy for the kind of melodramatic romance that This Time for Keeps is aiming for. Durante, in particular, seems torn between a desire to be in a dramatic performance and his natural talent as a comedic entertainer. The plot doesn’t do itself any favours by playing heavily on some tired ideas (like familial approval) or under-developing some ideas that don’t quite fit in the framework. But those issues should be familiar to MGM musical fans — the form typically meant mixing plenty of elements in a single film, in the hope that they would come together for broad appeal. It does not work as well here as in other films, probably because of the lesser emphasis on comedy to the benefit of a dubious melodrama. Oh well — Williams is fantastic in the water and likable outside of it, Durante is funny, you get to listen to some opera, and the setting is not without its forested rustic attraction. It could have been worse, but there is definitely better.

  • Bloodshot (2020)

    Bloodshot (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, August 2021) The risk in designing a film to overturn expectations is that first you have to play up expectations, and so many will have trouble making it through the first twenty minutes of Bloodshot, so completely does the film indulge in re-creating a kind of film we’ve all seen too many times before: the special operative left for dead, resurrected with high-tech means by a shadowy outfit dedicated to extrajudicial killing that aligns with his own revenge. Vin Diesel looks the part and plays the part, but this is such familiar territory presented without a shred of reinvention that some are likely to turn it off. But wait… because if Bloodshot doesn’t become a good movie, its second-act turn does make it an acceptable one. For, you see, our hero is manipulated through memory editing and selective briefings to become an unthinking assassin. Once the target is eliminated: memory reset, and implantation of a false revenge narrative for the next target, the rest of the team being in on the deception. That’s not, to be fair, an earth-shaking premise… but it’s better than the dreck served in the first fifteen minutes. It also allows the film to become just a bit more daring with its action sequences: By the time the climax hits, the elevator fighting sequence is actually kind of enjoyable. As for Diesel, well, this is the kind of meathead role that he’s typecast in: you do get his usual persona, but nothing much more. (Despite some provocative material at the edges of its premise, Bloodshot never goes for more than the emotionally obvious.)  Some of Dave Wilson’s direction is slick, albeit perhaps a bit too frenetic when it comes time to let his action sequences develop. The result is not that remarkable, but at least it avoids the trainwreck anticipated by the film’s opening moment.

  • The Social Dilemma (2020)

    The Social Dilemma (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, August 2021) I actually agree with a version of the thesis espoused by director Jeff Orlowski’s The Social Dilemma: social media is not good for you, not good for your friends and family, and not good for civil society either. It exploits basic human desires to the profit of those without any noble instinct and it’s willfully manipulated to engage you at an unhealthy level. I’d need to qualify those statements with some nuance (for instance, I’m not advocating for the end of social media — properly used, it’s not necessarily evil), but you can certainly classify me as a social media skeptic. I practise what I preach: I’m on read-only mode on Reddit, I briefly check Facebook every two months or so when friends or family remind me, and my Twitter account is a mere one-joke placeholder in case I need it. I will support anyone questioning social media — such challenges are an essential part of how society regards innovations, and ultimately help forge not only a legislative framework, but a social contract that addresses the excesses. On the other hand, I really wish the filmmakers behind The Social Dilemma had done a better job. Not necessarily in substance, but in those weird extrusions that distract from the substance. A hard-hitting critical contemplation of social media illustrated by interviews with former remorseful employees, this is a film that cleanly exposes how social media uses clever algorithms, unimaginably all-encompassing data collection and an amoral approach to produce something new and uniquely suited to manipulation. The point is money, as always, and money only comes from engagement, whether it’s frequent (as in: scroll every time you’re bored) or acute (as in: get mad, post more). The interviews are generally solid, although some material definitely should have been trimmed: In reaching for spurious parallels, one interviewee confidently asserts that nobody objected to bicycles, which is such a ridiculous statement that it’s debunkable within seconds. All innovations get pushback, but that pushback is how we master those innovations — alas, very few people interviewed in the film have any kind of historical awareness, which is telling in itself. The Social Dilemma, however, loses the most points when it takes off from facts and opinions and starts dramatizing them: in awkward fictional segments, we see a family struggle with their social media addiction, and some fantasy scenes even literalize the platform algorithms by having actors dramatize those decision loops. It doesn’t work — and there’s even another documentary (the little-known 2017 Canadian production You’re Soaking in it) that does a far better job factually explaining how advertisement algorithms sell you to advertisers. It doesn’t help that, needing to generate attention for itself, The Social Dilemma gets apocalyptic at times, indulging in the fallacy that there’s never been anything like this and there’s nothing that can be done. I would gladly watch another documentary with an attention span longer than ten years because historical precedent will tell you that there have been many things like social media in the past, and that they were dealt with. Once upon a time, newspapers, radio and TV were new and seen as social nuisances, manipulating public opinion and earning vast profits for owners and advertisers. In every single case, enlightened jurisdictions developed and enforced laws and standards that reigned those innovations into something useful. (Yes, I hear your objections about American media, but then again, I did say enlightened jurisdictions — and there’s a lesson here in social media being the reflection of the society allowing them to exist.) In parallel, audiences eventually learn better than to believe everything the innovation brings to them. It’s an age-old pattern and it will happen again, although it remains to be seen how much damage will take place until that happens. In this light, even a flawed documentary like The Social Dilemma is useful because it helps create the memetic antibodies that we all need to develop in order to rein in the excesses of social media. You may not quite know what to do with all of that craziness, but don’t worry: your kids eventually will.

  • Navy Blue and Gold (1937)

    Navy Blue and Gold (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) Despite being made in peacetime, Navy Blue and Gold check off many of the characteristics of the wartime propaganda films that became so prevalent during WW2. Its academic setting is tightly focused on one specific area of the armed forces — the US Naval Academy. It features three young men who go on not just to better themselves, but to understand and uphold the traditions of their branch of the service. The wrinkle, so to speak, is that the film combines this recruitment pitch with the ever-popular college football film tradition: Our three protagonists (including a young James Stewart, stealing the show in his usual aw-shucks manner) aren’t just recruits from various areas of society, but all enroll to play on the Navy team. The finale, being in peacetime, takes place not in combat but an ersatz of it — the Army/Navy game, won through theatrics that can only exist in Hollywood since its creation. Director Sam Wood makes sure that all the subplots (romantic, medical, academic) climax at or near the game itself. Navy Blue and Gold is not exactly a bad film, but its elements may be obvious to twenty-first century audiences. On the other hand, they still work… so what does that tell us about the value of a good formula?

  • I predatori di Atlantide [Atlantis Interceptors aka The Raiders of Atlantis] (1983)

    I predatori di Atlantide [Atlantis Interceptors aka The Raiders of Atlantis] (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) No one will ever mistake Atlantis Interceptors for a respectable film and that’s certainly part of its charm. It starts big, as an American crew tries to raise a Soviet submarine off the coast of Florida. But what they didn’t plan on is that (and that should tell you all about the film itself) the radiation from the wrecked submarine causes the continent of Atlantis to rise from the seas, encased in a big globe. Meanwhile, Atlanteans living undetected in Florida decide to trash Miami, making it eventually look like the Phillipinese town in which the film was shot. Whew. But here’s the thing: the film is so eager to deliver one thrill after another than the preposterousness of the plot becomes an advantage. Director Ruggero Deodato has a long trash-tier filmography, but he has a good hand on pacing here. Alas, let’s not get too enthusiastic: the dialogues, acting, special effects and production values are all horrible. Not that this should be surprising: There’s an entire sub-subgenre of terrible 1980s Italian-produced, American-acted, Philipinese-shot science fiction movies out there ripping off every single halfway-original idea even put on screen by Hollywood during that period. It’s certainly not good. But occasionally, it can be a moderate amount of fun. Atlantis Interceptors has a modest cult following, and it’s not that hard to understand why.

  • Farm to Fork to Love (2021)

    Farm to Fork to Love (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2021) Send help. I’ll do my part by saying that I’ve got a curiously soft spot for Lifetime/Hallmark romantic comedies, as formulaic as they can be — if they can revolve around a compelling hook (a military cruise, a pumpkin-growing contest, a writer’s block, to name three examples), then that’s enough to get me in. I’m not necessarily saying that I watch these films with undivided attention — one of their strengths is that you can leave for a few minutes and it will be right where you expect it by the time you get back — but they make great videogame background viewing or cleaning/cooking accompaniment. But this is getting ridiculous: One of my “this looks interesting” triggers is food, and it seems as if the networks are on to that: the new hotness is chef-centric romance, and Farm to Fork to Love is the third such film in as many months. Never setting foot in a farm, this is a film about a sous-chef re-hooking with an old flame (coincidentally rich, handsome, talented and related to a matchmaking culinary mogul putting together a context). There are rarely any surprises as to where director Sandra L. Martin is going with that script, although part of the intellectual suspense, I suppose, is seeing how the third act will introduce a meaningless complication out of nowhere, and how Farm to Fork to Love will dispense with the protagonist’s existing boyfriend, who seems to be a decent match. (In the end, they alter his personality so that he turns hilariously inflexible and controlling.)  It’s all, well, analogous to comfort food. Romantic comedies are supposed to be like that—but if I take a step back, I have to wonder why they’re not any better. It doesn’t cost much more to write better scripts and feature better actors — although the truth is that the economics of such films probably don’t allow for fine dialogue or actors that cross the dangerous line between good-looking and gorgeous. Viewers won’t stand for a challenging script or people who remind them of their imperfections. I already know all of this, so why am I watching those films? As I said — send help, or at least better movies.

  • Girl Crazy (1943)

    Girl Crazy (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) As much as we profess to dislike film formulas, they exist because they work. Once you’ve found something that works, why bother changing it? Of course, staleness is the constant danger, and there can be a time where the most entertaining thing about a film series is the way it keeps reworking core concepts in ever-wilder situations. Girl Crazy is the ninth and last film to co-star Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, and the amazing thing about it is how, despite taking its actors to an isolated western ranch campus in twentysomething roles, it still manages to cram in the “let’s put on a show to save the orphanage!” plot of most of their earlier small-town backyard movies. It’s quite impressive in a way… and it comes later enough in the film that we’ve had a fill of new stuff to tide us over. As is often the case, this is a film of moments and musical pieces rather than a sustained narrative — adapted from a Broadway musical, it does have a few snappy numbers and the presence of Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra — “Treat me Rough,” “Fascinating Rhythm” and “I Got Rhythm” are notable standouts, with that last number being a typical Berkeley Busby spectacle before he was replaced as a director by more mild-mannered Norman Taurog. Style and setting of the film bring to mind an appropriate double-billing with Too Many Girls. Girl Crazy is not that good of a musical, but it’s watchable and arguably more interesting than many of the Garland/Rooney films in which the backyard premise was repeated too often without variation even as they were growing older.

  • Il était une fois le diable aka Devil Story (1986)

    Il était une fois le diable aka Devil Story (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) French-Canadian Horror TV channel FrissonTV currently airs “Nanarland,” a weekly summer showcase for terrible movies, accompanied by a half-hour show explaining and contextualizing what the heck we just saw. Even in this context, Il était une fois le diable is bad enough that it came with a disclaimer before the beginning of the film, warning viewers that watching the film to the end would be an ordeal. They were not kidding — Even by the standards of low-end horror films, it’s a wretched piece of nonsense, an incoherent blend of ill-fitting horror tropes, a thorough demonstration of directorial incompetence and a showcase for amateur “acting.”  Put together for French regional theatrical exhibition, it has terrible audio-visual quality on top of its lack of other qualities. The opening has some hilarious attempt at creating horror out of camping slaughter (with the director keeping the camera on a terrible blood-spurting effect), but never mind because soon enough we’re off to land pirates, mummies and Nazi killers, as well as an old man shooting at a black horse through the night and into the morning. There’s more, but the more it adds, the less it makes sense — here’s a review that ends with a flowchart to showcase the absurdity of it all. It’s really bad: so disjointed that it’s difficult to stay invested in this as something other than a collection of sequences shot by director Bernard Launois with minimal crew and inexperienced actors, and so terrible from a cinematic point of view that there’s little artistry or wonder. (Although I did like the landlocked ship.)  Il était une fois le diable is the kind of film fit to recalibrate your notions of what a terrible film can be: reading reviews taking pot shots at ambitious-but-misguided big-budget productions such as The Bonfire of Vanities is hilarious when you know how low the bottom of the barrel really goes. That, in the end, may be the greatest feat of wretched films: making us appreciate the better ones.