Reviews

  • The Tingler (1959)

    The Tingler (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) With producer-director William Castle, the gimmick was the thing, and what’s most remembered from The Tingler isn’t as much the silly story as the tales of theatre seats rigged with small devices that would vibrate at carefully selected moments in the film, echoing the on-screen theme of sensing fear and screaming to drive the monster away. The gimmick is carefully set up in the film’s first two minutes, as Castle introduces himself on-screen and delivers a portentous monologue that sets the tone and the topic of the film. After that, it’s up to Vincent Price to take up the slack with his soothing voice, playing a mad scientist who identifies a parasite living near human spinal cords that kills from fear… unless the victims can scream themselves hoarse. The plotting is ludicrous (and that’s without even mentioning the then-legal use of LSD by Price’s character as an experiment to scare himself silly), but there is an undeniable body horror moment at the idea of having a fear-fuelled parasite inside our bodies, and by the time the film makes its way to an actual movie theatre, the fun of Castle’s gimmick is back in full force. There are a few jolts along the way too: Other than the disgust of seeing a rather good parasite puppet move around the set, there’s also a scene with bright red blood flowing in the middle of a black-and-white film. Price is terrific as usual, and the added social satire of having married couples plotting to kill each other adds a bit of thematic content to the blunt high-concept. The result may not be sophisticated, but if you’re already attuned to Castle’s brand of gimmicky horror (start with House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts), The Tingler is good fun with a bit of an added kick to it.

  • Body and Soul (1925)

    Body and Soul (1925)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) My naïve understanding of black American cinema prior to digging deeper in film history was that blaxploitation had started it all, but it took until the late 1980s until black filmmakers came on the scene with their own stories. That is profoundly mistaken, and I’ve been trying to atone for this misconception by seeking out the films of Oscar Micheaux who, in the silent era, would produce films as vital and reflective of the African-American condition as anything produced later on by Spike Lee and his cohort. Within Our Gates is a terrific example of silent cinema that still has the power to shock today, and I was also impressed with The Symbol of the Unconquered as a black western with the KKK as antagonist. Body and Soul is very much in the same vein, although it turns its attention inward, focusing on a mother trying to keep her daughter from making bad decisions—even if the temptation here is a preacher who is secretly an abusive thieving murdering alcoholic. Narratively, Body and Soul is a bit of a mess—the ending is a blatant “it was all a dream” cop-out, and the film can’t quite figure out if it’s the story of the daughter, the mother, the evil preacher or his beatific twin brother. On a technical level, much of the film is as rough as any other 1920s film—static camera, rough inserts, overlong title cards and so on. But there are occasional flashes of brilliance as well: there’s a sequence in a cabin in which the antagonist comes to rape the heroine, and it’s filmed with a great deal of style, the image narrowly focusing on his shoes as he enters the cabin as a way to build suspense, and then (“Half an hour later,” the title card bluntly says) leaving the cabin with little guilt. It’s a sequence that remains with viewers long after the silliness of the plot harms the overall film. Still, Body and Soul remains a fascinating viewing experience: it features rural black characters living dignified lives decades before, say, Sounder. It’s almost entirely absent of white characters, and it shows Micheaux with greater command of his craft as a filmmaker than his first features. Perhaps more regrettably, it’s one of the few silent films from Micheaux to have survived until now—might as well appreciate what we now have.

  • It (1927)

    It (1927)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Awareness is knowing that an It Girl refers to the starlet of the moment—the one who may develop into a major talent. Knowledge is knowing that the expression derives from the 1927 film, and originally referred to Clara Bow. Expertise is seeing the film and realizing that the “It” of the title is that elusive magnetism that some people have and some don’t… which brings us closer to the more familiar definition. Sometimes called the first concept film, It adapted a then-popular novella by Elinor Glyn (who shows up briefly in the film, as characters comment on her magazine piece) to take advantage of cross-market popularity. The story isn’t all that complex, as it features a rich man falling for an attractive shopgirl and dealing with the social complications that this entails. But the story is far less important than, well, the It girl herself—Even nearly a century later, Clara Bow remains an incredibly striking presence, one that (with a more modern haircut) would still get heads turning today. (Ironically, she would retire six years after It, and spend the rest of her life away from Hollywood.) As a romantic comedy, It is serviceable, but it’s best seen as a splendid illustration of the power of personal magnetism—any film that features charisma as its central narrative hook must have a star that can follow through, and Clara Bow was indeed the It Girl of the time.

  • Warlock: The Armageddon (1993)

    Warlock: The Armageddon (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) Oh no! Another sorcerer coming to our world to end it! What do they get out of it? Isn’t it lucky that we always have someone ready to fight him? Wouldn’t we be better off if they had their way once in a while? Such are the questions that pop up unbidden during the lengthier stretches of Warlock: The Armageddon, a rather dull film occasionally enlivened by imaginative sequences. It’s really not worth watching for its over-familiar plot: As a warlock (Julian Sands, whose presence greatly exceeds his acting talents) roams the United States in search of the magical doodads what will enable him to summon Satan and end the world, older protectors train their young recruit in order to stop the warlock dead (again). This is basic stuff, regurgitated from low-grade horror clichés. But where Warlock: The Armageddon does slightly better is in the more memorable sequences that pepper the humdrum narrative: the antagonist makes his entrance in a disturbing and more effective than expected birthing scene that clearly shows that the film was scripted by a man. One of the deaths makes effective use of a skylight. There’s a rather good sequence showing the antagonist being vulnerable to the spells of his opponents at a distance. Every so often, Warlock: The Armageddon has zingers of interest, even if the overall quality of the result really isn’t worth crowing about. Still, I’ll take it—many horror movies can’t even achieve even one effective sequence, bet alone a handful. Plus, there’s Sands hamming it up, as a warlock coming to free the devil—they simply don’t make them like that any more.  Thankfully.

  • Airheads (1994)

    Airheads (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) I wasn’t expecting much from Airheads—another rock and roll comedy about dumb characters? Meh. But I hadn’t paid attention to the main cast nor the specifics of the plot before watching, and there was no way of guessing ahead of time the strange alchemy between its elements. But by the turn of the first half-hour, I was curiously invested in the adventures of our three rocking protagonists, unsuccessful musicians who end up, almost despite themselves, taking an entire radio station hostage. Much of the interest of the film these days will have to do with the lead trio of actors assembled to play the protagonists: Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler in an early pre-stardom role. The film does make the most out of its comic premise, escalating the situation even further with the hostages cheering for their captors when it becomes clear that the radio station is headed to a format change to easy-listening music. Lesser-know comic actors populate supporting roles from Chris Farley, Ernie Hudson and Joe Mantegna as a rock DJ. The soundtrack is stellar, beginning with “Born to Raise Hell” on the opening credit sequence. The supporting characters all have funny details to contribute, and the restricted setting of the film, once it’s done with the throat clearing, does add an interesting atmosphere. Airheads is not meant to be a good or particularly ambitious film, but I found it easy to like and surprisingly engaging once it gets started.

  • Open Grave (2013)

    Open Grave (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) Good directors can manage to elevate any kind of dross, while bad directors can find a way to suck the life out of even the most promising material. I haven’t yet seen enough of Gonzalo López-Gallego’s work to say if Open Grave is a fluke, but it manages to mishandle what could have been an interesting take on the zombie genre in any other hands. It begins as a man (Sharlto Copley) wakes up amnesiac in a mass grave. Clawing his way out, he discovers a group of equally-amnesiac people, some of whom he suspects knowing. It quickly becomes clear that there’s a zombie apocalypse unfolding, and there’s too much medical equipment lying around to pretend that they’re average people. Sadly, that’s roughly Open Grave’s peak moment—everything after that is duller and duller, blander and blander, longer and longer. Your only reward for making it to the end of the film is how the sight of a gigantic open mass grave can actually become boring by simply going on, and on, and on until we’re actually clamouring for the end credits. The film is too mean-spirited to be effective, as it sinks so deeply into darkness that it becomes impossible to care about any of it. Still, I can see how amnesia could have its benefits, especially if it’s enough to make anyone forget about Open Grave.

  • Sleepwalkers (1992)

    Sleepwalkers (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) On the shelf of Stephen King movies, Sleepwalkers distinguishes itself for being the first to have been directly written by King for the screen (rather than having written the source material, or adapting his own short stories as he did for Maximum Overdrive). The result isn’t particularly distinguishable from countless other mid-budget efforts—although it does have its quirks. Featuring an incestuous mother-son duo of energy vampires, the story takes place somewhere in the Midwest, where the pair is once again on the prowl for a young woman to drain her lifeforce. The one plot flip that does add much interest is that they fear cats, leading to the feline forces acting as support to the heroes as they fight the villains—it’s good fun to see the cats play to the good side for once, although that does come at a price: I don’t recall a film that kills as many cats as this one does on its way to its conclusion. Feline body count aside, Sleepwalkers does have its issues. The film’s self-awareness comes across strangely at times, with odd bits of comedy clashing with its more traditional intent to scare. King himself makes a tertiary role appearance as a defensive cemetery caretaker, while Ron Perlman is conspicuous the moment he shows up and Alice Krige does look good as the hundred-year-old villain. (Other cameos include Joe Dante, John Landis, Clive Barker, and Tobe Hooper.) The plot itself will only make sense if you’re not paying attention, with the younger member of the evil pair leaving a conspicuous trail of violent deaths well before being able to target his prey—isn’t he supposed to know better than this? Still, the Sleepwalkers’ big finale is the fun part of it, with cats clawing at the villains until the heroine manages to put an end to this nonsense. Meow!

  • They (2002)

    They (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) A thoroughly forgettable entry in the “is she crazy or isn’t she?” horror subgenre, They is about as bland as its title. Much of the story has to do with a young woman convinced that there are nightmare creatures stalking her and if you’ve fallen asleep already, I can’t really blame you: this is old, old stuff by horror movie standards, and the film does little to make it feel any fresher (even by 2002 standards). The ending scene is not bad, but by that time we’re this close to cheering for the creatures anyway. Almost nothing else stands out from the result: The actors are unfamiliar for a reason (although Jodelle Ferland does make an early appearance) and director Robert Harmon has done much better elsewhere. In the end, They is your standard moody, dark, undistinguished horror film—it plays better as background noise than anything worth watching in a sustained fashion.

  • Lost Souls (2000)

    Lost Souls (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) Oh good, I first thought, a theatrically released 2000s horror movie I haven’t yet seen! Alas, there’s a reason why Lost Souls came out in 2000 and disappeared from collective memory soon thereafter: It’s really stupefyingly dull. Riding the wave of Catholic-themed apocalyptic horror movies from the turn of the millennium, it deals with a runaway sect convinced that our protagonist is destined to be the anti-Christ, and that’s pretty much it in terms of plot. Directed by cinematographer turned director Janusz Kamiński, the film is visually stylish, but so uniformly glum and dour (think a rainy day stretched over 97 very long minutes) that it just makes a dull experience even duller. Ben Chaplin couldn’t be blander as the protagonist, while Winona Ryder is just a bit too cute to be forgettable as the female lead. Far more moody than scary, Lost Souls deservedly slid into obscurity, and I see no reason to take it out from there.

  • Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

    Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) Nearly every single successful horror film of the 1990s spawned a sequel whether it was appropriate or not. The temptation to do a follow-up to Candyman was predictably irresistible: Not only was the film successful, it also fascinated audiences by weaving a complex mixture of social protest, urban decay, black representation and the undeniable presence of Tony Todd as the titular boogeyman. Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh predictably devolves by ramping up the horror elements at the expense of the social commentary. Leaving the concrete apartments of Chicago for New Orleans is a miscalculation even if it lets the filmmakers explore the Candyman legend to its origins. But then again—overexplaining what should have remained mysterious is the hallmark of ongoing horror series. What’s less forgivable is how the thematic concerns of the original are muted to the point of being nearly inconsequential: this film is about the iconography of the series (the hook, the bees, the mirror calling) more than the meaning of those icons. Perhaps the most surprising thing is how Farewell to the Flesh is directed by Bill Condon, who would progress to much brainier fare with his subsequent Gods and Monsters, and then further on to tentpole Hollywood productions. Not much of his talent is on display here, though—the direction is as mechanical as the script’s reliance on carefully spaced murders to qualify as a genre horror sequel. If nothing else, Farewell to the Flesh is another chance to see Tony Todd at work, and it’s not irremediably awful—merely useless.

  • Show People (1928)

    Show People (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I have a sharp interest in Hollywood movies about Hollywood, and it turns out that there were many of them –even in the early days of Hollywood! Many of them are not so good, but Show People does have a few things going for it. For one thing, it’s directed by King Vidor, a capable director who clearly knew what he’s doing. For another, and perhaps more visibly, this is a film that actually gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the way a silent film studio operated. The story itself is archetypical but holds up—an ingenue from the Midwest goes to California to become a movie star, and is dismayed to succeed first in slapstick comedy (getting hit in the face with seltzer water), but loses her way when she turns to prestige drama. There are many cameos—notably Vidor and lead actress Marion Davies as herself—but you’re going to need a good working knowledge of late-silent era Hollywood to know who they are. Show People is a fascinating piece of archival history of Hollywood’s silent era, and the emphasis on comedy means that it’s remarkably easier to watch than many other dramas of the time.

  • The Lady Vanishes (1979)

    The Lady Vanishes (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) Trying to remake Hitchcock is such a pointless exercise that it probably shouldn’t be attempted. We already have the (admittedly interesting) Gus van Sant version of Psycho to tell us that, but Anthony Page’s earlier remake of The Lady Vanishes should have been evidence enough. Oh, the film is watchable enough—and if you asked a viewer used to contemporary films to watch either one of them, the remake is more accessible. Updated elements include colour cinematography, the presence of more recent actors such as Elliott Gould, Cybill Shepherd and Angela Lansbury, as well as resetting the setting to explicitly take place in Nazi Germany rather than the ersatz substitute used in the 1938 film. Most of what people remember from the original is in the remake as well: the two football-fan comic reliefs, the sense of paranoia, the climactic shootout and the final whistled tune… but it’s not quite Hitchcock, nor is it a marvel of technical innovation as the original was. If nothing else, it’s a decent-enough suspense with Nazis losing at the end, which isn’t too bad already. But it doesn’t help anything thinking that they can remake Hitchcock pictures with impunity.

  • Street Trash (1987)

    Street Trash (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) Part of the fun of Street Trash is discovering how truly insane the film is willing to become, but for everyone else who may want some advance notice, be warned that in some circles the film is considered a masterpiece of the “melt movies” subgenre. You shouldn’t have asked what those are, because now you’re cursed with the knowledge that there are people out there seeking films in which people, well, melt. We’re not talking climactic melting à la Raiders of the Lost Ark: we’re talking about films in which people’s bodies graphically melt down through some horrific mean. In chunks. So it is that in Street Trash, we find ourselves among the homeless of Brooklyn, as a case of old booze is sold to those who can’t afford any better, and they dissolve in colourful pools of goo. The poster is terrible enough, but the film itself is a carnival of vomit-inducing liquefaction, and that’s not even getting into the dirty atmosphere of the film in its entirety. Cheerfully racing past “gritty,” “grimy” and “dirty” as adjectives, Street Trash is simply visually filthy: every scene, every costume, every character has dirt, grease, human fluids or liquid goop attached to them. Abstractly, it sounds terrible, maybe even unbearable—I certainly would not recommend the result to anyone without a strong stomach and a tolerance for the kind of dark humour that genre 1980s horror could dive into. But on the screen, the result is so consciously over-the-top that liquefying hobos have never been so, well, funny. It’s still stomach-churning, but it’s not nearly as hollow as it could have been—and scenes in which street bums play around with a dismembered phallus are, well, curiously tolerable once you play into the film’s twisted logic. Obviously made by director J. Michael Muro and screenwriter-producer Roy Frumkes to freak out the mundanes, Street Trash remains, even today, the kind of film that becomes part of every twisted horror cinephile’s conversational repertory: “Oh, you think that’s bad, but have you seen…?” It’s definitely one of those movies that has to be seen to be believed. But if you show it to friends, you’re responsible for providing the barf bags.

  • The Front (1976)

    The Front (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Unusually enough, The Front features Woody Allen in a pure acting performance—within a film that he neither directed nor wrote. But you can understand why Allen would accept the project when you take a look at what the film is about—set in the 1950s, it’s about screenwriters put on the blacklist who hire the services of a store clerk (Allen) as a front to present their scripts to entertainment executives. The film’s aims are clear once the credits roll and a good chunk of the film’s topline crew (starting with director Martin Ritt, screenwriter Walter Bernstein and lead actors Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, and Lloyd Gough) have their names accompanied by a note telling us when they were placed on the blacklist—and of course, those who know about Dalton Trumbo’s career will recall how he kept working under various pseudonyms, even winning Academy Awards as someone else. Parts of The Front are quite funny: helped by Allen’s nerdy charm, the film coasts a bit on his ability to portray a sympathetic loser. But as befit the topic, the film has some less amusing turns toward the end, as the illusion dissipates and the film goes for a well-deserved “take that!” at the idiocy of McCarthyism. While not necessarily well known these days, The Front is a welcome act of reclamation by blacklisted Hollywood people, acting as a marker and a bit of wish fulfillment by those who were sidelined by the excessive paranoia of the time.

  • Terror in the Aisles (1984)

    Terror in the Aisles (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) I’m favourably predisposed toward anthology films—handled correctly à la That’s Entertainment, they can combine an educational quality with some great entertainment matter. But Terror in the Aisles does seem to miss its target. Supposedly an exploration of horror cinema narrated by Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen as if they are in a movie theatre watching a horror film (a conceit that doesn’t quite work), it features excerpts of films from the 1930s to the early 1980s. Unfortunately, the chatter that accompanies the excerpts is definitely introductory material: While the film features footage of Hitchcock providing his well-known explanation of the difference between suspense and surprise, the rest of the film seems satisfied with familiar platitudes. The choice of the excerpts can also be suspicious: There’s a lengthy excerpt from Nighthawks that did make me want to see the film, but seems out of place in a film about horror. Much of the material is loosely grouped along thematic lines, which does add to the sense of wasted opportunities: by 1984, horror cinema was fresh from a decade of radical change after the rise and crash of slasher movies, the hybridization of themes (as with Alien, equally at ease in horror and SF), and the far-gorier material made for an increasingly distinct horror audience (à la Italian horror wave). Very little of this is covered in Terror in the Aisles, and one can’t really blame the lack of perspective when those trends were already obvious years before. I really would have enjoyed an assessment of the horror genre circa 1984, but this isn’t what this is meant to do—it feels closer to a mainstream cash-in on the horror craze of the time, not digging too deep for fear of losing their non-fan audience. For those who are knowledgeable about the genre, there is some value in being reminded of better movies and playing “name that movie” when the film doesn’t. Amusingly enough, the most interesting section of Terror in the Aisles is the one about horror spoofs because it features films that, to put it bluntly, have not withstood the test of time, and thus qualify as unfamiliar fresh material for anyone watching from the twenty-first century.