Reviews

  • 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.

  • House of Wax (1953)

    House of Wax (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Despite having seen enough movies to know better, I thought that having seen the 2005 remake of House of Wax meant that the original wouldn’t have many surprises in store. I was happily mistaken—it doesn’t take a lot of time to realize that the “remake” is as far apart in plot from the original as “movies about a wax museum created by a psychopath using live persons” could be. This version stars none other than the unique Vincent Price as a genius-level wax sculptor who, in the opening moments, sees his labour of love being burnt down. When he reappears, he’s got a few people working for him with designs far darker than before, and it’s up to the investigators to piece together the rebirth of his museum, the mysterious disappearances around the city and the reports of a horribly disfigured figure prowling around. House of Wax does feel a bit more daring than usual for a 1950s horror film—the prestige colour cinematography does help a bit, and Price does help make any material compelling. It’s a decent film in its own right, and much more interesting for those who have seen the remake.

  • Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

    Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) Abbot and Costello movies don’t deal in subtleties, and so their chance to meet the Mummy (third in their trilogy of Universal Movie Monsters team-ups) is a full-bore excuse to indulge in as many Egyptian stereotypes as possible. The comic intent of Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy helps make it as inoffensive as possible, although we’re once again deep in pyramids, European expat clubs and old-school adventurer hats. It’s also an excuse for them to run through variations of their comic routines, where it’s the “pick/spade” verbal jousting that echoes their famous “who’s on first” number, or the “slipping the mickey” routine from an earlier film. There’s a nice mixture of comedy levels here, and the result is easy enough to watch even if it’s seldom as clever at it could have been (or as the first “Frankenstein” film). The character of the Mummy is comically altered, but still recognizable from its classic roots. If you like Abbott and Costello, if you’ve seen the two other films in this sub-trilogy, if you’re looking for the authorized comic takes on the Universal classic monsters, then Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy will fit the bill. It may even be a good pick for Halloween night viewing with the kids.

  • The Far Country (1954)

    The Far Country (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) Never mind the western, here is the northern: The Far Country is distinctive in how it is set in Alaska (but shot in Alberta), featuring an adventurer bringing order to the north. There are numerous points of comparison between this and Thunder Bay in semi-awkwardly featuring James Stewart as an outdoorsy adventurer, and that was before I discovered that both movies shared the same director Anthony Mann, who made many other 1950s films (especially westerns) with Steward. The ingredients are similar, what with an adventure story made distinctive by its procedural description of a slightly unusual setting. The Far Country is not that distinctive nor that good, but it’s watchable enough in how it transposes familiar Western themes to an underused environment. There’s a little bit of Canadian and French-Canadian content in here (largely due to the location and to Corinne Calvet’s performance). Still, the film is not all that memorable, and there are better choices out there for Stewart fans looking at his 1950s filmography.

  • Humoresque (1946)

    Humoresque (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I’m not a big Joan Crawford fan, but she’s the single best element of Humoresque, a dour and dark romantic drama that rests on her performance as a damaged woman dragging a young and inexperienced violinist (John Garfield, fine but no more) in her self-destructive spiral. In many ways, this is an old-fashioned weepie, with characters fated to bad ends through their own flaws. There are not a lot of opportunities for levity or jokes here (placing supporting actor Oscar Levant at a disadvantage, as his later roles would demonstrate), reinforcing the all-orchestral swell of melodramatic intensity that goes with the ending. There’s a little more to it than just a melodrama in how the film delves, especially in the first half, in the universe of classical music performance. This enables the film to spend a lot of time featuring good music (and for Levant to play a bit of piano), lending additional respectability to the result. Humoresque is not exactly a good movie, but Crawford is compelling here as a woman who knows she can’t be redeemed, and if the result is overlong, it’s not to be dismissed easily.

  • Birthmarked (2018)

    Birthmarked (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) It’s really not a good sign if you make it to the end of a film wondering when the good stuff will start. You can call Birthmarked a slow burn, and that’s fine. I’ll just call it a film without a clear reason to exist. It attempts to be darkly funny in describing how two scientists raise kids contrarily to ideas about their “nature,” but that’s already a shaky start considering that few people will subscribe to that central thesis in the first place. It gathers no point for a restrained direction and a rather dull narrative. While Birthmarked does acquire a pulse very late in the process, by that point we’re in a sunk-cost kind of situation, as it’s easier to let the film play and see how it ends than stopping watching already. I should feel more positively about the film: after all, it’s a Canadian production shot not too far away from Montréal, and it’s a bit more subtle than usual. But there’s subtlety and then there’s having no perceptible point, and Birthmarked doesn’t do too well in that area. The premise called out for wilder screenwriting and much more stylized direction—what we got instead is simply too dull to be interesting.