Donald Pleasance

  • Death Line aka Raw Meat (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) Repetition is an essential part of movies, especially if they aim at a wide audience – it’s an accepted quirk that everything needs to be repeated two or three times to account for short attention spans, people getting up for the washroom (or, these days, having a look at their phones), wide disparities in cognitive capabilities, and the proverbial common denominator. This usually goes double for horror films – not because they’re more complex, but because there usually isn’t much more to say than “monster bad and kills people” repeated a few times to make sure we get the message and get our money’s worth in gore and death. But even given those accepted parameters, Death Line goes all-out on the repetition thing. Every ten minutes or so, the film’s opening event is brought up again (have you heard about the unconscious man in the stairwell? That unconscious man in the stairwell? Yes, that unconscious man in the stairwell! Isn’t it strange that there should be an unconscious man in the stairwell? What a strange place, a stairwell, for an unconscious man! I know, who could imagine such a thing as a stairwell with an unconscious man? etc.) in what almost becomes a running gag. But the film has more than that – a sombre tale of a police inspector investigating something that ends up being a cannibal tribe hidden underneath the London Underground, the film does have a few stylistic flourishes and odd turns. Donald Pleasance, for once, doesn’t play a mad scientist but a surly hard-working London policeman, and his brief scene with Christopher Lee (as a high-ranking MI5 officer) is a meeting of the greats. There are some nice things here for a 1972 horror film – most notably one long uninterrupted sequence, a good portrayal of the monster, and some unnerving plot elements. Less fortunately, an entire subplot of the film having to do with a young couple (endlessly talking about an unconscious man in a stairwell) takes away some of the film’s energy. Death Line is a bit better than my dismissive comments about repetition may suggest, but it’s hardly a great movie – another script rewrite with fewer young couples and more Christopher Lee could have improved things quite a bit.

  • The Mutations aka The Freakmaker (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) It’s going to take a specific kind of viewer to stay interested in The Mutations, even if having Donald Pleasance running around as a mad scientist does have its own unarguable charm. There’s some cool plant-growing footage over the opening credit sequence, but any interest in the film goes down whenever the plants are replaced by humans. The plot is a lazy mad-scientist shtick with the antagonist having plans to create human/plant hybrids by experimenting on young female college students. Partially inspired by -and aping- the classic horror film Freaks, the film can be gross at times as it unrolls a literal freak-show, but these little shocks can’t come close to making the rest of the film feel any better. Bah – nobody has to like 1970s low-budget British exploitation. Except for those who do.

  • Prince of Darkness (1987)

    Prince of Darkness (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) If it took me a while before catching Prince of Darkness on TV, it’s not for lack of trying.  But it’s is not considered among director John Carpenter’s best movies, and watching it only confirms why. I’ll be the first to admit that there is something intriguing in the concept of the film and a good chunk of its execution: The uneasy mixture of science, religion and impending apocalypse is always something that gets me interested, and there’s some interest in the film’s idea of ancient evil bootstrapping itself in the world through modern technology. On a purely visual level, there is also some really interesting stuff here, up to Carpenter’s prime-era standards: the man-of-insects, the liquid mirrors, gravity running in reverse and other spooky stuff works well in isolation. Finally, there’s some interesting character work throughout the film: Despite Jameson Parker’s unfortunate mustache, Donald Pleasance acts as a cornerstone of the film, with some assistance from Victor Wong. Alas, Prince of Darkness, for all of its potential, eventually falls into the spooky-stuff-in-a-blender school of horror filmmaking, in which various strong images are strung together with no apparent discipline or meaning. Anything and everything can happen, making moot any attempt to make sense of it all. This impression is made worse by the film’s frequent and blatant jumps from a patina of scientific justification to pseudoscientific nonsense without rigour or reason. Even the music is a bit too much at times. Finally, and perhaps more damagingly, Carpenter misses the mark when it comes to creating empathy for his characters. The lead couple is dull and uninvolving (the male lead initially behaving like a creep doesn’t help at all), there are too many supporting characters, and few of them end up being sympathetic, except for supernatural fodder when the film has to kill or possess someone. The result is still worth a look, like most of Carpenter’s movies, but there’s a palpable sense that Prince of Darkness, with all of its genuine eeriness and good ideas, could have been much, much more.

  • Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

    Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) It took no less than seven years for Moustapha Akkad, the producer of the Halloween series (at that point) to conclude the three-film arc launched with Halloween 4, but sixth entry Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is a let-down even by the low standards of slasher films in following the fifth movie’s dangling plot threads. This being said, let’s be careful about expressions such as “three-film-arc,” and “following up on plot threads”: the production history of the series clearly shows that they had no idea where to go and made it up at each new film up to the shooting stage, which explains the disjointed plot details and increased supernatural mysticism of Myers’s powers. Whatever interesting plot elements are almost accidental, and they tend to be overwhelmed by the execution as, inevitably, slasher movies appeals to those who want to see “the kills” more than anything else. The production history of this entry is almost legendary for its chaotic nature, so all we’re left to contemplate is what shows up on-screen (and even then, there’s a producer’s cut also floating around—not what I’m reviewing here). And what shows up is … weird. Paul Rudd gets an early starring role, but his sullen creepy character is far away from his usual screen persona. This was veteran actor Donald Pleasance’s last film role, but even it was butchered considering that he died between principal photography and the extensive reshoots. The result is a mess, not even enjoyable by slasher standards. And if you’re not a slasher fan, then it quickly becomes exasperating. There are about half a dozen things and ideas in here that a more competent writer or director (or producer, considering the entire mess) could have used to make a more interesting film, but that’s not the case. There is an interesting historical context here in that the following year, Scream would re-examine the slasher genre and relaunch it on a foundation of self-awareness and snark, so you can consider Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers as the last dying gasp of the old-school slasher. As for me, this was the last reasonably popular Halloween film I hadn’t seen (or so say my notes, because these films are hard to tell apart without written documentation) and so I can walk away from the entire series with the conviction that off-brand Halloween III remains the craziest and best of them.

  • Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

    Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) In the grand scheme of the Halloween series, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is the one that trashed the idea of a series of unrelated Halloween-themed movies—as much as I like Halloween 3’s crazy approach to the theme, Halloween 4 is indeed the return of Michael Myers as the unstoppable, possibly supernatural serial killer with a fascination for the Stroud family. If you’re even remotely familiar with the concept of a slasher horror movie, you know what to expect: an evil killer, innocent victims, ineffectual police forces (through no fault of their own, as even gunshots at close range aren’t the kind of stuff that will stop this killer). The twist here is that the intended victim is a very young girl, introducing a not-so-cool, not-so-fun element in the template. There’s an extra twist at the very end, but it feels more distasteful and a mockery of any attempt at characterization—though I’ll note that both Halloween 4 and Friday the 13th 4 (four years apart) ended on similar notes, Halloween 4 being a bit more sadistic about it. There’s something almost interesting in the character of the doctor (Donald Pleasance) being driven mad by the idea of pure evil returning over and over again, but if you’re thinking meta-commentary about the nature of such movies, then think again: Halloween 4 really isn’t interested by such shenanigans. As the flat writing and direction suggest, this is a pure cash-in. If you’re a fan of slasher horror, this is a film for you. If you’re not, this is clearly not the film that will convince you otherwise.