Halloween Movie # 26: The Reflecting Skin

Sometimes terrible things happen...

...quite naturally

A black screen.

A sound. Dark, low. Unknown.

The screen explodes into a field of color. Yellow and white.

As far as the eye can see, rows upon rows of amber waving grain.

The deep and low plucking of what sounds like a thousand violins as a small boy with impossibly black hair and translucent skin runs through the middle of the grain.

Something is coming. You can feel it. Something is in the air.

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Or such is how I imagine the script for the opening of Philip Ridley's might read.

In 1990, Philp Ridley, a well-known U.K. based novelist and playwright, wrote and directed a film called The Reflecting Skin. It came out the same year as another movie he wrote, The Krays. The Krays was a hit in the U.K. and abroad.

No one saw The Reflecting Skin. They should have. If they would have, they would have seen the work of an artist who likes to dip his toe in a world of fantasy and myth that is both horrifying and beautiful.

Check out the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxlnDRqPUXE

The Reflecting Skin is the story of a young boy named Seth Dove. It is his journey into a fantasy world of dark childhood dreams and desires. The plot is about Seth's brother (played by a very, very young Viggo Mortensen) coming back from the war, his relationship to his disturbed parents and the mystery behind a demonic black car filled with darkly clothed men as it races along the country landscape, searching for something better let unsaid.

Trying to describe the story points of The Reflecting Skin is like trying to describe the story points of Blue Velvet. I could tell you Blue Velvet is a detective story about a man finding out who kidnapped a distraught woman's child and how a severed ear plays a part in the mystery...but as we all know, the point of Blue Velvet is not so much if the bad guy is caught in the end as it is the texture of the path along the way to finding out who the killer is.

The same principal is at play in The Reflecting Skin. Yes, we do want to know who the men in the black car are. Yes, we do want to know what will happen to Seth Dove and the strange woman he meets in her house in middle of a field is all about.

Is she a vampire? Is she simply a lonely woman? Is his imagination overactive? Or do demons live among us and he is simply seeing them when the rest of us are too busy or blind to see?

We get answer to all of these 'story' questions, but more than that, we get a feeling and a sense of how Seth Dove experiences them...this is a movie so rich in texture and sensual detail it's nearly impossible for me to explain why it's so good, except to say you must see it.

The score by composer Nick Bicât is sweeping and terribly haunting. The cinematography by Dick Pope, one of the all time greats (the nearly perfect film Naked, the under appreciated Mountains of the Moon, Dark City, The Secret Garden), feels as if it's in 3D. It's rich and textured and absolutely in sync with the emotion and feeling of each scene. Watch how he frames each shot. Nothing is out of place, nothing is happenstance.

As with all great movies, there is absolutely not visual or narrative fat to this movie. It's as lean and mean as movies get.

I'll bet you dollars to donuts Dick Pope and Philip Ridley spent days looking at the work of Andrew Wyeth before they started to map out the look of the film. The entire feeling of the film can be summed up in this famous image:

And this:Lindsay Duncan is terrifyingly good in the role of Dolphin Blue. Yes, Dolphin Blue. Look at those names - Seth Dove and Dolphin Blue. Her scenes with the boy are spellbinding. You can't turn away from them. She is what a a famous writer once told me actor Cherry Jones is like. She is a 'vessel', meaning, she is so pure in her acting an entire world seems to emerge from her. Her acting is so organic it doesn't ever feel as if she is acting as channelling some unknown force.

Jeremy Cooper, the boy in the lead, did hardly any film after this one. It's no wonder. How do you follow this up? Sheila Moore as Seth's mother scares the shit out of me. Just wait until you see the water scene. Dear God.

But the real star of the movie is the writing. Kill me now. The texture to the words, the dips and falls in the narrative, the metaphors and subtle uses of jargon and language - the monologues are as good as any put on film, particularly the ones from Ms. Duncan.

This is one of those horror movies which is meant to be felt. God bless him, Philp Ridley did write The Krays and it is very, very good but it is nothing compared to the force of The Reflecting Skin.

This is horror and suspense movie making at it's finest.

Watch out for black cars on the road.

You never know who is inside.

Until next time...

Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets...

1977.

I'm almost 13 years old.

My father came over to me as I sat on the floor of the living room in our tiny house outside of Seattle and asked me," Wanna go to the movies? There's a double feature at the Lynn Twin."

The Lynn Twin was a two screen movie house in a parking lot off of a huge mall in Lynnwood, Washington, a small town a few over from my own. The screens were separated by a massive concession stand which served as a sound buffer between the two screens.

The building was block and simple. Functional. It was meant to get people in and out to watch movies, not to admire the decor or enjoy the rock hard seats.

Over the years, my father had tried to bond with me over various sporting events. First there was baseball. I hated it. I stood in the outfield, clutching a worn, dirty mitt in my hand, terrified a ball might actually come my way and I'd be forced to attempt to catch it. I remember being so afraid to leave my spot I used to pee in my pants instead of going to the bathroom a few fields away.

I was a curious child.

My father tried soccer (hated it, but loved watching boys in their jockstraps), fishing (if there is a more boring 'sport' known to man I have yet to uncover it), hiking (enjoyable, if endless and oddly unsatisfying - climbing and climbing and climbing for more climbing and climbing and climbing), camping (loved the outdoors, hated the lumpy ground), and the infamous Y-Indian Guides of the Pacific Northwest.


Y-Indian Guides was a group dedicated (as the badge says) to making Fathers and Sons 'pals forever.' My father was Chief Bryan and I was Little Michael. It was a whole Indian-Washington naming thing difficult to understand unless you grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I asked to be Sacagawea Michael. That didn't go over very well.

At Y-Indian Guides we boated and sailed and made cars and stood for pictures wearing Indian feathers on our heads and beaded shirts...it was all very bonding but it bored me to tears (except the cars...they were cool).

I was a young boy growing up gay and my father was a farm hand from Idaho and Montana. What did we have in common?

Movies. We had movies in common. So when my father asked me in the late summer of 1977 if I wanted to go to a double feature, I said yes. Movies were my obsession. They were my friends. I didn't have any literal friends, I was that oddly pathetic kid in school who spent time alone reading and watching movies. My Mom and Dad were my best friends.

I know, sickening.

I always went to the movies alone or with my parents. My mom took me to disaster movies and comedies and my dad took me to anything R-rated or with blood. A good time to be had by all.

He told my mother we were going to a double feature. She asked him what the movies were. The conversation went something like this:

Mom: "Lynn."

Dad: "Yes, dear."

Mom: "You didn't tell me what movies you and Mike are seeing."

Dad: "I don't know, dear. Some movie where Dustin Hoffman plays that weird comic who swore all the time in the 60's -"

Mom: "You mean Lenny. The biopic on Lenny Bruce."

Dad: (to me) "Biopic? Where does she learn these things?"

Mom: "I learn these things by reading Mike's Rona Barrett Hollywood magazine. There's a lot of boobs in that Lenny."

Dad: "How do you know this?"

Mom: "I read the review by John Hartl in the Seattle Times. He said that oversexed Val Perrine person shows her boobs through the whole movie."

Dad: "Well, then, good for us, huh?" (at this awkward point he nudged me in a heterosexual father and son moment)

Mom: "What's the other one?"

Dad: "I don't know. That Taxi thing."

Mom: "Taxi Driver?"

Dad: "Yea. We have to go. We're gonna be late."

Mom: "Nice. This is good parenting Lynn. Mike is 12 years old. He turns 13 in two weeks and you're taking him to a foul mouthed movie with all sorts of boobs flying all over the goddamn screen and a psychopath killer cab person with teenage hookers in New York."

Dad: "Yup. That's about right."

And with that, we left the house.

I was elated. Nudity? Violence? New York City? R-rated movies?

Nirvana.

So on that late summer day in August of the summer 1978 my father and I sat down in the air-conditioned Lynn Twin and watched Taxi Driver, starring Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, written by Paul Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese.

I never finished the movie in 1978.

Here is why: I sat watching this movie about this guy driving a cab in dirty, grungy New York City and as the movie progressed, I had a mounting sensation something awful was going to happen. I didn't have any idea at the time what would happen, but I had sense it was going to be awful.

I shrunk down farther and farther in my seat. The pit in my stomach was growing and I felt sweaty.

Then came the scene where Robert DeNiro walks down the street, his hair in a full Mohawk and shoots Harvey Keitel in the stomach. Something about the way in which he shot the guy made me sick to my stomach.

But that isn't what did me in.

What did me in was when DeNiro walked into the apartment building and shot the guy in front of him in the hand, sending four severed fingers flying in the air and blood shooting onto the wall.

I felt as if a cold bucket of water had been splashed on me and I heard myself scream.

That was when my father reached across me, grabbed me by the arm and hauled me out of the theater as fast as he could.

On the drive home we didn't say a word about it. My father giggled about it and said it was probably not smart to have taken me to it. I agreed...but nothing more was said.

But I privately knew Taxi Driver was the very first time I felt horrified in a movie theater which is why it is #29 in the Halloween Movie Countdown.

When I see the movie now I can admire it's artistry. The grainy film stock Scorcese used to give the killing scenes a documentary feel; the lack of any sense of politically correct charged speech; the shots of old, dirty, foul New York City at night; the dour, depressed and insanely angry tone of the movie; the poetry of the writing and the sheer audacity to make a film so insanely bleak and hellish.

Sure Jodie Foster is good in it (let's face it, the woman is not a great actress, she's stiff as shit and we all know it) and Cybill Shepherd is breathtaking and Albert Brooks is so damn young and Peter Boyle is amazing, per usual...but this is all about Scorcese.

The man is a fucking narcissistic ego whore. Raging Bull is great, Goodfella's is great if you're a Guido and hate everyone but your family, but Scorcese is not the God everyone makes him out to be. There is a reason hardly any of movies make any money.

He's too in love with Scorcese and Taxi Driver is still one of his top movies. Well - Mean Streets is pretty spectacular but Taxi Driver is the real jewel.

Plus, I used to be Robert DeNiro's assistant in the early 90's and I can tell you that DeNiro is a prick. 100% certified. I became good friends with his father and some day, some day, I'll tell stories that would make DeNiro fans die with envy. All I'll say is that I used to sit in the living room of DeNiro father's house and watch movies of DeNiro as a child...very surreal.

Taxi Driver is a movie, movie and I see now why it put Scorcese on the map. It's unrelenting in it's bleakness and grime. When I worked in video stores in New York City in the early 90's, myself and the other employees would watch the movie over and over on laserdisc and pause it and analyze the shots and the way they were composed and what they were about.

This is the kind of movie film geeks love because it's so in love with the form it's hard to take your eyes off of it.

It's a narcissistic, dirty horror movie with a rotten, tortured soul. But it's well-made and extremely smart.

Writer Paul Schrader (a man I admire but am afraid to meet) said he wrote Taxi Driver in 6 days in New York City when he was homeless and broke and strung out on dope. All of Hollywood is bullshit, so I find this hard to believe. But that is how the movie feels. It feels like it was made in the midst of a feverish drug dream where there is no escape.

Even the final shot with Travis looking in the rear view mirror and the refracted image he sees of himself to the zing of Herrmann's strings tells you this horror dream is never ending for him.

Travis Bickle is insane and is going to murder again. Thank God there has never been Taxi Driver 2. Can you imagine? "Travis Bickle is pissed off...again!"

And let's just say it - the name "Travis Bickle." One of the greatest names for a character ever.

Taxi Driver is unsettling, horrific, demonic and feverish. It's your worst nightmare come to life and as such, is a fitting part of the Halloween Movie Countdown.

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Of note as well:

Paul Schrader is a writer whose work I studied for some time. Besides the too-often praised Raging Bull, the bloated Cat People and the oddly dull American Gigolo, he did write 2 fun Halloween flicks you'll want to check out:

The first was Obsession directed by Brian DePalma in 1975. It was a great, crazy, ridiculous somersault of a movie that is a wonderful brain teaser straight out of the old noir days starring Geneviève Bujold, Cliff Robertson and John Lithgow.

The movie is old-fashioned but the directing by DePalma is great and baroque and the ending is a smash. The score by the late Bernard Herrmann (whose died one day after he finished the score for Taxi Driver) is a dream come true, the cinematography by the late, great and unmatched Vilmos Zsigmond is a widescreen lovers wet dream and the editing by Paul Hirsh (still editing to this day) is breathtaking.
Also, I'm a huge fan of The Comfort of Strangers, a 1989 movie Harold Pinter adapted from the Ian McEwan novel of the same name. Pinter truly understood Ian McEwan's book. He took the tone and the style of the novel and somehow found a visual and aural equivalent no other writer could have.

I only recommend this movie to people who truly love the art of movies. It is slow and methodical. This is a languid, living macabre dream of a mystery movie. If such a movie is not your thing, you will not like it.

But I can't get over the scene of Helen Mirren on the balcony describing the private, hurtful things Christopher Walken does to her in the dark or the way Natasha Richardson puts together the pieces of what is happening to them and why.

McEwan is an extremely tricky writer to adapt. He is all about the word. To find a way to make his work cinematic is hard for any artist, but when Schrader and Pinter got together, it became magic.

Sexually charged, demented and with one of the sickest endings of any movie in the 80's, The Comfort of Strangers is a wonderful Halloween movie to watch in the dark with a glass of wine. The cinematography by the great Dante Spinotti is pitch perfect, the editing by Bill Pankow is great and the score by Angelo Baldamenti is one of the most underrated scores he ever created. I bought the CD back in the 90's and listen to it at least once a month.

Until tomorrow...

Pleasant dreams...

Halloween Movie Countdown: #30 - What the fuck happened to Bette Davis and Ruth Gordon?

Look at them. I mean look at them. Imagine them looking out the window of their house as you stroll up, an innocent little child, your Halloween basket held in front of you, looking for candy, just a little bit of candy.

#30 on the countdown are two immortal classics of truly horrific cinema - Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? and Whatever Happened To Aunt Alice?

Ah, Baby Jane. What can I possibly write about it which has not already been written?

Bette David and Joan Crawford were down and out on their luck as actresses. They couldn't get a part to save their lives, when along came director Robert Aldrich. He had adapted a popular novel at the time into a script both of the women agreed to star in.

Suckers.

The end results is an exercise in grotesque psychological suspense, rather than all out horror. Although Crawford is quite fun in the movie, it's a Bette Davis picture all the way. She's a horrible character, a thoroughly terrible creature with one thing and one thing only on her mind: destroying anything in her path which takes away from her own narcissistic spotlight (Britney Spears anyone?).

The scenes between the two women is both campy and vile. The movie is surprisingly violent and the music is sublime. Despite the grandiose ridiculousness which runs through most of the film, it was a big hit when it came out and nabbed Davis an Oscar nomination.

She didn't win (Anne Bancroft did for Miracle Worker), but that didn't stop Davis from stealing the spotlight...again. According to popular legend, Crawford was infuriated when Davis was nominated for an Oscar and she was overlooked.

She contacted the Best Actress nominees who were unable to attend the ceremonies and offered to accept the award on their behalf should they win. When Anne Bancroft was declared the winner, Crawford triumphantly pushed her way past Davis saying "Step aside!", and swept onstage to pick up the trophy. Davis later commented, "It would have meant a million more dollars to our film if I had won. Joan was thrilled I hadn't."

Hysterical, old-fashioned and baroque (this is from the same man who made the great noir, Kiss Me Deadly), Whatever happened to Baby Jane is a worthy addition to any Halloween night...

After Baby Jane, Aldrich went on to make another less-known but nonetheless disturbing movie with two actress who had seen much, much better days...

Ruth Gordon and Geraldine Page. It's amazing to me these actresses would do such a simplistic and evil movie.

The poster tells you all. Someone is killing people and burying them in a garden. There. Done. It's really not more complicated than that.

Ruth Gordon - I could write an entire blog about her. Sure, she won an Oscar for Rosemary's Baby, but the woman was a writer, director and star for many, many years in works most people don't even remember.

She was an amazing talent who simply put everyone around her to shame.

She is crazy as usual in this - funny, acerbic, walking around as if she were in her living room...watching her raise a shovel and bring it down on a poor victims head while she sticks out her infamous tongue and bites down on it...

Heaven.

And Geraldine Page - the woman could act. Tennessee Williams' adaptations, Horton Foote's delightful Trip To Bountiful, Woody Allen's masterpiece Interiors - give me a break! She was a goddess of the acting world and then she did...this.

I have a theory...I have a theory Robert Aldrich gave all of these women LSD when he met them for the projects and just kept feeding them LSD...why else would they do these movies?

I'll tell you why -- because they were a gas. Aunt Alice is a surprisingly funny and unsettling movie. There are twists and turns in the plot you simply won't see coming. The dialogue is crisp and ridiculous and believe it or not, there is some pretty great suspense sequences.

Aldrich may have chosen silly subject matter but he executed it well and with style. These are living, breathing, baroque melodramas which are hysterical and disturbing.

These may not 'scare' you but they will freak you out...you'll also never look at the old lady next door in quite the same way ever again.

(And yes, I know I left out Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte - that is getting it's own entry later)...

Until tomorrow...

Halloween Movie Countdown: #31 - A chatty severed head and a spiked ball from hell...

I used to work in various video stores in Seattle, Boston and New York. For 8 years. Some people go to film school at USC, UCLA or NYU - I was born into white trash so I could never afford such high and mighty schooling. No, I worked in a video store for $7 an hour for years.

And let me tell you, I saw a lot of movies. A LOT of movies. Thousands.

As employees, we would always gleefully put horror movies on the monitors in the stores to freak people out. Over the course of the next month, all of the movies I'll highlight for Halloween were movies which, when played on the TV's, freaked people out every_single_time.

They would gasp and scream and cover their eyes but they would never, ever turn away.

That is my goal in recommending movies to you. I'll only list movies which survived the Video Store Test...

...movies you can't turn away from.

Because life is to fucking short to be wasted on lame ass, boring movies.

On that note...

Stuart Gordon meet Don Coscarelli. Don meet Stuart. What do you two have in common?

You two made four of the sickest, most vile, inventive and truly hysterical horror films of the late 70's and early to mid-80's and...nothing quite as creative since.

You want to scream, cringe, throw popcorn at the TV, gag, hit the pause button and rewind button again and again and again?

Then I dare you to watch these four classic movies back to back. Make it a Halloween weekend marathon. These guys went balls-to-the-wall in a way we simply do not see anymore in movies.

Let's take a look at their minor masterpieces...

When I first saw Re-animator I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The lead actor, the unbelievably peculiar Jeffery Combs, was shockingly funny and horrific at the same time. And the violence! It was stylized, offensive, hysterical and deeply disturbing. My kind of movie!

The movie is very, very, very loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's story Herbert West, Re-animator. But make no mistake - the movie is entirely Stuart Gordon. In France, there was a style of grotesque and violent theater entitled Theater du Grand Guignol. It was all the rage in Paris at the turn of the century. The violence was operatic and shocking. It was obscene but stylized and beautiful...and funny.

The plot of the movie doesn't need to be explained. It's a simple revenge tale.

I mean, please...the text for the poster is:

Herbert West has a very good head on his shoulders...

And another one in a dish on his desk...

You get the idea.

What Stuart Gordon did so well in Re-animator is take violence to such a level to make it vile and then absurd, and as he stripped it away, made it revoltingly hysterical.

It would ruin the experience if you've never seen it, but with Combs as his thematic muse, the movie goes into places few American horror movies had (and still don't have the balls to do).

I' m a huge fan of horror movies which are genuinely funny and shocking. These kinds of mixes are hard to find. They're normally from filmmakers who take the story and scenes in a direction where you constantly find yourself covering your mouth and saying, "Oh, no. He didn't do that" but yet find the humor in the grotesque.

A great ride of a movie, Stuart Gordon's Re-animator still stands the test of time as one of the all time great 80's horror movies.

Rent it, but please...save the desserts for after. This one is not an 'eating while watching' flick.

WARNING: As with many of these Halloween recommendations, there are edited and unedited versions of the movies. You must always try to find the unedited version if you can.

Trust me, what Herbert West does with the head on this desk and the naked girl on the table...it's edited out of some versions and you really want to see it. Its so shocking as to not be believed.

The other movie Mr. Gordon made which we used to love playing on the TV's (to the horror of little kids - I know, we were awful) is this little known gem:

This movie is a twisted sexual mind fuck.

Again, Mr. Gordon 'adapted' a short story of H.P. Lovecraft's and gave the lead to his muse, Jeffrey Combs. Together, they plunged into a story involving whips, chains, dildos, monsters that look like dildos, monsters that look like pussies, brain munching, pulsating mind bending machines, monsters which ate women from the inside out and one of the most creatively unsettling engorged pituitary gland in all of American cinema.

Again, to tell you the story is moot - a mad scientist tries to find clues to helping people unlock their deepest desires, but things get out of hand and the result is a bloody mess.

Combs must have been sniffing glue during this one. His scenes are simply unreal. He's manic, channeling some inner demented horror god on caffeine. Some are turned off by his weird 'acting'; I love it and find it the perfect Halloween concoction.

If psych-sexual horror with enough unrated gore to make you upchuck your dinner is you thing, then dive into this hearty dish. It is fairy spectacular.

Now, onto Don Coscarelli's mini-masterpieces -

And his fucked-up sequel:
Unlike Mr. Gordon, Mr. Coscarelli didn't want to give you a fun thrill ride so much as scare the living crap out of you and make you squirm.

And he succeeded.

The original Phantasm came out in 1979 and from the moment it hit the theaters, it was an underground hit. Like a lot of people, I heard about the movie from friends who told me about this amazing Tall Man and a flying ball and yellow blood.

Of course, I had to see it.

The movie is a weird mix of sci-fi and old-fashioned horror scares and one hell of a mean ass demonic ball with spikes. It was a heady mix which worked perfectly. The Tall Man scared the shit out of me and the ball fascinated me.

It's a great, scary Halloween movie with just the right amount of blood, guts and satanic plot holes. The entire thing doesn't really hold together, but the central mystery is pretty good and the special effects for the time were great. And, Coscarelli directed, wrote, edited and shot the movie by himself. True independent filmmaking.

Very cool.

Barbaric, scary and inventive, Phantasm is one of the best and most original horror movies to come out of the late 70's (and Variety posted a story saying a remake is in the works this winter.)

It's about the portal to hell and weird demons chasing two brothers across a barren landscape...blah, blah, blah.

It took ten years for him to make Phantasm 2, but it was well worth the wait. The first one was a big enough of a hit for Universal to give him a big budget and he didn't waste a penny. In the 80's and 90's, Universal put up money for some big, glossy thrillers and horror movies which they don't do anymore. Most of them were clunky, thundering money machines with no energy and soul.

Not Phantasm 2. It fucking ROCKED. It's a balls-to-the-wall action movie and a great, big budgeted horror movie in one.

With more money and lots of time between the first and second movie, Coscarelli crafted a great sequel. He directed and wrote it and the producing was left to others so he could concentrated on making a killer sequel.

The movie starts years after the first and continues the brother's quest to find out how to access the portal to hell, the secret behind the Tall Man and what the demonic, spiked ball is REALLY about.

A very young James LeGros starred in the sequel, as well as his white trash brother and the Tall Man. But the real star of the movie was the ball. Or, I should say three balls.

Fuck me. The balls in this movie were so bad-ass. There is one scene where they burrow into a guys back and...no. I can't ruin it. It will destroy the impact.

Suffice to say the scene is inventive and brutal. It's so bloody and sickeningly smart it's more than a bit upsetting Phantasm 3, 4 and 5 sucked. I can't recommend the sequels. You have much better uses of your movie viewing time.

Watching Phantasm and Phantasm 2 back to back would be the perfect Halloween fright fest. Pop these in and watch the evolution of a great horror story.

Until next time...

The Countdown to Halloween Begins...

The year is 1962.
The place is Willowpoint Falls.

No one knows about what happened
in the school
classroom ten years ago.

Now, in the dead of night,
Frankie Scaroltti, is going to find out why.

For the next 31 days, until the dawn of Halloween, I'm going to countdown each day by paying homage to 31 of the greatest scary movies of all time (with extras thrown in for good measure).

My list comes from having seen countless 'frightful' movies over the years. I have no idea why, but I've always loved suspense movies (which makes no sense - I'm the most anxious guy I know!).

My love of all things scary runs more to the suspense and thriller side then strict blood and guts horror...but I do appreciate a good gut spilling like anyone else (as long as it's done with wit and style).

Each day I'll highlight one movie I feel is superior in style and substance, and list a few others which are obscure and unknown but worth you time.

Go to the video store.

Turn the lights out and pop some popcorn.

Snuggle up on the couch and get ready to get the living crap scared out of you.

Without further ado, let's start off with a nice old-fashioned ghost story.

Frank LaLoggia's 1988 curiosity, Lady In White...

TRAILER:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji73ogmlCQ8&feature=related

For me, this movie is like one of those great, old-fashioned ghost stories, but with a nice social commentary in the center. The filmmaker, LaLoggia, has since disappeared off of the film radar. Not sure where the hell he's gone, but he was a talented filmmaker who also made a nifty little 80's thriller called See No Evil.

Lady In White boasts a fantastic original soundtrack that is both inspired and cheeky. The lead actor, Lukas Haas, was a few years fresh from Witness and was ideal for the part. He didn't possess any of the sarcastic and grating style of so many child actors of the time. He was centered and down to earth.

I am LOATHE to tell you much about the story except it's a fun ghost story that is rather lurid and mean spirited - but that's not what makes the movie. What makes the movie is a subplot concerning an old man in the town who is after the character played by Lukas Hass and a cameo by Katherine Helmond during the over-the-top finale which has to be seen to be believed.

The stairs...beware of the stairs!

Cheesy and great, ridiculous and cinematic, touching and well-made...this is the perfect start to your Halloween movie watching.

Give Lady In White a shot and you won't be sorry.

(Extra credit (if you dare)....

If you can find a copy on VHS or set your TIVO to tape it when it comes on late at night, watch The Haunting of Julia aka Full Circle with Mia Farrow, based on the book Julia by Peter Straub. And excellent thriller from the 70's that unfortunately has yet to appear on DVD...and the ending? Dear God...the ending haunted me for years as a child. Superb ghost story AND book.

Many feel The Changeling from director Peter Medak is a great ghost story. It was made in 1980 and had a wonderfully demented George C. Scott in the lead role. While I don't feel the movie as a whole is that good, the suspense does have a very nice build and dear Lord, what director Medak could do with a bouncing ball and a staircase will make you scream bloody murder.

And one cannot forget The Innocents from 1961. A sublime exercise in suspense with poor Deborah Kerr. Much spooker than you'd expect for 1961. It's playing this month on TCM. Tape it!

If you dare...)

BLU-RAY DVD REVIEW: Disney's EARTH (or, how to enjoy the effects of acid without acting taking the shit)

This is my uncensored opinion of anyone who watches this on Blu-Ray and is not at least partially stunned into emotional submission - you are heartless.

No, no, no. Of course are you are not heartless. That's cruel. However, you may want to get your empathy checked...

I know most people have absolutely no interest in films about nature. I used to be one of those people. I used to think they were so boring. My sister has always been into the glories of nature and how wonderful this planet can be. I was like, How very lesbian of you. Haven't you got a real film to watch?

Then I grew up. And started watching nature shows. I did like some of them, but most were the same shit. Nature is pretty but nature is shit. We are born, we get eaten, we love, we frolic, we die. End of story.

Like I need to pay to see this? I live it every day in NYC.

So it was with great reluctance I rented Earth from the new line of Disneynature films. I really had no great expectations of it. I thought it might be good in Blu-Ray but I didn't hold my breath.

Well, fuck me with a chainsaw. This movie is brilliant. I mean brilliant.

I won't even tell you how the colors on Blu-Ray are like colors I've never, ever seen, not even on a Blu-Ray Pixar disc; I won't tell you how many times I stared at the TV, my mouth hanging open at some of the footage I was seeing; I won't tell you how many times my husband said to me the graphics and footage was so stunning it had to be a digitally animated movie; I won't tell you the feeling of utter awe and wonder and you've got to be kidding me I felt watching this movie.

Yes, the center of the film does sag as there is no real narrative to speak of. The throughline to the story is the earth. That's it. On the land, under the sea, anywhere life exists this film went. There is a structure to the film, but it's mostly geographical with only a few loose story lines batted around and ones which come full circle, but that isn't the reason to see this.

The reason to see this is to see the splendor of nature's amazing power and grace and inspired beauty and to be humbled and grateful you are lucky enough to live on this planet.

The only quibble is Disney loves their soaring music and Mr. James Earl Jones really MUST chill out with his Darth Vader impersonation during his thundering voice over, but not even his over-acting can hurt the stunning visuals.

See this on Blu-Ray. Don't have a player? Find a friend who does. See it.

It's truly amazing.

Mikey Movie Madness - 4.5 overall - minus a .5 due to the silly music and the lack of any real narrative.

Oh, whatever you do, watch the credits at the end for a fun 'making of' reel.

Yours in movie obsession...

mmm

DVD New Releases: CORALINE and ADVENTURELAND

I had the great fortune and misfortune to see a whole slew of movies this weekend. I'll say one thing: I should always trust my instincts.

I'm not sure how, but I can almost always tell, via a movie poster or the the DVD cover art or the coverage on a movie if I'll like it or not. It's rare I'm wrong. And it's rare the American public is wrong. Most often, the most successful movies are the best movies.

By 'successful' I mean movies which succeed monetarily in compared to the scope in which they are made. It is rare a movie which does poorly is very good; the fact it did poorly is because none of the critics liked it and most people who saw it in the theater did not as well, so they told their friends and they told their friends...and no one went. I'm not saying critics are right, but when they all hate something, there is something there.

Let's start with Coraline.

The pitch:

A young girl walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. On the surface, this parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life - only much better. But when her adventure turns dangerous, Coraline must count on her resourcefulness, determination, and bravery to get back home - and save her family.
The trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/coraline/

This is one fucked up movie. It's strange, surreal, odd and, in the end, dull. It's also the kind of movie snobs will say is great even when they are bored because they feel they have to say it's great by the sheer fact it's so odd.

The film follows the story of a misfit girl named Coraline who discovers an alternative reality where she meets her 'perfect family', replete with buttons for eyes and sweet, caring souls.

There isn't much more to say about the story except for that. The plot is very simple and of the garden variety misfit tale.

There is no denying the artistry which went into making the film. The animation and the feel of the movie is creepy, layered and staggering. The tone is savage and mean; you wait every moment for someone to become plummeted with knives. The team behind this movie clearly took years and years to make this.

The filmmaker is Henry Selick, the man behind The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone. His style is very much that of an artist with an an individual vision. It is a vision which is bleak, nihilistic and in love with the grotesque. There is a reason his name is often confused with Tim Burton. Their visual style is very much in sync, but their storytelling style is not.

Whereas as Burton can become lost in his dark aesthetic at the expense of emotion and story, he has made a body of work which has been, at times, very emotional and accessible. Selick's work is so otherwordly and dark, it's difficult to find something to identify with or latch onto...instead, his movies are technical marvels to watch and study, but not movies, sadly, to enjoy.

The reason the movie made $75 million can be attributed more to the effective 3-D than to the story or the film itself. It deserves all the kudos out there for it's amazing technology and it's oddly shaped and disturbing characters, but the film isn't engrossing and rather off-putting. I found myself fading in and out halfway through and only enjoyed it for it's lush colors and magnificent animation, but if most viewers were honest (and most critics) the movie is beautiful in the darkest of ways, and also one of the most boring animated films I've seen in a long time, and I see lots and lots of animated movies.

From a writing perspective, this is from the novelist, Neil Gaiman, the very accomplished and prolific author from Britain Mr. Gaiman is a man who takes his work and storytelling very seriously. I've only read one of his novels and the subject matter was not to my liking, but he does know how to weave a tale. Many are fans of his comic book (oh, sorry, graphic novel) Sandman...I've read that as well and while I liked it I didn't love it.

I've found the rules and structure of fantasy and horror writing to be unruly and difficult to deconstruct. It's as if the rule book is thrown out of the window with such work. Maybe it's my own unwillingness to live in those worlds long enough to understand them...they are much too dark and violent for me.

Mr. Gaiman has a delightful website where he posts often.

Here he is: http://www.neilgaiman.com/

Mikey Movie Madness score:

7 for technical achievements; 4 for storytelling. Unfortunately, even in 3-D, not worth your time.

Next up: Adventureland

The pitch:

In 1987, James dreams of a summer European tour before studying at an Ivy League school in New York City are ruined after his parents have a severe career setback. As a result, James must get a summer job to cover his upcoming expenses at the decrepit local amusement park, Adventureland, where he falls in love with a witty co-worker. The young carnies have unforgettable and painful learning experiences about life, love and trust.

The trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/adventureland/

I know the kind of people who say they love this movie. They are the kind who are in Graduate Writing or Sociology Programs at Columbia university and are working on their dissertation about the use of irony and fate in society and/or late 20's century drama. Or, better yet, they live in the East Village and attend rally's in Washington Square Park and smoke pot and run poetry slams to empty halls.

It's difficult to tell you what is good and what is bad about this movie, because I found the tone so annoying and frustrating, it was difficult to sit back and let it wash over me. If there is one thing this movie is, it's smug. Smug in it's attitude for well-structured movies, smug in it's anti-societal views, smug in how grating the lead actor is (sorry, but I find Jesse Eisenberg very, very grating, even though he always plays the downtrodden Jewish guy), smug in how it finds the format and movement of good movies so passe, smug in how it views the world and it's quirky sense of irony...

It reminds me of the worst works of Wes Anderson. I simply do not like them but I feel like I should like them and that if I don't like them then there is something wrong with me. I used to feel it was simply that I didn't 'get' these kinds of movies and there was some illiterate and defective part of my obsessive movie gene which resulted in my making a knee-jerk reaction to these movies, but now I know better. Most people know better (which is why they make no money and hardly anyone goes to see them, except those noted above). They are dull and worse, smug, about their own perceived intellectual superiority at the loss of story or forward dramatic momentum.

Smug: marked by excessive complacency or self-satisfaction; "a smug glow of self-congratulation" (according to the Princeton online dictionary).

Mikey Movie Madness score: 4 for trying to make a drama about people in their 20's that has serious, literary ambitions; 2 for execution and, well, smugness.

More soon...

MMM