Most Misleading Title in Years

Film: The House on Sorority Row
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

There are expectations when it comes to an early-‘80s slasher movie. You expect a few nasty kills with some sort of sharp implement, a couple of jump scares, and a decent amount of T & A. I’m not a huge nudity guy when it comes to movies in the sense that it’s not something I generally look for in a movie. But, as I say, there are expectations that need to be dealt with. A slasher movie of the vintage and name of The House on Sorority Row? This should be crammed full with shower scenes and gratuitous nipple shots. And, because I’m making this a point of discussion, it clearly isn’t.

If I’m not a huge T & A fan, why is this an issue for this specific film? Because—and I know this is probably going to catch me some shit here from at least a few regular readers—slashers of this era don’t really have a lot more to offer. We know going in that we’re going to get some sort of mutated killer. He’ll have either physical deformities, be mentally aberrant, or both (probably both), and that he’ll kill off half a dozen to a dozen people, many of them scantily clad nubile women. Depending on how daring the director is, we might get a few quality kills, but will more than likely get something akin to a raised knife (or cane with pointy bits in this case) and implied flesh piercing with said object. Honestly, the least the filmmakers could do is give us a bit of skin.

Redrum

Film: Doctor Sleep
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

One of the problems with sequels is that there are a lot of expectations with them. John Carpenter wanted to turn the Halloween franchise into an anthology, with a completely different story every year. He tried with Halloween III and got buried for it, even though now, decades later, it’s considered a pretty good horror movie. Often, a sequel happens after a movie gets a great deal of acclaim, and the sequel is frequently a disappointment because of those expectations. So how do you do a sequel after 40 years? Well, they did it with Halloween from 2018, and did it pretty well. Doctor Sleep attempts to do the same thing with The Shining.

Before we dive head-first into Doctor Sleep, I want to discuss this idea of sequels and what Doctor Sleep does right in that respect. A sequel to what is widely considered one of the greatest horror movies ever made 40 years after the fact is, honestly, a big ask. What we expect, of course, is that we’ll spend the movie at The Overlook dealing with the unquiet ghosts of the past. The truth is that we do get there eventually, but not until the third act. Doctor Sleep wants us to earn that return to Room 237. So, we’re going to deal with something entirely different that is going to lead us back to that doomed hotel. By the time we get there, we’ve had an entirely new story to get us there.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 2018

The Contenders:

Willem Dafoe: At Eternity’s Gate
Rami Malek: Bohemian Rhapsody (winner)
Viggo Mortensen: Green Book
Bradley Cooper: A Star is Born
Christian Bale: Vice

Oh, Mickey, You're so Fine

Film: Bloody Pit of Horror (Il Boia Scarlatto)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

I’ve watched a lot of movies for this site. I’ve seen some things I can’t unsee, I’ve been introduced to movies I have loved that I would never have watched, and I have seen some terrible cinema. That said, it’s been a long time since I have seen a movie as powerfully stupid as Bloody Pit of Horror (or Il Boia Scarlatto, if you prefer the Italian). This movie is kind of an Italian version of a “roughie”; it exists so that Mickey Hargitay can perform weird tortures on scantily clad women.

Bloody Pit of Horror has the thinnest veneer of a plot to string it together. A writer named Rick (Walter Brandi), his publisher Daniel (Alfredo Rizzo), his secretary Edith (Luisa Baratto), and a number of other people are driving through the countryside looking for a place to take pictures to serve as the covers for Rick’s horror novels. They come across a castle that appears to be uninhabited, so they break in to take pictures of scantily clad women being harassed by ghouls and skeletons.

Barber vs. Barber

Film: Marriage Story
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on the new internet machine.

I’m not going to pull any punches at the start of this review so that you’re not left in any suspense. If you’ve seen Kramer vs. Kramer, there’s not a lot of new territory for you when it comes to Marriage Story. At one point in the movie, a divorce lawyer says something along the lines of criminal lawyers see bad people at their best and divorce lawyers see good people at their worst. This is a movie about a divorce, so the audience gets to fill in for the role of the divorce lawyers in this case. Worse, I’m not so sure that these are good people.

So yes, this is a story of divorce. It’s worth noting that one of the last times Noah Baumbach (who wrote and directed this) delved into the topic of divorce, the movie we got was the absolutely gutting The Squid and the Whale. It’s more of the same this time, only this time, there’s only one child, he’s younger, and the story is going to move between New York and L.A. At its heart, though, this is a story about two people doing everything they can to hurt each other emotionally and mentally. It’s unappealing at best. There’s a reason I’ve waited this long to watch it, and there’s a reason I saved one movie from last year’s Oscars to watch after this, so I didn’t end my 2019 Oscar watching on something that made me want to pull out my own spine.

Because "Train Car of Horrors" Wouldn't Sell

Film: Dr. Terror’s House of Horror
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

Anthology movies seem to be horror movies almost by default. I think that’s because you can tell a quick horror story and get people to care at least a little bit about the characters quickly. There’s a natural empathy for people put in danger, and that’s what horror is all about. Still, I prefer movies that have one main story rather than watching anthologies. Anthology films always seem to offer short shrift on the good stories and have too many stories that aren’t that interesting clogging things up. Even one that has a lot of heft behind it, like the awesomely-named Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors doesn’t have the heft it should based on the cast.

Our framing story takes place on a train. Half a dozen men end up sitting in the same train car. It turns out that one of these men is Dr. Schreck (Peter Cushing), which he tells the other men means “terror” in German. Dr. Schreck has a tarot deck with him that he claims will tell the future of each of the other five men, should they wish it. If you guessed that we’re going to get five stories, each one being the future of one of these men, well, you’ve seen the set up to an anthology film before.

Nic Cage Has Always Been Nic Cage

Film: Vampire’s Kiss
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

There is an entire online cottage industry of meme makers creating memes of Nicolas Cage in his various weird roles. Several of these—the crazy eyes Nic Cage, the Nic Cage with a cigarette and pointing—come from Vampire’s Kiss, a bizarre late-80s kind of horror movie/drug trip. Based on his career, Cage clearly has the ability to be engaging in a role and fantastic on camera. Leaving Las Vegas and Adaptation attest to that at the very least. But anyone who thinks his slide into the more sewer-y and bizarre end of the Hollywood kiddie pool is something new has never seen Vampire’s Kiss.

Seriosly, Cage had been unhinged multiple times in movie roles in the past, but I don’t know that he’s ever been quite as unhinged as he is in this. I honestly don’t know if Vampire’s Kiss was conceived of as a comedy, but it certainly became one based on the way that Cage acts in many a scene.