Steam Heat

Film: Elemental
Format: Streaming video from Disney Plus on various players.

I usually am pretty good about the animated features from each Oscar year. It’s often the first category I finish. The movies tend to be easy to watch, not terribly long, and easy to access. That hasn’t been the case this year, where two of the films aren’t available to me streaming, at least not yet. For whatever reasons, I haven’t been able to pull the trigger on animated Oscar films this year, so I decided to finally bite the bullet and watch the Pixar entry, Elemental.

The truth is that there’s nothing particularly wrong with Elemental, but that’s not really a lot of praise for something that came out of Pixar. We’ve come to expect great things from that film studio even though they’ve had some clear missteps. As much as I would love to heap praise on Elemental, I can’t. It’s fine, but that’s all it is. It’s just fine, and in a different year, or coming from a different studio, there’s no way this gets a nomination.

The Marquis Would Be Proud

Film: The Sadist
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Anyone who watched any Mystery Science Theater 3000 knows who Arch Hall Jr. is. While he only appeared in a single MST3K movie, his turn as the allegedly romantic lead in teen scream film Eegah! is legendary if only because he is legitimately less appealing than the film’s caveman, played by Richard Kiel. The Sadist puts Hall in the sort of role he was born to play—a stunted, psychopathic murderer. You watch Eegah! and you’ll wonder how this kid thought he had a shot at a movie career. The next year he makes this, and you wonder why he didn’t have a longer career playing psychotics.

The plot to The Sadist is as simple as they come. A trio of teachers, Carl (Don Russell), Ed (Richard Alden), and Doris (Helen Hovey in her only movie role) are on their way to a Dodgers game in L.A. on a Sunday. They have a bit of car trouble and are forced to pull into a service station in the middle of nowhere. The place seems to be deserted, though, and strangely so. There are plates on the table inside, and the food is still warm. Ed starts looking for the part that they need in the junked cars while Ed investigates the area.

A Grave Problem

Film: Lisa Frankenstein
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on basement television.

I was born in the late ‘60s, which means that I am a child of the ‘80s. Like most of Gen-X, I came of age with movies like The Breakfast Club. That said, those of us who liked things darker with a touch of comedy had two movies that defined a large part of who we were. Those are Beetlejuice and Heathers. Both of these movies explored some dark territory (the second more than the first) and also came with a good number of laughs. While there have been some fun horror comedies since then as well as horror romances, none really feels like it has picked up the mantle of those films like Lisa Frankenstein. It’s not a coincidence that Lisa Frankenstein takes place in 1989, the year after Beetlejuice came out and the same year the Heathers did.

In 1989, unfortunately-named goth girl Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is dealing with moving in her senior year of high school, a step-mother (Carla Gugino) who is awful to her, a bubbly cheerleader step-sister named Taffy (Liza Soberano), and the fact that a couple years previously, her mother was murdered by an axe-wielding maniac. Essentially friendless and mired in an unrequited crush with the editor of the school literary magazine, Lisa spends a lot of her time like any goth in an abandoned cemetery. One of the graves, that of a young man, is her favorite, and she frequently leaves him trinkets and talks to him.

And in This Corner

Film: The Iron Claw
Format: Blu-Ray from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I don’t care at all about sports. I used to, up until about 20 years ago. I lived and died by the Bulls, Bears, and White Sox. These days, though I don’t have time for it. Even when I did care about sports, I was never into wrestling. One of my brothers was for a time, and my wife’s cousin still is to some extent. I understand the appeal of it—it’s theater on a grand scale, and while the matches are scripted, I would never suggest that the people doing the wrestling aren’t athletes. Now that I’ve said all of this, it’s not going to be a surprise that I watched The Iron Claw, which is a wrestling movie, but it’s also a movie about family and about tragedy.

We will begin with Fritz von Erich (Holt McCallany), who is a wrestler coming up in the sporting world. But we’re going to be far more concerned with the sons of Fritz and Doris (Maura Tierney), who will follow in their father’s footsteps. Much of what is going to follow will be what we are told is the curse of the von Erich family—we won’t see the death of the eldest son at a young age, but we’ll hear about it. The rest of the film will be about the near constant tragedy experienced by the family, a large amount of it clearly caused by the wrestling world.

Binge and...

Film: The Purge
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

The Purge is a right-wing fantasy movie. I don’t mean that the political right is specifically thrilled about the idea of 12 hours of lawlessness (although I think a lot of them are). No, what I mean is that pretty much every conservative I know has a closet full of guns and an intense desire to use them on a home invader. The Purge is that fantasy writ large. It’s a world where people are essentially dared to break into your house and you can kill them without consequence. The entire membership of the NRA had to have a hard-on over this concept.

There’s another, more sinister reason that The Purge is the deepest fantasy of the American right, and it is that 12 hours of lawlessness. Essentially, this is the story of a future, far more fascist America, where for 12 hours every year, virtually all crimes are made legal. While it’s not stated outright, after a massive economic crash, a new political party takes over the country. Unemployment is down and draconian policies crack down on crime. However, needing a release, the American people are given a 12-hour period every year to go buckwild and get all of their violence out of their system. And, true to form, this is not a parade of rape and theft, but of the wealthy and fortunate targeting the homeless. It’s open season on “undesirables,” and there’s a reason that the stereotype of conservatives wanting to hunt the homeless and immigrants for sport exists.

Catholic Guilt

Film: Immaculate
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

Immaculate is the second movie about nuns I’ve watched in three days; the other one will show up in the July wrap-up early next month. Neither of the two movies show the church in a positive light. For Immaculate, that lens is going to be one of horror and trauma. It’s worth saying that I am fortunate in my religious past. I didn’t experience any undue religious trauma—nothing more than the typical indoctrinated fear of Hell anyway, and I was also never a Catholic. Immaculate is going to play on the much darker reputation of the Catholic Church, and anyone who has dealt with any Catholic trauma or church trauma in general is going to likely be upset by this.

That said, while the religious trauma aspects of the film aren’t going to trigger anything specific in me, the opening scene certainly is. A young nun (Simona Tabasco) breaks into the room of the Mother Superior of a convent in Italy and steals a ring of keys. She tries to escape but is attacked by four nuns who break her leg and knock her unconscious. When she comes to, she finds herself in a coffin being buried alive. I am claustrophobic, so this was very difficult to watch, although arguably not the most difficult part of the film.

Blood in, Blood out

Film: The Living Dead Girl ( La morte vivante)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

In many movies involving the dead coming back to life, the fact that this is happening is far more important than why it is happening. Sometimes, as in Night of the Living Dead, it simply happens and we don’t get an explanation. Other times, we do, and it doesn’t really matter that much if it matches anything completely ridiculous. Toxic waste, weird bacteria, whatever. It’s toxic waste in The Living Dead Girl (La morte vivante in the original French), which feels unique in the sense that our living dead girl in the title is not a Romero-style ghoul who creates other undead, but more of a reanimated vampire who requires blood to survive.

First things first—we need to get some toxic waste in position to revivify a corpse. We get that from a pair of men apparently delivery toxic waste for disposal. Rather than do their jobs, they stop at an abandoned crypt to put the waste there. While they are there getting rid of the waste and taking a few moments to rob the graves of the people buried in the crypt, a minor earthquake causes the toxic waste to leak, which causes one of the corpses to wake up and attack. Since this corpse, who we eventually learn is named Catherine Valmont (Françoise Blanchard) has been dead for a few years, it’s a bit of a surprise that there is not a bit of decay or decomposition. Must be the favorable atmosphere in the catacombs.