Phenomena

 Year:  1985

Director:  Dario Argento

Screenplay:  Franco Ferrini and Dario Argento

Starring:  Jennifer Connelly, Daria Nicolodi, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Donald Pleasence, Patrick Bauchau

Running Time:  116 minutes

Genre:  Horror

American teenager Jennifer Corvino (Connelly) arrives at an exclusive Swiss boarding school and soon discovers that the nearby area is being plagued by a vicious serial killer.  Jennifer, it turns out, has the ability to psychically communicate with any kind of insect, and teams up with elderly, wheelchair-bound Scottish entomologist John McGregor (Pleasance), and his intelligent chimpanzee, to track down the killer.

Dario Argento is generally regarded as one of the greatest Italian horror filmmakers.  Despite featuring a lot of Argento hallmarks, Phenomena is far from his best work.  It feels like a mix of the giallo films that Argento made his name with (black-gloved killer stalking young women, point of view shots, the main character witnessing an important detail early one which she is afterwards unable to remember, inept police investigation, and an  overly convoluted final reveal), with dark adult fairy tale (Jennifer's mystical powers, surreal nightmare imagery) and gothic romance (Jennifer Connelly spends a lot of her time running through a dark forest at night in a billowing white nightgown, as might be seen on the covers of numerous '70s paperback originals).  While it doesn't seem to be intentionally funny, the film is so ridiculous it's hard not to laugh at Jennifer's psychic bond with bugs (including teaming up with a fly to find evidence), Donald Pleasence's Scottish accent and the heroic chimp.  The performances are pretty bad, even from normally very good actors such as Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasence, who seems to be playing the whole thing for comedy.  Argento's skill at creating arresting images generates some interest, but there are very few of the trademark elaborate set-pieces that Argento can be so skilled at.  While the film is gruesome, gore fans may be disappointed at the comparative lack of bloodshed on display.  The score, from regular Argento collaborators Goblin, mixes lilting fairy-tale style music with sudden bursts of loud heavy metal, along with music from Bill Wyman, Iron Maiden and Motörhead among others.  The plot makes absolutely no sense at all.  It's fun if your in the right frame of mind for it, and the climax is so over the top it's quite entertaining.  On it's original release in the US and the UK the film was retitled Creepers with 20 minutes of footage cut.

Jennifer Connelly in Phenomena

Halloween Ends

 Year: 2022

Director:  David Gordon Green

Screenplay:  Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, based on characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, Will Patton, Kyle Richards, James Jude Courtney

Running Time:  111 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Four years have passed since serial killer Michael Myers' (Courtney) latest bloodbath, and the residents of the small town of Haddonfield are starting to heal.  Corey Cunningham (Campbell) who accidentally caused the death of a young boy he was babysitting, has since become the town pariah.  Allyson (Matichak), whose parents were killed by Myers and has since been living with her grandmother Laurie Strode (Curtis), befriends Corey.  After being savagely beaten up and left for dead by some bullies, Corey encounters but survives a weakened Michael Myers, and takes it upon himself to continue Michael's murderous legacy.

Halloween Ends is the thirteenth film in the Halloween franchise, and the third and final instalment in the trilogy directed by David Gordon Green which began with Halloween (2018) and continued with Halloween Kills (2021).  The Green series carries on from the original Halloween (1978), discarding the previous umpteen sequels, and Halloween Ends is supposed to be the final Halloween films, although I, for one, very much doubt that it will be.  Halloween Ends is a disappointing entry in the series.  While it does have some very good things in it.  It feels as if the film was intended to be a serious examination of trauma, grief and guilt, but they needed to add Halloween horror elements to make it fit into the series.  The stalk-and-slash horror elements doesn't fit with the more serious and darker aspects.  Another thing is that Michael Myers barely appears in the film.  The main antagonist is Corey who kind of becomes a Michael Myers protege, and he even seems to have Myers' ability to appear and disappear suddenly, as well as surprising strength.  Corey even gets his glasses broken  early in the film and seems to manage without them with no problem whatsoever and nary a stumble.  The performances are good, particularly from Jamie Lee Curtis, and there are some enjoyable set pieces, but the whole film is not scary and, worst of all, is kind of dull.

Jamie Lee Curtis and James Jude Courtney in Halloween Ends

The Wolf House

 Year:  2018

Directors:  Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña

Screenplay:  Cristobal León, Joaquín Cociña and Alejandra Moffat

Starring (voices):  Amalia Kassai, Rainer Krause

Running Time:  75 minutes

Genre:  Animation, horror, fantasy

Maria, a young girl in an isolated German commune in Chile, escapes into the forest where she finds a strange house.  Inside the house she discovers two pigs who slowly become human, and she raises them as her children.  Meanwhile the house itself seems to change to reflect Maria's emotional state.

This Chilean film is a strange stop-motion animation, which has it's inspirations in fairy tales, urban legends and the real-life Colonial Dignidad cult.  The film opens with a brief live action introduction, presenting the film as a production made by the cult to introduce it to new or potential recruits.  The Wolf House is the first feature length project by animators Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña, who had previously made some well-received short films, including a music video for the rock band The Smile, an off-shoot of Radiohead.  The film is genuinely surreal and deeply disturbing.  It feels genuinely nightmarish and has something of the feel of legendary Czech animator Jan Švankmajer.  However, it is very much it's own thing, and is definitely recommended to horror and fantasy fans.

The Wolf House

Shock

Year:  1977

Director:  Mario Bava

Screenplay:  Lamberto Bava, Francesco Barbieri, Alessandro Parenzo, Dardano Sacchetti

Starring:  Daria Nicolodi, John Steiner, David Colin Jr., Ivan Rassimov

Running Time:  95 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Dora (Nicolodi) moves back into the house where she lived with her husband who died in an apparent suicide several years before.  Dora is now remarried to Carlo (Steiner), an airline pilot, and she has a young son, Marco (Colin Jr.), from her previous marriage.  The family begin renovating the house, but Marco begins to exhibit increasingly disturbing behaviour, and as strange happenings begin to pile up Dora becomes convinced that they are being haunted by the malevolent spirit of her dead husband.

Mario Bava was one of the most important directors of Italian horror films, with his low-budget, but stylish films influencing filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton,  and Francis Ford Coppola.  Shock was the last feature film that Bava completed before his death of a heart attack in April 1980, and his son Lamberto Bava, who co-wrote the film, served as an uncredited co-director for some scenes.  In Shock, Bava largely leaves behind the gruesome Grand Guignol excesses that had been his trademark for a slow-burning tale of supernatural horror, with gore largely absent until the final quarter of an hour.  While this is not Bava's best film, it does have a lot to recommend it.  The direction is stylish, and there are some arresting images.  Daria Nicolodi, who would become a familiar face to Italian horror fans through her appearances in five films by her then husband Dario Argento, gives a strong performance in the central role, and she pretty much dominates the film.  David Colin Jr. is fine, if not particularly impressive, in his role as the creepy child, who may, or may not, be possessed by the vengeful ghost.  There are plot holes, and the whole thing is very silly at times, and there are places where the low budget is painfully obvious, and some fans may be disappointed at the relative lack of gore, but it is a fun little spook show, which should entertain lovers of ghost stories.

Daria Nicolodi in Shock

To Live and Die in L.A.

 Year:  1985

Director:  William Friedkin

Screenplay:  William Friedkin and Gerald Petievich, based on the novel To Live and Die in L.A. by Gerald Petievich

Starring:  William Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Pankow, Debra Feuer, John Turturro, Darlanne Fluegel, Dean Stockwell

Running Time:  116 minutes

Genre:  Action, crime, thriller

When his partner is killed investigating a counterfeiting operation, corrupt Secret Service Agent Richard Chance (Petersen) is determined to bring down master counterfeiter Rick Masters (Dafoe) by any means necessary.  However, Chance is forced to team up with by-the-book agent John Vukovich (Pankow), who opposes Chance's anything goes philosophy.

Adapted from the 1984 novel by Gerald Petievich, this gritty crime thriller returns director William Friedkin to the seamy world of amoral cops and brutal criminals that he previously explored in The French Connection (1974), the film that made his name.  In fact, aside from being set in Los Angeles rather than New York and dealing with counterfeiters rather than international drug runners, there are some similarities between To Live and Die in L.A. and The French Connection, both deal with ruthless cops (or, more accurately, Secret Service agents in To Live and Die) who will break any rules they have to to bring down a powerful enemy,  and To Live and De in L.A. also features it's own spectacular car chase set piece.  Despite being set in December and January, Los Angeles seems to burn under blazing sunlight, and beautiful pink evening skies (I don't know, I've never been to Los Angeles, maybe it really is like that in the bleak midwinter).  The film looks beautiful throughout, and has a pulsing score from British new wave band Wang Chung.  There is a gritty, authentic feel to the proceedings, which are filmed in some of the less glamorous parts of the city.  The cast is impressive with a number of actors who weren't well known at the time, but later went on to become major stars, notably Willem Dafoe and John Turturro.  William Petersen is believably callous as the repellant Richard Chase, who is the film's nominal hero and extorts his informer Ruth (Darlanne Fluegel) for information and sexual favours, under threat of having her parole revoked.  Willem Dafoe is good as the murderous counterfeiter,  John Turturro is convincingly desperate as the member of Dafoe's gang who Chance arrested and tries to make a deal with.  Darlanne Fleugel takes the acting honours as the unfortunate collateral damage in Chance's war on crime, and her desperation to break free and make a fresh start is heartbreaking.  The big problem with the film is, as good as it is, there is really no-one to root for here.  The ostensible "heroes" aren't much better than the crooks they are chasing.  However, this is an involving and exciting slice of '80s action thriller.

William Petersen and John Pankow in To Live and Die in L.A.

Foxy Brown

 Year:  1974

Director:  Jack Hill

Screenplay:  Jack Hill

Starring:  Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas, Peter Brown, Terry Carter, Kathryn Loder, Harry Holcombe

Running Time:  91 minutes

Genre:  Action, crime

 

When her narcotics agent boyfriend is murdered by a powerful crime ring, Foxy Brown (Grier) poses as a  call girl to infiltrate the syndicate.

This is one of the defining blaxploitation films.  Blaxploitation (the term is a portmanteau word made up of "black" and "exploitation") was a subgenre of American action and crime films that were very popular in the 1970s, which featured predominantly black lead characters and were ostensibly aimed at black audiences.  These films were criticised at the time and since for perpetuating stereotypes of African-Americans, but they were also one of the few places where black characters and stories were shown.  Directed by exploitation veteran Jack Hill, who had previously worked with Pam Grier on Coffy (1972), the film is full of violent action, and it all moves along at a good pace.  Pam Grier is fantastic as Foxy.  Antonio Fargas, who is best known as Huggy Bear in Starsky & Hutch (1975-1979), plays Foxy's deadbeat brother.  Kathryn Loder is good as the sinister head of the "modelling agency" which is the front for the crime ring.  Veteran exploitation actor Sid Haig appears as a pilot who runs drugs between the US and Mexico.  The film does have some social commentary, Foxy has connections to the local Black Panthers, who help keep the streets safe from drug pushers.  Foxy also is in favour of direct, vigilante action against crime as opposed to her upstanding boyfriend who believes in the due process of law.  The film is funny, fast and dynamic.  The fashions and jive-talking dialogue scream 1970s, as well as the funky soul soundtrack featuring songs by Willie Hutch, and the film had kind of a second life in the late 1990s when there was a lot of '70s nostalgia, and has been a heavy influence on Quentin Tarantino, who cast Pam Grier as the lead in his homage to blaxploitation Jackie Brown (1998).  However, the film does have plot holes, and there are elements of it that are certainly not politically correct, particularly in the film's mos disturbing sequence where Foxy is kidnapped by the villains, forcibly injected with heroin and sexually assaulted (although the assault isn't shown, but her violent retribution certainly is).  

Pam Grier is Foxy Brown
  

Christine

Year:  1983

Director:  John Carpenter

Screenplay:  Bill Phillips, based on the novel Christine by Stephen King

Starring:  Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky, Harry Dean Stanton, Roberts Blossom

Running Time:  110 minutes

Genre:  Horror

1978:  Arnie Cunningham (Gordon), a nerdy, unpopular teenager, spots a broken down, derelict 1958 Plymouth Fury for sale.  Despite the protestations of his best friend, Dennis (Stockwell), Arnie buys the car from a sinister old man, George LeBay (Blossoms), whose deceased brother was the original owner of the Plymouth and named it "Christine".  Arnie sets to work restoring the car at a local do-it-yourself garage, and begins to exhibit strange and disturbing personality changes.  When Arnie starts dating the popular new girl in school, Leigh (Paul), Christine begins to manifest a jealous, murderous personality of her own.

Producer Richard Kobritz snapped up the film rights to Stephen Kings 1983 novel Christine before it was even published, and it certainly looks like a sure fire winner on paper:  King, one of the world's most popular novelists; teenagers; cars; horror and rock 'n'roll.  Director John Carpenter, who had made the seminal horror film Halloween (1978), was attached to direct.  However Carpenter's previous film, The Thing (1982), had been staged by critics and was a commercial flop (even though it is now seen as one of the best films of it's type ever made), and he was not interested in Christine, commenting that he felt the book "was not very scary" but felt that he needed to do the film to help his career.  Certainly the film is a surprisingly bland, workmanlike affair.  In the novel, the car is possessed by the evil spirit of it's former owner, which begins to channel itself to Arnie, however the film opens with a short prologue set in the Detroit production line in 1957 where Christine manifests her hostile personality before she even rolls off the assembly line.  It's never explained in the film why the car has a mind of it's own.  Some of the performances are fairly bland, and some of the high school "teenagers" look as if they are well into their 30s.  In the novel much of the horror comes from Arnie's transformation, as he becomes increasingly paranoid, arrogant and angry, which would probably strike a chord with parents of teenagers, but the film centres the car.  However there are moments when the film works really well.  After Christine is trashed by Arnie's high school bullies, she resurrects herself in a hugely impressive sequence, which is one of the film's biggest set pieces, and when Christine is tracking down and murdering the bullies is really where John Carpenter comes into his own, particularly the scene where the car is on fire chasing after the leader of the gang (William Ostrander).  Roberts Blossom, who became known to horror fans for his lead in the cult film Deranged (1974) and is probably most familiar for his role in Home Alone (1990), is very good in a small role as the dirty, bleary-eyed George LeBay, and Robert Prosky is great as the bad-tempered, raspy-voiced, cigar chewing Darnell, owner of the garage where Arnie keeps Christine.  Harry Dean Stanton is wasted in a small role as the police detective who investigates the mysterious number of deaths surrounding Arnie and his car.  Kelly Preston appears in a small role as Dennis' cheerleader girlfriend.  Keith Gordon is good in the lead, but John Stockwell and Alexandra Paul give quite bland performances.  Also the red and white Plymouth herself, is an impressive looking vehicle, which manages to be genuinely sinister.  In the novel, Stephen King uses the lyrics of rock 'n' roll songs throughout, in the film the 1950s song playing on the car radio serve as Christine's language.  In the prologue she rolls off the production line, warning the world that she is "Bad to the Bone".  When she is alone with Arnie she plays "Pledging My Love" and "We Belong Together", and when she locks her doors to prevent Arnie rescuing a chocking Leigh in the front seat, she plays "Keep A-Knockin'".  While there is nothing particularly unmissable, there is certainly enough here to make recommend the film to horror fans.

Bad to the Bone: Christine