Had an interesting week of some minor life changes (nothing bad, I promise!) that had me slacking on writing stuff up for the most part, so I enacted the Lightning Round Protocol to get caught up before tonight's finale.
Week Five (Oct 25-31): No One is Allowed into the Theater After the Screaming Starts! (Oct 26)
(this doesn't happen in the film, but I'm sorry, this was too good not to use)
A curious blending of supernatural revenge and period piece film noir tropes, and one that certainly isn't afraid to be gruesome in either aspect with the gnarly makeup effects that show up every now and then. Let down by a not-so great approach to racking up the body count of the mobsters that slighted our ghostly avenger, going as far as skipping the build-up altogether after a certain point and some really hokey acting from all the players that seems more concerned about playing to the folks in the back, rather than making the characters feel particularly alive before they get bumped off. Still, it's got a nice bit of swampy authenticity to the atmosphere that hint at the untapped potential this could have had, and the amount of time spent on showing you just how a drive-in operates is surprisingly welcome, even if it only figures into the proceedings for a kill or two. This also shows you about all you ever need to see of
Attack of the 50-foot Woman that anyone is likely to stomach, too!
33/38
(Oct 27)
Despite featuring the kind of touches one expects from a first-time director that's very eager to show what they're all about as a technician, having the drama suffer as a result, this is one of those films that's dripping with as much good ideas as it is blood, and it's certainly not lacking for blood. If not explored in great detail, the reason behind the haunted film is a surprisingly compelling one all the same, and one that manages to get a proper follow-through on to its apocalyptic ending that ends the film with a good jolt while giving you something to chew on with the way we interact with media that directly or indirectly exploits real-life tragedy. It might make you feel a little nostalgic, too, if only because seeing a film theater operate with 35mm projectors and a plot point that centers on cam rips makes this feel like a product of a bygone era, despite it being just over 10 years old in age. With a little more time spent on characterization, this could have been a real gem, but for now, it has to settle for being a solid supernatural shocker that has a lot more to offer than it initially seems.
34/38
(Oct 28)
Hey, a modern day slasher that's not interested in making a new slasher icon! Indonesia hardly needs more propping up as far as coming up with spirited and gruesome genre films these days, but an out-and-out slasher certainly benefits from their tendency to emphasize the physical element of the chase, fights and certainly kills, giving this a real adrenaline shot that most stalk-and-stab types can't begin to keep up with. Initially, the story itself carries on a kind of "it could happen in your theater" element that keeps it largely unexplained, which serves to make it a lot scarier when the killer starts with all the keys and pieces to the board that our small group of survivors attempts to get the hell away from. Of course, once we find out that the movie that was being screened was based on a true story, it doesn't take much to figure out where this is going, but the third act does throw a nice curveball that takes the film from a lively slasher into a much, much darker direction that will have you squirming big time. Alas, it can't leave well enough alone after its genuinely disturbing setup as the twists start piling up way too high for the film to sustain properly before collapse is inevitable, especially as it's clear to all that watch this that "keep it simple, stupid" was the most obvious and correct route for the film to take. Still, up until that point, this one has a genuine bite to it that makes it easy to recommend for folks looking for something with a strong setup and a grisly execution (har har), and some decent character work makes you root for our heroes to survive in defiance of Indonesian genre cinema's inevitable inclination towards near obliteration of all that dared to show up throughout.
35/38
(Oct 29)
This is a movie where Vincent Price has an acid trip. I scarcely need to say more to get anyone to watch this now, but the last of William Castle's collaborations with Price certainly offers up a lot of goofy fun with the completely absurd elements at play here, as Price's coroner/amateur scientist finds himself on the verge of a breakthrough in proving that the idea of fear has a genuine body to it, and all it needs is just the right conditions to have it manifest properly for study. Along the way, we get yet another of Castle's homicidal spouse plots, which was already wearing a little thin by that point, though there is a little bit of a swerve there that might catch you off guard in spite of the setup that Price has to do with it and the barbs that Price trades with... well, pretty much anyone within earshot is delivered with his patented brand of ham-flavored relish, even before he drops some LSD for one of his most uproariously ridiculous moments as an actor ever. The finale is one of those sequences that one needs to see to believe, as the centipede-like titular creature finds itself loose in a repertory theater that's known for playing silent films, though surprisingly enough, the Tingler itself plays second fiddle to the bombardment of Castle's central gimmick coming to the forefront here, as the movie literally stops to get the crowd going with the activation of the Percepto chairs to get a chorus of screams going in the theater. This loses pretty much all of its impact when watched at home, but one can deny that Castle's showmanship is a rare talent that should be preserved for all to see, chair or no chair. And even if he wasn't that well-known for being a particularly great filmmaker, he does manage to pull off one genuinely good nightmare logic scene that, even as the film attempts shortly thereafter to explain its plausibility to entirely unconvincing effect, shows that he did have a skill for delivering some real good scares that scarcely needed a flying skeleton or 3D glasses split in half to achieve.
36/38
(Oct 30)
A rare achievement in the world of arthouse horror, as this simulates what it feels like to be someone that doesn't like arthouse horror but finds themselves trapped in a theater all the same with it on the screen, getting increasingly annoyed by its efforts to convince you that it's anything other than a whole lot of nonsense. Of course, that's not what it's going for at all, making its deeply self-serious and self-conscious efforts at being unnerving and disorienting all the more laughable, as this movie-within-a-movie tries its hardest to be disturbing and hypnotic with its otherwise evocative imagery, only to fall flat immediately when Zelda Rubinstein and Michael Lerner find themselves on one side of the screen in scenes that feel like an assembly cut of a bad slasher movie, while the audience on the other side test your patience with their popcorn munching, hushed mumbling and seat squirming that does a better job of killing any desire to go to a theater ever again than any novel coronavirus could ever hope to achieve. The big turn in the plot occurs during a hypnosis sequence in the film-within-ah-who-cares that takes approximately eight hours to get through, or what feels like it at least, triggering an audience member to a massacre-friendly mindset. It's potentially very nervy to have your killer be a theater shooter, giving the film a potentially prescient level of horror as a result, but with how long the blah-blah-blah-in-a-blah-blah-blah feels and how loud the popcorn munching is on the soundtrack, it gets more and more difficult to blame them for their blood lust when you also want to kill everyone in the theater while also wishing that you could do the same for the characters on the screen. The point seems to be that reality is much scarier than fiction could ever be, which the film dutifully undermines with its rug-pulling gotcha ending that everyone saw coming but the filmmakers themselves, rendering it as having no point to make at all. Good aesthetic choices cannot and will not make up for a laughable absence of any other value whatsoever, but I'll give it this much: this actually does earn the title of being pretentious in an unironic way, which is a rare thing indeed in this day and age.
37/38
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