Edge of the Axe - 1988

Okay, well IMDb and Wikipedia are not in agreement again, and I usually take Wiki's side, but in this case I will take IMDb's because it makes my guess at the year correct.

I am of course going to watch Halloween related films all month, movies that are horror based and may get reviews or not. I'm also waffling with the choice of what to watch ON Halloween, but I may decide to go classic and watch the original Halloween, on VHS. Stick with the classics, right?

Edge of the Axe was a Spain and American co-production low budget horror entry made in the late 80s with intention and some basics. It stars no one but the actors don't suck, it has some atmosphere but the script is trash, and it has a surprisingly cool looking villain with sort of a papier-mache mask.

Edge of the Axe starts with the usual sort of scenario, a woodsy town somewhere is terrorized by a man with an axe, as shown in the opening kill scene where a woman is axed while going through a car wash(?) A local sorta nerdy dumbass kid Gerald is one of our unlikely stars, he's trying to get with this girl in town and we follow them as their relationship grows. I'm having a real problem remembering the plot, but it don't matter: there's a guy, he has an axe, and there's a small town that basically has only one cop. You know how this is going to go.

Except you don't. The unexpected part of this are the parts that make it so bad it's good, and also the parts that are just plain ol' good. The script is so dumb but it's hilarious, the characters are stupid but not self aware, the computer sub-plot is hilarious, and the movie doesn't focus on the killer or the horror elements a lot, so we're just left with these good parts. Those are so much fun to watch, and the movie moves quickly enough and isn't rank amateur so there's nothing to bring it down. I had a fucking great time! This is a movie I'd watch again, and again it made me really think of which movies got sequels and which didn't. This was too late 80's to have a horror franchise spring from it, but it's really solid!

Edge of the Axe was too late to the party and I think got mixed in with all the others coming out at this time, but this is why you dig and sift through movies for years: to find ones that you missed. Hidden gems. This is one of them. Give it a watch if you're a slasher afficionado.

April Fools Day - 1986

Well folks I've been in the Halloween mood for a slasher, and scanning through the titles online I found April Fools Day. Why not huh? It's been quite a long time.

April Fools Day was written by Friday the 13th worker Frank Mancuso Jr, and it is "your average mid 80's slasher". The big gimmick and indeed the big spoiler can be found in the title, and being one that always found the "pranks" in horror movies rather annoying, I have to admit that it was fine in this movie.

In the beginning, we meet group of friends Muffy, Nikki, Kit, Arch, Chaz...the list goes on. They are your average college kids escaping to a woods filled holiday, and they're playing pranks on each other nonstop as they pull into the rural escape. They're basically bland, and you'll wonder what the heck Biff from Back to Future was doing in this movie, and wish he was as fun as he was in that movie.

That aside, soon enough it seems as if someone is after the kids, and they're being killed off and the bodies are stacking up. We soon enough follow final girl Nikki as she and Rob are among the last left, and things are finally shaping into a direction to the killer. Then, as I said, the spoiler is revealed that it was all an elaborate prank, and we're left wondering what this movie was.

Now, I'm not dumping on it. This movie, first and foremost, is totally fine. The acting is good, the music is fine, the deaths are plentiful and they're decent. The tension is sort of gone, and the whole direction is predictable, but overall, it's like I said in the beginning, it is "your average 80's slasher". Barely distinguishable. It's there, and you may watch it a few days before Halloween, and you may have a decent time doing so, and that may be totally cool.

The Untouchables - 1987

I'm now marathoning the "known" portion of Brian DePalma films, with Scarface and now The Untouchables. I watched and did not review Mission Impossible as well, so I'm really deep into his popular hits.

The Untouchables is one of his most referenced films, being the film that contains the iconic baby carriage rolling down steps, as well as DeNiro as Al Capone saying "I want him dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground!"

Kevin Costner stars as a treasury agent who is put in charge of a new division charged with capturing Al Capone. He enlists beat cop Sean Connery, rookie Andy Garcia, and accountant Charles Martin Smith (who we just saw in the tremendous film Never Cry Wolf) to help him in this endeavor, and in the meantime DeNiro as Al Capone uses thugs Billy Drago and others to carry out his evil plans and strike back once the fight comes to blows.

The film feels like all of the gangster movies that have come before and after, not in a unoriginal or generic way, but in the way of standing out, being good. This is right up there with the best gangster type films, if that is your thing. It's brutal, bloody, taught, and risky.

There's not a ton of character things going on but it's got enough and it's riding high on us rooting for the good guys cause they're good and frowning at the bad guys cause they're bad. I am not sure if I mean it as a critique or as an observation when I say it felt quite patriotic. It felt like it was coming from a place of "look at this amazing cop beat the bad guy through both brains and brawn".

When all is said and done, this is not a movie for me, but I'm glad to have seen it. I don't have many DePalma movies left, but I'll continue to watch them, and then one day it'll be over. At that point I'll eventually rewatch things like Body Double or even Raising Cain (I'll try to redeem it in my eyes), but I doubt I'd rewatch this one. That said, 4 stars.

The Omega Man - 1971

I've always wanted to see this movie, even before it was remade in my theater-going lifetime as I Am Legend. I knew it starred Charlton Heston and I knew it was based on Richard Matheson, and those two things kept me interested.

Charlton Heston stars, as said, in this bizarre 1971 last man on Earth story. I believe this was the second adaptation after The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price. Either way, this is one of the earlier instances of the idea of following the last man on Earth, and it is I believe the most faithful adaptation of the book.

The movie begins with Charlton Heston driving through an abandoned New York, and as he gets home it is getting dark. He is attacked by a strange mob of robed figures wearing sunglasses, and they are revealed to be alterned humans. They are at war with Heston, and he uses a automatic rifle to keep them at bay while they shoot arrows and chuck spears at him. They have bizarre cultish beliefs, actions, and dialogue, and we get a strange sense of their absurdity early on. As things progress, we learn about Heston and we watch these further conflicts as well as see him meet with other real humans.

This movie is thematically and textually weird. First of all, it feels very influenced by the time from which it came. The group of night dwellers acts straight up like some drugged out cult group, very influenced by Manson and those type of recent headlines. Then, the black woman Heston falls for later is written as such a harlem queen it reads as straight up blaxsploitation, which feels a bit weird. Her nudity in the film is also strange, as it would otherwise contain no objectionable content whatsoever. It's got a strange atmosphere going, that's for sure.

I feel like I barely said anything about this, but I want to wrap it up. The movie moves quickly and it has some thrills and scares, but the dialogue and the tones it imparts are sometimes off. Heston does a great job and there is certainly enough to give it a watch if you haven't before. And it's in the spirit of Halloween, so there.

Vivarium - 2019

I had a feeling I didn't like when I contemplated writing this review. I had a feeling that I'd been writing more and more reviews of recent movies, as in incredibly recent, like post 2000. But I can't really find a ton a data to backup that feeling, so I'm writing this review anyways.

I went into Vivarium expecting a horror film, basically, and then from the tone I thought maybe it was instead a weird offbeat comedy. The truth is it's sort of both, as well as a thriller, mystery, and compelling drama. The original feeling it illicits is the reason behind my review here, and the inability to pin this movie down or truly compare it with anything is again one of the reasons why I would say it deserves mention. My prevalence of post-2000 reviews aside.

Vivarium stars Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots. Is Imogen Poots the worst name imaginable? If the answer is no, it's high on the list for contendership. Either way, early on they are talked into checking out a home for sale in a community of identical awful color green homes. They highly dislike the neighborhood and the salesman, who's giving very odd vibes and who acts in an irregular fashion. When the couple come out of the house they realize the salesman and his car are gone, and when they try to leave the neighborhood there is no way out. They try what they can to escape as the days pass by, and eventually a box containing a baby boy shows up at their front door with the eerie message "Raise him and you will be let go".

The odd incapturable tone of this is really unique and despite the fact that this would be a fools errand and be irrelevant aside, I tried desperately to think of what movie's it had reminded me of. I thought of none. The best I could do would be to think of the independently made movies that similarly felt like nothing else that exists, movies like Under the Skin, Frank, and maybe The Lobster. Vivarium is in no way thematically or even tangentially related, except that they all stand out as unique, thoughtful experiments.

If movies like this ever stop being made, I'll lose interest in film. This is why I watch movies man. That may be the biggest sell of all time, but it's true. Weird, offbeat, highly original ideas like this (not even including the execution, which was perfect) are what keeps me in theaters, getting stuff at libraries, and keeps me engaged. I'll be watching whatever this director does in the future for sure.

Kwaidan - 1965

As I've mentioned before, I love a anthology. The opportunity to experience multiple stories, with some far fetched and some more realistic, and the constant change keeps one more interested. I love movies n all, but sometimes I'll readily admit I look at something and it says 2 hours, 3 hours, etc, and I just cannot fathom getting through something that long. A 30 minute mini movie I can do though!

Kwaidan is a anthology of Japanese ghost stories, scary stories to tell in the dark, Japan style. It is based on a book of collected stories, a book which my library does not have (no surprise there). Kwaidan consists of 4 segments, and since I think it is relevant, let me copy in my original idea behind what is in an anthology.

Kwaidan is going to break my anthology rules because most of these stories are weird, at least from my perspective. So, read that idea break down or don't. Whatever.

Segment one: The Black Hair. A man leaves his good wife in order to climb the social ladder. His second marriage doesn't work out and he misses his ex, so he runs away to be with her, but only encounters something strange when he returns to her.
This one is so classically Japanese. The presence of honor and the presence of morality is the focus here, and in the end it's actually a quite feminist idea. The pacing works the best of the stories I would say to, perhaps because of the simplicity.

Segment two: The Woman of the Snow. Two loggers are out on a night where the'yre overtaken by a snowstorm. One of the man witnesses a phantom white woman of the snow kill his partner. He is told he can live if he never tells this story to anyone. Is he up for the challenge?
This is the one I remembered the most. This one is the best, I would say. It has a really good idea and could easily be fleshed out to an entire movie. It's also the most positive and upbeat, so hey, party.

Segment three: Hoichi the Earless. A blind musician is targeted by a mystery man to play for a mystery group very late at night.
This one is WAY too long. This is a good idea (I guess) but it takes over an hour of this movies 2.5 hour running time, and it feels like it. It has so many long scenes of a guy playing his biwa that you might even end up fast forwarding unless you really like the music. It's also very obvious from early on what is going to happen, not helped by the title, and you'll feel everything telegraphed from far away.

Segment four: In a Cup of Tea. A samurai guarding a royal house sees a reflection of a stranger in a cup of tea. He cannot get rid of the reflection and so he drinks the tea. Soon enough he meets the owner of the reflection, claiming that they must now duel.
This one is a good concept again, and could have been a full length movie. The problem with this segment really is that it focuses too much on the fighting instead of the character stuff. What, did they feel like they needed to pump up the pace?

Kwaidan as a whole is thoroughly enjoyable in the short segments. I wish Hoichi was also 30ish minutes instead of an hour 15. If I were to watch it again, I'd probably skip that whole part. It's the weakest segment, length aside. Overall though, this is really good stuff with great atmosphere and cool, creepy, original ideas. Nothing like this in Western culture anthologies anyways. I give it 4 stars. (I might give it 5 without Hoichi...)

The Magnetic Monster - 1953

The classic 50's movie The Magnetic Monster was on Amazonwhen I looked up "classic" as the key word. This is why the whole Amazon versus Netflix thing is a no brainer for me. Netflix has no classic films, like at all. It seems their catalogue leaves out basically anything pre 1990 really. They focus instead on their stupid original content.

The Magnetic Monster has it all. Black and white, slow moving plot, vague scientist types talking about things while they wear lab coats and fret continually about things. You see, there is a hardware store where strange occurences are happening, including all the clocks stopping and a magnetic field forming. Turns out that some scientists have created a new element, and this highly radioactive dangerous element is now threatening everyone. The thing is emitting dangerous energy and it appears to be growing. They devise several thoughts about what this means, and they fight a ticking clock with the element.

This is an example of a talky movie with a barely existent visual threat, but with it still working. We are given a little side story with our stereotype of a main character, Jeffrey and his wife Connie, who are pregnant and he's worried that she isn't eating enough. This is the type of B plot this movie gets, seriously. It's a laugh of a flick, short and sweet, classic in the utmost sense.

I give it a 3.5. it's not going to change your life, but it is a true map to the type of film coming out in this time, no rule breaking, no exceptions here.

Halloween Kills - 2021

In 2018 Halloween the original movie from 1978 got a sequel, simply titled Halloween. I saw it in theaters twice and I fuckin loved it. It erased all the stupid sequels and the thorn cult and everything else that had soiled the name and it got back to Michael and Laurie. The sequels were announced after the success of Halloween, we soon after knew we were going to get Halloween Kills and the next one, Halloween Ends. Covid delayed Halloween Kills, but now it came out in 2021.

Jamie Lee Curtis returns... should I start with that? I bet her total screen time is less than ten minutes. Okay, well she is back and she is in this sequel. As is Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy from the first film. Michael Myers is out and we pick up right after the sequences in Halloween, the 2018 film.

What is the plot here, I don't really know. I just saw the movie this night. Basically, Myers is back and killing people here and there. There's definitely an up in body count, there's an up in gore, and there's an up in screen presence, and those are all the signs of a usual bad sequel right? In fact, this in many ways felt like the usual bad sequel directed by someone else, written by someone else, made by someone else. Was this made by someone else? It would seem so.

Tension is gone, character is gone, drama is gone, horror is gone. Is this even a horror movie? It's a movie, that's for sure. Maybe IMDB should list this as drama first, then horror. Who knows huh? Anthony Michael Hall leads a cult like group who despite not knowing who Myers is decides to revolt against him. Strode's daughter is there, doing things. Other people die, including a faggot couple who are horribly written. This movie fucking sucked.

The Prestige - 2006

I'm glad that of all the new directors that are popular, two of my favorites are also both quite prolific. Christopher Nolan and Yorgos Lanthimos are both quite prolific, with another Nolan movie coming out next year and same with Lanthimos. It's refreshing not to have to wait 4, 5, 10 years between movies.

With Nolan, I was in since the year 2000 when Memento came out. I saw it based on the poster and loved it, and never have gone back since. I have a few directors who I have basically said, I'll see whatever they come out with. I'm in. It's at least okay, if not way way better than that.

The Prestige was a movie I didn't hear about when it came out, however. I'll admit that I missed this one, and saw it a few years after in reflection. I liked it, it was fine, and I never saw it after. But I recently rewatched Dunkirk, and now I have seen this again, and I might even rewatch Interstellar. The Batman movies are a maybe. A lot of these I haven't seen in like 10 years man, it's worth it!

The Prestige stars Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in a tale of two magicians working together. Until that is, Christian Bale drunkenly ties up one of the stage women and she dies because he might have tied the wrong knot. That starts a feud between the two of them, and they keep trying to outdo each other as well as screw up each other's act. Woven into this is Michael Caine as a elder magician and role model, as well as Nikola Tesla as an inventor who can perhaps lend a trick for these men to use in their show.

Using Nolan's signature time jumps and cross cutting, we have a surprisingly character driven story with some genuine funny and dark moments. Both men are enigmatic and secretive, more similar than they'd like to admit, and using truly ingenious tactics they stay ahead of the game. We start with Christian Bale getting framed for the murder of Hugh Jackman and then we explore the layered history with them both, and it's truly interesting.

The Prestige seems to have vanished behind Nolan's other more popular, successful or more intellectual work. This movie is simply good in a time when we demand things be great. However, it is really good, and it is very entertaining. Everything works in this film, and there's not a missed opportunity here at all. I'll give it a 4.

Hider in the House - 1991

I have been randomly adding movies to my Amazon queue. Hence adding a early 90s Gary Busey movie to my list.

If you're like me, you see a movie called Hider in the House with Gary Busey and its from the 90s, you think this is gonna be bad. Hammed out, low budget, ham-fisted, clumsy, low brow. It's going to be dumb n fun Saturday night entertainment.

Here's the first surprise: Hider in the House also stars Michael McKean and Mimi Rogers, as well as Bruce Glover. I gave an audible "huh!" at those credits.

The title implies the plot, which is true in this case. We see the details come into focus- Busey is a kid who was heavily abused and killed his parents in a house fire. He gets discharged from his psychiatrist and moves into the attic of a house which is then purchased by McKean and Rogers. They move in and Busey imagines himself as a fellow member, and begins to integrate himself in their lives.

So how does this succeed? The answer is in multiple ways. Number one, as I said, I underestimated it. Also, the character bits are really good. Then there's Busey turning in a good performance, there's a few good twists, and there's a growing body count. Mimi Rogers is really good in it, and the atmosphere is tense.

I thoroughly enjoyed what is essentially a cheap short Busey starring thriller. It surprised me.

Two Evil Eyes - 1990

Dario Argento and George Romero are mosters of horror and defining icons for their contributions to the genre. In this Grindhouse-esque idea, they both direct an hour long segment of this two hour anthology.

Segment one stars Adrienne Barbeau as Jessica, who is married to an aging, dying Valdemor. Valdemor is being put under hypnosis by Barbeau's secret boyfriend doctor Hoffman. Under hypnosis, they're changing Valdemor's will to give Barbeau money and possessions, and the plan is working, as we see her going to the bank and extracting loads of cash. Pretty soon, however, Valdemor dies while hypnotized, and they have to cover up the death. Since he was hypnotized and "between worlds" his soul cannot escape to heaven or whatever, so now they can talk to him from the grave, and he is warning them of others he sees in the middle space.

Segment two stars Harvey Keitel as a photographer and publisher, living with his girlfriend Annabel. She finds a black cat and brings it home, and immediately the cat and Keitel don't get along. This relationship escalates as eventually Keitel takes pictures of the cat as he tortures it in front of a backdrop, and then apparently uses those photographs to publish a book? A book of tortured cat pictures? Anywho, soon enough Keitel murders the girl and arouses suspicion, and things escape his control.

These are both ok. They're both based on writings by Edgar Allen Poe, so we actually have three horror icons at work here. The pacing can be slow or ok, and the atmosphere especially in segment one is pretty cool at times. There's sort of too many ideas present in segment two, including an homage to Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum.

I can't dump on it too much, but let's be fair and say this idea doesn't exactly work. It feels a bit too slow for one, and at 1990 it's not especially ahead of it's time. It feels like a cool idea that didn't quite achieve what it wanted to. It's fine as a soft intro into October, a month where I routinely watch a lot of horror films. This is a average 3, a movie which won't completely bore but also won't blow you away. Good effects in both too, but so scant it's disappointing.

Fear and Desire / Killer's Kiss - 1953/1955

I heard a while ago about Fear and Desire coming onto the internet free of charge. Stanley Kubrick's WWII drama that he purportedly disowned. Now I've seen it.

Fear and Desire is a character drama centered on a group of soldiers stuck 6 miles deep into enemy lines. They try to negotiate a route out while contending with obstacles in their way. It is just over an hour and based on their trauma and destruction.

The acting in it is pretty atrocious and the only Kubrick moments come in the cinematography. When one of the soldiers snaps and shoots a woman he immediately jumps up to an 11 on the unhinged-ometer, and the climactic boat scene later is uneven because we're not sure what's happening. By far the best moment is when our troupe attacks enemies in a house eating stew, that's a tense and creepy 10 minutes. The rest is meh and boring.

Killer's Kiss is another character based drama. We follow down and dirty boxer Davey as he relays a story of what happened to him. He has a thing for the girl next door and gets involved in her life. She is the target of low-life Vincent, who is abusing her. Davey is mixed up in this, so soon enough he is a target himself.

Killer's Kiss a film noir, and way ahead of it's time. It is dark, mysterious, and desperate, with a attitude of nihilism and dread. The climactic fight scene in the end is true insanity, a faceoff in a mannequin factory. That scene in itself is so different from a lot of typical 50s dramas, it's tense and quickly paced, with a huge fight and a lot of action. The studio demanded a happy ending, but we have to think without that, this movie would be a real downer. The great cinematography and editing in the movie is a highlight, all done by Kubrick, and the film certainly feels like it has a unique and clear voice.

A while ago I watched his film The Killer, and this trilogy of early Kubrick is interesting in retrospect. They're all showing a master coming of age and defining his craft, and each one has their moment to shine. The moments just get bigger and bigger as time passes, so thankful for that. Fear and Desire is a 1.5 star with the worst acting in a Kubrick film, and Killer's Kiss is a genuine 4 star excellent film noir.