SPIELBERG (2017) *** ½

Director Susan Lacy’s documentary on the world’s most famous filmmaker gives you a solid overview of his career.  Lacy is a veteran of PBS’s American Masters series and the film often plays like an extended episode of that show.  She covers all his cinematic milestones in fine fashion, but I for one would've liked to have seen a little more time spent on some of Spielberg’s lesser movies.  (Sometimes failures are more interesting to discuss than successes.)  At least they give a little insight into 1941.  

What I wasn’t expecting was how it delved into his personal life.  The way Lacy portrayed the relationship between Spielberg and his parents was especially touching.  Because of that, you can see how the themes in his work ran concurrent with his relationship with his father.   

The best segment focuses on Spielberg’s friendship with his fellow filmmakers (dubbed “The Movie Brats”).  If you’ve ever wanted to be a fly on the wall while Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, and Francis Ford Coppola were hanging out and shooting pool in the prime of their career, you’re gonna love this movie.  The home movies of The Movie Brats chilling out together are just awesome.  Hopefully there’s a lot more of that footage laying around somewhere.  It would make a great documentary on its own. 

While the film is a bit obvious in parts, I liked how they showed Spielberg maturing throughout his career.  Looking back, Schindler’s List seems like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to forget that at the time, a three-hour black-and-white movie about the Holocaust was anything but a guaranteed success.   

Sure, it does run on a little long and would’ve benefited from some tighter editing in its final act.  (I would’ve also liked it if Lacy finally got to the bottom of the whole “Who directed Poltergeist” controversy.)  Despite that, it remains an entertaining and absorbing documentary that should please Spielberg’s legions of fans. 

NETFLIX AND KILL: THE HOUSES OCTOBER BUILT (2014) **

I've never been a walk-through haunted house kind of guy.  I've never enjoyed walking around in a herd of people inside a deserted Ames led around by some schmo spouting a corny spiel while waiting for someone in a mask from Spencer's Gifts to jump out of the darkness and grab a person in our group.  I'm not a fan of Found Footage horror movies either.  So why did I watch The Houses October Built, a Found Footage horror movie about a group of friends who go across America filming a documentary about the country's "most extreme" walk-through haunted houses, you ask?  Well, when you're trying to cram in 31 horror movies in 31 days for the month of October, you do a lot of things you wouldn't ordinarily do.  

As far as these things go, it's not terrible.  Sure, the characters are all unlikeable and say "fuck" a lot.  Sure, the final handheld sequence where they go into the “Blue Skeleton” haunt is hard to see because the camera shakes too much and it's way too dark in places.  That stuff just goes with the territory.  

There is one moment of invention that elevates the film from the usual tripe.  Of course, I’m talking about the sequence where the characters go to a strip club and all the topless dancers are wearing zombie make-up.  If anything can make a run-of-the-mill Found Footage horror movie better, it’s zombie strippers.  So, it's got that going for it.  

AKA:  Halloween House.  AKA:  Houses of Terror.  AKA:  Halloween Night.  AKA:  Haunted Houses. 

NETFLIX AND KILL: HOUSEBOUND (2014) ***

When you think of the great horror movies from New Zealand, you think Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste and Dead-Alive.  You might also think of Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows.  I can’t say Housebound is quite in the same league as those films, but there are certainly plenty of moments here that flirt with greatness. 

Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly) gets busted for robbing an ATM and is put under house arrest.  It’s one thing to be stuck in your home with an ankle monitor.  It’s another to be trapped at home with your annoying mother (Rima Te Wiata).  Kylie eventually comes to believe there’s a ghost living in her house, and since she’s wearing her ankle monitor, she can’t leave.  As chance would have it, her probation officer (Glen-Paul Waru) just so happens to be a paranormal expert and jumps at the chance to bust some ghosts. 

Housebound contains some very funny stuff, and like the best horror comedies, the humor comes from the characters and situations.  The standout sequence comes when O’Reilly is attacked by a killer teddy bear.  This scene is a great example of how writer/director Gerard Johnstone can take something potentially ridiculous and still give it enough edge to make it induce goosebumps. The IDEA of a killer teddy bear is silly, but since it’s played with a straight face, it works.

Johnstone is unable to keep that level of mania sustained throughout the longish 106 minutes running time.  The second act could’ve used some tightening up as there are a few lulls in between the set pieces.  Still, there are a handful of priceless moments along the way.  Johnstone does a particularly fine job in the film’s quieter moments.  I mean there is a scene where O’Reilly is interrupted by ghosts while taking a pee that is funnier than most modern comedies.

NETFLIX AND KILL: HOUSE ON WILLOW STREET (2016) **

Sharni Vinson leads a team of kidnappers to snatch a young woman from her well-to-do family.  They kidnap her and take her to a dilapidated building where they begin making their ransom demands.  While doing so, the kidnappers slowly come to realize there is something different about their captive.  She seems to know their darkest secrets and later exhibits the power to project disturbing visions of their dead loved ones into their minds. 

The movie starts off with a bang.  The opening scenes of the kidnappers planning their crime run like clockwork, thanks to a strong performance by Vinson.  The strong set-up eventually gives way to repetitive scenes of characters seeing hallucinations of dead bodies/ghosts/zombies accompanied by high-pitched screaming, which is unfortunate.   

Ultimately, the movie plays with the audience’s expectations a bit too much.  They endlessly tease the kidnapped girl’s big secret, and once they finally reveal it, it’s pretty lame.  I won’t spoil it for you (although its alternate title does a good job of doing that), but I will say if they had just come out and said what was going on a half-hour earlier, the film had a much better potential of being fun.  As it is, the constant teasing wears on your patience.   

It doesn’t help that the long flashback sequence that explains everything is so damned dull.  This scene is filled with a lot of stupid “rules” concerning the girl’s condition that have to be laboriously explained to the audience by the characters.  Sometimes, the cinematography is so dark that it makes some scenes hard to make out, which is another major debit. 

For all its faults, the zombies do have a griminess about them that makes them feel like they came out of a Lucio Fulci movie.  That’s about the best thing I can say about them.  Too bad director Alastair Orr couldn’t think of a better way to use them more effectively. 

I liked Vinson in You’re Next, and she does a fine job here.  In fact, she’s the only one in the whole movie with any kind of screen presence.  Whenever she isn’t front and center, House on Willow Street really falters.   

AKA:  Demon Girl.  AKA:  Demon House on Willow Street.  AKA:  From a House on Willow Street.

NETFLIX AND KILL: THE DISAPPOINTMENTS ROOM (2016) *

Kate Beckinsale made this sorry sack of shit in between Underworld sequels.  It was directed by D.J. (Disturbia) Caruso, from a script he co-wrote with actor Wentworth Miller.  Caruso isn’t really known as a horror guy, so maybe that’s why this was such a miserable dud. 

Kate and her family are city folk who move into the country to live in a big old spooky house.  They’re only there a day and Kate is already seeing ghost dogs and having bad dreams.  She finds a locked door in her attic that is apparently a “disappointments room”, a place where rich people used to hide away their deformed children.  Gee, do you think something bad happened in there and now there are ghosts haunting the place?  If you’ve seen as many of these things as I have, you’ll probably already know the answer. 

The disappointments room is exactly where The Disappointments Room belongs.  It’s overly derivative (it blatantly rips off The Shining and The Changeling), exceedingly tedious, and not scary in the least.  It plods along at 85 minutes, but it feels much longer.  Beckinsale is easy on the eyes though, so I guess it could’ve been worse.   

The movie also teases us endlessly with the possibility that it could all be in Kate’s head.  (She stopped taking her anti-psycho pills, don’t you know.)  All this subplot does is eat up a lot of screen time and annoy the shit out of the audience.  Just when you think we’re building up to some sort of payoff, along comes one of the most infuriating non-endings I’ve seen in some time.  The only good part is a fairly juicy head bashing scene, but since the head that gets bashed in belongs to a ghost, it hardly matters. 

I did get a kick out of seeing Gerald McRaney as the head ghost though.  Remember when he played Major Dad?  Now he’s playing Major DEAD.

DARK TOWER (1989) * ½

Dark Tower is an Evil Skyscraper Movie.  There were a lot of these in the ‘80s.  I guess the most famous example is Poltergeist 3.  Why were there so many of them?  Maybe they were supposed to be cautionary tales for architects who continually build buildings higher, thereby tampering in God’s domain.  Maybe they were meant to act as scary bedtime stories for the rich folks who lived inside of them.  Whatever they were, they were rarely effective. 

Architect Jenny Agutter watches in horror as a window washer plummets to his death.  She claims he was pushed by someone or something on the scaffolding, but no one believes her; except for cop Michael Moriarty.  (Mostly because he wants to sleep with her.)  The next day, a security guard dies mysteriously in an elevator.  When Moriarty’s partner goes nuts and kills a bunch of people in the building, Moriarty goes on a quest for answers.  Along with two paranormal experts, he tries to use his long-repressed power of ESP to put a stop to the supernatural shenanigans.  

Dark Tower was a troubled production.  It was originally intended to star Roger Daltrey and Lucy Guttridge with Ken (Return of the Living Dead 2) Wiederhorn directing, but he wound up being replaced by Freddie (The Creeping Flesh) Francis.  The film’s cobbled-together nature is really apparent during the finale when Agutter is chased through the building, and her hair and wardrobe change from shot to shot. 

Speaking of which, most of the film centers around long scenes of people wandering endlessly down hallways until they are eventually picked off by the supernatural entity.  As you can probably guess, this gets tedious awfully quick.  The random appearances by Agutter’s dead, eyeless husband are almost laughable.  The zombie ghost in the finale is likewise terrible as it looks rubbery AF.  The ghost’s big scene at the end feels like it could’ve come out of a Tales from the Crypt episode.  If that was the case though, we’d only have to wait thirty minutes to see it instead of ninety. 

Moriarty has always had a weird energy about him that makes him fun to watch.  If it had anyone else in the role, Dark Tower might’ve been even more torturous to endure.  I especially liked the scenes of him mumbling to himself while doing research on his computer.  Agutter (using an American accent) is pretty much wasted, but Kevin McCarthy gets to chew the scenery late in the game as one of the paranormal experts who investigate the building. 

Francis/Weiderhorn use a lot of low-angle shots of the skyscraper to make it look ominous (and taller).  They aren’t successful.  There are so many of these establishing shots that one could build a drinking game around them.   

One interesting aspect about the movie is that it takes place in Spain.  Many films are shot there, sure, but they usually try to pretend it’s New York or something.  Because of the location, many of the supporting players have thick accents or don’t even speak English at all.  Dark Tower also earns a place in cinema history for being the only flick that was unofficially released as part of both the Curse AND Demons franchises.  That’s got to be worth SOMETHING, right? 

AKA:  Curse 5.  AKA:  Demons 7:  Inferno.

NETFLIX AND KILL: MERCY (2014) **

This is our second Stephen King adaptation this month for Netflix and Kill.  It’s one that kind of flew under my radar and went straight to DVD a few years ago.  It’s based on his short story, “Gramma” and was produced by Jason (Paranormal Activity) Blum and McG. 

Most of us have had to care for a sick and/or dying loved one as they were slowly approaching the end of their life.  I think we can all sympathize with the family in this movie.  They take Gramma out of the nursing home in hopes she’ll die peacefully at home.  The family has to force feed her, give Gramma her shots, and hold her down when she has her fits.  It’s especially hard on the children, but then again, children sometimes are a lot more resilient than you’d expect.  This aspect of the movie works.  As a horror flick though, it ain’t much.   

There wasn’t a whole lot to the short story, and the stuff the filmmakers have added to pad out the narrative is muddled at best.  Pacts with the devil, imaginary ghost friends, mysterious deaths, hounds from Hell, and family curses are all thrown into the mix in an effort to add some scares to the proceedings.  It never really gels, but at least the performances by Frances O’Connor and Dylan McDermott are solid. 

Although none of the horror elements came together in any kind of meaningful way, I didn’t hate it or anything.  Well, until the end that is.  That’s where the movie really shits the bed.  (Just like Gramma, I suppose.)  It’s almost borderline incomprehensible, which is a shame because the opening act had a lot of promise. 

Part of the fun of watching all of these Netflix movies this October has been seeing various plot elements overlapping from film to film.  Like The Devil’s Candy, it’s a family-oriented horror flick.  Like The Devil’s Candy, the family stuff works better than the horror.  Like The Devil’s Candy, it’s only 79 minutes long, but it feels much longer.  It’s also similar to Late Phases as it’s about a guy dealing with a loved one as they enter the last stages of their life.