SCREAM AND STREAM AGAIN: BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW (2012) *** ½

(Streamed via Xumo)

Elena (Eva Allen) is a patient at the mysterious Arboria Institute.  There, her creepy quack (Michael Rogers) keeps her under close surveillance.  Mostly for his own amusement (I guess), he lets her out of her cell so she can discover her surroundings. 

Beyond the Black Rainbow was written and directed by Panos (Mandy) Cosmatos, the son of Cobra director George P. Cosmatos.  He exhibits heavy influences from Kubrick, Carpenter, Cronenberg, and Lynch, but is still able to make the mosaic feel weirdly original at the same time.  While I am sure some viewers are bound to find it to be a marathon test of their patience, if you can get in tune with its bizarre wavelength, you should find yourself enjoying it as much as I did. 

Remember a while back when I watched Ad Astra and it almost left me in a trance?  This one just about did the same thing.  From the warm, vibrant colors to the droning soundtrack, to the sparse monotone voices, Beyond the Black Rainbow lulls you in.  Then… WHAM!  It brings on a trippy black and white flashback that’s as weird as anything in Begotten. 

Cosmatos gets a lot of mileage out of the lead performance by Rogers.  Looking like a wax figure of Christian Bale that’s miraculously come to life, he emits a creepy vibe that works hand in hand with the world Cosmatos has created.  (I especially liked the faux-vintage film strip for the Institute.)  When Rogers goes nuts in the final act, he doubles-down on the oddball touches and really gets under your skin.

Beyond the Black Rainbow isn’t all sunshine and roses though.  Did it really need to be close to two hours?  Probably not.  Is the ending anticlimactic and more than a bit lame?  (The two random metalhead characters notwithstanding.)  Kinda.  Till then though, it’s a wild ride that any lover of offbeat cinema will surely enjoy taking.  

SCREAM AND STREAM AGAIN: KILLER MERMAID (2014) * ½

(Streamed via Crackle)

Kelly (Kristina Klebe, from Rob Zombie’s Halloween) and Lucy (Natalie Burn) go to Montenegro to hang out with an old college friend (Slobodan Stefanovic) and his bride to-be (Sofija Rajovic), leading to a lot of sunbathing, swimming, and infidelity.  They hear about an old abandoned military base on a remote island and decide it’s the perfect spot for a vacation getaway.  What they don’t tell you in the brochure is the place used to be home to Nazi experiments.  Once there, the gang are menaced by a deranged killer (Miodrag Krstovic) who stalks the grounds and acts as caretaker to a bloodthirsty siren of the sea (Zorana Kostic Obradovic). 

Basically, it’s Splash Meets Piranha with a bit of The Grim Reaper thrown in there. 

Killer Mermaid kicks off with a solid opening that immediately grabs your attention.  After the main title comes up, it promptly releases your attention, leaving you to flounder for the next ninety minutes.  Then you have to put up with a lot of long scenes of our heroines lollygagging around.  Once they finally shove off and make their way to the island, the pace moves even slower, if you can believe it.  From there, we get a lot of scenes of the girls walking down dark hallways, shining flashlights about, and saying stuff like, “Guys… where are you… this isn’t funny anymore”.  On top of that, you have to deal with the subplot about the killer caretaker plunging an oversized fishhook into people’s necks, which eats up a lot of screen time.

If you can’t already tell, it takes a long time for the Killer Mermaid to do her thing.  Once she finally does, it really isn’t worth the wait as the climax is sorry, soggy, and unsatisfying.  The long, drawn-out set-up for a sequel is particularly unnecessary.  It’s a shame too because the scenes of her luring the awestruck men to their impending doom had potential.    

At least we have Franco Fuckin’ Nero turning up as a menacing looking sailor who warns the friends, “That island is drenched in blood!”  He also gets a USS Indianapolis-type monologue about losing his men on an ill-fated voyage.  Eventually, he gets quite a bit of screen time near the very end, but even then, his talents are wasted in this stinky fish tale.

AKA:  Killer Mermaids.  AKA:  Nymph.  AKA:  Mamula. 

SCREAM AND STREAM AGAIN: THE BLACK CAT (1989) ***

(Streamed via YouTube)

Directed by Luigi Cozzi (who also served as one of the many uncredited directors in yesterday’s movie, Vampires in Venice), The Black Cat originally began life as the proposed final installment of Dario Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy.  Once he left the project, Cozzi got ahold of the script, rewrote it, and turned the Three Mothers movie into a prospective film-within-a-film.  The Argento connection doesn’t end there because in some territories, it was sold as a sequel to the Argento-produced Demons.  (Part 6, to be exact.)  If you squint hard enough, you can see the connection, thanks to the abundance of heavy metal on the soundtrack and the participation of that film’s star, Urbano Barberini. 

Anne (Florence Guerin) is an actress starring in an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat.  Her husband, Marc (Barberini) is a director who just got hired to make the final sequel in The Three Mothers Trilogy, and he wants Anne to star as the witch, Levana.  Almost immediately, Anne starts having dreams and visions of the real Levana terrorizing her. 

Things only get weirder from there.

The Black Cat almost feels like a precursor to New Nightmare as it’s about an actress who is haunted by a character in her latest movie.  I think Cozzi was going for an Argento vibe with the use of vibrant colors during the nightmare scenes, but it winds up feeling more like a late-‘80s Elm Street sequel (especially The Dream Child), which isn’t a bad thing.  I mean Levana even has a disfigured face and razor-sharp fingernails!  Like New Nightmare, there are also some in-jokes that are amusing, like the screenwriter having a Godzilla costume in his office.  (Cozzi directed an Italian version of Godzilla in the ‘70s.) 

In terms of “quality”, the pendulum fluctuates all over the place.  It is, however, rarely boring.  Often times, it feels as if Cozzi put a mess of movies in a blender, hit the “Puree” button, and made a cinematic smoothie.  In addition to the Argento homages, we have characters spewing green vomit like The Exorcist, and a scene where guts shoot out of a TV just like in Videodrome.  Heck, Cozzi even rips off himself a couple times.  There’s a bonkers scene where a woman’s heart explodes out of her chest that looks suspiciously like leftover props from Cozzi’s Contamination, and there are lots of random cutaways to a shoddy looking starfield that look like outtakes from Cozzi’s Starcrash.

Speaking of Starcrash, that film’s star, Caroline Munro appears in a supporting role as a sexpot actress; and she’s looking quite foxy, I might add.  Brett (The Devil’s Honey) Halsey also has a brief, but memorable turn as a cranky wheelchair-bound producer.  The stars, on the other hand, are about as dull as dishwater, but that doesn’t really matter when the movie itself is so batshit insane.

I’m not saying any of this makes sense.  I’m not saying any of this is what you would call “good”.  What I am saying is that it’s fucking nuts, and for some (READ:  Me), that will be enough.

AKA:  Demons 6.  AKA:  Dead Eyes.

SCREAM AND STREAM AGAIN: VAMPIRES IN VENICE (1988) ** ½

(Streamed via Tubi)

Professor Catalano (Christopher Plummer) is an expert on vampirism who arrives in Venice looking for Nosferatu (Klaus Kinski).  It is his theory that the old bloodsucker, though he causes death and despair everywhere he goes, is secretly wishing to die himself.  It’s then up to the professor to make sure he gets his wish. 

Vampires in Venice is a sequel to Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu remake with Klaus Kinski.  You might not catch that (even if you see it under the title of Nosferatu in Venice) since Kinski refused to wear the elaborate iconic Nosferatu make-up this time out.  He also apparently fired a lot of people (which resulted in him directing part of the picture) and assaulted a few more behind the scenes. 

The presence of Plummer and Donald Pleasence help lend some much-needed class to the proceedings.  So much class that the film often meanders whenever they are not on screen.  At least it’s able to skate by virtually on Kinski’s oddball performance alone.  Even without the make-up (he still wears a set of big ass fangs), Kinski looks creepy, and he exudes a tortured state of existential weariness when saying ponderous dialogue like, “What is time in a life that never ends?”  

Despite the offscreen struggles, what occurs on screen is at least consistent visually as the film is often moody and dreamlike. While Herzog’s version looked great, it was slow and kind of dull.  The same can be said for this one, but at least it achieves a sense of otherworldly weirdness that makes it watchable.  (The gondola shots of the fog-shrouded Venice are quite atmospheric.)   

Unfortunately, “moody and dreamlike” also translates into fitfully frustrating and wildly uneven.  The third act is increasingly challenging to get through as it seems like this stretch of the film suffered the most from the backstage turmoil.  It starts to make less and less sense as it lumbers towards its inane conclusion, but at least this portion features a generous helping of nudity and at least one big unintentional guffaw (the flying scene), which almost salvages it.

AKA:  Nosferatu in Venice.  AKA:  Vampire in Venice.  AKA:  Prince of the Night.

SCREAM AND STREAM AGAIN: ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (2019) ***

(Streamed via STARZ through Amazon Prime)

No one was really clamoring for a sequel to Zombieland, especially not a decade later.  I figured three, maybe four years tops would’ve been the lifespan for this sort of thing.  That didn’t stop the original team from getting the band back together for this slight, but highly entertaining follow-up.

Ten years after the events of Zombieland, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) take a break from killing zombies and finally put up roots at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Before long, Little Rock grows restless and splits to be with people her own age.  Her dysfunctional family unit then take off looking for her, unaware there has been a mutation in the zombies’ DNA, rendering them extremely hard to kill. 

As you can see, no one set out to reinvent the wheel this time out.  The plot is as basic bitch as you could get.  Even when an interesting wrinkle is thrown in (like the appearance of a Valley Girl, played by Zoey Deutsch), not much is done with it.  Most of the time, the film is simply content to rehash the old movie and coast on the charm of its actors.

Which is okay because they do a great job once again.  The core quartet play off one another effortlessly and seem to be having a blast having another opportunity to stand side by side killing zombies once again.  The newcomers to the cast are fun too.  Rosario Dawson does all the Rosario Dawson-type things you’d want to see her do.  Luke Wilson is amusingly teamed up with Thomas Middleditch, and Deutsch practically steals every scene she’s in.  If you stick around after the credits, you’ll also get a fun nod to the original that fans should really enjoy. 

To be honest, the zombies are probably the weakest element.  Although they have learned a few (OK… one) new trick since we saw them last, the zombie carnage more or less just feels like an afterthought most of the time.  In fact, you could’ve put this cast in just about any genre and it probably would’ve resulted in a decent flick.  The fact that they inhabit a zombie movie is just kind of a bonus. 

SCREAM AND STREAM AGAIN: DIRECTOR’S CUT (2018) ***

(Streamed via IMDb TV)

Comedian/magician Penn Jillette (who also wrote the script) teams up with one of my favorite directors, Adam (The Dark Backward) Rifkin for this inspired, frequently funny horror-comedy.  It’s a little uneven, but it has the benefit of a unique and clever gimmick.  If you’ve watched as many director’s commentary tracks as I have, you should be able to appreciate it.

As the movie begins, we hear the voice of Herbert Blount (Jillette) on the soundtrack inviting the audience to listen to his director’s commentary.  He informs us this is his “director’s cut” in which he re-shot, re-edited, and re-instated new footage into the original film to preserve his artistic vision.  We quickly realize Blount is obviously obsessed with lead actress Missi Pyle (playing herself) and it soon becomes apparent his “new footage” is just stuff he filmed while stalking her.  Eventually, Blount resorts to kidnapping Missi and forcing her into completing his original vision of the film.

Jillette’s commentary is pretty hilarious.  As a fan of director’s commentary DVD’s, I appreciated the accuracy in which Rifkin and Jillette were able to mimic and skewer the artform.  I especially loved Jillette’s introduction of Harry Hamlin (who also plays himself):  “This is Harry Hamlin.  He’s only in movies because his wife is a reality show star.”  He also points out continuity errors and takes jabs at crowdfunding (which adds to the meta aspect because the film itself was a crowdfunded project).

Jillette dials down his usual abrasive persona and effectively creates a character that is part cinephile and part sociopath.  While his antics tend to get annoying the more he appears on screen, he’s quite good during the scenes where he’s only heard and not seen.  Likewise, the movie starts to run out of steam toward the end.  The premise is stretched particularly thin after Pyle is kidnapped and forced to shoot her “new” scenes.  However, there’s enough ingenuity here to make the gags work, and there are some hearty laughs to be had throughout (especially in the early going during the commentary track-heavy sequences). 

Pyle proves to be a tremendous sport throughout, but it’s the cameos that make it memorable.  My favorite bits include the appearances by Gilbert Gottfried, Lin Shaye, and Penn’s usual partner in crime, Teller.  Rifkin also plays himself, and even tosses in a fun nod to his previous work that I’m sure his fans will appreciate.

In short, this is another winner from Rifkin.  In lesser hands, this could’ve been a disaster, but Rifkin’s knack for combining the satiric with the surreal keeps the material from flying off the handle.  After the one-two punch of this and The Last Movie Star, it’s evident no one blends the real and reel like Rifkin.

SCREAM AND STREAM AGAIN: UNSANE (2018) *** ½

(Streamed via Amazon Prime)

Steven Soderbergh filmed Unsane on his iPhone, partly to show aspiring directors you don’t need a lot of fancy equipment.  You just grab what’s available and go out and make your movie.  Of course, most fledgling filmmakers can’t attract an eclectic cast like Soderbergh can… or receive a sweet distribution deal… but you get the drift. 

Sawyer (Claire Foy) is an office worker who is constantly looking over her shoulder in fear she’s being stalked.  She goes to a hospital for psychiatric treatment and to her horror, is immediately locked up against her will.  Sawyer becomes increasingly paranoid when she begins to think her stalker (Joshua Leonard) is a nurse in the hospital. 

Unsane is an intense psychological thriller that very rarely calls attention to its limited resources.  In fact, you get a sense that using a camera phone was immensely freeing to Soderbergh, as he is able to achieve some interesting angles he might not have otherwise got.  Heck, even when he does something as simple as setting the phone down on the desk, it creates a unique perspective.  These odd angles sometimes have an unsettling effect, which enhances the feeling of the character’s paranoia.  The use of available lighting also adds to the mundane, yet potentially threatening atmosphere of the hospital. 

For something that was shot on someone’s phone, it’s all very well done.  Only in the last ten minutes does Soderbergh resort to some night vision shaky-cam Blair Witch bullshit.  Thankfully, all that’s kept to the bare minimum. 

Honestly, you really didn’t need a bunch of high-tech gear when you are blessed with such an intense (I hesitate to use the word “committed”) performance by Claire Foy.  It’s a real tightrope act since so much of the movie rests on her shoulders.  Her face fills the frame in many scenes, and with such a small screen size and claustrophobic setting, there’s no room for a false note, because the camera would instantly pick up on it.  She pulls it off miraculously and delivers a performance that deserves to be talked about in the same breath as Jennifer Lawrence in mother!

Soderbergh does a good job at making the audience second guess what they’re seeing.  Does Sawyer in fact, have a stalker?  Is she only being imprisoned because the hospital wants to drain her insurance money?  Or is she… well… crazy?

It must be said, it is mostly (but not always) men telling Sawyer she’s crazy.  There is a distinct (but not overt) subtext here of how women must feel when they are dismissed, criticized, corrected, and talked down to constantly by men.  It’s almost enough to send anyone to the snake pit. 

Soderbergh also delivers on a quality freak-out scene when Sawyer takes the wrong medication.  Although simply done, the overall effect is surprisingly unnerving.  The final confrontation in “the blue room” may go on a bit long, but it helps to hammer home the character’s isolation and the time she’s spent locked away.

In addition to Foy, the supporting cast is uniformly fine.  SNL regular Jay Pharaoh fares well in a dramatic role as a fellow inmate trying to help Foy.  Juno Temple really makes an impression as a dreadlocked, tampon-throwing nutzo with her sights set on making Sawyer’s stay a living Hell.  Amy Irving (who I haven’t seen in a while) does a bang-up job too as Sawyer’s worried mother.  We also get a Big Name Cameo (who I won’t reveal) that reminds you this is, after all, a Soderbergh flick.  However, he plays such an average schlub so well that you’re actually impressed with his ability to fit in with the low-key aesthetic of the movie. 

AKA:  Paranoia.