LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SMILE (2022) ****

FORMAT:  4K UHD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on November 29th, 2022)

Smile had a great viral marketing campaign where they had several people sit in the stands of baseball games and smile unblinkingly into the camera inning after inning.  That was cool, but it wasn’t quite enough to get me into the theater to see it.  When it was released, it became the rarest thing in horror:  An original horror film with no big movie stars that became a word of mouth hit, grossing over $100 million at the box office.  Even as the positive word of mouth was spreading, I still somehow never found time to check it out.  Now, I’m home for the holidays, it’s on Paramount+, and I no longer have an excuse.  Even with little to no expectations and knowing very little about it, Smile knocked me on my ass.  Unlike Barbarian, this is one horror flick that lives up to the hype.  

An overworked shrink named Rose (Sosie Bacon) is horrified when her patient commits suicide right in front of her.  The worst thing about it?  The demented smile that remained on her face the whole time she performed the deed.  Now, Rose keeps seeing weird, smiling people everywhere she goes.  After doing some Encyclopedia Brown-style investigation, she discovers a pattern:  Anyone who comes into contact with a sinister, smiling suicide victim will themselves commit suicide seven days later.  Will Rose be able to break the curse, or is she doomed to perpetuate it?

It would be flippant to shrug Smile off as “It Follows Meets The Ring”.  Yes, the bare bones of that scenario is there.  However, this flick sets out and accomplishes what it intends to do a hundred times better than those two overpraised movies did.

Smile is a slow burner, but somehow writer/director Parker Finn (making one heck of a debut) cracked the code of how to make a slow burn horror flick that manages to keep the tension simmering, while at the same time carefully doling out jump scares, gross-out moments, and gnarly set pieces at expertly timed intervals, so that the audience’s patience is never once tested.  In fact, these sequences (chief among them, the birthday party from hell) add to the allure and mystery of the premise.  

A lot of that has to do with Bacon’s performance.  She runs the gamut from caring doctor to raving lunatic with about a hundred different shades in between.  The film wouldn’t be as effective as it is if we didn’t believe the terror she was experiencing, and brother, we buy it hook, line, and sinker.

I joke about every horror movie these days being about “trauma”.  Smile is the first one to say, “Yup, that’s what this one is all about:  TRAUMA.  Bold, underlined, italicized trauma.”  What’s interesting and effective about the film is the way the supernatural menace assaults its victims much like, say, PTSD.  They go around having a fairly good day without a care in the world until the entity (trauma) comes tumbling down on them like a ton of bricks, making them on edge, unable to cope, and pushing themselves away from their loved ones.  

The wildest part is the ending (Vaguest of Spoilers Ahead, but it’s hard not to discuss the thing that makes the film so great), in which our heroine finally confronts the monster (trauma) head-on.  And I don’t mean “wild” as in it’s crazy or weird.  I mean “wild” as in I’ll be damned if I didn’t get a little choked up.  We all have a little trauma inside us all.  Smile foregoes a fiery, balls-to-the-walls conclusion befitting a great horror movie, and instead gives its heroine an opportunity to confront, reconcile, and move on from her past trauma (monster)… Of course, then it continues onto a fiery, balls-to-the-walls conclusion befitting a great horror movie.

Smile sure left this horror fan grinning from ear to ear.

QUICK THOUGHTS: 

I got a good deal on the Paramount Scares 4K box set and I was looking for an excuse to revisit this before the sequel came out, so I was able to kill two birds with one stone.  I’m happy to say that on my second viewing, even knowing how it all plays out, the film still cooks.  It remains one of the most original horror flicks in recent memory.  Director Parker Finn gets a lot of mileage out of a slim premise and Bacon delivers a true tour de force performance.

4K UHD NOTES:

I was surprised how well this popped in 4K.  The unsettling off-kilter aerial shots are twice as dizzying in high def, and the fluid camerawork looks mesmerizing.  I don’t even have the best set-up in the world, and it still looked like a million bucks. 

TERRIFIER 3 (2024) *** ½

There’s “over the top” and then there’s “through the roof”.  Terrifier 3 is a case of the latter.  There is more blood and guts in this sequel than most horror flicks have in their entire franchise.  I have a feeling that somewhere Herschell Gordon Lewis is smiling. 

Terrifier 3 earns extra points for being a Christmas horror flick, something the world can always use more of.  It manages to give us all the things we crave in a Christmas slasher (namely a killer in a Santa suit chopping up people with an axe), but with fresh new nuances (like the killer making “blood angels”) to make it feel fresh. 

If you recall, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) got decapitated at the end of Terrifier 2.  To put it delicately… he got better.  Now, he’s back with his horribly disfigured girlfriend Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) in tow, and he’s looking to finish off The Final Girl, Sierra (Lauren LaVera) once and for all. 

Terrifier 3 is for my money, the best installment yet.  It dials back the fairy tale weirdness of the second flick while still adding enough touches of it as to not turn off die-hard fans.  The running time is thankfully shorter than 2 and while it still clocks in at a hefty two hours, it certainly isn’t boring and there is no shortage of the red stuff to go around. 

Speaking of which, some of the kills must be seen to be believed.  I will go on record by saying that the chainsaw up the ass scene will go down as an all-timer.  Sure, some of the gore scenes flirt with tastelessness (like when Victoria masturbates with a shard of broken glass), but if you’re still watching this series after the grisly second entry, then you probably already know what you’re getting yourself into. 

Thornton delivers yet another fun performance as Art.  He’s basically a mix of Pennywise, Freddy Krueger, and Charlie Chaplin. Some of his reaction shots are priceless this time around.  LaVera once again makes for a formidable adversary for him, although her nerdy brother (Elliott Fullam) kind of gets the short end of the stick in this one.  The supporting cast, which includes everyone from Clint Howard to Tom Savini to Jason Patric, is fun too. 

Your mileage may vary of course, but Terrifier 3 got this old Grinch into the holiday spirit. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BANDH DARWAZA (1990) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

A woman desperate for a child, sneaks off to the sinister “Black Mountain” to get knocked up by the Dracula-like “Master”.  When she finally gives birth to a daughter, the Master demands she join him on Black Mountain.  Naturally, she refuses to give up her baby and he has her killed.  Her grieving hubby then comes to get revenge, but with his dying breath, the Master places a curse on his daughter.  Years later, she falls madly in love with a man who rejects her advances.  Soon, she finds herself pulled to Black Mountain where the witches there promise to grant her powers in exchange for her soul.  With the help of a magic book, she bewitches her intended love.  His friends then team up to break the spell and stop the Master and his evil witches at the Black Mountain. 

If all that seems like a lot of plot… well… it kind of is.  However, the film moves at a fast pace and is never boring.  Since it’s a Bollywood movie, it has a few musical numbers, but honestly there weren’t nearly as many as I was expecting.  They aren’t intrusive to the plot and are moderately entertaining for the most part.  In fact, it just adds to the bizarre “anything goes” vibe. 

Like most Bollywood flicks, it’s long (almost two and a half hours), but there’s enough weird and/or cool and/or goofy shit here to keep just about any genre film lover entertained.  There’s Aerobicizing, annoying comic relief, dorky grown ass men wearing Michael Jackson Thriller jackets, some interesting camerawork, a scary bat idol with glowing red eyes, and random Kung Fu fights.  It also blatantly steals music from Friday the 13th (and Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein), which ups the overall kitsch factor. 

The first half is full of witches and spells and assorted weirdness.  By the end of the film, things switch over to a more traditional Dracula type of deal with the red-eyed Master seducing and biting women on the neck.  Sure, a lot of this is wildly uneven, but it’s still plenty of fun, and the scene where he flies through a car windshield and bites the driver is legit.  

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1962) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on October 25th, 2007)

After his daughter’s face is terribly disfigured in a car crash, a slightly crazed doctor (Pierre Brasseur) works frantically in his lab to perfect a face transplant. His assistant (Alida Valli from Suspiria) lures girls back to the lab where they are anesthetized and become unwilling facial donors. Meanwhile his timid daughter (Edith Scob), who wears a creepy featureless mask, becomes increasingly loony, especially after the latest botched surgery.

This atmospheric and stylish film, directed by Georges Franju benefits from some truly unsettling operation scenes where victims' faces are scalpeled off with impeccable precision. They must have really been something to see back in the '60s and pack quite a punch today. Unfortunately for the most part though, the film can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be an arty French movie or a balls-out horror movie. Even though most of the movie is stuck in this bizarre state of genre limbo, it’s still worth a look just for those nasty operation scenes alone. The stiff pacing and art house sensibilities don’t do it any favors either.

The performances are a mixed bag as Brasseur doesn’t make much of an impression as either a concerned father or a mad scientist. Valli fares much better and brings a touch of sensitivity to her otherwise underwritten role, but it’s Scob who really steals the movie. With her majestic, hopelessly sad eyes peering through her expressionless mask, her touching performance elevates the movie and gives it a much-needed shot of pathos.

Some people will be turned off by the subtitles and the slack pacing, but others will want to check it out for the botched facial surgeries and Scob’s memorable performance. Besides it’s not every day that you can say you saw a French mad doctor movie, is it?

AKA: House of Dr. Rasanoff. AKA: Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: CAPULINA VS. THE MUMMIES (THE TERROR OF GUANAJUATO) (1973) *

FORMAT:  DVD

Capulina was a painfully unfunny, but wildly popular Mexican comedian who starred in several comedies south of the border.  There’s really no reason to see any of his movies unless they have monsters and/or El Santo in them.  Even then, they still aren’t any good.  In fact, this one is fucking terrible. 

(You know you’re in trouble when the filmmakers can’t even decide on a title, so they just slap two of them onto a title card.)

This time out, the bumbling Capulina is working as a taxi driver.  He takes a flustered fare out to the middle of nowhere to visit his uncle, who just so happens to be a mad scientist with a lab full of mummies.  The scientist takes a shine to Capulina and hires him to be his new assistant.  Naturally, chaos ensues when he succeeds in bringing the mummies back to life. 

The alleged comedy sequences include fast-motion chase scenes, talking skeletons, and people falling into swimming pools.  None of it is funny, and Capulina’s constant mugging begins grating on the nerves from the very first scene.  The long subplot where Capulina and company mistake a criminal for a mummy goes nowhere too.  There are also oddly placed episode titles throughout, which makes me think this might’ve originally been meant for television. 

The mummies are cool though.  They’re not the Hollywood variety with bandages and shit.  Rather they are barely preserved skeletons with brownish dry skin thinly pulled over their bulging skulls.  Too bad once they are brought to life they just look like an unkempt gardener. 

This is the part of the review where I tell you my copy didn’t come with English subtitles.  That means if there had been some hilarious wordplay and banter, I probably missed it.  (Chances are, there wasn’t.)  Hell, the flick could’ve been littered with funny repartee I did understand, and I’d still be stuck suffering through Capulina’s painful slapstick shenanigans.  His unfunny schtick doesn’t need any translation and is unfunny in any language. 

Director Alfredo Zacarias went on to direct the camp classic disaster movie, The Bees. 

AKA:  Capulina vs. the Mummies.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DO YOU WANNA KNOW A SECRET? (2001) * ½

FORMAT:  DVD

Do You Wanna Know a Secret? comes to us from Mainline Releasing, a company mostly known for their Skinamax movies.  (The house in the film is featured in many of their erotic thrillers.)  It was co-written and produced by none other than Del Tenney, the man who gave the world the immortal classic The Horror of Party Beach.  It also stars Grease’s Jeff Conaway as a detective and Joseph Lawrence AKA:  Joey Lawrence from Blossom as the leading man.  Whoa!

Despite having all that going for it, it still winds up sucking.

A hot blonde’s boyfriend is murdered, and the killer is never caught.  One year later, she and her friends go down to Florida for Spring Break.  It seems the killer has followed them down south.  He also loves to scrawl notes that say, “Do You Wanna Know a Secret?” for the friends to find before he offs them.

This early ‘00s slasher has way too many false scares, fake-out dream scenes, and offscreen kills to be worth a damn.  Nothing happens for the longest time before most of the cast gets wiped out in short order.  The murders themselves are mostly bloodless and forgettable (when they do happen on-screen that is).  And for a movie from Mainline Releasing, it features no skin whatsoever, which is especially disappointing. 

Things take a particularly yawning-inducing turn in the finale.  That’s when all the standard cliches (longwinded explanation by the killer, victims propped up around in a circle, the killer jumping up just when you think he’s dead, etc.) are trotted out.  You’ve seen this shit played out a hundred times before and done much better.  I guess the makers of Do You Wanna Know a Secret? didn’t know the secret to making a good slasher. 

Look fast for Greg Cipes, the voice of Beast Boy from Teen Titans as “Taco Boy”. 

AKA:  Dark Summer.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BYLETH: THE DEMON OF INCEST (1972) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

A young Duke named Lionello (Mark Damon) returns home to find out his sister Barbara (Claudia Gravy) has gotten married.  That pisses the Duke off to no end because he’s got the hots for his sister.  To make matters worse, he can’t make it with any other woman, which gives him a creepy reputation in the village.  When a killer in a black cloak goes around stabbing naked women in the throat with a three-pronged knife, Lionello quickly becomes a person of interest.  But is the killer human, or is it a supernatural creature driven by lust and revenge?

Byleth:  The Demon of Incest is a solid little slice of Eurosleaze.  Despite the lurid title, the film is handled with a surprising amount of restraint.  Not to worry, there’s still plenty of gratuitous T & A and healthy doses sex and violence to go around.  It’s just that it’s not nearly as icky as it could’ve been, considering the subject matter.  In fact, the final incestual coupling is handled rather… dare I say… tastefully.  Too bad the ultimate confrontation with the demon is so anticlimactic. 

Mark Damon is typically a bland leading man, and that mostly describes him here.  However, the characters he usually plays are cut-and-dry bland characters.  In Byleth:  The Demon of Incest, he’s cast as what at the outset seems like your average Mark Damon role.  Since he’s sort of a tweaked freak masquerading as a bland character, it works in Damon’s favor.  He doesn’t exactly hit it out of the park or anything, but his stilted blandness is creepier than if he chewed the scenery and tried to be scary.  The lovely Gravy is quite good too as the object of his affection, and the many ladies in the cast are equally alluring, especially the sultry Silviana Pompili, who plays Damon’s new doomed girlfriend. 

AKA:  Byleth.