"78/52: HITCHCOCK'S SHOWER SCENE".........WHEN CINEMA FOREVER CHANGED........

78/52: Hitchcock's Shower Scene"  (2017)   Is it possible to base an entire 90 minute documentary on the astonishing Janet Leigh shower-murder in "Psycho"?

           No doubt.......there's more than enough to talk about. And plenty of today's filmmakers willing to amiably chat about it......including Eli Roth, Elijah Wood, Peter Bogdonovich, Mick Garris, Danny Elfman, Guillermo Del Toro, Jamie Lee Curtis and many, many others......the hour and a half flies by.

             In fact, documentary writers and directors could make multiple movies about some of the topics briefly touched on here........before the film settles down to its main event, a shot-by-shot examination of the iconic scene.....(the title refers to the 78 camera set-ups and 52 separate cuts that make up the sequence....)

            Specifically, we refer to the cultural landmark that "Psycho" became........how the film stands as a borderline signpost dividing the 1950's from the 1960's........

             With the capriciously startling slaughter of Janet Leigh, we knew we'd left the moral civility, comfort and solid conservative values of the 50's.  "Psycho"was the perfect touchstone to usher us in to the taboo-breaking, rollercoaster world of the 60's........filled with random cruelty, paranoia, sudden violence, distrust of authority and upending of all normal values that we used to hold dear.

               Irony rules here.......since Hitchcock viewed the film as an elaborate practical joke played on the audience.......the equivalent of pulling the theater seats out from under moviegoers after they'd already sat down.......

                 While American audiences embraced Hitchcock's new Cinema Of Cruelty and reveled in the nasty tricks the film played on them........across the pond, Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom" met with revulsion and rejection.  Hitchcock's little tour through psychosis and murder made him a director-superstar.......Powell's film, more than equal to "Psycho" in its plunge into utter madness, ruined the director's career.

                  As we said......more than enough food for thought here to make a variety of movies about "Psycho" and its continued ripple effect through pop culture. (Don't think so?   One of the film's participants points out that even his 7 year old daughter can replicate Bernard Herrmann's shrieking violins.....)

                 Getting back to the....uh.....meat of the film....(including the decision to use the stabbing of a casaba melon and sirloin steak for the sound of a knife plunged into Janet Leigh).....the meticulous breakdown of the shower scene is a hardcore movie buff's dream come true.

                 For anyone who grooves on Hitchcock and holds fond memories of what it was like to experience "Psycho" for the first time, track down "78/52" a.s.a.p.......stabbin' out 4 bloody stars for this one (****).....

                 

"THE FORBIDDEN DOOR".......ONCE AGAIN, JANE VS.THE NANO-BASTARDS.......

The Forbidden Door by Dean Koontz (2018)  We count ourselves among the legion of Koontz fans but he does seem bound and determined to wear us all out with this ongoing series of thrillers.....of which "The Forbidden Door" is # 4.........

              And yes, you do have to start at the beginning........to drink in the whole saga of rogue FBI agent Jane Hawk and her ongoing battle with the evil cabal of elites who've dubbed themselves the 'Techno-Arcadians'.....

               The 'T.A.'s as we'll call them, have permeated the highest echelons of government, law enforcement and big business.  Their goal......Utopia for the 1 per-centers who can appreciate it.....

                Lesser humans (or anyone whom the TA's deem a threat to them) face eternal mental enslavement and zombie-hood by way of injections of nano-bots.......those micro-minions, the little devils, go to work on setting up a web across victims' brains, dooming them forever to TA servitude.

                Our gal Jane's on to them, but the TA's have sent out legions of thuggish goons determined to track her down.......as well as her Achilles Heel, her little boy.  The tyke's hiding place has been discovered........so the new book details a Jane's breathless race to rescue her son before the relentless and vile TA trolls close in on him......

                Just as we were about to mumble to ourselves how repetitive this saga is becoming, Koontz finally juices up the story with a careening turn into all out, blood-soaked apocalyptic horror. And most satisfying, we might add. More than that, we dare not say.......

                 The flaws in these books, however, still remain. The pacing crawls with too much descriptive verbiage. You have plenty of time to ponder why the supremely efficient Techno-Arcadians hire a collection of borderline loonies to do their bidding.

                   One of the TA bounty hunters has even embraced nihilism to the max, believing everything around him is but an illusion.  And Koontz insists on dragging us through this guy's internal babbling in chapter after chapter. Come on, Dean......give us a break.

                    But still, "The Forbidden Door" marks a huge improvement over the last book.......and that new plot twist that introduces a jarring influx of rampant gore is a much needed shot of adrenalin........for both Jane Hawk and we of the Koontz faithful...........

                    4 stars for this one (****)......if Koontz can maintain this level for subsequent books, we'll strap in for the whole ride....

               

"HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH"....2 MORE DAYS TO..... HALLOWEEN....HALLOWEEN.....HALLOWEEN

Halloween III: Season Of The Witch (1982)  Horror fans regularly deride and dismiss this one-of-a-kind, stand-alone entry in the 'Halloween' franchise.......

               First, because it committed the blasphemy of having nothing to do with everyone's favorite psycho Michael Meyers slashing his way through a bevy of horny teenagers........(John Carpenter's idea here was to turn the series into a yearly horror anthology, with Halloween night the only link to the varied stories.....)

               Second, because despite the wild and crazy storyline originally concocted by legendary British screenwriter Nigel Kneale ("The Quatermass Xperiment"), the movie came across as cheap, confusing, indifferently acted and directed and burdened with plot holes........

                 Yet, it still holds a warm place in John Carpenter's heart........and because of our undying admiration for the daring imagination and creativity of Nigel Kneale......ours too. (Even if Kneale had his name taken off the film after heavy collaborative tampering with his script....)

                 Tommy Lee Wallace, the credited writer-director, lacked the talent and gumption required to fully embrace Kneale's way-out-there concept and run wild with it..........he glumly directs this movie like typical, low-budget slasher junk.......with regularly scheduled jump scares and gross-out gore inserted into the film as he's working off a checklist with a timetable.

                 Given half a chance, veteran character actor Dan O'Herlihy might have had some juicy fun with his role as a mad toymaking tycoon who implants kids' Halloween masks with chips taken off a chunk of Stonehenge....which he managed to steal and import to this California factory..("We had a devil of a time getting it here..." he boasts in one of the film's best lines...) 

                But the film pays little or no attention to O' Herlihy, whose inexplicable master plan involves detonating the Stonehenge mask-chips on Halloween........so millions of tykes unlucky enough to wear them that night will have their heads crushed, with all manner of supernatural bugs and snakes crawling out of their ruined craniums........

                 A few innocents who uncover the plot (Tom Atkins, Stacy Nelkin) must do battle with      O 'Herlihy's army of business-suited robots who periodically show up to perform Michael Meyers-type executions.....(heads ripped off, power drill lobotomies.....the usual stuff)

                 All this admittedly screwball nuttiness required the kind of breathless, hysterical style that director Val Guest applied to Nigel Kneale's 'Quatermass' films. But Tommy Lee Wallace sticks to the slasher playbook........and the film glumly mopes along to the low moans of John Carpenter's  trademark synthesizer score.

                 Never getting out of low gear, the film gives you more than enough time to examine its many goofy flaws........its one good gimmick, O 'Herlihy's creepy annoying TV ad for his masks, gets run into the ground to the point of unintentional humor.

                And as expected, given the film's angry rejection by fans, Michael Meyers returned to the subsequent 'Halloween' sequels and reboots.......to continue to his racking up of body counts.....(until the current "Halloween" reboot decided that none of them ever existed at all ......)

                 Still, as crappy as it is, "Halloween III" remains sort of fun to watch, in a trainwreck kind of way.......amid all the listless nonsense, you can almost detect the outrageous, shocking fantasy that got plowed under and squashed before it could reach the screen.........the filmmaking process here gave Kneale's script the same treatment the movie's kiddies got from those masks......

                2 stars (**).........if nothing else, you'll never get that TV jungle out of your head........

THE ID RULES AMERICA.......ONCE AGAIN......

                    We've used this analogy when we first started this blog........but this week, more than ever, it continues to haunt us......

                     In "Forbidden Planet" the towering achievement of the doomed alien race, the Krell, was enhancing their brain power to an almost infinite degree........to the point where whatever they could think of, they could give it form and substance by the power of their minds alone......

                   In doing so, they unwittingly unleashed the Id.......the primitive beast th.......at lived deep inside themselves........and wiped themselves out in out in one apocalyptic night.

                    Here in the United States,  pretty much the same thing is going on.......except instead of one night, we're doing it in slow motion......in agonizing degrees.......

                  Aided and abetted by Twitter, Facebook and ridiculously easy access to guns, the Id shows its odious, gruesome face in public more every day, every week......

                   Mass shootings fueled by hate, attempted bombings fueled by a demented would-be dictator who takes his Id out for an early morning stroll on Twitter each day.........

                    And increasingly, a populace ruled by unbridled hatred, division, a willingness to swallow utter nonsense as gospel truth.........

                  The phrase we keep hearing, over and over again......"we're better than this...."

                  Are we?

                  At this point in time, we're starting to wonder.

                  Meanwhile, the Id continues its triumphant march across our landscape.  And we wonder if we're better than the Krell…….

                 

"THE 15:17 TO PARIS"......CLINT'S REAL HEROES GO AHEAD AND MAKE HIS DAY.......

The 15:17 To Paris (2018)   No question, as 88 years old, Clint Eastwood stands as an international living legend and cinema treasure.......

               No other director that we know of turned single-minded efficiency into artistry........

               Sure, there's plenty of other directors who assemble films as fast as Eastwood......asking a limited number of takes from their actors, swiftly composing their shots and shooting the film within 6 weeks or less.....

                But Eastwood's one of the few directors who could make films that way and have them come out looking like they'd been in meticulous, lengthy production for a year or more......

                 But that doesn't always work out for him.....or us as viewers.

                Sometimes, Eastwood's movies too easily display the haste and minimal thought and preparation that went into them.

                 They still look good........after several lifetimes of filmmaking, Eastwood's never less than supremely professional. But you can't help wondering how much better they might have turned out if Eastwood did a little more with his actors than mumble (per Tom Hanks)...."okay, that's enough" when they finished their first or second take.

                 In a striking, bold move, Eastwood cast the actual three young American men who overcame a gun-toting Islamic terrorist on an express train from Amsterdam to Paris.  (Well, why not.....he's Climt Eastwood and can do whatever the hell he wants)

                There's ample precedent for casting public figures as themselves.......(the primary example that relates to this film would be 1955's "To Hell And Back" with most-decorated U.S. soldier Audie Murphy playing himself and re-enacting his amazing World War II battle exploits)

                 The positives:  The three heroes (Alek Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone), under Eastwood's direction, acquit themselves with all the dignity, honesty and easy likability you'd expect from such brave, exemplary men.   They're the real deal.......literally.

                 And the terrorist takedown on the train is staged with all the harrowing action and suspense you know Eastwood is more than capable of........a breathless, wrenching 15 minutes or so......

                The negatives:  Eastwood never really found a proper way to build a full feature-length movie around this event. Forced to fill up about another 70 minutes,he tries killing time with clumsy flashbacks to his heroes'  childhoods and then has his threesome, as adults, duplicate their wandering tour through Europe.

                 So until these guys get on the train, the movie's going nowhere.

                 No doubt Eastwood brought all his legendary efficiency to the movie.......but not much else.......which is why "The 15:17 To Paris never becomes anything more than a odd little stunt in the Eastwood filmography.

                 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2) for the film's last third. You can start watching it around the 65 minute mark and enjoy the best of it.......
           

BABY ORANGE VOMITS UP HIS TRUMPANZEE MAD BOMBER.........

              Well, that didn't take too long, did it?

               Naturally, it didn't take all that long for the FBI to nab the Trumpanzee who sent bombs to almost everyone on Baby Orange's 'greatest hit list'......

                After all, we're talkin' hardcore rally-attending Trumpanzee here.......which means he possesses roughly the brain power of a head of lettuce.

                Only a hardcore Trumpanzee would gift the FBI with a mountain of evidence containing his fingerprints and DNA.........

                  In Baby Orange's deeply psychotic head, of course, he bears no responsibility for this Florida dipsy-doodle......even though this trog did emerge, fully grown, surfing the wave of the  toxic lava that flows out of Baby Orange's corrupted mouth......make no mistake.....this guy's as much Baby Orange's child as Ivanka and Don Jr.

                  No, the real fault for the spawning of this Rally Madman is the 'fake new' who always victimizes poor, poor, put-upon, pitiful Baby Orange........who fells terribly persecuted by journalists who insist on reporting the over 3,000 lies he tells

                  The only real fakery involved here......Baby Orange giving a fake portrayal of  U.S. President.......

"A BAD MOMS CHRISTMAS".............F*** THE HALLS........

A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)    In this crude, graceless age, you can now divide up movie-goers into two groups......

              Group # 1 -  everyone who thinks the sight of a too-cute-for-words 4 year old girl looking into the camera and cracking "Oh my fucking God!" is hilarious........

               Group # 2 - Everyone else.

              This gasping, exhausted sequel to "Bad Moms" owes its existence solely to the surprise jumbo box office take of......"Bad Moms".

               And nothing makes sequel-izing easier than putting the film in that peculiar 'Christmas-as-Hell-On-Earth' comedy genre........with family dysfunction and misery mixed in with snow, caroling and debauched Santas.........

                Setting the movie during the holiday season also allows numerous chances to pad the running time (and the skimpy screenplay) with slapstick musical montages.......thereby inflating a 70 minute story into an acceptable 105 minute movie.....

                 This one has the original Bad Moms (Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn) dealing with their own Bad Moms....(Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines, Susan Sarandon)

                 The horror.......the horror........

                  The film makes Hahn do most of the comedic heavy lifting, since she's the wild 'n crazy borderline outlaw character......with Sarandon more than matching her.  Hines' clingy helicopter mom is beyond creepy and Baranski barrels along, doing her usual Huffy Diva bit.

                  The movie reduces Kunis to wandering dazed throughout the proceedings, sometimes muttering...."What.....The......Fuck"......

                   Our reaction exactly.

                   Zero stars (0). And that's more than enough words wasted on this.  Other than to say there's a special place in hell for filmmakers who resort to using toddlers to drop F-bombs.

"BLUMHOUSE'S 'TRUTH OR DARE'".........BLUM AND DUMBER.........

Blumhouse's 'Truth Or Dare' (2018)   Unless something about them catches our attention, we usually ignore the perpetual tidal wave of low budget horror films pumped out by prolific producer Jason Blum.....

             Blum's outpout, along with his imitators, consists mostly of PG-13 trifles in which attractive millennials die at the hands of assorted ghosts, demons, slashers and who-cares-what-else.....

              Made for next to nothing and stocked with lazy jump scares designed to make girls clutch their dates on a multiplex Friday night, you can find these movies sneaking into theaters on any weekend when no major studio film opens against them.

               With 'Truth Or Dare' we may have stumbled upon the worst of them.......a movie so slack, so paint-by-numbers, so uninterested in its own story, it practically disappears before your eyes while you're watching it.

                An MTV-ready collection of collegians get tricked into playing Truth or Dare, not realizing the game's being run by a murderous, invisible demon.  The game-happy Demon goes about his business, arranging violent deaths for the group that look like lame outtakes discarded from the "Final Destination" films........

                 Mr. Demon periodically shows himself on the faces of the actors, who have to assume a  Joker-like wicked smile, further tweaked and enhanced by those ever busy little CGI cartoonists. (This couldn't offer much of a challenge for the digital crew.......tasked with rubber-izing the mouths of the indifferent cast......then again, for some of these actors, it's the closest they'll ever get to showing any emotion on their chiseled, placid faces.....)

                 It's pointless to go on about this movie........since it's really nothing but a Jason Blum marketing strategy to separate young multi-plexers from their weekend spending money.......

                 The only thing really frightening here is the corporate cynicism and contempt for the film's target audience.......a film barely assembled by lizards who think they can throw anything on the screen for a quick first-weekend cash grab. (These are the guys whose rigid, demonic smiles need no computer upgrades......)
             
                  Zero stars (0).....a piddling crumb spit out by the House of Blum.......

"THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING'........BUBBA'S WET DREAM.......

The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson  (2018)      Pardon our jaded worldview, but we found the whole idea of this book hilarious........

               How could we not smirk?    An ex-President creates a fictionalized version of himself......only new and improved. Bill Clinton 2.0....now re-imagined as President John Duncan. Not only a war hero POW,but the savior of the USA......as he foils a cyber-terrorist plot and uncovers a traitor in his own White House.

              Noble as he is, President Duncan accomplishes these Herculean feats while keeping his shlong in his pants and resists any urge to have cute interns lower his poll standing by raising his own pole in the Oval Office......

               Even better, this Super Prez is a widower.......so unlike his creator, he's blissfully unencumbered by a First Lady whom half the country distrusts and despises.

               Since this book rocketed to the top of the best seller lists, we can imagine some of the other living Presidents pestering James Patterson to collaborate on a thriller........

                WeaponBuster by George W. Bush and James Patterson.....President Rock Hard single handedly uncovers Saddam Hussein's secret stash of 5,000 weapons of mass destruction

                  Rock 'N Rolla Ayotollah by Jimmy Carter and James Patterson    President Opie Brass personally flies a rescue mission into Terhan, liberating American diplomatic hostages and swift-kicking the Ayotollah in the crotch so hard, the old bastard won't be able to enjoy the 37 virgins waiting for him in paradise.......

                    Unlike the other Chief Execs, it's not likely that Donald Trump will have to collaborate with Patterson on a Presidential thriller.........since Trump's presidency is already a demented, unbelievable fiction, the stuff of frightening fantasy......(and given Trump's 'contribution' to "The Art Of The Deal", Patterson would have to write it all himself anyway...)

                  Thrills 'n spills?  Not in the early chapters, in which we guess Clinton had the most input.
Patterson lets Clinton take his own sweet time with the exposition........laying out Preident Duncan's character, his allies, his enemies and so on.....

                    Clinton even stops the book cold with a long thoughtful meditation on today's toxic, tribal politics........obviously referring to the cancerous aura spread by the current White House occupant.  Under the guise of a thriller, Bubba gets a lot of stuff off his chest.

                     So it's slow going until the action-adventure plot launches into full-speed-ahead and from that point on, it reads like Patterson took over completely......with his non-stop breathless chapters that only last a page or two.

                       In the final pages, Clinton does come roaring back with the last word.....in fact, many last words. In the form of an address given to Congress, Clinton lets his Super Prez unload with a speech that sounds like an ex-President's wet dream Inaugural speech.

                        Well, we won't begrudge him that. Who hasn't daydreamed about doing their job much better than they do it in real life?   (For examples, refer to our imaginary Patterson books co-written by W. and Jimmy Carter.....)

                      Altogether a lumpy sort of book. James Patterson junkies won't really get into it until about halfway through, when the mile-a-minute chapters kick in. As for Bill Clinton.......you amateur psychologists  might well enjoy more insight into his character from his fictioneering rather than his memoirs.

                        Our dream Patterson book........his world famous Alex Cross accepts the Democratic Presidential nomination........and not only handily defeats Trump but uncovers all the President's crimes. That'd rate an automatic 5 stars from us...

                     But for now.....2 & 1/2 stars for "The President Is Missing" (**)...a strange blend of wishful politics colliding with best-seller novelizing. You decide which parts you like the best.

                   

"MARATHON MAN"..........THE TOOTH IS OUT THERE.........

Marathon Man (1976)   With Halloween almost upon us, we couldn't think of a more perfect movie to post on......

              Cause technically, it's really a horror film masquerading as some kind of international suspense thriller.......

              And Laurence Olivier's Nazi war criminal dentist Szell became a towering, iconic nightmare creation.......with his ghastly mantra of "Is it safe", spoken just before he jams a drill into Dustin Hoffman's teeth.......(we'd love to see Trick of Treaters dress up as Szell for Halloween, with shiny bald heads book-ended by tufts of white hair....yelling "Is is safe" when they hold their bags out for candy.....)

               William Goldman, the novelist-screenwriter who never let you forget how clever and self-aware he was as he tweaked and warped typical thriller cliches, adapted his own heart-thumping thriller.......

                Very much like Hitchcock, Goldman loved to concoct brilliant, lunatic sequences and then somehow wrap them around a story that would make sense of them.......barely.

                 So 'Marathon Man' is not so much a rational thriller.......it functions more as an aggressive funhouse ride through a series of escalating grisly and horrific scenes........ever so slightly connected to each other by the skeletal plot.

                 Once again, we're plunged into 1970's New-York-City-As-Hell-On-Earth......kicking off with one of the first film depictions of road rage.......a comedic, and ultimately doomed automotive face-off between an elderly Jew and German, both driving junky cars on their last legs.  It's like a min-version of World War II re-fought on the dangerously congested Manhattan streets.

                 Eventually, movie gets around to explaining what this scene has to do Dustin Hoffman's character, a history doctoral candidate who's already emotionally tortured by the McCarthy-era suicide of his wrongly victimized father.......even before he ends up physically tortured by Olivier.

                  Which brings us to Europe and the lethal bloody world  of Hoffman's super-spy brother, played by Roy Scheider.  As part of a deeply unknown U.S. intelligence group called 'The Division', Scheider finds himself fending off assassins who've started bumping off his fellow agents.

                 All of these seemingly disparate plot elements lead back to Olivier's ultra creepy Nazi.....who's forced to leave his secret South American jungle lair and commence cutting a bloody swath through New York City........(and none of this chaos sits too well with an oily 'Division' operative (William Devane) whose loyalties shift faster than the wind direction).

                  William Goldman's script makes a few brief attempts at connecting this stuff together, but it really doesn't matter...........it's all about the jolts, surprises, sudden gory deaths.......and the legendary scenes of Olivier chatting calmly with a tied down Hoffman before laying waste to Hoffman's mouth......deploying those sharp edged dental instruments you never want to think about while getting your own teeth cleaned.

                  It's a non-stop horrorshow, sure enough,  capped off with not one but two bravura sequences......Olivier touring New York's jewelry district. silently revolted and enraged at the sight of all the Jewish diamond merchants and their customers, some of whom recognize him as their concentration camp tormenter.......and of course, the long expected final showdown between Olivier and Hoffman.

                    Yes,we've heard all about the clashes between the two acting icons......the precision stagecraft of Olivier up against Hoffman's extreme method intensity.........whatever the differences in their techniques, together they made some indelible, unforgettable movie magic....

                    For Halloween horror, some might get their goosebumps from Freddy Krueger, 'Friday The 13th's Jason, or Michael Meyers.........we at the BQ hereby nominate Laurence Olivier's Dr. Szell to join that distinguished group. Make an an appointment for a check up soon........we guarantee you that he'll drill his way into your heart, along with a live nerve in one of your molars.  4 painful stars (****).......and no, it's NOT safe.....trick 'r treat.

               

             

"THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS".......THE FALL OF THE ROMAN VAMPIRE......

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)    According to this film's tortured history, director Roman Polanski's original cut of his loving comedic tribute to Hammer Films ran 148 minutes.......

            Sorry.....but the thought of this movie running 2 & 1/2 hours is more simultaneously funny and scary than anything in the film itself.......

            As fate would have it, the film fell into the hands of Hollywood producer Martin Ransohoff, a professional reptile with a long history of meddling in the editing room......

            Ransohoff slashed the film down to 90 minutes,re-dubbed the actors,  threw in a dopey animated exposition and added a subtitle to the title.....'Pardon me but your teeth are in my neck...'

             Oh my, what a witty card that Ransohoff was.........but really, no amount of tinkering, good or bad, could make this movie anything other than a weird, junky whats-it.......

              And having recently sat through a Polanski-approved 107 minute cut of the film.....our view of it hasn't changed much......

              It's still a huge, weird piece of crap.......sometimes watchable, sometimes unbearable......and never as funny and clever as it thinks it is.

              To quickly break it down:    The cool stuff:  the whole Hammer homage in the visuals and production design. Polanski helped himself to chunks of "The Brides Of Dracula" and "Kiss Of the Vampire" for his primary inspirations......and for any Hammer fans, that part's fun.

                Christopher Komeda's score.......what an incredible gift to this movie, with its eerie and witty choral work. Unlike the film's own clumsy attempts to meld laughs and scares, Komeda's music finds the perfect balance.........it's about 100 times better than the film it serves.....

                Jack MacGowran.......that beloved Irish acting treasure.  Outfitted as a doddering old coot, his physical performance is wondrous to behold,  recalling the great silent film comedians.  And close behind him in scene-stealing hambone shtick.....Alfie Bass as the Jewish innkeeper turned vampire who discovers the the undead bloodsuckers still remain anti-Semitic bigots.......(making him move his coffin into the castle barn)

                Another MVP.......Ferdy Mayne, resplendent as Count Von whatever, rolling his tongue through his fangs and also providing his rich deep voice for the film's opening and closing narration.......(as if any of this nonsense needed additional explanation.....)

                And then there's the real sadness of seeing the soon to be horribly slaughtered Sharon Tate, doing a perfect tongue-in-cheek replica of a typical heaving-bosomed Hammer starlet.

                The vampire costume ball........probably the major reason for the movie's entire existence.........watch Jack MacGorwran earn his laughs as he nimbly negotiates his way through the demented choreographed legions of over-costumed vampires.

                 The rest of it?  Nothing but a very lame stab at duplicating the humor of the Abbott and Costello films where the boys meet the Universal Studios resident monsters. (Frankenstein, Mummy, Dracula, Invisible Man, etc, etc). It's possible that the film could have been funnier if Polanski had cast, instead of himself, a real comedian in the role of MacGowran's frightened, flunky servant, but who knows..........(Benny Hill could have had a ball with this.....)

                  The humor, what there is of it, consists mostly of tripping and falling gags........with only one real inventive visual bit - Polanski running in a complete circle and running right back into the clutches of the blonde gay vampire who's taken a fancy to him.......(sometimes the stupidest, simplest slapstick works the best....)

                  "The Fearless Vampire Killers" might look like perfect October viewing........but compared to the pantheon of classic horror movies available for these pre-Halloween nights......BQ says you could easily skip it and move on to something better.  2 stars (**).....primarily for Jack MacGowran and that horde of twinkle-toed vampires.......

       

           

THE USUAL WEEKEND MADNESS SUSPECT......SPECIAL "I'M PRESIDENT AND YOU'RE NOT" EDITION

Baby Orange will capitalize "country" when referring to the USA.......and we here at BQ promise, when referring to Baby Orange, to capitalize Psychotic, Racist, Bully, Misogynist and Ass Kissing Dictator-Lover

Baby Orange lavishes praise on GOP minion who body-slammed a reporter.......Imagine if this guy had used a bonesaw to carve up the reporter.......Baby Orange might have awarded him the Medal Of Freedom........

"Maybe it was rogue killers......who knows....."   This was one of multiple theories that Baby Orange at first pondered to explain Khashoggi's murder.........others included Peter Pan whisking away Khashoggi to Never Never Land, and Khashoggi accidentally steeping through a consulate mirror and fallling into Wonderland.

 Baby Orange believes the Saudi story that Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate and promptly died in a fistfight........also, he absorbed a hard enough punch to break his torso and limbs into separate pieces......in a stunning coincidence, the Saudis also considered using  the Peter Pan/Neverland explanation......

GOP purges thousands of voters in a desperate effort to stay in power......No wonder they join Baby Orange in his great love affair with Putin and Kim Jun Un........those guys know how to win elections......and when Putin and Kim purge voters, they stay purged.....permanently.....

Baby Orange snaps at '60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl...."I'm President and you're not".......and there's everything you need to know about the state of the planet earth today........the most powerful nation on earth in the hands of a monumentally stupid, 6th grade schoolyard Bully......(we did promise we'd capitalize that last word......)

"THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE".......SHIRLEY, YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS.......

The Haunting Of Hill House (2018)    It's maddening to get a handle on this mini-series, freely adapted from the classic Shirley Jackson novel.......(considered one the greatest haunted house books, and the basis of the equally classic 1963 film version "The Haunting")

               We admired the hell out of it.......and would have easily given this 5 stars.......if it were only about 7 hours shorter.......

                Some brilliant acting on display.........and some meaty dialogue and characters for the actors to turn into many bravura moments.......

                Technically stunning.........some truly breathtaking displays of editing, scenic design and camerawork.........

                 Scary?  Oh boy, is it ever. One nightmarish sequence after another and enough jump-scares to make you spill twenty or more bags of microwave popcorn.......

                 Anything we didn't like about it?

                 Yes.  Clocking in at 10 episodes of 60 to 70 minutes each......it's just too goddamn long. 

                 This could have made a superb 3 hour film, but at 10 punishing hours, it starts to wear you out with non-stop horror, tragedy and overall family dysfunction.  (After a while, you start resenting the jump-scares, like sitting next to someone who's perpetually poking you in the ear with their finger)

                  These days, we realize it's all about the binge when it comes to TV viewings.........but it doesn't make for better TV.........even when a mini-series maintains a high level of excellence like this one, the sheer bloat of the thing threatens to undo its artistic merit.

                  We're starting to fear that streaming turns us all into Mr. Creosote from the Monty Python film........one more episode in the binge and we'll explode.....

                   But let's return to the good stuff. Creator-director Mike Flanagan executes a bold, hugely ambitious re-imagining of Shirley Jackson's story.  He transforms Jackson's collection of ghost hunters, who functioned as a kind of metaphorical damaged family into an actual family.

                   The series than sprawls into intricately edited time shifting.........from the young family's past trauma as the Hill House ghosts torment them to their current days.......where the the now adult children of the family, even safely away from the house,  still can't escape the horror -  the house's vile apparitions continue to haunt them.

                    Throughout this long, tortuous, familial journey, Flanagan cleverly cherry-picks his way through all the well-known sequences and dialogue from the Jackson novel........(including everyone's favorite, the housekeeper Mrs. Dudley intoning how she won't stay in the house after sunset.....in the night.....in the dark....)  Anyone familiar with the book or the '63 film will have enormous fun spotting them.

                    Our only quibble here (and we've pointed this out when posting about other horror films).......we understand that jack-in-the-box scares are a major part of a horror filmmaker's arsenal.
But when you start to spread too many of them across 10 hours of material........it becomes lazy, repetitive......and tiresome.

                    A fine scary feast, this one......a gourmet banquet of goosebumps. Way overdone and way, way, way too long......but well crafted in every minute. No horror fan dare miss it. 4 hair-raising stars (****).....make sure you watch it......in the night......in the dark.

"THE NIGHT OF THE GENERALS".........HEIL AND HIGH WATER........

The Night Of The Generals (1967)   Deep, deep inside this lumbering behemoth, assembled by cigar-chompin' mega-producer Sam Spiegel ("Lawrence Of Arabia")  you can find one brutally ironic idea.........struggling mightily to escape into the daylight from the big budget swamp surrounding it....

                How do you rationally quantify a murder in the midst of a world war?   What's one single homicide compared to the daily slaughter of thousands of combatants and innocents?

               So as warfare rages, does murder become an antiquated concept?  The rule of law and what constitutes civilized behavior,  at the end of the day, are strictly in eye of whoever's winning.

                Fascinating concept........worthy of movie that would focus on it with single-minded intensity.

                That's not this movie.......

                Sadly, the sheer brilliance of the central storyline bobs along in the ambitious sprawl of an all-star epic that sweats and strains to become too many genres all at the same time -  war movie, war drama, star-crossed love story and.....oh yes,  murder mystery.

                  A German Major (Omar Sharif), doggedly investigates the murder of Polish prostitute in World War II-ravaged Warsaw. His trio of suspects......all German Generals. (Peter 'O Toole, Donald Pleasance, Charles Gray).

                   The movie quickly tosses out its murder-mystery aspirations once you get a good look at O'Toole, who performs his wrapped-too-tight madman as if waiting to be fitted for straight-jacket.

                   Numerous tedious subplots start to clutter up the proceedings, none of which we're going to waste time detailing here.

                    Clearly, Sharif's relentless pursuit of 'O Toole is what this movie should have been all about.........but at 2 and a half hours, it floats around in all directions, even taking time out for the botched 'Valkyrie' plot to blow up Hitler.

                    By the time it crawls to its conclusion, 20 years later in 1965, you wonder if the whole 'serial-killer-in-the-middle-of-mass-killing' idea ever really engaged the people who made the movie.......(except for 'O Toole, fully committed to playing his Nazi Jack The Ripper to the hilt....)

                  BQ fires off 2 missed-opportunity stars (**) for a typically huge Big Important Movie of the 1960's  that lost sight of its one single Big Important plot.

A BRIEF BIT OF MIDWEEK MADNESS.........

           Sorry we can't do a full fledged post today.......entire day of family stuff to tend do......

            But couldn't help LOL-ing (isn't that what you worldwide inter-web kids call it?).....as Baby Orange refers to his porn-star fling Stormy Daniels as "Horseface".......

             Uh....."Horseface"?

             This coming from a guy who slathers his own bulbous face with some kind of nauseating orange goop.......as if he fell face down into an uneaten, year old tub of butter popcorn and wallowed in the congealed, crusted yellow-y junk that came out of the concession stand spigot......and semi-solidified.

              People who live in orange faces shouldn't throw stones.......

              (They also shouldn't cheat on their mail-order wives with porn stars, but if all this is perfectly okay with the Holy Roller Evangelical Trumpanzees......who are we to judge?).

"THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN"......DO YOU WANNA HUNT A SNOWMAN?

The Abominable Snowman (1957)   There's no better way to spend a chilly autumn night than cuddling up with a vintage Hammer chiller.......

              And we especially warm to this one because it defies expectations.........which is what you'd expect from a script by the always brilliant Nigel Kneale, who based the film on his BBC TV play "The Creature"........

               No roaring, snarling, stomping monsters here......Kneale has much bigger and better concepts on his mind.  His snowmen are far from abominable.........they're a worldly wise, sad lonely species, choosing to live out their solitary existence in the icy drifts of the Himalayas.........in the hopes of one day reclaiming the earth from rampaging, violent mankind........

                It takes a while for a bunch of typically foolish humans to realize who and what they're dealing with when they dare go climbing up the frozen peaks to bag a Yeti like a prize trophy. These include a civilized, gentle-hearted scientist (Peter Cushing) and an obnoxious Big Game  Hunting crew led by Forrest Tucker, superb as the loud, pushy quintessential Ugly American.

                 As expected, this clueless group get way more than they bargained for in their close encounters with the AB's.......discovering too late that these surprisingly intelligent creatures may possess mental powers beyond the comprehension of their would-be hunters.

                  Director Val Guest is smart enough to keep the Snowmen mostly hidden from view throughout the film, saving the reveal for the last few minutes........

                   And when we see one at last step out of the shadows, it's a moment that's amazing, peaceful and melancholy all at once. Because he appears more human and empathetic than the people who've stalked him......and far more knowing.  (It's possible Kneale flirted with the idea of the Snowmen as nearly divine entities......but we'll leave that for you to discuss that among yourselves....)

                   Peter Cushing and Forrest Tucker make a great unlikely pairing of oddball adventurers.....and visually, the film's a crazy black-and-white widescreen mixture of stunning outdoor scenery combined with obvious backlot sets on Hammer's Bray Studio home base.  But the story's so compelling, we easily overlooked the film's low budget restrictions.

                   Top notch, top-of-the-line Hammer chills and thrills........4 snowy stars (****) and more than worth chillin' out with......