'LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH'.......ZOHRA, ZORHA..... HALLELUJAH.....

 Let's Scare Jessica To Death (1971)     Anybody who remembers seeing this movie back in the day usually uses "creepy' as the primary adjective to describe it.......

                 Okay, we'll go with that. 

                  Despite the movie's wonderfully lurid title, it's a dedicated attempt to apply genuine artistry to a horror film.......(director John Hancock, aiming high, used "The Haunting" and "The Innocents" as his inspirations.)

                   So gorehounds take note:  this one's not for you.

                  For the rest of you horror fans who don't necessarily need to see gallons of blood and spilled internal organs, there's a lot worth taking in here.

                   Primarily, (and sadly) it's the only feature film that offered a leading role to Zorha Lampert, a gifted stage actress with a drowsy, purring voice and a slight  dreamy smile she could employ to convey multiple emotions.

                     Hardcore classic movie buffs would most likely remember her as the farm girl Warren Beatty ends up married to in the final scenes of "Splendor In The Grass". She spent the bulk of her long career in random TV series episodes and small roles in feature films.....a waste of a great talent capable of much better things. 

                      With her innate gentle charm and vulnerability, she holds this strange little scary story together and makes it her very own. 

                      Zohra's the titular Jessica, who with her husband (Barton Heyman) and best friend (Kevin 'O Connor) have moved to a remote Connecticut island to live the life of free-thinking hippie farmers...(hey, it's the early 70's,  so they're artistic, semi-rebels......flower power, baby)

                      Squatting in the ramshackle old house they've moved into is a mysterious, ethereal hippie chick (Marciclare Costello) who quickly becomes part of their unofficial 'family'......

                       But there's horror stuff afoot!  Jessica's recovering from a mental breakdown and the hippie chick's revealed as the island's combination ghost-vampire........who's already put the bite on the surly crowd who hangs out at the island's general store.

                       Compared to today's crop of in-your-face, aggressively violent horror films, you'll either find what follows too mellow and mild or you'll be completely sucked in by the dread-filled atmosphere and Lampert's ability to ramp up her escalating terror.

                     If it's the latter, the film will do its job of unnerving and frightening you.......(we watched it with Beloved Daughter, who then went to sleep that night with all the lights on the TV blaring)

                   And it's definitely worth a viewing to see a one-of-a-kind actress who made the most of the one and only starring role she was able to secure. 

                     For anyone in your household who'd like to enjoy a creepy Halloween movie night without severed limbs and multiple jump scares, by all means sit 'em down to enjoy Jessica getting scared to death.......

                      You can even finish the night arguing about what the ending means. And that's something we've rarely encountered in modern horror movies. 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2_

THURSDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP........MAYBE THE END IS NEAR......

            The glimmer of hope still shines bright........that on November 3, the madness, chaos and vile cruelty will at last come to an end after nearly four years.......

              Baby Orange Does The Full Mussolini....... standing mask-less......in front of nobody.  Except Mussolini was careful never to gasp for breath while preening on a balcony...

              Baby Orange won't agree to a virtual debate.........and be forced into not infecting dozens of innocent people.......

               Baby Orange claims he's a "perfect physical specimen".......as proof, he displayed this photo taken during his stay at Walter Reed Hospital......

                Baby Orange tells the country 'don't fear Covid, don't let it dominate your lives'.......in other words don't be suckers and losers like those 211,000 dead people and 1,000 more a week joining them.......

              Baby Orange claims, "maybe I'm immune".......in fact, he is immune.......to empathy, intelligence, humanity......and sanity. None of those conditions have touched him yet.

               A fly parks on Mike Pence's head during the VP debate.......squealed the fly, after listening to Pence for an hour....."Help meeeeeeee...........Help meeeeeeeeeee

'CUTTER'S WAY'.....THE" POWERS THAT BE" GET AWAY WITH IT.......OR DO THEY?

 Cutter's Way (1981) ........belongs to that unique, specialized genre of films that we always loved from the get-go, but took awhile for the rest of the world to catch up......

                  We speak of films that went right to the very dark heart of an America ripped asunder by the stench, deep corruption, worsening division and horrific human toll exacted by the Vietnam war. 

                   These films began to hit the mainstream in 1970........campus revolt dramas like "Getting Straight" and "The Strawberry Statement"......and numerous other dramas that displayed the Land Of The Free and Home Of The Brave now under sinister control of the rich, the powerful, and the well connected.

                   Justice, fair play, morality, decency, the triumph of good over evil........all that stuff went out the window.  Malignant, unknowable forces now pulled the country's strings like puppeteers........and they considered the rest of us nothing but  pawns in their vast global chess game designed to keep them fat 'n happy.....and forever in charge. 

                   To make these films palatable to movie audiences and not come off like raging political screeds,  the films often disguised themselves as dramatic thrillers (such as 'WUSA', 'The Parallax View', 'Who'll Stop The Rain'). 

                    But the message always came through loud and clear........the 'Powers That Be' were out to screw you six ways to Sunday, and you'd end up dead if you dared to defy or fight them. 

                    "Cutter's Way", a brilliant, prime example of this genre begins by setting up an unlikely trio of friends eking out a living in wealthy Santa Barbara, California.......Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) is a go-with-the-flow marina caretaker and mediocre gigalo to bored matrons.  He hangs out with Cutter (an Academy Award worthy John Heard), a deeply embittered, corrosively angry Vietnam vet who's lost an arm, a leg and an eye in combat. 

                      Completing this damaged triumvirate is Cutter's demoralized depressed alcoholic wife  Mo (Lisa Eichhorn), often on the receiving end of her husband's rage and abuse. 

                      Bone witnesses the body of a raped and murdered high school girl tossed in a trash can......and thinks the dumper was none other than the town's  all-powerful oil magnate J.J. Cord (Stephen Elliot).

                      This news energizes the ever manic Cutter, who sees McCord as an example of the kind of entitled, evil manipulators who sent him to Vietnam. He seizes the chance to strike back, enlisting Bone and the murdered girl's sister (Ann Dusenberry) in a  'I-Know-What-You-Did' scheme to blackmail McCord with threats of turning him over to the police. 

                     But McCord is no one to trifle with.......and carries with him a long history of crushing and destroying those who cross his path. 

                      We'll not go any farther with the plot description, other than to say you need to see yourself how it all plays out.......and to savor and wonder at Heard's spectacular performance. 

                      And the film's final moment, depending on how the it strikes you, will either leave you infuriated, elated and plain mystified. 

                      That's the mark of a great movie in our humble opinion, so BQ's handing out a rating we haven't awarded since we don't know when......our highest honor, a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDs.

                       No cinema lover should miss this one. 

                       

                    

'THE LINDA VISTA PROJECT'......WILDLY OVERPRICED AT $2.95.....

The Linda Vista Project (2015)    You may well ask (as we've asked ourselves)......why, out of thousands upon thousands of obscure, dirt-cheap horror DVDs, why would we pick this one to blog about?

              Good question. Answer:   We didn't pick it. 

              It was picked for us. By, of all people, our beloved wife, Mrs. BQ, who found it in a Dollar General store bin amidst dozens of similar cheapo horrors.   For the incredibly exorbitant sum of $2.95.

               And bought strictly as a joke gift. Why that one?  

               The cover, as you can see, features a forbidding, ghostly Ratched-type nurse ominously pointing.......as she's announcing to some poor soul that it's time for their rectal thermometer or an industrial sized enema. 

                So how could we not watch such a thoughtful gift?  It would be like begging off wearing that new Christmas sweater with reindeers whose antlers light up.

                 Watching that sweater light up for 90 minutes still would provide more entertainment than the same amount of time we spent watching "The Linda Vista Project".

                  It's ghost hunting time, kiddies, with a young trio of paranormal investigators ( two babes and a spare boyfriend) wandering through a long abandoned legendarily haunted hospital. 

                  They're joined by a skeptical douchebag representing the company that plans to refurbish the hospital into condos or whatever. 

                   NON SPOILER ALERT:    Bad stuff happens. 

                   (That's for those of you who've been in a coma since "The Blair Witch Project", "Paranormal Activity" and their 300,000 imitations were set loose upon the world)

                     To our surprise, the filmmakers here splurged on some CGI........so there's a guy in a rubber monster suit with all sorts of digital fuzz piled on him to make him look extra creepy.

                    What they didn't splurge on, no surprise, are professional actors. 

                   So the ghostbusters and Mr. Douchebag are played by a quartet community theater rejects who dutifully recite their lines like they've been practicing for at least 5 to 10 minutes.

                   Painful, to say the least. But there are a few odd moments of fleeting fun watching the Rubber Monster Suit Guy zip around the hospital in a swirl of CGI smoke.....it's a shame they didn't give him a few lines like, "I'll get you.......and I'll get your little dog, too.')

                    We might have even given this movie up to half a star (well, make that one quarter of a star) for the Rubber Monster Suit Guy.

                     But sorry, they blew their chance with the phony advertising on the DVD box.

                     Not once does the ghostly Nurse Ratched on the box cover show up to give anyone an enema.  BQ will NOT tolerate such an unforgivable scam. 

                       For that blatant offense, "The Linda Vista Project" earns Zero stars (0)

                      Hasta La Linda Vista, baby.  If you must spend $2.95 at the Dollar General store, make it jumbo-sized Kit Kat. And break us off a piece while you're at it...........

                    

'THE DECKS RAN RED'......JAMES MASON GOES CRUISIN' FOR A BRUISIN'........

 The Decks Ran Red (1958)........but lucky for us, director Andrew L.Stone, shot it in black and white,...

          The only red you'll see?  The crimson blazing of the word 'red' in the main title.....

           If Stone, a dedicated practitioner of no-fakery filmmaking, had shot it color, it might have ended up looking like Herschel Gordon Lewis's "Blood Feast"......

             For the total BQ lowdown on Andrew Stone, check out our posts on his previous trim little thrillers,  1956's "Julie"  (4/4/17) and 1958's "Cry Terror!" (8/17/19).

             Aided by his film editor wife Virginia, once again Stone hurls you into a boiling hot melodrama, filmed on actual locations.......(you will never, ever see a rear projection background in a Stone film.)

             The film deploys James Mason, who last matched wits with raging psycho Rod Steiger in "Cry Terror". This time the always smoothly urbane Mason is First Officer on a cruise ship. Looking to move upward, he unwisely accepts a captaincy position on a cargo ship anchored in New Zealand.

              This grungy tub, the S.S. Berwind is a hotbed of hate, populated by angry, disgruntled crew members.....

               Even worse, two of them (Broderick Crawford, Stuart Whitman) plan to slaughter all the crew members, claim the crew abandoned ship in a mutiny and then return the boat by themselves in order to pocket a huge salvage payoff for their efforts.

               What else can we say?

               The decks run red......(on in this movie's photography, dark chocolate).

                Nothing much else to say here other than to mention that along for the ride is that charismatic, star-crossed starlet Dorothy Dandridge, playing the va-va-voom wife of the ship's cook.  We could only watch with sadness knowing that outside of her starring roles in African American epics like 'Carmen Jones' and 'Porgy And Bess' , Hollywood would relegate this powerhouse actress to mere window-dressing roles. 

                  The rest of the movie is on a par with the other 'live-as-it-happens' Andrew Stone melodramas as the desperate Mason and his surviving crew play cat-and-mouse with the predatory Crawford and Whitman. 

                  You won't be bored, that's for sure. So climb aboard by all means.......this voyage features at least as much danger, angst, misery and death as a typical Carnivale Cruise vacation. 3 stars (***)

'IF IT BLEEDS'.......THEN IT MUST BE STEPHEN KING.....

 If It Bleeds by Stephen King (2020)   What better way to kick off the Month Of Scary Stuff than with a fresh collection 3 new King short stories and a novella.......

                  If you're King fan (yes, we are), then there's plenty here to love......although we're sorry to report that none of these stories will give you nightmares or force you to run around the house switching all the lights on.....

                  Still, we guarantee you a good, creepy time, and a few of the stories find the author in a contemplative mood about the state of the world and we flawed humans who inhabit it.  (And yes, he does indulge in a few sideways swipes at Donald Trump....perfectly okay with us. )

                   We won't spill the plots, (you know we hate that), so here's a quick skim to give you a taste of what's inside the pages.....

                    "Mr. Harrigan's Phone"   A ghost story wrapped up in one of King's patented, heartwrenching childhood reminiscences......complete with the usual vile King-sian high school bully whom you can't wait to see what the story has in store for him.....

                     "The Life Of Chuck"   Enormously clever in its elaborate construction, but honestly, not one of our faves. It becomes sort of a chore to see where it's going (an intricate combo of "It's a Wonderful Life" and the End Of The World As We Know It)  But many of its scenes may tug at your heartstrings.

                       "If It Bleeds"  The premier piece of the book, a novella featuring Holly Gibney, the sweet, ever vulnerable character from King's "Bill Hodges" trilogy and "The Outsider". But deep down,  the lovable Holly has a core of steel and she's going to need it as she faces off with one the author's typically ghastly, superhuman creatures.

                       "Rat"  Once again, King takes up the plight of struggling writers everywhere, those who scribble on legal pads, pound an old typewriter or dance their fingers across their laptops.  This tale takes a while to set up its premise, which becomes a good old fashioned 'Be Careful What You Wish For' fable......(and we especially dug the writer character's novel-in-progress, which reads like the ultimate combination John Ford/Howard Hawks western movie)

                        Nothing earthshaking here, but  if you want to fill your October with some fun, chilling reads,,,,look no farther than "If It Bleeds"   4 stars (****) 

                        

'CONSENTING ADULTS'......TAKE MY WIFE.......PLEASE!

 Consenting Adults (1992)   We've been having all sorts of fun, plowing through thrillers of of the 80's and 90's, but this one perplexed us more than the others......

                   Given this movie's top-of-the-line cast and director, how in the holy hell did they come together to make this movie??

                     Which of them, if any, thought this script was worthy enough of their time and talents to commit to eternal celluloid.......and be a part of their filmographies forever?

                      That's a far bigger mystery than anything presented in the film itself.

                      Thrillers have to function of three levels.  First, they have to set up a plot or a premise that compels you watch.

                        Second, this plot needs to be executed with the utmost skill and cleverness. Translation: the writer, actors and director have to make you believe in the twists and turns of the story, no matter how potentially far-fetched and absurd.

                      Third, the thriller has to live up to its genre and give you some actual thrills, provide the edge-of-your-seat jolts you'd come to expect when you decided to kill time to view it. 

                      In that regard,  "Consenting Adults" remains consistent throughout its running time. It fails on all three levels. 

                        The film unfolds in Hollywood's idea of suburbia , with huge expensive single homes jammed close enough to each other so everybody can watch their sexy neighbors undressing.

                       Our normal, innocent couple (Kevin Kline, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) are befriended by a wild 'n crazy fun-lover (Kevin Spacey) and his sultry, mysterious wife (Rebecca Miller)

                       Before long, the ever gabby Spacey has oozed his way enough into his neighbors' lives to convince Kline to indulge in wife swapping.......while their wives are asleep no less. 

                      This, as you might imagine, does not bode well for Kline. 

]                   Huge Problem #1:  Spacey, outfitted with a silver-blonde hairdo, behaves like he's got a huge sign around his neck, "BEWARE, I'M A PSYCHOPATH". So you can't even buy the initial premise of him worming his way into these people's lives. 

                     Huge Problem #2:   You next have to believe Kline would succumb to the whole wife swapping idea and easily sneak up on Rebecca Hall and take her, unknowingly......uh....from behind.

                     Huge Problem # 3:   Pretty much the rest of the movie, which then lurches from one unbelievable plot turn to another.

                      And most astounding, how this mess was directed by Alan Pakula, who'd fashioned some our all time favorite films like "Klute", "The Parallax View" and "All The President's Men".  

                      One single bright spot does glimmer at the very end, which is why we'll dredge up at least 1 star (*)........(earned for this wrap-up and the gifted, wasted cast)

                       The film's final shot is a superbly realized visual joke, which no doubt elicited a roar of laughter from any audience members who stayed with it to the very end.

                      It's the only real fun thrill this movie ever manages to deliver.  So beware.