THE CHANGELING'........THINGS THAT GO BOUNCE IN THE NIGHT......

The Changeling (1980)   For a moment, we contemplated yet another "Weekday Madness" post.....since yesterday brought the usual horrendous torrent of Baby Orange outrages and general current events lunacy......

               Nah.  We'll save it.......besides, it's closing in on HALLOWEEN!!!!

               So for now, let's leave real horror.....for fun horror. (the kind that's over after 2 hours...)

               This isn't the most stylish ghost story you'll ever see......for that, you've got "The Haunting" and "The Uninvited".......

                 But oh boy does it ever get the job done.  If this one doesn't freeze your blood, raise your goosebumps and bring on the bad dreams......then buy one of those spiffy watches that checks to see if you've still got heartbeat.......

                A composer and music professor (George C. Scott), still broken from  the horrific accidental deaths of his wife and child, takes up residence in an old historic mansion.

                 He's got company.........the tortured spirit of a murdered child, who regularly torments Scott with pounding on the pipes and other assorted poltergeist-ian mischief......

                  The dead little boy seems to press Scott into uncovering the mysteries behind the vile murder.......which involve a truly heinous conspiracy that stretches across decades......and points directly to...(oh no.....you're not going to hear a damn thing about that from us......big-time spoiler)

                  The ghostly encounters here are everything you'd want.......the stuff of nightmares. At one point, Scott and the ghost  play 'catch' with his late daughter's  favorite toy, a rubber ball      leading to the film's most tragic and scary image, the sight of the ball bouncing down the stairs.....tossed by the unseen presence.

                    We'll say no more, other than to mention that in addition to the superb Scott, he's backed up by a top-notch supporting cast (Melvyn Douglas, Jean Marsh, John Colicos, Barry Morse, Madeline Sherwood, Eric Christmas).

                   Positively required Halloween season viewing........pick a cold, cold, dark, dark night, turn off the lights......settle in and prepare for a fright night extraordinaire......4 stars (****)

                    Boo!

WEEKDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "I WILL CALL YOU LATER" EDITION......

               Exclusive! Baby Orange sent Beached Quill a letter...….

                We re-print it here in its entirety...…..

                 Dear BQ:

                             Let's make a good deal!  You don't want to be responsible for continually trashing me on your blog and I don't want to have to assign you one of my imbecilic, 2nd Grade nicknames ("Potty-Mouth Scotty")

                             History will look upon you favorably if you submit to a lobotomy so you can attend my rallies. It will look upon you forever as the devil (you know, like that little girl who spits green puke and sounds like me appearing on "Access Hollywood") if you keep posting unkind things about me. Sometimes you behave nastier than.....than....nastier than....a woman.

                              Don't be a tough guy! Don't be a fool!  I will call you later if you'll please unblock my calls.

                               Love always...(and I usually only use this closing for Kim Jung Un)….
                                           Donald J. Trump

(BQ note:  We did the same thing with this letter that Turkey's president Erdogan did with his.....threw it out, but only after using to scoop up litterbox clumps....)

In other breaking news...….

                       Baby Orange announces new reality show TV Pilot...….titled "No Hard Feelings", it features Baby Orange introducing grieving parents to the person who ran over their children, turning them into roadkill......says, B.O.: "Nothing pumps up ratings like a heartless ambush!"

                         Baby Orange tells Democrats that Communists in Syria will make them happy.... and waves a piece of paper while screaming, "I have in my hands the names of 75 Syrian Communists!"

                       Baby Orange says the Kurds live in sand.....a lot of sand......but not nearly as much sand as the amount in Baby Orange's head...…

                      Baby Orange calls Nancy Pelosi a '3rd Grade' politician...….cheer up, Nancy. 3rd Grade?  That still puts you 3 grades higher than Baby Orange.....who has yet to graduate Day Care.

'DRACULA' (1979).........LET'S BE FRANK ABOUT THIS BLOODSUCKER.....

Dracula (1979)   We bet everyone forgot about this one.......the first major studio Dracula movie to feature......oh my God, a ROMANTIC HOT DRACULA!!

                   But hold on......not exactly a new idea.......

                   The Hammer horror factory, at the height of its powers, introduced a dreamy Drac in their 1960 "Brides Of Dracula".....a coiffed blonde heartthrob who, once he sprouts fangs, puts the bite on his own aging mom.......(cue the audience muttering, "eeewwwwwwwwww")

                    And in the 70's lonely housewives and teen girls pined for Jonathon Frid's "Barnabas", the resident tortured-soul vampire on TV's "Dark Shadows"........(even though Frid looked more like an anemic mortician than anyone's idea of a dreamboat....)

                    But you'll spot no dripping incisors on Frank Langella's revamping, so to speak) of the classic Count..........he's all dash 'n flash, a Byronic anit-hero.......he's like 'Wuthering Heights' Heathcliff with a yen for your hemoglobin.........

                      This swoon-worthy Drac gets a full top-of-the-budget treatment.......every swirl and swoop of Langella's cape is accompanied by John Williams lush score....music to bite your neck by.

                     And Drac's ancestral castle is a beautifully rendered glass matte by the acknowledged master of that special effects art form, Albert Whitlock......

                      The other primary reason you want to put this one on your Halloween 'to watch' list....none other than Laurence Olivier shows up as Drac's arch-enemy Van Helsing.......(the script ups the ante by having Van Helsing's daughter suffer the Count's hickey from hell and turned into a red-eyed fanged ghoul herself....)

                       Loads of style here, including swirling fog, an appropriate de-saturated color scheme , and of course, the creepy Drac minion Renfield gobbling cockroaches at every opportunity.....

                        4 bloody stars (****).....BQ recommends you sink your teeth into it before the 31st rolls around.......It's literally batshit crazy fun.......

                     .

'T. R. BASKIN'.......SEXIST AND THE CITY.......

T. R. Baskin (1971)     Funny how we came across this one the day after we weighed in on the titanic Scorsese Versus The Comic Book Movies debate.......

                 We strongly refuted Scorsese's 'not cinema' declaration, but fully agreed with him that comic book movies are nothing but filmed theme parks.......(along with our own opinion that there's too damn many of them.......superhero movies, that is....not theme parks.)

                 'T.R. Baskin', a perfect example of script-driven, actor driven 70's cinema is probably the kind of movie that Scorsese fears long gone from  mainstream studio filmmaking today......in favor of.......well, you know what....the spandex brigade.

                  True enough. No major studio today would go anywhere near 'T.R. Baskin'. You could call it a prehistoric version of an Independent film........a modest dramatic coming-of-adulthood tale, centering on one woman and her separate encounters with two men.

                    T.R. (Candice Bergen) arrives in Chicago, fresh off the bus from Ohio and bravely makes her way through the big city maelstrom to secure a job and an apartment.....

                     Armed with an ultra-dry wit, courtesy of Peter Hyamns' script, T.R. deftly navigates the corporate idiocy of her workplace (a big-biz satire-worthy outfit requiring hundreds of typists).......but her attempts at a social life are disastrous and sad......

                      The stories of the the two men in her life play out in reverse order......(the reason for this apparent only toward the end of the film......)

                        Inexplicably (to us, at first) T.R. agrees to hook up with with Jack, (Peter Boyle) a lonely, married travelling salesman looking for quick hotel nookie while he's on the road. Even more confounding, Jack got  T.R,'s number from children's book editor Larry (James Caan), who was T.R.'s previous sexual encounter......

                       T.R.s painfully awkward night with Jack turns out sexless but leads to poignant,  bittersweet conversation......and her reason for posing as the prostitute Jack mistakes her for is explained in the flashback in which her date with Caan comes to a wrenching end.......

                      You may well wonder why, in a city the size of Chicago, T.R.'s love life is so exclusively toxic.......(in one of the film's most telling moments, T.R. 's stuck in the company of a loathsome misogynist. who's oblivious to her sly digs at him. His denseness finally forces her to  give up subtlety and directly blurt out ..."you're a shmuck."

                      And that's pretty much the whole of 'T.R. Baskin'.......a plethora of witty comebacks which Candice Bergen wields like well-aimed darts.......the sad, but funny scene between Bergen and Boyle.......and some on target swipes at corporate crapola.....(along the lines of "The Apartment" and "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying"....)

                        3 stars (***) for the kind of modest little drama that defined 1970's movies.......and we don't mind telling you, BQ derived more cinema pleasure from this film's 90 minutes then the combined running times of the last three Avengers movies......

SCORSESE VERSUS THE SUPERHEROES.......WHO WINS? WHICH ONE'S CINEMA??

                    Having taken our shots at a fair amount of comic book movies, we figured it's time we tossed in our own 2 cents into this real life Clash Of The Titans.......

                     By that we mean, of course, Martin Scorsese firing off a nuclear powered blast at the onslaught of Marvel and DC movies..........

                     Says Marty:  They're not cinema.

                    Ouch. No....make that Infinity Stone-power Ouch........

                     Cue the onslaught of comic movie fans (and filmmakers) screeching "Blasphemy! Sacrilege!"

                     And Scorsese's already doubled down on this opinion. He means it.

                      So......where does BQ stand?  Okay, let's get real and talk common sense here.

                     The comic book movies, repetitive, noisy, overlong and wildly overrated by both their audiences and critics........yes, they're cinema.

                      They tell their mythic stories with the help of vast amounts of studio cash and all the up-to-the-minute technological advances available to them.........

                       And bear in mind, this is a 360 degree turnaround from the way Hollywood studios used to treat fantasy/sci-fi movies for decades.........as low-rent trash, worthy of laughable special effects and poverty row budgets.......

                      Bur they're undeniably cinema......... just as much as Martin Scorsese's gritty, violent explorations of gangsters, psychopaths and assorted tormented lowlifes who populate his stories.......

                     Yes, Marty, it's ALL cinema.

                    We feel his pain, though........the way the spandex crowd and their bloated movies have clogged up theaters and studio production schedules like giant, mutant globs of cholesterol........

                      Hollywood's lost all interest in telling stories about real people........not when they can pump 200 million into a movie  with actors in designer Halloween costumes tossing each other through the air like footballs..........and then rake in 3 billion from ticket buyers (mostly in China)

                    Yet, undeniably.......they're cinema. But not human cinema.  Nothing that ever truly reaches or moves an audience by illuminating the struggles and triumphs, comedic, dramatic and tragic, of we humans on planet Earth.....

                    The actors in these films can blah-blah-blah all day long about their characters' "journey", but at the end of the day, they remain cartoon toys......flesh and blood actions figures for millions of guys who still live in their parents' basement.

                    But like it or not, Marty, comic book movies are cinema.

                    Let's use the astounding diversity of some 1964 releases as an example......"Goldfinger" is cinema......."Dr. Strangelove" is cinema......."Becket" is cinema......"Mary Poppins" is cinema......"Night Of The Iguana" is cinema........"Zulu" is cinema.......

                     And that, in BQ's humble opinion, is the real issue today......look at the incredible line-up of those 1964 movies. Would you ever see anything close to that variety of films today?  Don't hold your breath.

                     You're expected to gobble your corporate Marvel CGI candy corn and like it......

                     Scorsese might have been better off if he'd ditched that dopey "not cinema" thing and instead spoke some plain, honest truth-to-power.....

                   ........ that critics, TV and media yakkers and fanboys should stop grovelling at the feet of every over-hyped comic book movie as if it was the Second Coming........and maybe start expecting something better out of a film than spiffy wisecracks and a computer digitized cast  bouncing off each other like they were ping pong balls inside a State Lottery drawing bin...........

                       Everything's cinema, Marty......the problem here today is lop-sided cinema........an all-you-can-eat buffet with nothing but overpriced, fatty desserts.

'THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN'........DEATH BY TROMBONE.....

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)    You might think we're kidding about the sub-title of this post.....

                   Nope.......

                   This movie's mad killer, rampaging through Texarkana Arkansas, ties a girl to a tree and stabs her to death by standing close enough to her while he blasts out a few notes on a trombone with a knife attached to the end of it......

                    Wow......talk about hitting C Sharp.....the poor girl, understandably, has little comment on the guy's musical technique, except to gasp and die.  Ah well.....everyone's a critic..

                    We only wish we could tell you that the rest of this wretched little movie, a piece of cornpone 1970's  flotsam, maintains that level of gruesome inventiveness.......

                     Not a chance. This film's director, Charles B. Pierce, was one of those backwoods auteurs who'd mastered just enough rudimentary filmmaking skills to slap together junk for whatever drive-in theaters were still in operation......

                    And we do mean rudimentary.

                     But if you care enough (and that's the BQ mission in a nutshell) ....you can dig out a few shiny nuggets in this  pile of horseshit......

                     Standing out in a huge crowd of worthless non-actors, there's good old reliable Ben Johnson as a grizzled Texas Ranger hot on the trail of this 1946 serial killer.......(playing, more or less, the same exact role he performed a few years earlier in Steven Spielberg's first theatrical film, "The Sugarland Express")

                    Ben spends the entire film looking like he wishes he were somewhere else. We feel his pain......so did we.

                   Given Charles B. Pierce's total incompetence, the movie's tone careens wildly, much like the film's collection of vintage 1940's cars swerve along muddy back roads......if nothing else, the film's crazy downshifts make you snap to attention....

                  In its ample, gory murder sequences, it pre-dates the horde of teen slasher movies that would flood the market in the late 70's and early 80's......

                   Most jarring off all, the movie interrupts its own self-important, semi-documentary aura to suddenly indulge in 'Smokey And The Bandit' low comedy........but trust on  this, Charlie Pierce makes Hal Needham look like Orson Welles......

                  We've no idea how this movie gradually built up its reputation as a worthy cult offering.........53 years later, it's still the same undercooked sludge.....

                    We will however, do a slow clap for that Terror Of The Trombone, that Master Of Musical Madness, the resident loony who makes Texarkana dread sundown.....

                   And the rest of us dread movies like this. 1/2 a star . (We would have upped this rating to at least 1 star if the killer had remembered to cut a mouth hole in the sack he wears over his head......forcing him to hyperventilate while he blows those lethal notes from his instrument.....)

'PET SEMATARY'...........SHLOCK TREATMENT.......

Pet  Sematary (2019)     Not that we'd ever dream of doing this to any of our beloved blog visitors......

                 Suppose we snuck up on you and gave you a sudden poke in the back..........or maybe jumped out of your closet, wearing the most repugnant Halloween mask we could find......(possibly of Rudy Giuliani or Stephen Miller.......)

                 "Aaahhh," you might exclaim (or something similar) and visibly flinch or jump.......

                  Gave you a good scare, did we? Made you jump?  Yay us. And you know what was absolutely NOT required of us to accomplish this?

                   Talent. Artistry. Or even a smidge of creativity.

                   Those little things you look for and expect in a movie.  Even a horror movie.

                    Now we're not naive about the state of most horror films today. The people who make them aren't interested in taking the time to steadily build up an atmosphere of dread and rising terror.........

                    They just want to make you jump out of your seat  every three to four minutes, as if they wired your chair with a built in taser......

                      These guys no doubt consider themselves clever and skillful artists for doing that. But in essence, they're no different than the old shlockmeister William Castle......who stuck joy buzzers under the seats while audience members watched his "The Tingler"......and deployed a skeleton on a wire to dive bomb  the crowd as they watched his "House On Haunted Hill"

                      Our point:   these filmmakers aren't making real movies. They're just running a filmed version of that  Chamber Of Commerce 'Haunted House' attraction out on Route 71.....that costs you five bucks to get into, between October 1st and 31st every year.......the one where teen part-timers put sheets over their heads and wait to jump out at you as you walk up the stairs.......

                     Sure, you'll jump. But nobody ever mistakes it for art........

                      Which is why BQ says don't waste a minute or a penny of your time and money on "Pet Sematary".  Not when your kids, your friends, your neighbors or those pimply teens in the Haunted House out on Route 71 can give you the same effect.......

                       All they have to do is jump out of the closet.......or poke you in the back.

                    You're better off reading the superb Stephen King book, in which he  brilliantly poured out all his fear and dread of what the loss of a loved one entails.......that one's a 4 star horror experience......

                       This movie?  Nothing but a joke shop Halloween store......made by people who think they're geniuses for wiring up your seats.  Zero stars (0)