Another mixed bag …

Emily (Mariclare Costello) haunts a Connecticut idyll in John Hancock's Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

Another seemingly random collection of movies, this time including some cheap exploitation, cheesy fantasy, horror and noir. I revisit an old favourite, re-evaluate a low-budget Canadian film from the ’70s, and finally catch up with a couple of movies I’ve wanted to see for decades.

A post-Covid 3D evening

One of the few eye-poking moments in Owen Crump's 3D Korean war movie Cease Fire (1953)

To mark our emergence from the Covid lockdown, my friend Steve and I ate barbecued bratwurst and watched a couple of movies which emerged from his big 3D TV screen: Owen Crump’s Korean war docudrama Cease Fire (1953) and John Brahm’s B-movie horror The Mad Magician (1954), Vincent Price’s threadbare follow-up to the hit House of Wax.

New features by two favourites

Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) being absorbed by the Color in Richard Stanley's Color Out Of Space (2019)

The label “visionary” gets tossed around far too easily, but it does apply to two filmmakers whose work begins in genre conventions yet rises to explore themes of horror and human fallibility in complex and original way: too long absent from the screen, Richard Stanley and Larry Fessenden have returned with some of the best work they’ve ever done – the former with the H.P. Lovecraft adaptation Color Out Of Space and the latter with Depraved, a modern meditation on the narrative and themes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Why do I do it?

Roger Cobb (William Katt)'s dead Vietnam buddy Big Ben (Richard Moll) is pissed off in Steve Miner's House (1985)

It’s a puzzling personal aberration, but I continue to find myself drawn to bad movies because they become available on disk in attractive packages. This time out, Arrow’s substantial box set of the four features in the completely disposable House franchise.

Perverse Families & Dysfunctional Kids

Girly (Vanessa Howard)'s eroticized immaturity is used to trap unsuspecting men in Freddie Francis' Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly (1970)

While they form one of the main building blocks of society, families are often mysterious when viewed from the outside, providing opportunities for mystery, suspense and horror since we began telling ourselves stories. Outsiders who penetrate the strange membrane between community and family may be faced with codes and rituals which can turn dangerous … as in four recently viewed movies: Curtis Harrington’s Night Tide (1961) and Games (1967), Freddie Francis’ Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly (1970) and Ted Post’s The Baby (1973).

Pandemic viewing, Part Four

Tiny Tim as Mervo tries to entertain Jill (Itonia Salchek) in Bill Rebane's Bloody Harvest (1986)

Social isolation and “working from home” mean a lot of time for movie-watching … and the volume far outstrips my ability to say anything substantive about many of the films I do watch: so here I mostly just acknowledge what I’ve been viewing in the past 4-6 weeks. Part four of four.

Trawling the Internet

Rats take on human form and infiltrate society in Krsto Papic’s The Rat Savior (1976)

With a little time and patience, it’s possible to dig up obscure and interesting movies on the Internet – some public domain, others no doubt illegitimate, some in pretty poor shape, others looking just fine. Here’s a collection of ones I recently discovered and generally enjoyed.

Blasts from the past

Twilight Time round-up

DVD Review: Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967)

Theo Angelopoulos (1935-2012)

Val Guest and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)

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