STEP RIGHT UP!…I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America, the autobiography of William Castle, is either packed with bull or Castle led the best life ever. I’d like to think its the latter, as I’m a big fan of the old-fashioned ballyhoo that was lost with Castle’s death.
From his first film, The Chance of a Lifetime to his last, the near-insane pairing of mime Marcel Marceau and horror Shanks, William Castle did things his way, worrying every step of the way, gambling his house several times as he went from a B-movie director to the feature attraction of his own brand of horror films.
The majority of Castle’s films had a gimmick and ad campaign that went along with them — that way, if Castle’s direction wasn’t the best, at least the audience had the gimmick to remember his films by.
House on Haunted Hill featured Emergo, where an inflatable skeleton with glowing eyes would rise from the screen to fly over the audience. The Tingler, filmed in Percepto, had moments where the titular monster would escape into the theater that you were sitting in and everyone had to scream to keep it from attacking them. Several seats in each theater would be hooked up to joy buzzes that would simulate an attack of the Tinger. 13 Ghosts had Illusion-O and Homicidal didn’t just rip off Psycho, it also had a fright break where the audience could get their money back if they were willing to walk to Coward’s Corner. Mr. Sardonicusgave audiences the chance to see if the movie’s villain lived or died, with two different endings (only the ending where he dies was actually filmed). Zotz! gave a gold coin, 13 Frightening Girls had a different version made for multiple countries after a beauty pageant selected 15 girls (Castle couldn’t be bothered with logic), I Saw What You Did had seatbelts installed to keep audiences from being knocked out of their seats, Bug had an insurance policy on its hero bug and Strait-Jacket had the best gimmick of all — Joan Crawford.
Despite all this, Castle dreamed of being a serious director and Rosemary’s Baby was to be his big movie. However, Robert Evans bought the film and convinced him that only Roman Polanski could bring it to the screen. Sadly, he was right.
I learned about Castle from his biggest fan, John Waters, who once wrote, “William Castle was my idol. His films made me want to make films. William Castle was God.” He even got the chance to play Castle in the FX series Feud: Bette vs. Joan.
He appears in this film, along with Joe Dante, John Landis, Roger Corman, Leonard Maltin and many more icons, all telling the story of how there really wasn’t anyone quite like Castle, the only director to have a fan club with 250,000 members.
This is a way to fall in love with the power of movies all over again. You can find it on Vimeo.
Thanks to Dustin Fallon from Horror and Sons for this entry. Beyond having a great web site, Dustin has really helped us get people to see our site and get writers for this project. It’s really appreciated! Thanks for watching so many movies for this month’s project!
Originally filmed as Terror, the 1963 Spanish/Italian production The Blancheville Monster is a musty, dusty Gothic horror affair that’s just rife with classic horror trappings and features more than just a touch of American soap opera melodrama, although that last part probably wasn’t overly intentional. The film was directed by Italian filmmaker Alberto De Martino, whose later horror credits include 1974’s The Antichrist and 1982’s Blood Link. However, Martino may be best remembered for a film so schlocky that it was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater, 1980’s The Pumaman.
Set in Northern France in 1884, the film opens to find young countess Emilie de Blancheville returning home to her family’s ancestral estate after many years away at school. Accompanying her on her trip are her friend, Alice, as well as Alice’s older brother, John. John is secretly in love with Emilie, but it would seem to be a very poorly kept secret. Just as poorly kept of a secret is Alice’s own growing romantic interest in Emilie’s brother, Rodéric, a man that she only knows from hearing Emilie read the letters that he has sent his sister over the years.
Upon arriving at her family’s castle, Emilie is saddened to learn that her father was killed in a fire just a few years prior. Her family’s servants have passed on in her absence as well and have since been replaced. In addition to a new butler, the family has taken on a new housekeeper as well: a much younger, attractive woman named Miss Eleonore. Eleonore is played by one of the better known starlets of 60’s and 70’s (and even later) European cinema, Helga Liné. Liné appeared in numerous horror and genre films, such as Horror Express, Horror Rises From the Tomb, and Nightmare Castle. Liné had a tendency for playing evil or sinister characters, surely due to her ability to be both sensual and emotionless in the same shot.
It doesn’t take long for eerie occurrences to begin around de Blancheville Castle. As they sit for their first meal, a sound much like the howls of an old hound dog or the cries of an injured man can be heard in the distance. Rodéric explains that the sound is indeed just that of an old dog, carried by the wind from one of the surrounding “peasant villages”.
At almost immediately the same time, the new family doctor arrives at the castle. He is introduced by Rodéric as Dr. LaRouche , the tension instantaneous between the two men. Rodéric excuses himself to escort his house guests to their rooms, but essentially warns the doctor that he will return. This leaves LaRouche alone with Eleonore, filling the air with a different sort of tension. There is some vague allusions to double-crosses and other “devious activities” before LaRouche hands Eleonore what appears to be three small vials.
As with any good Gothic horror, a storm rages through the night. Alice is woken by thunder, and begins to wander the darkened halls and corridors of the old stone structure. She hears a gasping sound coming from a stairwell and ascends her way up to a shuttered door. Throwing the door wide, she finds Eleonore standing over the prone body of a severely burned man. A syringe filled with a dark, viscous fluid is clutched in her hand.
Rodéric is forced to reveal that the burned man is in fact he and Emilie’s father, the Count de Blancheville. While the elder de Blancheville had indeed survived his injuries, he had also been driven bat-shit crazy. The syringe that Eleonore had intended to use on him was filled with a sedative intended to help abate the old man’s ravings and rages. Without the injection, the Count has broken free from his chamber and is roaming the castle grounds at large.
Making this family reunion more memorable is the fact that dear ol’ Dad has become obsessed with a curse allegedly placed on his family, one that will befall them should a female descendant reach her 21st birthday. In order to prevent this prophecy from fulfilling, the Count must now murder his own daughter before her next birthday, just mere days away.
The Count de Blancheville appears throughout the castle, usually at his Emilie’s bedside. Almost hypnotically, he frequently makes her rise from her slumber and sleepwalk to the family tomb. There, he systematically attempts to shatter his daughter’s psyche, almost willing her into accepting her impending death. Why he never chooses to actually kill her while he has her in this defenseless state may be the film’s biggest mystery.
The passive-aggressive behavior from our aspiring practitioner of filicide leaves the film free to muddle up the remainder of its runtime with soap opera style love triangles and rampant melodrama, filling the screen with more “red herrings” than a bag of Swedish Fish! Everyone is in love with everyone else, while jilting another all in one breath. You’d be forgiven for expecting Eric Braeden to pop up as “Victor”, but that would be one too many “shady fuckers” for a film to handle.
Buried somewhere in all of this mess is the overlooked fact that the Count de Blancheville is apparently a ninja. Not only can the Count slink from room to room throughout the castle undetected, hiding in the old castle’s multitude of shadowed corners and nooks, but he (or she?) can also launch large blocks at his prey from the castle walls while theoretically still in another room at the time. “Spoiler alert”, or something.
The entire thing culminates in one giant pretzel of double-crosses and fake outs. Characters die only to later return. Ya know, kinda like when “Marlena” supposedly died in that plane crash on Days of Our Lives, only to be “revived” from a coma later on. At least no one in The Blancheville Monster gets possessed by a demon.
Most casual horror fans will probably find The Blancheville Monster to be an insanely boring film… and they’re not entirely wrong. It’s filled with tiresome exposition and moves at a plodding pace. Even ardent Gothic horror fans may be hard-pressed to find much of exception, excluding the beautiful, yet foreboding, architecture of the old castle itself. And despite having Edgar Allan Poe’s name attached to its original title, the film has little to nothing to do with his stories. Skip this one and go watch Barbara Steele in The Ghost, which is conveniently also included in this set.
Between great design, reviews of junk food and lots of great info on the artists behind horror movie posters, there’s a lot to love about the site Camera Viscera. Here’s one more: Doc, the creator of the site, has sent this article on Messiah of Evil!
The best word to describe Messiah of Evil (really, the only word to describe the film) is surreal. With its vampire-zombie hybrid antagonists and rundown seaside setting (not to mention its pseudo-satanic undertones) it’s a movie less concerned with weaving a cohesive narrative than it is stringing together as many odd characters and bold set pieces as it can in its belabored 90-minute runtime. But what Messiah lacks in grace (and budget, and continuity, and comprehension, etc.) it makes up for in genuine curiosity.
When the film opens, a young woman named Arletty (Marianna Hill, who also acts as narrator) is driving to Point Dume, a sleepy seaside town along the California coast, in search of her artist father from whom she hasn’t heard in some time. When she arrives at his beach house, she finds no sign of him, but she does find a diary he left, seemingly for her to read. The journal entries are ominous and cryptic, warning her of not only the other-worldly dangers that seem to inhabit the town, but also unsettling changes that are happening to her father.
Through no real explanation, she eventually hooks up with a trio of fellow out-of-towners: Thom, Toni, and Laura (Michael Greer, Joy Bang, Anitra Ford). Thom seems to be on a similar hunt of his own, searching for answers surrounding the type of portents Arletty’s father’s diary warned about. Thom’s motivations are never clearly explained, but that’s par for the course with Messiah.
One of the signs Arletty’s father warned of is a blood moon, which eventually appears in the sky one night, setting off the chain of events described in his diary. Locals wander aimlessly on the beach, their heads transfixed skyward. Hordes of blood-thirsty flesh-eaters stalk the streets at night. People bleed from their eyes. Our titular Man in Black (who we come to learn was a member of the fated Donner Party) shows up to greet his disciples. No one seems to know what the hell is going on, including the viewer.
After a few inspired but poorly executed set pieces (the two best ones involving a supermarket and a movie theater), the film crescendos into a battle of survival for Thom and Arletty at her father’s bungalow. Despite its minuscule budget, the film manages to deliver some surprising action, including a few falls-through-a-skylight and even an extended full body burn. Alas, even these dazzling displays including the supermarket and movie theater scenes aren’t enough to make the film feel anything less than a slog. The highlights are too few and far between, sandwiched amid a shuffle of go-nowhere scenes and mostly sluggish performances.
Messiah was released theatrically in 1973, under no less than four different titles, and getting it to the big screen was no easy task. According to Ford, “…shot in 1971, this movie was originally titled The Second Coming. Towards the end of the filming, investors pulled their money out, and the film was never finished. A Frenchman bought the unedited footage, edited it and released the movie under the title of Messiah of Evil.” And indeed one of Messiah‘s greatest weaknesses is its editing. Scenes abruptly end, dialogue isn’t synced properly, jump cuts abound. It’s all very slapdash, and it shows.
The film was written and directed by husband and wife team, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, and to say they have had an interesting career in Hollywood would be an understatement. The same year Messiah was released, the duo who happened to be friends with George Lucas, serendipitously enough ended up being asked to write American Graffiti and later Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, as well as being tasked with writing and directing the unanimously derided bomb, Howard the Duck. It’s about as strange a journey as Messiah of Evil itself.
Messiah is arthouse exploitation. Equal doses of trippy visuals (for the pompous types) and goopy low-budget viscera (for the rowdy types). Though not as refined as its contemporaries, it still shares shelf space with the likes of Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Burnt Offerings, The Witch Who Came from the Sea, and others. It’s a niche but important sub-genre, one whose entries flow with the languid, dreamlike pace that only a movie from this era could. Gauzy visuals and strange happenings like your brain after a long night of drinking.
While I’d recommend a few other titles before this one, Messiah of Evil is worth a watch if you’re an exploitation completist looking for a break from reality.
If you need any proof just how much Larry Cohen means to this site, you need only turn to the entire week of his films that we featured last year. I’ve had so many questions for this directorial force about how he got into films, how he ended up directing so many films that meant so much over so many years and where his ideas come from. Luckily, this documentary and its bonus features answer all of them and then some.
Not only does this movie feature Larry Cohen breaking down his career year-by-year, from breaking into television to his blacksploitation and exploitation film career. And not only do you get to hear from Cohen himself, there are also appearances by everyone from J.J. Abrams, Yaphet Kotto and John Landis to Michael Moriarty, Joe Dante, Mick Garris, Fred Williamson and more.
So many of the reviews of this film talk about how it legitimatizes Cohen’s work, elevating it from the world of exploitation to films with merit. All films are exploitation, all seeking to make money. Cohen’s films succeed because even they’re deeply personal pieces of moviemaking. Even a trifle like Wicked Stepmotherexists because Cohen saw the chance to give work to a legend like Bette Davis. And Yaphet Kotto relates that while films like Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem are blacksploitation, they also smashed down the doors so that black actors and actresses could get work. And one need look no further than The Stuff or God Told Me To for proof of Cohen’s genius. Not many other directors could transform tales of alien yogurt and ancient astronauts into moral tales that have kept their power for decades.
The blu ray release also includes nearly an hour of Cohen’s stories about his films, more than half an hour of other remembrances by friends and co-workers, a look at the monsters of Cohen’s movies and footage of a convention appearance. I loved the extra Cohen stories, as he’s as unguarded as it gets, unafraid to both bury and praise people as he rambles on about his career.
Do you love movies? Then you owe it to yourself to find this and watch it. It’ll inspire you to look up much of Cohen’s catalog and watch it for yourself.
I’d recommend buying it directly from La-La Land Records, as you’ll get a slipcase autographed by Larry Cohen, Director Steve Mitchell and composer Joe Kraemer, as well as a soundtrack!
Also known as Bakterion, Nightmare Killing and even Zombie 4 in Greece, this film was directed by Tonino Ricci, Fulci’s assistant director on White Fang and Challenge to White Fang.
It all starts with lab rats going nuts and killing one another, which was not what I was planning on watching while I ate my breakfast while watching this. What was I thinking?
Professor Adams has gone missing — maybe it was a fishing trip — but we all know that he’s behind all of the random killings. The government literally sends Captain Kirk (David Warbeck from The Beyond) to figure out what’s going on. He starts working with Jane (Janet Agren, Eaten Alive!, Hands of Steel) to figure out how to stop the infection and save not just the town, but soon the entire world. Yep, there’s plenty of talk about how this mutant virus could end life as we know it, yet all we see is one rotting meatloaf looking doctor.
Will the military nuke the town? Can Captain Kirk stop the worst special effect you’ve ever seen this side of Curse of Bigfoot? Will Jane feel bad for the professor, whose face looks like the inside of a stuffed pepper? Did I laugh out loud at this end credit copy?
Ugh, this movie. It’s pretty painful. That said, you can get an uncut version on Cult Action, watch it on Amazon Prime or just grab the Chilling Classics box set.
Hey guys! Paul Andolina is in charge for this review. I met Paul at a wrestling show and we discovered a mutual love of film. Check out his writing at Wrestling with Film.
I love holiday themed horror movies. I probably spend too much time scouring the internet and books to look for more films with a holiday bent to add to my watchlist. Just this October I participated in a friendly movie watching competition. Its theme was holiday-centric horror. When I picked up Chilling Classics I had completely glanced over the fact it contained the film Silent Night, Bloody Night. I already owned it separately on DVD. I finally got around to watching it for this review and I was not expecting what I got. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised.
Silent Night, Bloody Night is a horror thriller released in 1972. It was directed and partly written by Theodore Gershuny. You may be familiar with his work unknowingly as he worked on both anthology television series, Tales from the Darkside and Monsters as both director and writer. Silent, Night Deadly Night is about the Butler house, a one-time asylum with an interesting past. Wilfred Butler the man who restored the house to its current state dies when he set himself on fire on Christmas of 1950. His only surviving relative, his grandson, Jeffrey Butler, is selling the house. He’s in town to settle affairs but his lawyer and other people go missing. What is it about this house? Why does Jeffrey want to sell it and why do the townsfolk seem so eager to acquire it all costs?
The film stars James Patterson, a Derry, Pennsylvania native, as Jeffrey Butler. He died during post-production of the film and his lines were apparently dubbed by someone else. It also stars the director’s then-wife Mary Woronov as Diane Adams, the mayor’s daughter. It largely centers around these two characters. Someone is calling the townsfolk and in whispered tones is asking them to come to the Butler house. The calls sort of reminded me of those placed by Billy in 1974’s Black Christmas. However, the caller is able to convey a creepiness without the crassness of the calls in Black Christmas. There is something deeply unsettling about the hush toned calls from the mystery caller, who says she is Marianne. The movie is deliberately paced and has substantial payoffs both in terms of plot and the kills depicted. Even though there are only two or three kills depicted outright, there is one that will catch you off guard and change the tone of the film drastically.
The movie takes place around Christmas but it isn’t played up much, apart from some Christmas tunes on the radio, some decorations, and sparse snow. It still has the dreariness one would want in a holiday horror flick and would go well with some spiked eggnog or whiskey laden hot chocolate on a snowy day. There is a particularly interesting use of the church hymn In the Garden as well. It is a recurring theme throughout the movie’s soundtrack and adds an extra dose of oddness to the proceedings. If you enjoy low budget films or holiday centered horror or just enjoy proto-slasher films you’ll find much to enjoy in Silent Night, Bloody Night. I should also point out that not only is this Cannon’s first released film it is also co-produced by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma. I hope you consider watching this film during the upcoming holiday season but must warn that most cuts of the film released on DVD are not the best looking prints.
I don’t know for certain if I’ve ever had the chance to espouse on this site exactly how much Orson Welles means to me. As a child, I was obsessed with his radio work on Mercury Theater and The Shadow, blasts through the nighttime ether via WKST-AM radio (the first station that Alan Freed would work at before he coined the term rock and roll). In the late 1970’s, the opportunity to watch classics films wasn’t as simple as grabbing a movie off the shelf or streaming it. No, when Citizen Kane aired on broadcast TV, it was a major event. I remember my father sitting me down and telling me that we were about to watch something special.
That may have been the birth of my lifelong love for Welles work, but it’s only grown as I’ve read innumerable books and watched so many documentaries that attempt to explain his genius and madness. Now, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead explains even more as it details his legendary lost film, The Other Side of the Wind.
Directed by Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), this work tries to explain exactly the trials and tribulations of this film, which ties together Welles attempted from European exile in the wake of the new Hollywood to the Iran crisis and the dissolution of his friendship with his acolyte, Peter Bogdanovich.
This movie had to have been hard to make for many of the people caught in the wake of Welles. For Cybil Shepherd, he was the combative old man who lived in the same wing as her in the home of her lover Bogdanovich, so forgetful that he’d put lit cigars into the pockets of his robe. For Bogdanovich, he went from hero to villain, vilifying him with Burt Reynolds on The Tonight Show and placing a character into the film that was a not-so-thinly veiled assault on his relationship with Shepherd.
Nobody was more impacted by Welles than cameraman Gary Graver, who volunteered to work with the artist at a young age and then basically gave his life and sanity over. Welles was the central figure of his life and to supplement the money he lost working for him (he was given the 1941 writing Oscar that Welles won for Citizen Kane, but was sued by his daughter to get it back when he tried to sell it) by working on films like Trick or Treats and Mortuary. This film also sheds a light on the fact that Graver also worked as a writer and director in the adult film industry, often credited as Robert McCallum. He didn’t just make one or two films. More like 135 and he was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame for his contributions to the adult film industry. In fact, in order to get Graver back to work on his film faster, Welles himself would personally cut a scene in the film 3 A.M.: The Time of Sexuality. While a hardcore lesbian scene, it totally looks like an Orson Welles movie, complete with low camera angles. How many major directors silently work in the adult industry just to finish a film they’d been trying to complete for a decade?
As time moved on, characters would become real people and real people would become the characters in the film, in an extreme magical rite of sorts. Welles was obsessed with the nature of reality, with what is the truth and what is an illusion (see all of his perfect film F for Fake for more). The near decade creation of The Other Side of the Wind both predicted and reacted to the changing story of its creator’s life.
The strangest thing of all is that They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is a documentary about the last film in Welles life. But so is The Other Side of the Wind, when you get right down to it. Then again, there were over a hundred hours cut together to make the latter, so of course, it needs some further exploration and interpretation.
My favorite part of this documentary are all the moments where you wish there was more, such as Welles conversation with Dennis Hopper about the changes in Hollywood. I’m fascinated by Welles, well, fascination with femme fatale Oja Kodar. And amazed that Rich Little would agree to appear in this when he comes off so badly. Anything for Orson, one assumes.
If you love Welles at the level that I do (I can totally understand Graver throwing away his life to work with him), you’ll love this. And even if you don’t know a single thing about him, this is an intriguing meditation on the nature of art and reality.
Imagine a Hammer movie where instead of implied nudity and strange sexuality, everything is laid, well, bare. It’s not hardcore, but compared to where horror was pre-1971, Lady Frankenstein is a somewhat audacious concept: the man is no longer in charge and it turns out that the heroine (or villain, there’s no real hero in this movie though) is even more warped and insatiable than those that have come before. If you listen to Rob Zombie, you may know the sample from the trailer for this film: “Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead?”
Three graverobbers deliver a body to Baron Frankenstein (Joseph Cotten!) and his assistant Dr. Marshall (Paul Muller, Barbed Wire Dolls) to bring back to life. The twist is that Tania Frankenstein (Rosalba Neri, Lucifera: Demon Lover, Amuck!) has completed her studies in medicine and is eager to help her father with his secret work.
The next day, the Frankensteins and Marshall watch a criminal be hung and run into Captain Harris (Mickey Hargitay, the former husband of Jayne Mansfield and father of actress Mariska Hargitay, who was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980 made for TV movie The Jayne Mansfield Story), who already suspects them of graverobbing.
That night, Frankenstein brings the man back to life — a scarred, weird headed, giant-eyed beast — who pretty much instantly hugs the Baron to death. Tania and Marshall report the murder as a burglar, but Harris calls their facts into question.
If you thought that killers going after people as they have sex was something that was invented in 1980’s slashers, the creature in Lady Frankenstein is here to show you the error of your ways as he comes upon (no, not like that, get your mind out of the gutter) numerous frolicking couples and eviscerates them.
Meanwhile, Tania makes Marshall confess that he’s always loved her, but his old body can’t satisfy her. This is a polite way to say that the dude has erectile dysfunction and if Viagra had existed in the 1800’s, there would be no need for the movie to continue the way that it does. Tania does find the mildly mentally challenged servant Thomas (Marino Masé, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times) attractive, so she has sex with him while Marshall watches. Thus cuckolded, he snuffs the young man out with a pillow.
Things get better for him, as she puts his brain in the young man’s body, making him superhumanly strong for some reason. While all that’s going on, the creature keeps on terrorizing people until they remember that they’re supposed to pick up pitchforks and torches and take him out.
The monster makes its way back to the castle, where it attacks Marshall, who rips off its arm, allowing Tania to stab it before he smashes its head open. As the castle burns down around them, Marshall and Tania make love as Harris and Thomas’ sister Julia (Renate Kasché, Devil in the Flesh) watch. The flames consume them as Marshall begins to choke out Tania.
Lady Frankenstein isn’t a great movie, but has a great lead who can do anything a man can do, if a man wants to bring the dead back to life and have sex with their reanimated corpses. It’s progress. And if you want, you can watch it on Amazon Prime.
After my review of Funeral Home, I was hoping that someone else would write about it as part of our Chilling Classics month. Luckily, Becca, the B of B and S About Movies volunteered. She agreed to be interviewed about her feelings on this movie.
Sam: So did you like Funeral Home?
Becca: It’s been on for about 40 minutes and no one has any idea what it’s about. Not even the people who are making it. This is really dumb.
Sam: Eventually, stuff happens.
Becca: There’s no real story yet. It’s like they just filmed some people who lived in what was a former funeral home and decided to shoot the whole thing day for night.
Sam: What do you think it’s about?
Becca: Secrets.
Sam: Secrets?
Becca: Secrets.
Sam: And…
Becca: Well, the black cat that keeps showing represents the dark. And more secrets.And whatchamacallit…superstition.
Sam: So a lot of people are getting killed.
Becca: Yes.
Sam: Do you have any idea who the killer is?
Becca: Not yet. But it seems like bad things happen in the quarry, which would have been a better title than Funeral Home. Bad Things Happen in the Quarry.
Sam: Do you have a better title than that?
Becca: Sleepytime Favorites. Or…Good Night!
Sam: Is there a message in this movie?
Becca: Cops are silly.
Sam: Would you stay in the funeral home?
Becca: No, It’s creepy and little kids don’t like it. And you know, Cubby (our dog) is unnerved by this place. He’s saying to me, “I don’t think dogs are welcome here. And that’s not cool, dogs are people too. We deserve a nice place to stay.”
Not a fan of Funeral Home.
Sam: Would you feel safe?
Becca: That goofball cop? No. I don’t feel safe around him.
Sam: So are you enjoying this movie?
Becca: Not at all. Who likes movies like this?
Sam: Bill.
Becca: Of course he does. Nothing happens. It’s his perfect movie.
With that, Becca went upstairs with Cubby to watch Halloween 3, leaving me to finish watching Funeral Home again. I think she made the right decision.
People always ask me, “Why do you still buy movies on DVD?” That upsets me. Probably not as much as questions like, “What are you going to do when they stop making DVD players?” and “Why don’t you just stream everything like a normal person?” Beyond enjoying the tactile feel of physical media and not wanting to lose access to the movies I’ve already purchased, I really enjoy listening to commentary tracks. But what about a movie whose entire storyline is within the commentary track?
The voice on that track comes from Herbert Blount (Penn Jillette), who crowdfunded a movie starring his favorite actress, Missi Pyle (Gone Girl). Yep, this movie plays with reality by inserting real actors and actresses into a film that isn’t real. Harry Hamlin and Hayes McArthur also play themselves and their characters in the film within a film (director Adam Rifkin also is in this). Herbert uses his chance to be in the film Knocked Off — that was his crowdfunding reward — to kidnap Missi and re-edit the film himself.
To get really meta, this movie was also crowdfunded.
The best scene in the film is one of the rare moments where Penn’s partner, Teller, speaks. It’s a creepy little scene and not as over the top and goofy as the rest of the film. I kept waiting for all the talking to add up to something profound but like the worst commentary tracks, it just ends up getting in the way of the actual film. I get what the filmmakers were going for, but once the joke is told and then explained several times, it’s no longer funny.
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