Ah, the 2000s, when every decent and not-so-decent slasher was remade. That means that even April Fool’s Day could be made all over again by The Butcher Brothers (Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores), who had just made The Hamiltons.
Desiree Cartier (Taylor Cole) is hosting a party for her actress Torrance Caldwell (Scout Taylor-Compton from the Rob Zombie Halloween movies) and has invited Blaine (Josh Henderson), the brother she dislikes along with U.S. Senate candidate Peter Welling and his beauty queen fiancee Barbie (Jennifer Siebel), her enemy Milan, videographer Ryan and society reporter Charles.
During that April Fool’s party, a prank leads to Milan suffering a seizure and falling off the balcony to her death, which ends with Blaine losing control of the family’s fortune and Desiree becoming the executor. The death is ruled an accident.
A year later, the group is invited to Milan’s grave to watch a video of Charles being drowned. One of them killed Milan, a note states, and unless they confess, everyone will die.
While the score is close to the original, the film just doesn’t live up to the inspiration. But you knew that. It does have a nice giallo/Agatha Christie set-up. But it just doesn’t seem to know what to do with the story once it gets going.
I think my new obsession is watching movies where Jack Lemmon is flummoxed by modern love. Here, he’s Howard Brubaker, a man married to Phyllis (Sally Kellerman), who cares more about money, real estate and status than love. The person he falls for is Catherine (Catherine Deneuve) whose uncaring and philandering mate is Howard’s boss, Ted Gunther (Peter Lawford). When they meet Grace and Andre Greenlaw (Myrna Loy and Charles Boyer), they start to believe that maybe they could be happily married, just like the Greenlaws, if they can only run away and start again.
Deneuve’s part was originally intended for Shirley MacLaine, which would have reunited the stars of The Apartment. Knowing that makes me realize that that casting would have truly improved this, as with as stunning as Deneuve is, it makes it seem as if the affair is simply over attraction and not the idea that the two could be life partners, not just attracted to each other — no insult to MacLaine, who is also quite fetching. I hope you understand my point.
Maybe after The Apartment I just see Lemmon and MacLaine as the perfect couple.
Director Stuart Rosenberg also made Cool Hand Luke and The Amityville Horror, while writer Hal Dresener wrote Sssssss, The Eiger Sanction and Zorro: The Gay Blade. Dionne Warwick sang the title song, while one of her biggest hits, “I Say a Little Prayer,” is sung at a party in the film by Susan Barrett. The b-side of that single? “Theme from Valley of the Dolls.”
The last episode under the Ghost Story title, as well as the last appearance of Sebastian Cabot hosting as Winston Essex, “Time of Terror” is one of the darkest episodes in the series, based on Elizabeth Walter’s short story “Traveling Companion” and written by Jimmy Sangster.
Patricia Neal, who was in another Ghost Story, is Ellen Alexander. She has finally convinced her husband to take time away from his work and take her on vacation, but nearly as soon as they check in to a casino hotel, his bags are packed and he’s moved to another room. She can no longer find him and is horrified to discover a lottery in the main room where couples are tearfully split up forever when their numbers are called.
Beyond Neal, who is perfect in this, Craig Stevens is hotel manager, full of calm in the face of telling people the inevitable. He’s usually remembered for playing Peter Gunn, but he’s quite good here in a different role. Alice Ghostley plays a domineering woman who is struck down by the game, wondering why they planned and dreamed so much when her husband’s number is called. It was also great to see Lynn Hamilton, who was so good as Fred Sanford’s love interest Donna.
Director Robert Day started his career in England before coming to America, where he mainly worked in television. That said, his directed work is more memorable than many of his contemporaries thanks to his solid guidance of movies like Ritual of Evil, The Initiation of Sarah and Scruples.
This episode has stayed with me longer than any of the others in the series. If you’re going to pick just one of these to watch — or want to know which episode to start with — this would be it.
You can watch this on YouTube.
Note: Thanks to Bruce Kimmel for his notes on this, which were adjusted in the copy above.
I think I quote The Jerk and say lines from it more than any other movie, nearly having absorbed it into the ways that I think and do and act and live since I first saw it in my single digit years. It’s absolutely my junk food warm blanket movie, a reminder of a time when the only responsibility I had was to watch movies over and over again, unlike now, when I face a mountain of multiple responsibilities but you know, still watch movies over and over again.
Imagine, Steve Martin was probably the biggest deal in comedy in 1979, selling out arenas, having best selling albums, being a cultural force with his appearances on Saturday Night Live and now, he’s about to step into another media and take a chance at failure and somehow takes a movie about failure and becomes a success.
Instead of me telling you the whole story of how Navin R. Johnson was born a poor black child, found his special purpose and found his fortune and lost it through the invention of the Optigrab, I will just tell you I love when I discover that the beliefs I have about this movie were true. In his book Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, Martin said that the set was joyous, with cast and crew eating together every day and you can feel the joy he had when they filmed the scene where he and Bernadette Peters sing “Tonight You Belong to Me” together.
I remember watching this at the age of eight and finally understanding why people did crazy things for love. If everyone was as wonderful and perfect and magical as Bernadette Peters, it had to make sense.
As I’ve learned and grown and loved and lost, The Jerk remains there for me, a movie I’ve watched hundreds of times and can turn down the volume and word for word recite the dialogue. I always find something new to laugh at, like the moment where Navin sees his name in print for the first time or the disco in his house that everyone leaves behind after it all falls apart.
If life is treating you like life treats you, I invite you to watch this movie. Allow it to wash over you. I think you’ll smile at least once and that’s better than staring into the void and screaming.
“Oh, this is the best pizza in a cup ever. This guy is unbelievable. He ran the old Cup ‘o Pizza guy out of business. People come from all over to eat this.”
For the first day of the B&S About Movies April Movie Thon, we’re looking for foolishness.
April 1: Go ahead, fool us — Whether this movie has a literal fool in it or a funny person known for acting ridiculous, start the month off with something silly.
All April long, we’ll have thirty themes as writing prompts. If you’d like to be part of it, you can just send us an article for that day to bandsaboutmovies@gmail.com or post it on your site and share it out with the hashtag #BSAprilMovieThon.
Here are some past films that we can recommend to watch today:
April Fools Day (1986): College students decide to spend spring break at the secluded island estate of Muffy St. John, but their fun pranks soon turn murderous.
Harlequin(1980): A politician’s son meets a clown who makes him smile and also has faith healing abilities, but his powerful father feels threatened and soon turns murderous.
Mondo Balordo(1964): Released as A Fool’s World in Italy, this mondo has everything and by that I mean a dwarf singer, bodybuilders, bedouin pimps, Japanese models for rent, Indian exorcists, people who can’t stop smoking, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lottery players, a clone of Valentino, cults, nightclubs, Luna Park, London after hours and so much more.
Entertainment Squad’s genre label, The Horror Collective has put together an anthology of shorts called Beyond the Dark and while usually a collection of previously released shorts can be a mixed bag, the movies within this series are all quite interesting, which is surprising and gives me hope for anthologies in the future.
Episode 1: The Speed of Time (2020): Starring former WWE superstar John Hennigan (he of the many last names) as Johnny Killfire, a time traveling hero that must find his former self (Sean Marquette) and battle the TimeBorgs, who are trying to get an app that can help them destroy the space-time continuum.
In episodic fashion, director William J. Stribling, who wrote this episode with Russ Nickel, this moves at a faster than fast pace, packed with 80s action and no small amount of hilarity. Another wrestler, Nic Nemeth (formerly in the Spirit Squad and the brother of Dolph Ziggler) shows up and many pizzas are delivered into the past. This is so good that I’m kind of hoping that it becomes a full-length movie.
Episode 2: Midnight Clear (2017): Only seven minutes long, but Joe Russo’s short film is all about David (Kurt Kubicek, who is also in Russo’s full-length The Au Pair Nightmare), an abusive father, and the traumatic holiday he puts his wife (Jessica Morris) and children (Caige Coulter and Kue Lawrence, who was Jody DeFeo in The Amityville Murders) through.
Episode 3: Malacostraca (2018): As his wife Sophie (Amber Marie Bollinger) deals with her pregnancy — which came from a crab-like creature maybe? — Chris (Charlie Pecoraro) wonders what it will be like to raise his crustacean offspring. Writer-director Charles Pieper must have understood the madness that writing, writer’s block and trying to share your life with others as a writer entails because this is pure and wonderful strangeness.
With effects by Gabe Bartalos, who directed the equally strange Saint Bernard and Skinned Deep) and the strange notion that a man can by cucked by the claws of a crab, I have no idea why more people haven’t lost their minds championing this blast of pure madness. The fact that Sophie seems to be completely lost in arousal in the POV soft shell sex scene just makes this even more delightfully off-kilter. Beyond recommended.
Episode 4: Pipe (2018): With characters named Sneer, Wheeze, Bliss, Gimp Hand and Face Tattoo, Pipe — named for a character played by Zoë Bell — this is the story of Pup (Elizabeth Hunter), a girl living in White Rock, a crumbling bombed out crater of a town. When a dead body washes up on shore, she refuses to give it up and undertakes a quest to properly bury the body.
Directed by Max Isaacson from a script by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, Pipe offers post-apocalyptic action under time and budget. Again, another episode that could very well be a regular movie.
Episode 5: The Wound (2019): Director and writer Chris Levitus has made a 9-minute short in which Otto (Kris Lemche, Ginger Snaps) wakes up with a gigantic hole in his chest. So what does Anna (Letticia Bissondut) have to do with it?
Episode 6: Conversion Therapist (2019): Wow — this episode, directed and written by Bears Rebecca Fonté, has something for everyone. It starts with a conversion therapist named Ira (Michael Dickson) sniffs the panties of Justine (Sara Fletcher), which have been coated with a substance that makes him pass out and awaken to the worst torture he can imagine. After making horrifying remarks about the Orlando Pulse shootings, Justine is going to make him orally pleasure Clay (Jordan Morgan) under the stress of torture or even death. And her partner Salina (Evelyn Jake) has even more reason to hurt Ira, as he abused her before she transitioned her identity.
I kind of enjoyed how this movie used exploitation and gore to push the envelope while taking pages from our headlines — perhaps more pages than we’d like to read — and not being afraid to go hard on gore and language, which definitely has the potential to offend people on either side of the issues that this film raises. The pace needs some help, the story could be together, but this episode takes chances.
Episode 7: Peopling (2019): Speaking of chances, Peopling has a protagonist named George (Josh Fadem) whose masturbatory results end up turning into a clone of himself that his partner/mother/mother/who knows Joy (Kimmy Robertson) ends up loving more than him.
Lucas Amann directed and wrote this short and I don’t know if I want to shake his hand or if I’d be afraid of what fluids would be on his palm. Again, like the previous installment, this is either going to make you laugh, wretch or shut this off in anger. More creatives should be willing to take things this far.
Episode 8: The Final Girl Returns (2019): Alexandria Perez has created a short that really brings the slasher to life and expands on the idea of the Final Girl, as well as a hero called The Driver who is compelled to save them over and over without confronting the monsters in his life. With just 15 minutes of time, this is yet another episode that left me wanting more.
Episode 9: Bad Hair (2019): Made in Estonia, this is the story of Leo (Sten Karpov), a man who has decided that bald is no longer beautiful and if he must, he will cover his head in a strange gelatinous substance in the hopes of having long, flowing locks. Well, he gets what he wants. He gets too much of what he wants and over the 14 minutes of this short, an entire team of wig makers and special effects artists get to transform real life into a delirious cartoon directed by Oskar Lehemaa.
Episode 10: Man in the Corner (2019): Directed by Kelli Breslin, who co-wrote with Daniel Ross Noble, this episode is all about Michael (Christopher Dietrick) and Daniel (Matt Pascua), who are hooking up when Daniel learns that they’re not alone. In the corner, there’s a hidden man named Dave (Larry Weissman) who keeps emerging at the worst moments, reminding viewers that watching cucking videos may seem hot online, but supernatural cucking is as frightening as can be.
Episode 11: The Color of Your Lips (2018): Annick Blanc directed and wrote this short in which a diver (Alexis Lefebvre) and a woman (Katia Lévesque) are potentially two of the last people on Earth, a planet that has less air by the moment, leaving you wondering if they will breathe their last making love or war. It’d be frightening and sad if it wasn’t all so beautiful, but isn’t that life?
Episode 12: Maggie May (2018): Director and writer Mia Kate Russell created this installment about Sam (Katrina Mathers) and Maggie (Lulu McClatchy) who seem like they may come back together after the death of their mother, except that Maggie wants to do nothing. At all. The same thing she did — nothing — when her mother was dying right before her eyes. You can learn more on the official site and Facebook page for Maggie May.
Episode 13: Socks and Robbers (2014): After some of the hard-hitting and thought-inducing films in this series, don’t you want to watch the story of Sniffer, Gout, Bunion and Hammer Toe, one of the deadliest gangs of bank robbers ever? Director and writer David Lilley has some style and wit, because who else would make a Guy Ritchie movie about sock-headed criminals? You can learn more at the official Facebook page.
Beyond The Dark is available on VOD and digital fromThe Horror Collective.
Jay (Michelle Ehlen, who also directed and wrote this movie) is a non-binary photographer making the movie across the country after divorcing her wife Lily (Jeneen Robinson). That journey takes her to the home of Jess (Shaela Cook), a woman who she used to be secretly obsessed with, and introduces her to Tommy (Chad Steers), a stand-up comedian who no longer believes in love.
Shot in 17 days over the course of almost two years — with the last four days of shooting delayed due to the pandemic — Maybe Someday comes from a very personal place, as its creator also made a cross-country post-divorce trip.
Unlike other breakup movies, the choices that Ehlen makes as a character and as a filmmaker are about discovering how you can grow from a breakup and become someone better instead of feeling the loss. That’s brave if you’re a person and most assuredly if you’re a filmmaker.
To watch Maybe Someday, you can purchase tickets to Cinequest on April 1-17. To learn more about the movie, visit the official Facebook page.
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