April 14: Viva Italian Horror—Pick an Italian horror movie and enjoy the pasta sauce and gore.

Dario Argento did Opera and now, Phantom of the Opera, starring Julian Sands as the Phantom, perhaps the best-looking person to play the role. John Malkovich was the original actor for the part, but Sands ended up being in this, and unlike every other movie adaption, he wears no mask.

This is in the period of films where Argento is perhaps thought to have lost it. It’s in-between The Stendhal Syndrome and Sleepless and sadly, starts to look more like a made-for-TV movie (not always a bad thing) instead of the visually rich films that we expect from the director. Then again, it does have a score by Ennio Morricone and the acting isn’t bad. And if you like rats…

The Phantom (Sands) in this one is a telepathic man raised by said vermin, his baby basket plucked from a river and brought to the basement of the Paris Opera where he eventually finds Christine Daaé (Asia Argento), whom he seeks to gain the part of Juliet in a play. She’s also in love with Baron Raoul De Chagny (Andrea Di Stefano), yet she first succumbs to the lovemaking of the man with rat parents. Before you know it, he’s bringing chandeliers down on people and doing all he can for her, even if she winds up choosing the Baron; being flighty, she goes back to the Phantom by the end, but the police end up taking care of that, beating and stabbing him after he shrugs off a gunshot to the stomach by the Baron.

There are some cool dream sequences in this, no small amount of gore, and a sadly muted color pallette that doesn’t seem to even hunt at the rainbow excesses of the past. But you know, directors need to work, and Argento kept trying throughout the 90s, and fans of his- hey, that’s me- kept on hoping for more. I have this in a 4-pack, and that’s how it is available in the U.S., which is kind of sad, but I don’t think anyone is begging for a 4K of this or Dracula 3D. Actually, I am. Throw in Do You Like Hitchcock? and The Card Player, too.

Cinematographer Ronnie Taylor also worked on Opera, Argento’s other Phantom-inspired movie, and Popcorn, which has similar themes. He was also a cameraman on Phantom of the Paradise, so he really got a lot of work out of this story.

Also: I only have Pelts and The Five Days left of his movies to watch.

April 13: (Evil) Plant Appreciation Day — It ain’t easy being green. Pay tribute to all the plants with a movie starring one of them.

Directed, written, and starring Jason Liquori, Lumber vs. Jack is the story of Jack Woods, who finds himself saving his wife Jill (Debbie Rochon) from genetically modified trees. Now he and Brad (Brewier Welch) must go deep into the forest, rescue Michelle and Jody (Michelle Prenez and Jennifer Wenger) and join entymologist Sheila (Christina Daoust) to take out all of the vines and trees and whatever else has grown into something that wants to kill humans.

The main problem is that the sound quality is all over the place. But you know, it’s an evil plants movie. Liquori came up with the idea the first year that he lived in the mountains of North Carolina. The leaves just kept coming back, and it felt so strange to him. Then he made this.

There’s also a sequel, Jack vs. Pumpkins, with Monique Parent in it. You know I’m looking for it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

April 12: 412 Day — A movie about Pittsburgh (if you’re not from here that’s our area code). Or maybe one made here. Heck, just write about Striking Distance if you want.

Yes, Whispers in the Dark is mostly shot in New York City, but there are scenes shot in Pittsburgh, and that’s good enough. I wish I could tell you it was a Yinzer Giallo, but no. It’s close to real Giallo, but it has no Iron City, no one goes to eat at Primanti Brothers or walks past the Kaufmann’s clock.

Directed and written by Christopher Crowe (who also wrote the Marky Mark goes crazy movie Fear), this has Annabella Sciorra as Ann Hecker, a psychiatrist who gets obsessed over a patient, Eve Abergray (Deborah Unger, who A.C. Nicholas told me has never not been nude in a film and reminded me again of the beginning of Crash), who makes every man around her want to dominate her sexually. Like, totally nice guys suddenly become sexist and want to slap her around like she’s Barbara Bouchet or something.

Ann wants that life now and gets so upset that she confides in her teachers, the married couple Leo and Sarah Green (Alan Alda and Jill Clayburgh). She also starts dating a new guy, Doug McDowell (Jamey Sheridan), a former Air Force pilot.

But let’s get back to Eve, who comes into their next session, takes off her dress, and tells Ann how much she wants to jill off in front of her. Is Ann having a fantasy? Why doesn’t she react? How freakish is Eve? And is she also with Doug because she claims the lover who treats her the worst is Francis Douglas McDowell?

This leads to Doug and Ann fighting, which Eve sees and realizes they’re dating. She accuses Ann of living out her fantasies by going after someone she dated. And then, when Ann comes to apologize, Eve is dead at her own hand. Or maybe not, as Detective Morgenstern (Antony LaPaglia) says that she was murdered.

Is this a Giallo? Yes, we already went over that.

Who killed Eve? One of her patients, Fast Johnny C. (John Leguizamo)? Ann? Doug? Well, it’s probably not Johnny, who breaks into Ann’s place and ends up jumping to his death, just like Ann’s dad. Then, Doug is in a hangar with the detective’s dead body, but he gets hit by a car. This is filled with red herrings.

Gene Siskell said this was the worst movie of 1992, so you know I loved every minute.

You’ll ask, “Can the think woman’s sex symbol be a psycho sexual killer?” Look, he’s no Ivan Rassimov, but if you got this far, spoilers — he’s the one who beats his wife with a wine bottle and talks filthy in that Alan Alda voice you know so well. For that moment alone at the end, when he gets a hook right through his skull and he takes a bump into the surf, you probably should watch this.

April 11: Until You Call on the Dark — Pick a movie from the approved movies list of the Church of Satan. Here’s the list.

Directed by John Farrow — the father of Tisa and, yes, Mia — and written by Jonathan Latimer and Barré Lyndon (the stage name of Alfred Edgar Frederick Higgs; he also wrote The Lodger), this was based on the book by Cornell Woolrich, whose stories were also filmed as The Leopard Man, Phantom Lady, Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, Cloak and Dagger and I’m Dangerous Tonight.

Los Angeles is a dangerous town. It’s the kind of place where oil geologist Elliott Carson (John Lund) can watch his girlfriend Jean Courtland (Gail Russell) try to jump into the path of a train, then take her to dinner as if nothing happened. There, they meet John Triton (Edward G. Robinson), a psychic who keeps telling her that she is going to die soon. Elliot thinks that he’s trying to get her to kill herself and take her money.

The truth is a bit more complicated.

Twenty years ago, Triton, his fiancee Jenny (Virginia Bruce), and Jean’s father Whitney (Jerome Cowan) toured the country as part of a magic show. Whitney also used Triton’s skills at seeing into the future to get rich. However, Triton soon sees Jenny dying after they have a baby. He leaves, Whitney marries Jenny, and they have Jean, but she dies during childbirth, proving his prophecy. Years later, he’s too late to stop Whitney from dying in a plane crash, but he wants to try and save Jenny.

It seems like Jenny made it on the fateful night, only for the clock to be moved forward. Someone comes out to kill her, but Triton stops them. The police arrive and believe that he’s the killer. They shoot him, and as he dies, Elliot finds a note that explains that Triton will die saving Jenny.

A movie about a doomed woman who is afraid of the stars themselves. The title comes from a poem by FW Bourdillon, “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.”

“The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one:

Yet the light of a whole life dies

When love is done.”

Robinson was usually the bad guy in movies, but he’s nearly the lead here. He’d also appear in another Woolrich movie, Nightmare.

According to The Church of Satan, “Satanic themes include the use of theatrics, Reading and Casing the Mark (see the chapter in The Satanic Witch), Skepticism and Doubt, and the exploration of the unknown.”

Anton LaVey often spoke of this movie, saying, “I started out like Edward G. Robinson in Night Has a Thousand Eyes. A carny mental act, a fraud. I believed everything was fixed, gaffed. Then, like Robinson, you start to get real flashes. Only if your life isn’t full of miracles can you recognize the real miracle.”

In Blanche Barton’s The Secret Life of a Satanist, he says, “Robinson actually did several Satanic Films – Hell on Frisco Bay, Little Caesar, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes — most of his roles had satanic overtones. In his personal life, he was an avid art collector and had one of the finest private collections in the world until he lost it in a divorce suit. Chernobog — the devil in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, the one who looms up from the mountaintop during the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence was actually inspired by Edward G. Robinson’s features, not Lugosi’s as is usually believed. He exuded the diabolical perhaps better than any other actor — with the possible expansion of that statement to include Erich Von Stroheim.”

April 10: Seagal vs. Von Sydow—One is a laughable martial artist, and the other is a beloved acting legend. You choose whose movie you watch; it’s both of their birthdays.

Based on The Unsleeping Eye by David G. Compton, Death Watch imagines a future world where illness has been eliminated. Well, all except for Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider), who is dying of some mysterious sickness and has agreed to allow her death to be filmed by the NTV network and their boss, Vincent Ferriman (Harry Dean Stanton). She gives the money to her husband and goes on the run.

That’s when she meets Roddy (Harvey Keitel), a cameraman whose eyes are replaced by cameras. She has no idea that this man is filming her and he’s given up his future — he’ll go blind if he is in darkness for any length of time, even sleep, and must shine a light into his eyes every 15 minutes — to make sure the public gets to watch her expire.

Katharine wants to see her first husband, Gerald (Max Von Sydow) one more time before she dies. She asks Roddy to get her makeup in town, and while there, he sees a commercial for the TV show he’s been filming, Death Watch. He loses his sanity and his flashlight, eventually going blind and confessing to Katharine what he’s been doing.

The truth is that the network has made all of this up. Katharine isn’t dying, and the pills she’s been given make her sick. She’s convinced that her death is coming, so she overdoses at Gerald’s house just in time for Vincent to show up.

Bertrand Tavernier, who directed and co-wrote this with David Rayfiel, dedicated this movie to Jacques Tourneur, who made Cat People, The Leopard Man, I Walked With a Zombie and Curse of the Demon.

In the world that he creates in this film, everything has become boring. Machines create all of the art while man numbs himself with drugs. This is our world. Add in a police state, protestors paid to hold up signs without caring for the cause, and a heroine who decides to control her own fate rather than be controlled by the media, and you get a movie that feels more of our time than a future story. If anything, it feels too real.