Injury to Eye Motif

Justice League: War (2014): The second animated film in the just-completed DC Animated Movie Universe (the first was The Flashpoint Paradox) reimagines the origin of the Justice League. War mostly adapts the somewhat clunky, post-Flashpoint reboot in the DC Comics universe, though it substitutes Shazam (aka the original Captain Marvel) for Aquaman. It's actually better than its Geoff Johns/Jim Lee source, though it's still burdened with some of Lee's fussy, busy superhero costume re-designs, none worse than on Superman's high-collared, no-red-trunks look.

It's also better than the live-action Justice League movie, which also adapted that Johns/Lee graphic novel/first six issues of the new Justice League. That it also explains both the origins of the heroes who  need one (Cyborg) better than the movie AND deploys Darkseid rather than his lieutenant Steppenwolf in the invasion of Earth -- well, maybe the DC Movie Universe needs to hire more people from the animation wing to work on the live-action movies.

Two somewhat perverse elements may amuse or freak out the casual viewer. For one, Alan Tudyk voices Superman, one of the most baffling voice-casting choices ever (Tudyk voices the Joker in Adult Swim's Harley Quinn series, as a point of comparison). Of course, the voice-casting here, as in the Young Justice series, deliberately establishes this as a different universe than the DC Animated shared universe of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman, Batman Beyond, and Justice League [Unlimited].

The second involves a lengthy climactic battle in which the heroes' goal is to poke out Darkseid's eyes. I shit you not!!!! In any event, recommended.

It Follows... Again!

It Follows (2014): One of the ten great horror films of the past decade, It Follows rewards multiple viewings with new observations and revelations. This time around, I wondered if the Creature had problems with water because of Its behaviour during the climax.

As the 'expert' exposition about the Creature's capabilities comes from a very fallible source, one whose knowledge of the Creature is purely anecdotal and personal, his explanation of what the Creature can do must remain suspect. Everyone comes to believe that the Creature only moves at a relatively slow walking pace. 

But while it does indeed so while near its prey, it is intelligent and it isn't a ghost. There's no reason to believe the Creature can't use public transportation, as funny as that seems. Indeed, there's no reason to believe that it's incapable of faster movement when its prey gets too far away. 

Otherwise, from what we see, It is only capable of traveling about 72 miles a day as the crow falls. That doesn't seem to work all that well in terms of its arrival at a cottage about midway through the film. 

Though I did give myself a bit of a laugh when I realized that Its slower return to the suburbs of Detroit from the cottage on the shores of Lake Michigan may be attributed to It not being able to secure a ride. And as it can open doors, It could also hop into the back of someone's car or truck. Unless one has been infected by the Curse, one cannot see it -- though one can hit it, shoot it, or get clobbered by it. Oh well. Highly recommended, as always.

Previous reviews are HERE and HERE...

The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort

The Book of the Damned (1919) by Charles Fort: Charles Fort is an important figure in both paranormal circles and in the science-fiction and horror genres. Financially able to not work, Fort decided to work at compiling strange stories from journals and newspapers and historical accounts during lengthy days spent in New York's public libraries. The result was what sometimes reads like The Book of Lists: Early 20th-Century Paranormal Edition.

Buried under a mountain of metaphysical gobbledygook is a fairly simple thesis: things are not what the experts tell us! The 'Damned' of the title are any 'facts' either excluded from theories of the way things work or explained away as being explicable.

Unfortunately, Fort's writing is often tedious at its best and almost incomprehensible at its worse. The book falls into a fairly consistent tripartite pattern:

1) Metaphysical and philosophical theories that slide rapidly into endlessly repeated Fortean platitudes.

2) Lists of hundreds of items, most of which could profitably be moved to an appendix because once you've read about ten things that were reported as falling from the sky, the list of another 700 things that fell from the sky gets pretty boring.

3) Rinse. Repeat.

What saves the material is Fort's almost throwaway gift for specific science-fictional speculation. These speculations are the stuff that many stories can and have been made of. Do alien spaceships jettison spent fuel into Earth's atmosphere? Is Earth's atmosphere partially covered by a gelatinous dome? Does Earth occasionally pass through the debris fields left by ancient space freighters? See, that's great stuff!

Fort tries to pass himself off as a bold iconoclast. However, while he has oodles of derision reserved for scientists, he seems to accept that stories from newspapers and journals of the 19th century and earlier are for the most part reliable. 

Another problem is that Fort perplexingly begins this, his first of four forays into the paranormal, with perhaps the most boring of topics -- weird stuff that purportedly fell from the sky. About 200 pages of it. This rapidly loses its interest long before the 200 or so pages Fort devotes to it is over. Frogs, fish, red rain, black rain, slag, cannonballs, thunderstones, rocks... on and on and on. You can almost taste the boredom -- and Fort's desire to get all that research he did into the book.

This is an important book when it comes to various genres. But if you read it, you will skim long sections. There's only so many strange rains of the 19th century one can find interesting. Recommended.

Demon Knight !!!!

Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (1995): written by Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris, and Mark Bishop; directed by Ernest Dickerson; starring Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett, CCH Pounder, Gary Farmer, and Thomas Haden Church: 

Based on a  script that had been floating around Hollywood for years, Demon Knight isn't a typical Crypt offering insofar as the main story isn't terminally jokey. It also has a solid cast and good, stylish direction from long-time Spike Lee cinematographer Ernest Dickerson. 

It also seems refreshingly colour-blind in its casting. While protagonist William Sadler and demon antagonist Billy Zane are both white, the remainder of the cast is a very mixed bunch -- and its most heroic members are all African- or Native American.

Demon Knight also takes advantage of Billy Zane's always slightly off presence, slightly off whenever he's played a hero (as in The Phantom or even Twin Peaks). He's much better as a villain than he ever was as a hero.

A young Jada Pinkett Not Yet Smith is spunky, William Sadler is his always good self as a long-lived warrior for good nearing The Final Round-up, and CCH Pounder, John Schuck, Dick Miller, and Gary Farmer all do what they can with a few lines of dialogue and a whole lotta shooting and exploding.

Indeed, if only they'd cut the jokey, punny Cryptkeeper frame story from the film and let it stand on its own, it might find more of an audience even now. It breaks the knee-jerk racism of Hollywood casting just enough to be more interesting and involving than the sum of its parts would suggest. But Jesus, the Cryptkeeper is the worst. Recommended.

Bad Acting Playhouse

Tales from the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood (1996):  There are a certain number of laughs to be had from the second and last of the features bearing the 'Tales from the Crypt' imprimatur. 

Some come from the fact that neither protagonist Dennis Miller nor antagonist Angie Everhart can act their ways out of a paper bag. Everhart is especially terrible as Vampire Queen Lilith, so much so that Miller looks pretty good when he's acting against her. 

Chris Sarandon can act, but he's strictly here for the paycheck. That means the best performance comes from Erika Eleniak, previously best known for coming topless out of a cake in UNDER SIEGE. Oh, well. 

Despite a frame tale featuring the Crypt-keeper, this very much doesn't resemble the great TALES FROM THE CRYPT comic book of the 1950's, though it does resemble the often slapdash, sophomoric HBO series of the 1990's that it's technically a spin-off of (spun off from?). 

EC Comics'  TALES FROM THE CRYPT was one of three pre-Comics Code horror anthology comics from that company, along with THE VAULT OF HORROR and THE HAUNT OF FEAR. The more you know! Not recommended. 

Now in Smell-o-rama!

Mr. Sardonicus (1961): adapted by Ray Russell from his novella; directed by William Castle: Enjoyable though somewhat low-budget adaptation of one of Ray Russell's terrific nods to the Gothic. Some time just after the invention of the medical hypodermic needle in 1853 (seriously, this is a plot point that allows one to date the narrative), a British expert in the field of curing muscle paralysis is summoned to a Gothicky manor in Eastern Europe by the woman he loved who was forced to marry for money... marry Baron Sardonicus!

Sardonicus wears a life-like mask for reasons he will soon explain to our recently knighted English doctor. The One Who Got Away doesn't love Sardonicus, nor does he love her. Sardonicus' creepy yet sympathetic majordomo, played by the under-rated Oscar Homolka, is found putting leeches all over the face of a maidservant. But it's all for a good cause...

Peasant tales of grave-robbing, corpse-eating ghouls will follow, as will a money-grubbing first wife for Sardonicus, a fantastic lottery win, and the origin of his self-selected baronial name (Sardonicus is descriptive, not inherited). 

The cinematography and staging often tend towards the bland and too-bright but the acting is more than adequate and the make-up and prosthetic work come across nicely, though they will have been shown too much by the end. Oscar Homolka steals the show here. Castle added a hilarious Coda to the film in which the audience voted to choose the ending. There was only one ending to the film, though -- Castle was a great showman, but two-way movies were still a long way in the future. Recommended.

New Heroes

The Invisible Man (2020): written and directed by Leigh Whannell; starring Elizabeth Moss: Enjoyable though overlong update of H.G. Wells' venerable tale of the dangers of not being seen. 

Having escaped the manipulative clutches of a tech billionaire, Elizabeth Moss' Cecelia soon finds herself stalked by him. But as he's an "optics genius," he's built an invisibility suit! So unlike previous Invisible Men, he doesn't have to run around naked to be invisible. Moss is solid as usual as a wounded woman finding her strength even when no one believes that she's being stalked and framed, you know, an Invisible Man. This may have started life as part of Universal's abortive Dark Universe franchise, especially given the superhero origin story ending. Recommended.

Bloodshot (2020): based on the Valiant Comics character created by Kevin VanHook, Don Perlin, and Bob Layton; directed by Dave Wilson; written by Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer; starring Vin Diesel and Guy Pearce: Perfectly serviceable superhero origin story for Bloodshot, a cyborg hero who first appeared in Valiant Comics books of the early 1990's. 

There's a pretty good twist about 40 minutes into the film that was spoiled by the trailers. And then Covid-19 arrived in force during the first week of the film's North American release, pretty much shutting down the box office. The movie didn't cost much, relatively speaking, so it may yet return as a Vin Diesel vehicle. I suppose one of the ways the movie kept costs down was by having virtually all the action take place in buildings and other enclosed spaces. This may account for what I think is the longest battle on top of an elevator in movie history. Recommended.

Invaders

They (2002): written by Brendan Hood; directed by Robert Harmon; starring Laura Regan, Marc Blucas (Buffy's Riley Finn!), and Ethan Embry: 

Underwhelming horror movie with a far-too-passive heroine as played by Laura Regan. Can Regan act? The script doesn't give her much to do other than run around screaming or stand around woodenly denying the supernatural, so who knows? Marc Blucas, Buffy ex Riley Finn, has almost nothing to do. 

Really, no one has much to do -- the shadowy monsters drive the action completely and prove to be unstoppable so early in the movie that one wonders what the point is. They do have an odd array of powers -- not just shutting down electricity but also operating elevators and running subway trains. It sure seems that way, anyway. An interesting film involving Night Terrors hides under the inept writing. Not recommended.

Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers (1956): written by Francis Martin; directed by Winston Jones: Odd, seminal combination of documentary and docudrama covering the evidence of Flying Saucers Over America! as of 1956. Great for those who love this sort of thing, somewhat tedious for those who don't. The film interpolates actual colour footage of UFO's as captured by reputable civilian photographers -- fleeting, fascinating stuff given extra zing by the fact that the real stuff is in colour and the rest of the film is in black and white. Dry, great stuff. Recommended.