A Movie a Day IV: The Quest for Peace

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Sherlock: The Hounds of Baskerville (2012)

Well, they finally did it. They finally dropped the A-bomb on Sherlock and used the word "Asperger's" to describe Holmes. But what I'm much more excited about is that I finally got a new version of The Hound of the Baskervilles that does something new with the plot. After reading the book and watching eight previous adaptations (there are over 20 in total), none of which bothered to change the plot much at all (not even the comedy version), I'm glad to see it reinvented at last.

The awful opening five minutes (in which Holmes is acting like a raving maniac simply because he wants a cigarette) made me nervous, thinking that this would be a repeat of Season 1 in which the second episode was much worse than the first, but luckily it turned out well. I still have my nitpicks about the series – Holmes comes across as too much of a prick for my tastes, and the plots are too complex, as if the screenwriters are afraid that audiences will be disappointed if they don't get confused – but nitpicks are all they are.

I have nothing else to write. This show is great, and I'm much worse at describing what's good about a good movie than what's bad about a bad one. There's very little to complain about here. If I had to introduce Sherlock Holmes to someone who's never read the books and doesn't really care to, I would probably start them with these 90-minute TV movies. I prefer Jeremy Brett's portrayal of Holmes to any other actor, but Brett's material (the writing, the supporting actors, the sets) was often mediocre, and you don't have that problem here.

Fog Island (1945)

Put together a couple of my favorite actors and I'll watch pretty much any old shitpile. Check out these credits:



Zucco's the crazy bastard from movies like Dead Men Walk and The Mad Monster, and Atwill showed up in about half a dozen Frankenstein movies. They also both played Professor Moriarty in the series of Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone.

I wasn't sure if I knew who Cowan was, but I did: he played Sam Spade's partner Miles Archer in The Maltese Falcon. Wikipedia tells me he also played the lawyer who prosecuted Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street, which I haven't seen, but I think we can all agree that putting Santa Claus on trial is a major dick move.

I thought I recognized the director's name, Terry Morse, so I looked him up. Sure enough, he directed the footage with Raymond Burr that was added to the American version of the first Godzilla movie. He also made something called Love in a Goldfish Bowl, which probably isn't as interesting as it sounds.

As for the movie itself, there isn't much to write about. It's a bland mystery about an ex-con who lures the people who framed him to his island home and it's not long before everyone's killing each other. I stopped trying to pay attention to the plot less than halfway through. Zucco is as good as always, but the rest of the characters are as boring as can be. Atwill is decent but doesn't get much to do, and the other actors are as wooden as Bill Paxton but without the charm.

Fog Island is...

Hold on, let me consult my thesaurus...

...flat, flavorless, insipid, savorless, tasteless, unexciting, unstimulating, vapid.

It sucks, is what I'm trying to say.

Gah, my memory sucks. I always forget when the week ends. Yesterday was the end of Week 2. Here's this week's haul:

The Giant Gila Monster (1959)
Doomed to Die (1940)
Metropolis (1927)
Dagon (2001)
Incident at Victoria Falls (1991) Part 1 of 2
Sherlock: The Hounds of Baskerville (2012)
Fog Island (1945)

Week 3 starts today and the posting starts tomorrow.

Sex and the City 2 (2010)

I've decided that I want a change of pace with this topic, so today's movie will be a romantic comedy about a group of sassy MILFs!






























Just kidding. You think I'm out of my damn mind? I'm not watching that.

Hands of a Murderer (1990)

I like a movie that opens with a blatant disregard for historical accuracy. Public hangings in Britain were a thing of the past in 1900, which is when the movie is set, but it makes for good drama, accuracy be damned.

This one surprised me. I watch so many Sherlock Holmes movies that end up being quite disappointing, and I wasn't expecting any different from an obscure TV movie from the early 90s that stars someone other than Jeremy Brett, but it turned out to be not only good, but even better than many of Brett's TV episodes.

Edward Woodward makes an excellent Holmes. He was 60 at the time but plays the character with a surprising passion and energy, not afraid to use a weapon or chase someone on foot. He's slightly unhinged, throwing a criminal up against a wall and shouting in his face to get information, and threatening at one point to beat the man to death with his bare hands.

But it's not just the adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Raving Maniac. The deductive reasoning that makes Holmes who he is hasn't been lost, and he has a good chemistry with John Hillerman's Watson, with plenty of good dialogue between the two. Woodward would have been a fine replacement for Brett had they decided to continue the TV series after Brett's death. It's really too bad that he only got to play Holmes this once.

Anthony Andrews is also a good Professor Moriarty. This character is supposed to be the most dangerous criminal in London, but so many Holmes films make him seem like a common crook. Andrews actually comes across as a guy not to be f**ked with; the opening scene in which he escapes his public hanging is great, as is the way that he manages to assassinate someone in police custody. It's odd to see a Moriarty who's about 20 years younger than Holmes, but it works.

It's not perfect, though. The actors playing Mycroft Holmes and Inspector Lestrade fail to make much of an impression at all, I correctly guessed the identity of the traitor who Holmes is after the moment I saw him, and the ending is a bit of a letdown. But I can't complain too much, not when the focus is on three characters and actors who are all superb. It's movies like this, which I probably wouldn't have bothered to watch if I hadn't decided to spend my free time watching a movie every day, that keep me from quitting these stupid topics.

The Bat (1959)

Oh, Vincent Price, deliver us from evil. He provides the only moments of this movie that don't completely suck ass. He's unfortunately only a supporting character; the real focus is on a group of women who are enough to make me a misogynist. These whiny, obnoxious, shrill-voiced b*****s make Fran Drescher seem pleasant in comparison.

The movie relies upon what Roger Ebert calls the idiot plot, in which the story would be over in about five minutes if any of the characters had any brain cells whatsoever. They all lock themselves in their bedrooms because there's a violent murderer on the loose who's been breaking into houses and tearing out peoples' throats, but they leave their rooms to investigate every suspicious noise they hear.

The final scene is particularly idiotic. The main character looks right into the camera and tells the audience members not to kill because "you can't hide murder." Was this supposed to be a public service announcement? Did people really need to be told not to kill? If so, shouldn't they be told not to kill because it's wrong, not simply because they'll get caught? And did I mention that the main character is a crime novelist? You'd think that she of all people would know that murder can indeed be hidden.

What a load. Tale away Price and The Bat has nothing going on.

The Dunwich Horror (1970)

In 1963, Roger Corman directed a pretty good adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward called The Haunted Palace. Seven years later, he produced this pile of crap. There's a halfway decent adaptation of the short story somewhere in this mess, but it's buried under a ton of filler. And that filler sure does suck – Dean Stockwell needs a mother for his demon spawn so he spends a lot of time romancing Sandra Dee and we see lots of really drawn out scenes of Dee writhing around in orgasmic bliss. I guess it's supposed to be erotic, but it's about as sexy as a trip to the DMV. The movie's so boring that it took me nearly all day to finish – I would watch ten minutes, take a break, and repeat the process. I would need to be a cocaine addict to be able to watch this in one sitting.

Incident at Victoria Falls (1991) Part 2 of 2

It's no different than the first one.

I feel like crap today and am in no mood to be writing about crappy movies. Scroll to the top of the screen if you want more.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

I think I may have actually blacked out with this one. While watching it, I would periodically "wake up" and realize that I couldn't remember what had happened over the last five or ten minutes, even though I was looking at the screen and trying to pay attention. I wasn't too impressed with the 1922 film Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore, but this is ten times worse. It's bad enough that it's boring, but seeing Barrymore twist his face around during the transformation scenes is silly even by silent film acting standards. It's 67 minutes long but felt like 200. The copy I watched used the exact same organ music used in my copy of Nosferatu, which just made me wish that I was watching that instead. It's amazing how much better the German horror films of this period were than the competition from abroad.

Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall (2012)

Can't say I don't get what I ask for. I often complain about Sherlock Holmes movies portraying Moriarty as a common crook instead of the most dangerous criminal in London like he's supposed to be, but in The Reichenbach Fall, he destroys Holmes in every conceivable way. This is far more dark and depressing than any of Christopher Nolan's Batman films, but luckily much less pretentious. But of course Holmes never stays dead for long and Moriarty never wins in the end, so I don't think I'm spoiling much by saying that Fall ends on a hopeful note that isn't totally devastating. Again, I don't have much to say because there's so little to complain about. This is easily the best film of the series (I think I'm going to stop calling them episodes, since they're all 90 minutes long) and one of the best Holmes films I've ever seen, which is saying quite a bit considering I've seen over 50 of them.

Zodiac (2007)

I think Netflix is trying to tell me that I watch too many Sherlock Holmes movies. They were supposed to send me Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars, but they sent me Zodiac instead. "This isn't a healthy obsession. Listen, I want you to watch this instead. It'll do you good."

This movie proves my theory that a good director can get a good performance out of anyone. Jake Gyllenhaal, who's awful in pretty much everything I've seen him in, is good. Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, and Robert Downey, Jr. are good, but they didn't need David Fincher's help. The only problem with the movie is the same problem that plagues nearly every movie that's based on a true story, especially ones about serial killers who were never caught: it has no real ending and just sort of stops.

But it's alright because it's so well-made. I'm always complaining about movies being too long, but this one is 157 minutes and I never once found myself wishing that it was shorter. It's not my favorite Fincher movie – that would be either Seven or The Game – but I like it more than Fight Club or Panic Room. Good job.

That's the end of Week 3.

Hands of a Murderer (1990)
The Bat (1959)
The Dunwich Horror (1970)
Incident at Victoria Falls (1991) Part 2 of 2
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall (2012)
Zodiac (2007)

And the end of this topic. Maybe. We'll see.

Anyone seen Jory? I was reliant on him as the WP film critic. Did he get miffed at people for phobic opinions and leave?

I'm still here, still watching sh***y movies on a daily basis, but my enthusiasm for writing and posting on WP has taken a serious blow over the past couple of months, for several different reasons. One of them is a growing disillusionment with WP itself, both the people running the site and the people posting on the forums. WP felt like a haven when I joined, but with every passing day it seems a little less like a place I want to be associated with. No need to go into it any further.

Another problem is my profound difficulty in writing and expressing myself, which may or may not have something to do with an undiagnosed learning disorder which may or may not be dyslexia. Writing just a few paragraphs feels like a chore – it often takes me over three hours to write and edit a post; this one took about an hour – and even after I go through the trouble of writing something, I'm never satisfied with it; it often only feels like about 20% of what I was trying to say.

Do you have any idea how exhausting and depressing it is to spend three hours trying your hardest to express yourself in words, only to end up with something that might as well be written in Chinese? It's bad enough when I'm writing about something I really care about, but I seriously feel like I'm wasting my time and energy when I'm simply describing why The Giant Gila Monster sucks. I was on the verge of tears trying to write about Bride of Re-Animator, and it had nothing to do with the film itself.

Long story short, it's not fun anymore.

I check in once or twice a day to browse the topics in a few forums, but I rarely have anything to say – and when I do, it rarely feels worth the effort. Apologies (and thanks) if you found these silly topics amusing and if you feel disappointed in their demise, but I'm sure you can find something more entertaining to read.