A Movie a Day 3D: 2D Edition

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When I put an end to A Movie a Day 2, I said that I wouldn't start A Movie a Day 3 four days later, and I'm a man of my word. So here it is, seven days later. You know the drill: I'll watch at least one movie every day until I get sick of it. Which, judging by the first two topics, will most likely be about six weeks from now. There aren't many restrictions, so I can watch a movie whether or not I've seen it before, and I'll probably end up cheating a few times by watching a TV episode if I'm not in the mood to watch a full film. But full films are what I plan on mostly watching, and they'll probably for the most part be ones I've never seen. Anyway, here we go...

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

"The human race will just be a bedtime story for their children. A myth. Nothing more."

Considering that The Thing is my second favorite movie, it's about time I finally checked out the other two parts of what John Carpenter calls his Apocalypse Trilogy: In the Mouth of Madness and Prince of Darkness. Besides, I should be using these topics to catch up on movies like this instead of wasting my time on BS like The Mad Monster and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome. Watching crap like that every day was starting to make me hate movies altogether.

It's funny how sometimes the unofficial adaptations of an author's writing are better than the official ones. For example, few would argue that Open Your Eyes, Dark City, The Truman Show, eXistenZ, and Inception are better Philip K. Dick movies than Screamers, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, and The Adjustment Bureau, and Miller's Crossing might be a better Dashiell Hammett movie than even The Maltese Falcon.

Similarly, In the Mouth of Madness is an unofficial H. P. Lovecraft movie that's better than pretty much any of the official adaptations I've seen. It's made with more skill and it better captures the central theme of his writing: that humanity is nothing more than an anthill in the universe, that there are things behind the curtain that we're better off not knowing about, things so alien that merely reading about them is enough to drive a man insane.

All of the actors are great (Sam Neill, Jurgen Prochnow, and Charlton Heston in particular) and the special effects are unsurprisingly terrific, but there's some genuinely creepy imagery in this movie that doesn't involve effects at all. There's some great dialogue and the comic relief hits at all the right moments. Re-Animator might be more entertaining, but that movie wasn't even trying to capture Lovecraft's insanity and horror. In the Mouth of Madness is the movie that I'll recommend to anyone who wants to know what he's all about. The Call of Cthulhu might adapt his plot faithfully, but it doesn't have the impact of this movie.

The Invasion (2007)

"All you have to do is nothing."

The 1956 and 1978 versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers were two of the movies I watched for A Movie a Day 2. I was planning on watching the 1993 version (titled Body Snatchers) tonight, but I had some trouble finding it so I watched this one instead. I had seen it once before and I wasn't very impressed, but I enjoyed it a bit more this time.

This one changes the nature of the aliens a bit; instead of plant pods that kill people and replace them with duplicates, it's basically a virus that takes over their brains. There's also a difference in focus: this version spends more time on the hysteria caused by the invasion, and there are more scenes of the main character pretending to be one of the infected by hiding her emotions to blend in and move amongst them.

Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig are good as the leads, and it's nice that we actually spend some time with them and see some characterization before getting to the action. Even the background characters have more substance than they usually do in horror movies like this. It's a shame that Craig wasn't in it more, because he's terrific. He delivers what's probably the best version of the "we're offering you a world without war, all you have to do is give up your humanity" speech.

There are plenty of good scenes that weren't in the previous versions, and it's probably the most well directed as far as pure filmmaking craftsmanship goes. It's stylish and gets creative with camera angles and edits but never feels pretentious or showy. I particularly liked the part in which it cuts back and forth between two different scenes, one of Kidman and Craig discussing their escape plan and the other of them enacting it.

So, whatever the reason for my lack of enthusiasm the first time around, I've changed my mind on this one. For the most part, that is. I was really liking the movie until it sh*t its pants at the end. Unfortunately, like the 1956 version, there's a happy ending that comes out of nowhere and feels as phony as a three dollar bill. Both movies were victims of studio tampering, and in both cases it backfired just like it always does. Why does anyone ever think that giving dark horror movies fake happy endings will give them better appeal and make more money? Focus groups are poison.

The Haunted Palace (1963)

"Arkham is a strange community. You see, it’s haunted. Not by ghosts, but haunted nonetheless. By fear, by guilt, and by the memory of a particular night..."

Imagine if Let Me In had been called Bram Stoker's Dracula. That's about what happened here. The poster and title screen read "Edgar Allan Poe's The Haunted Palace," but the movie is actually based on H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Why the title change? The same reason behind every decision made at a movie studio:



Roger Corman had recently made five movies based on Poe's stories and poems, and they were very popular. Lovecraft, on the other hand, was practically unknown to audiences. So when Corman made a Lovecraft movie, the people in charge of the studio forced him to add a few lines of a Poe poem to the final shot, so they could sell it as the next in the Poe series and keep snorting cocaine and wiping their asses with $100 bills.

What's funny is that it doesn't even matter, because Corman had made the film in the style of his Poe movies anyway. The Haunted Palace may not be faithful to Poe in the details, but it's more faithful in spirit to Poe than to anything that Lovecraft ever wrote. So it doesn't really bother me that the film isn't a prime example of Lovecraft on film. That's not what it was going for. It was going for gothic atmosphere, and it succeeded.

Of course, Vincent Price is what drives these movies, and it doesn't really work without him. If you want proof, just watch The Terror, which Corman shot the same year on leftover sets from The Haunted Palace. That movie gets some milage out of Boris Karloff and Dick Miller in supporting roles, but Jack Nicholson's bland protagonist proves that you can't get by on gothic atmosphere and good secondary characters alone. Price could read from a Sears catalog and make it sound brilliant, and he makes The Haunted Palace worthwhile more than any other element.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

"It's your disbelief that powers him. Your stubborn faith in common sense. It allows his deception."

I don't think there's ever been a better actor than Donald Pleasence when it comes to giving the "damnit, there's evil here, why won't you listen?" speech. He's great at it in the Halloween films and he's great at it here. If he told me that the Hamburglar was coming after me and it spelled my doom, a doom that I can scarcely imagine, I would believe him. Pleasence is easily the best part of this movie, and it's also nice that John Carpenter brought over some of the Chinese actors from Big Trouble in Little China. They were the only reason I didn't turn that movie off after 20 minutes.

None of the other actors make much of an impression, except Alice Cooper as one of Satan's minions, but stumbling around in a daze was probably just a part of his daily routine in 1987. And somehow Satan himself comes off as less threatening than the Thing or the Old Ones from In the Mouth of Madness. But like most Carpenter movies, the story moves along at a nice pace (slow but never boring), he manages to come up with some original twists on a story that's been done before (I particularly liked the characters hearing radio transmissions from the future in their dreams, warning them of Satan's takeover), and the music is terrific.

By the way, according to this movie, when Satan takes over the world, he's going to turn you into a zombie and make you pee out your mouth and into the mouths of other people. That guy's messed up.

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (2008)

"He invented his own genre, really."

This movie does what a good documentary about a famous writer should do. It tells H. P. Lovecraft's life story in an unbiased way, not shying away from his flaws (it tackles his racism head on). It shows how his work sprang from the circumstances of his upbringing. It shows exactly what was so good about his work, why he ever got famous in the first place. It shows the impact of his work in his own time and how it affects the world today (to give you just a partial list, he's influenced Stephen King, Metallica, and movies ranging from Alien, The Thing, Evil Dead, and Halloween to Ghostbusters, Hellboy, and even Pirates of the Caribbean). And it manages to be entertaining instead of feeling like a day at school.

It never feels too serious, allowing some humor to creep in (like when Guillermo del Toro describes Lovecraft as "a guy that definitely did not get laid much"), but it still feels professional. The interviews (with people like Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi, as well as del Toro, John Carpenter, and Stuart Gordon, directors who have made films either officially based on Lovecraft's writing or heavily inspired by it) are great, as is the narration of Lovecraft quotes and story excerpts, and we see many beautiful paintings that artists have made based on the stories. It gets a little cheesy at times, like when pianos and violins start playing when the subject of Lovecraft's death comes up, but that's a minor complaint.

Anyone who's never read Lovecraft but wants to should go buy a collection of his stories (I would recommend the Library of America edition titled H. P. Lovecraft: Tales), but not before watching this movie (it's on YouTube). In addition to everything else that's good about it, it points you in the direction of the stories that are Lovecraft's best.

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

I knew almost nothing about the Quatermass series before watching this movie. I knew that it was in the science fiction genre, that there were several TV serials and movies, and that critics have described it as an influence on a lot of later movies. I decided to watch one of the movies instead of one of the serials, because I figured that cramming all the plot of a serial into a single film would make things more exciting. Instead, I was left wondering how the hell a serial ever got by with such a lack of plot. Quatermass and the Pit is insufferably boring at 97 minutes, so I don't even want to think about what it's like to watch the six 35-minute episodes of the serial.

After 40 minutes, all I knew was that a ship was found buried under the London subway, and a professor named Quatermass was called in to help the military determine what it is. After 80 minutes, I knew what was in the ship and why it posed a potential threat, but all I got in the way of drama was the professor telling people to stay away from it but they thought his theories were crazy and wouldn't listen to him. The plot finally kicks in, when there are 15 minutes left in the running time, but the threat is dispatched with ridiculous ease almost the moment it makes itself known.

I wouldn't mind this glacial pace so much if any of the wasted time had been spent on characterization, but at no point in this movie is it ever apparent why anyone thought the Quatermass character was interesting enough to give him a single movie, let alone three movies and a bunch of TV serials. I wouldn't be able to describe any of the characters in this movie without telling you what they look like. The actors are good and the film is well directed, but there's no engine in this car. I can go without characterization if there's plot and I can go without plot if there's characterization, but I can't go without both of them. This barely even qualifies as a movie.

The Raven (1963)

"That's a fine boy. Does he favor his mother?"

"She favors him."

Ha. Incest jokes!

When this movie opens, it seems like it'll be a pretty straightforward adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's poem. A raven taps at the window of Vincent Price's den, and he lets it in. He's been mourning his dead wife lately, and he asks the raven if he'll ever see her again. But then the raven sets the tone by opening its beak and saying, "How the hell should I know? What am I, a fortune teller?"

Screwball comedies from the 1960s aren't usually my cup of tea, but I've enjoyed the ones from Roger Corman for the most part. I say "for the most part" because Creature from the Haunted Sea sucks monkey a**hole, but I can count myself as a fan of A Bucket of Blood, The Little Shop of Horrors, and now The Raven. Corman's style in these films is similar to Airplane! in that he throws every joke at the wall to see what sticks, and plays it completely straight. Of course, it all depends on the actors, and Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff are excellent.

I feel like crap today and don't feel like writing anything more, but there's nothing much to write about. If you know what Vincent Price movies are like and you enjoy them, you'll enjoy this one. I'll end this with a great quote from the movie's Wikipedia article: "It is also remembered as a film that introduced Jack Nicholson: he later stated that he liked working on the film, but did not like the title star, the raven. Although the bird was trained, it shat on almost everyone, including Nicholson."

Tales of Terror (1962)

"Pardon me, ladies, but could you spare a coin for a moral cripple?"

What a strange world we live in. Filmmakers have turned Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems into comedies, and yet the Twilight movies have been filmed with the utmost seriousness instead of being played for laughs like they should be. But I'm not going to complain when the Poe comedies are this good. Actually, only part of Tales of Terror is a comedy. It's an anthology of three stories, one comedic and two serious, but the comedy segment is so much better than the serious ones (not to mention much longer) that it overrides them entirely when I think of the film. Peter Lorre is a hilarious drunkard in this segment, and the back and forth between he and Vincent Price is brilliant.

Too bad about the other two segments. Not that they're bad, but the film would have been decent at best and mostly forgettable if the comedy segment had been of the same quality. The actors make them worth watching, particularly Price and Basil Rathbone. Rathbone isn't as lively as he was in the Sherlock Holmes films (he was 70 by this time) but he's still good, and Price is pretty impressive playing against type (and sans mustache) in the first segment. Still, if I ever watch this movie again, I'll probably spend the first segment just waiting for the second, and the third knowing that the film peaked too early.

The Departed (2006)

"She's on her way out."

"We all are. Act accordingly."

The Departed is so good that the thick, phony, exaggerated, unnecessary, and inconsistent Boston accents hardly bother me. It also doesn't bother me much that Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and especially Mark Wahlberg aren't nearly as good as Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, and Ray Winstone, or that Martin Scorsese isn't really breaking any new ground here. (The movie is basically Goodfellas III.) So f**k you, The Departed, for being so good. Now I can't make fun of you on the internet using the sophisticated art form of Helen Keller jokes.

So Helen Keller walks into a bar and

Infernal Affairs (2002)

"I don't know whether he's good or bad. I think only he knows."

It's sad that Infernal Affairs is mostly known today as the movie that The Departed is a remake of, but I guess I should be happy that it's getting any attention at all since it's a better film. Not that The Departed isn't great, but Infernal Affairs beats it in a few areas.

For starters, the actors are better for the most part. Eric Tsang isn't nearly as good as Jack Nicholson, but that's the only exception. Tony Leung and Andy Lau wipe the floor with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, and every other actor except Tsang is superior to his or her American counterpart. Second, there's a much stronger emotional focus in this version, particularly in the "where's the line between good guy and bad guy?" relationship between Leung and Lau, and in the father/son relationship between Leung and Anthony Wong (DiCaprio and Martin Sheen in The Departed).

Third, I simply preferred the way that a lot of the scenes were filmed in this version. The Departed often goes for the loud and obvious, while Infernal Affairs goes for the quiet and subtle. Fourth, The Departed goes on for a bit too long, while Infernal Affairs packs a leaner punch with a shorter running time. And finally, those atrocious Boston accents in The Departed just distract from the characters. All they do is make you constantly aware that you're watching actors acting, while the actors in Infernal Affairs get to embody their characters more fully.

Both are damn good films, but I know which version I'll be recommending over the other in the future.

The Cry of the Owl (1987)

This movie is... I don't know. What's the word?



Right, thanks.

I was hoping to make it through the first week without giving up on a movie, but I turned this one off after about half an hour. I watched and reviewed the 2009 version of The Cry of the Owl for my first Movie a Day topic, and I loved it. Critics said that the 1987 version was better, but they're the same people responsible for the 2009 version's ridiculous 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it's not surprising that they're dead wrong. Maybe the film gets brilliant later, but it's too much of a remote possibility for me to care.

The story is about a young man who spies on a young woman through her windows, and the tables turn when he finds himself being stalked by her. The scene in which she catches him watching her and invites him in for a drink is a good example of the difference in quality between the two films. The actors in the 2009 version are so good that you can watch this scene with the sound turned off and know exactly what's going on, but you would be completely lost in the 1987 version if you took away the subtitles. (The dialogue is in French.) They seem like friends who have known each other for years and are just having a mundane conversation. The movie violates the "show, don't tell" principle by having the actors comment on how odd and confusing the situation is without conveying it at all in their acting.

And it just keeps going like that. The man has to tell us things like "I'm thoroughly unstable" and "I struggle constantly to stay on an even keel," but you'd never know it based on how normal the actor plays him. The actor who plays the female lead seems to have a little more enthusiasm for her role, but the whole thing just comes across as dull. I have my problems with Patricia Highsmith adaptations like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Ripley's Game, but they don't put me to sleep within the first half hour. And needless to say, this movie doesn't come close to matching Highsmith movies like Purple Noon and The American Friend.

From Beyond (1986)

It shouldn't have taken me this long to see From Beyond since I enjoyed Re-Animator so much. It's not a sequel but both movies are based on stories by H. P. Lovecraft and share the same director, producer, writers, composer, and lead actor. Like Re-Animator, it combines a twisted sense of humor with gruesome creature design, but it's not quite as enjoyable, and I can't pinpoint why. Roger Ebert says "it's not trashy enough and it doesn't have the insane tunnel vision of the first movie," but I'm not really satisfied with that explanation. It just seems to be missing that impossible to describe spark of magic that pushes a movie from good to great. It's like Die Hard 2, enjoyable but slightly disappointing compared to what came before. It's worth a watch, for Jeffrey Combs if for no other reason. The guy would be in every one of my movies if I were a director.

And that's Week 1. I almost doubled my quota this time. Recap: In the Mouth of Madness (1994), The Invasion (2007), The Haunted Palace (1963), Prince of Darkness (1987), Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (2008), Quatermass and the Pit (1967), The Raven (1963), Tales of Terror (1962), The Departed (2006), Infernal Affairs (2002), The Cry of the Owl (1987), From Beyond (1986)

Bride of Re-Animator (1990)

Do you know how long it takes me to write these little reviews? Hours. I think the reviews are why I keep getting sick of these topics after a few weeks, not the movies. I've spent the past three hours trying to type up a review for this movie, but it's just not coming together, so I deleted everything.

Here are the basics: It's a comedy horror film. It's the second Re-Animator movie. I had seen the first and third but not this one. It's not as good as the first one but all three are good. The third movie (Beyond Re-Animator) has a rat fighting a severed zombie penis. I'm not sure how that was supposed to fit into the review, but I felt it was important to mention, to establish what kind of tone these movies are going for.

I may stop writing reviews for this topic entirely. It's bad enough that every single day I have to deal with the frustration of being terrible at expressing myself in words when speaking to someone, and of having to read everything five times to understand it due to the learning disorder I have that I suspect is dyslexia, but I was happy knowing that I still had my ability to put my thoughts into writing, no matter how long it took. Now I seem to be losing that.

I'm still not happy with what I've typed here. It seems like I can only get across about 20% of what I mean to. But this time it only took an hour. I guess that's an improvement, but I'm still so frustrated right now that I feel like crying and punching something.

Necronomicon (1993)

Anthology of four stories, loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft's writing. Acting, writing, and effects are good. Does a decent job of the "horror lurking among us that we're not supposed to know about" thing which Lovecraft excelled at, but not the best example. (In the Mouth of Madness is better.) Slightly disappointing that Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Payne don't get to play nutjobs, which is what they're good at.

The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

A lot of H. P. Lovecraft fans call this the best adaptation of his writing, but you won't hear that from me. Most faithful? Sure. Best? Hm. It's very good, but how many people would really rather watch this than Re-Animator or In the Mouth of Madness? It's made in the style of a silent film from the 1920s, and that gimmick is a double edged sword. It's an impressive recreation (though not without flaws: it's too obviously shot on video, and the intertitles disappear far too quickly) but you're always aware of the gimmick, and the experience of watching it is more about the novelty than the story. But like I said, it's good. I had seen it once before, and it stood up on a second viewing. It's just not the triumph that it's often made out to be.

Versus (2000)

Evil Dead + Hard Boiled + The Matrix + Pulp Fiction + Japanese insanity = the most entertaining movie I've seen in a long time. Directed by the guy who did Godzilla: Final Wars, the one where Godzilla uses an armadillo as a soccer ball and the X-Men fight a giant lobster with laser bazookas. The budget is lower here but it's just as crazy and over the top. The characters aren't even given names but the actors give them personality. There's plenty of humor, and it's funnier than any recent comedy I've seen. The action scenes are very well directed and easy to follow despite how frantic they are. This is what Michael Bay movies would be like if he had any talent whatsoever.