TODAY IS

So today is the 30th anniversary of Tim Burton's BATMAN. Arguably, this film opened the door for the prevalence of superheroes to hit the big screen (yeah yeah, Christopher Reeve came first and makes a case for the proliferation but Superman itself got the reboot treatment). At 3 decades, thumbs up and hats off still to an impressive Michael Keaton for proving wrong all the naysayers & detractors (50,000 protest letters had been sent to Warner Bros. and Adam West, ridiculously, felt himself to be a better choice) who said the comic actor could never pull off a sullen, brooding Bruce Wayne, and a dark, tortured caped crusader. A job intensely well done, he did in shutting up his critics. And of course, what hasn't already been said about Jack Nicholson's brilliantly insane Joker? (Robin Williams had lobbied hard for the part). Zany and psychotically overboard, he pretty much stole the whole movie with his outrageous & hilarious performance. To call him the centerpiece of the movie is an understatement. There's something to be said when his bizarre potency as a villain was more gripping than the albeit underplayed but no-nonsense good guy. I just wish the script would have allowed more screen time for him to have shared scenes with Jack Palance. (Nicholson's impersonation of him was great). And how Nicholson didn't win an Oscar (let alone wasn't nominated for his role) to this day remains robbery. You had the sense almost immediately that there was no way Burton was going to trot out a musty, dusty interpretation: the razzle-dazzle striking visuals of the production design and Blade Runner-like sets and Danny Elfman's driving score complimented the at-times sinister, nihilistic, psychologically twisted and even mean-spirited mood (this was no kids pic). This version was an ambitious & successful re-invention which through its affiliation, further predictably kicked off a marketing/merchandising bonanza rife with fastfood tie-ins, product placement, clothing, books, and toy commercials. The first 2 films are the best in the bunch (before Joel Schumacher took over to captain the helm with much weaker, unremarkable, draggy & numbing sfx overkill films) as later on, Kilmer was ok, Clooney was dull as hell, monotone Robin was lame n' uselss, and Batgirl just seemed lost -- both sidekicks regardless of their introductions in the comic -- and the plethora of big name celeb villains (with the lone exception of Danny DeVito's nasty Penguin) bogged down in too much campiness. BATMAN was the first film to earn $100 million in its first 10 days of release and was the highest grossing movie based on a DC comic until 2008 with Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight' starring Christian Bale.

JAYSUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH!



GRABBERS (2012)
Richard Coyle, Ruth Bradley, Lalor Roddy, Russell Tovey, David Pearse, Bronagh Gallagher, Pascal Scott
Directed by Jon Wright
A sailor at sea is on his boat at night. As he swabs the deck, a zooming blue light passes overhead and crashes in the distance. Thinking it's a distress flare and acting as skipper, he and his 2-man crew reach the location. As the fishermen investigate, both shipmates are fatally pulled overboard by a lethal hentai-ish tentacle in the water. Having sent an SOS on the wheelhouse CB radio, the skipper arms himself with an axe but is ambushed by something unseen from above. In the morning, garda (police officer) Lisa Nolan arrives by ferry to Erin Island (off Ireland's West Coast) to meet her new colleague, Ciarán O'Shea, who's coming off one of his regular hangovers. She's on temporary loan from Dublin while the Chief is on 2-week vacation and had flippantly stated 'the town will be dead' with everyone going on holiday. Oh, if only he could know what's in store with that ominous statement... Cynical veteran O'Shea is a grumpy hard drinker who resents his female cohort for being an enthusiastic & dedicated straight arrow which has impressed the bosses. He feels he should naturally be in charge. The tourist island's small rural community is soon abuzz after mutilated whale corpses wash up on shore which are not the work of JAWS but of bloodsucking squiddy aliens. Paddy Barrett, the town wino, survives an attack after first removing one of the creatures from his lobster trap (which he then dumped in his bathtub as a souvenir only to have it get loose, then facehug him like John Hurt in ALIEN before detaching itself, and die from being stomped). Paddy brings the dead creature [which if I'm not mistaken suddenly seems smaller] to the lab of dorky British marine biologist/ecologist Dr. Adam Smith who has the hots for Nolan right away, and determines that Paddy's high blood alcohol level was toxic enough to withstand the "grabber" -- Paddy's dubbed name for it which everyone thinks is dumb -- which needs blood & water to survive.

The creature is also an adult female, and an intrigued Paddy wonders if he can sell the dead remains on eBay. When O'Shea and Nolan check out the house of a woman pulled up a chimney (while her husband was watching NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD right at the part where Johnny utters his famous last words, they then grab Paddy and the trio head to a beach cave. There, they find a nest of eggs buried in the sand and flee a large grabber, the adult male. Back at Dr. Smith's lab, O'Shea survives an attack from the female originally presumed dead but revigorated from a sprinkler. Saved, thanks to the literal brewery saturating his body, O'Shea and his 2 companions stomp the female to death. Startled from the encounter, O'Shea tries to contact the mainland for help but he is dismissed by the Coast Guard, and an approaching massive storm cuts off both communication & help. Further adding to the dangerous grabber threat will be the rain allowing the grabbers to traipse about the island with more ease. Inside a church, he & Nolan have the locals rounded up to take shelter (a "lock-in") at a pub where the tavern attendees from relative safety start to relax when the owner, Brian Maher, dishes out free drinks. Everything seems legit and as O'Shea takes the initiative to stay sober so he can organize the island's protection (and for him this is a big deal to not get stumbling tanked), the remaining inhabitants -- including by-the-book bubbly Nolan who's never been soused in her life -- all get sloshed in mass binging as the downpour hits. With the Stout & ale flowing-a-plenty and the beer goggles chugging on in the piss-up, Nolan confesses in their patrol SUV that she came to the island to breakaway from her sister who got all the family attention, and although yin & yang opposites, she tells O'Shea she is attracted to him inspite of rebuffing him earlier while he was shitfaced when putting the moves on her.

When Una the raunchy pub landlady (alongside bar patrons all citing Nolan's prettiness) tried to hook up both gardas, Nolan wasn't having any of it but as she now makes a pass at him, in a class act he skips the opportunity to take advantage of her. He also reveals that the reason for personally drowning in alcoholism from heavy benders is due to his wife having run off with another bloke. Una incidentally is also Brian's wife and under the impression that all the patrons are there to celebrate her birthday. If only. When the creatures gather from the wetness increasing their activity, little sluggy newborn grabbers unsuccessfully swarm a physician named Jim who is outside urinating. He's briefly rescued by the 2 gardas only to be killed by the male which also destroys the patrol vehicle, forcing the duo inside the pub. Dr. Smith attempts to take a picture of the male and believes being fueled up on booze will make him resistant to being dinner, but he is swatted into the air, clear across the horizon and killed. With the taps run dry and kegs outside, the assembled group take cover upstairs (as the pub also serves as a hotel) as the maggoty baby grabbers burst in. A wasted Nolan in her giggly blotto state, inadvertently causes panic for revealing the danger everyone is in, while invalidatingly saying they are all fine. As the gardas devise a means of escape, Nolan accidentally torches the pub while fighting off the male. In the ensuing flames, she and her partner distract it from attacking the upstairs and it proceeds to follow them both as they take off in Brian's pickup truck to a nearby quarry. Figuring they can destroy this big ugly rolling sack of sushi once n' for all, their plan is to use a construction digger to hold the grabber off ground and leave it exposed to the sun where it will die from dehydration. Murphy's Law has other plans for their trap and the male shows up. Nolan uses a bulldozer where quite unexpectedly for her, she angrily calls it a cunt(!) and pins it to the bottom of a gravel pit.

With its flurry of fleshy multi-limbs, the creature grabs O'Shea by the waist and pulls him towards its maw but he drops a bottle of Paddy's homemade liquor into its mouth. The highly potent moonshine repels the grabber which lets him go. Nolan uses a flare gun to set off an explosion of oil barrels and the male is killed in the blast. With the storm clearing up, both gardas walk back to town in the morning and kiss, with a new O'Shea having thrown his flask away. Goodbye swigging and hello sobriety. Unbeknownst to all on Erin Isle is the extent of spawning & multiplying by the parent creatures that took place, and we close to the hatching of more little bastard grabber eggs on the shoreline. GRABBERS is a funny sci-fi horror comedy whose grippy, entertaining B-movie irreverence is a happy marriage of The Cornetto Trilogy, THE BLOB, ATTACK THE BLOCK, SLITHER, CRITTERS, GREMLINS, a less-refined but more energetic Kang and Kodos, and quite blatantly Ireland's version of TREMORS. And for all the abundant references, still manages to find its own distinct niche and avoid being a premature ripoff even as its tone also plays like a slick hidden tribute to the many 1950's drive-in sci-fi classics (and turkeys) that featured interstellar behemoths and deformed oversized gargantuans. And theme wise, there's a clever winking role reversal here in regards to the belligerent outer space aliens of old: As alcohol is the Achilles heel to the vulnerable grabbers and proves their undoing, this is infact a twist on INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN (1957) wherein the bulbous-headed & bug-eyed 'little green men' of that picture used retractable needle fingernails to inject people with pure alcohol so humans could die from blood poisoning. [The movie was remade in 1965 as THE EYE CREATURES and in both low-budget versions, the aliens die from the bright glare of car headlights].

Besides the heavily played-up shameless stereotype of getting rip-roaringly plastered, also on display is a longstanding separate UK tradeoff: the common Irish are seen as talkative and relaxed though quickly prone to excitement and colorful profanity, while the stuffy egghead Brit is a stiff-upper-lipped and privileged elite. [No doubt any Scots would have been volatile countrymen with parallel inebrious consumption matched by their purported tight-fisted penny pinching]. These provincial parochial idiosyncrasies however are all in good jest making satiric fun of cinematic cultural notions regarding compatriots. There is a curious paradox when it comes to international drinking: No nation likes being accused of being a population of perpetually intoxicated and obnoxious slovenly drunkards, but when it comes to bragging rights, that same nation is not immune to taking celebratory pride with copious next rounds in how much they can drink everybody else under the table. For stein and country! Still, nothing is deliberately depicted in an inconsiderate mean-spirited manner to evoke any real offense, so hopefully none is taken. With a mixture of humor & gags from played straight and light hearted to full-on hilarious, the dialogue and character interactions also come off as a cross between Father Ted meeting THE GUARD. As citizens disappear and severed heads turn up, it's interesting to note that there are no guns. And the closest thing to "arms" are a nailgun, a board with a nail in it, a pellet gun with no pellets, a frying pan, and petrol-filled super soakers to act as flamethrowers which are unconventionally lowbrow yet hurriedly improvising for these amateurs as the isolation & tension takes hold. The idea of alien aquatic sea monsters (looking like toothy Lovecraftian Cthulhu octopuses with whiplashing tongues) that are severely allergic to alcohol is perhaps equally akin to the martian invaders from WAR OF THE WORLDS being defeated by bacterial flu (whose immune systems were mortally weakened by sickness).

What could have failed as a stupid, full of slapstick one-joke premise for GRABBERS actually works and has that near-believability component thanks foremost to the great chemistry of the garda duo who predictably put aside their differences. Their forged relationship is the anchor here that verges on quirky rom-com because of the unlikely mismatched pairing, but the affection is genuine and free of being sentimentally sappy. As alcohol is easily positioned as the mighty slam dunk, defense mechanism-champion that saves the day, O'Shea and Nolan are themselves heroic from the situation turned nuts. When both are not generating faint sparks as love interests [whereas 2 men would have made this another "buddy film" about bonding], Nolan is a professional stickler who does initially disagree & disapprove but she's also that stick in the mud who succeeds in winning you over because she's so damn adorable in pulling her weight. And her clumsy fall down a flight of stairs and declaring herself fine is actually one of her finer moments. O'Shea demonstrates how effective and responsible he can be when the urgency calls for it. In addition are endearing commendable performances from the feckin' gobshite residents who embrace being three sheets to the wind; a decent pace albeit a little pedestrian; beautiful quaint scenery (filmed in County Donegal); and slimy CGI monster fx which are very good and detailed [SyFy Channel take note, this is how it's done]. The rainstorm not always convincingly stormy enough, and the relative no-gore zone are the movie's small weaknesses. And speaking of weather and background, filming took place during one of Ireland's worst winters causing regular delays. For whatever external problems, incredibly none of those complications show. In closing, GRABBERS is firmly tongue in cheek and definitely worth raising a couple pints of Guinness to. [Whether or not you stay sober or get blackout hammered is entirely up to you].




RAWHEAD REX (1986)
David Dukes, Ronan Wilmott, Niall Toibin, Kelly Piper, Heinrich von Schellendorf, Niall O'Brien, Cora Lunny, Hugh O'Connor
Directed by George Pavlou
RAWHEAD REX is based on Clive Barker's same-titled short story from the 3rd volume of his 1984 'Books of Blood' anthology. [The story itself is based on a 16th Century English tale called 'Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones' sometimes aka 'Tommy Rawhead' with both renditions meant to frighten children. The mythos also has origins in the Missouri Ozarks, and a foothold in African-American roots]. Howard Hallenbeck is an American photojournalist who has traveled to the small remote countryside village of Rathmorne in Ireland with his wife and 2 kids to research sacred Celtic neolithic sites for his historical book. While he visits the church with permission to photograph in a cemetery, 3 local farmers are trying to raise a large phallic-looking megalith in a field. At its base are engravings but if the writing is some kind of warning that speaks of a curse, it is ignored. When 2 of the men call it a day, the other's on-going labor causes a sudden freak thunderstorm. Thick smoke begins pouring from the ground and gives rise to a jacked-up pagan demigod known as Rawhead Rex. Howard's wife, Elaine, is not enjoying the stay in town. Inspite of her Irish heritage, she's bored of the trip and would rather be shopping in Dublin. Daughter Minty(!) [who was obviously named after a spearmint gum commercial] and son Robbie are restless brats. When Howard stumbles across the murdered farmer, he tells the police who believe the deceased to have been slain in a revenge killing. After Howard first meets the Verger, the curmudgeonly Declan O'Brien, and is then introduced to the friendlier Reverend Coot, Declan experiences strange visions from touching an altar. Later, the son of an arguing couple in a forest, finds an earlier kill by Rawhead. Seen also by the parents, the fearful trio race out of the woods with only Mom & son making it out alive. Later, townsfolk Dennis Nicholson and his pregnant wife Jenny are in their cottage home and disturbed by a racket outside. Rawhed shows up from refuge in a barn, kills Dennis, and drags his body through the forest. As police are called to the Nicholson house, Rawhead stops infront of a trailer park.

Teenager Andy Johnson is getting frisky with his girlfriend and the young lovers head into the woods oblivious to the waiting danger. They are chased by Rawhead whom Howard, during a late-night stroll, later spots in the distance as the creature stands on a hill holding Andy's decapitated head. With Rathmorne's inhabitants panicked over the creature having massacred the trailer park caravan as well, the bumbling police (except for Detective Larkin) are not swayed by Howard's description of a monster on their hands, and Howard suspects that suspicious Declan is the culprit behind the slayings. As Declan grows unstable & hostile, Howard asks to look into the church's parish records which Coot allows to arrange. Following up with Coot, Howard is then told the parish records have been stolen, and has his camera broken by Declan, causing him to hit the road with his family. When their van pulls over so Minty can pee by a tree, her screaming brings both her parents while Robbie stays in the vehicle. Rawhead emerges killing Robbie and drags his eaten body into the forest. A devastated and furious Howard blasts the police for failing to get Rawhead, and he returns to the church seeking revenge where he is drawn to the cryptic stained glass window featuring the image of a faceless victor casting down a devilish creature. He concludes that whatever can kill Rawhead must be hidden on the grounds. When Howard leaves, Coot touches the altar and struggles to succumb to the temptatious visions he undergoes. Rawhead noisily arrives at the church and in the movie's pre-eminent WTF boffo scene, baptizes an insane kneeling Declan with a graveyard golden shower(!) [Hey, if Linda Blair can chunder pea soup and masturbate with a crucifix, hold my beer]... Shocked and disgusted by the sight, Coot flees into the basement as Rawhead trashes the church. Coot finds the missing parish records which feature a blueprint of Rawhead [which fails to explain his presence other than offering a vague ecclesiastical knowledge of his existence] but is found by Declan. The corrupted apostate turned zealot (who steps up in dropping f-bombs) forces Coot upstairs to be sacrificed by Rawhead.

The police arrive at the church ready to gun down the creature but hold off when they see Coot. The police eventually open fire resulting in Rawhead using mind control to hypnotize Inspector Isaac Gissing to douse gasoline around the police cars which he ignites during the shooting, burning all the officers and himself to death. Howard leaves Elaine & daughter to again return to the church where he finds a dying Coot telling him that Rawhead is scared shitless of an object in the altar which stands as the antithesis to evil. He finds Declan burning books, kicks his ass, and uses a candlestick to pry open the altar where he retrieves the weapon -- a holy stone carved as a pregnant woman. In the cemetery, deranged Declan snivels back to Rawhead and tells his angry master of Howard's find. Howard faces off with the creature but uses 'little miss preggo' unsuccessfully, and is tossed aside. Rawhead kills an orgasmic Declan by ripping his throat out as a terrified Elaine watches from having followed her hubby. When Rawhead tries to kill Howard, Elaine picks up the 'bun in the oven' figurine and in the vein of She-Ra, holds it above her head where it activates with a ray of light that beams onto the creature hurting it. It has to be a woman wielding the weapon to trigger its power. The spirit of a woman then materializes from the gravid gizmo along with zapping electric rays that pierce into a bawling Rawhead, knocking him to the ground and severely wounding him as he now endures hair loss, premature aging, and Howard hitting him with a shovel. Fatally ill from the magic laser light show, Rawhead collapses dead and falls back into the ground where he's crushed under broken slabs of tombstone, completely finishing him off. Elaine has dropped the weapon in with the creature and runs to Howard, with hubby & wife making their exit from the cemetery. Farewell once-impending Armageddon. Sometime later, a boy from the trailer park is putting flowers on Andy's grave and when he leaves, Rawhead pushes up in the foreground and roars in quick monstrous return.

Rewatching this over 30yrs later, RAWHEAD REX is not so much a truly terrible movie, as it is just not a very good one at all. The idyllic Irish landscape/ambience on display is made splendid use of, there are some effective scares, and a decent violent gore factor is in tandem with off-screen kills that were treading carefully in the then-surrounding UK controversy over video nasties. But the major negative outweighing the few positives is the lousy cheap monster design of Rawhead in rubber mask & Mad Max suit; played by muscle-bound Schellendorf (aka Heinrich von Bünau) in his only screen performance who was a 19yr old bodybuilder that would make Schwarzenneger proud. [Peter Mayhew aka Chewbacca was first approached for the role but he wanted too much money]. Equally cheesy and embarrassingly bad (and very laughable), the crux of the problem is that Rawhead unfortunately simply doesn't hold up. It was always a given from the short story that his physical form was imposing and unusual. And as a savage brute force of nature who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, he may not be a typical slasher but he's not exactly out of place in the splatter arena either. Almost werewolf-ish, Rawhead looks like a shaved mutant ape on steroids with a near-mohawked mullet; an extended/exposed lower jaw sprouting fangs in fixed puppet expression; retractable fingernails; and has possible strabismus issues. Imagine what the offspring of Rammstein and Gwar would resemble -- a conceived penile demon-baby born out of a nightmarish hair metal hell fused of pyrotechnics and sorcery. That little bugger is an adult Rawhead. And the mind swirls wondering what Rawhead could have been in the hands of Tom Savini, Rick Baker, or Stan Winston. Vicious and fast in unleashing his carnal fury, Rawhead's animalistic killing spree is impressive and he shares a primal similarity with Molasar from THE KEEP: both are ancient pre-Christian hulking beasts that are close to 9-10ft tall; have glowing red eyes; are steeped in folklore superstition; and each ready to slaughter when unintentionally released from centuries of sealed imprisonment after the removal of a confining marker.

But just how unconvincing is Rawhead's description you may ask? Well, consider Barker's own words: He first said, "Basically, I wrote a story about a 10-foot prick which goes on the rampage." After seeing the portrayal, he called it "Miss Piggy in combat fatigues." At his core, Rawhead is a giant peeled & sunburnt walking erect penis with his very name of "rawhead" having a sexual tint standing for over-aggressive male libido that would make Manowar jealous. If we remove all of the masculinity and alpha cock symbolism ["Rex" incidentally being Latin for "king"], Rawhead is reduced to being a Halloween-dressed marauding menace in shredded shag carpet; a cartoonish badass berserker who with better artistic altering, would fit more in a setting of early Iron Maiden album covers. To the annoyance of many, the movie further deviates from the more elaborate short story and wimps out mainly in ditching a lot of religious subtext; moving the locale from London; changing the depiction of Rawhead's look; eliminating Rawhead's larger propensity for butchering children; leaving out Rawhead's inner thoughts explaining his ambivalence towards humanity; tinkering with the Hallenbeck family; and making Rawhead's death different. One exception that proves quite fun is the expansion of wayward Declan's breakdown into a full-blown lunatic disciple. He's hysterically over the top. There's also a curious gender & fertility observation going on here: a purity in the female weapon needed to defeat Rawhead when the whole while, none of Rawhead's victims were women as he has no dominion over them. And in keeping with the era's penchant for gratuitous topless moments, an attractive victim has her clothes flagrantly torn off. Barker would go on to have several of his baroque writings adapted into movies but vehemently and notoriously disowned this flawed film treatment (which was banned in Iceland) citing his hatred due to the improper representation of his screenplay being not just diluted but with plenty of what he envisioned being scrapped altogether. He wasn't even allowed on the set(!)

It was RAWHEAD REX's disappointing dumbed-down compromising, undermined translation, and poor reception that led Barker to have a more adamantly hands-on control in the director's chair when it came to later productions of his work. A remake was slated in the years after but abandoned as his involvement with the HELLRAISER franchise grew. [Oddly enough, Rawhead's leatherwear predates the Cenobites]. I wonder by 1987's PREDATOR, if that movie's creature fx, prosthetic, and costuming department had seen Rawhead and studied firmly what not to get wrong. In total, RAWHEAD REX is actually not unwatchable. If everything previously described makes it sound like a shoddy joke and painful mess, think of it more as a psycho cousin of LEPRECHAUN. It's just the kind of past recollection to pull from the shelf should you feel the need to breakout a dose of something rather peculiar -- especially a long unseen & less-celebrated hokey relic of the 80's that is impossible not to find ridiculous. So yeah, not garden variety but it deserves a revisit after 3 decades, and a recent blu-ray release from Kino with a 4K restoration does give it a sharper enhancement. It's nice to have the visibility looking cleaner than it ever has. Honestly though, while full of shortcomings and a misguided path which lost its way [the 1993 EC Comics graphic novel is more faithful to Barker's original story with an almost sympathetic Rawhead appearing Xenomorph/Slenderman-ish], the movie is not without justification for being an off-the-wall one trick pony hampered by budgetary pitfalls. Nevertheless, we can however particularly cut it some campy popcorn slack because it's still a glimpse from a then-upcoming new author whom Stephen King famously praised as the future of horror. And Barker's prolific output and memorable contributions of far better visceral titles to the genre, both in book & on screen (NIGHTBREED, CANDYMAN, LORD OF ILLUSIONS), were just around the corner. If RAWHEAD REX ever comes up for a reboot, maybe Guillermo Del Toro could give it a go.

IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE



FLATLINERS (1990)
Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, Hope Davis, Joshua Rudoy
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Chicago medical student Nelson Wright is walking along a waterfront and with the sun going down, states in a famous phrase [attributed to Lakota leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull], "Today is a good day to die." He meets up with his friends & fellow classmates -- David, the valiant atheist and most skilled of the students who is praised but suspended for saving a woman's life in the absence of doctors; Rachel, the sensitive introvert who interviews a collection of people about their encounters with dying; Joe, the womanizing Casanova hunk who'll hit on any hot babe with a pulse; and Randy, the bowtied goofy comic relief who's trying to find a title for his memoirs. From Nelson's prompting, the hotshot future practitioners discuss one of life's biggest eternal mystery questions: what happens after death? Nelson introduces his secret tests on controlled near death experiences that take place after-hours in a Campus wing of their University-under-renovation. Scaffolding, plastic tarp and a leaky roof surround the constructed makeshift lab, but the necessary operating table & surgery instruments are at the ready. Nelson is initially scoffed at but under the guise of ambitious academic research, his friends agree to lend a hand, and he subjects himself to being flatlined (having the heartbeat and brainwaves shut down) for 1 minute. Though pronounced clinically "dead", he is resuscitated from a nether region. As crazy as it is, Nelson's extraordinary trial run has worked and at first, he doesn't describe what he saw: an incident in his childhood of bullying a boy named Billy Mahoney because the moment began peacefully innocuous. He is vague in his telling that something has affected him.

The others, except Randy who is the group's voice of reason and acts as a monitor, drop their earlier reservations and decide to undergo their own NDE. Next up is skeptical Joe whose trippy flashback currently reveals his numerous sexual conquests as a Hefner-esque horndog who videotapes women without their awareness or consent. Joe is the Rob Lowe sex tape scandal x 10. David's NDE also recalls the childhood bullying of a black girl named Winnie Hicks which often left her in tears. All 3 men describe a feeling that resonates and soon start having vivid hallucinations as a direct result of their NDE's that become more distressing. An uneasy, pessimistic & neurotic Randy is worried that the risky course they embarked on flirts too close to disaster. Each daring participant grew increasingly competitive in their bidding war one-upmanship of pushing their flatline timeframe to a higher count meaning the tricky method of bringing them back ran higher odds of failure. A shroud of darkness sets in as Nelson gets the shit kicked out of him twice from hockey stick-wielding Billy. Engaged Joe who is soon to be married, is bothered by voyeuristic visions of his trophy girls that nag his conscience and condemn his cheating. David has the tables turned on him from an encounter on the train which sees Winnie mercilessly taunting him with foulmouthed playground verbal abuse. On Halloween night, Rachel is ready for her NDE as David unsuccessfully tries to stop her from partaking. She almost dies for real when a power outage hits leaving her helpless. With her friends freaking out trying to bring her back, she is at first unresponsive to the CPR shocks from the emergency defibrillator paddles but she is revived. Her sad mind-journey voyage was that of her beloved Dad committing suicide when she was little. Devastated & grief-stricken, she always blamed herself.

Nelson, David and Joe share their dismaying NDE stories with severely bruised Nelson's encounters being the most frightening & torturous. A remorseful David sets out to make amends in hopes that his nightmares will stop. Afterwards, Joe's fiancée, Anne, visits his apartment while he's out. She finds his illicit videotapes of homemade bedroom softporn [a forerunner to the sleazy building owner Baldwin would play 3yrs later in SLIVER] and watches selections of the harem. He comes home to find her heartbroken from betrayal and she breaks up with him. With their relationship over, his visions end. Nelson joins David who visits Winnie. Now married with child and having moved on, she still shows a glimpse of fragility. David apologizes for his hurtful behavior and the humiliations she endured. She accepts the apology and thanks him. He leaves heading back to his truck to find Nelson beating the living daylights out of himself in the vehicle with a pickaxe (David is a rock climber) which is infact another thrashing administered by Billy. David interrupts Nelson's attack and both men head home. From their blossoming chemistry, Rachel finds solace with David and they sleep together that night (with Nelson's jealous mutual affection for her forming the love triangle). A stirred up Nelson drags Joe and Randy to a graveyard to reveal he killed Billy after throwing rocks at him while he was cornered up a tree causing him to fall. Nelson leaves upset & alone resulting in David temporarily bailing on Rachel to pick up the stranded duo. Rachel wanders into the bathroom where she has another run-in with her father. He expresses how sorry he is to his daughter for leaving her in the manner he did; having returned from Vietnam addicted to heroin and caught having fatally overdosed.

[In many other hands, let's be honest, Rachel's foray would have been coming to terms with molestation]. Like Joe and David before her, she feels relief from the lifted weight of sorrow. Nelson calls her saying he needs to flatline again to finally free himself of suffering. He also apologizes for enlisting them all in his dangerous & reckless experiment, and for the unpleasant ordeals they each went through. The 3 men reach Nelson first who has been "dead" for a whopping 9 minutes. With Rachel's arrival, the friends frantically try to save him and struggle to bring him back, but this time Nelson's NDE is sacrificial as he puts himself in Billy's place to be the one who dies from the tree fall. Unable to stimulate any activity in Nelson, the friends are prepared to declare him dead -- with the potential of his passing bringing not only expulsion but criminal charges. But Nelson's expiry date is still a long ways off from this mortal coil, and he's not ready to cash in his code blue chips just yet. With a new narrative in Nelson's punishment, Billy has forgiven him bringing an end to Nelson being throttled. As David gives one last CPR shock from the paddles, Nelson is miraculously awakened to the alleviation of his friends, and he whispers, "Today wasn't a good day to die." FLATLINERS is loaded with symbolism. By physically returning to a bystander version of their past to see the youthful wrongs they committed/caused/witnessed, and particularly before balancing previous unresolved harmful actions, these ill at ease manifestations of traumatizing transgressions (which also incorporate the memory & perspective of other victims) would obviously follow them back to present-reality adulthood; returning indeed to haunt.

Flatlining by the foursome became an extreme form of misadventure where unintended consequences from carried burdens that took an alternate physical form, brought serious self-examining repercussions (before any resolution) that required difficult admission of faults; confession; empathy; truthful repentance; and the healing forgiveness of those mistreated to ultimately release both parties from repressed pain. The ego-driven mistake of playing God means paying the price in an unexpected form of martyrdom. Nelson as the maverick ringleader has the rush of an adrenaline junkie. He's a manipulative prick in his desire for fame and could easily be written off as callous but his hesitancy shows he is not entirely without a moral compass, even though he crosses ethical boundaries with his implemented key that attempts to unlock ultimate knowledge. He introduces his group to a project of 'induced demise' with gung ho that pushes the envelope, but the afterlife that waits is not a continuation of existence to explore possible heavenly hereafter in the original sense of his purpose. Instead, it's a landing detached of warmth, and a purgatory represented by a situated troubling moment stuck in an endless loop; a needle in the groove of guilt & regret. With an obsession for decoding the great beyond that intensifies, he's scared and lashes out with tantrums of immaturity but still maintains a tough air of rebellious overconfidence. Nelson bears slight tragic hints of an unhinging Dr. Jekyll and a vain Victor Frankenstein who are fatally penalized for toying with death. As far as his impetuousness fares in the universal mad scientist manual, his creation quickly gets out of hand which worsens into a mess that requires his unhealthy creator self to be rescued.

There are no blissful auras; or tunnels of light; or being outside of their bodies looking downward on themselves; or angels; or Pearly Gates; or reunions with deceased loved ones welcoming the group to the 'other side' with open arms. The friends have entered a dimensional door which is very familiar but changes them through an unsettling revelation of personal baggage in the background. They confront uncomfortable secrets where the buried old ghosts of each can only be pacified by an atoning restitution. With accusations of Gen X cynicism, sophomoric sermonizing for grand answers with arrogant audacity, and opinionated pretentious pop psychology [c'mon, this was the beginning of the ranting-slacker 90's], FLATLINERS is a cautionary tale with decorative flair. Its spooky gothic edge, palette of neon color lighting, and shadowy gargoyled architecture borrows from BLADE RUNNER, and takes an intriguing concept of 'life flashing before one's eyes' that straddles a middleground of compelling with implausibility. The repetitive course of the friends does sag in the individual occurrences but in the movie's defense, would have been more bloated if Randy was a 5th journeyman. On its surface, what may look like a thin story threaded with thick melodramatic ponderings and tense peril, is not outright aimless in its logic but rather offers a consideration on the nature of sin, responsibility & redemption. Without being incredibly profound, and with some lazy writing culminating in a textbook ending that is hurried & tacked on, the movie regardless brings heavier messages about catharsis & closure. Bolstered by stylish atmospheric production design and a strong talented cast of Brat Pack-ish rising stars, what's delivered here is also one of the decade's first entries in suspenseful psychological thrillers, alongside JACOB'S LADDER, with some toes dipping in paranormal/supernatural sci-fi.

Sutherland clearly steals the movie and Roberts has the least to do among the friends. Her episode is the weakest which is unusual considering her high profile from PRETTY WOMAN could've/should've easily brought her installment more showcase. [Both stars announced their engagement shortly after FLATLINERS' premiere and set their wedding for the following summer. They became tabloid fodder when the groom was stood up at the altar by the bride who ran off with Jason Patric -- Sutherland's castmate in THE LOST BOYS. Sutherland's drinking and alleged affair with a go-go dancer was said to have ended their relationship. When Sutherland was set to host SNL a few months later, Roberts got wind of her ex's planned opening monologue about being ditched that took potshots at her and begged him not to do the routine. He ignored her and did so anyway to huge laughs. Sutherland would reteam with Bacon 2yrs later in A FEW GOOD MEN, and reteam with Platt 6yrs later in A TIME TO KILL]. Perhaps forgotten is that FLATLINERS was a box office hit, and received a 1991 Oscar nomination for Best Sound Editing. [It lost to THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER which featured Baldwin's brother, Alec]. Had this movie not been pre-BATMAN Schumacher's [Sutherland incidentally is in 5 of the directors films], I'd love to have seen David Cronenberg at the helm. As for FLATLINERS (2017)? Sutherland has a starring role and claimed the new version, while geared for millennials and widely panned as overt self-indulgent posturing more akin to TV's Grey's Anatomy, was not a remake but a sequel. Despite being a different character (named Barry Wolfson) in a city unidentified (hello Toronto), and with no reference whatsoever to the 1990 events [except for a deleted scene near the end that was cut, and meant as a homage for older audiences], Sutherland added that his playing of a professor/Chief of Staff at a Med School University is actually Nelson who has just changed his name and moved on from his earlier tampering misdeeds.




SOULTAKER (1990)
Joe Estevez, Robert Z'Dar, Vivian Schilling, Gregg Thomsen, David 'Shark' Fralick, David Fawcett, Jean Reiner, Chuck Williams
Directed by Michael Rissi
A man dressed in black (except for his silver-tipped cowboy boots, and no it's not Johnny Cash) enters the hospital room of an elderly man. The visitor is a grim reaper who extracts the soul of the patient who expires. Just as he arrived, he leaves unseen. 'The Man' next appears with another reaper who happens to be his boss, the Angel of Death. Both men walk along a road headed towards a town Summerfest picnic in which Zack Taylor (no, not the 12th President of the USA) has met up with his ex-girlfriend, Natalie McMillan. The duo still have feelings for each other and are joined by friends, wayward Brad [a near-sociopath who's channeling Chicago Bears QB Jim McMahon, and no doubt wears his sunglasses at night] and bro-dude Tommy. Bossman singles out the foursome (and Brad's bimbo girlfriend named Candice) to be 'taken' by his reaper. Grimmy has a special interest in Natalie as she is the spitting image of his lover during the Civil War. Natalie has the disdain of Brad who thinks she's a golddigging rich bitch (hmm, jealous because he can't get into her pants?); disapproval from her father the Mayor who thinks Zack is a loser; and the bad luck of having been ditched by her friend Karen who she came with when Karen splits with her boyfriend. After the festivities, she catches a ride with Zack in Brad's car. Brad's dangerous joyriding is sponsored by having snorted coke and downing a bottle of Jack Daniels, and as he picks up speed, the reaper waits at a far off dead end where he causes the car to swerve & slam fatally into a tree. All except Candice awake unharmed in a forest at nightfall thinking they've been ejected from the car, but unbeknownst to them (at first) is that they were killed in the crash and are now disembodied spirits in the waking world.

The reaper is at the car where he extracts the soul of Candice among the mangled bodies of the foursome still in the vehicle. Unable to 'take' Brad, he tells Bossman that the foursome are 'displaced' and is ordered to retrieve them. The group return to the car where paramedics have since taken them to a hospital. Brad's big ziplock bag of hidden coke has been found as the reason for the accident, and a detective is curious as to why the front passenger door is open believing it was unlikely to have happened upon impact. When the friends unsuccessfully try flagging down a police car returning to town, the reaper shows himself, attacks Brad, and extracts his soul resulting in Brad dying for real in the ambulance. Zack, Natalie, and Tommy have fled and run into a convenience store asking the cashier for help from a killer on the loose chasing them. They are still unaware that they can't be seen or heard and believe they are being rudely ignored as the employee prattles on to his girlfriend on the phone, thumbs through a porn mag, and empties a coin jar into his pocket. The trio then see a TV news report about their narcotic-involved crash leading an angry Natalie to argue with Zack thinking he's a drug dealer. They are further confused when hearing they are all at the hospital in comas. Outside, after Zack makes a 911 call from a payphone resulting in the operator hanging up, Natalie runs towards a tow truck hauling away their wrecked car and is grabbed by the reaper when it blows past. But his memories of a past life from her striking resemblance cause him to halt 'taking' her, and she is scooped up by Zack as they both run away.

The reaper follows Tommy who has run back into the store as Bossman pops in to reprimand his reaper for not getting Natalie when he had her in his clutches. Tommy tries to offer the reaper money but he ends up paying a different price at the cost of his life. The cashier is arrested by a cop answering the store alarm who mistakes the employee as a robber picking up the cash. As Zack and Natalie run back into town, the reaper is right behind them and both make it to Natalie's mansion house. Her mother can see them(!) and is told about the reaper having killed Brad; is asked for a gun by Zack; speaks on the phone requesting help for the duo when Zack once again can't get through to the receiver; and draws a bath for her daughter. Meanwhile the arresting cop tells the detective about the cashier who blames ghost activity, with the detective again suspicious wondering who set off the store alarm. As Zack and Natalie make nice, she heads upstairs where she hears strange footsteps and rests on her bed which brings dreams of the nights events, and a POV of an oxygen mask being attached while in an ambulance. Zack watches TV and wanders through the house where the pet dog in the kitchen, who can't see him, growls & barks at his presence in DEV (dog's eye view)! A sleeping Natalie is watched over by her mother and told to forget about dating Zack again. Annoyed, she undresses in the bathroom where she is spied on from behind the door. Zack watches a news conference of the Mayor announcing that due to brain death, Natalie's life support systems will be disconnected at midnight. Zack is startled when Natalie's distraught mother then appears on screen by her husband and at the same time, creepy Mom in the bathroom morphs into the reaper causing Natalie to scream.

Flashback memories reveal the reaper was betrayed by his lover whom he shot dead after she was found in bed with another man. Seeing Natalie as a reincarnation substitute, he offers her eternal life to stay at his side. Zack races upstairs to the bathroom and clocks the reaper with a golf club while Natalie flees. She returns with a shotgun from the attic to find Zack being held by the throat in midair, and refusing the reaper's offer again, shoots him to no effect. The reaper throws Zack through a window whose fall also has no effect. Outside, the duo run from the house to a bus stop where Zack tells her of her condition in the hospital, and why no one can see or hear them. Desperate to get back into their bodies, Natalie's parents and Zack's Dad meanwhile are numb in the waiting room with Mr. Mayor dishing out a healthy portion of snobbery, but losing his snootiness as they have to face signing 'pull the plug' release forms. At the hospital, with less than 15 minutes counting down to the permanent exit, Natalie is trapped on an elevator by the reaper (who morphed from a young orderly humorously bumping reggae on his walkman headphones). He tells her they are headed to a 7th floor (seeing as the hospital only has 6) which is an afterlife, and that he is an angel who takes souls for a better world but Natalie wants off of his ride. As Zack feverishly rushes to her (and is freaked out while also passing deceased Tommy's room), with 6 minutes left, he reaches the 6th floor and spends another 3 minutes yelling for her(!) He meets Brad who is now also a black-clad raincoated reaper but more an underling. And still a jerk although a little remorseful. Brad makes a witty Led Zeppelin reference of no such thing as a stairway to heaven and extracts the soul of an elderly woman.

Natalie with the reaper watches her parents stand sad vigil over her bedside as they prepare to sign the release papers. When she begs for them stop, her mother senses hearing her daughter's cries but the reaper who is determined to rekindle his old flame (I suppose at heart, he's really lonely), convinces her that Zack is dead and she'll be forever safe in his realm as there is nothing more in the current to cling to. As her resistance fades she joins Grimmy back to the elevator to cross the sinister uncelestial bridge. Brad tells Zack that those who kill people, even unintentionally, must serve the Angel of Death as penance. [Wow, a continuous cycle of killing in the infinite yonder. Sounds like virtual ecstasy for every serial/mass murderer wishing to come back from the grave but I digress]... With 1 minute left, Brad brings Zack onto the elevator where Natalie runs back to him, with Brad helping by preventing the reaper from separating the duo. Now midnight, Zack and Natalie make it back to her room where she enters herself, and Zack (finding that a pendant in her hand acted as a source of protection) extracts her soul. With the reaper coming for her, Zack sprints through the halls having denied him his main prize. As the reaper fails to claim Natalie, he follows Zack up stairwells to a boiler room. At 2 minutes past midnight [the hands that threaten doom♪] he drops the pendant which the reaper finds, giving chase to Zack onto the hospital roof. Remembering his being slingshotted from the bathroom window and no longer subject to pain, Zack jumps off the building and again survives where he dashes back to his own room. Shocked by his plummet, the reaper is met by Bossman who tells him that by violating the precious time necessary in his failure to snatch the duo, he must now face lethal punishment.

Now 3 minutes past midnight, Zack enters his body and awakens from bed with a doctor and nurse trying to calm his agitated state. He staggers back to Natalie's room and tries to bring her back by restoration, while the pleas of the reaper to the Angel of Death fall on deaf ears as Grimmy himself is mercilessly extracted by full disintegration. Natalie has flatlined but revives to the happiness of Zack and her parents. Sometime later with the duo recovered, Zack visits Natalie in her room as she's set for discharge, and he is on good terms with her father who thanks him for saving his daughter's life. He then shows her his surprise: his fixed up navy blue 1956 Chevy. Saying she feels they've been given a second chance and asking what happens if the reaper returns, he replies no worries as they'll hook up in paradise. They kiss and drive off. SOULTAKER looks like a straight-to-video release but opened in theatres to what I'm guessing must have been a very short run. Set to the close of the acid-washed 1980's, it's a bomb plagued with uneven wooden acting; stiff dialogue; a wobbly storyline; plenty of out-of-synch emotional beats; a syrupy glaze of clichéd 'love-meant-to-be-together' (he's a poor Romeo mechanic from the wrong side of the tracks, and she's a jittery Juliet socialite from a wealthy family); a clumsy climax that falls apart in a whirlwind of rubbish; and grade-Z sfx. Its silly micro-budget fantasy is a feast of ineptitude that will have you laughing & nitpicking from the get-go, and is best remembered for being bashed on a 1999 episode of MST3K with Schilling -- who plays Natalie and wrote the screenplay -- said to have been irritated when she was mockingly compared to Tonya Harding.

The movie is along the lines of CARNIVAL OF SOULS and Schilling based her script on a real 1986 car accident involving her and a friend. While definitely not as spooky or arthouse (but with lots of the same meandering drifting more than morality tale) and merged with hospital horror, its poor man's lineage shares the eerie plane of protagonists with a footstep in 2 existences. And stuck in a crossover limbo where the thin tether between each is wavering, this gap of twilight atleast doesn't sparkle. With better writing, solid actors and real scares, this could have been FINAL DESTINATION a decade before that franchise began. [If we're talking supplementary romantic angle alone, SOULTAKER also has a veiled semblance to the German films WINGS OF DESIRE; its sequel FARAWAY, SO CLOSE; and the American remake of WOD -- CITY OF ANGELS]. Whereas religion, theology & philosophy for centuries haven't proven what happens when we kick the bucket [the debate lies with individual/collective interpretations based on spiritual faith which is an argument for another time], the Angel of Death and the reaper in SOULTAKER know the score from whom there is no escape. When our time is up, that's it. And no bargaining, negotiating, compromising, or pleading will get us off the hook. When the 2 pale riders show up, you are an absolute goner in the time/space capsule they operate [a mystifying cosmic order which is never properly explained]. Earthly elimination isn't even about malice: it's just a cold rule following a monotone exactitude that seems ruthless because it's relentless & irreversible. The extracting of souls collected in the palm from black rings that glow green are a super streamlined equivalent of ultra low-tech gizmos that you can imagine would be used by any 1990's two-bit generic presentation of an upgraded Horseman of Death.

As the subordinate reaper, Estevez who looks & sounds chillingly like his more famous brother, Martin, was originally asked to play the Mayor and with his darkened eyes and intense piercing glare that could laserburn through brick, he takes his role and runs with it. Square-faced Z'Dar [from a genetic disorder known as cherubism] is instantly recognizable as MANIAC COP. His voice is electronically altered and he sports bad blonde hair which he playfully insisted in the years afterwards was not a wig. He passed away at 64 on March 30, 2015 from cardiac arrest. Surprisingly, the movie won the 1991 Saturn Award [Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films] for Best Home Video Release which in fairness is understandable if you take extra exterior concepts of metaphysical boogeymen death-merchant agents; parallel universes; OBE's (out of body experiences) trapped in harrowing gloom; embodiments of almost hypnotic immortality; and dream-drenched divinity (albeit ominous) bleeding into reality. So yeah, wonders never cease but gold statue accolade aside, SOULTAKER at worst is a mundane limburger-stenched plodding clunker, and at best is amatuerish subpar mediocrity far more downright tepid than anywhere near remotely terrifying. For all its rough margins, flawed continuity hiccups, and skewering reviews of being nonsensical, the movie does have its fans from Variety and Billboard magazine to Joe Bob Briggs. Apparently, a sequel was planned with James Earl Jones, Donald Sutherland, Faye Dunaway and William Shatner(!) but production fell through and was never made. Schilling however, was unwilling to abandon the idea and kept the premise for her 2002 novel, 'Quietus'.

WATCH OUT BOY, SHE'LL CHEW YOU UP



THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM (1988)
Hugh Grant, Amanda Donohoe, Peter Capaldi, Catherine Oxenberg, Sammi Davis, Paul Brooke, Stratford Johns
Directed by Ken Russell
Loosely based on both Bram Stoker's 1911 same-titled novel (written as he was dying from untreated syphilis), and allegedly made in part as a tribute to Oscar Wilde, THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM also recalls the legend of the Lambton Worm from County Durham in North East England. [As the area's most famous Anglo-Saxon folklore, the tale took place around the River Wear involving Estate heir, John Lambton, who skipped church one day to go fishing and was ominously scolded by an old man (or witch) for not attending Sunday service. In various versions, Lambton caught an eel/snake-like creature with 9 holes on each side of its salamander-ish head, and after declaring he caught the Devil (which was presumably a punishment), then threw it down a well. Having grown up, he joined the Crusades and forgot about the creature which grew to become gigantic and poisonous, (and in some tellings is a dragon). The worm developed a voracious appetite for livestock, and wrapped itself around a local hill. With the villagers terrorized, and small children disappearing, John's father (Lord Lambton) attempted to pacify the serpent by bringing it daily offerings of milk. When villagers and knights tried to kill the worm, they all failed, and whenever the worm got pissed, it pulled up trees and swung them like clubs(!) John returned from the Crusades after 7yrs of war to find his estate nearly impoverished, and he sought the advice of a wise woman (or witch) before going after the worm. She told him to fight the creature in the River Wear as it was now wrapped around a huge rock, to cover his armour in spearheads, and after slaying the worm to then kill the first living thing he sees otherwise his family would be cursed for 9 generations and unable to die in their beds. John arranged with his father that once the worm was dead, he'd blow his hunting horn 3 times as a signal for his favourite hound to be released so he could kill the dog. John killed the worm and blew his horn, but Dad forgot to unleash the hound and instead ran out to congratulate his son. John couldn't eliminate his father and so sacrificed the dog but it was too late, and the curse took hold].

Scottish archaeology student, Angus Flint, is part of an excavation dig of a convent in the pastoral Derbyshire countryside. While there, he stays at the Mercy Farm Bed & Breakfast run by the innkeeper sisters, Mary & Eve Trent. Amongst artifacts at the field site's ruins, an excited Flint finds a strange fossil; an elongated giant skull of unknown species (dinosaur? reptilian?), and believes it to be linked to a local legend of a snake creature known as the d'Ampton Wyrm which was killed in the Stonerich Cavern by the famed medieval John d'Ampton whose descendant happens to be a current Manor Lord and Eve's boyfriend, James d'Ampton. After an annual party that night at James' castle with music by an Irish hoedown trio (with a touch of The Pogues), and line dancing involving costume play, tomboyish Mary and Angus get cosy during their walk back to the B&B and she becomes unsettled when a mysterious car drives past. They find Constable Erny waiting with a pocket watch that was found in Stonerich Cavern which raises suspicions when it is revealed that the watch belonged to the father of the Trent sisters. A year earlier after Dad went spelunking, both parents (Joe & Dorothy) of the girls went missing in a grove near Temple House, the grand stately home of the sexy, sultry, slinky n' kinky Lady Sylvia Marsh. The police are planning a new search for Mom and Dad, and Mary mentions the car to Erny who says he'll check it out on his way back to the precinct. Having returned from winter absence and with her friendly & seductive charms, Ms. Marsh is actually an immortal priestess who worships the ancient snake God, Dionin, which can take shape in human form. She steals the unusual skull, and as she's done with a long line of lovers, lunges into victims (such as the visiting Erny) who either "turn" in hypnotic paralysis or succumb to endless screaming as they meet their eventual fate when dragged down into a deep pit to be consumed by something sinister.

When Angus and Mary return to the B&B from a resumed police search of the Trent parents, they find James consoling a distraught & confused Eve who is recovering from a terrifying vivid nightmare and ranting about a huge white serpent. James pays Ms. Marsh a visit to which she exhibits eccentric and bizarre behaviour as she flirts with him. They speak in double entendres over brandy, he asks to see her again and they kiss. Back home and after calling Mary to make sure Eve is resting, he falls asleep during a silent movie and dreams he disappears into a painting that features hermaphrodites. A now convinced James gathers reluctant Angus (who continues researching the legend's origins, sure they are rooted in fact) and the Trents to go searching for clues, saying he believes the worm of legend survived being fatally bisected and continues to roam. He has predicted that the giant worm is lurking about and passing through underground caves connecting Stonerich to Temple House, and that the found pocket watch is the result of Mr. Trent having been swallowed. The trio are alarmed with an upset Eve leaving to return to the B&B. On her way back she is abducted by Ms. Marsh who has literally popped out of a tree (in the vein of Eve from scripture offering forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden) using the ruse of trying to rescue a kitten. Taken to Temple House, Eve trembles throughout as she is disrobed to her skivvies while Ms. Marsh talks about reincarnation of the two of them having met before as nuns. When James, Mary and Angus learn of Eve's kidnapping from a frantic phone call, they make haste to Temple House (with both men wearing kilts to battle the diabolical) where James physically snakecharms a gyrating Ms. Marsh out of an oversized wicker basket with a recording of Arabian music(!) Dorothy Trent is found alive and Mary is overjoyed to be reunited but she is bitten on the neck by Mom.

While Angus sucks the poison from the wound, Mary is still freaked by tripping out badly to snake men donning carved penises. Following in the slayer footsteps of his ancestor, James slices Dorothy in half with a large broadsword and clumsily falls into a drum set while a transformed Erny is unleashed where he lures Mary away. A tied-up Eve in Stonerich nears being sacrificed to Dionin, but accompanied with bagpipes, a mongoose that would give Rikki-Tikki-Tavi a run for its money and a hand grenade, James and Flint arrive in time to save her, and destroy Ms. Marsh and the snake creature (which is dispatched rather lazily). In the ensuing rescue however, Angus was attacked & bitten by Ms. Marsh before she died and as the evil might live on, this dooms him to be cursed to continue the nasty subterranean proceedings. Ken Russell's reputation as a controversial and egocentric bonkers director who pushes wild man extremes was still firmly intact due mostly to his notorious THE DEVILS (1971) which fused ample nudity and condemned religion as corrupt, and was heavily denounced by critics as perverse and wretched Christian blasphemy. But here he crafted a cheeky gothic tale coiling with paganism & vampirism, and one playfully akin to a next-generation monster entry in the Hammer family for while it takes place in the present, it has a 1960's bent of above average B-movie, and the female body-ogling is a throwback to the protagonist nymphs of early horror with their heaving cleavage and racy peekaboo nightgowns. Still relative newbie Hugh Grant (in just his 5th role before his jump into stardom) gives us his expected dose of upperclass gentry, aristocratic smugness and reserved snobbish nobility. Bespectacled and floppy-mop-haired Peter Capaldi (25yrs before becoming the 12th Doctor Who) resembles a new wave indie-band musician and appears everready to upstage his fellow actors with a trace of piercing intensity he'd find in future roles (google Malcolm Tucker).

And not to be outdone is sly villainess Amanda Donohoe (who strips down in blue greasepaint and scaly swim cap). She's terrific with impossibly curved fangs that bite below the belt, and wears a cone-shaped, ivory-horned strap-on dildo that is more frightening for the pornographic defilement it conjures in the imagination alone. She seems to be having the time of her life with a catchy enthusiasm that manages to avoid wallowing in total trash. She's outstanding and shines every time she's hamming it up on screen. [Tilda Swinton was first approached for the role of Lady Sylvia but she turned it down]. Along with THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM's slithery humor (and some closeness to THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW, and THE WICKER MAN) is its alignment with archaic curses, talismans, phallic iconography & vaginal symbolism, black magic, orgies, biblical heresy, lesbianism, and Lovecraftian cosmic-type druid deities awakening from dormancy to reclaim and rule the world. Sigmund Freud would have a field day with this stuff. The decadence and delirium is not just witty but also not afraid to poke fun at itself in outrageous parody style: The surreal fantasy sequence of sophisticated James on the Concorde airplane with the cavorting stewardesses who break out into a wrestling catfight (with hiked up skirts and garter belts) looks like it was lifted straight from an MTV hair metal video, while lusty Ms. Marsh (first in garters with a flashy show of leg, and then in black skin-tight thigh-high boots) entices a hitchhiking Boy Scout named Kevin whom she's picked up from the pouring rain. The hint of sex, scrubbing his body in a hot tub, and blowjob innuendo no doubt induced a million teen boy dirty dreams. To see how she was both unintentionally almost undone by a harmonica playing(!), and then interrupted by doorbell while giving a speech as she hoists the stolen skull were each a nice lighthearted use of happy accident.

And when she spit venom at a crucifix on the wall in a viperous hiss, one can literally picture Christopher Lee's Dracula in defiant similar contempt. When Eve later touches the poison cross that triggers a disturbing hallucination of Roman centurions engaged in the rape of Celtic virgins, complete with writhing bodies and hellish cartoon flames all infront of a struggling Jesus(!), this too is reminiscent of the hyper nun violation in THE DEVILS. However crazy Russell has been called for his provocativity and excesses, he's certainly not boring when it comes to delving in oddity. Divisive as he is, THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM is probably his most accessible film for its casual deliberate silliness. [Certainly more marketable and toned down than his ALTERED STATES (1980), and GOTHIC (1986) which each dealt with heavily deep themes of subconscious]. Even when the film itself looks & feels like it's a screwy mind-altering substance at times with bad shots and some clumsy editing, or recalling past 'snake woman' movies like THE SNAKE WOMAN (1961), and THE REPTILE (1966), Russell's campy subtext still brings laughs amidst the disorienting visions stemming from druggish ambience. One can almost picture even Thulsa Doom giving kudos but while his minions were a true powerful cult, Ms. Marsh exemplifies the dying vestiges of a less-than-piddly scattered handful of disorganized fanatics determined and desperate to keep from disappearing forever. And with little blood, THE LAIR OF THE WHITEWORM is extra fun because the small cast and their chemistry is free of non-appealing sideplayers venturing into unnecessary subplots. Every character (including Constable Erny, Peters the butler, and Nurse Gladwell) is presented as an everyday individual in a setting worth delving into for being equally surrounded by amusement that matches the absurdity.




LIFEFORCE (1985)
Steve Railsback, Mathilda May, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gothard, Chris Jagger
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Exploring deep in the outer reaches of space is the space shuttle HMS Churchill, comprised of a joint UK/US crew of astronauts. Inside the dust tail of Halley's Comet which they've intercepted as part of their program, the radar spots an enormous needle-shaped alien spaceship in a hidden gas cloud which a small team then board. After finding hundreds of grotesque frozen bat-like carcasses in the cavernous structure, they are stunned to come across the bodies of 3 nude people (1 female, 2 males) preserved in crystalized glass sleep chambers. Still in their suspended state of hibernation, the trio and one bat are brought back to the Churchill for the return to Earth. On the way home however, radio communication is lost for a month and in the frantic attempt to regain contact, mission control at NASA dispatches the Columbia space shuttle on a rescue mission. The Churchill is found gutted by fire with its charred astronauts dead from the blaze. The 3 sealed caskets with their humanoid occupants are found untouched and are taken by the rescuers for extraterrestrial study. Once back in the London HQ of The European Research Space Centre and just before a planned autopsy, the femalien unexpectedly wakes up and she kills a weak guard (with a kiss) and other staff before escaping the Compound. Enter the arrival of arrogantly calm SAS (British Army 'Special Air Service') Col. Colin Caine who quickly launches a womanhunt to capture her. When the guard's shriveled corpse is medically examined, he too in resurrection administers the same fate to a pathologist, and the witnessing doctors are astonished at the confused guard's fully restored health. One week later over in Texas, a crashed escape pod from the Churchill is located containing Col. Tom Carlsen, an American air force officer who is the sole survivor. Carlsen is sent to London as part of a secret British investigation where he gives his account to baffled scientists and national security of the strange discovery. He explains why the crew was found "drained" and how it was he who set the fire afterwards to stop the alien trio, fearful of what would be in store for mankind if they ever set foot on our planet.

Under hypnosis, Carlsen shares a psychic/telepathic link to the femalien and is able to see through her eyes, as she assumes the host body of a nurse, Ellen Donaldson. This naughty nurse however is seen as a redheaded temptress in green poncho who seduces a man in his car. [Again, British girls hiking up their skirts in a fashion lifted from the school of Benny Hill]. Tracking her movements through visions, this leads Carlsen and Caine to The Thorlstone Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Yorkshire. Along with them is a 3rd colleague, Dr. Hans Fallada who is a thanatologist (one who studies death). Reminiscent of Dr. Van Helsing, Fallada says the trio may be the source of earthly vampire legend. Carlsen and Caine think they trap femalien who has absorbed the body of Dr. Armstrong, the hospital manager, while Ellen is revealed to be strongly into S&M and therefore slapped around without any reservations or protest when interrogated for information. But unbeknownst to the pursuers is that they have been set-up in a trick to lure them out of London. As a drug-injected Dr. Armstrong is transported back to London by helicopter, he dies from a hemorrhaging bloodstream leaving his body which materializes into our girl's form (giving a whole new meaning to bloodclot) who escapes again when she spills into a vomit-burst splash(!) By now, the Capital City has been infected with a catastrophic plague resulting in martial law. The 2 male aliens who rose from their siesta and were earlier thought dead from being shot in a fire fight and hit with grenades, have escaped the Lab Facility disguised as soldiers. The seemingly indestructible duo immediately set about turning the population into rampaging soul-suckers who proliferate the cycle of widespread virus into contagion. The outbreak has caused panic and triggered burning, rioting & chaos throughout the city, and not even the Prime Minister (or his secretary for that matter) is safe. And with the military overwhelmed and government collapsed, NASA seriously considers nuking England as a drastic means of quarantine to save the world.

The accumulated "lifeforces" taken by the 2 males are cerebrally siphoned (acting as conduits) to the femalien, who then funnels the massive gathering of nourishing & rejuvenating energy to their huge spaceship which makes its way pronto to hover in orbit directly above London like a beacon. (In a parallel, this is not unlike the docking of the Russian ship, Demeter, in Bram Stoker's Dracula). Dr. Fallada impales one of the males with an ancient sword of leaded iron, and Carlsen tells Caine that back on the Churchill, he was drawn with desire beyond his control to the femalien while she was in her sleep chamber. She is tracked to St. Paul's Cathedral where in a basement crypt, she lies on top an altar; the weaponized Queen feeding her harvesting alien vessel. After telling a shocked and stripped nude Carlsen that they mentally bumped uglies in space (giving a whole new meaning to the cosmic mile high club), like raging hormoned teenagers they makeout like gangbusters. As Caine kills the other male, horny Carlsen in self sacrifice goes for double penetration by impaling himself to femalien with the über sword but she is only wounded. From a rising energy column still surging and reaching high into the sky like a tentacle (with the scene more than a little borrowed from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), a huge explosion blows the dome off the Cathedral. With the femalien and Carlsen each still embraced together in lover's union, they are beamed on board the craft with the presumption of he now having fully merged with "the feminine in his mind." Caine is left looking upward as the ship ventures back into space towards Halley's Comet. Based on the 1976 novel 'The Space Vampires' by Colin Wilson, some may remember back in the day how LIFEFORCE was quite commonly and most often referred to as "that naked space vampire chick movie." From every video rental recommendation citing the hot babe with hairy bush whose near entire role is almost completely in the buff (and in rampant full frontal), to top shelf publications, it was an alternative title not undeserving as the voluptuous boobie parade remains the most mentioned and taboo feature characteristic that everybody who sees it will recall.

The femalien is a trance-inducing, gliding literal opiate who is first introduced as sleeping beauty, and debilitates helpless victims with lust before they succumb to ghoulish terror. She can shapeshift by bodyjumping, and like her 2 male companions, can transfer consciousness and blast out any obstacle in their path without breaking a sweat. Her specialty is mesmerizing anyone into a kind of erotic fever dream that renders powerlessness in an aura of phantasmagoria(!) The victims from all 3 are physically depleted of the very essence of their spirit that looks like electric blue sparks of static lightning. Such discharge for the unfortunately damned means their fatal emaciation into a mummified husk of a skeletal zombie-vampiric creature who likewise "drain" in order to sustain themselves. An aspiring French ballet dancer, very attractive 20yr old Mathilda May resembled Alyssa Milano and her subsequent filmography often featured nudity (with one 1994 movie called THE TIT AND THE MOON figuring prominently on the namesake breasts). For a young woman with barely any lines in a mainstream picture to saunter about gracefully in complete undress is blunt, bold & brave, and it's no wonder that May, probably overnight, gained a countless legion of male fans. The 2 boys in Hyde Park who hope to witness the femalien in some lesbian action, are highly & smirkingly representative of any hetero guy's mindset (juvenile or mature) instantly transfixed by a gorgeous bombshell confidently walking around in her birthday suit. Remember nubile Natasha Henstridge strutting around in SPECIES? May is clearly her titillating exotic predecessor. As for sullen overacting Railsback, he's made a career in brooding performances as tormented types teetering on the edge of obsession and instability bordering on full madness. At the time of filming he was best known for playing Charles Manson in the 1976 TV miniseries, HELTER SKELTER.

While it failed in the theatres and was despised by critics (Wilson himself called it "a textbook example of how to make a bad movie"), LIFEFORCE actually stands as one of Tobe Hooper's most exciting offerings, and he clearly went to town. The film's nostalgic popularity amongst the vcr crowd's loyal audience can't be denied. It's slight blend of the first ALIEN mixed with some of the QUATERMASS films also incorporates amazing sfx from John Dykstra (best known for his work on STAR WARS) and solid cinematography. At one point an impressive cast of John Gielgud, Klaus Kinski, Olivia Hussey, and George Peppard had all been tapped for parts but all 4 dropped out. Co-written by Dan O'Bannon, and with grandiose music composed by Henry Mancini, the beginning of the movie also has a basis in reality for Halley's Comet (visible every 75-76yrs) was due to return to our solar system as it did in March 1986. LIFEFORCE is slammed for being somewhat incoherent and inconsistent with its swerving mood swings of mystery into mayhem, but the transitioning territorial havoc and climactic frenzy unleashed by the trio who run amuck isn't really that difficult to follow as the unfolding events (and May's every footstep) are just brought in different subgenre styles. While it doesn't sound like it should, everything meshes well. For all the head-scratching weirdness, imperfections or negative complaints of switching narratives being too complicated, this is a straight-up comic book presented in graphically garish and gross-out live action, rife with a fetish for voyeurism. Some reviewers have analyzed that the diseased "draining" is a subversive dreadful metaphor for both homosexuality and the 1980's AIDS epidemic. Ultimately, the picture overall is an alluring & lurid, high-spirited nightmarish romp of a sci-fi horror yarn spilled into sudden apocalyptic invasion. And in total, has more than enough 'go for broke' ingredients to be a very enjoyable crazy yet cool movie.

31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN 2018

"CRY OUT IN FEAR OF THE FUTURE / CRY OUT IN FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN / CRY OUT IN FEAR FOR OUR PLANET/ THAT THE HUMAN RACE CALLS ITS OWN..."
- KREATOR / Fatal Energy

ALL DISQUIET ON THE EUROPEAN FRONT



THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (1921)
Victor Sjöström, Astrid Holm, Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg, Tor Weijden, Einar Axelsson, Concordia Selander
Directed by Victor Sjöström
St. Sylvester's Night (New Years Eve). Sweden. A pious Salvation Army sister named Edit, suffering from consumption (tuberculosis), is on her deathbed and calls for David Holm (played by Sjöström). He however, is in a cemetery with 2 drunken pals and he tells them of his deceased friend Georges, whom recounted to him the legend of how a ghost chariot materializes every year to carry off those who will die near the start of the brand new calendar. The last sinner to die on Dec 31st before the clock strikes 12, becomes the new coachman who carries out the task for the full 365 before the reins are handed over to the next unfortunate doomed soul to fulfill the annual tradition. David is found in the graveyard and told of Edit's last wish to see him but he refuses to visit. When his wino friends try to take him to her, a brawl breaks out and he is accidentally killed when hit on the head with a bottle. As Georges died at the end of the same holiday night the year before, the old friend shows up, hooded and scythe-wielding, in the horse-drawn buggy to collect David, whose spirit rises from his body. David was a happy family man with his wife, Anna, and their 2 kids but Georges was a bad influence, and through flashback we are led through David's vice-ridden past deeds and see how his chronic drinking, and being mean & hateful both corruptingly ruined his life and destroyed his family -- with glimpses of him being thrown in jail for rowdiness, his brother sentenced to prison for drunkenly killing a man, and David returning to an empty poverty-stricken apartment to find his wife & kids gone and swearing revenge to find them. In his search, he arrived at the Salvation Army where he met Edit.

She sewed his filthy torn coat and he promised to come back and see her in a year as a follow-up, but he returned the act of kindness with cruelty by ripping out the stitching for pure spite, of which he took pleasure. Tender but naive Edit sees her mission as that of a savior who makes it their quest to please God. Her supreme task is to succeed in helping David overcome his personal demons. In a strange metaphysical way, her failure to prevent his pathetic self-destruction sees her contracting his same illness from contact alone, almost as a punishment (and thus reducing him, further and lower, to a literal walking disease). Making him keep the promise against his will, Georges takes David in the carriage to see Edit. In another flashback, David is shown at a bar and then a Salvation Army meeting with Edit pleading for him to give up booze but he is callous and unaffected. When Anna later tells her of the worry she has about his love of liquor, Edit plays mini-marriage counselor and the couple do alright for a little while but in no time at all, his inebriation drives her to total despair. Begging him for the sake of the children, she locked him in the kitchen and attempted to take off with the kids for safety, but fainted as he chopped through the door with an axe. When he awoke her with a cup of water, he immediately berated her. Georges enters Edit's room with David in tow. She blames herself for his welfare and family troubles, and seeks his forgiveness. Deeply remorseful for all his wrongdoing and kissing her hand, from this sincerity and having remained hopeful and virtuous to the end, she dies peacefully. Georges tells David that others will collect her, and then shows him that Anna, also afflicted from consumption and having lost the will to carry on, plans on poisoning the children & herself.

David begs Georges to stop her but he has no power over the living. Having regained consciousness in the cemetery, does David have a desperate last act of decency or for that matter, any selflessness left? With innocent lives in the balance, can he heroically prevent a terrible act of tragedy from taking place? Can he ultimately save himself from utter damnation? THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is adapted from Selma Lagerlöf's 1912 novel, 'Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!' (In 1909, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature). With the Swedish name translating as 'The Wagoner' for this silent and spooky fantasy-horror movie, it also went under Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!, The Phantom Chariot, and The Stroke of Midnight. Whatever the titles in trying to capture the genre, at heart is a morality tale of memory and warning, filled with modern issues of domestic abuse, abandonment, depression, misanthropy, alcoholism, addiction, abstinence, and rehabilitation -- all of which help give a sense of timelessness. Alongside his parallel with German directors like F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, this specific Sjöström offering was a watershed moment in early Swedish cinema and so immensely influential on fellow director Ingmar Bergman, that Bergman reportedly said after first seeing it at age 15, that he went on to watch it every New Year's Eve, and had viewed the movie well over 100 times. He died in July 2007, at 89. As well, Bergman's character of 'Death' in his 1957 film, THE SEVENTH SEAL, was inspired by Sjöström's meditative presentation, and he further cast Sjöström in his other 1957 film, THE WILD STRAWBERRIES (which also references THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE). Sjöström (aka Seastrom during his MGM years in the USA) died in January 1960, at 80.

The sfx are a stunning masterpiece of painstaking post-production with double exposures, match cuts, and multiple superimposed layering to create the dazzling ghostly transparency. Whether walking though walls or a great underwater sequence in a swirling sea, the beautifully lit haunting imagery of ethereal supernatural visions were a major, innovatively advanced, sophisticated, and superb technical accomplishment. And complicated as they were, however crude the process may be considered by present standards, to this day they nevertheless appear flawless, convincing, and still rival any current CGI. Without too much dispute, Stanley Kubrick's famous terrorizing axe attack from THE SHINING is an echo (if not an outright & overt rip off) from this picture -- which in turn could also have been Sjöström "borrowing" from a similar hatchet scene he may have seen in 1919's BROKEN BLOSSOMS by D.W. Griffith. The flashback narrative fabric of reviewing David's existence through the error of his ways and the damage he's inflicted recalls (in much bleaker manner) A CHRISTMAS CAROL's Ebenezer Scrooge, and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE's George Bailey (with Georges as both Jacob Marley, and Clarence Oddbody). But David is no mere lovable reprobate and as Death's impending but reluctant new driver, he is told that the weight of each day on earth will feel like 100yrs, and his own painful journey shown through the filter of his somber conscience (feeling like a long funeral procession) is a miserable, wasted existence of selfish obnoxiousness. Glum and guilt-ridden for all the negativity he has wrought as an intoxicated asshole, he faces reckoning before any repentance or reform. And before any atonement, we see all that was anguished and appalling.

Realistically, David certainly deserves to have the extremely unpleasant task of being 'harvesting Grim Reaper' hoisted upon him. The most difficult thing about watching silent movies are having to sit through boredom from tedious storylines, reading from flashcards from start to finish, and the exaggerated silliness of long-outdated, corny melodrama histrionics. Even for the 1920's, films were still in their infancy, rife with rough shortcomings, and there was plenty of drawn-out preaching & lecturing as THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE, too, has it's fair share of Christian overture dwelling on prayer and humility throughout. Redemption is the big theme here, but its sometimes convoluted, and the certainly old-fashioned structure will have many attention spans waning for while an ambitious plot, it's very jumpy and that distraction unfortunately displays some lack of focus. But it's the larger delivery of what is viewed here that definitely more than makes up for the faults (and debatable ending). THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE saw a 1939 French remake, a 1958 Swedish remake, and a 2000 Swedish TV play, THE IMAGE MAKERS (which centers on the meeting of Sjöström and Lagerlöf, their clashing over her wanting to film on location vs. his wanting to use a studio, and the early shooting stages of the movie as they watch scenes). Overall, the 1921 Sjöström version is a splendid gem with even Charlie Chaplin repeatedly giving it his highest praise. And in closing, the movie is a very worthy spectral entry in the non-Hollywood arena of yesteryear -- daunting, often lost fare that is sadly too easily prone to being relegated/reduced to little more than silver screen footnotes. THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is one celluloid chapter in a bygone era that should not be forgotten.




THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920)
Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Hans Lanser-Ludolff, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Directed by Robert Wiene
In the small German mountain village of Holstenwall, a man named Francis is narrating our tale. On a garden bench with an elderly stranger, he speaks of his friend named Alan, and points to his nightgowned fiancée named Jane who passes by in a daze. In flashback, he tells of a madman named Dr. Caligari, a selfish hypnotist (and svengali-like evildoer who can mind control minions, like Dracula) and his zombie-ish sleepwalking henchman, Cesare (a fiendish Frankenstein-like Golem of sorts) who is claimed to have been in a snoozing slumber since birth for 23yrs(!) Caligari has gotten a permit from the boorish town clerk to open a curious carnival exhibit showcasing Cesare, which Francis and Alan attend. Cesare is a mindreader and foreteller of the future, and when awakened to answer questions from the audience, he forecasts Alan's death saying the doomed man will die at dawn. The shocked pair of friends leave but recover after they run into Jane, the daughter of the town physician. Both men are in love with her and are affably competing for her affection. When Alan is found dead in the morning, the baffled police investigating the alarming killing begin wondering if they have a serial killer on their hands (as the town clerk was also found stabbed in his bed), and if the deaths are connected to the arrival of the mysterious & suspicious newcomers. With Caligari running his sideshow tent as ringleader at the local fair, this prompts Francis to spy & snoop on him further, but Caligari with Cesare slyly sidesteps the police who are searching for the culprits responsible.

A recently arrested criminal caught in the act of attempting to knife an old woman, is charged with the 2 murders -- which the miscreant adamantly denies. Caligari orders Cesare to kill Jane, and our proto-Goth goon (with a blend of Mike Myers' Dieter character from SNL's Sprockets) glides into her bedroom where she screams and faints from his attack. Ghoulish but unable to harm Jane due to his attraction to her (as another instance of being spellbound), the pitiful Cesare instead abducts her, making his exit by carrying the poor maiden onto a crooked trail where he is chased by a mob that was alerted by her noise. Putting the unconscious Jane down, Cesare suddenly collapses & drops dead. And from this unsuccessful kidnapping, the townsfolk make their way to Caligari's wagon abode where they find him missing, and a dummy in Cesare's casket/coffin. Caligari returns but manages to escape during the stirred up commotion. Francis hits the nearby insane asylum to dig up possible info on Caligari, and is told by an employee to see the director who it turns out is Caligari. This convinces Francis that Caligari is indeed the murderer, and with the director asleep, the would-be sleuth along with some staff check his office. Scrounging through his books, Francis finds a diary which reveals that Caligari is obsessed with a same-named 18th Century mystic who had a companion -- a hypnotized, submissive servant (also named Cesare who is trapped in telepathic trance). This predecessor perpetrated a killing spree in northern Italian towns.

The director's pages are ravings about how he must become a new Caligari of infamy, as if to absorb himself into a very ideal of power -- not unlike a position he's already abusing. Through Francis exposing the duo's foulness leading to Caligari's unveiling, the police arrive with Cesare's dead body. When Caligari returns to his office, and is confronted with the corpse, the unraveled director has a psychotic break and goes crazy trying to strangle a doctor. He is quickly fitted with a straitjacket and confined to a cell as an inmate in his own institution. But SURPRISE(!), it is Francis who is the real madman relating his story (a fabrication) to us as a mental patient in the asylum courtyard. A quiet Cesare, and Jane are also patients (with Jane believing she is a queen, and who rejects Francis). And the real Caligari is shown as the director who has no sinister bone in his body but rather is a benevolent man whom is attacked by Francis in a screaming outburst. This earns Francis his own straitjacket and cell, with Caligari intent on curing him of the demented delusions that have twisted his brain. As for the real killer? (Perhaps Francis, unable to reconcile his guilt thus concocting a falsehood?) His face was never visible, and we are left open to subjective/metaphorical interpretations that contemplate identity, victimization, jealousy, paranoia, truth and deception. Perhaps the most immediate discussion in talking about THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI is the appearance of its unusual painted backdrops...

...An abstract and bizarre landscape in a theatrical visual style filled with tilted chaotic distortion, twisted sharp points, curves & jagged edges, and diagonal, zigzag & slanting lines galore -- all evidenced in narrow passages, uneven windows & stairs, peculiar furniture, and spiked trees & thorny grass. [It's an impelling misshapen look of exaggerated asymmetry and defied gravity, whose out-of-joint weirdness, revolutionary approach, and captivating dark flair plays like a disturbing dream that has surely inspired Tim Burton]. The film has been shown in dirty yellowish brown, green, and blue tints, and along with its use of light & charcoaled shadow, iris lenses, words representing surrounding voices, and set design, its manner of framework keenly juxtaposes competing stark contrasts of insanity vs. stability, and reality vs. nightmare. The intellectual, philosophical, and psychological academic context of the film has even gone far beyond the analytical discussion of a radical discordant artform, to present scholarly theories that through symbolic teutonic obedience to authority, prevailing disorder, and corruption of the world, what we view in its entirety is a subliminal premonition/precursor/predictor of the tyrannical rise of Nazi fascism 13yrs before Hitler came to power. Arguably the world's genuinely first horror movie, we can quite literally trace the whole trope of a twist-ending, beginning with this famous and foreboding German film alone and with it's pioneering techniques, it is highly notable that this movie also introduces the clever craftsmanship of what are now-familiar premises of bait & switch reversals, red herrings, maguffins, and most specifically: unreliable narrators.

An iconic and incredible foundational landmark of huge historical importance, this quintessential film is a magnificent gold standard recommended BIG time, and is an absolute must-see, seminal classic for both film buffs and first-time enthusiasts. Fractured and still fresh with it's longest running length at 78 minutes, even if you have a strong aversion to silent movies (and especially foreign ones), you should see this atleast once in your life and all the way through. Overall, with its avant-garde expressionism, and early template for all lurking lunatics and villainous stalkers to follow, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI was an experimental and cerebral groundbreaker WAY ahead of it's time that stretches into additional referential subject matter such as modern art, the scarred psyche of post-WWI, the Weimar Republic, repressed memory, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and film noir. And ultimately, the filmmakers couldn't have possibly imagined in their wildest dreams how much their surreal and mesmerizing, creepy creation would clear a trailblazing path to influence later horror for decades & generations afterwards. [It spawned a 1962 20th Century Fox version; a 1989 sex-driven horror comedy sequel; a 1991 rendition (with just music score and no dialogue) that was screened only during the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and never released to cinema, starring Joan Cusack, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Peter Gallagher, and Werner Klemperer; and a 2005 US indie release which is a nearly shot-for-shot remake with sound]. A century on, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI continues to remain a fantastic, engaging, and enduring potent piece of work that brilliantly stands the test of time.