Category Archives: Movies

A Prequel I’d Be Interested in Seeing

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Prequel films are tricky beasts to pull off and make work well. Usually, they are the product of a studio’s endless hunger for more cash and are stuffed with fan service bits that often are needless fixation on minor production details of the original movie. I couldn’t care less about exactly how Han Solo got his distinctive blaster in Star Wars; the pistol is not what made Solo an interesting character.

If it is not trivial details of props or settings, then another issue that faces prequels is that it is difficult to chart the growth of the character. We know who the character is in the original source material, if we give them a dynamic and interesting character arc in the prequel then for much of that prequel’s run time we are not in company of the character we grew to love but rather a different person who became that beloved individual.

There is one cinematic character who if written, produced, and acted well I think would be fascinating to watch as they transform into the one we originally met, William ‘Will’ Munny from 1992’s award-winning film Unforgiven.

Warner Brothers Studios

David Webb Peoples’ script introduces the audience to Will Munny long after his criminal and murdering days are behind him. A widowed pig farmer trying to raise a pair of children following the death of his beloved Claudia from smallpox, Will is pressed back into the role of assassin for reward money posted by sex workers seeking justice after one of their own survives a brutal assault.

Will repeatedly reminds the people he travels with and the audience that he is not the man he used to be. His drunkenness, his cruelty to animals, his wanton and unpredictable violent manner were all ‘cured’ by Claudia. ‘He ain’t like that no more.’ However, when the events of the film finally push Will beyond his new self the old Will Munny, a vicious and sociopathic killer reemerges for the movies climatic finish. A postscript card at the film’s end lets us know that Will once again returned to a peaceful life, the one Claudia brought him into, and not the one of murder and robbery she saved him from.

The prequel I want to see is the story of how Claudia changed Will Munny. The picture drawn of Will in days before her influence both by Will himself and those who knew him is one of such vast violence and bad temper it is hard to imagine the situation that brought Claudia and Will together much less how this apparently loving and peaceful woman induced such a powerful transformation.  I have no idea if Peoples ever worked out any sort of detailed backstory for Will and Claudia but man it fascinates me to no end.

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Movie Review: Siberian Lady Macbeth

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A Polish film from 1962, Siberian Lady Macbeth is an adaptation of the 1865 novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which has been adapted into an opera and films since 1962.

Kino Video

Katarina is an unhappy wife living on a large estate with many serfs, ruled by an overbearing “master” Boris, to whose son she is married. Childless and joyless, with her husband away dealing with some far-flung emergency, Katarina begins an affair with a recently hired serf, Sergei. Katarina and Sergei conspire and murder Boris when he returns so Sergei may become the “master” of the estate. Their idyllic future is threatened by the arrival of distant relatives with a claim on the estate. Burdened by guilt and with suspicion against the couple growing, their relationship frays, leading to the story’s inevitable tragic conclusion.

 

 

Siberian Lady Macbeth is not an adaptation of the classic play but rather takes its title from the central conceit of a woman manipulating the men around her into murder. The story is presented more as a film noir, with characters driven by their base desires and greed into inescapable situations. While this film was produced in Poland, it in many ways adheres to America’s Production Code, both in the depiction of onscreen sexuality and violence and the compelled moralistic ending.

The copy streaming on Kanopy is not restored and displays many scratches and blemishes due to its age but is still quite watchable.

Overall, I am glad to have seen this film, but I can’t say that it ranks very highly among my favorite noirs nor my favored adaptations of Macbeth. There are several shots, particularly of the windswept and foggy estate that serves as the story’s central location, that were reminiscent of 1957’s Throne of Blood, my favorite non-Macbeth adaptation of the tragedy.

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Movie Review: Fantastic Four: First Steps

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After three previous attempts and a merger of studios to bring the film rights back to Marvel Studios, there is yet another shot at bringing the exploits of comics’ first family to the larger-than-life screen. The Fantastic Four is this time titled Fantastic Four: First Steps.

First published in 1961, The Fantastic Four is a quartet of heroes with very public identities and celebrity status in the comic book continuum. Though a popular franchise for over 60 years, the group has struggled to find a successful silver screen adaptation. The filmmakers with this reboot have elected to jettison more conventional approaches for a bold vision.

Marvel Studios

Fantastic Four: First Steps drops the audience into a parallel universe where the family of superheroes are already not only known but honored globally for their exploits and bravery. It is an alternate 1960s, and the production is drenched in retro-futurism—a future that people of the 60s envisioned but never came to pass, colorful and optimistic. The team’s ‘origin’ is quickly recounted as backstory for a television special. How scientist Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), pilot Ben Grimm (Eben Moss-Bachrach), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), and her brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) ventured into space and returned changed, imbued with amazing powers. In addition to eschewing recreating their origin, the filmmakers also steered clear of the team’s most notorious opponent, Dr. Doom. Instead, they are confronted by the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), Herald to the god-like being Galactus (Ralph Ineson), whose insatiable hunger drives him to consume planets teeming with life. Galactus is presented in the film as he was in the source material—a kaiju-sized humanoid in fantastic armor. The Silver Surfer has selected Earth as Galactus’ next victim, and the Fantastic Four attempt to negotiate with the god-like being. But when Galactus demands a price too high for the team to personally pay, Earth is set as his next target, and the world turns on its former heroes.

Fantastic Four: First Steps, in my opinion, is a mid-tier Marvel Cinematic Universe entry. Not as weak as some of the franchise films, but also nowhere near the excellence of its best. The script has four credited writers for both screenplay and story, and the final product is a bit muddled, showing what was likely a turbulent development and production. The cast is good, with Pascal and Kirby being outright terrific. Julia Garner plays enigmatic well and has one of the best ‘cheer’ moments in the feature. I think most of my issues—and why this film did not enthrall me completely—stem from the world-building of the alternate Earth failing to convince. It is not the retro-futurism that I found unconvincing (that I looked forward to), but some of the human aspects that were baked into the world that I found beyond my ability to accept. In Iron Man 2, it was stated that Stark ‘privatized world peace’—one moment of hyperbole that could be and should be ignored. Here, a similar concept is baked into this world’s canon.

Still, I did not regret venturing out to the theater for a fun, bright, and optimistic superhero film far from the dark and grounded miasma of cynicism.

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Things to Look Forward To

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After two days of dental surgery, chiropractic, and pulmonary medical appointments, Amazon drivers taking a reserved parking space, and my front passenger tire going flat due to a tiny screw, I can finally start to relax and look forward to a few weeks of hopefully nice events and activities.

First off is this weekend’s opening for Fantastic Four: First Steps. I am quite happy with the trailers and the interesting approach to produce the film in a retro-futurism style that echoes the comic book’s 60’s origins. So far, there haven’t been any decent Fantastic Four movies, but this one is the first to be produced under the Marvels Studios’ guidance following that studio’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox.

Next on the things that are making me happy is the next 7-8 weeks of televised science-fiction with the third seasons of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Foundation. Full disclosure, while I have read a lot of classic SF, I never managed to get into Asimov’s Foundation series. His fiction often struck me as dry and with characters created to solve puzzles rather than experience emotional lives. So, I know that this show is deviating wildly from the source material, but it doesn’t bother me. Strange New Worlds is of course as I have previously written about is breaking ‘canon’ with Treklore, but it is doing so while giving us more realized and fleshed out characters so that’s a trade I am perfectly willing to make.

And finally, next month is the World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle, Washington. It has been a number of years since I have been able to make a WorldCon and this I hope will be the restorative vacation/holiday I need just before the really busy period at the day-job commences.

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In Defense of The Last Jedi

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Yesterday, while recovering from minor oral surgery, I watched a YouTube video from the channel ‘Feral Historian’ where he discussed the history of myths and their cultural command throughout human civilization, concluding with the observation that while Disney owns the intellectual property of Star Wars the myth of that franchise belongs to the wider American and even global culture. It is a very fine distinction that can ‘separate ownership’ from ‘belongs to’ but in my opinion his essay seemed to boil down to essentially, ‘Not my Luke Skywalker.’

It is a fairly common refrain that the character of Luke Skywalker as presented is strikingly at odds with how the character is in the original trilogy. That his fall and sulky isolation degrades his heroic stature and is an insult to the fanbase.

I don’t agree. In fact, I think there are signs and traits exhibited in the original trilogy that support the actions taken by Skywalker in The Last Jedi.

Disney/Lucasfilm

Luke started his journey to becoming a Jedi Knight driven by anger and a thirst for vengeance after discovering the charred corpses of his Aunt and Uncle. His first steps into that wider mystical existence were steps that often lead to the Dark Side. This is a small factor, Luke clearly tries to devote himself to the Rebellion and the fight for freedom, but it is an important emotional fact to keep in mind.

In The Empire Strikes Back it becomes clearer that the Dark Side of the Force holds an allure and draw to Luke just as it did for his father. (In either the original backstory presentation as told by Obi-Wan or in the retconned version of the prequels.) When confronted with a cave that is ‘strong with the Dark Side’ Luke is told by Yoda that he must confront it, and he should do so without his lightsaber.

He ignores the sage advice of his tutor, strapping on his weapon, and venturing into the lair of the Dark Side. There he is confronted by a vision of Darth Vader. There was the unmistakable sound of a lightsaber igniting, and Luke raised his weapon to fight. Only after Luke has lit his weapon does the image of Vader ignite his.

Luke, even after being told that hate and anger are paths to the Dark Side, starts the violence of the encounter. Defeating the image of Vader, it was revealed to be Luke under the mask, his real fight is and always had been with himself.

Luke, again ignores the counsel of his teachers, abandons his training to fly into a trap set by Vader and the Emperor in the Cloud City of Bespin. There he is maneuvered into a confrontation with the real Vader and having not learned the lesson of the cave, Luke starts aggressively, lighting his weapon first. Luke escaped but was bitter that he was not told what he thinks he should have known and not reprimanding himself for repeatedly ignoring the people wiser than himself in these matters.

The Return of the Jedi in addition to the space and ground battles represents Luke’s final temptation by the Dark Side and he starts the story off in a bad place. Setting aside the elaborate and knowingly doomed attempts to make a deal with Jabba the Hutt, when Luke enters Jabba’s palace his very first action, though difficult to see due to the bulky costumes, is to force choke the Gammorrean guards and reserve the ‘Jedi Mind Trick’ for the majordomo. While there are no on-screen fatalities from the choking it is quite reminiscent of the scene from the original Star Wars when Vader is simply annoyed by an Imperial Officer.

Luke displayed a fair amount of control as the Emperor pushed, prodded, and tempted Luke to give in emotionally to the Dark Side as the Rebel forces are being destroyed in the battle of the Second Death Star but eventually Luke did break, seizing his weapon, and giving in to his anger. He briefly regained his calm but only until, again unable to control his emotional nature, it is revealed he has a twin sister and all of Luke’s composure vanishes.

He is very nearly turned to the Dark Side with only the image of his father’s mechanical, hand so much like Luke’s own, shattered the rage that had propelled him, allowing him to accept death rather than be seduced by the Dark Side. Luke did not get to that moment of serenity quickly or easily. He is an emotionally volatile man, given to storm changes in his mood, demons that have been present throughout the character’s arc.

Which brings us to The Last Jedi and its Rashomon-like backstory of Luke and that night with Ben Solo.

Luke, sensing a Dark Side power he had not encountered since Vader, nearly twenty years earlier, reacts as he has always done when suddenly confronted in this manner, ignites his lightsaber. It is a moment of fear and weakness, but a moment was all that was required to destroy the future. Luke did not strike, but before he could take any further action, Ben awoke, and the die was cast for both their fates. Luke, always a person short on patience and given to grand gestures, flees in the face of his failure.

Here it is important to remember that Luke is also older than he was when he confronted his own failings. When one is young it is much easier to ‘pick yourself up’ and start over. There is an air of limitless possibility and invulnerability to youth but as you age you become more cautious, you feel the failures more painfully, and you are so much more aware that time is closing off all those limitless possibilities of youth. The idea that Luke flees, hides his failure and his shame from everyone else, wallowing in self-hatred for what he has done, is wholly in character with the young man I met on the silver screen in 1977.

He may not be ‘your Luke Skywalker’ and any honest critique cannot be wrong, but he is not divergent.

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Revisiting Across 110th Street

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This Sunday, as part of Film Geeks San Diego’s Neo-Noir festival for 2025, we watched the 1972 film Across 110th Street. Often considered a ‘blaxploitation’ feature, I think the film is more accurately part of the crime sub-genre than that one. While the movie has a large cast of Black actors and the setting is the gritty, grimy conditions of their lives in run-down Harlem of the early 70s, the novel was written by a white author, and the film was produced and directed by a white filmmaker, which I think takes it seriously away from the ‘own voices’ nature of most blaxploitation movies.

I watched this film on the Criterion Channel a few years ago, but it is a different experience watching it on the big screen, even if that screen is the 50-seat micro-theater of San Diego’s Digital Gym.

In the story, three Black men rob a ‘counting house’ where the Italian Mafia counts and acquires the funds from the Black Harlem gangsters that are their subjugated gang. The robbery goes awry with both Italian and Black gangsters being killed along with a pair of New York police patrolmen, sparking an intense hunt for the robbers by the police and the criminal gangs.

Thematically, Across 110th Street is very much about the old being supplanted by the new. Within the police, for purely political posturing, the investigation is given to a young and relatively inexperienced officer, Lieutenant Pope (Yaphet Kotto), solely because Pope is Black, infuriating Captain Matelli (Anthony Quinn), a racist cop but with decades of experience in Harlem. The Mafia Don sends a hotheaded and expendable nephew, Nick D’Salvio (Anthony Franciosa), to identify, find, and make an example of the three robbers. Nick’s interfacing with the local Black criminal organization, run by ‘Doc’ Johnson (Richard Ward), reveals serious friction between the gangs with the implication clear that the Italian Mafia’s days controlling Harlem are rapidly closing. In both cases—the criminals and the police—it is the younger, more vibrant actors that repeatedly succeed in uncovering information leading to the three doomed robbers while the tired and brutal methods of the older generation prove ineffective.

As was typical for films of the 70s, now released from the restrictive Motion Picture Production Code, Across 110th Streetis a violent, cynical affair populated with characters of whom none can truly be called heroes save for the still, in many ways naïve, Lt. Pope.

Directed by veteran television director Barry Shear and utilizing new lightweight cameras, Across 110th Street was filmed on location using location sound instead of the more conventional studio shoots and dubbing of location dialog, giving the film a realism that indicated the future of cinema. While the feature may not fit neatly into the genre of ‘blaxploitation,’ its treatment of its Harlem-based characters indicates a compassion and understanding that is often absent from films of the period. The characters, good and bad, have depth and characteristics beyond the needs of the plot. Even the racist and bigoted Captain Matelli has a compassion even for those for whom he normally harbors only resentment and hatred.

Across 110th Street has now been released in a newly restored 4K Blu-ray from Shout Factory. It was this release we watched, and the film looked fantastic.

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Superman and Assimilation

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James Gunn’s relaunching of a film franchise based upon DC comic book heroes has begun with his Superman and in these politically charged and patently insane partisan times it of course has launched a million takes.

Sonny Bunch, culture editor for The Bulwark, an online home and community for displaced former Republicans and centrist Democrats, recently revealed that his interpretation of this variant of the character was to see it as a conservative character, principally due to Clark Kent’s end-to-end assimilation as an immigrant of American culture and values.

This is, of course, a ludicrous interpretation. Clark Kent AKA Kal-El, rocketed to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton as an infant.  Assimilation implies, quite strongly, the discarding of some of a person’s former cultural practices and traditions while adopting the same from their new home’s culture. Kal-El carried with him none of that planet’s culture and was raised in the heartland of American as the only culture he knew. This was no more assimilation than it is for any person born and raised in Kansas.

But assimilation is a Trojan Horse argument, meant to ‘other’ the immigrant and as such make it easier to treat them as non-persons, which of course makes it easier to be cruel and uncaring.

America is an idea, and anyone can become an American, but that process does not at all require them to reject everything of their former culture and it never has. American culture is an amalgam of cultures from around the globe, our food, our holidays, our practices are not and never have been just one thing, one culture, one idea.

The poisonous idea at the heart of MAGA and its hatred of ‘DEI’ is the idea that there is one way and only one way to be American. It is the desire to use a great metal stamp to force everyone into a single mold, a single form and to fear and hate anything that resists that process.

Nothing is more ‘Big Brother’ than MAGA.

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Movie Review: Superman (2025)

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Writer/Director James Gunn and cinematographer Henry Braham powerfully diverts from the grim, grounded, and gritty aesthetic of recent DC Comics superhero film gives the audience in Superman a colorful and gloriously goofy rendition of the iconic ‘Man of Steel.’ A trailer featuring the super canine ‘Krypto’ coming to a battered and beaten Superman sets the tone audiences should expect with this movie.

Eschewing re-harvesting the overly tilled fields of the character’s origin story or Marvel Studios’ course of building a cinematic universe element by element introduced in features focused on individual character Gunn drops the audience into a comic inspired universe already in progress and populated by ‘metahumans.’

DC Studios

What writers refer to as ‘the inciting incident’, Superman’s (David Corenswet) intercession into a war and losing in a battle against a new supervillain, happens before the film even starts the character crashing into the frame beaten and defeated. Gunn skips many of the familiar beats found in stories of these characters, hurling the audience into a film where Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) is already aware of his dual identity, allowing the story to focus on their relationship instead of secret identity shenanigans.

This new DC Cinematic Universe is one where the heroes of the ‘Silver Age’ are already present and active. Gunn, rightly, in my opinion, understands that the audience, after 17 years of the MCU, is ready to accept a world of comic book characters without the need to establish and detail each and every origin. As such the Guy Gardner Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi) simply fly into their scenes without the scrip stopping to explain them.

Quickly the plot develops as manipulated public opinion turns against Superman and the hero finds himself questioning his purpose on Earth and the challenges doing the right thing in a complex morally grey world. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) fueled by a fiery envy and hatred to destroy Superman is here presented in a composite of attributes that the character has exhibited in various media, he is scientifically and technologically brilliant, a billionaire businessman, politically influential, as well as having a predilection for land and its ownership.

There are a number of nods and references to 1978’s Superman The Movie, most notably even in the trailer is that the score by John Murphy and David Fleming is inspired and around the well-known theme written by the legendary John Williams. There are more subtle callbacks, in the background of one scene Perry White (Wendell Pierce) can be heard shouting ‘Don’t call me Chief!’ This Lex Luthor has a large number of people assisting his villainous plot including one referred named Otis a nice Easter egg but one that is expanded in the credits where his surname is revealed to be ‘Berg.’

There is a major change in the canon of the character, one on which a great deal of the plot revolves about that is sure to upset some fans. To avoid spoilers, I cannot reveal it here but when it unfolds people familiar with the history and lore of Superman will see it. Personally, I was fine with it, but others may not be.

James Gunn’s Superman is about as far as one can get in tone and style from Nolan’s Batman Begins, but both are crafted by talented director/writers who knew exactly the kind of film that they wanted to see on the screen. It was a fun frolic but one with heart and soul and a powerful theme that we are not tools of our parents designs but of our own.

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The Accidental Hero of Superman ’78– Otis

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WB Studios

I was 17 years old and in my senior year of high school when Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie hit the screens in the United States. Despite never being a deep fan of the comic books and possessing only a surface knowledge of the character, this was still a movie that I rode my bicycle a couple of miles to the local twin cinema to see. I can recall quite vividly pumping the pedals quite hard and fast with John Williams’ icon score replaying in my head as I went home from that screening. While not as campy as the Batman television series of 1966 and a far cry from the grounded, gritty DC superhero movies of the ‘Snyderverse’ to come in the next century, Superman: The Movie set a high bar for superhero films in general, and Christopher Reeve’s excellent portrayal as Clark Kent/Superman remains in the minds of many unmatched.

What is surprising is that after 47 years, the number of people who do not quite grasp that the plot of the film and its resolution rotates around the fumbling failure of one henchman.

Otis (Ned Beatty), while a seductively costumed and faux-injured Ms. Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine) distracts the Army’s security detail escorting a nuclear-armed ICBM, alters the missile’s targeting at the behest of his supervillain boss, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman.) Later, Lex learns that Otis bungled his assignment inputting only three updated coordinates instead of the required four. When it comes to the second missile, this time being transported and guarded by the US Navy, it is Ms. Teschmacher whom Lex sends to corrupt the missile’s targeting, ensuring it hits his intended target: the San Andreas Fault line to create ‘New West Coast’ that he will own and control.

Lex Luthor’s plan is when both missiles are launched Superman, due the missiles divergent courses, will be able to intercept only one. But to ensure even that outcome does not come to pass, he chains lethal kryptonite to Superman and drops him in a pool to drown.

When Ms. Teschmacher learns that the other missile will detonate its nuclear warhead over her mother’s town of Hackensack, New Jersey, she betrays Lex Luthor and rescues Superman but only after he promises to save her mother first.

It seems an idiotic mistake for Lex Luthor to send his expendable nuclear warhead to the hometown of his expendable girlfriend but of course that was never Lex’s plan. That missile is the one whose targeting was charged by the bumbling Otis, who failed to input the coordinates correctly. Because it was not the warhead that would create the ‘New West Coast’ Lex never bothered to correct that mistake leading to the targeting of Hackensack and Ms. Teschmacher’s betrayal.

Without Otis’ ineptitude, Superman would have perished, and Lex Luthor’s plan would have succeeded. Otis is the accidental hero of Superman: The Movie.

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Movie Review: Magic (1978)

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For many people, the astounding acting skills of Anthony Hopkins exploded into their perceptions, despite decades of on-screen performances, with his Oscar-winning turn in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. That is not the case with me. I was wowed by his portrayal of William Bligh in 1984’s The Bounty, but I first experienced Hopkins in 1978’s Magic.

20th Century Fox

Adapted by legendary screenwriter William Goldman from his novel of the same title and directed by legendary actor and director Richard Attenborough, Magic is a psychological horror film centered on Corky Williams (Hopkins), a stage magician who utilizes a ventriloquist’s dummy, ‘Fats’ (also voiced by Hopkins), as part of his performance. When his agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith) informs Corky that a medical exam is required for his upcoming television network special, Corky flees the city for the isolated Catskills town of his childhood, reconnecting with his high school crush Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margret). But ‘Fats’ may have other ideas about what is best for Corky.

The trailers and commercials for Magic hinted at possible supernatural causes for the film’s horror, and Attenborough used a deft and light directorial touch to keep things off balance concerning ‘Fats.’ But this story and movie is essentially a horror of the human mind and how it betrays itself when faced with crushing psychological trauma and an inability to escape it.

With limited settings and cast, Magic is a film that could have been produced for television, but Goldman as writer, Attenborough as director, and cinematographer Victor Kemper use the limitation to create an atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia even in the open woods of the Catskills.

I was seventeen when I walked to the local twin theater to see Magic, and the film has stuck with me over the decades. Unnerving and powerful in its use of what would become known as ‘the uncanny valley,’ Magic is a prime example that horror is not always found in ghouls, ghosts, and vampires but sometimes within the tortured soul of the outcast.

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