This could be a repeat entry in this series for me, but this is also one of my favorite films and easily my favorite Boris Karloff performance.

The Body Snatcher (Not to be confuse with iteration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.) is a 1945 film helmed by then novice director Robert Wise as part of Val Lewton’s cycle of psychological horror films, which included Cat People, for RKO. Based upon the short story by Robert Lewis Stevenson this movie is about doctors, students, and grave robbers. Rather than a retelling of the Burke and Hare affair, though that one has been put to film a number of times including in a flawed but lively comedy staring Andy Serkis and Simon Peg, this story deals with fiction characters involved in the sordid business of robbing graves and murdering people to supply medical schools with dissection specimens.

A young student, without the means to continue his education, becomes the assistant to a famous doctor, McFarland, and quickly finds himself caught in the middle of McFarland’s antagonistic with the cabman and resurrectionist John Gray, played with wonderful oily charm by Karloff. The young man, a person of good morals, find himself pulled deeper and deeper into the crimes of the school as he desperately tries to get the doctor to save the life of a paralyzed little girl. When grave-robbing turns to murder the stakes are raised and the confrontation long delayed between the doctor and cabman explodes.

This is a wonderful little film. I remember getting this on laserdisc when I still watched movies on that pre-DVD format. I found it in a used shop for something like $8 and I had never seen it. Figuring it wasn’t too much of a risk I bought the disc and that weekend discovered this classic of horror cinema. This is not horror that beats out from supernatural monstrosities , but rather from the pride and need to dominate in the human condition. Not all of the Val Lewton psychological horrors of this cycle are to my tastes, but this one and Cat People certain are worth the scant time they take to view. This film is highly recommended.

Thanks to getting back onto a disc plan with Netflix, my selection of films has opened op and last night I watched a film I have wanted to see for some time, Zero Dark Thirty.

This is the dramatized account of the hunt for and the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. From my basic knowledge of the facts I did not spot any glaring inconsistencies and the film was written and produced with a minimum of political bias.

The film uses as it’s focus a CIA operative named Maya, we never learn her last name and as for film purposes I wouldn’t even assume that this is her real name. We follow her multi-year trek through shards of intelligence data and bureaucratic infighting to try and located the world’s most hunted man. The tension is real and the filmmaker, Kathryn Bigalow who won an Oscar for ‘The Hurt Locker’ showed deft skills in managing a story that spanned such a vast amount of time and locations.

I appreciate that Ms. Bigalow did not using the stomach-wrenching video we have all seen of the attacks on 09/11. There was no need for that sort of exhibitionism in a tale this deftly told. She also never gave us the face of Bin Laden, I suspect so that even in the form of an impersonator as to deny him all manner of publicity and fame.

The script was well written by Mark Boal who was responsible for the reporting about Black Hawk Down that Ridley Scott turned into a fine film. The cast boasted no superstars, but was well represented with talented actors who seemed to inhabit their characters.

This film is worth the time.

After the light-hearted fare of the past couple of weeks I thought I might turn to something of a more serious tone for my Sunday night movie pleasures. Several of my favorite drama however proved to be too lengthy for the time I had to watch a film. I settled on a classic Samurai movie, Yojimbo.

This is a movie that you are likely familiar with even if you have never seen it or heard the title. The director, Kurosawa is in my opinion one of the most copied directors to ever helm a picture. The plot of Yojimbo you may know under the remake’s title ‘A Fistful of Dollars.’ Or the really bad remake ‘Last Man Standing.’ But I feel the best is the original.

The story is simple a penniless wandering samurai – the character has no name – comes to a small town torn asunder by warring criminal gangs. While the Samurai creates an air of lawlessness around himself, he is actually a very moral man and works to bring peace to the town and the innocent people suffering under the stupid cruelty of the gangsters.

I said that I selected this film because I was looking for a darker tone, and there are certainly dark elements to this movie, but I had forgotten the moments of levity and genuine humor throughout the piece. It is a story about a good man in bad times. It is timeless and I am fortunate that I have been able to not only own a Blu-ray of this classic movie, but I have seen it projected on the big screen.

If you get the chance, rent it, this movie will not disappoint.

Originally I had planned on making my Sunday Night Feature this week something with a more serious tone, after all last weekend had been a light and feel–good movie experience, however when it came time to select a film, I decided to continue with the whimsical tone that had pervaded my evening. (Earlier in my sweetie-wife and I had watched a French Comedic Fantasy The Extraordinary  Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec. If you enjoy silly fun this is worth a look, but be warned it is subtitled.)

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is an early 2000’s independent film spoofing the dreadful SFfilms of the later 50’s and early 60’s. It was filmed in black-and white, with highly restricted locales to capture that low budget sensation so prevalent in the films it lovingly mocks. The film’s charm works best if you have, like myself, instead of developing normal social skills, wasted your youth watching SF and horror movies late night on the weekends. The special effects are absolutely non-special, the acting is so deliberately bad that it makes most local high school productions appear to be the Royal Shakespearean, (Though it must be said it is not easy to act bad and let everyone in on the joke. ) and the dialog sets back the cause of intelligence and sexual equality. All of this make the film funny and in my opinion well worth the time.

The story is simple; Dr. Paul Armstrong and his wife Betty have come to an isolated cabin is search of a recently fallen meteorite which Paul believes is made of Atmospherium, a rare and powerful radiative element. Dr. Roger Flemming has come to the same area searching to the lost caves of Cadavra, coves so lost to memory that he’s forced to ask a forest ranger for their location.  As a dedicated Mad Scientist, Flemming is searching for the Lost Skeleton which he hopes will not hate him as other skeletons has and will make Flemming the most powerful man in the world. To do this he needs Atmospherium.  In addition to the two scientists we have an alien married couple, Kro-bar and Lattice, who have become stranded on Earth unless they can refuel their ship with Atmospherium.

The film has mutants, mind control, rock dances, raor, and the ever famous Amish Terrariums. I had the good fortune to see this on the big screen, but big or little this humor works and this is my sort of art house movie.

So I continued my movie thick weekend with a bit of pop fun from 1984, and one of the first films to attempt photo-realistic CGI, The Last Starfighter.

The story is about a young man, Alex Rogan ,on the edge of college age, who lives with his mother and brother in a trailer park in the boonies of California.  The location is so isolated and so very little happens that even an event so minor such as Alex breaking the record on an arcade video game will draw a crowd.

Alex dreams of bigger and brighter things than living life in a place filled with senior citizens and endless chores. However being poor and unable to secure a loan for college his dreams seems as barren as the trailer park’s nights. Continue reading →

In all honesty this is the late Saturday night/early Sunday morning movie, as I watched with a couple of friends during that period. Sunday night rolled around and I found myself, after an early rise and a busy day, far too tired for a feature film.

Hailing from 1976, this is a wonderful film that if you have not seen it, you really should. It stars Dustin Hoffmann, Lawrence Olivier, and  Roy Scheider. Scheider and Hoffman are brothers, though they are polar opposites. Scheider is a successful business man, with refined tastes and works in the global oil business, while Hoffmann is a graduate student pursuing his doctorate in history, wikth a side quest of proving his father innocent of charges thrown against him during the McCarthy era.

Everything I’ve told you about Scheider is what Hoffman’s character believes to be true and none of it is. This is really a story about family, about haunted pasts, and Nazi dentistry. It has one of the most chilling and terrifying torture scenes ever put to the screen, and it is done without blood and gore. After seeing this film the phrase ‘Is it safe’ will never have the same meaning for you again.

The Screenplay was written by William Goldman, based on his book, and it is stellar. Goldman is responsible for a number of truly terrific screenplays, including Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, and The Princess Bride to name just two.

I can’t praise this film enough and I can’t talk too much if you have not seen it. The film has twists and turns, and I will not be one to spoil them for you.

After the horror that was 300: Rise of an Empire AKA Stereotypes Are Us,  I wanted something light and fun and mirth-filled for my Sunday Night Movie. I almost wenmt with GalaxyQuest, a terribly fun movie, but at the last moment I committed to Reefer Madness: The Musical.

Now in the 1930’s there was a film made, Reefer Madness a hyperbole-filled exploitative movie about the terrors and dangers of the demon weed, marijuana. It passed into public domain, became a bit of a cult film for those with the spine to endure it. (It’s truly is a dreary, boring piece of propaganda.) Much later a playwriting teams took it and turned it into camp musical, keeping much of the dialogue and turning the delivery to take what had been lecture and transforming it into satire.

The stage play was later turned into a film for the pay-cable network, Showtime, and that is what I watched.

It starts Alan Cummings, truly a talented actor and singer, Kristen Bell of Veronica Mars fames, and Christian Campbell, who has been known to lament that his gravestone will note him as the actor who played “Jimmy Harper” the protagonist of this piece.

This is a hilarious bit of movie making. While I myself am not a user of the demon weed, hell I very rarely drink, I stand firmly against the stupid, expensive, and deadly drug-war our nation has engaged in. The movie is filled with wonderful performances, lively and sharp songs, all wrapped in unsubtle digs at the puritanical powers that would have us follow the unquestioning in  this war.

If you like satire, if you like musicals, if you like camp, then this is a movie for you.