The Jerky Boys Got Nothing On Mama Rose

From Repulsion to The Sentinel, there’s just something about single women in new apartments that makes for such a perfect starting point for tense horror. As someone who’s had her share of brave roommate mice, pre-war building bathroom ceiling cave-ins, and creepy Craig’s List landlords on roller skates (seriously), I can easily identify with such a premise, making the 2011 Puerto Rican filmed The Caller an ideal instant watch.

Quick Plot: Mary moves into a spacious but eerie apartment following her tense divorce from a dangerously obsessive man. Trying to get on with her life, she enrolls in a French conversationalist class where a room mix-up leads her to a meet-cute with John, a handsome and friendly technical teacher who just happens to be conveniently available despite being such a perfect catch. Still recovering from her abusive marriage, Mary tentatively engages in some flirtation while also befriending long-time tenant George, played by that lovable P.T. (or just Paul, I don’t know; not the Resident Evil one) Anderson regular Luis Guzman.

Life is slowly improving until one day, Mary’s antique rotary style phone rings. On the other end is a middle aged woman named Rose who refuses to accept the idea that her boyfriend Bobby no longer lives in Mary’s apartment. The bigger problem? Mary is apparently living in the 1970s. And not in a thrift shop bell bottoms/forever disco retro allegiance kind of way.

Nope. On Rose’s phone line, it is indeed the 1970s.

The Caller is a wonderfully paced film that takes its time in unraveling the freshly done story. John’s sci-fi geekery pays off in helping to establish the basic rules of the plot: somehow, Rose and Mary are communicating at different times, and as a result, an alternate timeline based on Rose’s new actions is being created. Like any time travel movie, a cynic could find more holes in the plot than a slice of Swiss cheese, but if you let your movie-watching instincts trump your scientific logic ones, The Caller is incredibly effective.

As Mary, Rachelle Lefevre (better known as the villainous vamp who got replaced in the Twilight films) is a solid lead. Her chemistry with True Blood’s Stephen Moyer makes you genuinely root for the couple’s safety, while Sergio Casci’s script has a disciplined approach that never rushes character or plot developments. Looming in the background is the constant menace of Mary’s ex, a subplot that isn’t always handled flawlessly but ultimately gets a proper payoff when needed.

Directed by second-time filmmaker Matthew Parkhill, The Caller has both original ideas and effective execution. Rose is a terrifying villain because, in one of the film’s wonderfully subtle themes, she’s just a lonely, abused old woman, something Mary herself could easily turn into if set on a certain path. We don’t know why she has this supernatural time jumping power, but it doesn’t matter in the least; if a nice and needy old woman was on the other end of a phone line, any one of us might engage her in the same manner as Mary. You never know what kind of evil a person has the potential to commit, and worse, how that might affect those around you. Mary learns this the hard way.

High Points

As Insidious taught us, scary apparitions in photographs are never not creepy when done right

SPOILER

When we finally meet Rose, it’s only for a few brief glances but even in quick shots, she’s a positively perfect design. There’s nothing monstrous or inhuman about her look, but the smudgy makeup and dated clothing is somehow enough to make her something to fear

Low Points

Don’t think too hard about the logic of timelines. I beg you. Just. Don’t.

Mixed Bag

The sound department was quite ambitious for The Caller, ending with both positive and negative results. Early in the film, there are some wonderfully subtle choices that build a truly creepy atmosphere, something that becomes less effective as the underlying noises become louder and more conspicuous. It’s nice to hear some experimentation, but the results aren’t quite as disciplined as they could be from beginning to end

Lessons Learned

Just because you made someone a daisy chain does not mean they are immune from the effect of a crazy serial killing time traveler

Pulling a knife out of your leg is something you should never do in a library, church, board meeting, or any other location where silence is important. Those things are LOUD

No matter how good that rent might be, never move into an apartment with terrible cell phone service*

Being wiry is almost as good as being big

About the Dog…

If you’re anything like me, you see a beautiful golden retriever in a horror movie and then get extremely distracted worrying if it will experience a terrible fate unworthy of anything so cute. If you are indeed of my mindset and need to know this, look below the picture of a beautiful golden retriever for the SPOILER ALERT answer (written in Spanish as an ode to the film’s filming grounds)

El vive.

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Caller is an excellent little thriller well worth a stream on Instant Watch. The only exception is for those annoyingly logical viewers who still let the issue that John Connor shouldn’t exist because he only exists because he sent a man to father him ruin their enjoyment of the Terminator franchise. Yes, there are inconsistencies in The Caller, but if you dim the lights and sit back to enjoy a creative scary movie, I almost promise they won’t bother you. I for one am eager to see what Matthew Parkhill does next.

*I learned this the hard way myself when I first moved into my current home, only to realize that unless I kept my head hanging out the window or consulted a shaman, I would never be able to have a phone conversation. Saying this out loud after watching poor Mary watch people she cares about die horrible deaths now makes me feel a little petty. But seriously: it was really annoying.

Because sometimes it's the third serving of pea soup that really takes the salt

I have strong memories of watching The Exorcist III late one night on cable, probably when I was ten or eleven years old. Though I remembered very little of the actual film, I still to this day recall how I felt when it was over, weirdly frightened and reluctant to head to my bedroom without first turning on the light.

Naturally, I had to one day return to a film not really considered to be a classic that had made me so uneasy. Having recently rewatched Friedken’s The Exorcist and, with much less interesting results, John Boorman’s boor-ing (see what I did there?) sequel, it seemed like the time had come to see how well William Peter Blatty’s 1990 thriller held up.

Quick Plot: Detective Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb in the original; a fine George C. Scott here) attempts to solve a series of grisly religious-themed murders in the sunny city of Georgetown. To de-stress, he heads to the movies with his best friend, Father Dyre (Father Karras’ old pal) who isn’t thrilled to hear about slaughtered priests and beheaded altar boys. Before long, extra tragedy strikes and Kinderman becomes personally involved in solving the case.

I won’t spoil one of the first major kills of the film; it’s somewhat predictable, yet still deeply sad and terrifyingly explained. The third murder moves the investigation to a shady hospital, the kind of place where the head of psychiatry can walk around chain smoking (ahhhh, 1990), the head nurse can rudely roll her eyes when being questioned about a crime, and the ‘disturbed’ patients sit wrapped in straitjackets inside dank, unlit cells with leaky faucets. 

It’s inside the mental ward where Kinderman meets Patient X, a sometimes catatonic man who was found roaming the streets with amnesia 15 years earlier. Now awake, the curly haired man oozes evil, waxing nostalgic about the murders he committed in the guise of the Gemini, a fictional serial killer supposedly executed right around the time that “McNeil Kid” threw up her last bowl of pea soup.

Has Pazuzu found his way inside Patient X? Did Father Karras welcome yet another unwanted demon visitor into his body on those fateful stairs? How close is Kinderman to solving the crime and what will he sacrifice in order to do so?

The Exorcist III is, in an easy word, a complicated film densely packed with a few too many ideas. Blatty himself was never quite satisfied with the end result, mainly because the studio (Morgan Creek) insisted on having the final cut so much so that they demanded an exorcism be weaved into the plot (despite the fact that, as you see in the final scene, it really had no place) and changing the title of the film. Though clearly a sequel to Friedken’s classic, Blatty wanted to call the film Legion, after his book that he had used as the basis. Despite the rightful bombing of The Exorcist II: The Heretic, the studio won out, believing a sequel to be more bankable. 

Production, you might say, was probably not buttery smooth.

That being said, however, I kind of loved The Exorcist III. By about thirty minutes in, I realized why the film grabbed me so deeply as a child. Even though most of the violence occurs offscreen, all of it is described in chilling detail; a black child crucified and decapitated, his head replaced by a Jesus statue in blackface. A woman split and stuffed with rosary beads. A little girl, whose ribbons and pink dress are as vivid in your mind as anything you’d see on camera. Blatty, who wrote the screenplay, uses novel-like prose as dialogue and since it’s delivered by fine actors, it comes off as natural and horrific. Some of the special effects don’t look quite as sharp twenty years later, but there are also a few shots that are as unsettling as anything I’ve seen in recent cinema. A hospital murder, given, without exaggeration, four seconds of screentime made me do another audible Magic -like “ugh!” and though I don’t have any religious affiliation, Blatty’s use of macabre Jesus statues gave me the chills.

Though this one is a little more The Joker Goes Catholic for my tastes

Will the film work for everyone? Probably not. There’s an age-old argument that occasionally surfaces when discussing The Exorcist that claims those without Christian leanings are naturally more immune to some of the story’s machinations. Perhaps that’s true for some, but what’s neat about The Exorcist III is that it never feels preaching or pro-religion. There is evil in the world, it argues, evil that may exist as some counterpoint to good (or God, if you like--I don’t) but good men can do something about it, regardless of their faith. You don’t necessarily need an ordained priest to save a soul; sometimes, a detective’s smarts, gun, and determination are enough.

High Points

There’s a lot to be said for laughing in a horror movie, especially one as dark as this. Blatty gives us some truly winning dialogue, especially in the unique but believable friendship between Kinderman and Father Dyre. There’s also plenty of visual gags that simply make the film interesting, including a wonderfully weird dream about heaven (complete with Fabio and Patrick Ewing, natch) and a wheelchair flasher who kind of deserves a sequel of his own

You simply can’t cast crazy better than Billy Bibbit himself, Brad Douriff, and even though you can occasionally catch a little Chucky in his voice, Douriff (and Jason Miller) make the Gemini Killer (maybe) a horrific force

Remember how I said the best part of a movie that ended up with the original title of this one was when a possessed senior citizen crawled on a ceiling? This film has one too. And it could kick that old bag’s ass

Low Points

Perhaps due more to studio intervention than Blatty’s skills, it’s hard to deny the story of The Exorcist III is kind of a mess

Because Scott, Douriff, and most of the priest, police, and medical characters are so darn good, the two scenes that take place inside Kinderman’s home feel out of place. Both the acting and general look just don’t mesh with the rest of the film, taking us out momentarily

Lessons Learned

Never trust a man who has a glamour portrait of himself hanging prominently inside his office

It’s a wonderful life

When conducting an exorcism, nothing says fashion like a tear-away robe

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’m heartily recommending a rental of The Exorcist III, mainly so that you can come back here and tell me if the film affected you in the same odd way it did me. I don’t scare easily, but there’s something so strangely wrong about the murders here, helped, of course, by some fine acting and a director with an instinctively good feel for atmosphere. Had the DVD included a single extra, I’d easily tell you to buy it but sadly, all of Blatty’s cut footage was ‘lost’ by the studio and no one comes back here to tell us why. This is a smart, funny, and deeply scary film that is simply better than it had any right to be. The fact that it’s been branded a cheap sequel is almost a sin.

Or maybe I’m just a wimp.

Just Call Me Angel of the Mourning

Pity a film that oversells itself with a way-too-good (by my standards) trailer. While anyone can understand a preview that shows the best bits to draw you in, it’s something of a tragedy to realize mid-movie that nothing you’re about to see will beat those 3 minutes of teasery.

Examine, if you will, the red band trailer for 2010’s Legion:

Awesome, right? Spidery senior citizens! Cheesy one-liners involving Christianity! Fist pump Doug Jones! Kickass Roc! Dennis Quaid aging gracefully!

How could this not be the best theatrical horror since Orphan ?

Sigh. As almost everyone who eventually watched Legion knows, it’s kind of the very definition of the word ‘meh.’

Quick Plot: 8 months pregnant with a soon-to-be adopted fetus probably suffocating from desert air and chain smoke, Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) waits tables at a lonely restaurant visited primarily by lost and car troubled travelers. On this sunny xmas eve, diners include a possible thug (you know...because he's black), unhappy rich family with a skanky teen daughter, and regulars/employees Dennis Quaid (why?) Charles “Roc” S. Dutton, and lovestruck Lucas Black. Things get slightly more interesting when newcomer Michael (Paul Bettany, all whispery and white) saunters in like an albino cowboy, his mission being to ensure the safety of Charlie’s unborn child in order to save the soon-to-be exterminated human race.

(Significance???)

See, God’s going retro this year with a throwback to the Old Testament. Instead of a flood (soooo B.C.) or locust plague, the big man has ordered his flying posse to zombify mere mortals. Ever the defiant one, Michael cuts off his own strings--er, wings--because Black’s unwavering crush on the town slut means deep down, humans are awesome. 

Had I not watched the impeccably cut trailer, Legion may have proved to be a guilty enough pleasure. B+ list actors slumming in wacko genre fare is always a treat, and the very concept of a demon/angel/zombie war is entertaining enough in its silliness. Unfortunately, there’s something so heavy about Legion that never lets the audience feel any joy.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t require tongue-in-cheek goofiness in every religiously themed horror, but a film should know when to wink. Legion seems to think such a twitch would be a sin worthy of eternal torment or no hard candy from the likes of this woman:

High Points

One bait and switch scene involving blond children (never a good sign) is actually rather frightening

God’s fickleness is somewhat amusing in a total “What a dick!” kind of way

Low Points

How do you cast Kevin Durand--that 6’8 or so slab of psycho Lost baddie goodness--as a dark angel and make him so damn dull?

Remember that awesome Doug Jones ice cream man transformation you saw in the trailer? Cool right? And that’s it

The Winning Line

“I gotta get my bible.”

“What for?”

 “Somebody’s gotta start praying”

If Legion had more moments of cheese such as these, I would be melting it over french fries and smiling far more than my current sleepy scowl

Lessons Learned

Just cause you’re a girl means you CAN deliver a baby

The assigning of the next messiah is more random than the state lottery drawing

Angelically possessed zombies are surprisingly easy to kill, providing you’re not an idiot that runs straight into 180 of them gathered in mob stance 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Invest no capital or energy in seeing this film. Too empty for a rewatch, too blah to be drinkable. It’s a stopping-on-a-cable-channel-on-a-snowy-evening kind of movie that should prove to be passable enough for a TV watch but simply doesn’t require any more of your resources. Pop a mini-bag of popcorn, cue up the superb trailer, and save yourself 106 minutes with a much better time.

Grandmother, What Big Teeth You Have

First, the bad news:
There are no grandmothers to be found in Rabid Grannies. Nor is there rabies. Our two sweet nonagenarians do become monstercized, but as demons more akin to Anjelica Huston’s Grand High Witch and far removed from poor Old Yeller. Also, they’re aunts.

Now the good: Rabid Grannies is fun, plain and simple. Not a classic and 99% not frightening, but this Troma distributed Belgium horror does provide 90 minutes of gooey kills and occasionally clever jokes, all at the expense of a humorously unlikable extended family that the world could do well without.


Quick Plot: In a picturesque European village, two sweet and wealthy old ladies--one resembling a softer Elaine Stritch and the other a poor man’s Betty White--and their Chaucer-esque house staff prepare for their dual birthday party. Meanwhile, a vast collection of money grubbing nieces and nephews make their ways to the secluded mansion for the annual inheritance baiting kiss-up competition. We slog through a funny but definitely overlong 40 minute introduction to the nastiness of these would-be heirs, including a horny playboy, a fat dildo maker, a WMDs dealer with possible blood ties to Timothy Dalton, the world’s worst lesbian, a squirmy priest, and a few more characters in need of a good demon eating. The real horror would be meeting the family black sheep (because how much worse could it get?), but instead, the unseen disinherited Satanist sends a mysterious smoking box to his not-so-beloved aunties.

Finally, after one performance of Greensleeves and plenty of pointed squabbling, our senior citizenettes are transformed into man-hungry monsters with Deadite senses of humor. After a few quick kills, our characters find themselves separated into mixed groups, all the better to show their true, mostly cowardly colors. A few heroes/heroines emerge, but more importantly, the oilier folks die painful yet creative deaths, sometimes involving post-mortem blinking.


High Points
The initial transformation and first kill are, agreeable to the little boy’s assertion, “smashing!”

The fate of Belgium’s least loved priest comes in a funny yet surprisingly disturbing scene with a rewarding payoff


You just can’t go wrong when you toss a child’s limbs down a staircase


Low Points
The ridiculously simple seduction of the heroic lesbian by the smarmiest of sleazebags is just plain offensive

Lessons Learned
Having your hand chopped off is no big deal, since it will be immediately bandaged in an impossibly fast cut


Never inhale a gift from someone that hates you

Opera singers sober up quickly when pursued by elderly demons


WMDs have come a long way since 1988

Rent/Bury/Buy
I have a special nostalgia for Rabid Grannies, as I can recall the gleeful rental during my judge-a-film-by-its-title days of yore (okay, first, those days are far from over as witnessed by my queuing of The Sinful Dwarf and second, this phase is dangerous as witness to my less than stellar Gourmet Zombie Chef From Hell experience). Does it hold up? Yes, in that it’s just as much fun as I remember. Although this was distributed, and not produced by Troma, all the standards are there, including gratuitous nudity, colorful gore, and hit-or-miss jokes. Rabid Grannies won’t change your life, but it will give you something to smile about. The DVD is packed with extras (or so I hear, since I used the Netflix Watch Now service) so a well-priced release could easily warm your shelf with senior citizen scariness.


Not Stritch:

Stritch: