The Changeling (1980)

Film: The Changeling (1980)

Stars: George C. Scott, Trish van Devere, Melvyn Douglas, John Colicos, Jean Marsh, Madeleine Sherwood

Director: Peter Medak

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

A trend started in the 1960's, and continued until the 1980's, where aging movie stars decided to give horror a shot.  This became known for a lot of women as "hagsploitation" or "grand guignol" where once glamorous actresses like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Olivia de Havilland were put in caked on pancake makeup & tortured by each other (and more so the director), but it continued for decades longer.  One example of this would be The Changeling from 1980, with an aging George C. Scott (and a nearly gone Melvyn Douglas, who would be dead less than two years after this film was released).  Neither actor is known for their work in horror, certainly not in their prime but given limited options, they both gave it a shot here, and ended up with something unexpected.  The Changeling, one of the most important Canadian horror films ever made, was a film I hadn't really heard of before this month (it was actually a movie I substituted last minute when I decided another one of our choices was going to be too hard to find in good condition), but it's well-done, especially some of the bits at the end of the film, and worth your time if you (like me) were unfamiliar with it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in two halves.  The first half follows famed conductor John Russell (Scott) in the wake of the deaths of his wife and daughter after a horrific car crash.  He rents a mansion from a historical society in Seattle, and lives there despite no one having resided in the house for 12 years.  It turns out that there's a reason for that, as the house appears to be haunted, unexplained phenomena getting to John, particularly surrounding water, as he starts to see visions of a drowned boy in a bathtub, and he begins to investigate who the boy is.  It turns out he's Joseph Carmichael...which is a problem because Joseph Carmichael is still alive, an aging US Senator (played by Douglas) whom we learn was switched with a crippled & sickly boy as a child so that the healthy (fake) Joseph could inherit the family estate.  In the process, the sickly boy is murdered, drowned in a bathtub, and for much of the last thirty minutes it is clear the boy wants recognition of what was done to him, in the process needing to use John to get his fake brother to return to the house...where the true Joseph can have his revenge.

The movie is fascinating for a variety of reasons, not least of which is because the beginning has very little to do with the plot of the film.  There is no ghostly apparitions of John's wife and daughter in the house, and so it puts a fascinating spin on the haunted house story, where he is haunted by a literal ghost but also figurative ones, trying to understand what to do with his life after the unspeakable has happened.  I think this is really clever, and honestly something I didn't expect going into the movie-this red herring that also plays a B plot to the movie is a solid touch.

The film's many twists also generally work.  If there's a fault, it might be that they work too well.  Melvyn Douglas's character probably needs 1-2 more scenes with George C. Scott to really sell this, as you don't get a great sense of what his opinions are about what's happening.  It's possible that he's also an innocent victim here, being thrown into this circumstance as just a boy...but the ending wants him to suffer for these crimes.  That ambiguity doesn't quite work because you need a clear indication of whether or not the ghost is malicious or righteous.  That is, however, the only thing that doesn't work here, as the rest of the movie is a "start at 11 PM, and you'll be staying up past midnight" style horror movie classic.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

The Fog (1980)

Film: The Fog (1980)

Stars: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Houseman, Janet Leigh, Hal Holbrook

Director: John Carpenter

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

John Carpenter has come up twice before in these horror retrospectives, and in both cases, he kind of knocked it out of the park.  Halloween is a classic of the slasher genre, in many ways it invented the modern slasher genre, but it also is a titillating look at one of the most iconic horror villains.  The Thing is a quintessential alien thriller, one that features great work from Kurt Russell & Keith David, and one of the best endings I've ever seen from a horror movie.  So as I finished off this trilogy of Horror Movies from the 1970's-90's, I needed to find a way to pay homage to my favorite director discovery of the project, and in this case it was a third film that is generally regarded as another horror classic, The Fog.  One of only two movies to unite "scream queens"/mother-and-daughter Janet Leigh & Jamie Lee Curtis, the movie was initially dismissed by critics as middling, but has since been saved by a cult of devotees (horror fans will eventually find quality if it's there), and after watching it-I think the modern critics have it right.  The Fog is a really fun (and spooky) ride.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in a California bay community, one where 100 years earlier, a ship crashed on the rocks.  It turns out this was done on purpose, the goal being to kill those onboard, as they were afflicted with leprosy and the town founders didn't want a leper colony nearby.  The centennial has brought a mysterious fog to the town, and with it, the ghostly crew of that ship are coming for revenge.  We alternate as we learn this between a few different locales.  First there's Father Malone (Holbrook), who discovers the revenge plot, and is a descendant of the town founders.  We have Elizabeth Solley (Curtis), who is a hitchhiker just passing through town who comes across the fog by accident.  There's Mayor Kathy Williams (Leigh), who is trying to keep the town safe...while also prioritizing the importance of the centennial celebration.  And best of the bunch is Stevie Wayne (Barbeau), a disc jockey who, from the lighthouse, is in real time trying to help the people of the city from the fog.

This element of the film, Barbeau's disc jockey, is easily the best part of the film and what makes it special.  In a lot of ways The Fog feels akin to the old Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast, as we are hearing warnings to the town in real time.  In an era before smart phones or even cable news, this is a realistic way that people might get the news, and it's chilling because frequently the movie makes a point of Stevie's warnings coming too late, her getting the news after a death or after the fog has moved to another area of the town.  That unreliability (not even the hero can save you) is good movie-making, and something that more horror films should employ without having to underline it (you'd usually see a lot of regret from the hero if they couldn't save someone...here, that's not the case).

The movie isn't as succinct or well-scripted as Halloween or The Thing.  The film isn't entirely logical, particularly muddling the reasons for the fog itself and the revenge plot feels convoluted, but if you look past that, Carpenter makes it genuinely creepy.  One of the realities that three years of doing this has taught me is that horror movies aren't always scary (this month there's maybe 1-2 that have actually had me nervous in the way, say, The Blair Witch Project did the first time I saw it), but The Fog has true elements of horror, particularly a late killing that feels like a nasty coda to the film, and the way that it plays with the mistakes we make when we panic.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: Altered States (1980)

Film: Altered States (1980)

Stars: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid

Director: Ken Russell

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

Every genre of movie has a pretty wide berth when it comes to its description.  Think of something like "comedy" where everything from the films of the Three Stooges to the polished wit of Noel Coward to the black-hearted works of Yorgos Lanthimos are somehow under the same umbrella.  This is true of horror as well, as we see with Ken Russell's film Altered States.  This is definitely a horror film, fit snuggly into the concept of body horror, and one that was nominated for a pair of Oscars (as we've said, this is pretty rare for horror pictures, particularly when you're talking Best Score).  But it's also quite cerebral, and could easily be a thriller (or, honestly, just a SciFi Drama).  We will consider it, though, for the sake of our conversation this month, a horror film, and a pretty odd one.

(Spoilers Ahead) Ken Russell's films are quite heady so I''m going to give you a high-level look into the plot, but know that I'm missing some things.  We have Eddie Jessup (Hurt), a scientist who is studying schizophrenia but becomes obsessed with the concept of studying other states of consciousness.  The movie leans in on this as he moves into a sensory deprivation tank, and enjoys the secession from reality that it affords.  Years later, he is still obsessed with this concept, despite having domesticated a bit (he's married to his wife Emily, played by Brown, and has two daughters).  His marriage nearly in shambles, he goes to Mexico to study a tribe that has shared hallucinatory states, and is able to join them with a magical mushroom potion, one that he steals & brings home to study in the lab.  Continued time in the tank shows that he is manifesting or reverting to some sort of caveman state of being, one that is potentially killing him, but that he becomes addicted to experiencing so he can understand what is happening beyond himself.  The films ends with him nearly transcending to another plane, but because it's going to come at the cost of Emily, he decides not to do it, and they reunite, their marriage on the mend.

The film is one that I'd find really hard to love, but I also understand & respect those who are into.  It deals with a lot of larger concepts, and I don't think it works.  On some level it's clearly about the Frankenstein myth, with Eddie wanting to create something beyond himself, understanding mankind in a different level.  In doing this, it's noteworthy that he becomes estranged from his wife, who actually has created other life (their two daughters), which is the core of the Frankenstein myth-men are obsessed with this thing that women can do and they cannot.  I don't think, though, that Russell has enough to say about this-he shoots for the wider reachs of the universe, asking questions, but because these questions are unknowable, he can't really find the answers.

The film's two Oscar nominations I was in the middle on, even if the film looks pretty good (the creepy-crawly skin effects on William Hurt are well-done...and also kudos to Russell for making sure to have totally unnecessary male nudity in a genre where we almost always get that for women but not men).  The sound is intriguing, but it's also repetitive, and honestly, this would be much more in the "sound effects" category we'd get soon after this than the mixing I'm accustomed to (they were combined then).  The Score, a rare nomination for John Corigliano who would pull off one of the category's great upsets 19 years later for The Red Violin, is solid but again, not exactly to my tastes.  It's interesting, it fits the film, but it's not as iconic as you'd want from one of the rare entries into the horror genre nominated for Best Score.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: Ordinary People (1980)

Film: Ordinary People (1980)

Stars: Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Timothy Hutton, Judd Hirsch

Director: Robert Redford

Oscar History: 6 nominations/4 wins (Best Picture*, Director*, Actress-Mary Tyler Moore, Supporting Actor-Timothy Hutton*, Supporting Actor-Judd Hirsch, Adapted Screenplay*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Mary Tyler Moore: click here to learn more about Ms. Moore (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

It's hard to express what a big deal The Mary Tyler Moore Show was when it was on in the 1970's.  The show wasn't a gargantuan-style Friends-esque behemoth in the ratings (it was a Top 20 hit for five of its seven seasons, so respectable, but was not once in the Top 5, peaking at #7 in Season 3), but it dominated the pop culture landscape.  The show would spawn three spinoffs, including the critically-acclaimed drama Lou Grant, and win more Emmys than any comedy until Frasier over two decades later.  Three of those would be for Moore as Best Actress in a Comedy Series.  As a result of playing Mary Richards, beautiful-but-talented, a single woman who didn't need a husband to be happy (or successful in life), she created a feminist icon.  Oprah Winfrey herself has stated she got into television because of Mary Richards, and the normally composed Winfrey openly wept when Moore made a surprise appearance on her show.  Coming off such a success would be daunting, but Moore chose pretty well for herself.  Being guided by Robert Redford in his directorial debut, Moore won the only Academy Award nomination of her career for 1980's Ordinary People, arguably the only significant film she'd make in her career in terms of passing into cultural relevance, a movie that won an Best Picture Oscar that is still discussed today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about the Jarretts, living in the suburbs of Chicago in an idllic house, but as you can imagine things at home are not idillic.  Their eldest son Buck has passed away from drowning, an accident on a sailboat that occurred while their younger son Conrad (Hutton) was on the boat, and since then Conrad has attempted suicide & gone to a mental hospital.  Conrad is now back-in-school but unsuccessfully readjusting, and his parents are not handling it the same.  His father Calvin (Sutherland) is amiable but largely hoping the problem will go away if he's kind to his son, while his wife Beth (Moore) wants to pretend nothing is different, and lives a sort of plastic Norman Rockwell-style existence, frequently trying to lift her problematic son out of her life completely.  Conrad is in therapy with Dr. Berger (Hirsch), a tough-talking psychiatrist who wants to get to the root cause of Conrad's problems, many of which he places at the feet of his parents.  As we learn, this is both true and an excuse.  Conrad has the ability to change himself, but not those around him, and when he suffers a breakdown, this comes to a head.  His father is willing to bend and be someone different to stay with the son he has left, but his wife is not, and leaves them before the end of the picture.  It's a hopeful, but bleak (and realistic) ending, and look at what grief can do to a family unit.

Ordinary People's best moments come from the prickliness that happens within a family unit, and how each person plays a part (and what happens when one of them is no longer there to play said part).  I think what's so smart about Redford's direction and the script is the way that it doesn't shy away from this.  It's very clear that Buck was Beth's favorite child, and that Calvin tried to compensate by favoring Conrad, though he wasn't as successful because Beth is the dominant figure in the household.  What is more intriguing is watching Beth & Calvin's own realities start to dissipate as we move into the movie.  It's clear that while Calvin loved both the boys, Beth might not have loved either of them, or at least not in a conventional way...she saw them as ornaments for her life, things to show to her friends.  There's an extremely uncomfortable but telling moment where Calvin wants to get a photo of Beth & Conrad together, and while Conrad is willing, Beth refuses, insisting she doesn't need it, and you see the look on Timothy Hutton's face as he understands in real time his mother no longer even wants to be seen next to him, he has strayed so far from what is acceptable as her ornament.  This is a very real type of mother (just look at all of the parents who abandon their children for being gay or trans), who only loves their child if they match the vision they have of them in their head.

And it's a testament to Moore (and the writers) that she doesn't get a redemption.  Part of what makes this performance so good is that Moore's Beth is not someone who is going to change, because she'll never see what she's doing as wrong.  She is the sort of person who has never considered that her worldview might be incorrect, and while Conrad & Calvin are capable of such introspection, she is not, which makes the ending work really well-you get a sense of her going back into her own life of golf, cocktail parties, & church fundraisers, everyone gossiping about how lonely she is behind her back but too afraid to reach out for fear of her slapping their hand.  All of the performers in this are good (Sutherland's blistered dad, Hutton's damaged son, even the least of the main quartet Hirsch's hipster doctor works more than he doesn't), but Moore is the best because she manages to play unlikeable so real.

The big controversy for any Oscar watcher (this is one of the very rare Best Picture winners I'd never seen) is that it beat Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, and so (for the record) I want to acknowledge that this is not as good as Raging Bull (few movies are).  That movie does more with form, and has a better central performance.  But it is strong, and I get why it has developed a sort of second battalion of defenders in recent years after being something of a How Green Was My Valley/Dances with Wolves-style punching bag for so many years.  It's a great movie...it just probably shouldn't have beaten a masterpiece.

Friday the 13th (1980)

Film: Friday the 13th (1980)

Stars: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Jeannine Taylor, Laurie Bartram, Kevin Bacon

Director: Sean S. Cunningham

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

Last week we talked about Michael Myers, the first true super-villain of the 1980's horror craze, where serial killers became not just big box office, but actual headliners in film franchises.  But Mike Myers is not the only major horror icon of the 1980's, and today we're going to get to one of the movies that clearly borrowed from Halloween, but became its own legitimate franchise in response.  Friday the 13th came out in 1980, but it had a slightly different track record than Halloween.  While the 1978 horror film was independently-distributed, the money that it made was something that Hollywood couldn't ignore, and so when a similar film came out, major studios were actually in a bidding war over this minuscule budget horror film, with Paramount eventually winning the distribution rights for a hefty $1.5 million, making Friday the 13th the first independent slasher film to be distributed by a major studio.  This paid off handsomely.  Friday the 13th would go on to make nearly $60 million worldwide, giving it a huge profit, and would run behind only Airplane! as the highest-grossing film at Paramount that year.  It would also span an entire horror franchise that would run for nearly 30 years...though given the plot of this movie, one would wonder how that was possible.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is very light on plot, but essentially we have a bunch of horny camp counselors alone in a campground where two murders took place years before.  The townspeople don't want them to reopen the camp, which they think is haunted, but the counselors, being young & thirsty, don't seem to care.  However, slowly-but-steadily they all start getting murdered, frequently during some act of nudity or sex, and we have only one woman, Alice (King) who is left standing when Mrs. Voorhees (Palmer) shows up and we quickly realize that she is the killer, avenging the death of her son Jason who drowned in the nearby lake while two camp counselors were having sex & not watching him.  After Alice kills Mrs. Voorhees (cutting off her head), she goes out onto the lake and is dragged under by a burnt boy, whom we are meant to assume is Jason...though she survives, she realizes that since no one found the boy, he must still be out there, and the final moments of the film look at the increasing ripples in the lake.

The movie, and your love of it, will depend entirely how invested you are in slasher/horror film culture and camp (as in campy, not in campground).  Friday the 13th by almost any measure is a bad movie.  You get no sense that these counselors are anything other than hormonal, there's nothing built around them as people or trying to grow them as human beings.  Thus, there's no real attachment to them when they start to die other than obviously one of them is Kevin Bacon (whom, it has to be said, is in a speedo that leaves virtually nothing to the imagination in proof that the 1980's handled nudity very differently than we do now).  But the script also doesn't foreshadow enough.  We don't really meet Mrs. Voorhees in the beginning (other than seeing her briefly in a car) or have some mention of Jason before she shows up.  So literally it's a wild third act that feels deeply expositional & like bad writing, as if they were making up the script as we're going along.  There's not enough break between her first scene & her revealing she's the killer for it to really count as a twist (even if most younger audiences likely had the ending ruined by Scream).  Palmer, who was a regular panelist on I've Got a Secret in the 1950's, is the best performance in the film (and only took the job so she could buy a new car), but that's hardly saying much given everyone else is so interchangeable.

That said, I was impressed by the makeup effects in this film.  Tom Savini, who has been a major makeup wizard for decades in horror films, comes up with some genuinely inventive ways to kill off characters, particularly Bacon's death on a camp bunkbed, where he's stabbed through the neck.  Horror films rarely get the due they deserve for pioneering a lot of the best violent makeup that we find is commonplace today in everything from war films to thrillers, but this is impressive, particularly for a film with not a visual effect in sight.

I mentioned above how weird it is that this became a franchise, and that's because Mrs. Voorhees is not the killer for the remainder of the movies.  In Friday the 13th Part 2 and in all of the remaining films in the franchise, the little burnt boy from the lake Jason is the killer, transformed into a roided-up machete-wielding hockey demon.  This is definitely one of those situations where you just have to assume that Paramount, seeing the dollar signs, figured that they had to capitalize on this but didn't think that audiences would continue to show up to see a middle-aged woman as a horror franchise star, so they basically gave us a knockoff of Michael Myers.  Given how poorly this one landed for me, though, I'll likely be skipping the sequels.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Mummy's Ghost, The Uninvited, House of Dracula, She-Wolf of London, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Revenge of the Creature, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Village of the Damned, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead, The Wicker Man, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, The Amityville Horror, When a Stranger Calls

OVP: The Great Santini (1979)

Film: The Great Santini (1979)

Stars: Robert Duvall, Blythe Danner, Michael O'Keefe, Stan Shaw, Lisa Jane Persky

Director: Lewis John Carlino

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-Robert Duvall, Best Supporting Actor-Michael O'Keefe, for the 1980 Oscars rather than '79, hence the tag discrepancy with the year above, in case you're eagle-eyed & noticed that)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Movies like Casablanca are celebrated for countless reasons.  They're brilliantly written, acted, directed, scored...they come together beautifully.  But there's also a bit of luck about movies like Casablanca, classics that are not just celebrated in their time, but endure years later.  It's easy to forget now, but Casablanca was made during World War II...there was no assurance either during its production or even upon its release that the Americans were going to win the War.  We see that film now as a triumphant call to victory, but that wasn't the case at the time.  A film being timeless is up to chance, and sometimes movies that are great in their moment age horribly, either because the history their ending projects didn't come-to-be, or the message of the film is clouded by our later changes in what we consider politically-correct or appropriate.  I was struck by this while watching The Great Santini, a film from the very late 1970's that won two Academy Award nominations for acting, but in the light of the 21st Century, feels like something darker than what the director wanted to show onscreen.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in the early 1960's, before the dawn of the Vietnam conflict, and is about a military family headed by "Bull" Meechum (Duvall) who prefers to go by the moniker "TheGreat Santini" amongst his fellow Marines.  Bull runs his family, including wife Lil (Danner) and eldest son Ben (O'Keefe) like it's a military unit, and it's clear that Bull struggles with being a warrior in peacetime.  As the film progresses, we spend alternating time between Bull, who doesn't fit in with a new generation of recruits who don't have memories of previous wars, and Ben, who is becoming his own man, befriending a local African-American student named Toomer (Shaw), who is ridiculed by racist white classmates, and generally starting to understand the shadow his father's constant pressure & ridicule has brought to him.  As the film goes on, we start to see Ben attempt (largely unsuccessfully) to merge his love for his father with his fears about the man whom he cannot escape, and who has created a constant pressure in his life.  The film takes a sharp turn in its final act (wasn't kidding about those spoilers so drop out now if you need to), when in a routine flying mission, Bull's plane crashes and he dies, with his son getting the release of being freed of his father, but without the closure of doing so on his own terms.  The family must go forward without Bull, with Ben taking up his place as the "man of the house" like Bull initially intended.

The Great Santini is one of many films from the 1970's to try & tackle the issue of a robust father figure, burdened by the expectations of toxic masculinity, with a more sensitive young son who questions the previous generation's gender norms.  Most modern readings of this relationship is that the father needs to change, that his unhealthy control is bordering on abuse, and in some scenes of the film (when he hits his wife & emotionally berates Ben), it's actual abuse.  But The Great Santini sees Bull as someone who is redeemable, and I'll be honest-I didn't see that.  Robert Duvall gives a fully-fledged performance here, particularly given his more limited screentime (he's in less than half the movie, and nearly as much of it as O'Keefe who is a total case of category fraud for me); he makes an unlikable character feel human, and that's not always easy.  But Bull is a jackass, and deliberately cruel to his eldest son.  The film might feel real, but it also doesn't have enough catharsis, and I didn't like that in death we had to have Ben become his father, as if the message was that Bull was right on some level.  That felt wrong to me as a modern audience even if it would've seemed logical to a contemporaneous audience in 1979.

Before I leave the film, though, I wanna mention a few things to get them off my chest.  First, Michael O'Keefe is kind of a blast in some scenes, as he's weirdly kooky in his acting style (Ben isn't a comic book nerd, but O'Keefe plays him as one), and were it not for the category fraud, I'd give him pretty high marks here as I think he finds layers in Ben that the script wants to ignore.  Blythe Danner missed with Oscar, and I'm kind of glad even if this is a favorite role for the Academy (long-suffering wife), as there's not enough there in her part-she plays the role of dutiful spouse a little too well, never really giving us a hint of what her actual feelings are toward Bull (is it sorrow or relief that clouds her scenes after his death...we have no way of knowing).  And lastly, the whole interlude with Toomer feels so tangential (what exactly are we learning about the main father-son dynamic from side characters that bear no meaning on the plot whatsoever?) that it drags down the film in a weird way, as if it's a more TV series with a "very special episode" on a supporting character than it is a two-hour movie.  As a result, I didn't like The Great Santini, but the two central performances are good enough that I can't say that I hated it.

OVP: Gloria (1980)

Film: Gloria (1980)
Stars: Gena Rowlands, Julie Carmen, Buck Henry, John Adames
Director: John Cassavetes
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Gena Rowlands)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I don't get to "confess" to unforgivable sins very often anymore when it comes to my film-watching.  I have made a point in the last 3-4 years of not necessarily keeping pace with the grueling tasks I set before me when it comes to watching movies (I'm a perfectionist who is always redefining "perfect" so I can never quite reach it), but I have definitely made great leaps in terms of what films I've seen.  That being said, occasionally you're reminded that there are a lot of movies, and today I will admit-I've never seen a John Cassavetes-directed film.  While I've certainly seen him act in movies (The Dirty Dozen, Rosemary's Baby), I've never seen one of his iconic, realistic pictures.  And so he feels like a good place to start for a new week, and one devoted to the Oscar Best Actress category (every weekday afternoon, we'll have a Best Actress nominee that I saw for the first time recently), as few directors have been so devoted to one particular Best Actress their whole careers.  Gena Rowlands starred in ten of Cassavetes' films, winning Oscar nominations for two of them, the second of those nominations coming for Gloria.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie Gloria reads pretty conventionally with the plot, but as you'll see below doesn't feel conventional while you're watching it.  But let's ground ourselves at least with some cursory details, shall we?  The movie takes place in the South Bronx, where an accountant and his family have had a hit put on them by the mob, as the accountant has turned state's evidence against them.  Before the mob can kill the family, the accountant gives his son Phil (Adames) to Gloria (Rowlands), a next door neighbor, to look after.  When the entire family is killed, Gloria is forced to take care of the kid despite her not having any maternal instincts, and Phil not really appreciating Gloria or what she is sacrificing.  As the movie continues, we come to learn that Gloria has a lot of connections to the mob as a former girlfriend to a mobster, and as a result knows the world well.  She starts rampaging around the city like Rambo torn between giving up the child and taking care of it.  As this is a movie, you can guess which one she picks.

Gloria in that plot description sounds kind of badass, and at times it is.  Watching a 50-year-old Rowlands, who does not resemble the action heroes we normally associate with action-adventures (athletic women like Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton), take on such a role is a treat, and I loved some of the character touches particularly the costume designers brought to this role (this is a woman who has a ton of vanity about her appearance, and it shows in the meticulous nature of her outfits).  However, Gloria is a weird movie, and I've double-checked with a film fan more familiar with Cassavetes, and it's an atypical one for the director.  The film reads like a comedy, or a spoof-the dialogue is stilted, repetitive, and Rowlands is tasked with making this gritty character feel almost like a parody.  Roger Ebert called the film "silly" multiple times in his review when the movie came out, and he's very correct-this is a silly movie, one that plays its increasingly implausible plot as if it's filled with naturalism, thus making it curious & certainly watchable, but also difficult to judge and just odd.  This makes it also hard to grade Rowlands' performance, but while it's interesting, I left unimpressed.  She doesn't have a movie where it's easy to ground her character, and her Gloria doesn't know how to match the tone of an unusual film.  It's not bad (she's Gena Rowlands, after all), but it's also an unusual performance to site, and probably was noted because it was atypical.

It is much easier to judge the performance of her costar.  It feels mean to bag on a kid, but I know I'm not the first here-Adames gives (and I'm not giving hyperbolic here) one of the worst performances I've ever seen in a film released by a major American studio.  His dialogue is so stilted-there are scenes where he delays so much in his line readings it feels like Cassavetes ran the print because he couldn't get a better take from him, and there's no sense of understanding in the performance at all.  I've read that Rick Schroder was once considered for this part, but they wanted to go with a new performer to get a more natural performance...this was the wrong instinct.  Adames won the Razzy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1980, tying Laurence Olivier of all people, and it pains me to say this was a dishonor this performance deserved.

Airplane! (1980)

Film: Airplane! (1980)
Stars: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Lorna Patterson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Barbara Billingsley, Maureen McGovern
Director: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, & Jerry Zucker
Oscar History: Nothing with AMPAS, though it did get a Best Picture nomination from the Golden Globes
Snap judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the big things you need to realize when judging a "classic" comedy is, if it's truly a classic, it's been ripped-off, parodied, and been seen with countless knockoffs so many times it's difficult to find it properly funny when you finally get to it because so many of its successors have already trod that territory.  Perhaps there is no modern film where that's more true than Airplane!, a 1980-spoof comedy that used surreal humor and slapstick bits in bold new ways, building off of the works of Mel Brooks and Monty Python to pave the way for comedians like Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, and Seth MacFarlane in the coming decades.  I realized its impact by watching the picture for the first time last week, realizing almost every sequence in the movie has some sort of homage in a Family Guy episode.  The problem is, though, if you've already seen it, how do you pay credence to what is before you without also admitting that you just aren't laughing at the jokes?

(Spoilers Ahead) Airplane! is a spoof of the disaster films of the previous decades, particularly Zero Hour! and the Airport series.  The plot is relatively simple, as a bunch of people of various walks and backgrounds board an airliner that is doomed.  The crew is serving a meal that gives most of the pilots on the plane food poisoning, resulting in Ted (Hays), a traumatized pilot from the Vietnam war, to have to take the reigns of the plane.  His girlfriend Elaine (Hagerty) is a flight attendant on the plane, and has been rejecting him throughout, but finally comes around to a romance when he saves everyone on board the plane with a successful landing.  All-the-while, we learn more about all of the supporting players, both in the air and on the ground, who are impacted by the plane's stormy journey.

This all sounds admittedly like your average disaster film, with a handsome man and a beautiful woman falling in love in the roughest of situations, all while surrounded by a hodgepodge of supporting players.  Except, of course, with Airplane! it's played for laughs.  The film parodies all of the romantic feelings between Ted and Elaine as comedy, and all of the characters in the film are played frequently for dry, sarcastic humor, contradicting the actors' real-life personas.  It's worth noting that at this point in their careers Stack, Bridges, Graves, and Nielsen hadn't done comedy, or done a spoof of their work in such a way.  They were serious actors known for 1950's and 60's dramatic television (with series like The Untouchables, Sea Hunt, Mission: Impossible, and Hawaii Five-O giving them actorly heft).  This is bizarre now, particularly for Nielsen, who is basically only remembered for this style of comedy rather than his first three decades in film considering his followups in the Naked Gun series made him a matinee idol in the way that drama never could, but at the time this was a really neat trick, the equivalent of someone like Mariska Hargitay doing a film about cops where she's serious but no one around her is.

The problem is that the humor in Airplane! is not just borrowed from (something I think I'd be able to respect), but it's truly, horribly dated.  This is something you always have to keep in check when talking about an older film, but if the main goal is to make you laugh, it just didn't.  The film is frequently sexually regressive (there's one scene where literally a woman's naked breasts are onscreen for a second, though there's literally no other purpose to her being there), and the racism is omnipresent.  There are two black characters who speak "jive" toward each other, unable to properly communicate with the white characters in the film save for Barbara Billingsley (like the men we listed above, this was an against type role for Billingsley, most well-known for playing the "All-American Mom" June Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver), and this is all played for laughs, as is the effeminate man prancing about making gay jokes among the other straight characters.  Most of the humor in the film is mined from these sort of regressive stereotypes, and while it's 1980, Mel Brooks, for example, had done better in pictures like Young Frankenstein (though of course even Brooks had struggled with indulging stereotypes in movies like Blazing Saddles).  All of this is to say that while I understand that Airplane! is an important milestone in modern comedy, I just didn't like it.