After his mother’s necklace is removed from his resting place, Johnny (Ry Barrett) crawls out of his grave to retrieve it. He also kills anyone and everyone unlucky enough to either cross his path or capture his attention whilst he lumbers through the woods, searching for that stolen necklace…
Who would have thunk that doing a Friday the 13th homage from Jason’s point of view could turn out to be so damn entertaining? Not me. I walked into my local Cinemark at a loss as to how writer-director Chris Nash could make long takes of a decayed behemoth lumbering through the woods, interspersed with an occasional bloody kill, into an interesting or compelling viewing experience.
Yet, In A Violent Nature managed to keep me interested and entertained from beginning to end.
Nash lets the viewer know that the how and why of Johnny’s resurrection is more important than the people responsible for it. We hear the voices of several people that are visiting Johnny’s “supposed” resting place, but they are not shown. Not even when the necklace is taken. Because they are unimportant. Meaningless.
Johnny awakens not too soon after the unseen group leaves. He crawls out of his grave, climbs to his feet, and commences to stride through the forest. Only the occasional edit, wherein the scenery and lighting change, let the viewer know that Johnny’s tireless tread is covering a considerable amount of both time and distance.
The woods are not empty or uninhabited, though. This allows Johnny to wander in and out of a variety of scenes and set-pieces that could be from any paint-by-the-numbers boilerplate slasher film released in the 1980s.
This is the true brilliance that makes In A Violent Nature so damn entertaining. The inherent silliness of all the zero context dialogue, coupled with the over the top brutality of the kills, had me doubled over with laughter.
Yes, I have heard people were either passing out or throwing up at some screenings of In A Violent Nature, but I think that is just marketing department hype designed to sell tickets. Which does this movie a disservice. Because In A Violent Nature is one of the best horror-comedies I have ever seen.
Just remember. All Johnny wants is his mother’s necklace…
“What the hell is a million year old grizzly doing here?“
When a rogue bear starts killing and eating campers in an unnamed national park, it is up to ranger Kelly (Christopher George), naturalist Scott (Richard Jaeckel), and helicopter pilot Don (Andrew Prine) to hunt down and destroy the man-eating marauder.
Grizzly first opened in San Francisco Bay Area theaters and drive-ins on Wednesday, May 12th, 1976. I was all of eight years old at the time.
While there were a lot of trailers and newspaper ads that grabbed my attention, or just freaked me the hell out, I have no memory whatsoever of seeing a commercial or trailer for this particular film. The only reason for my knowing of its release date is thanks to my scouring the archives of both the San Francisco Examiner and the Oakland Tribune at newspapers.com, so I can clip and collect ads and listings for beloved, and not so beloved, movies, television shows, books, and more.
I would learn about Grizzly the same way I learned about a lot of mid-seventies horror and exploitation movies. By being disinterested with whatever movie my parents had chosen to see at the Coliseum Drive-In and looking over at the other screen(s) to see what was there. One night it was Grizzly and what little I saw of it made me want to see more.
In July of 1975 Jaws had blown my mind, cementing itself in my heart and soul and becoming my undisputed favorite movie of all time. Although I knew that Grizzly offered more of the same kind of thrills, I did not think to question why a film that was so similar to Jaws could and would be in theaters a mere eleven months after that film started gulping down copious amounts of cash at the box office. I was just grateful there was more of what I loved to watch unspooling at a local movie theater.
My strongest memories of when I first saw Grizzly, at the Alameda Theatre on Central Avenue, is being scared to death by the attack scenes and of making myself sick trying to eat an entire gigantic bar of Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate that I had pestered my dad into buying for me.
I walked into the theater not knowing who Christopher George, Richard Jaeckel, or Andrew Prine were, but I walked out a passionate fan of all three actors. Those three, and the chemistry between them, do a lot of heavy lifting here, making their tissue-thin character archetypes (i.e. carbon copies of Brody, Hooper, and Quint) look, sound, and feel like they could be actual people.
People you wouldn’t mind having a beer with. Especially Prine, who gets to make quite a few wisecracks throughout the film. His offhand “You know, that boy’s weird” and his barked “You could help!” are all-time favorite lines of mine. Yet it would take a few years, and going through puberty, for me to understand what he meant when he asks Kelly, “How ’bout that filly you been riding?”
The next time I would see Grizzly it would be as Killer Grizzly, when it made its network television debut. What was memorable about that experience was how my mother snarled at how stupid Gail (the late Victoria Jackson) was in stripping down to her undies and strolling under a waterfall, while she was supposed to be looking for a dangerous animal. This moment served as one of my formative introductions to critical thinking and laid the foundation for one of my core movie viewing rules. That while I will suspend my disbelief for whatever ludicrous scenario is about to unfold, the film should not insult my intelligence.
When I got my first VCR, I actually purchased a copy of Grizzly and watched it on the semi-regular. It was those repeated viewings that made me notice just how slight the material truly was. That the dialogue filled time, but did little to nothing else. That blowing the grizzly apart with a rocket launcher, while undeniably entertaining, seemed a tad excessive and, well, kind of silly.
Revisiting the film, courtesy of the gorgeous blu-ray released by Severin, was an eye opening experience. There were things about the film I had never noticed before.
First, and most comedically, was that the female campers killed at that the beginning of the film had left their campfire unattended. What the hell!?! They could have burnt the whole park down. Idiots.
Second was there being an actual one-take in the film. It starts just after the bear tears into a tent and, for whatever weird reason, decides beat a poor woman to death by slamming her repeatedly against a tree. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood might have done it best, but I think Grizzly just might have done it first.
The woman’s boyfriend is sitting and quietly weeping. Kelly approaches and gently asks the bereaved man if he would like to ride in the ambulance. The man answers yes by saying that Sally loved him, she really did. Kelly then helps the man to his feet and walks him to the ambulance, the camera follows. Kelly then walks away from the ambulance and over to the Scott, the camera again follows, and they start talking.
Park Supervisor Kittridge (Joe Dorsey) and Grizzly‘s carbon copy of Mayor Vaughn, steps into frame and an argument between the three ensues. Kittridge turns to walk away and Kelly walks with him, yet again the camera follows, and Dr. Hallitt (Girdler regular and one-time Horror Host Charles Kissinger) steps in to offer some his commentary on the killer bear. End scene.
All of it in one take. Something I had never noticed before. Incredible.
Third is how Kittridge derisively calls Kelly a maverick and tells him that the park has no need for mavericks. Thing is Kelly not once acts in an unorthodox fashion. He seems more like an easy-going guy overwhelmed by the unexpected appearance of a killer bear than a take charge and screw the rules and repercussions type.
Something that is backed up when he tells Allison (Joan McCall), the film’s variation of Ellen Brody, that what he really likes about his job is telling stories around the campfire, giving lectures, and watching the animals. That’s not what I think of as maverick behavior.
Now if Kelly, and not Kittridge, had been the one to call in the hunters, maybe I would buy Kelly being a maverick. But everything he says and does points to a nice, decent guy just trying to figure out what the hell it is he is supposed to do about a killer bear. Maybe he should watch Jaws.
Yet, as paper thin as the characters are and as meandering as whatever it is that passes for a story in this movie are, I still found Grizzly to be an entertaining way to pass ninety or so minutes.
By the time Godzilla Minus One ended I was high as a kite. No, I had not ingested any edibles before entering the theater. I was high from the joy of seeing a truly great movie.
When I stood up and walked out of the theater, my spirits were orbiting the Earth. I wanted to raise a fist and shout, “HAIL TO THE KING, BABY!”
Yes, Godzilla Minus One is that damn good.
I did not expect it to be, really. That might sound harsh, but my childhood memories of Godzilla consist of syndicated broadcasts of Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster and seeing Godzilla Vs. Megalon on the big screen, when it was the second half of a double-bill with Bug.
While I do take Godzilla seriously, a great many of the movies featuring the iconic monster do not. At least not since the original 1954 film.
Until now.
Godzilla Minus One begins at the very end of World War II. Pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) returns to a destroyed Tokyo wearing a shroud of shame and guilt. Shame from being unable to carry out his assigned duty as a kamikaze pilot. Guilt in that he froze and did not open fire on a strange dinosaur-like creature that attacked the airstrip where he had landed his plane. A creature the locals call Godzilla.
Years pass and Shikishima, now working to safely detonate unexploded mines in the waters off the coast of Japan, once again encounters that strange dinosaur-like creature. Only nuclear testing has made it bigger and more aggressive.
It also appears to be indestructible…
Although you could remove Godzilla from Godzilla Minus One and still have a compelling drama about survivor’s guilt and the rebuilding of a shattered psyche, I do not think the emotional beats would hit quite as hard as they do. When Godzilla unleashes the full force of its atomic breath for the very first time, the wide-eyed and slack-jawed expression of those unfortunate to witness it seem to be silently screaming and wailing, “NO, NOT AGAIN!”
I did not expect to be as moved by a Godzilla movie as I was by Godzilla Minus One. But I was. I did not want anyone to die. I wanted them all to be okay. I wanted them to figure out a way destroy, or at least stop, Godzilla. I wanted them to win.
One year after several people are injured or killed in a violent Black Friday stampede a masked murderer starts carving up any and all involved with, or thought to be responsible for, the tragedy.
Although some are going to quibble with Eli Roth’s decision to ditch the “washed-out and battered film print” conceit for his sixteen-years-in-the-making Thanksgiving movie, I will not. The choppy look and bumpy sound of a faded and tattered film print is something I have zero nostalgia for.
I was also a tad leery about the film itself, for two reasons.
Reason #1: Just because that fake Grindhouse trailer was fun does not mean the movie it inspired will be. What made those “old school” exploitation trailers so ripe for parody were how often the trailer would be more entertaining than the movie advertised, because all of the “good stuff” was crammed into the trailer.
Reason #2: While I admire Eli Roth’s enthusiasm, I have not enjoyed his movies. The House with a Clock in Its Walls is the only one, at time of writing, that I have watched more than once.
So, admittedly, my expectations were not all that high for Thanksgiving. But holiday-themed slashers were such a ubiquitous part of my childhood horror movie viewing experience there was no way I was not going to see this one on the big screen.
I am happy to admit that it managed to both meet and exceed my cautious expectations. Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell have reinvented and restaged most, but not all, of what was in that fake trailer, and created an actual “old school” slasher film. One that pays homage to two very different eras.
The first era is, of course, all those holiday-themed slasher films from the early-to-mid 1980s. The ones I saw as a 12, 13, or 14-year-old. Those were the movies the fake trailer parodied and homaged.
But it is the second era, the slasher craze resurrection from the mid-to-late 1990s, brought about by Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, that gives the movie version of Thanksgiving its narrative structure and tone.
The end result? Something that manages to invoke the gruesome goofiness of that fake trailer for all us old farts in the audience, while also indulging the nostalgia its younger audience members, viewers that might not know that a fake trailer even exists, have for a different kind of slasher movie. It’s an impressive thing to see and experience.
This approach makes Thanksgiving look and feel more like a reboot of the movie the fake trailer is advertising, which is a good thing. Because, rather than an attempt to recreate something from a past few might understand or appreciate, it makes perfect sense to reinvent and create something for audiences to view and enjoy in the here and now.
I had a great time with Thanksgiving and will gladly go back for seconds.
Seventeen year old Billy (Jimmy McNichol) is super excited at his shot at getting a full athletic scholarship to the University of Denver. Billy’s doting Aunt Cheryl (Susan Tyrell), who raised him after his parents died in a horrific car accident, is threatened by this (to her) unwanted development. Her fear of Billy leaving her alone causes all manner of suppressed feelings and desires to boil over and she begins to lash out…
This movie might be sporting the title Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker now, but for me it will always be Night Warning. That was the title it had when I first saw it, way back in 1982, on a double bill with what I am pretty sure was The Beast Within.
Four things in this movie stuck with me.
First is the decapitation that occurs during the opening credits, when Billy’s parents are killed. It was a jaw dropper for me back then and I was pleased to find it still held up.
Second is Susan Tyrell’s delirious rollercoaster of a performance, which is a marvel to behold.
Third is when Sergeant Cook (Britt Leach) gets a hand lopped off. I remember how the audience howled the roof off at that particular moment.
Fourth, and what left the strongest impression of all, is the incendiary homophobia exhibited by one Detective Joe Carlson, played with Dirty Harry level of intensity by the reliable Bo Svenson.
At the time of the film’s release, Svenson was best known to me for playing the oak stick wielding Sheriff Buford Pusser, in two movies and a short run television series.
Being a longtime Walking Tall fan, I was taken aback by Svenson’s gleeful turn as bigoted antagonist. Svenson was so over the top in his disgust and hatred, I remember leaning over and whispering to a friend something along the lines of, “I think he has to be faking this.”
One might think it asking too much of a 1981 exploitation movie to handle the subject of homosexuality with any kind of nuance or sensitivity, but Night Warning came pretty damn close. The bad guys and bullies all spout plenty of homophobic slurs and make constant accusations of Billy being gay. This is made worse when it is learned that Tom Landers, Billy’s basketball coach, and the closest thing to a father figure the boy has, is gay.
Detective Carlson, Aunt Cheryl, and team loudmouth Eddie (Bill Paxton) all think this is sick, suspicious, and incriminating. Billy thinks it’s no big deal. Neither does the movie. Even though knowledge of Coach Landers sexual orientation brings out the very worst in some people, at no point is he ever shown as anything but a caring and supportive man. A decent human being whose actions have no ulterior or predatory motive. I think that’s pretty progressive for 1981, considering who was president and how homosexuals were viewed at the time.
Then again, I suspect you could make the movie today, not change a word in script, and it would still feel relevant and believable. Far too much of the country has not changed all that much in the last 40 or so years.
Wait, I first saw this glorious melding of hagsploitation and slasher movie tropes 40 years ago? My god.
“I will take you to a place where my friends foregather…“
Horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine), in repayment for giving vampire Eramus (Vincent Price) a much needed snack, is allowed to visit the Monster Club. A secret location where all manner of monster can gather together, socialize, and enjoy a respite from the human world.
As the bizarre frivolity plays out around them, Eramus shares some stories with Chetwynd-Hayes…
The Shadmock Story:
Angela (Barbara Kellerman) and George (Simon Ward) are a pair of small time crooks looking to make a score big enough to set them up for life.
They hope robbing a strange and unsettlingly recluse named Raven (James Laurence) will be that score. What they do not know is that Raven is a Shadmock, and Shadmock’s must never whistle.
Ever.
The Vampire Story:
All young Lintom (Warren Saire) wants is to spend some quality time with his father (Richard Johnson). But the reclusive, dapper man works nights, so what little time they spend together is fleeting and unsatisfying.
A mysterious clergyman (Donald Pleasance) encourages the boy to sneak downstairs, to his father’s bedroom, the next time his mother (Britt Ekland) leaves the house. It is there the boy learns the horrifying truth about his father…
The Humgoo Story:
Sam (Stuart Whitman) is a horror director struggling to find a “strange, eerie, lonely, half-deserted village” to film his next movie. He finds just that, and more, in the creepy, secluded hamlet of Loughville. A place where humans and ghouls have interbred.
The Monster Club was the final feature film of director Roy Ward Baker (A Night to Remember, The Vampire Lovers). While it was given a small theatrical release in its native Britain, it was dumped onto regional television in the United States. That is where I first saw it.
It might have been shown as part of Son of Svengoolie, which aired Saturday afternoons on Channel 44 (KBHK , Cable Channel 12). I could be wrong, though. It was a long time ago and I wasn’t taking notes. I was just watching whatever scary movie I could find.
When the movie turned up on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, although I first mistook the title as The Monster Squad, I was amazed by how vivid my memory of this intermittently silly and occasionally serious movie was. I saw it once, forty or so years ago, when I was 14 or 15. Yet my recall of the move was so vivid it became clear that, for whatever reason, The Monster Club had imprinted on my memory.
Some naysayers might snark that the movie left scars, not imprints, but they are people not worth listening to. The Monster Club is a sweet, simple throwback to a different kind of horror movie, from a different kind of era. Joe Bob rightly pointed out that The Monster Club, had it been made and released during the heyday of Hammer and Amicus films, might have been better received and even financially successful, rather than the crater making flop it turned out being.
1981 was a great year for horror movies, but it was a terrible year for The Monster Club. An American Werewolf in London, Scanners, and The Howling broke new ground in special make-up effects. Countless slasher movies were splashing blood across every holiday on the calendar. Tobe Hooper visited The Funhouse, Clint Howard learned Evilspeak, and The Final Conflict brought The Omen trilogy to an ignoble end.
The Monster Club, looking and feeling like something that could have been made at any time between 1968 and 1973, did not stand a chance. It was mod, but not modern. The goofy monster masks, whether intentional or not, seemed better fodder for a children’s program than a horror film aimed at teenagers and adults.
The first and last stories are serious, even effective. But the middle story, and the wraparound frame, are overtly comedic and playful. They are fun, but they also make the monsters feel less of a threat and more like a pet.
In 1981 it might have been difficult to understand just what it was the The Monster Club was trying to do. Was it having fun with monsters, or was it mocking them? Was the audience meant to laugh with the film, or at it?
A year or so later, Creepshow would do a better job at sticking the tonal landing The Monster Club seems to have been aiming for. Even if The Monster Club had handled its tonal shifts better, I doubt the movie would have managed to find a receptive audience. It was just too many years too late getting to the club. Instead of a warm welcome, it got an undeserving cold shoulder.
Which is too bad, because the movie deserved better.
A traumatized widow (Jessie Buckley) retreats to the English countryside, so that she can grieve and heal in relative solitude. Her plans are derailed by a series of increasingly bizarre run-ins with bothersome, antagonistic, and deranged men that share a marked similarity.
Alex Garland’s new film did not strike me as being all that anti-male. Nor did it feel to me like the work of a misandry pandering simp. Because Men is not that kind of movie.
I also don’t believe that kind of movie can even exist. I mean, come on.
Being the survivor of an abusive relationship, there were quite a few “tells” sprinkled (some will no doubt argue they are poured) across the film’s first act that clued me in as to what was “really” going on. What it was that Garland seemed to be working toward.
It was something I could understand, appreciate, and relate to. Because I had been through an emotional and psychological journey not all that dissimilar to the one Harper (Jessica Buckley) suffers through. Only mine unfolded with zero dream logic, sexism, and the barriers between the real and the unreal remained steadfastly intact.
But I do like me some dream logic and the breaking of the barrier between the real and unreal. I also understood most of the symbolism Garland smothered over his movie. Most, but not all. There were a few moments where I felt there was some kind cultural symbolism that I might not be understanding. Maybe I was just too damn American for what seemed to be a very British movie.
The thing about symbolism, dream logic, and the breaking of the barrier between the real and unreal is that a little can go a very long way, when done correctly. Unfortunately Alex Garland is no David Lynch in this regard and Men lapses into one or three fugue states too many. There was a certain point where those fugue states began to feel like digressive padding, as if Garland feared the story he was telling was not strong enough to hold the viewer’s attention.
As the movie began to drag, I began to question if the length of this particular journey was worth the destination it seemed to be working toward. I walked out of the theater with the opinion that it was not. Men could have used a bit of a trim. A little narrative manscaping, if you will. Because it took about ten minutes too long to get to where I had already figured out it was going.
“…the goal is to trick your lizard brain into thinking these are real people that real things are happening to.“
Writers/Directors Sarah Appleton and Philip Escott explore the cultural history and critical theory of Found Footage films past and present. They also raise the question of where social media and current technology might take the sub-genre.
I was 32 when The Blair Witch Project came out and conquered both the burgeoning Internet and the cinematic world. In real time I watched it go from Sundance sensation, to critical and box office hit, to the inevitable backlash and the “The Blair Witch Project is overrated and/or bad, actually” editorials and message board comments.
Like its makers, I too had grown up on a steady diet of The Legend of Boggy Creek (a syndicated television regular) and broadcasts of In Search Of…, both of which are the acknowledged influences for both their film and marketing approach.
But it wasn’t the first Found Footage movie.
Ruggero Deodato’s infamous Cannibal Holocaust, a film that often gets cited as something The Blair Witch Project was ripping off, is also discussed; but only in relation as to how it was influenced by, and grew out of, the Mondo film genre. [Mondos are documentaries of questionable veracity and taste.]
While the creative and thematic echoes between Blair and Cannibal are obvious and easy to see. I think the connection between the two has more to do with the long conversation that art, both the intensely personal and the excessively corporate, is constantly engaged in, rather than the simplistic idea of Blair being nothing more than a Cannibal knock-off.
And Cannibal Holocaust wasn’t the first Found Footage movie, either.
What film does The Found Footage Phenomenon cite as the first example of Found Footage cinema? The opening of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, of all things, and Appleton and Escott make a credible argument for that opinion’s validity.
Paranormal Activity, released ten years after The Blair Witch Project, is cited as being the film that cemented what a Found Footage movie was in the mind of the general audience. An opinion that should surprise no one and is difficult to argue against, although there are some that will always try.
As to the creative sources that the Found Footage genre might have sprung from? Appleton and Escott suggest Bram Stoker’s epistolary novel Dracula and Orson Welles infamous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds as early examples of melding reality and fiction together to form something that feels both immediate and real to its audience.
Many other prominent examples are discussed in the documentary. The Last Broadcast, a film seen as a sort of creative and cultural dry run for The Blair Witch Project, since it was made just a year prior to Blair. UFO Abduction, a 1989 shot on video film which gets the “very first Found Footage movie you never heard of” treatment. A claim the filmmaker seems to enjoy mocking. We get a glimpse at an unpleasant looking film called Hate Crime, a vampire diary titled Afflicted, the inevitable Found Footage 3D, the stranger danger nightmare Megan is Missing, and the Spanish hit [REC]. The wonderful Zoom meeting set Host also gets some love, as does the infamous television production Ghost Watch, which caused a War of the Worlds radio broadcast style panic when it was shown for the first, and only, time on BBC in 1992.
The Poughkeepsie Tapes is mentioned, but only in passing, as are Cloverfield, Romero’s Diary of the Dead, and The Borderlands. Not discussed, or overlooked, are The Legend of Boggy Creek, the home video scene from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the sublime Hell House LLC and its inferior sequels, The Houses October Built and its sequel, Adam Green’s Digging Up the Marrow, and many other examples that I have forgotten, or don’t know about.
That Appleton and Escott do not have time to cover them all, even as they dug deep, serves as proof that the Found Footage genre is an area worthy of critical study and attention. The Found Footage Phenomenon is an excellent place to start doing so.
Director William Friedkin explains, discusses, and occasionally shrugs off the many disparate elements, themes, and influences that helped him to create what many consider to be one of the most frightening films of all time.
“…just a straight ahead story that was done as realistically as possible.“
With that sentence William Friedkin proves that he was the right person to direct The Exorcist. That he understood the assignment from page one, word one of William Peter Blatty’s bestselling novel.
For me it also brings to mind the moment in Dario Argento’s Tenebre when crime novelist turned amateur detective Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) quotes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to actual Detective Germani (Giuliano Gemma).
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
That is why The Exorcist is able to work as well as it does and why so many of its knock-offs and almost all of its sequels fail. Friedkin knew that the build-up to the possession needed to be both methodical and painstaking. That the reality of Regan’s possession had to be indisputable in the mind of the audience members by the time Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) arrives at the house.
An arrival that just so happens to contain one of the most memorable shots in cinema. What inspired that shot and how it came to be is just one of countless stories and anecdotes that Friedkin shares in Leap of Faith, a documentary that is simply the man sitting in a chair and talking about how he made his most famous movie.
Writer/director Alexandre O. Philippe (The People vs. George Lucas, 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene) does not allow alternate points of view to contradict Friedkin’s version of the story. This documentary leans pretty heavily into the Auteur Theory, as does Friedkin himself. The man even goes so far as to tell how he told Blatty to junk the script and start over, by giving the author a marked up version of his own novel, to explain exactly what the new script did and did not need.
“I’m more interested in spontaneity than perfection.“
There are plenty of anecdotes and evidence of what Friedkin put the cast and crew through during production, and the director is quite open about some of them. He shares how he would fire a gun off at random times, so that some actors did more than simply “act” scared. An old director’s trick he claims was used by George Stevens and John Ford. He also shares how he punched one non-actor, so the guy would be able to cry with the kind of power the scene called for. But he does not go into any detail about the injuries that Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn suffered on set.
“…to me it’s more a chamber piece than a spectacle.“
The one thing I do agree with Friedkin is that his film’s quieter moments are when it is at its most powerful. The opening in Iraq (which Friedkin had to fight to include), Father Karras’s nightmare, and a dialog scene between Burstyn and Lee J. Cobb are all rightfully singled out for their excellence.
“…it’s both obvious and indecipherable.“
A nitpickers gotta nitpick and Friedkin discuss what he thinks is the biggest nit in Blatty’s story. The ending. Friedkin flat out admits he does not understand it, or what it was that Blatty was trying to reach for. The ending does work, of course. It just does not hold up to Friedkin’s analytical approach to the material.
But his comments do make for a fascinating end to a documentary that, despite being a man sitting in a chair and telling stories, is as every bit as thought-provoking and engrossing as The Exorcist itself.
Anne Fedder (Barbara Crampton) is struggling. After 30 years of marriage to Jakob (Larry Fessenden), a prim and proper pastor, she is finding it hard to ignore the feelings of malaise, resentment, loneliness, and, most powerful of all, anger bubbling inside her.
A meeting with an old flame (Robert Rusler) tempts Anne to act on those feelings, if only for a moment. Anne, immediately overwhelmed with guilt by her actions, tries to extricate herself, but a vampire attack ends the awkward situation before she can.
Now Anne has more than feelings of malaise, resentment, loneliness, and anger bubbling inside her to contend with. She has a growing thirst for blood…
Jakob’s Wife is a good movie, especially if you like vampires in the vein of Count Orlok or Kurt Barlow. The Master (Bonnie Aarons) is a creepy, ruthless, and smooth talking delight. A threat that is both formidable and seductive.
Even better are stars Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden. Both give wonderful performances. They also share a tremendous amount of onscreen chemistry. Anne and Jakob look and behave like an old married couple in the worst way possible. Jakob has grown so comfortable and complacent, he has drifted into emotional and psychological neglect.
Anne is clearly suffering and Jakob is just as clearly not noticing. His love for Anne might be strong, but his attention to her is sorely lacking.
That no one around them seems to notice, or care, makes Anne’s suffering all the more palpable and relatable.
Their underplayed and unacknowledged marital issues get the film off to a wonderful, character focused start. A start so good, so solid, it could be argued that, if you were to take the vampires out of the movie, there is more than enough meat on the story to make a heartfelt drama about how a marriage is tested by the temptation of infidelity.
But the vampires were not removed, which gives Jakob’s Wife some jarring tonal shifts to go along with all its plot twists. Director Travis Stevens navigates those shifts and twists with reserved aplomb, aided by the emotional anchor created by Crampton and Fessenden.
It’s good, very good. Which is why it was so frustrating for me that it misses greatness by the narrowest of margins, and I so badly wanted Jakob’s Wife to be great.
As good a job that is done showing how Anne and Jakob’s relationship is stress tested to the near breaking point, revealing just how strong the bond between the two truly is, I think a vital element is missing. Religion. Jakob is a pastor, but for all that matters on how the story plays out, he could be a carpenter, electrician, or door-to-door salesman. Jakob referencing Paul’s letters in his sermons opens the door for some biting commentary on just how stifling the teachings in those letters can and are for women in some churches. [#NotAllChurches???]
But the movie doesn’t go down that thematic rabbit hole, so I am not going to go into any greater detail than offering the opinion that some quotations from 1st Corinthians, and a few other relevant books, might have juiced up the three-way battle between the Master, Anne, and Jakob in interesting ways.
Not that the ways on display are lacking in juice or points of interest, far from it. The fear, loathing, and hatred of female power (emotional, sexual, and intellectual) are still revealed and explored. Jakob says some pretty mean and victim blaming things to Anne, once her secret is revealed. There is also a strong sexual current to what the Master is doing, of course. That the Master is a woman ads some sapphic symbolism, too. There is no shortage of ideas or meaning in this film. It’s a great problem for it have.
Intelligent and bloody, Jakob’s Wife is an excellent film that can and will hold up to multiple viewings.
Ghoulies, Ghosties, and Long-Leggedy Beasties 