Lessons Learned: 2025!

I've been doing this for quite some time. 

As is tradition these last 15+ years (honestly, who can count anymore in this economy?) we begin to close out the Deadly Doll's House calendar year (which runs to January 31st for multiple reasons that you now need an appendix to understand) by extracting our favorite, most educational lesson gleaned from all the movies covered these last 365 days. 

Categorized, of course, like any good Jeopardy! board.

Urban Living

When moving into an NYC walkup, do everything in your power to make sure you hear that mover ring the doorbell. It's literally the difference between life and death (in this case) or life and a very strained back -- Woman of the Hour

The People In Your Neighborhood

You can always count on a '90s movie killer to speak in sadistic dad jokes -- Virtuosity

Nobody gives great accounting quite like a weirdo -- Out of the Dark

The only thing worse than a missionary at your door is a person eager to talk with the missionaries at your door -- Heretic

Technology In Government

Top secret military installations don't allow thumb drives, though they do grant personal access to Facebook -- War of the Worlds

Political Science

There's simply no such thing as an honest mayor in any town that has a water source -- Alligator

What's In a Name?

A furniture salesman can solve your table problems, not name your newborn -- The Coffee Table

Never confuse an arms dealer with an impotent terrorist -- Beyond the Poseidon Adventure

Being a caddy and naming your dog Caddy is a life choice rife for confusion -- Blades

Hair Today...

Nothing brings your hair to Pantene PRO-V level glory than being a kept woman -- The Free Fall

The Art of Cinema

Setting your film in a graveyard is a great trick for directors looking to take home a prop that includes their name -- The Gravedancers

The easiest shorthand to imply 'unhinged psychopath' is simply casting David Patrick Kelly -- Dreamscape

The Animal Kingdom

Sharks hate nothing more than bubbles -- No Way Up

What They Don't Teach In Med School

Nothing sterilizes your tools for organ removal more effectively than windy saltwater breezes -- Dead Sea

O-negative blood is very rare, and that's why city blood bank facilities keep their limited selection stored at unregulated room temperature in shoddy ziplock bags -- Vampire In Vegas

UK laxatives are incredibly ineffective -- The Tournament

On the Road

Everyone needs to learn what it means to be free, which is the kind of thing someone with a broken down motorcycle would say -- Campfire Tales

Architecture & Design

Corporate windows are a lot thicker than they look -- Wake Up

To the Skies

Any pilot knows never to nose in -- The Disappearance

It's bad luck to board a flight without saying I love you -- Flight 7500

Parenting

Before you leave your grandchild in the arms of his new adopted mother, maybe make sure she knows how to support his infant head? -- Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror

They don't teach screaming in lamaz -- Smashup On Interstate 5

So much of early motherhood is cutting fruit into small pieces -- The Feast

Not Parenting

Ladies, please remember that you are under no obligation to carry an antichrist to term -- Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return

Childing

A good son keeps an 8 x 10 glamour shot of his mother framed on his work desk -- Too Close to Home

Sports & Leisure

Scuba diving involves far too much time math -- The Dive

Much like Gallagher's humor, the best vessel for communicating tai chi is smashed watermelon -- TC 2000

Potent Potables

There's no such thing as a good domestic pinot noir -- Never Talk to Strangers

Culinary Adventures

Eerie days call for hot soup -- Exhuma

There's no better consolation than chocolate -- The Ugly Stepsister

Always keep a charcuterie board ready, even (or especially) if you live in a remote with few chances of visitors -- Oddity

Risotto has a better track record in horror than Top Chef -- House of Spoils

You Got Served

"Garden variety vigilante" is the new "virgin who can't drive" -- Hunt Club

Forensics for Dummies

Dead bodies are easier to cope with than dead husbands -- Nightwatch

When covering up a murder, never forget the crepes -- Everyone Will Burn

To properly identify a body, one must check the face and feet -- The Red Shoes

Historical Fashion

Women wore a lot of eyeliner in the late nineteenth century -- The Cursed

Women 101

Chicks love baths -- The Lamp

Freud Would Never

Fear comes in many forms, including 3' tall hamburgers -- Making Contact

The best way to jog a psychotic patient's memory is to expose him to closeups of the thing he fears most -- Genocide

Timeless Wisdom

A stopped watch is haunted at least twice a day -- The Damned

When you get old, you prepare for the apocalypse -- Deliver Us

Survival Essentials

Chekhov's law of skinny dipping remains unbroken: your clothes will be stolen. Accept it -- The Hole In the Fence

To survive hypothermia, you have to be very, very lame -- Snow Falls

If your week has been filled with hallucinations that are quickly proved to be just that, maybe wait two minutes before making a rash decision based off a visual display that seems incredibly shocking and unbelievable -- The Dark and the Wicked

Never turn your back on a human sacrifice -- Azrael

Fame!

So long as the Wisconsin Convention Center offers you more than $10K for a comic convention, you're still a star -- House of Bones

NEXT WEEK: The best of the year roundup! WEEK AFTER: The Shortening!

Special Delivery (it's us)

Sometimes all a genre movie needs is an interesting setting to be worth a watch. An antichrist baby in Estonia? Sign me up. 

Quick Plot: We open with a moody prayer circle that ends in throat slitting. The pile of dead Russians then gets an odd form of last rights in having their back tattoos skinned off and preserved.

Nearby, a hunky American priest appropriately named Father Fox is getting ready to leave the church to marry his pregnant girlfriend Laura. A cardinal convinces him to take on One Last Job: visiting nun Yulia, who claims to be carrying one savior and one antichrist in her own pregnant belly.

As things in St. Petersburg go south, Father Fox, Yulia, and handy Cardinal Russo escape to Estonia, where Laura's family money has kept a conveniently remote end-of-the-world cabin fully stocked with the basics for a few years of survival. Yulia's twins are doing surprisingly well. They can even hypnotize people. 

Father Fox struggles with dreams that push him towards Yulia, something Russo's own texts seem to predict. Meanwhile, the townspeople are growing antsy, a plague is raging through the land, and a one-eyed Thomas Kretschmann is hot on the trail to kill some babies. 

Deliver Us is co-directed by Lee Roy Kunz (who also plays Father Fox) and Cru Ennis, and co-written by Kunz and brother Kane Kunz. 

To be clear, there is a lot of Kunz in this movie. 

It's...fine. Deliver Us has a few strong assets: the Estonian backdrop adds automatic style, the cinematography has a clear point of view, and the cast is quite watchable. Where Deliver Us dies is its storytelling. The film opens with a bang (well, lots of cuts) and then seems to take an hour-long nap. It sets up several interesting character dynamics (especially around Jaune Kimmel's Laura) and then fizzles them out for what somehow feels like a rushed ending. 

Still, there's something different about the script's approach to its infant dynamics. And the movie pays off on Chekhov's Law of Bear Traps, so I'm probably going to forgive its trespasses and promptly forget most of the details shortly thereafter.

High Points

It's hard to describe the look of Deliver Us without making it sound bad, but there's a dramatically blue-hued coloring that almost makes the film feel black and white in a way that's actually quite striking

Low Points

What the film has in style it seems to lose in actual substance when it comes to character. Is THAT how a priest would react to SPOILER ALERT his pregnant girlfriend being shot?!

Lessons Learned

Nuns are naturally good shots

 

Russian conductors have soft spots for babies

When you get old, you prepare for the apocalypse

Rent/Bury/Buy

Eh. Deliver Us has some visual appeal and is slightly better composed than the kind of film you haven't heard of streaming on Hulu, but it's hard to feel much passion for the end product. If the subject appeals to you, give it a go. 

You Ain't Never Had a Field Trip Like Me

 

In 1999, my high school social studies teacher gave our class the assignment to make a movie that had something to do with American history. Naturally, I convinced my friends that the only story worth telling was Zombies Ate My Classmates, an educational horror film about a group of students who break into a museum, desecrate valuable artifacts, and then spend the night fleeing undead historical figures.

We got an A, and I've spent the last 26 years wondering what it could have looked like with a bigger but still very small budget. 

Apparently, a lot like The Lamp!

Quick Plot: A prologue set in 1893 sees a young woman land in Galveston, Texas, with her mother. Before they can locate the nearest queso, mom puts on a sparkly bracelet and releases a homicidal djinn, killing the boat crew in the process. The girl manages to flee with the bracelet and magic lamp, keeping it safe for a good 90 years until a trio of horny robbers breaks in to ruin everything.

With the old woman murdered and the robbers hacked up, the artifacts end up in the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Like, the actual museum, which is used as the filming location for The Lamp. 

THAT'S REALLY COOL. 

Chief archeologist Dr. Wallace is excited to investigate the new pieces, though his teen daughter Alex would rather he just, you know, BE A DAD. In fact, she even wishes he was dead!

Kind of!

The wording isn't that specific but it's good enough for a genie. Alex commits the unforgivable sin of trying the bracelet on and before you can sign a permission slip for a museum field trip, an ancient demon sneaks his way through her feathered hair.

The timing couldn't be worse for Alex or better for the genie. Her friends are eager to hide out in the museum for a night of premarital sex and cheap beer. While good Alex would discourage such behavior, possessed Alex is all for it. Throw in her psychotic ex-boyfriend and his sidekick, and you have a whole menu of potential victims to be murdered by historical artifacts.

When the credits rolled, only to be followed by the rare pre-2010 post-credits stinger, I found myself screaming this question: why oh why did director Tom Daley make only this movie?

It's so fun!

Yes, the kills are creative and weird. The actual story is fresh, and the setting is obviously massively neat. But we also get some neat character work! A cool archeologist dad, his daughter's open-minded boyfriend, an opera-singing security guard...there's a lot here!

I'm using a lot of exclamation points because I found this movie so satisfying!

High Points

This movie includes death by ceiling fan, haunted spear, cobra bites, and masks. HOW IS IT NOT MORE KNOWN?

Low Points

Could I have done without the sexual assault? Yes, I certainly could have done without the sexual assault

Lessons Learned

You know it's far out if the armadillos won't go

Texas bullies in the early '80s were racist sociopaths, which is why high school teachers were apparently trained in martial arts

Chicks love baths

Rent/Bury/Buy

I kind of loved this movie. It's not an immaculate piece of art fit for the Houston Museum, but by golly, it's incredibly fresh...even if it's no nearing the age of 40. As I've said several times in recent years, it's a delight to discover so much under the radar horror from eras we thought we knew. Thanks Shudder!

Let's Rock

 

In my old age, I've become quite the fan of a little publication known as Readers Digest. Somewhere in between its brain teasers and helpful tips about using coffee grounds, you'll find quite a batch of essays that read like starting outlines for I Shouldn't Be Alive! episodes.

It's logical that I'd also enjoy these kinds of stories on film, especially when they involve doomed underwater disasters and pretty ocean cinematography.

Quick Plot: Sisters May and Drew have an annual tradition of scuba diving, but this year might be the last. When gliding through a scenic cave, a rock collapse above them sends big stones upon their heads. 

Less experienced Drew frantically searches for big sis May only to find her trapped under some broken, impossible to move sea debris. May is pretty level-headed...at first. Being underwater with limited oxygen and a ticking deathclock will eventually make that impossible (physically, since, you know, oxygen).

Drew is able to reach the surface, but their remote location means there's not a single living soul around to help. Back in she goes with a fresh tank, but this can't go on forever.

There's a bit of a lather-rinse-repeat rhythm to Maximillian Erlenwein's The Dive. Drew reaches May and they plan, Drew surfaces to try something, it fails, and she dives back in as May's fate darkens. 91 minutes is a short runtime for most films, but somehow The Dive still drags a bit.

Still, it's mostly efficient. The change of scenery out of and under water helps to keep the visuals moving, something the slightly similarly themed 47 Meters Down couldn't really overcome. The underwater cinematography is clear and crisp, and the actors are able to convey plenty of storytelling under scuba helmets.

High Points

Characters hallucinating on film is harder than it seems, but Erlenwein manages to make the tricks May's brain plays on her effective at breaking down her psyche

Low Points

For a film that could have used some more stuff to help expand its storytelling, it feels like the sisters' family backstory could have easily been given more development

Lessons Learned

Always bring a reel to an overhead environment

It's harder to break into a trunk than you'd think

Scuba diving involves far too much time math

Rent/Bury/Buy

Overall, The Dive is a good Sunday afternoon time killer. It looks good, moves fairly quickly, and delivers a decent amount of tension for 90 minutes. Find it on Hulu if the mood strikes. 

But What If I Haven't Seen the First 665?

In continuing my quest to watch all the Children of the Corns I've thus far missed, I've started accumulating some details that tie the franchise together. Chief amongst them: car trouble.

Parts I, V, and now VI (excuse me: DCLXVI) kick off by stranding or temporarily stopping their would-be victims on the road. 

I promise there are more interesting things to be found in Isaac's Return, but that just seemed worth noting.

Quick Plot: Hannah is on a solo road trip to investigate the secret of her birth. Some 19 years earlier, she was adopted from a sleepy Nebraska town and is now eager to learn more about her cursed heritage. After uneasily picking up a religious man on the road, wild hallucinations cause her to run into a whole row of corn. The shifty policewoman on call sends her to the shiftier town doctor (Stacey Keach!), whose clinic is housing none other than a comatose messiah.

It's Isaac's Return!

Meanwhile, Hannah nearly finds herself in another accident when a truck tries to run her off the road. Don't worry, it's only her birth mother (Nancy Allen!) trying in vain to get her kid back to safety. Stubborn Hannah continues to ignore every red flag, even when they all seem to be on fire and wrapping her in knots. Part of that is due to the helpful hunkiness of Gabriel, a mysterious local who seems to be able to save Hannah whenever she needs it. 

Part 6(66) is refreshing in following up the original film with, cue the title: Isaac's Return. John Franklin's slithery cult leader was always a highlight, so continuing his story, in theory, is enticing. Unfortunately, there's almost too much story here. All-stars Allen and Keach feel wasted, while Hannah's actions are so dumb that it's hard to stay invested in her fate. Worst of all, we're lacking a key element of this entire franchise's title: 

I know I complained a bit about the lackluster main villain in Part V, but at least he was underage! Isaac's Return seems to have forgotten that the most haunting and interesting thing about Children of the Corn is that these are, you know, children. Children doing horrific things to adults! That's what we're here for!

But I guess we'll have to settle for Stacey Keach going weird.

High Points

Director Kari Skogland might not have had the same affection for the actual Children of the Corn franchise that some of us weirdos do, but she does have a great eye, staging some sequences in quite an effective and unique way

Low Points

No shade to actress Natalie Ramsey (doing what she can with very little), but I can't remember seeing a dumber lead character. Her own MOTHER is telling her to leave town, and yet, after being near axe-murdered and drugged, she still hangs around. There's a line

Lessons Learned

Never loan anything to Matt

After narrowly escaping abduction and human sacrifice, the natural celebration is a cold hose shower and unprotected barn sex

Ladies, please remember that you are under no obligation to carry an antichrist to term

Rent/Bury/Buy

Obviously if you're a CotC completist like me, you're going to watch Part 666 and get something out of it. The bigger question is whether this film stands on its own outside the franchise. On that note, I'd reluctantly say not quite. For a straight-to-video late '90s horror, it's about average, but anything that makes it more is really its own relation to the series.