A Dream Is a Wish Your Tapeworm Makes

There's a reckoning every elder millennial must make with the fact that a giant chunk of her childhood entertainment celebrated physical beauty above all else. We've all had our deep revisionist Barbie era, but if you, like me, were in part raised by clamshell VHS cases containing animated Disney fairy tales, it's sometimes jarring to realize just how many of these stories hinged on the gorgeous girl getting her (often) silent man.

Cinderella is one of the worst offenders. Yes, our heroine is at least nice (we know this because animals like her) but the way that film juices every ounce of ickiness out of its physically less appealing villainesses is, to a 21st century eyeball, kind of gross.

So bring on the revisionist horror adaptations!  

Quick Plot: Elvira (the wonderful Lea Myren) is your typical awkward teen girl, fishing chocolate out of her braces and fantasizing a poetry-filled life with Germany's most eligible bachelor: Prince Julian. Her prospects seem to improve when her widowed mother Rebekka marries a baron, but the celebration is short-lived. Not only does the groom die before digesting his own wedding cake, but his beautiful daughter Agnes quickly reveals that their household like Elvira's, is broke. 

Rebekka despairs, but Elvira sees opportunity when the prince announces an upcoming ball to choose his bride. Surely some charm school, a little nose job, and a quick round of orthodontic work can take her to the crown?

If you thought dieting was rough in your lifetime, imagine how much worse it was a few hundred years earlier. Tapeworms crawled so Ozempic could run.

Elvira works hard to transform her awkwardness into a conventional beauty, losing as much weight as she does hair and even more of her very own soul. Younger sister Alma watches in horror, hiding her own menstruation to stay as far away from balls and betrothments as possible. With her blond hair and perfect face, Agnes is assumed to be the most likely princess but her secret tryst with the stable boy sends her down to the bottom of the social pile. 

With less competition and a newly thin physique, Elvira inches closer to winning the prince. But Agnes still has a fairy godmother, magical pumpkin, and friendly silkworm tailors to steal the day.

The Ugly Stepsister is the debut of Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt, and what a statement it makes. To make your first film as a period fairy tale with body horror elements no one has ever seen before is quite a swing, and Blichfeldt is positively roaring with technique. She's aided by incredible photography and costuming, making The Ugly Stepsister feel as rich as something like Marie Antoinette. 

Bilchfeldt has also written an appropriately wicked script. It's hard to not draw comparisons to Coralie Farget's The Substance, another deeply female-driven flipped fairy tale about just how horrific it is to internalize society's arbitrary and impossible beauty standards. Like The Substance, The Ugly Stepsister is aggressively visceral with a dark sense of humor about how far women will go to reach their ideal. 

I really enjoyed The Ugly Stepsister whilst watching, but a few days later, I find myself loving it. There's a lot to ponder in terms of its themes, which seem easy on the basic level but are far more complex the more you dig. And along the way, we get absolutely vile body horror from a female lens. It's exactly my kind of movie. 

High Points

I won't spoil it, but by golly did I find Elvira and Alma's ending to be satisfying

Low Points

And here I will SPOIL, so skip until you've watched:

It's only in the final moments that I came to truly understand the real villain of the piece. Maybe this will be clearer on (an almost guaranteed) second viewing, but it's ultimately Rebekka who seems to take on the bulk of responsibility for the terrible things Elvira puts herself through. The freedom Elvira and Alma ultimately find in living poor lives as happy hags (I say this with extreme affection) is something they have to grab away from this woman who has forced them to follow the same hateful doctrine she has modeled her own unhappy, if aesthetically pleasing life upon. Sure, Julian and his royal friends are shallow jerks for how they view woman, but to do the same from the inside like Rebekka is something much, much worse. I think there's a way to watch The Ugly Stepsister with this in mind and find a richer experience. We'll see next time.

Lessons Learned

There's no better consolation than chocolate

If you're marrying for money, check your intended's bank account before putting on that ring

Rotting barn corpses are fertile breeding grounds for fairy godmothers

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Ugly Stepsister isn't a complete masterpiece, but it's an incredible debut, and one that makes me wildly excited for Emilie Blichfeldt's future. This is such a rich, gross, funny, and gloriously twisted tale that it's an immediate recommend. Find it on Shudder and live happily ever after.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Lawn

Parody is easy to do, and very difficult to do well. Not every songwriter can be Weird Al, and not every The Fast & the Furious spoof can reach the glorious heights of Superfast!

Seriously, trust me on this one.

Today's film is an unusual entry in the '80s horror canon: a straight-out remake of Jaws by way of a golf course being terrorized by a lawn mower. No, it doesn't reach the heights of Eat It, but you know what? 

This is something special.

Quick Plot: Two horny teenagers sneak away from their friends' bonfire to make out in the fields of Tall Grass Country Club, only to discover there are things far scarier than STDs. Cue the credits as done in the POV style of Police Squad but as, you guessed it, a killer lawnmower. 

It's business as usual at Tall Grass, even after a dues-paying member is slaughtered in a similarly mysterious manner. Golf trainers Kelly and Roy (nothing coincidental about that name) are suspicious, especially after Mal the caddy also turns up in pieces. Still, there's a golf tournament to be played and the mayor--er, property owner--is not to be dissuaded. The show must go on. 

Blades is a silly, silly movie. Mal's widow shows up in full Mrs. Kintner drag to slap Roy. When a wayward lawnmower is discovered and thought to be the killer, there's a glorious shot of the proud hunters hanging the bag high and slicing it to reveal...leaves, nothing but leaves. Which means THE KILLER IS STILL OUT THERE.

And yes, the killer is a lawnmower. If Blades has a flaw, it's that we never really get much insight into just why such a machine would choose this moment to hack its way through this stuffy rich community, though the fact that our victims are mostly rich white jerks might in itself be a justifiable motivation. 

There is nothing overly grand about Blades. It's fully aware of its own stupidity and absolutely dedicated to being pure entertainment. Considering all of the unofficial Jaws knockoffs--everything from sue-able Orca to transferring the threat to Piranha--the fact that director Thomas R. Rondinella cleverly moved the formula to something as dumb, but genuinely violent as a sentient lawnmower is in itself something special. That his film is backed up by earnest performances and a true understanding of Jaws's key moments really lets this hit home. 

High Points

There's almost a Simpsons-esque aura around the idiotic townspeople who can't listen to a word of reason without breaking down into a violent mob. With our rightly leads playing their drama straight, the utter silliness of the supporting characters keeps Blades somehow perfectly balanced. And yes, I'm saying all of this about a Jaws parody starring a killer lawnmower

Low Points

It might be unfair to compare the then-novel Blades to another 40 years of Jaws parody, but it does feel a tad disappointing for a blatant parody to not always cash in on the best moments. Where's our chalkboard scrape, our singalong-gone-wrong? Picky, I know. But there are only so many Jaws parodies about killer lawnmowers, and I want each one to be all it can be

Lessons Learned

You know it's bad when the 19-year-old EMT says it's the worst he's ever seen

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

Once formed, bad habits are hard to break

Rent/Bury/Buy

Blades is good dumb fun, and perfect for the lighter summer season. Oddly enough, its current home is Peacock. Have a good time.

Gaslight (White Diamonds Edition)

 

Every time I move, I play the mathematical nightmare game of trying to figure out what I should be doing about cable. Anyone younger than me may be googling the definition of ‘cable.’ Those older are just asking, “Spectrum or Optimum?” Those in between wonder about Fios. 

Sometimes it is a bit of a mind boggle to realize how many languages this particular moment in time is speaking without realizing they’re different. We are our own Tower of Babel, a precarious stack of cable boxes atop routers spewing out cut cords like dead vines. 

Inevitably, because I am now officially old, I flirt with such things as Hulu Live or YouTube TV and realize in the end, I’m just going to keep that darned fossil of a cable box…though now a smaller pebble that makes my RoKu look like overweight.

All this is to say that with my ridiculously overpriced cable plan (look, a lifelong baseball fan will almost always be stuck giving in to the network gods) I now get TCM (Turner Classic Movies, for the younglings). And that means I have constant access to film classics that are often hard to find or more specifically, hard to remember that I want to find them. So when something in the genre hits that digital guide, it’s a safe bet that I’m going to make that $10.99 DVR do its job.

Quick Plot: Ellen Wheeler is the kind of glamorously wealthy English(?)woman who sleeps in full makeup and drinks brandy from fine glassware in a sprawling garden estate. She also looks a lot like Elizabeth Taylor.

There's been a lot of talk in the last few years about what it means to be a movie star, and how that kind of categorization has been dying out in an age of 21st century media. I disagree with the sentiment (Florence Pugh, Michael B. Jordan, Sydney Sweeney to name a few new ones). Still, when those unusual violet eyes catch the film’s lighting in such a way that you get an all-out diamond sparkle, you kind of understand the phrase "the camera loved her.”

But the world doesn't seem to love Ellen. A few years earlier, her husband died in a car crash. That's sad, but it's a harsher memory when his passenger was a much younger, also dead mistress.

Ellen moved on well enough to remarry, but things seem tense between new husband John. One night, during a chaotic storm, Ellen spots a dead body sitting in front of the window of the abandoned house next door. The police are summoned to predictably find no sign of foul play, and John is doubtful of his wife’s state of mind. Much like every beautifully wealthy British(?sure) woman of her time, Ellen is recovering from a nervous breakdown.

Bestie Sarah (genre all-star Billie Whitelaw) is visiting and quickly sides with John, which only fuels Ellen’s fury. There are also shady psychiatrists, mysterious gardeners, finely worded paperwork, and all the other details you look for in this kind of story. 

Based on a successful play, Night Watch was directed by Brian G. Hutton, better known for war movies like Kelly’s Heroes. He seems a good fit for this material and cast. The story feels like a rather straight British mansion mystery, but the film never feels as if it was confined to a stage. Part of that is the pure star power of Elizabeth Taylor, but it’s also the simple joy of a raging thunderstorm and heavy classical score. We use the word “cozy” to describe a lot of mysteries these days, even when they involve homicide. Night Watch seems to have that same perfect mood.

High Points

I wasn’t terribly surprised at the film’s second-to-last reveal, but I was fairly shocked at the level of violence and pure viciousness in the primary act(s) of violence. It takes Night Watch to a brutal place I didn’t see coming, and it makes the denouement that much more chilling in its own eerie way

Low Points

I’ll be a little vague here as to avoid spoilers, but I do wonder if the film needed just a hair more of one character’s chronic betrayal to better tie things together

Lessons Learned

Everything is bigger and better in Spain

Dead bodies are easier to cope with than dead husbands

Ulcers and golf make for a terrible combination

Rent/Bury/Buy

There are certainly better versions of this kind of tale than Night Watch, but I still had a fantastic time with its twists and turns (even if a clever viewer could probably call most of them out early on). Elizabeth Taylor commands the screen and leads us into a gloriously satisfying finale. If you’re experiencing any kind of itch that only a 1973 British mystery can scratch, this one will feel great. 

30 Odd Foot of Clicks

Random reminder that I have a podcast (even I forget) and that in my most recent episode, the great Christine Makepeace and I dove into Red Rooms and its obvious pairing, 1995's The Net. 

I wrote about The Net a lifetime ago, but found it even more impressive this time around. As a thriller, it's perfectly sleek, but the real surprise was how once you look past the details (floppy disks, PIZZA DOT NET), the actual story is just as relevant THIRTY YEARS later.

Anyhoo, now that we all feel like dinosaurs, it only feels right to see ANOTHER studio-sized techno-horror from the same year.

Quick Plot: A technology firm has teamed up with a maximum security prison to enlist inmates in some virtual reality testing. Ex-cop turned convicted murderer Parker Barnes (the world's best movie star Denzel Washington) and a pre-Saw Costas Mandylor are hunting serial killer SID 6.7 in a video game sushi restaurant when something goes wrong. Our beloved before-he-was-Jigsaw-5.0 is killed, as investors decide to pull the plug on this totally reasonable experiment.

Not so fast. Head developer Darrel Lindenmeyer (the kind of wormy little man who you'd meet and say, "I bet his last name is Lindenmeyer") is so proud of SID 6.7 that he simply can't bear to say goodbye. If you love something, you set it free, even if that something is a computer program amalgam of 200 serial killers condensed into baby Russell Crowe's buttocks.

SID is quick to turn LA into his own very '90s murder playground. He storms a rave and MMA fighting event, always framing his kills in perfect view of a running camera. 

Naturally, there's only one man who can stop SID's rampage. 

Well, one man and a randomly paired blond sidekick with a precocious child perfectly constructed to be put in danger.

Virtuosity was probably never going to be a great film. The fact that I've taken multiple paragraphs to set something up before reaching the 20 minute mark of a 98-minute film and STILL haven't addressed half of the cast (OSCAR WINNER LOUISE FLETCHER FOR GOODNESS SAKE) should probably indicate that there's a bit too much going on here. 

Even Denzel thought so. The biggest drag in Virtuosity is whatever the heck the plan was for Kelly Lynch's Dr. Madison Carter. She's a criminal psychologist intent on teaming up with Parker to catch and profile SID. Naturally, she's also a single mom to baby-faced, perfectly kidnappable Kaley Cuoco. 

As a sci-fi action thriller, Virtuosity can be pretty fun. But Lynch's Carter just sticks out as an unnecessary chess piece in an already overstuffed game. It's not surprising that the first bit of behind-the-scenes trivia for this film is that the script turned Parker and Madison's relationship romantic. Whether that was ultimately cut for time, chemistry, or racial politics (most sites suggest it was Denzel Washington who thought it would alienate filmgoers), the end result of this pairing is just...off. This woman should NOT be tagging along as a seasoned cop/convicted murderer hunts down a terminator. The minute you see her equally blond-headed child, you clock exactly what will be the final conflict of what could be a far more interesting story.

So no, Virtuosity is not a hidden gem in a Blockbuster pile. It has heavy script issues that are both helped and hurt by the very '90s CGI and overall aesthetic. There's certainly a charm to its very of-its-time style. The film is never boring. But also, mostly, not that good.

High Points

Maybe it was a direct effect of having just watched the divine Sandra Bullock take over the screen in The Net, but there really is something to seeing a true movie star in action. Denzel Washington is obviously capable of deeper performances, but his work in this fairly dumb thriller is just more evidence of how insanely perfect he is as an onscreen presence.

Low Points

Aforementioned mess of Kelly Lynch's role, shoehorned into an already messy narrative and topped with one of the worst '90s haircuts to boot

Lessons Learned

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

Never trust a computer nerd with a name like Lindenmeyer

It should probably go without saying, but there's no universe in which combining 200 serial killers into one mainframe is a good idea

Rent/Bury/Buy

Virtuosity is by no real definition a good movie. The choppy storytelling suffers from whatever happened behind the scenes, making the overall product fairly unsatisfying. But hey, there are only so many '90s techno thrillers, and even fewer that boast someone with the heft of Denzel Washington. 

Northern Exposure

Good gosh do I love a period film set in the freezing waters of absolute doom. We get so few. We need so many more. 

Quick Plot: Welcome to the 19th century Arctic, an easy-living destination filled with fresh fish and jolly drunken cheer.

Oh, how I kid.

Life is miserable. Young widow Eva manages a sad fishing outpost once run by her late husband Magnus. Eva and her crew pass the time with ale and ghost stories told with panache by the superstitious cook Helga, but it's a rough routine. 

One fateful afternoon, helmsman Ragnar spots a sinking vessel stuck in The Teeth, the same treacherous rocks that claimed Magnus some years earlier. With their own resources so limited, Ragnar refuses to lead a rescue despite good-hearted sailor Daniel's plea to do the right thing. Eva reluctantly agrees with Ragnar's decision, but when some delicious salted pork from the doomed ship rolls onto their land, the group decides to investigate. 

It doesn't go well. Though they find a few barrels of lamp oil, they also discover some rightfully frantic survivors trying to hitch a ride onboard. Ragnar tries to fight them off but ends up pulled into the water. Daniel hammers one in the face to save Eva. It's ugly and no one feels very good about their choices...especially when the bodies wash up on shore the next day and strange signs point to a haunting. 

Hungry, cold, and terrified, the team quickly descends into chaos. But are they being hunted by a wronged draugr, or their own madness?

The Damned is a rich slice of period horror that falls short of greatness in part because, well, it's simply too short. At just 90 minutes, the film moves fairly quickly, even if it also has the feeling of a slow-burning ghost story. The problem is that its big finale culminates in a twist that should hit hard before the screen fades to a silent black. Instead, it had me scratching my head. 

I won't spoil The Damned's ending, as I do still recommend this as a worthy atmospheric watch. But the fact that I sat through the end credits tossing things over in my head, then pounced on internet threads to see if there was a consensus is telling. And that most Google searches that start "the damned movie" include "ending explained" and descend into arguments isn't something to be ignored. 

Director Thordur Palsson clearly has talent. Even in its warranted literal darkness, The Damned looks and feels like a much grander period film than its fairly low budget would normally suggest. There’s not a bad performance in the bunch. Tension is built effectively. And yet, when all of these things are put together and add up to a truly confusing end note, it’s hard to give the film a full pass. 

High Points

Come on, it's a sleek horror film set in the 19th century arctic! What's not to enjoy?

Low Points

It's often the nature of snow-set ensembles that characters in heavy layers and tightly wound scarves are hard to differentiate. This is in full swing in The Damned, where we're stuck with a whole crew of frost-faced white men who blend together so quickly that I never really had a footing of anyone’s individual identity, making it difficult to even do a head count as the terror grew

Lessons Learned

Ocean-bloated corpses make cozy hideaways for eels

Always listen to the cook

A stopped watch is haunted at least twice a day

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’m very glad I watched The Damned. It was a great moody way to spend a late Sunday afternoon in the dark, and the fact that its first 89 minutes was so strong makes me almost forgive it ending so poorly. If you’re the kind of forgiving genre fan who can look past an unresolved (and I don’t mean ambiguous: I mean genuinely undecided) ending, this is well worth your eyes.