I Want To Play a Game

I've been trying very hard to break the devastating cycle of spending more time picking a movie than watching one. Peacock, one of the skimpier streamers when it comes to horror, makes that fairly easy. Something vaguely new pops up on the list? Just hit play.

Or in this case, dial.

Quick Plot: Chris Mitchell has just moved to Willow Falls following some kind of personal trouble. The first friend he makes is Tonya, a troubled fellow high schooler with a vendetta against presumed witch Edith Cranston.

Some years before Chris arrived in town, Tonya's little sister disappeared from Edith's daycare center. Suspicion surrounded Edith and her husband Edward, but their lawyers ensured the circumstantial evidence ended the investigation. Still, it's 1987 and the Satanic Panic is in full roar. The Cranstons lost the trust of their community.

Tonya has vowed to keep that hatred alive. On Chris's first weekend in Willow Falls, she drags him, boyfriend Zack, and Zack's brother Bret over to the Cranstons' home for some mild bullying. Edith, now a shell of a woman played by genre royalty Lin Shaye, doesn't take this well. Despite husband Edward (Jigsaw himself, Tobin Bell) proclaiming his love for his depressed wife, Edith finishes the evening hanging from a noose.

Chris feels terrible when he sees the obituary, and worse when Edward mysteriously invites him and his pals over for some intriguing news: Edith has bequeathed $100K in her will to the group, or rather, whichever one can - you guessed it - win her game.

Which means that yes, we get to hear Tobin Bell say "play a game", and yes, you will immediately find yourself realizing Tobin Bell simply cannot be expected to say these words without us all reacting as such.

There are no reverse bear traps in sight, but that doesn't mean the kids are getting off easy. One by one, they must enter a room and place a call to the phone that has been buried with Edith. If they stay on the line for one minute, they'll collect. 

Naturally, it's more complicated than that. Everyone has some darkness in their past ready to cross over with Edith's connections. 60 seconds can be a lot longer than it sounds. 

It's an interesting ambition to set your low budget film in the 1980s. The Call's story doesn't necessarily require a period piece, but I suppose the draw of suburban witch hunt fervor helps round out the rationale for Edith's position. Director Timothy Woodward Jr. and writer Patrick Stibbs can't resist a few obvious references, but for the most part, they're wise to downplay 1987 as simply the time that something like this could happen.

It obviously helps that we have two great actors anchoring the horror of The Call, even if we don't get as much of them as we'd like. The young cast members mostly hold their own, and Woodward Jr. finds some creative visuals to take them all down to their personal hell. 

The payoff isn't quite there, but I found The Call to be far more satisfying than its humble backing suggested. The story works in the hands of this cast, even if the details are a little messy.

High Points

It's Tobin Bell and Lin Shaye. What did you expect here? 

Low Points

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it for another 17 years: the deep demon voice is stupid

Lessons Learned

Nice guys take you to Dairy Queen

Moving to a new town can be lonely, but maybe don't rush into the first group of friends you meet when they're all at risk of committing felonies

Tobin Bell cannot say the word "hello" without his audience frantically montaging to all the times he did so at the end of 9 Saw movies

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Call played better than I expected, considering my expectations for a Peacock-streaming horror film I'd never heard of were basically non-existent. It's not going to win over anyone without a certain supply of grace for low budget horror, but if you're reading this, you probably are not one of those people. Give it a try. 

I'll Spin You a Yarn

Welcome to The Shortening! For February, we adjust the height on our camera to focus on movies featuring vertically challenged villains. If you have your own blog or podcast and plan to do the same, be sure to leave a note in the comment with your links!

Fairy tales are the most public of all domains, but it still feels risky to tackle a property so perfectly immortalized on film already.

Quick Plot: Tim and Emma have recently moved from NYC to a sprawling country estate. Pregnant Emma is taking a break from her successful interior design, while Tim continues to run his wholesale yarn business. 

They are a very, very dynamic couple.

Life gets wild when Emma discovers a basket of yarn sitting in a corner. HOW COULD SUCH A THING HAPPEN? she wonders, not satisfied with Tim's casual suggestion that maybe the previous owners forgot to pack it up. She stresses even more when she reads about a bear attack nearby, prompting my favorite cinematic rule: Chekhov's Law of Bear Traps.

Tim has his own reasons to worry. Buried in the yarn is a mask, and as we all know, nothing is more irresistible than putting a mysterious bit of plaster over your face.

Rumpelstiltskin is born! I guess?

Pop quiz: what do you know about this fairy tale? It's certainly one of the darker stories we tell children, teaching them to not make promises they don't intend on keeping (that IS the moral, right?). A quick recap:

A miller brags about his daughter, embellishing her talents to claim that she could spin straw into gold. A jerky king takes him up on it with the bet being his daughter's life or marriage (coincidentally, this is also how I met my husband). The young woman is devastated to realize she's about to be executed when salvation comes via a mysterious imp who does the job for her on one condition: his payment will be her firstborn child. Fast forward to the happy couple's pregnancy interrupted by the little magician coming to collect. He agrees to break the contract if she can figure out his unusual name. Thankfully, this guy is an even bigger braggart than the new princess's father, revealing himself to be Rumpelstiltskin in a drunken dance. She names him, he explodes, and everyone else lives happily ever after, save for the day they have to explain to their children what brought them together. 

Anyway, Rumpelstiltskin is a pretty messed up tale for children. But it's also pretty rad, hence why we have some great adaptations (Faerie Tale Theater, I'm looking at you). It's PERFECT fodder for a cheap horror movie. 

And yet. 

This is bad. This is very, very bad. So bad that it doesn't even understand how to use a public domain horror story to just direct its script. Did writer/director Brett Bentman just see open a library book to a picture of Rumpelstiltskin that showed an imp, pregnant woman, and loom and think that these were the keywords of the story? There's no bargain or bragging. Our only reference to gold comes in Emma's yuppie friend's husband who has a lot to say about crypto, then dies while filming most of his scenes in a completely different location than his killer. 

But that's not the worst of it.

I don't know how to say this easily, so I'm going to take an acting lesson from Rumpelstiltskin's star. Picture me mumbling, shifting weight on my feet, and scrunching my nose as I quickly blurt this out:

This Rumpelstiltskin is not short. 

When Tim, a man of average height, dons this mask, he simply morphs into it and goes about killing at his 5'9 frame. 

It's bullshit.

You may be thinking, "Emily! How can you close out the Shortening with such a villain?" and I excuse myself with three defenses:

1) The character is still constantly referred to as an imp

2) This was the second attempt I took at watching a low budget short-powered horror movie only to discover the killer was NOT SHORT. Folks, I watched a Canadian horror comedy called Scared Shitless which is mostly what you think it was (though slightly better than it sounds). I couldn't do this again

3) By the time I realized this movie wasn't going to pay for any kind of effect to change the height of our villain, I was more than halfway done with the film. Time, like me, is short. I wasn't going to waste it. 

So that's that. 

High Points

At a mere 78 minutes long, I can thankfully say that even if you (for whatever insane reason) decide to watch this movie, at least it won't take much time out of your life. Also, bear traps

Low Points

The fact that I'm trying to remember how the movie ended, and if indeed it actually ended, might be one of many

Lessons Learned

Never underestimate expense reports

The worst spun yarn gives the best stitch definition 

Sometimes you can judge a movie by its cover

Rent/Bury/Buy

I've had a surprisingly successful run of cheap-looking movies being way better than their titles and posters suggested this month. That ends here. If you're STILL a glutton for punishment, you can watch this on Peacock or, not surprisingly, Tubi. Don't say I didn't warn you. perfectly immortalized on film already.

Mommy Lightest

It cannot be said, nay SCREAMED, enough.

Judith Light is, and has always been, a national treasure. 

Quick Plot: Because director Bill Corcoran (last seen here with the Tara Reid screamer Vipers) loves us, we open on a sexy closeup of Ms. Light's lips purring out a beautiful first line:

What she doesn't specify is that the object of her affections was Nick, her grown son and only source of joy in Diana's life. She loves this young man so much that she wakes him up with a freshly frosted cake for his birthday. She loves him so much that she attends his court hearing and cheers him on as he loses. She loves him so much that she seduces his would-be landlord so the pending rental agreement can be nullified, meaning Nick has no other choice but to stay in Mom's house. 

It's, you know, not a very healthy relationship.

Furious when he realizes he's stuck at home, Nick packs his bags to crash with a friend, only for Jane to respond with a suicide attempt. She survives, and unwittingly leaves Nick even further away: he strikes a romance with hospital nurse Abby, who, as predicted by the cynical Diana, quickly gets pregnant. 

Diana tries everything to break up the young couple: faking prostitution records for Abby's background, hiring (and stiffing) an unhoused man to annul the marriage, and finally, paying off a pair of goons to just murder the poor girl. 

That wraps us back to the framing device of Diana's narration, coming from inside a jail cell because naturally, she's caught. But sweet Nick can't believe that his mother would do such a thing and in an act of true law and disorder, agrees to represent his own unstable mother in the murder trial of his own dead pregnant wife.

My gosh do I miss the era of making TV movie posters look like VC Andrews' book covers

Don't worry: the film has already established that Nick isn't a very good attorney.

Still, this is a wild, wild last act. Too Close to Home is based on the true story of a case I won't explain in detail as it may spoil the ending. But if this is your kind of jam, then spread it. Spread it well.

High Points

Seriously, I can never say enough good words about Judith Light. This is obviously a soap opera of a TV movie, but Light knows exactly how to command the camera as a juicy, needy sociopath

Low Points

It's inevitable in a movie light this, but there's simply no way Rick Schroder can summon the kind of obsession Diana has for him in Light's hands. Both Ricky and Nick are simply outmatched

Lessons Learned

A good son keeps an 8 x 10 glamour shot of his mother framed on his work desk

In the '90s, collies made excellent police dogs

Most girls don't dream of being proposed to the night that their boyfriends present falsified documentation of their past as sex workers

Rent/Bury/Buy

Too Close to Home is gloriously ripped from the headlines made-for-TV trash. I say that as a compliment. Find it on Peacock when you feel too clean. 

Different Places

Let's get one thing straight: Vampire In Vegas is not the same movie as Vegas Vampires, though both are about vampires that are in Vegas (or Vegas vampires, you might even say). 

Vampire In Vegas, which I watched on Peacock, has a 2.8 out of 10 rating on IMDB. Having watched Vampire In Vegas and put together this far too long writeup below, I can pretty safely say that 2.8 is a fair score. 

So...how bad can the even LOWER rated Vegas Vampires possibly be? 

And what does it say about me that my new top goal of the summer is to watch it because I NEED TO KNOW.

But that's a story for another day.

Quick Plot (of Vampire In Vegas, not Vegas Vampires): We open with what feels like a 20 minute narrative monologue by Tony Todd. I get it: you've probably (hopefully) spent most of your budget on locking down one of the genre's best voices, so why not lean in on your greatest strength?

Well, maybe because you still need compelling writing when it goes on...and on...and on.

Eventually, we get action in the form of B-roll footage for a tourism commercial selling the perks of Las Vegas. It's one of the more visually aggressive credits sequences I've survived. What starts as panning over popular landmarks quickly turns into unreasonable zoom-in and zoom-outs on the same landmarks. It's upsetting. It kind of hurts. But then there's a brief shot of a cat, and what do you know? I'm suddenly back on board.

No wonder why this is .4 points higher than Vegas Vampires, which, I have to assume, does not include a cat, much less a shot of Tony Todd holding said cat.

And now, a quick rundown of our players (of which there are way, way too many):

- Tony Todd as a vampire who as noted above, in one scene, holds a cat

- The cat. The cat only has one scene. No wonder why this couldn't crack a 3

- A lady scientist charged with developing a sun-blocking serum for Tony Todd vampire 

- The lady scientist's cleavage

- A pair of campers who witness a lot of self-combustion as lady doctor tests out serums in the Vegas desert. If you're thinking, "what are their names and should we invest any energy in learning more?", I'm here to tell you, "No."

- A male detective whose thing is bowties

- A lady detective whose wardrobe, I warn you, may lead me into a 1000+word essay on why men should not..just, should not

- The lady detective's cleavage

- Renfield! In this case, Tony Todd's campaign manager because what more could a 300 year old vampire want but the US presidency?

- An engaged couple who rudely have their morning sex run late as the groom's friends wait outside to drive him to their camping trip

- His terrible aughts bro friends who are actually going to take him to Vegas for a full bachelor party hell

- A lady vampire 

- The lady vampire's cleavage

- The lady vampire's torso

- A vampire doorman 

This is a LOT of characters for a very, very bad film. There's also such a messy story at play that I beg your forgiveness with my very confused summary. I won't even try to call out a single character's name. I'm already doing a lot of work here, and considering this movie's opening credits assaulted me, I feel like I owe it very little. 

At some point, our characters end up in one place: a vampire night club.

It's a strip joint where no one actually takes off their clothes, possibly because the budget couldn't afford it. One stripper dressed as a naughty schoolgirl gives a speedy lapdance, rushes through her lines in the style of the Micromachine Man, grabs a pencil and notebook out of her skirt to land a punchline and hurls it off to the side so quickly that I'm convinced this woman was charging the production by the minute. 

I haven't even gotten to the homemade CGI or incredibly confusing rules about vampirism that this movie seems to change every time a new character shows up. At one point, our hero (it takes a really long time to figure out we have one) drinks a vial of Tony Todd's blood, sprouts vampire bat wings, and can teleport across town...in broad daylight. Is that a thing? 

Vegas Vampires is directed by Jim Wynorski, a legend of low budget cinema who made everything from the underrated Chopping Mall to CobraGator and dozens--seriously, dozens--of movies with some variation of "breast" in the title. A sampling:

Despite helming something called The Hills Have Thighs, I think, and this is purely conjecture, that this man likes boobs. Not that you actually SEE any naked boobs in Vampire In Vegas. Just cleavage. Cleavage pushed up higher than the high heels that our lady detective wears on the job...while hiking through the desert to investigate a homicide. 

This is a movie universe where a powerful vampire who survived three centuries is ultimately bested by a skinny dude with a tree branch. I shouldn't expect much. At least I get the exact closing line I hoped for when I saw the title:

High Points

We will never have another Tony Todd, and while I'm a little sad to think of him bringing his classically trained skills to this mess, it's never a bad thing to see him onscreen

Low Points

Picking the worst thing about a very bad movie isn't easy, but you know what? You've got legendary Tony Todd and you dress him in a Kmart Dracula Halloween costume? That's cruel

Lessons Learned

One does not smoke LSD

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

Doorman 101 curriculum does not overlap with Vampire Doorman 101 Curriculum

Careful where you lean in a laboratory. Some are equipped with exposed high voltage indoor fences

Rent/Bury/Buy

As you might guess by the dissertation I've now written on Vampire In Vegas, I found far more to this movie than I ever expected. Folks: it's reallllllly bad. Bad in that way that demands a LOT of introspection. 

What am I doing with my life?