MY CALL: I can see how this might have been a jaw-dropper in 1972. But this is one of the longest 85-minute movies I’ve ever seen. There are good visuals and good ideas, but the execution was just too uneven between the gory and the excruciatingly boring. MORE MOVIES LIKE Death Line: For more “Morlock horror” you should watch Barbarian (2022), The Descent (2005), Bleeders (1997) and C.H.U.D. (1984).
An American graduate student (David Ladd) and his British girlfriend (Sharon Gurney; Crucible of Horror) are stuck in the middle of a missing person investigation after making a report to the police. What little evidence they can find leads them back to the London Underground depot of the disappearance and then deeper into the tunnels.
Train Horror SIDEBAR: Truth be told, I thought Death Line would be a “train horror” movie. But alas, it is not. But if it’s “train horror” you seek, consider the likes of Terror Train (1980), Beyond the Door III (1989; aka Dark Train, Death Train), Midnight Meat Train (2008), Howl (2015) and Train to Busan (2016).
POV and raspy, drooly breathing trumpet the presence of these abandoned train tunnel troglodytes. And when we see them, they appear diseased, covered in open sores and boils like zombie lepers. They may have contributed to the inspiration of The Hills Have Eyes (1977).
Plenty of chunky, low budget, antiquated gore, as chunks of flesh and mangled corpses festoon the subterranean cannibal lair that feels like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) source material. Men are impaled with sticks and shovels.
The greatest flaw I find in this film is the exhaustingly lengthy scenes of Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence; Prince of Darkness, Phenomena, Halloween 1-2/4-6) explaining every trivial detail or criticism about every little thing. His character isn’t interesting, nor is his conjecture driving the story anywhere. Thankfully, the troglodyte scenes are not so stale. In fact they are gross, weird, and even emotionally provocative as they, too, suffer loss and loneliness—though they lack the ability to articulate it beyond painful, mourning bellows and screams echoing through the tunnels.
When our cannibals are on screen, it’s very stimulating—even if drawn out every bit as much as Pleasance’s oft-empty dialogue. When the cannibals are not on screen, this is a slog. Not even a cameo appearance by Christopher Lee could defibrillate my interest. Whereas the movie poster advertises a “tribe” of tunnel-dwelling Morlocks, there is no such thing. The movie hints at a past in which there may have been many, but delivers a present in which there are only two. Sigh…
Director and co-writer Gary Sherman’s (Dead & Buried, Poltergeist III) early foray into Morlock horror may have worked well at the time of its release. But just find it a bore despite some excellent gore work and make-up. It just ages poorly, mostly due to its pacing and long-winded dialogue style. And this is such a shame, because I truly loved revisiting Sherman’s 1982 classic Dead & Buried—which did age well.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 496 – The Lost in Translation Soundtrack Draft
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Mark and Petros Patsilivas (@cagedinpod on Twitteer) talk about all things Lost in Translation (2003) and draft their favorite songs from the epic soundtrack. In this episode, they also talk about Sofia Coppola, Bill Murray, and shoegazing music. Enjoy!
Make sure to listen to Caged In Presents Coppola Connections wherever you listen to podcasts.
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John’s Horror Corner: Climax (2018), a very stressful and trippy French “drug horror” about young dancers and LSD.
MY CALL: This is hardly horror, nor is it not horror. What this is is stressful, tense, provocative, trippy and unnerving. MORE MOVIES LIKE Climax: Closest thing that comes to mind is the dance horror giallo Murder-Rock: Dancing Death (1984).
From IMDB—“French dancers gather in a remote, empty school building to rehearse on a wintry night. The all-night celebration morphs into a hallucinatory nightmare when they learn their sangria is laced with LSD.”
We meet our cast of dancers like it’s a 90s MTV reality TV show. Videotaped interviews with each performer introduce us to perhaps too many characters with a broad range of interesting peccadillos. They all want to be chosen to work with this great choreographer (their interviewer). Most notable among the cast is Sofia Boutella (The Mummy, Monsters: Dark Continent).
The dance choreography is impressive. We enjoy a long, elaborate, fast and very stylish performance to be followed by a wrap party. It’s really cool! Celebrating their rehearsal, the group indulges in a little party with sangria and, yes, more dancing. A lot more dancing. The dancers, being in their late teens and early twenties, talk about sex… a lot! It occupies a great deal of rather graphic dialogue—who likes who, wants to do what to whom, what they probably do or are like in bed… a lot of that.
So this is a horror movie for dance lovers. But it’s not like Suspiria (1977) nor Murder-Rock: Dancing Death (1984), which are true horror movies. No comparison at all. This film showcases its dancers’ technical prowess every bit as much as it showcases its social horrors once the drugs kick in. It’s basically all about dance… until it’s not. And then it’s all about drugs and paranoia… well, it’s basically about tripping on acid and the domino-effect of things going very wrong.
The violence, what violence there is, is mean. There’s violence against women, child abuse, severe verbal abuse, self-abuse, some ludicrous dangerous accident, mob mentality, and mass hysteria. In other words, this film is a “trigger” buffet. After passing the halfway point of the running time, it would easily be described as a very stressful watch. These young dancers turn on each other readily, with onlookers too wonked out of their minds to know how to react. There’s an abundance of crying, panicking, confusion and screaming.
Some of the lighting styles conjure memories of Argento’s Suspiria (1977) shifting from a blue-lit hallway to a red room to a blue room. And one of the most interesting things about this film is that something active, heated, physical or provocative is almost always transpiring on screen after the initial introductions, even if it’s in the background. Like the sense of our hallucinating dancers, we are overwhelmed with stimulus and constantly wondering which of these stimuli will lead to the next transgression.
I’m somewhat reminded of Kids (1995). Director Gaspar Noé (Irreversible, 8, Enter the Void) captures the potentially diabolical social behavior of youth under the influence of drugs, competitiveness, stress and sexuality. It’s not truly horror, but it’s not not horror.
All in all this was an interesting film experience. I doubt I’ll ever want to watch this again. But that in no way means that I didn’t enjoy the ride. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call this provocative than “enjoyable.” It’s just not the kind of ride I care to revisit, taste-wise. I could say the same about Antichrist (2009), albeit for different reasons.
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BlackBerry (2023) – Review
BlackBerry – Grade – A: – Directed by Matthew Johnson, and starring Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton, BlackBerry is an expertly crafted look into the rise and fall of the first smartphone.
I always know when I love a film because immediately after it ends I find myself scouring the internet so I can learn more about the production (I found some cool interviews). BlackBerry is a movie that I greatly admire and it makes me really happy knowing that director Matthew Johnson and his crew created a visually impressive experience on a $5 million budget that was slowly pieced together throughout the production. Based on the book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry” the movie follows Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), Douglas Fregin (Johnson), and executive Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) as they take the BlackBerry phone from a simple prototype in the early 2000s, to owning 43% of the smartphone market share in 2011 – and then only 5.9% of it in 2013. It’s a classic rise-and-fall story that we’ve seen many times before (Social Network, WeCrashed, The Dropout), but it still feels fresh and new which is due to Johnson’s documentary-style approach to filmmaking.
Credit should also go to Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Michael Ironside, Cary Elwes, SungWon Cho, and Rich Sommer, who portray the various tech innovators, middle managers and competition who all pop up throughout the movie and create memorable characters. Johnson and co-writer Matthew Miller didn’t want to “Hollywoodize it and make these guys seem like Elon Musk. They had to be like LAN party nerds who — by happenstance — wind up changing the world and not even realizing they did it.”
I like the idea of accidental world changing because it really does come across that nobody expected the BlackBerry popularity explosion (and implosion). My favorite moment in the movie takes place when Lazaridis and Balsillie have lunch with Carl Yankowski, the CEO of Palm Inc. After not accepting Yankowski’s offer of a merger they are threatened with being bought outright, which forces Balsillie to start adopting dubious means to keep his company from being acquired. It’s fun watching him telling the sales people to step up their game by any means necessary and it’s a joy watching him travel around the country in a private jet in order to recruit the best in the business. The script and Howerton do a fine job of making Jim Balsillie believable as he breaks laws to ensure the company isn’t bought out by larger companies. He is never a caricature, and that’s why the movie is excellent.
Also, Baruchel excels as Mike Lazaridis, a soft spoken and wildly intelligent engineer who alongside his partner Douglas Fregin figured out a way for smartphones to be able to send emails and instant messages (for free!). What’s nice about Lazaridis is that he isn’t an super ambitious entrepreneur and he’s not a naïve “nerd who lets Balsillie run all over him. The characters feel real, and their motivations don’t seem too dramatically stretched as they scratch and claw to gain market share.
What’s interesting is that despite Johnson having very little knowledge of Silicon Valley and tech companies, he based the story of filmmaking. In an interview with IndieWire, he said “We tried to make it very close metaphorically to what filmmaking is like, how success can change the culture of a production company — we just grafted that onto corporate culture.“ Johnson’s filmmaking approach features a lot of wide shots and a documentary-style that watches characters through windows and listens in on personal interactions at a distance which makes it seem like the viewer is eavesdropping on something important. The cinematography by Jared Raab should be applauded because it makes the various office spaces and conference rooms seem vibrant and alive. This is a tough task because the amount of setups and shots they get out of each location is massive, which means extensive planning and patience had to be observed by the cast and crew.
Final thoughts – I love this movie. Watch it.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 495: I Saw the Devil, Revenge Movies and Choi Min-sik
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Mark and Zanandi (@ZaNandi on Twitter) discuss the 2010 revenge film I Saw the Devil. Directed by Kim Jee-woon and starring Choi Min-sik, Lee Byung-hun and a couple cannibals, the movie focuses on what happens when a secret agent and a serial killer play a horrible game of cat and mouse. In this episode, they also talk about revenge movies, terrible car rides, and South Korean cinema. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
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Unwelcome (2022) – Movie Review
Quick thoughts – Grade – C+ – Directed by Jon Wright (Grabbers) and starring Hannah John-Kamen, Douglas Booth, Colm Meaney, and many murderous goblins, Unwelcome is an occasionally fun creature feature that feels too disjointed to fully recommend.
Fueled by his love of Grimm tales, and fantastical elements, director Jon Wright set about creating an adult fairy tale that focuses on a young couple Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth) moving to rural Ireland after Jamie’s great-aunt leaves them an idyllic property, which on any other occasion might be considered a forever home. The move comes at a perfect time as Maya is pregnant and both she and Jamie are dealing with the aftermath of a violent home invasion that left them wanting to be anywhere but their London apartment. Since it’s a creature feature called Unwelcome, things quickly go south for the couple as they are forced to battle bullish builders and gleefully violent goblins called Redcaps who dip their hats in the blood of their victims .After a very shaky start, everything leads to a mostly satisfying conclusion that involves cheeky goblins, eyeball gouges, and more cheeky goblins.
Wright wanted to create an experience that didn’t solely focus on blood explosions and intestines pouring out of stomachs (there is some of that in this movie though), so he thought back to his youth and remembered how his grandfather believed in fairies, and when he learned about the Redcap goblins, a group of menacing maniacs who delight in chaos and have zero remorse when they stab their victims to death with their tiny knives. From there, he wrote a Gremlins meets Straw Dogs story about a “very urban, liberal couple getting back in touch with their primal, animal selves.” It’s a good idea, and sounds nice on paper, but in Wright’s quest to create an otherworldly magical vibe in the Irish countryside, he instead created a movie that feels artificial because of the reliance on a soundstage shoot and a house that never feels real. Part of this is because of Covid which most likely forced the crew to build sets inside soundstages to keep down on travel and not be hindered by the necessary precautions that come with shooting on location.
It’s neat that production designer John Beard built double-height sets which allowed real actors (dressed as goblins) to enter the house and walk into actual rooms. But, the house and lighting choices never feel authentically atmospheric and it took me out of the movie because it felt so inauthentic. I know the goal was to create a dreamy atmosphere, but in their quest to look like Legend, they made everything look too much like a movie lit by very powerful lights.
The biggest problem with Unwelcome are the tonal shifts which creates several movies that don’t quite gel. The first hour is a suspense thriller that leans more heavily on the villainy of the Whelan family played by Colm Meaney, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Kristian Nairn, and Chris Walley. The Whelan’s are a family of builders who rely on bully tactics and general BS as they fix up Maya and Jamie’s home (and also steal their delicious snacks). The movie becomes more interesting when the Redcaps spring into action because they inject some lunacy into the proceedings and their anarchic behavior feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s fun watching them deliver a plastic bag that is home to a severed head, and it’s a delight watching their Gremlins-esque behavior unfold as they battle the Whelans, Jamie and Maya.
In the Blu-ray extras, Wright talks about how he loves recent horror movies like Get Out, Hereditary and It Follows. The difference between Unwelcome and these films is that Unwelcome doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be and that hurts the final product. Wright’s previous film Grabbers works beautifully because it’s about people getting drunk so they can battle deadly aliens. It’s a simple premise and that allows the characters to shine. In Unwelcome the characters are dealing with pregnancy, PTSD, bullying, male expectations, fairy tales, paranoia, and deadly goblins. It’s a lot, and because of that it never really works as a whole.
Final thoughts – I love the Redcaps, and think there’s a lot to like about Unwelcome. But, it doesn’t totally work despite Wright’s best intentions to create a film driven by characters and feelings.
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MY CALL: Images on social media will make this movie look amazing. But it’s really just forgettable, even if not regrettable. Still, some fun to be had for fans of ultra-cheesy B-movie fare. MORE MOVIES LIKE Body Melt: (1996). Things like Street Trash (1987) and Slime City (1988) spring to mind for obvious, melty, cheesy reasons.
An Australian vitamin company produces a variety of contaminated products that cause bizarre hallucinations, extreme glandular issues, and eventual flesh and organ melting. Basically Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation but with spastic melty people instead of viral rage zombies and mutant monstrosities.
This flick is pure schlock. We open with full frontal nudity, needle drug use, and some green glowing Re-Animator (1985) serum. Detergent-chugging antics remind me the corny likes of Class of Nuke’em High (1986), after which the victim is sort of finished off and killed by vine-like tentacles that emerge from his own throat wounds. Peppering additional Troma seasoning into the stew are the inbred semi-mutant redneck scenes.
Director Philip Brophy’s lone feature horror film is complete absurd lunacy equally lacking in budget and vision—not that there isn’t fun to be had here. The acting, writing and production all have the strong feel of a Troma movie; very rough, unprofessional, silly, and likely done in one clunky take per scene. The hallucinations induced by the contaminated products are as incoherent as the rest of the movie, which was apparently originally intended as an anthology movie (which I can actually see). The only real element that develops is the gore, with the deaths getting bigger and grosser. But between the gore gags, the exposition scenes are painfully incompetent and readily forgettable. Most of the memorable parts of the film are, not surprisingly, limited to the last 30 minutes—but the screen stills you see online are generally better than the scenes themselves.
The gory birth scene and the animated killer placenta harken the shenanigans of both Re-Animator (1985) and Dead Alive (1992). Another victim has a sloppily split-open face a la Night of the Creeps (1986), and others suffer cheaply yet goopily executed melting faces. All very gross. Even if only for the novelty of it, the giant tongue scene was probably my favorite visual.
Screen grabs viewed on social media will make this movie seem like an amazing must-see. Ultimately, this ultra schlocky, ultra bad schlockfest was really just ultra-forgettable, even if not regrettable. And that’s a shame since this was high on my watch list for a long while.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 494: Serendipity, Romantic Comedies, and John Cusack
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Mark and Niall (@elniallo on Twitter) discuss the 2001 romantic comedy Serendipity. Directed by Peter Chelsom, and starring Kate Beckinsale, John Cusack, Jeremy Piven, and an absurd amount of fate, the movie focuses on what happens when two people really don’t want to be with their significant others. In this episode, they also talk about romantic comedy rules, fake snow, and really nice gifts. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
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MY CALL: If you enjoy solid writing, acting, direction and story to go with your gory 80s horror, then you should turn to this alternative undead thriller. Well-made in every aspect considerable, from start to finish. It also ages rather well despite being over 40 years old. MORE MOVIES LIKE Dead & Buried: For more dead and back again movies of the era, try Hellraiser (1987), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), The Thing (1982), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) or Planet of the Vampires (1965).
We open with gorgeous rocky beach cinematography in the Pacific northwest as a vacationing photographer meets a pretty girl (Lisa Blount; Prince of Darkness, Nightflyers, Needful Things) on the beach. A fantasy-like sequence fit to open an adult movie, they have a flirty exchange with perfect chemistry and begin an impromptu photo shoot which quickly escalates to direct seduction. But just when things are about to get really mature, the photographer is ambushed by local townsfolk using the woman as a diversion. They brutally beat him, tie him to a post and immolate him while calmly watching, taking photos of the whole process and politely “welcoming” him to Potter’s Bluff. They are as cold as ‘pod people.’
Investigating the crime scene of the horribly charred victim, Sheriff Gillis (James Farentino) quickly has several murder investigations in his tiny Pacific town. The local mortician (Jack Albertson;Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory) has an ego and fancies himself an artist critical for the preservation of fond memories. He jousts an occasionally contentious relationship with Gillis, and his dealings with the deceased become increasingly integral to the plot.
This movie is unlike most of its ilk, which may depict a lawman trying to solve strange murders or some mystery only to eventually discover it was his very neighbors and locals (including Robert Englund; Killer Tongue, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Galaxy of Terror, Hatchet II, The Phantom of the Opera) as part of some cult enacting the horrible crimes. No, this movie plays the opposite angle. More murders transpire with the movie blatantly showing us the local townsfolk enacting, photographing, or witnessing these murders of remotely located victims. And then the movie shows us those formerly dead victims alive and well again, but assuming the role of townsfolk like they had always been there. So herein, the mystery is less about what is happening and who is doing it, but more about how and why it is happening. But until we find out, the townsfolk continue to target every visitor or hapless passerby to their quaint little town, sparing not even a child. And all the while we as viewers always seem to be at least one step ahead of the sheriff.
The special effects are pretty good! The initial burn victim looked charbroiled with patches of bare, moist, skinless tissue. We also enjoy a good face-smashing with a rock, an oozy acid face-melting death, and while not a visceral sensation, the on-screen fisherman’s harpoon slashes of another death is at the very least acceptable. There’s also a brief but satisfying syringe death scene when a nurse stabs a man in the eye! But much more telling of what’s actually going on in the movie, a victim tears a clump of hair and scalp from an assailant exposing a gory patch whence it was torn; and the sheriff finds a severed arm moving on its own! So clearly are we dealing with zombies, voodoo, the Devil, or maybe a Re-Animator (1985) scenario, right? Well, the movie forces you to be patient.
Director Gary Sherman (Death Line, Poltergeist III) has served genre fans and connoisseurs of the classic so very well with this film. This is no cheap, throwaway story to pass the time between death scenes. I’d call this a solidly decent overall movie as well as a classic horror which does some unusual genre-bending for its time. The mystery unfolds at a steady rate, the pacing is engaging throughout, and the closing revelations are satisfying and well-executed. I was so pleasantly surprised as I revisited this film. I hope you are, too.
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Mark and Billy Patterson (@billyapatterson on Twitter)) talk about the soundtrack for the 1997 superhero sequel Batman & Robin. Loaded with hits from The Smashing Pumpkins, Jewel, Bone Thug-N-Harmony, Goo Goo Dolls. R.E.M., R. Kelly, and Eric Benét, this certified platinum soundtrack has a much better reputation than the actual film. In this episode, they also discuss 1990’s soundtracks, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and rushed sequels. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
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Movies, Films & Flix 