Monthly Archives: May 2021

And Now for a Good Movie: The Courier

 

In addition to watching the wretched The Creeping Flesh my sweetie-wife and I also rented The Courier a Cold War espionage thriller starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Set in the early 60s and lead up to the Cuban Missile CrisisThe Courier is based upon historical events and characters and from my Wikipedia level of research seems to have gotten the broad strokes of events correct but as always one should never attempt to learn history from cinema.

Greville Wynne (Cumberbatch) is a British businessman and salesman who frequently travels behind the Iron Curtain. When Penkovsky, a high-ranking member of the Soviet GRU (military intelligence), messages the Americans that he is willing to delivery secrets to them Wynne is recruited by MI6 and the CIA to act as a courier between the agent and the west. Wynne and Penkovsky become close friends and when their operation starts to become exposed Wynn is forced to decide what is the true nature of loyalty.

The Courier is an excellent film that keeps itself ground in the realism of the day. This is no James Bond adventure but more of a John le Carre style story though without the deep and all-encompassing cynicism Le Carre was so fond of. Directed by Dominic Cooke and written by Tim O’Connor The Courier rarely puts a foot wrong, principally keeping us in Wynne’s point of view and conveying the risks and consequences of the characters’ action. Sean Bobbit’s cinematography captures the sense of alien coldness permeating the scenes set in the Soviet Union as Wynne finds himself lost the labyrinth of modern spying.

The Courier is currently in some theaters and available for the ‘Theater at home’ rentals.

 

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Do Not Watch This Movie: The Creeping Flesh

 

Due to water damage reasons our weekly board and card games we’re canceled pitting movies front and center for me and my sweetie-wife’s entertainment. Surfing through Amazon Prime available films we discovered this Peter Cushing/Christer Lee movie from 1973 that I had never seen and she couldn’t recall watching, The Creeping Flesh.

Professor Hildern (Cushing) returns from New Guinea with a skeleton of an advanced man much older than the current fossil record for human evolution. His household is run by his sheltered adult daughter Penelope as his wife ‘died’ many years earlier. Hildern plans to used his discovery to win the ‘Richter’ prize returning his household to solvency but his half-brother James (Lee) also plans to wins the prize for his work with the insane, Both become fixated on the skeleton when it is discovered that is exposed to water it instantly regrows flesh that is the course of all evil in the world because evil is cause by a bacteria. Betrayal and theft result in the creature being reborn in a rainstorm, losing evil upon the Victorian Age.

Believe it or not that brief synopsis makes much more sense than the actual film. The Creeping Flesh, though mercifully short at 94 minutes attempts to stuff its scrip with an absurd number of sub-plots.

  • Hildern’s wife was not killed but committed to James’ asylum for apparently enjoying her sexual life too much.
  • James is also dealing with an escaped mad murderer that serves no story purpose.
  • Penelope is infected by the evil bacteria which makes her drink and dance and attack rapists. She is judged to be mad.

It turns out my sweetie-wife has seen this film before but had managed to repress it from her memory. Nothing saves this film, not Cushing, not Lee, not even the barest hints of sex and violence. It is a slog to view and should be avoided.

 

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The Itch is Back

 

For me part of the writing process is ‘the itch’ I get as an idea grows from a vague concept to a near obsession returning to my thoughts again and again like guilt. As I wind down the process of my current work in progress and begin the search for publishers and agents, the horror film section of the writing process, I find quite faster than normal this time my mind is already mining the next novel.

The core idea was generated last year when it was one of a few I submitted to my then editor for consideration as a follow to my novel Vulcan’s Forge not a sequel just the next book by me. He wasn’t thrilled with the ending and frankly at the time the idea hadn’t become all-consuming for me either, so I set it aside to work on the manuscript now nearing completion.

In that time the behind-the-scenes processor apparently kept working on the concept, finding the genre it really belonged to, and supplying me with a character to drive that had conflicting wants and needs that cemented the story dark ending.

So, my little vacation from writing looks to be ending sooner than I expected and a new outline is about to be born.

 

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Streaming Review: Mayhem

 

Okay, I’ll give everyone a break from the political posts and do another film review. This past weekend a friend and I watched the 2017 action/horror/comedy Mayhem starring Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving.

Derek (Yeun) is a rising corporate lawyer in the mega-firm of TS Consulting whose career is ruined when he is selected to take the fall for legal fumbles he had nothing to do with. Melanie (Weaving) is a woman desperate to save her family home from foreclosure by the faceless sociopathic firm. When a virus that fully inhibits inhibition and impulse controls permeates the towering building that houses TS Consulting the facility is quarantined for 8 hours to allow a neutralizing element to eradicate the infection. Due to legal precedent already established by TS Consulting itself no person is legally responsible for any of their action while infected giving Derek and Melanie, now improbably teamed up, a ticking clock to fight their way to the boardroom when the nine partners can change their doomed fates.

Directed by Joe Lynch and written by Matias Caruso Mayhem is a *fun* movie. Notwithstanding the copious amounts of blood, sex, and brutal violence, the tone of the film is light and satirical. Yeun and Weaving give us personable characters to empathize with and to root for while the corporate baddies sitting in their corporate offices doing corporate-y things are perfectly serviceable stand-ins for the faceless, joyless, and scruple-less bureaucracy that destroys lives in a mindless pursuit of profit and power.

Filmed in Serbia with a limited budget Mayhem through the excellent craft of director Lynch, cinematographer Steve Gainer, and production designer Mina Buric it has the appearance of a film with a much more substantial budget. Particularly impressive are the invisible visual effects. The virus causes infected people to have one terribly bloodshot eye and throughout the film everyone’sbloodshot eye is a CGI effect.

Unlike the previous Joe Lynch movie I have watched Knights of Badassdom Mayhem finds and nails the right ending for its tone making the experience of watching it quite enjoyable.

Mayhem, including a version with a commentary track featuring Lynch and Yeun, is currently streaming on Shudder,

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Liz Cheney the Liberal

 

Representative Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney vice-president under G.W. Bush, is, for the moment, the third ranked Republican member of the US House of Representatives, with only the House Minority Leader and Republican Whip more senior. In February she survived a conference vote to remove her from that post but now the troops are restless again and many feel that she can’t survive another vote. When you look are her policy positions it’s very clear that she’s out of step with the GOP. She is;

  • Pro Life and against Federal Funding for abortions
  • Votes consistently for tax cuts
  • Want to eliminate benefits from the Dep of Ed
  • Advises that nothing should be done about global climate change
  • Wants to abolish the EPA
  • Wants to force states to honor out of state concealed carry gun permits
  • Wants to abolish ‘Obamacare’

With such blatant left wing nearly socialist stands is it any wonder that the House GOP conference wants to get rid or her?

I mean seriously that fact that she voted to hold Trump accountable and refusing to repeat his lie that that 2020 election was stolen could not possibly be the sole reason that she is going to be politically crucified. Trump is the former guy, he holds no formal position in the GOP, and he lost the election, the party couldn’t possibly be cowed and beaten and prostrate before him as their orange god-king now, could they? The repeated attempts to overthrow the results of a free, fair, and honest election could not be the beating heart of today’s conservatives, could it?

Of course, it is. There is not conservative party there is only Trump’s party and for the good of the nation it must be burned to the ground.

 

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The Satanic Q

 

How many of you remember the satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s? Remember that America was swept up in a moral panic that from coast to coast a secret network of satanic worshipers were sexually and physically abusing children? It seems insane to contemplate that thousands and thousands of people seriously believed that bloody murders and sacrifices were routinely performed by a secret cabal operating under everyone’s noses. Which in San Diego’s local case included accusation that a mentally and physical challenged man had not only abused child in his care but had also somehow managed to slaughter both a giraffe and an elephant as part of the satanic ritual.

These cases had no basis in reality. What they had were an easy method of isolating and directing hate towards others in ‘defense’ of mythical normalcy.

Which brings us to our current version of this deranged and dangerous mindset, Q Anon.

The Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s had to grow slowly passing by word of mouth, rumor, and poorly sourced local reporting but Q Anon with its equally absurd assertions that a world-wide web of elites is secretly abusing and murdering children exploded across the nation and beyond with the speed of internet communications. I see the similarities between the satanic panic and Q Annon as quite important. Both were birthed from conservative culture, equally certain that secret insidious forces are at work and being ignored by authorities and possessed with the zealot’s zeal for their own righteousness.

The satanic panic of the 80s and 90s destroyed lives the moral panic of Q Anon may destroy democracy.

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Annual Re-watch: The Wicker Man (1973)

 

With the coming of May it is time for me to re-watch one of my favorite horror films 1973’s The Wicker Man. Starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee The Wicker Man in so many ways of quintessentially an early 70s film, low budget, stuffed with ideas and deeply cynical. Because I was already comfortably nestled in my overstuffed chair instead of using my Blu-ray edition of the film with the most recent edits and restorations, I watched the version currently available for streaming. This is the abbreviated edit compressing the events into just two days from three and with several scenes deleted.

Scottish West Highland police, and deeply devote Christian, Sergeant Neil Howie (Woodward) arrives by seaplane to the isolated island of Summerisle following am anonymous letter that a young girl has gone missing. The residents lie, misled, and confuse Howie with shifting narrative from there is no such girl to the girl had died. The islanders are also fervently pagan worshipping the old god of pre-Christian Europe offending the pious policeman. Lord Summerisle (Lee), the island’s leader, is convinced that Howie’s suspicions of murder are misplaced as they are a deeply religious people. Convinced the girl’s disappearance is tied to the pagan practices and with his seaplane sabotaged Howie is forced confronts the conspiracy alone in a desperate race again time and the coming May Day celebrations.

The Wicker Man is a unique film, simultaneously inhabiting the genres of folk horror, art house film, and musical while maintaining a consistent tone of dread. The production was troubled and the sale of the studio before completion led the final product being hacked down to 88 minutes without any real regard to story or quality. Over the decades various versions of the film have surfaced and been restored but the original edit has never been found and the original negative are believed destroyed, making The Wicker Man an enduring cinematic myth. Lee long maintained that he loved the script so much he appeared for free and that it was his favorite screen performance. Director Robin Hardy returned to Summerisle decades later for the sequel The Wicker Tree but failed to recapture the glorious magic of early seventies film. 2006 witnessed a remake of the film starring Nicholas Cage as the investigating officer but the sly and subtle conflict of culture theme was replaced with what many consider to be blatant misogyny.

No matter what version you watch The Wicker Man remains one of the most interesting, unique, and enigmatic movies.

The Wicker Man is currently streaming on Shudder and Amazon Prime.

 

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