What was the last film you watched?

[Snarky Oracle!]

Katharine Hepburn shimmers in her grande dame guignol outing and this includes a spin on the traditional grand staircase cinematography.

She refused to return the phonecall when they asked her to replace Joan Crawford in HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE. Later snorting, "I don't have to do the things that Bette does."

Hepburn's puritanical image was such that rumors swirled for years that Kate had no idea homosexuality even existed and was aghast when the crew explained it to her... An apocryphal tale, of course, as Hepburn was well-aware of the lesbian gossip which had followed her all her career.

Kate once asserted that, "I'm too healthy" (for the characters in SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER). To which Gore Vidal, the screenwriter, later snickered that Kate had Parkinsons Disease. (She obviously meant psychologically healthy).

The memory reaches its very extended crescendo in the film's finale and it's a bloody miracle that it didn't destroy Liz Taylor's career.
Not only does she escape the travesty unscathed, she almost beats it.

I think she got an Oscar nomination, along with Hepburn in the same category. Why might it have destroyed Taylor's career?... Sure, she gets a little fish-wifey shrill in the final scene, but the girl has to soliloquize for several minutes!

Hepburn told her biographer that she thought Taylor was "more interested in being a movie star than an actress," adding, "But make no mistake -- Elizabeth Taylor is a brilliant actress!" (Kate dismissed that talents of Streep & Close, while praising Julia Roberts -- so Hepburn may not have seen Taylor or Roberts as being a threat).

Hepburn also said director Joe Mankiewicz (one of Hollywood's best writers ever) was a bully to Clift and Taylor, "and it wasn't constructive." Taylor's husband had died in a plane crash and Clift had just been in a face-altering car wreck and "was a basket case." So, once the film was completed, Kate went to the editing room and spat in Mankiewicz' eye. (Mank says the event happened, but that she spat at his feet -- on balance, I assumed she hit him in the crotch).

But Elizabeth got her revenge. She had director's approval for CLEOPATRA, citing only George Stevens and Joe Mankiewicz as acceptable. Stevens was making THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, so FOX had to get Mank for CLEOPATRA --- a film that almost killed him and damaged his reputation and tormented him the rest of his life.

Clever Liz.

The third part is about Sebastian's death, killed by Spanish poor kids turned into zombies.

Were they Spanish?

I wonder if the jungle garden was the real thing or a fake set. It looks awesome.

It's a studio set, and it is awesome.

Month Clift only got the part because of Taylor (like Roddy McDowall in CLEOPATRA). It's miscasting.

 

[Emelee]

I saw The Bridge on the River Kwai. I usually have very little interest in war movies, but this is a highly rated classic.

But that didn't help all the way. The movie felt too long. On the positive note, it didn't feel a lot like a war movie. No boring drawn out shooting scenes in the trenches. I liked the psychological aspect of it. To obey or not? And is my idea of helping really helping?

I give it a 6,5 out of 10.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Why might it have destroyed Taylor's career?... Sure, she gets a little fish-wifey shrill in the final scene, but the girl has to soliloquize for several minutes!

Not only does she escape the travesty unscathed, she almost beats it.

It was a compliment, considering what she had to soliloquize

Were they Spanish?

I got the impression that Cazeba De Lobo(tomy) was a Spanish island. Does Spain have any islands?
Either way, it was the place of the sexy dark haired ones.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

It was a compliment, considering what she had to soliloquize

I got the impression that Cazeba De Lobo(tomy) was a Spanish island. Does Spain have any islands?
Either way, it was the place of the sexy dark haired ones.

Those scenes were, indeed, filmed in Spain. And, depending on whom you ask, Hepburn may have spat at the producer, Sam Spiegel -- accounts vary.

 

[Toni]

I used to live in the Costa Brava in the early 90s, very close to the place where THAT beach scene was filmed. It was a very popular summer place even in the 60s, and maybe allowing Hollywood to shoot there was just another plot of then dictator Franco to manipulate the public image of Spain (he forbid a lot of American stars and directors during his run).

​

About Cabeza de Lobo, it was made up by Williams for his play, but there are several places in Spain with that name, mainly mountains and small towns, but very far from Costa Brava. Locals still talk about the attention Liz raised and the scandal that was shooting her scene in the sea.

"Please someone order sangría and paella for me!"​

If some of you didn´t know that we have islands, check out the following map:

​

Right in orange color: Baleares (Balearic) Islands, with Ibiza, Mallorca (with a "ll") and Menorca. Very animated, posh islands, they say.

Left in brown color: Canarias / Canary Islands, 7 in total, the biggest ones being Tenerife, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria. They are in the Atlantic Ocean, quite far from the peninsula, at over an hour by plane from Spain.

I would recommend you to visit all of them without hesitation. You´d even be able to participate in the filming of "House of Dragons" or "Rings of Power" there...

"Rings of Power" shot in Tenerife part of its second season.​

About the movie itself, I first watched it when I was a gay teenager and I think I "got" all the subliminal messages and subtext in it. Of course, Mama Hepburn provided little sweet Sebastian with new young victims, and cousin Liz replaced her when Mama became just an old fart. The film breaks a lot of taboos of its time with the scenes at the clinic regarding the lobotomy issue, mental health and psychotherapy in general. But it´s Tennessee after all, and he always used twists and turns to talk about what he really wanted. I´d say here he deals with repression, possession, promiscuity and all their consequences, mainly mental unbalance, and sets up a dark melodrama.

I read a lot about it after watching it, and most reviewers did agree with that (those themes were usual in Franco´s society, where anything that could be repressed or forbidden indeed was...)... The plot twist about Sebastian´s death made me think that he might be fond of gay cruising (not a "love boat" for gays...!) and predators, transformed into zombie-like hungry men in the movie. By the way, there were a lot of hungry people in Spain then, but I´m sure that almost none of them were cannibals!). I could see it as a metaphor for a kind of "poetic justice" against Sebastian, who might (or not) be killed/raped/devoured "last summer".

All the actors are superb here, and it´s not an easy talk when Hepburn is the main lead. Taylor is excellent, and Clift´s damaged face makes him even subtler, because of his apparent lack of expression. McCambridge is another heavy-weight here. A must for any cinephile. Has anyone seen the TV remake?

​

The only thought of Lowe playing Clift´s role is a bit discouraging...
​

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Some very questionable viewing choices from me over the last couple of evenings.

First up was...

Evil Things (2011)

For some time into this film I repeatedly considered aborting. Only a sense of the perverse stopped me from doing so.

To get this over with: comparisons with The Blair Witch Project are unavoidable. It's all here: the "found footage" premise of young adults disappearing and never being heard of until this footage was found; the nausea-inducing shaky camerawork; the forced "naturalism"; annoying narcissists all talking/shouting over one another; getting lost in the woods (one young woman even wears a Heather-style beanie).

In this sense it seems rather belated. Was anyone even still filming this way - poor quality tape from an enormous camera with a light - by 2011? It's kind of all been done, and considering they go out of their way to establish how "real" everyone is, it's a little odd that nobody even draws comparison with what's happening to them and what happened in The Blair Witch Project. It's also a huge contrivance that this time there's no real reason for documenting everything other than for the presence of one of the annoying friends who insists on it for no other reason than he wants to (my idea of hell is having a "friend" who doesn't recognise personal boundaries enough to stop filming. I'd have booted them out of the car before this even began).

Where this film differs, though is in its other elements. Also stolen, granted, but used well enough here. The Duel-style escalating road-rage is where the film hooked me. It's introduced. Then it's gone and everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief, but you just know it's going to come back. Again and again. The fact that it's a mystery person against a group of young people, and that they take things off the road and into more personal territory also reminded me of 2001's Joy Ride (or Road Kill as it was in Britain).

Something this film does well is establish a sense of isolation. We journey with these friends to their remote accommodation, a large house loaned to them by the aunt of one of the girls as they celebrate the girl's 21st. As we get closer, the roads get narrower until they're off the beaten track entirely. It's established there is practically no mobile service. It's also snowing heavily and the roads icy. They're really away from it all. This adds the "cabin in the woods" element which I'm sure is a decent enough horror premise by itself.

When the games begin, it's an effective enough premise.

There is some contrivance. Nobody seems to consider, for example, that there are five of them and perhaps only one or two antagonists. And when stuff starts going down, everyone starts behaving like sorority girls in a slasher, screaming and running about in blind panic. I cut them a break on these fronts because we don't know for certain how many people are stalking them and they are, after all, fairly immature adults who still have enlarged teen-drama genes so of course they're going to milk a crisis for all they can get.

There are some moments that are genuinely chilling because they're tangible and even relatable. Many people have experienced or witnessed road rage, how easily it can escalate into something more threatening when occupants of one or both vehicles takes something personally and the red mist descends. Likewise, most of us have experienced being somewhere remote that we don't know well, and may have considered "what if" when it comes to needing help. And I would think most people have also felt a sense of unease at times when the lights are on indoors and it's dark outside, so someone can see in far more easily than the occupants can see out. This is very well done here.

Something that only occurred to me afterwards was the extent to which the antagonist had turned the tables when it came to the filming. There are even fragments of clues in this department in amongst the found footage. Moments when I'd found myself noticing they'd filmed X and Y at the same time and put it down to lazy editing paid off with some chills as the story unfolded.

Pleasingly, this film also doesn't answer questions about motivation for the antagonist, and we don't ever see them, even though we sense that they are, on the surface, very ordinary. All of which makes them very scary.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Last night's questionable horror was..

The Bunker (2015)
originally titled The Hoarder

Firstly, The Hoarder has a poster - a strange man-creature with mouth stapled shut - which is better representative of what the film became. And had I known that the film would include such stuff I'd have steered clear, since I find this kind of stuff quite silly and tedious. I feel the atmospheric poster above misrepresented to me what I would actually get.

I noticed Emily Atack's name in the opening credits, and recognised it as that of Kate Robbins's daughter. With that in mind, I'd assumed she was the main character who had a rather dodgy American accent (hugely over-pronouncing all her R sounds. Except when she forgot to do so). But no, it turns out this is Mischa Barton, and Emily was the one that I was convinced had one of the film's only authentic American accents.

There are moments of promise and a few jump scares that worked. It felt very much that it was going for an Alien kind of tone, with a disparate group in an isolated setting full of shadowy corridors and different levels from which a creature could appear at any moment. It's clear some effort had gone into make up effects, but it lost me after the first sighting of a creature (which was quite early on).

The performances were not great. The lead was photogenic and looked suitably terrified, but there was no connection with the viewer. The people she met along the way (yes, like Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road) were mostly one-dimensional archetypes with a single characteristic. The "gruff" cop (the actor going overboard from his first scene with sniffing and peeling back his top lip or trying to make his veins throb in an attempt to give off threatening and intense vibes). The drowsy, bohemian drug addicted woman (such a bore). The bossy, shallow, grasping soon-to-be-ex-wife of the man she'd trodden over for years (I knew she wasn't long for this world when it was established she was taking 60% of his income as part of the divorce). And so on.

There's a twist as to behind it's all, and while one feels it's supposed to make things more threatening by subverting expectations, it actually ended up slightly comical for all the wrong reasons.

Really, it wasn't my cup of tea and that's fine. I wouldn't have wished to condemn it but for the fact that the poster image and blurb mis-sold the film to me as an atmospheric, suspense-filled horror-thriller. Which it isn't.

 

[Willie Oleson]

But it´s Tennessee after all, and he always used twists and turns to talk about what he really wanted

Perhaps it is this "warts and all" approach that makes the Tenessee and Hitchcock films highly discussable. And possibly in the same way we digest our soap operas.
I recently watched Tenessee's Sweet Bird Of Youth starring Paul Newman and Geraldine Page, and again it seems to be constructed on conflicting themes.
There's Newman and Page doing their "Valley Of The Dolls" and Newman and Ed Begley doing their "Written On The Wind" (or a similar Sirkian drama).
I struggled to figure what idea (good or bad, or both) Paul Newman's character was supposed to represent, and that also makes it less memorable as a story.
Not to mention the abrupt ending that didn't fit the high drama tone of the film.
But the actors are very enjoyable to watch, especially Geraldine Page and Ed Begley, and it became a fine experience anyway. But not thanks to Mr. Tenessee.

 

[Payton Cross]

I just watched the horror zombie movie "The Elixir" on Netflix, great movie it was much better then i thought it would be.

 

[DallasFanForever]

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025)

As a big fan of The Boss growing up I was very much looking forward to this one. Unfortunately I ended up being a little disappointed. I certainly appreciate the struggles he’s endured, most of which I was unaware of to be honest. But ultimately the movie had too much of an underlying sadness to it and came off as being very depressive and hard to watch.

I definitely applaud him for the success he’s attained despite those issues, but lookin back on it I would’ve enjoyed it more if they had put a little more focus on the music aspect of his life and maybe a little less on those struggles, at least in this case.

Nonetheless, it’s still a good movie and worth seeing if you’re a fan of Bruce Springsteen and his music.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Founders Day (2023)

​

Pretty much what I'd expected: a low-budget-feeling slasher that thinks it's more clever than it is (tellingly, the writers didn't have attention to detail enough to include an apostrophe in the title).

The characters are mostly uninteresting and/or unlikeable and the performances amateurish... particularly during frequent awkward attempts at "funny". There's a clear Scream template going on, which is a shame. It would have been better played as a straight and simple classic slasher, instead, the reach exceeds the grasp and it tries too hard to be clever and twisty, ultimately ending up too busy and shallow.

The only depth and gravitas in the film comes from William Russ as everyone's favourite teacher (even though, as I watched, I'd convinced myself he was Steve Zahn and spent all the film trying to work out if he was aged up or had simply aged, and marvelling at how similar to Steven Spielberg he was).

As for the identity of the killer(s)... nobody will be surprised, and most viewers will probably have a moment of feeling good about guessing it, then ultimately be left feeling cheated.

 

[Willie Oleson]

It's kind of all been done, and considering they go out of their way to establish how "real" everyone is, it's a little odd that nobody even draws comparison with what's happening to them and what happened in The Blair Witch Project.

Hmm, that's an interesting observation. We usually don't want story-universe to acknowledge a different story-universe as it may seem like a gimmicky crossover - or worse, the idea that characters themselves acknowledge that they are in a story - but at the same time stories do exist in reality.
The pop culture reference in the spoken sense (as opposed to showing it e.g. on a television watched by characters) is a bit of a cinematic minefield, imo.

 

[Seaviewer]

The Shield of Honor (1927 silent film)
Before he was Commissioner Gordon in Gotham City, Neil Hamilton was officer Jack McDowell, the pilot of the LAPD's first airplane, investigating a series of jewel robberies. As far as I can gather, this is also the earliest surviving film to feature Thelma Todd, who plays one of the thieves' gang.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Final Summer (2023)

​

This is a hangover from when I added a load of terrible-looking slashers to my watchlist for October watches. Some I've watched. Some I deleted. At least one film was removed after attempting to watch it for five minutes.

Based on the poster, Final Summer is the one that I felt most confident about knowing the tone. It smacks of contemporary Friday The 13th ripoff, so I expected it to be low budget. But low budget by 2023 standards often hits the nail on the head for someone whose favourite slasher era is late-Nineties (think I Know What You Did Last Summer or Urban Legend: late-Seventies/early-Eighties-inspired, but a bit more glossy with just a whisper of post-modernism and without getting too clever).

And, this is pretty much what I got. The cast was made up of unknowns, with a focus on the young ones who make up for inexperience with enthusiasm and hormonal-emoting. It's a tad more diverse than the source material, but not in-your-face. Instead of the lesbian heavy petting and aggressively quirky characters of Founders Day, we have relative Nineties simplicity of the solid black character (who would typically have been played by LL Cool J in the Nineties or Anthony Anderson more recently) and the body positive (i.e. overweight) best friend. In the political correctness stakes, the most jarring undertone was the expected feministic element (oh, how I inwardly sighed when - after all the men being killed off easily - the first character to put up a good fight and start throwing the antagonist round was, of course, a woman. Adding insult to injury, she's the same woman who had selfishly treated the only remaining man as a minion, ordering him to go and get something from the car, despite his protestations about the danger). Still, though, the 2023 sensibilities aren't overpowering and so it remains enjoyable to watch.

It's a very 12/PG-13 kind of film. The killings are mostly bloodless and implied. There are no (successful) jump scares and the intensity is dialled right down. Most of this is not a bad thing in my book, because it allows the focus to be on character and atmosphere and, while it's not entirely successful in the character department (the post-trauma element dilutes things. It pays off a little at the end, but could have done so without the frequent flashbacks which slow the story down and don't hold the interest), the atmosphere is reasonable enough. There's lots of walking in the woods at night which has a kind of cosiness to it.

As for the killers. Well, neither was a huge surprise, in fact I had my best placed the older mastermind from her very first innocuous scene (I mean, we're doing Friday The 13th here). But it worked. And the younger male killer, while not particularly intense or threatening was kind enough to spend the last act running round in a pair of grey shorts, which was appreciated.

There's rather a lot of exposition at the end, but I'm not convinced it made sense of small details like motive or background. But hey-ho.

When I was looking for the image, I found a review that described the film as "flat" and lacking a beating heart and I suppose that sums it up. There's definitely something missing. Still, I'd rather watch this than something like Sleepaway Camp. Or even most of the Friday The 13th sequels, for that matter.

We usually don't want story-universe to acknowledge a different story-universe as it may seem like a gimmicky crossover - or worse, the idea that characters themselves acknowledge that they are in a story - but at the same time stories do exist in reality.

Funnily enough, Final Summer, which is mostly played completely straight, included a number of overt references to Friday The 13th (the series it's homaging). At one point someone mentioned Jason as they were walking in the woods. This was followed up with someone imitating the "Ki-ki-ki-ki" "Ma-ma-ma-ma" soundtrack (as usual, they got it wrong and did it as "Ch-ch-ch-ch" "Ha-ha-ha-ha"). And later in the film someone donned a hockey mask to confront the killer.

It sounds terrible, and might have been better not to have done it at all, but I'll take it as perhaps the only meta element of a fairly simplistic story.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

You're All Gonna Die (2023)

​

These tacky straight-to-home-media jobs are the sort of thing I would usually actively avoid but when it comes to terrible recent slashers, it seems my lack of taste is boundless this November.

If Evil Things was The (Wannabe) Blair Witch Project; Founders Day was a Scream ripoff and Final Summer was Friday The 13th Redux, You're All Gonna Die would seem to be analogous with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: a group of kids travelling who stumble into a rural community where they are pursued by a killer.

There are certainly more generic slasher stereotypes present here, but the Texas Chainsaw feels more obvious by virtue of the fact that it's filmed entirely on location in the middle of nowhere and that it's accompanied by an unpleasant soundtrack that hurts the ears. Imagine several singing bowl bells being played at a very specific pitch and volume that's beyond the comfort zone. Then throw in tinnitus and you're on the right lines. Not only is the score nasty, the sound design is the worst thing about this film, with the "music" drowning out almost all of the mumbled dialogue.

The backstory element is done to the Nth degree here, though it it somewhat more interesting than the one in Final Summer (for whatever that's worth). Sadly, the backstory's main "twist" regarding the killer of the nasty man could be seen coming from a mile away (and it was lifted right from Dynasty).

As with Evil Things, there's a sense the actors are going for naturalistic. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it's clear the actors are either inexperienced (Taylour Geiss) or driving home the "naturalism" too aggressively (Robert Rodenbach) it ends up with performances that are overacted, which is not what this film needs. Once things kick off, the men are quickly offscreen and the girl who becomes annoyingly hysterical lasts far longer than she has a right to. Ultimately, though, we're left with a final girl who is passable enough. The reveal of the killer is pretty anticlimactic, but there are some satisfying moments - trying to convince the sheriff that she is not attacking the killer is pretty decent, even if the sheriff's errors make her only a step up from a slasher sorority girl.

There are also some mysteries remaining (even if the biggest, for me, was: how has a rural labourer who has never left his small town ended up with bling, overly white Hollywood veneers).

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Locked (2025)

I'm easing out of slasherville with a first-time watch of a thriller.

I've been curious about this one for a while, partly due to the ever-reliable Anthony Hopkins, but mostly on the Phonebooth-style "confined location" premise.

For me, the biggest challenge was buying into this car being completely soundproof and the windows being completely blacked out so that nobody from outside can hear loud music or door and windows being kicked or see any movement at all inside the vehicle. Thankfully, even that wasn't difficult because it was set up well. The choice of vehicle was a good one, as it's spacious enough to allow for movement and lots of different angles even within the contained space (turns out Dolus is a brand created for this film, and a disguised, kitted out Land Rover Defender was actually used).

It's always fun to see how creative a film can be with such challenges, and this makes the most of smart features in cars, from heating, hands-free phones and audio setup to autonomous driving. Plus some elaborate rigging such as seats with built-in Tasers.

The performances really sell this as a feasible scenario, and this is really Bill Skarsgård's film. He's on-screen for every frame and doesn't let up with the intensity of the situations in which he finds himself. He sells his character's desperation before he even enters the car, and it gets worse. He's terrific, and convinces as the cocky and arrogant young small-time criminal who gets in over his head (I was reminded of Josh Henderson at times). Anthony Hopkins is solid as ever, but his character is less fleshed out. He has relatively little screen-time, being a disembodied voice on the phone for most of the film, and has to sell being a sadistic psychopath with nothing to lose due to the fact he is terminally ill. It all works, but it's quite "out there" and watching him is a less connected experience. Instead one watches with a kind of detached fascination. There are a number of gaps, and some aren't filled in, but that's presumably deliberate on the basis that the unknown is more frightening.

This is definitely a step up from the material I've been watching lately, and well worth a watch.​

 

[Mel O'Drama]

You Should Have Left (2020)

Expectations were fairly low for this one. Something about the thumbnail and description looked a little sub-par (as I found out afterwards, it did go straight to Video On Demand) and it also looked somewhat supernatural, which isn't always my thing.

As it turned out, I thoroughly enjoyed this. It was just atmospheric and creepy enough without going overboard. Kevin Bacon turns in a really nice performance. I'm no fan of Amanda Seyfried, but she was perfectly tolerable here. The little girl was also decent enough. She's what I think we might have got if Drew Barrymore had played Carol Anne in Poltergeist.

And yes, the film does have a little Poltergeist energy. Or perhaps The Amityville Horror. It throws in a little What Lies Beneath, and probably a dash of Kevin's own Stir Of Echoes. There is a decent twist, which reminded me greatly of another film (I think it was Interstellar, but I only watched that once back in the cinema so I might be misremembering). Perhaps, then, it is a little derivative. But it's a good story, nicely and efficiently done, so I didn't mind at all. If anything, the familiarity helped.

Even though the end credits brag about being filmed in New Jersey (or wherever) most of it was actually filmed in Powys, Wales, where it's set. I've actually found the house online as a holiday let, but would I have the courage after watching the film?

 

[Toni]

You Should Have Left (2020)

Expectations were fairly low for this one. Something about the thumbnail and description looked a little sub-par (as I found out afterwards, it did go straight to Video On Demand) and it also looked somewhat supernatural, which isn't always my thing.

As it turned out, I thoroughly enjoyed this. It was just atmospheric and creepy enough without going overboard. Kevin Bacon turns in a really nice performance. I'm no fan of Amanda Seyfried, but she was perfectly tolerable here. The little girl was also decent enough. She's what I think we might have got if Drew Barrymore had played Carol Anne in Poltergeist.

And yes, the film does have a little Poltergeist energy. Or perhaps The Amityville Horror. It throws in a little What Lies Beneath, and probably a dash of Kevin's own Stir Of Echoes. There is a decent twist, which reminded me greatly of another film (I think it was Interstellar, but I only watched that once back in the cinema so I might be misremembering). Perhaps, then, it is a little derivative. But it's a good story, nicely and efficiently done, so I didn't mind at all. If anything, the familiarity helped.

Even though the end credits brag about being filmed in New Jersey (or wherever) most of it was actually filmed in Powys, Wales, where it's set. I've actually found the house online as a holiday let, but would I have the courage after watching the film?

I watched that today, thanks for your review. It was quite enjoyable and with great atmosphere. The actors were good, but the girl´s dialogues were unbelievable for such a young girl. Bacon may not be the A-lister he should be, but has done a lot of little movies worth watching, and here he is great. It doesn't even matter that

Spoiler

there is no real explanation of what happens in the house

but in 2025 anyone can have their own theory. I think

Spoiler

labyrinths and lonely houses

are truly scary things in real life, at least to me, so the movie worked.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

I watched that today, thanks for your review. It was quite enjoyable and with great atmosphere.

Oh great. I'm so glad you enjoyed it.

I'd have felt bad if you had watched it off the back of my post and then hated it.

The actors were good, but the girl´s dialogues were unbelievable for such a young girl.

I know what you mean. "Precocious" might be the right word, but I kind of saw her as an old head on young shoulders. I think that's why she reminded me so much of Drew Barrymore in E.T., where she had an interesting combination of childishness ("I don't like his feet") but still seemed older than her years (even when she wasn't dishing out lines like "penis breath").

Bacon may not be the A-lister he should be, but has done a lot of little movies worth watching, and here he is great.

It's funny: I've never sought out a Kevin Bacon film specifically because he's in it, but at the same time whenever I have watched a KB film I've usually found myself enjoying the film and/or performance.

He's certainly a very busy actor, so I'm sure I've barely scratched the surface of his filmography.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Shattered (1991)

Watching for the first time some three and a half decades after original release, I'd say this holds up well. Some of the more "creative" moments - the occasional computer generated insert of an upper figure shattering into a thousand pieces - look a little dated, but I can still see how impressive they would have looked in 1991, and they get the point across. At times the creative filming style reminded me of a Columbo instalment, and it had the "grand design" homes to match.

Tom Berenger's name is very familiar, but looking at his filmography, I don't think I've actually seen any of his films (although the link for a 2020 film called Blood And Money was coloured in a way that suggested I'd read about it and so perhaps have watched it). He's great here. The cast is good all round, and it needs to be to sell what is actually a very soapy story, albeit told in a more unconventional way to that used by continuing drama. Greta Scacchi, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer and Corbin Bernsen are all suitably glamorous and show us wealthy people being nasty to one another and to the world in general. Completing the Columbo-esque element, into this world comes an eccentric and rough-round-the-edges detective-cum-pet-shop-owner. This time it's Bob Hoskins channelling Danny DeVito, and he's the best thing in this.

One note of pride and disappointment for me with this one. Very early on in the film, without even knowing that there was a big twist, I had worked out exactly what that twist was going to be. It's very unlike me to be so on top of these things, so I don't know whether it was really obvious or I just got lucky. The disappointment was because I like to be surprised and would always rather not see a twist coming. But I'm still pretty chuffed with myself for getting it so right. And I think it was a good one, too.