for reels: having old friends for dinner
What I watched in week 2 of October.
Welcome to for reels, sorta-weekly highlights from my movie diary. Here’s what I watched in the 2nd week of October.
Speak No Evil (2022) - when you have a horrific weekend with strangers and then it turns into a Funny Games
Speak No Evil caught some quick buzz after it dropped on Shudder (pound for pound the best streaming service), but it took me a while to actually queue it up seein’ how it’s an unforgiving high-tension Danish mega-bummer Funny Games type joint about making homicidal vacation friends. Drawing a long, taught fuse of tension that finally blows in a stomach-churning finale (all you parents out there who can no longer physiologically hang with depictions of children in peril, you’ve been warned), Speak No Evil is a day-souring cocktail of dark cringe comedy and social terror for the ‘hahaha yes sickos’ crowd — not one of the absolute best of the year IMO but pretty close to it you dig?
You can stream Speak No Evil on Shudder.
Hannibal (2001) - the Lecterverse gets the House of Frankenstein treatment.
I’m probably not the biggest Hannibal head you’ll ever meet but I do fuck with that shit man. Manhunter and The Slience of the Lambs are both faves and that Hannibal series with Mads Mikkelsen was one of the most radical shows to ever grace Network TV. Somehow I never got around to 2001’s Hannibal until this week. Hardly revelatory of me to say it reaches nowhere near the heights of Manhunter or Silence but I appreciate how trashy and bizarre it is. Ridley Scott (plenty acclaimed as a maestro of commercial prestige but underrated as a progenitor of big-budget schlock) gives the whole thing a cheap-operatic flare — think giallo with the crystalline sheen of a fragrance ad. In the third act it takes on the shape of those old Universal monster mashup movies (Frankesntein Meets the Wolfman, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, etc.) pitting Hannibal Lecter against his only surviving victim, the monstrous trust-fund sadist Mason Verger (an unrecognizable Gary Oldman). Sloggy a little eye-rolly in parts but overall pretty fun and world’s better than its successor, Brett Ratner’s dismal Red Dragon.
You can stream Hannibal on Amazon Prime Video.
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) - Jigsaw who
Another “old friend I had for dinner” this week, to paraphrase the good Dr. Lecter, The Abominable Dr. Phibes is basically if Saw were a colorful british acid-comedy from the early ‘70s aka one of the best movies ever made. Vincent Price (late-stage greatness from my man) stars as Anton Phibes, a mad scientist out for revenge against the doctors he figures killed his wife. The Art Deco-meets-swinging London set design is best in class and the back-and-forth between elaborate, cartoonish kill scenes and slapstick detective work is even more delightful than I’d remembered. Can’t go wrong with Phibes, folks.
You can watch The Abominable Dr. Phibes on YouTube.
Isle of the Dead (1945) - fuck me another plague thing that hits different post-COVID
Lotta movies about plagues and pandemics found a whole new life after COVID hit (check out my plug for Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death from 2020). Isle of the Dead is one of them. Boris Karloff leads a cast of folks stuck in quarantine on a Greek island during the 1912 war, and one of them might be a vampiric demon. It’s a diabolical petri dish of wartime humanity (or inhumanity, if you will) a la Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. We're all stuck floating through space on one big isle of the dead you dig? Doomed to paranoia, suspicion, superstition, tribalism, and the hubris of thinking law, science, and reason — values predicated on the good sense and good faith of those who wield their authority — will save us in a real pinch. Bodes ill for anyone living under the threat of a novel virus amirite?
You can stream Isle of the Dead on The Criterion Channel.
The Hidden (1987) - sometimes movies just rock
For real though this rocknrollin’ cult sci-fi/horror/action campfest with a dose of cartoon pathos is an absolute must. Caught it on Criterion Channel’s stellar ‘80s Horror collection that just dropped and couldn’t have been more delighted. Kyle MachLachlan plays an FBI agent (of, um, unusual origin) who teams up with an LA cop to track down an extraterrestrial slug monster who’s inhabiting civilian bodies and tearing through the city. Think Men in Black meets Lethal Weapon with a touch of Alex Cox’s Repo Man — a genre-bending indie that cooks with the white heat of ‘80s LA excess and punk-rock pathos. An all-American must-watch, folks!
You can stream The Hidden on The Criterion Channel.
Halloween Ends (2022) - hangin’ with uncle Michael
David Gordon Green’s Halloween “requel” trilogy comes to a close, to mixed if not oddly satisfying results. I liked Halloween (2018) fine but I remain pretty lukewarm on it. The whole back-to-basics conceit just didn’t work on me. What did work on me was last year’s follow-up, Halloween Kills, mostly for delivering on its title and then some, with a sinister play at ‘Trump-era mob mentality’ commentary that mostly works. Pleased to find Halloween Ends offers as distinct a twist on the Michael Myers mythos as it’s predecessor, and I’d say about 75% it is top-tier. The other 25%, devoted to the ceremonial “final showdown” between Michael and OG final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), feels pretty shoehorned. I dunno man I think it’s safe to say the whole horror “requel” concept — a late sequel that links only back to the original movie or whatever — has officially run its course. The new Hellraiser wasn’t super great but it did set the stage for full-on batshit reboots from these big franchises moving forward. Let’s fuckin’ go!
You can stream Halloween Ends on Peacock or catch it in theaters.
It (1990) - “You all taste so much better when you’re afraid.”
Caught about an hour of the two-part TV version of Stephen King’s It on cable when I was like 12 years old and it scared the absolute shit outta me. Finally watched the whole thing this week and no it doesn’t hit the same as when I was 12 but it’s still pretty damn scary dude like even when it’s goofy as hell. Tommy Lee Wallace works much of the same twisted-Americana magic that drove his directorial debut, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and Tim Curry’s Pennywise is every bit as funny and terrifying as you’d expect. Like a lotta folks, I dug Andy Muschietti’s It but thought Chapter Two was pretty weak. This version is a more successful piece overall I’d say. Heads up though: It’s three hours long and feels it so I recommend replicating its original appointed viewing context and splitting it up over two nights.
You can stream It on HBO Max.
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