Bond 25 speculation: Into the black

It has been a while since I put out one of these.

So a lot has changed!

First, frequent screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (scribes of all the movies between 1999-2015) were off script duties. And then they were writing a treatment. And then Danny Boyle was in as director, with frequent collaborator John Hodge as screenwriter (Bye Purvis and Wade!).

And then in August, Boyle and Hodge were gone (Hello Purvis and Wade!).

For a moment, it looked like Bond 25 was up in smoke, or in danger of being extremely pedestrian  (Hello Purvis and Wade!).

And then there was a news update: Cary Joji Fukunaga, of True Detective fame, was onboard as director, and the movie's release date had been pushed back to Valentine's Day, 2020.

What does this mean?

I don't know. And I like it.

Here we are suspended between victory and defeat, greatness and Die Another Day.

The real fact is that all the behind-the-scenes, pre-production nonsense does not matter (apart from the people who are employed on the project). What matters is the final product.

So unplug, enjoy your life and come back to this blog in just over a year when you can hear my thoughts on whatever Bond 25 turns out to be.

IN OTHER NEWS....

A new episode of the THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR will be dropping on Saturday.

I will also be putting out a Bond-related review at the end of November.

There are more good things inbound, so keep following the blog - there are some very cool things coming.

Related

What does James Bond mean in 2019 (now 2020)?

Bond reviews
Diamonds Are Forever

The Man With The Golden Gun

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill

The Living Daylights

Licence to Kill

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough (2010); (2017)

Die Another Day

Casino Royale

Quantum of Solace

Spectre (2015); (2016)

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: The Slumber Party Massacre (Amy Jones, 1982)

Alone for the weekend, teenager Trish (Michelle Michaels) invites her friends over for a slumber party. What they don't know is that serial murderer Russ Thorne (Michael Villella) is in the neighbourhood, looking to increase his bodycount...

There is nothing subtle about this movie. If you have seen the poster, you know exactly what it is.

A latecomer to the first slasher wave, The Slumber Party Massacre has an interesting pedigree - produced by Roger Corman, the movie was written by feminist academic Rita Mae Brown and directed by former editor Amy Jones, who would go on to direct the drama Love Letters with former scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis

I watched this movie about a decade ago, after reading Corman's autobiography How I Made a 100 Movies in Hollywood and never lost a Dime. Corman is famous for giving budding filmmakers opportunities, and one of the stories he related was about this movie - editor Amy Jones was keen to get a shot directing and so she put together a skeleton crew and shot the first 10 minutes of the movie without Corman realising it. When she presented the completed footage to the producer, he was so impressed he gave her the budget to finish the rest of the movie.


The book was filled with stories like this, with Corman offering tips and examples of how to get a genre picture made for very little money. At the time I read Corman's book, I was studying film production, and was hungry for stories like Jones's.






While I recognise its flaws, I have always had a fondness for this movie. It's working from a familiar template, but because it is so small in scope, and it is not as technically strong as something like Halloween, there was something weirdly aspirational about it.  

If you are looking for an introduction to the basic tenets of the teen horror movie, watching only the best movies won't get you that far. You can learn something from watching ideas executed brilliantly (Halloween), but I guarantee you will learn more from watching a movie like Slumber Party Massacre, where the mechanics of these movies are exposed. Not only is the shakiness of the movie's use of familiar clichés and formal conventions part of its charm, SPM serves as a great example of how these things are supposed to work.


Structurally, SPM is a re-run of Halloween - an evil killer escapes from prison to continue killing people and stumbles into a group of randy teenagers.


Now from what I have gathered, Rita Mae Brown's script was intended as a comedy, but the filmmakers did not get the satirical bent and turned it into a cookie cutter slasher movie. There are a couple of jokes which make it through - the phallic symbolism of the killer's drill; the creepy-but-well-intentioned neighbour; the zodiac signs in the newspaper. My personal favourite is the reveal (to the audience) of a body in the fridge, that the rest of the cast remain completely oblivious of.
I chalk it up to Brown and Jones that the movie does not really echo the implications of the poster. There is only one scene of brief nudity, and the violence is underplayed (probably due to the low budget).
The acting by the unknown cast is a bit wooden, although the core group of slumber paty-ers(?) have an easy rapport that adds a couple notes of humanity that they lack by themselves. There is a long, slightly dull subplot involving a new girl (Robin Stille) in the neighbourhood who has been ostracised from the group at school, and winds up coming to the rescue at the end. With a more sure hand at the directing tiller, and a more experienced cast, The Slumber Party Massacre might have been a dry run for Scream. As is, it is a generic slasher.


But if you take it as an instruction manual on how to do a genre film on the cheap, The Slumber Party Massacre gains another layer of entertainment value. It features a clear concept, a small cast, and a few key locations. And as a rip-off of a better-known movie, it offers a good primer in how to pull off low budget thrills. It's far from perfect, but in its imperfection, The Slumber Party Massacre brings visibility to the human endeavour of trying to scare an audience.

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: See No Evil (Richard Fleischer, 1971)

After losing her sight in an accident, Sarah (Mia Farrow) is spending time with her uncle's family while she works through the transition.

One day Sarah returns home to discover her family have been murdered by an unknown psychopath. The only clue to his identity is a bracelet engraved with the name 'Jacko'.

After discovering the bracelet is missing, the killer returns to the house. Sarah flees into the countryside on a horse.

Will she be able to escape the killer?

I have a soft spot for director Richard Fleischer. He directed one of the movies of my childhood, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, and one of my favourite films noir, The Narrow Margin. He also directed some solid true crime dramas, including The Boston Strangler and 10 Rillington Place. 

Extremely prolific, he made a variety of different movies of varying quality, and has gained a reputation as something of a hack. That may be true, but the guy knew what he was doing when it are to thrillers. 

I caught this movie about a decade ago, after I had seen the similar (and far superior) Wait Until Dark, starring Audrey Hepburn. This was the wrong entry point for this movie - compared with the 1967 potboiler, See No Evil comes off a bit weightless.

The best scene in the movie is Sarah's return to the house. As she walks upstairs, we see the signs of struggle, culminating in the reveal that everyone in the house is dead. It is a terrific scene, made more so by the lack of score (a rare dud from Elmer Bernstein).

Fleischer shoots the killer with torso out of frame, with his distinctive cowboy boots as the most recognisable feature. It's a neat shorthand, although some of the hand-held shots undermine the effect.  I could not help wondering what Fleischer could have accomplished if he had made this film a few years later with a Steadicam. After 'Cowboy Boots's first appearance, you can feel the filmmakers straining not to repeat themselves with new compositions that keep his identity a secret.

The movie is aiming for the same 'daytime nightmare' vibe as And Soon The Darkness (both films were co-scripted by Brian Clemens), but See No Evil loses momentum as soon as Sarah flees the house.

The story becomes a collection of ideas that kill the suspense. Sarah becomes entangled with a local clan of Roma who are afraid that one of their family may be blamed for the killings. This subplot is interesting but it means the main catalyst for the movie's suspense - 'Jacko' - is out of the picture right until the very end.

Basing the movie around a maligned minority who are blamed for a crime they had nothing to do with is a good idea for a thriller. In this movie, this subplot kills any sense of momentum. There is an element of danger in that the Roma do not want her to reach the police, but there is never any sense that Sarah is in actual danger. If the killer was hunting her for the course of her escape, and the Roma inadvertently made his job easier by imprisoning her, it would have worked. As is, it's just an overlong sequence that stretches the running time to feature-length.

 If you enjoyed Wait Until Dark, See No Evil is a fun variant. But be prepared for some judicious fast-forwarding.

Cotton Comes to Harlem (Chester Himes, 1965)

 After a rally for a 'Back To Africa' event in Harlem is robbed, police officers 'Grave Digger' and 'Coffin Ed' are put on the case. They soon find themselves following a trail of clues, back-street informants, femme fatales, and Southern racists, to a mysterious bale of cotton that everyone wants but no one can hold onto without winding up dead...

Written by Chester Hines, Cotton Comes To Harlem is a great pulpy detective thriller set in 1960s Harlem. Published in 1965, this acidic look at two hard-nosed black cops feels rather timeless.

Racism has always been a part of the American project, so it should come as now surprise that the issues present in Homes' novel - economic and political isolation; systemic oppression (the white cops feel like they could walk off the page onto the streets of 2018 America).

While the book's perspective feels radical in terms of how it shows the other side of the law enforcement, it is not a beacon of progress. Some elements - such as the sexualisation of the female characters - feel less enlightened, although stylistically in line with the genre Himes is writing in.

One of the chief joys of the book is the characterisation of our anti-heroes Grave Digger and Coffin Ed. Both hard-bitten, violent and empathetic to the community they are meant to serve and protect, they juggle the genre's fascination with vigilante justice with an understanding of how the system of law enforcement maintains racial inequality. It is a refreshing dimension that adds a layer of nuance to the violent loner cop archetype, that goes beyond their propensity for violence.

The novel moves at a clip - I blasted through it in a couple of days - and it possesses a great, dark sense of humour: The Southern villain everyone compares to Colonel Sanders; the light-skinned suspect who wears blackface to escape the police station; fake priest Deke O'Malley's hypocritical seduction of a dead man's wife.

The story is relatively clear, and Himes provides a few shifts in perspective that clue the reader into what is going on without spelling it out or making the investigation feel predictable.


While not redundant, it is the gallery of characters and the world that make Cotton Comes To Harlem so compelling.


Coffin Ed and Gravedigger are never just cops on a case; they are still two black men in America. Like all great fictional detectives, they are defined by having to move between multiple worlds, without having both feet in one place. While they are from Harlem, they are police men in Harlem. They are trying to walk a line between upholding the law and protecting the community.


The great thing about this duality, at least as I - a white Pakeha from New Zealand - saw it, was that it did not negate or obscure the issue of race - whether to temper the way they dealt with the biases of their white colleagues; or separate from the protests and campaigns of O'Malley's 'Back To Africa' movement, or the Black Muslims.


Though they use violence frequently, our anti-heroes display a more developed sense of empathy for the motives of the people they come into contact with, and are unafraid to stand up to their superiors.
While the book's politics add meat, there are elements that betray its age - the portrayal of female characters is straight out of the pulp tradition. As a fan of this kind of potboiler, it added a note of familiarity, but there is nothing that revisionary about any of them. They are just wives, femme fatales or somewhere in-between.


Overall, Cotton Comes To Harlem is really great detective novel. And if it was not clear, it is really fun to read. I am already on-board for 50s-60s thrillers like this, but it is really enjoyable - the prose is colourful but economical, and it moves like a bullet. There are eight other novels featuring Coffin Ed and Gravedigger, as well as three movies, so don't be surprised if they make more appaearances on the blog in the future.

IN THEATRES: Halloween

40 years after surviving Michael Myers' killing spree in Haddonfield, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is still dealing with the trauma of her encounter with the Shape (Nick Castle). In the decades since, she has prepared herself to fight the 'Boogey Man', turning her home into a compound. She has also driven her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) away.

When Michael (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) escapes during a transfer to a new facility, Laurie is in a race against time to protect her family as the Shape resumes his rampage through town...

I usually leave movies with a rough idea of how I felt about it. This time... I'm still figuring it out.

First thing first, this is easily the best Halloween sequel. The characters are more interesting, most of their interactions (even the minor characters) benefit from Gordon Green's background in improvised banter, and Carpenter's score is great. There are some neat inversions of moments from the original (I loved the appearance of the masks from Halloween III).

But as a movie in its own right? Hmm...

It's a good movie, but there certain pieces of the story which feel either under-developed or in the wrong place.

The movie's most interesting element is Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode. Curtis has played a version of this characterisation before, in Halloween H20, but that version felt like a sandwich with no filling. Having stripped out the familial connection from the previous sequels, this version has the benefit of focusing on what makes the original film so terrifying: Laurie and her friends were no one significant to Myers - they just were unlucky enough to be the people who chose to attack.

Jamie Lee Curtis is great here. Traumatised by her encounter 40 years ago, Laurie has geared her entire adult life around preparing for the Boogeyman's return. Curtis's Laurie has been whittled down to the wick, simultaneously exposed and armour-plated. It's an understated but fiery performance - with characters like this, it is easy to just lean into the warrior woman. With Curtis, you never lose sight of the traumatised teenage girl from 1978. It has defined and moulded her existence, but it has not blunted her humanity. Laurie may try to present a hardened exterior, but she is not made of stone.

Curtis's performance is so nuanced it really lays bare how un-adventurous the script is.

The main problem with any Halloween sequel is that it is not Halloween. The original movie is almost ridiculously simple, and its power comes from the perfect conflation of filmmakers and  aesthetic choices - choices which play a big part in overcome any logic jumps or plot holes that the story has. It is a story so simple it could only work as a movie, and it can really only work once.
The ethos of this new Halloween is to return to the simplicity of the original, but with an additional focus on how trauma and the passage of time has affected its central characters. There is a contradiction there that movie never figures out.

When this movie came out, I remember a tweet from critic April Wolfe pondering what Halloween '18 would have been like with women as the key creatives. Throughout the movie, this same hypothetical nagged at me.

The idea of trauma and the way it informs and influences future generations is a fascinating idea, particularly when framed within the context of the original Halloween. Laurie discovered that the Boogeyman was real. How does that inform the rest of her life?

It's a potentially dark, complex trajectory for a sequel, using the pure, elemental dread of the Shape as the starting point for examining trauma and emotional fallout. It is adult and complicated, and ultimately beyond this movie's scope.

We get one real indication of Laurie's parenting - a short montage narrated by Karen - and little else. The way Karen's backstory is shoved into the story feels very jarring and out of keeping with the movie as a whole - it felt like a scene out of a network TV show. I can appreciate inference and respecting the viewer's intelligence, but there is so little emphasis placed on what this movie is supposedly about that it just ends up feeling like a solid slasher movie, rather than a strong second chapter to Carpenter's original.

The power of the original Halloween is similar to Jaws and Alien, in that its antagonist is kept to the periphery of the frame - Michael Myers is terrifying because you cannot get a solid grasp on where he is or what he is.

Here, Green falls into the trap of putting Meyers front and centre - in the original, he feels like an omniscient premise, able to appear and disappear at will. James Jude Courtney moves well, but Green's camerawork never gives him that same sense of spatial control. He feels like a typical slasher movie villain.

One of the most interesting elements of this movie is the idea of Michael Myers ageing. While the filmmakers avoid showing him clearly sans mask, their presentation does not hide his mortality - wrinkled skin, white hair, the scarred dead eye.

This creates an interesting contradiction with Myers' invulnerability that the movie does not really deal with.

Once he has regained his mask, I was expecting some interesting variations on the Shape's modus operandi - how does a 60-year-old man navigate a world that he has not experienced in 40 years? The movie seems to be walking a line between awareness of time, and a desire to present Michael Myers as he always has been - an unstoppable killing machine.

This aspect of the movie highlights my big issue with it - it ultimately does not really deviate from the formula.  

Even the way in which (spoilers) Laurie and her family turn the tables on Michael feels like an amped-up version of the Final Girl. What are we supposed to take away from this? Laurie outsmarts the villain and wins.

Cool. But that is basically what happens in most slasher movies. The underwhelming climax feels like the result of Michael as an antagonist - he not a mastermind who has to be out-thought. He is never shown to have much personality - he is more of an elemental force.

His characterisation is powerful in the context of the original film - a pure embodiment of evil disrupting an ordinary community - but that simplicity is really only workable once.

The plot twist with Dr Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) is interesting, until Michael kills him, at which point it just feels like a convenient excuse to get at the main characters together for the climax. That sequence sums up the movie - it flirts with interesting ideas but it is fundamentally the same story. One of the big selling points of this movie is that it wipes the previous sequels out of continuity. 

That's great, but there is something unbelievable about that posture. We now live in a media environment in which IP, reboots and sequels are the foundation of American genre entertainment. Despite this movie's attempts at providing closure for Laurie, the fact that this is the 10th sequel (and third retcon) in the franchise.

Killing Michael with fire is cathartic, but he has already been vanquished that way. Maybe it is because I see the echoes of so many previous Halloween movies, that this movie does not feel as much of an evolution as it should be.

I was missing something missing from Laurie. She secures her family, which is great, but there is something missing from her character arc. The problem is that her character appears to be set from the beginning. She does not need to change.

Funnily enough, my issue with this movie is the same as with Jamie Lee Curtis's last return to franchise, Halloween H20: The opening and closing acts are built on a character progression that feels sidelined in the body of the movie. The movie almost reads as an extended third act in which Laurie Strode waits for the Shape to return so she can finally put him out of her misery.

Halloween '18 is a good movie. But in trying to emulate the qualities of the original film, it ends up hamstrung by the limitations of those qualities, rather than invigorated by them.

Related

Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myers

Halloween H20

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter (Joseph Zito, 1984)

Following two previous killing sprees, Jason Vorhees (Ted White) has finally been killed. JK, he revives at the morgue and resumes killing his way back to Crystal Lake.

At Crystal Lake, a group of horny 20-somethings arrive to stay for a weekend of partying. Next door, live the Jarvis family, including tech whiz Tommy (Corey Feldman) and his older sister Trish (Kimberly Beck).

The stage is set for Jason's inevitable arrival. But this time, can he be stopped?

I have watched a couple of the Friday the 13th movies, and read a couple of books about the franchise as a whole. I would not consider myself a fan, but as you do in the Information Age, for some reason I have accumulated a ridiculous knowledge of the long-running series.

One of the interesting things about F13 is how long it took for the franchise to figure itself out. Part One famously does not feature Jason; Part Two features Jason wearing a sack over his head; and it's not till midway through Part 3 that he finally gets the famous hockey mask. Usually by the time you get to the fourth film in a franchise, you would expect them to be running out of steam, but with F13 it feels like the opposite.

If you ask a layman what they think of when they think of Friday the 13th, The Final Chapter is probably what they are thinking: you have Jason Vorhees in a hockey mask chasing horny teens while battling his nemesis Tommy Jarvis. This is also the movie where we learn Momma Vorhees' name: Pamela.

I have never really been able to get into the F13 movies. I watched the first ad second one, but nothing about them made me want to stick around. If I had started with The Final Chapter, I might have been more willing to give it a shot.

From a technical and screenwriting POV, this movie is much better than the movies I had already seen. The movie feels far more atmospheric, and director Frank Zito actually bothers to come up with some suspense.

From the beginning, we know that Jason is coming back. Zito uses the old cliche of horny hospital staff as a trigger for his resurrection. There is something really perverse about these characters making out next to a dead body, but the image of people making out in the foreground while Jason's body lies on the gurney behind them feels like a commentary on the basic formula of this series.

Jason quickly re-animates, butchers the creepy couple and it's off to the races. I have to say, I was really impressed by Ted White's performance as Jason. There is an economy to the way he moves, and the viciousness of his attacks, that I really appreciated - and by appreciated, I mean I was legitimately scared of him. I went back to check out Jason's previous appearances, and there is nothing similar to the brute force of White's performance. 

The script for The Final Chapter won't win any Oscars, but it is clear and simple. Jason is on the loose, people are on his turf doing sexy things, and therefore he will kill them. There is a sense of dread to the movie that I really enjoyed - it is possibly the result of familiarity with these movies, but the movie does have a nice sense of pace.

It also helps that Barney Cohen's script spends a lot of time with all the characters, so we get a decent sense of most of their personalities. One of the teens/20-somethings (it's hard to tell how old they are, since they all look 37) is played by a young Crispin Glover. Before the movie begins, Jimmy (Glover) has been dumped by his girlfriend. He's feeling depressed, and this is not helped by his friend Ted (Lawrence Monoson), who belittles him. 

Zito apparently allowed the cast to improvise, and there is a real sense of a rapport between Glover and Monoson. The other actors are fine, but the looseness of the pair's dynamic is a major asset that gives the movie one of its better subplots.

Taken as a movie, The Final Chapter is no masterpiece. But as an exemplar of a formula product, it does the business, displaying an understanding of the basic building blocks of these movies, and finding ways to deploy them in ways that are satisfying.

The kids are not nameless victims, but given their own mini-narratives and character games that make them more than bodies.

Zito's direction shows some style - for the most part he keeps Jason off-screen, showing him at the edge of frame or as a silhouette. And while the deaths are violent, Zito finds artful ways to make them interesting (staging an impaling as shadow play against the exterior of the party house, with the bloody result on revealed as the body/missile hits the wall).

A fun movie on its own terms, although its relative strengths only highlighted why Slashers are not generally my cup of tea. While it is not a deep character study, I actually found myself liking the characters, and ended up hating the scenes when they died. This is what you sign up for with these movies, and I guess I am not the intended audience. I prefer my gore delivered with some irony, or as the garnish to a villain's demise - not some poor schmucks on holiday.

If you are in the mood for a fun ride, or just interested in seeing what this franchise is about, The Final Chapter is worth checking out.

Related

The Prowler

Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myers

Halloween H20

Psycho II (Richard Franklin, 1983)

Decades before David Gordon Green returned to Haddonfield, Australian filmmaker Richard Franklin, hot off Patrick and Road Games (which starred Jamie Lee Curtis), and screenwriter Tom Holland (Fright Night) joined forces to craft a sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's iconic Psycho (1960).

22 years after he was caught, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) has been rehabilitated and released back into society. Retuning home, he is anxious to make a new start and live a boring life like everybody else.

But someone out there does not want Norman to have these things. And they are willing to do almost anything to push him over the brink...

I really like this movie. I am not the biggest Psycho fan, but I was not expecting to like this as much as I did (by the way, if you have not watched the movie, stop reading because there will be spoilers).

Director Richard Franklin was a student of Hitchcock's, and was a friend of the director until his death. His films are rife with Hitchcock's style of visual story-telling (Roadgames is basically a remake of Rear Window, set in a moving truck), and he was a great choice to step into the director's chair.

What I really appreciated was the seriousness with which the filmmakers treat the story. When you think about a sequel to Psycho in the middle of the slasher boom, it sounds bad. Not that I have anything against slasher movies, but while it is based around a killer with a knife, Psycho feels a little 'subtle' compared with the likes of Friday the 13th. 

The first thing that stands out about this movie is the way it re-casts Norman Bates. While he is a major part of the original, in this movie he is the central character. What is distinctive about Perkins here is that he is not masking anything. Whereas Psycho's Norman was a facade, here there is no facade. Norman is an old man who has been hollowed out by his past life.  Perkins is terrific.

For the most part I like what Psycho II does with the mythology of Psycho. By focusing on Norman and his attempts to conquer his demons, the movie feels more like a drama about addiction, or - in genre terms - a werewolf story. And by re-orienting the story around Norman, it re-casts everyone with a (justified) animosity toward him as antagonists. 

Lila Crane (Vera Miles), Marion's (Janet Leigh) sister from the first movie, spends the movie trying to get Norman locked up. About halfway through the movie, it is revealed that she is the one responsible for tormenting Norman, and intentionally trying to push him back over the edge. This is pretty heinous, but it never feels like a cheap twist. Considering what Bates did, and what Lila experienced, it makes sense that she will do anything to put him away.

Screenwriter Tom Holland keeps most of the action restricted to the Bates house, and the movie ends up feeling like a haunted house thriller, or one of the post-Gaslight thrillers about women who are being driven mad by their evil spouses. The effect here is similar, except for the first half of the movie, it is ambiguous as to who is responsible for all the odd goings-on at the property.

The key focus of the movie is the relationship between Norman and a young woman he meets at work, Mary (Meg Tilly). Mary turns out to be in a part of the plot to tip Norman over the edge, but by that point she has become sympathetic to Norman's plight and tries to undo what she has wrought.

At first, I found Tilly's performance a little flat. it might have been the difference in acting styles, but she ends up being a good balance for Perkins' intensity. When her plans start to fall apart, and their roles switch, her initial acting choice makes sense. Her performance does not read because the character is (badly) playing a role. It is a little confusing (especially once the plot really gets cranking), but Tilly is great.

The big trump card of this movie is the reveal that Mrs Bates was not Norman's mother - it was in fact Ms Spool (Claudia Bryer), the old woman who helped Norman get his job at the diner. It turns out she was Norma Bates' sister and had a child out of wedlock. When she went to prison, Mrs Bates raised Norman as her own. She is also the person who has been doing all the killing.

My only problem with the movie is not the final twist, but the presentation. Like the original movie, everything is wrapped up in a monologue. It also comes really late in the picture. I’m not that bothered by the twist - the complications do add to the fun of unraveling the mystery - but it feels like the 10-15 minutes leading up to it are a bottle-neck of  plotting.

The reveal that the kindly Ms Spool is Norman’s real mother (and the culprit behind all the murders) feels abrupt and slightly unnecessary, but it does fall in line with the movie’s theme of people thinking they know what is best for Norman, and those intentions pushing him back into ‘Mother’s’ grasp.

It is interesting and messed up, but I wonder if there is a version of the movie where it was just a battle of wills between Lila and Norman, with Mary in the middle.

It is actually a testament to how good the movie is that the one thing that feels out of place are the murders. This movie was released after the first wave of slashers and the gore feels out of place with the movie - Lila’s gore-y death in particular feels like something out of a different movie. There is even a set piece that feels like a direct response to contemporary taste: a pair of teens break into Norman’s basement, smoke weed, make out and then are attacked by ‘Mother’.

The movie feels like an inversion of slashers, in that the best scenes do not involve violence. Psycho II is ultimately far closer to a traditional suspense movie than a rock 'em sock 'em slasher. Most of the tension comes from Norman - for a majority of the runtime the audience has no idea whether Norman has fallen back into his old habits or not. One of the tensest scenes in the movie just involves a note from Mother on an order wheel at the diner where Norman works. We are shown the note early on, and the whole scene is built around it slowly getting closer to Norman's line of vision. It's so simple, yet really effective.

While it feels related to Hitchcock’s movie, Psycho II punches its own weight. Jerry Goldsmith's score references Bernard Herrmann’s famous strings motif, but is built on its foundations. Dean Cundey’s photography feels like it’s descended from the aesthetic of the original, yet the colours and lighting make this familiar world feel old and worn-out. 

A fine thriller, Psycho II is a solid piece of work that does no shame to the original.

IN THEATRES: Bad Times at the El Royale

In 1969, a group of strangers arrive at a hotel on the border between California and Nevada. Only one of them is who they say they are.

As a storm closes in, secrets are revealed and bodies start dropping...

There are a lot of things to like about Bad Times at the El Royale. The structure is an ensemble thriller, a pressure cooker about a group of strangers stuck in a specific location. That conceit is always fun, and allows for some interesting character dynamics and mounting tension.

Like Mandy, Bad Times at the El Royale is a genre flick operating in a specific cultural context. Set at the end of the sixties, it feels like the end of the road - the El Royale is falling apart, and the people staying there are all running out of time.

It’s a story about people who have lost, but are still pursuing their passion: Jeff Bridges is an ex-con hunting for the haul from his last job, hidden in one of the rooms. He is losing his memory but is determined to get his reward. Meanwhile, Cynthia Erivo is a failed session singer heading to a gig as a lounge singer.

When the movie is based around Bridges and Erivo, there is a weight and tension to the movie that is otherwise lacking. Since this movie is an ensemble piece it lives and dies on its group dynamic, and not all of the pieces are that interesting.

We have an FBI agent (Jon Hamm) on a case stumbling into something bigger; a young woman (Dakota Johnson) who has kidnapped her sister (Cailee Spaeny); and finally there is the shifty concierge (Lewis Pullman), who is haunted by his own demons. All are interesting, but they never really become more than that.

This movie is stylish and contains a number of good twists and tense sequences. The soundtrack is awesome - if you love late 60s pop and soul, you’ll like this. But despite its qualities I left feeling strangely un-moved by it all.

All the acting is solid (Bridges and Erivo are really good as the ostensible 'leads'), I had a trouble caring about anyone's story. 

It does not help that the movie has an antagonist - a Manson-ish cult leader played by Chris Hemsworth - who never really clicks. I feel like a movie like this needs a big, epic finish to really sell me, and this one did not quite work, largely because Hemsworth doesn't.

This movie crystallised what Hemsworth’s strengths as an actor are. When I think of the performances that work, they are characters who either lack status or think they have status (Thor, Ghostbusters or even Rush's cocky James Hunt). In the role of a charismatic cult leader, Hemsworth feels like fraud. There is a key moment where he is revealed as a conman playing on the weaknesses of others. That moment does not work because Hemsworth feels like a fraud from the outset.

In the end, Bad Times at the El Royale feels a little bit less than the sum of its parts. This is a fun genre exercise, but nothing more. 

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Halloween H20 (Steve Miner, 1998)

20 years after the murders in Haddonfield, Laurie Strode has changed her name, had a child and is a functional alcoholic. When her murderous brother Michael tracks her down, Laurie is forced to confront her demons and fight the Shape once more.

Whew! After the pleasant surprise that was Halloween 4, I went into this movie with slightly raised expectations. Oops.

Directed by Steve Miner (Friday the 13th, Parts 2 and 3), and based on a treatment by Scream's Kevin Williamson, H20 represents both the return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, and another re-tooling of the iconic horror franchise to stay current with contemporary trends in the slasher genre. Whereas Halloween 4 amped up the violence to match the Friday the 13ths, H20 is responding to the success of po-mo slashers triggered by the release of Scream.

This movie flirts with some interesting ideas, namely Laurie trying to wrestle with the trauma of her past. Both this and Halloween 4 feature scenes of their protagonists haunted by visions of Michael - I kept thinking that the most interesting idea for a Halloween movie would be one in which Michael's presence is never defined. Is he alive? Or is he a memory haunting the present? 

That is maybe too cerebral a concept, but feels more in line with the ending of the original movie, where Michael vanishes into the night. 

Ah well. Away from the movie that could be, and back to the movie we have.

The big problem I have with H20 is that it never really follows through on its set up. We start with Michael hunting through Dr Loomis's (now deceased) old files to track Laurie down, which is then followed by an introduction to Laurie, now a single mother fighting PTSD and her 17-year-old son's (Josh Hartnett) desire for independence. This is all well and good, but then the movie gets stuck having to cater to the  younger set by delegating screen-time to Hartnett's John and his friends. 

And then before we have a chance to really get a handle on either of these storylines, Michael is on the scene and stalking everyone through the darkened halls of the private school where Laurie is now principal. Ultimately H20 feels like it is missing a second act - it sets up characters with back story and motivation, and then sidelines them to wedge in some extra bodies for Michael to butcher. 

Miner does a decent job with the set pieces - he is more adapt than Dwight Little with using a moving camera to hide and reveal information during suspenseful sequences - but otherwise the movie feels like an episode of a 90s teen drama. Curtis adds some weight to Laurie's struggles, but her decision to finally face Michael never feels organic, and the way she destroys him does not really feel that satisfying.

There are moments of greatness - the set-piece in the public restroom with a woman hiding from Michael with her clueless child is genuinely terrifying, and the old-fashioned car Myers uses is creepy - but H20 is not really as good or fun as it could be.

While it is not a bad movie, considering what it is trying to accomplish, H20 is surprisingly unremarkable as a motion picture.

Related 

Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myer

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myers (Dwight Little, 1988)

Later this month will see the release of David Gordon Green's confusingly titled Halloween, a sequel to John Carpenter's original classic from 1978 that will ignore all the sequels that came in-between. While there has been a bit of brouhaha from a certain section of the fanbase at Green's retconning, this tactic is not new to the franchise.

To date, there have been two previous attempts at anniversary Halloween films, the first in 1988, Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myers, and the second, Halloween: H20 in 1998.

Released a decade after the original, Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myers was a course correction after the previous in-name-only sequel, Halloween III - Season of the Witch, failed to break out. With the slasher genre getting a second wind from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, time seemed right to bring Michael Myers back to life.

It is 10 years after the murders in Haddonfield. Having survived the fiery finale of Halloween II, Michael Myers rises from a comatose state to escape confinement and return home. In the interim, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has passed away in a car accident, leaving her young daughter Jamie (Danielle Harris) to be raised by family friends, the Carruthers.

Realising the danger he presents to the young girl, Dr Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) tails his former patient back to Haddonfield. But who will get Jamie first?  

I was not expecting much from this movie - I am a big fan of John Carpenter's work, and I did not like Halloween II that much. 

But I have to say, while it is not mind-blowing, on its own terms Return is a solid chiller. And despite the changes which had taken place in the genre since the original's release, the filmmakers stick fairly close to the stylistic parameters of the first movie, with the moments of viscera feeling like punctuation to suspense rather than the main events.

The first act in particular is really well-handled.

The opening sequence is so simple yet so haunting - under yellow credits, we get a montage of Halloween decorations against familiar midwestern backdrops (barns, fields etc) backed by wind and subtle synth tones. It's distinct from the preceding films, yet feels totally appropriate. 

We then follow a pair of medical pros in an ambulance driving through a downpour. They arrive at a federal facility that looks like a gothic madhouse from a Hammer horror movie. They are here to transfer Michael Myers to another facility.


Covered in burns and bandages, Myers is immobilised on a gurney for his first few minutes onscreen. The slow tease of his reveal continues for almost half of the movie, from his brutal escape from the ambulance, through his first meeting with Dr Loomis in a deserted gas station.


The scene at the gas station is terrific - Loomis arrives to discover Myers has butchered the staff. Taking place during daylight, it is a creepy, comparatively understated scene; Myers is shown at a distance, his bandaged face resembling the familiar mask. It is vaguely reminiscent of Myers' early appearances in the 1978 movie, when he watches Laurie Strode from behind a row of bushes, or among her washing lines.


Once the mask appears, the movie decelerates a bit - not just because the mask is bad (it is), but because once the familiar pieces are in place, the movie becomes very predictable. It's not that bad though - the scenes with Jamie and Rachel (Ellie Cornell), her foster sister, are a little leaden, but Little pulls off some solid moments (Jamei's encounter with Michael in the costume rack; the cop car surrounded by multiple Michaels) that keep the movie interesting.

The one downside is the slight silliness running through the movie - the group of rednecks who go after Michael are straight out of a Simpsons episode - that undermines the tension. It might be the case that - unlike Halloween - there are too many plotlines, and none of them are particularly well-developed so it is hard to lock into what is at stake. 

 It's slight and a little corny, but on its own terms Halloween 4 - The Return of Michael Myers is a fun movie that does no disservice to Michael Myers' mystique - that would come off with the next sequel...