Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)

My daughter came home the other day and told me that her high school classic films class was watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Her teacher told her class that they were not watching the new version; they were watching the original version.  My daughter then began to describe the 1978 version with Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy.  I pulled out my trusty copy of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers Fotonovel from 1978 just to confirm that this was the version the teacher was claiming was the original.  Sadly she apparently did not know that the 1978 version was based on the black and white classic version from 1956 starring the recently deceased Kevin McCarthy.

I saw the 1978 version at the Plaza East the year it was released.  In fact I went to see Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings in Cinema I and then bought my ticket for Invasion of the Body Snatchers in Cinema II.  I went in to them figuring that I would prefer Lord of the Rings.  I came out of them with the exact opposite reaction.  I loved Body Snatchers while Bakshi’s rotoscoping left me seriously underwhelmed in several scenes.  Several years later I managed to catch Invasion 1956 on Friday night’s late late movie.  Unfortunately someone at the station played the reels out of order.  It was a long night, but it was still a good movie.

I decided that it only made sense to sit down with my daughter and show her the real original version of Body Snatchers.  She thought it was a great idea as well… until her boyfriend called about twenty minutes in.  She did manage to make it back for part of the ending, but now she was lost so she left for other pastimes. 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers tells the story of a sleepy little town where people start reporting that family members aren’t really family members.  As the mystery unfolds we learn that seed pods are being used to copy and take over the lives of the townsfolk.  Kevin McCarthy is a returning doctor that helps to break the mystery, and tries to stay alive after finding out.  Much has been made of political undertones in the film in relation to Joe McCarthy and the communist menace.  In an interview included as a bonus on the DVD, Kevin McCarthy says this was never the intention.  Intention or not, it still makes a nice parable.

The 1956 version was directed by Don Siegel who went on to direct Dirty Harry and many other films.  He was a good director and this stands out as an excellent film partly due to his ability to create not only suspense but paranoia.  I give the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers 3 stars.

The Gas Cafe

Back in 1992 I used to watch this tv series called Nightmare Cafe.  It starred Robert Englund as the owner of a spooky little cafe.  A couple of people wandered in to the cafe and soon discovered that they were in fact actually dead.  They end up staying on as workers at the cafe where they helped people come to terms with their lives and make penance for their misdeeds.  It was a neat little show on Friday nights where it crashed and burned after 6 episodes.

When I saw the trailer for The Gas Cafe on the Kelley Baker Angry Filmmaker Inc. Short Films DVD it gave me a bit of that same vibe that I got watching Nightmare Cafe.  The trailer did an excellent job of making me want to see the film without giving away the entire film either.  I also was drawn in by the tag line, “Five People collide in a bar one night. One is dead. One never lived. The other three are lying.”  It sets up the core mystery of which person is which as well as raising questions about how can someone dead be there, and how can someone have never lived.  Of course there was always the chance that the wording was artistic license and “dead” didn’t actually mean deceased.  By the same token maybe one of the characters just hadn’t done anything with their life and in that way they had never lived.  Marketing is a funny thing, so even though the tag line had my mind going one way, I was well aware the film might end up going another.  Never the less I had really enjoyed the short films of Kelley Baker, and I commented in  my blog entry that I wanted to get a copy of The Gas Cafe to check out his long form film work.

I got an email from Kelley Baker after he read that particular blog entry and he told me that he was going to send me a copy of The Gas Cafe.  To say I was thrilled was an understatement.  This man had written and directed several movies, he had worked on several independent motion pictures, he worked on the Oscar winning film Good Will Hunting, and he was offering to send me one of his films on DVD.  Imagine how I felt when he not only sent me a copy of The Gas Cafe, but of Birddog as well.  I wanted to watch these movies on a clear and rested mind.  Of course life seldom gives me the chance to have a rested mind any longer.  My 17-year-old daughter has discovered dating, we’re doing HCR mail counts at the Post Office, and one of our cats just had another litter of kittens.  A clear rested mind is about as likely as $1 a gallon gas. 

There was one other thought going through my mind as well.  What if I didn’t like the film?  I liked his short films, but what if I had set my self up with too high of expectations?  Or what if I just didn’t get it?  I slipped the DVD into my player and soon all these fears were laid to rest.  The Gas Cafe was a very enjoyable film. 

It is set in a little diner.  A lone stranger is seated at one table and a young man is working, taking orders when a couple enters the cafe, wet from the rain outside.  Their car has went into a ditch and  hit a tree after they swerved to avoid hitting a deer.  They are hoping to get a tow, but decide for the moment to enjoy the shelter from the rain. 

I have to admit I had a bit of trepidation at this point.  The young man was speaking in a horrible accent and seemed to be mangling Spanish and French.  I didn’t know if it was bad acting or bad directing, I just knew it was bad, but it turns out it was supposed to be.  Ross, the young man, (played by Francisco Diego Garcia) has spent his life stuck in the cafe and dreaming of travelling to Europe.  The closest he comes is by preparing for his travels by trying to speak in a foreign language.  When DeeDee (Abigail Ray), the female half of the couple that enters the cafe, tells him how annoying the fake accent is, I realized that there was more going on than meets the eye (or ear).  Ross drops the accent and the attempt to speak in a foreign language, and we immediately start to get a feel for the real character inside.  The film is full of little moments like this.  At one point DeeDee has what seems like an over the top moment when Ross refers to her job as an arts therapist as a “shrink”.  It seems over-acted at the moment it occurs, but later that too makes sense. 

The other characters open up to us as the film progresses as well.  It is like watching a rosebud bloom in time-lapse photography.  Ted (Don Alder) initially seems like a bit of a selfish thug, but we soon learn that much of that is a facade.  The final two occupants of the diner are the lone customer that is referred to as the Punk (William Earl Ray) and Grandpa (Tom Lasswell) the cafe’s owner.  We know there is some conflict between the two of them, but like all the mysteries in this film it plays out at just the right pace.  There is more than meets the eye to all of the characters, but especially these two.  The film lets us speculate about all five of the people before slowly giving us their true purpose.  I was especially fascinated by Ray’s portrayal of Punk.  The actor seemed to know exactly who his character was and despite early scenes where he says next to nothing, he draws us in with a glint in his eye or the slightest smirk at the corner of his lips.  William Earl Ray reminded me of Tony Todd as I watched his character go from saying nothing to becoming the voice of truth, drawing the characters’ real selves out from the darkness where they had been hiding.  Punk becomes not just a character but a presence.  Partly this is due to who Punk really is, but the success of it is due to the style Ray brings to the performance.  I would love to see another film about Punk and his next mission.  It also bears mentioning that Lasswell does a magnificent job of showing us the stubbornness of Grandpa who won’t do anything until he is ready to do it, a fact that is the bane of Punk’s existence.

The Gas Cafe is available for purchase at Kelley Baker’s website  http://www.angryfilmmaker.com and I highly recommend it.  I give The Gas Cafe 3 1/2 stars.  I’m just waiting for the weekend to check out Birddog.

Nothing But Trouble (1944)

This was the second Laurel and Hardy film on the disc with Air Raid Wardens.  Like that film, Nothing But Trouble is set in a different era when times were hard.  There are jokes about ration stamps and hoarding and the rarity of meat that today’s kids won’t understand at all.  I only understand them because my mom told me about those days.

There is one big difference between Air Raid Wardens and Nothing But Trouble that I noticed.  Nothing But Trouble is funnier.  This is still a much tamer Stan and Ollie compared to the memories I have of them from my youth.  I remember Ollie being much more domineering and quick to anger with Stanley.  I recall Stanley crying quite a bit as well.  In this film they are the best of buds and there is little dissention between them.  The plot concerns a boy king that sneaks away and spends the day with our duo while they prepare a dinner for a society climbing lady and her husband who are hosting a party that night for the self-same king.

The plot is like half of the Prince and the Pauper without the use of a twin look a like.  Of course plenty of time is also given to Laurel and Hardy’s antics as the chef and butler to this woman.  They do a lousy job, but their hearts are in the right place, so when she berates them and fires them, even though she is justified, we still feel bad for the boys.

A secondary plot concerns plans by the king’s uncle to have him killed and the death blamed on their political rivals.  This leads to a couple of funny scenes with a poisoned salad.

The disc doesn’t feature any special features other than the trailer for the film, but it is another one of those trailers that manages to show us the last scene in the movie as well as several other late in the picture bits.  If the plot were explained in the trailer it would likely give away the whole film.  It’s a 9 on the Quarantine scale.  As for the movie itself, I give it 2 1/4 stars.  It was interesting, but more as a nostalgic curiosity.  I’m still waiting to catch one of the Laurel and Hardy comedies that I saw as a kid.

Vampire Wars

I used to be a huge fan of anime when it was rare to find it anywhere in WV.  I had seen some of it and liked that it was different and that not everybody was familiar with it.  Of course then it started becoming easier to find.  My wife and I bought a bunch of anime videos from Blockbuster back in the 90s.  Some were good, some were great, and some were horrible.  When I started buying DVDs, Columbia House offered an Anime DVD club.  I joined and received several anime DVDs before we cancelled the membership.  I continued to watch for used anime at FYE and at Wills.  FYE was where I ran across Vampire Wars, I believe.  I bought it and never got around to sitting down to watch it.  Of course since that time Big Lots has offered numerous anime DVD buy outs, and I have bought a lot of them.  Recently I picked up a couple of volumes of Speed Grapher and Desert Punk.  The thing is that anime is so mainstream now, and my kids are into it so deeply, that it has lost much of its appeal for me.  That and the voices, especially the female voices, tend to grate on my nerves after a bit.  Don’t get me wrong.  I still like anime.  I just don’t go nuts over it like I did in the 80s and 90s.

Vampire Wars is an anime.  It’s also a pretty decent action film with a supernatural element.  Some of the animation is the standard anime trick of using a static shot and moving the camera around.  This is much cheaper as the drawing does not have to be animated.  Another standard trick of using action lines to simulate movement is also used quite frequently.  Those elements can often distract me from the action, but it wasn’t the case here.  The action is fast paced and the tone is very adult without stepping over into hentai anime.  There is plenty of violence and blood, the language sounds right for the characters, and there is very tasteful nudity as well.  But don’t expect any demon phalluses as in La Blue Girl or Ogenki Clinic. 

The plot involves a man protecting a girl with a very special type of blood.  It’s fairly easy to see where the story is going, but it’s still fun getting there.  Watching Kuki in this film made me want to check out Golgo 13 or Ichi Episode 0.  Kuki is a bad ass.  I give Vampire Wars 2 1/4 stars.

The Mandarin Mystery

I used to love watching The Ellery Queen Mysteries on NBC when I was a kid.  Mom and I would watch as Jim Hutton and David Wayne portrayed the father and son pair; one a police inspector, the other an amazing detective.  Each episode would end with Ellery solving the case and just before the reveal, he would break the fourth wall and talk to the audience, pointing out important clues and asking leading questions.  It was a lot of fun to watch and to play along.

The Mandarin Mystery was billed on box as an Ellery Queen mystery.  I was curious how a cinematic Queen might turn out, so I decided to pop the disc into the player and check it out.  The disc was part of a 2 disc, 4 movie set in the AMC DVD collection.  This collection was Great Detectives and included Sherlock Holmes along with Bulldog Drummond and Mr. Moto.  The character of Ellery Queen was played by Eddie Quillan and he plays Queen as a very confident, and very excitable young man.  He’s also very intelligent and has an eye for the ladies.  He immediately takes notice of Josephine Temple (Charlotte Henry) a young woman who has arrived to sell a very rare and valuable stamp to a collector named Dr. Kirk.  Dr. Kirk collects stamps and has been investing his ward’s inheritance into the hobby since the values continue to rise.  This allows him to pursue his hobby while investing her money as well.  The problem is she doesn’t approve, and she has others in the Kirk family that don’t feel this is a proper use of her money either.  When Josephine gets to the hotel where Dr. Kirk is staying, the stamp is stolen from her.  Soon a murder has taken place as well, and it is up to Ellery and his dad to figure it out.  

One way to make a mystery harder to figure out is to throw in a large collection of suspects, and that is what the writers do here.  They provide a few clues and a bunch of red herrings before eventually Ellery puts all the pieces together.  I enjoyed the film, but I do wish they had cut back just a little on the peripheral characters.  We not only have Miss Temple, Dr. Kirk, and the two Kirk girls, but there’s a boyfriend, a forger, and a stamp expert.  It soon becomes hard to remember everyone’s purpose and motive.

The print from which the transfer was made had some issues as well.  One scene jumps around like the print had sprocket damage when it went through the machine.  Still for $3, I don’t feel I got burned too bad.  The film plays fairly well with the exception of that one spot.  It still would have been nice to have had a cleaned-up and remastered print.

I give The Mandarin Mystery 2 1/2 stars.  I wish Quillan had done some other Queen films, but sadly this appears to have been his only outing as Ellery Queen.  Most of the other Queen films I have looked up feature Ralph Bellamy.  On a side note, I also just saw where the Ellery Queen Mysteries television show with Jim Hutton is coming to DVD this month.  Looks like I have something to shop for.

8 Months Down, 4 To Go

Once again I have gotten behind on my writing, and this is being written on September 11, 2010.  Just as I considered watching Black Jesus or Passion of the Christ at Easter, I have thought about what to watch today.  Part of me considers rewatching Kurtlar Vadisi – Irak (Valley of the Wolves: Iraq) while part of me thinks it might be a good day to take on United 93.  In reality, it will probably come down to a matter of time. 

So only four months to go.  I need to sit down and look over what I have accomplished in 8 months.  I’ve watched a bunch of DVDs, but I’ve bought a bunch of DVDs.  I started out watching a lot of older films and classic films, but lately I have watched more recent films.  I also think anyone would be hard pressed to call Yeti a classic.  I’m thinking of trying to concentrate on horror movies as we close in on Halloween, and I have a lot of Christmas films to watch after October ends.  Two films that I know I’ll be watching very soon are Birddog and The Gas Cafe.  Both of these were sent to me by Kelley Baker and I am extremely anxious to sit back and take them in.

I will say that I have been extremely disappointed in the hits I’ve been receiving lately.  I’ve never been a major power blog, but I was averaging over 10 hits a day.  Several days were in the 20s and 30s with I think two days hitting 40 or more.  This last week has been under 10 every day.  I don’t know why there has been such a drop.  I do know I usually get more hits on posts that have the terms “topless, nudity and breasts” in the tags, but I’m not that big of an attention whore that I would put those in as keywords for no reason. 

Have a great Patriot Day and if you haven’t read all the reviews, show a blogger some love and click on some of the older ones.  Better yet tell your friends to check out my blog.  Remember if you don’t spread the word about this unique movie blog, the terrorists win.

The Legend Of Hillbilly John

This one, like my review of The Human Centipede, is a bonus.  The Legend of Hillbilly John has yet to be released to DVD and VHS copies are incredibly rare as well.  I was fortunate enough to run across a copy on eBay and snagged it for my viewing pleasure.  I have tried to get rid of most of my VHS tapes and replace them with DVDs.  Unfortunately there are some titles that just aren’t available on DVD.  Futureworld has never been released as a Region 1 DVD.  Mondo New York is unavailable as are several others.  This makes it extremely difficult to track down these movies.

I first saw The Legend of Hillbilly John back in 1974 with Keith Harris at the old Alban theater.  The advertisement featured Hillbilly John being attacked by Ugly Bird, a huge demonic flying bird.  We figured this was a monster movie.  We were wrong.  I’ll be honest, I hated this movie when Keith and I watched it.  Through the years I blanked it out of my mind except for the title.  The title served as a good barometer when I was checking out movie books.  I always look up two or three obscure films when I’m considering buying a book on movies.  If one or two of them are in the book, I figure the authors know their movies.  If none of them are there, I figure the book is more a compilation of big name movies, and not really what I’m looking for.

Having forgotten almost all of Hillbilly John, I was left with only three vague images from the film.  I remembered the battle with Ugly Bird.  Actually what I remembered was that it was way too short considering how it was built up by the advertising.  I also remembered a scene with a man walking into a witch’s house.  When he starts to walk in, she is a beautiful young maiden, but once locked inside she turns in to a much older and much less attractive woman.  I remember a tight shot of the man’s screaming face.  The third and final thing that I remembered was a scene that quite frankly, I thought I must have dreamed I saw because I couldn’t imagine it actually being in the movie.  It involved Hillbilly John pushing open a golden door (to heaven perhaps?) and entering.  The next scene was shot with a filter that made the whole image appear to be tinted in bright golden-yellow.  And what was that scene?  Hillbilly John walks into a field filled with black people picking cotton.  This film was made in 1974.  Even then this was an odd choice of images.  I remembered this and I seemed to recall the black people singing and walking off with Hillbilly John.  I was more or less right on all counts.

The Legend of Hillbilly John, I can safely say, was poorly marketed.  It is not a monster movie.  It is not a horror movie.  On video it was categorized as a family film, and that is closer to the mark.  The film is based on the book Who Fears The Devil? which contains stories from the Appalachians.  As Severn Darden explains at the start of the film, the people in the Appalachians fear Satan more than any monster, no matter what name he is called by.  Grandpa John (Denver Pyle) announces to the town that he plans to call out the devil and defy him under the full moon.  He has a plan to defeat the devil by using a guitar with pure silver strings.  He created the strings by melting down silver half dollars.  Grandpa, with the whole town watching on, begins to play and sing a song calling out the devil.  Unfortunately he soon finds out that U.S. coins are no longer made with pure silver, and as the image goes to one of tearing and melting film, Grandpa John is struck down by the devil.  Now Hillbilly John must take up the mission of his kin.  He starts by finding some real true silver for his strings and then he sets off to have the silver tested.  This trek with his dog, Honor Hound, leads him to cross paths with a man who yearns for gold and wealth, a witch who longs for revenge, and the Ugly Bird.

Taken as an Appalachian folk tale, The Legend of Hillbilly John is a pretty enjoyable movie.  I’m not sure this would have made the film any more enjoyable for a 10-year-old hoping for more monster battles unfortunately.  The film is filled with Hillbilly John stopping to play a bluegrass style folk song or two.  The music is actually pretty decent as well, in my opinion.

I would love to see someone do a decent DVD release of this film.  Anchor Bay or Shout Factory would probably do a great job.  Until that time I guess I’ll hold onto my VHS copy and hope the heads hold up on my VCR.  I give the film 2 1/2 stars.

The Bank Job

The Bank Job is one of those movies where the trailer intrigued me enough that I decided I would eventually get the DVD and watch it… some day.  It looked like I would enjoy it, but it didn’t do enough to drive me to rush to the theater.  I was looking through DVDs at Wills the other day and I found a copy.  I bought it and placed it with the rest of the collection.  Since I have enjoyed most of the Jason Statham movies that I have watched, I decided to pop it in on Thursday.

The Bank Job is based on a true story.  As for how true the movie’s depiction of the events truly is… well, I would guess about as true as most claims made by a used car salesman.  It doesn’t make the film any less enjoyable however.  The Bank Job is a heist movie first and a history lesson last.  The only problem is that by trying to maintain a more realistic feel, the movie can not be as light and enjoyable as Ocean’s 11.

The film opens up with a man frolicking in the water with a couple of young ladies in the early 1970s.  One of the girls has her top off and her bikini bottoms are soon being removed as well.  The scene shifts to the inside of a beach house as the three get involved in more intimate behavior.  Unbeknownst to them, a man is outside their window taking pictures.  These pictures soon become blackmail material.  One of the girls in the pictures is a member of the royal family, and the photographs are in the safe deposit box of a radical black militant named Michael X.

The government wants those blackmail photos, but they don’t want to risk exposing the fact that they exist.  MI-5 decides to set up a robbery of the bank vault in order to gain possession of the pictures.  The bank robbers have to be unconnected to MI-5 incase things go wrong, so they make a deal with a woman who has been picked up on some drug charges.  If she will round-up a crew to do the job and bring them the photos, she goes free and the men get to keep whatever money and jewels they steal.  Anyone who has ever seen a heist film knows how well those plans work out.

Martine (Saffron Burrows) gathers a crew led by Terry Leather (Jason Statham).  They manage to break into the vault and start looting it, but they have no idea what else they might find or who they might tick off.  As it happens one of the safe deposit boxes belongs to a pornographer with a violent streak.  Another belongs to a madame who stored her own set of photographs of her rich and famous clients in a safe deposit box for insurance purposes should she run afoul of the law.  Terry’s gang must now deal with these issues as well as MI-5 and a bunch of crooked cops, not to mention the honest cops who are also trying to catch the robbers.

Unlike the Ocean’s gang, not every member of Terry’s crew is going to survive, and that’s one of the major drawbacks to this film.  It becomes too serious to be a light-hearted heist flick.  It would be like having The Cannonball Run ending with three or four of the cars wrecking and killing their drivers.  It might be more realistic, but it is a mood changer for the film. 

I did enjoy The Bank Job, but not nearly as much as I thought I would from the trailer.  I give the film 2 1/4 stars.  I think if they had went for a lighter approach, they would have had a more enjoyable film.  If they wanted to go for a serious crime movie, they should have cast it differently and reduced the goofiness in some of the early scenes with the crew.  Jason Statham is fine as an action hero leading man.  I enjoyed the Crank films as well as Death Race, but if you’re making a serious, dramatic film, I would suggest a different lead or better direction.  Terry, like most of Statham’s characters, doesn’t show a wide range of emotions.

Trick ‘R Treat

I first read about Trick ‘r Treat in Horror Hound magazine.  There was a lengthy article on the many trials and tribulations it had faced in trying to get a release date.  Finally, the magazine reported, it was going to be released pretty much direct to video.  The image that was used to market the film was of Sam, a little kid wearing a burlap sack fashioned into a mask.  It’s a neat looking image, but it might have confused people about the true intent of the movie.  I saw it and thought it was just another slasher movie.  When I read the DVD case, it says that the movie is a horror anthology.  That may be true, but it hardly describes what this movie really is.  Trick ‘r Treat is a film that captures the spirit of Halloween.  It is the horror movie equivalent of Kenny & Company which also captured the feelings of getting ready for Halloween and going trick or treating.

There are certain things I associate with Halloween.  As a kid it was always trick or treating.  Picking my Halloween costume was one of the most exciting things I got to do all year long.  Strangely, I only recall a couple of my costumes.  One year I had the Ben Cooper costume of Dick Van Dyke’s character from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  I don’t know why I picked that costume because I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie.  Another year I dressed in the Ben Cooper version of Walt Disney’s Snow White.  Once again, I’m not sure how that happened.  It was far from my favorite Disney movie and I was a boy.  Either way, that’s the costume I ended up wearing.  My cousin was my trick or treat chaperone, and she said after the first dozen or so houses saying what a cute little girl I was that I started saying, “Trick or treat, I’m a boy” when I knocked on the door.

As I got older Haunted Houses became the reason for the season.  Janet, the same cousin I mentioned earlier, took me to my first haunted house as well.  It was scary, but fun as well.  I also recall they had a pretty neat gift shop at the end of the tour.  Throughout junior high and high school, haunted houses were the highlight of Halloween.  I would get together with a group of friends and we would hit various haunted houses in the area.  Some were really lame to the point that we would come out laughing.  A couple of them were a little scary, but not nearly as much when you’re with a group of friends.  We stopped going before the advent of Haunted Trails and Haunted Hay Rides came about.  I think we took my son to one of the Haunted Trails once, but by the time he had gotten old enough to enjoy a haunted attraction we had moved to Clendenin where Judgement Houses were more prevalent.  They don’t tend to meet my idea of a fun time.

The next stage in Halloween enjoyment was horror movies.  Even as a child I enjoyed a monster movie, if somebody decided to air one for Halloween.  For some reason New Year’s Eve tended to be the holiday where one of the stations would run all night horror movies when I was young.  After cable came along, AMC would have Monsterfest and HBO or Cinemax would usually have several scary movies.  Of course the best horror movie marathons were created by renting VHS horror classics or rarities.  

The final Halloween thing I have come to enjoy is decorating.  For several years, the wife and I would hang up and set out all sorts of scary themed decor.  The mantle would be filled with the Universal monsters from Sideshow Toys, MacFarlane’s Monsters and Tortured Souls from MacFarlane Toys, and Silent Screamers from Mezco.  Over the last few years the living room has become overrun by my DVD collection, but recently I discovered Spooky Town by Lemax, and I have been pushing the DVDs on the top of the entertainment center back and setting out these pieces.  

Trick ‘r Treat does an excellent job of creating a film that captures the feelings produced by many of these things.  There are four stories, but characters from the different stories cross over into the other stories as well.  It’s like the movies Go and Elephant where the background character in one scene becomes the main character in another scene and we relive those events from their perspective.  The first story concerns a young couple who have different thoughts about Halloween.  The husband loves the parties and scary decorations, the wife isn’t nearly as thrilled with it.  In fact she hates Halloween.  The second story concerns a high school principal who just also happens to be a serial killer.  The third story involves a group of four hot young ladies looking to party the night away.  Well three of them are looking forward to the party.  The fourth girl is still waiting for Mr. Right to experience her first time.  Story number four concerns a scary legend and a cruel prank gone wrong.  The final tale deals with an old man that scares off any kids that come to his door until Sam sneaks inside.  Sam, the burlap sack masked character from the DVD cover, is the spirit of Halloween vengeance.  He chases the old man around and gets him ready to meet some kids from his past.

All of the stories are well done and enjoyable, and most of them do a fairly decent job of providing an unexpected twist.  Of course how unexpected the twist is will depend on how many EC comics you’ve read.  The acting is perfect in this film as well.  For such a small film it boasts several big names including Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin, and Brian Cox (the original Hannibal Lecter).  That this film was essentially buried by the studio that produced it is a real crime.  Rumors claim that part of the reason relates to the dismal box office of Superman Returns which was written by this film’s writer/director, Michael Dougherty, and directed by Bryan Singer whose production company was responsible for making Trick ‘r Treat.  I hope the film will get discovered now that it is on DVD.  I found it at K-Mart for $5, so it’s very affordable. 

I give Trick ‘r Treat 3 1/4 stars.  The DVD also includes the animated short that inspired the film.  Titled Season’s Greetings it tells the story of young Sam, his bag of treats, and the man stalking him.  It’s a wonderful companion piece to the movie.

Room Service (1938)

I love the Marx Brothers, but the two films I watched earlier, Go West and The Big Store, were disappointments.  I also had a double feature DVD with Room Service and At The Circus on it.  Having just watched Trinity at the circus in Boot Hill, I opted for the shorter Room Service.  This was more like the Marx Brothers I enjoyed.  Groucho is a penniless theater producer looking to stage a play at the hotel his brother-in-law manages.  Unfortunately an efficiency expert has shown up to audit the failing hotel and he wants the money Groucho owes the hotel, and he wants Groucho and his entourage out of the hotel as well.

Groucho’s girlfriend Christine (played by a very young Lucille Ball) has secured a backer for Groucho’s play, but they must figure out a way to stay in the hotel room in order to meet the backer and collect the check.  Since Groucho’s entourage consists of Harpo and Chico as well as the naive author of the play Leo Davis (played by Frank Albertson),  there is plenty of craziness afoot as well.

Room Service was based on a Broadway play and you can feel the stage in the way the most of the action is confined to the hotel room.  Never the less the film is still fast paced and very funny.  Harpo’s attempt to bring them a turkey dinner, a live turkey dinner, is a highlight as is the scene where the extremely hungry men sit down to a fast, noisy and chaotic meal.

Having really only known Lucille Ball as Lucy, it was interesting to see her as the comedic love interest.  The hero’s love interest is played by a 15-year-old Ann Miller looking much older and wiser.  Donald MacBride as the efficiency expert was a wonderful foil for the brothers. 

Room Service was fast and fun and I give it 3 stars.  The DVD also included Party Fever, an Our Gang short, and The Daffy Doc, a Porky and Daffy cartoon.  I hadn’t watched an Our Gang comedy since I was a kid, and I really enjoyed this one.  Butch, Alfalfa and Waldo all want to take Darla to the Strawberry Festival, so she decides that the boy who wins the Mayor For A Day contest will get to take her.  Alfalfa and Butch start trying to outdo each other.  Alfalfa cleans the street;  Butch comes behind him and trashes them again.  Butch has a marshmallow roast;  Alfalfa does skywriting in a balloon basket.  Waldo of course ends up winning because he wrote an essay about government.  Oh and the mayor just happened to be his uncle.

The Daffy Doc is a mixed bag as far as cartoons go.  The opening bit with Daffy assisting a Doctor Quack is pretty funny, but Daffy is much more crazy in these early cartoons and his voice doesn’t even try to match his mouth.  Porky is merely incidental to the storyline, but at the time he was a much bigger name than Daffy.  It’s worth watching just for the nostalgia/history lesson on the old Looney Tunes.