Radio DJ Heidi (Sheri Moon Zombie) receives a record from the self proclaimed “Lords of Salem” which features a strange mixture of notes repeating themselves. When played, it places certain women in Salem in a trance in addition to having an adverse affect on Heidi. Is the DJ going insane, or is she being targeted by a coven of long dead witches for a specific evil purpose?
The Lords of Salem is a “but” movie as in, this would have been really good…but. There’s something off about the film, even though I really appreciate what director Rob Zombie was going for here. It’s got that creepy vibe that’s present in some of the great (or at least more interesting) films of the late 1960s and early 1970s that I love like Rosemary’s Baby and Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.
But…
At times the film feels a little self indulgent with excess that, if toned down a bit, might have resulted in a far superior film. As it stands, The Lords of Salem, like all Zombie films, is interesting but it doesn’t quite reach the level of greatness that House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects (the latter of which is not just Zombie’s best film, but an exceptional horror film overall) did. Zombie seems more interested in style over substance here and it damages the finished product.
I’d recommend The Lords of Salem because I truly think Zombie is an interesting visionary whose films deserve an audience. However, I’d like to see him invest more time in developing a script with a stronger story and characters that we care about before applying his unique talents to committing it to film.
Shortly after the Perron family moves into their new home, a “fixer upper” farmhouse located in Rhode Island, they begin to experience strange, unexplained events. Carolyn (Lili Taylor) hears clapping coming from the basement even though no one else is down there. The family dog is found dead after refusing to enter the home. The daughters are attacked by malevolent spirits. Eventually, Carolyn and her husband Roger (Ron Livingston) enlist the aid of famed paranormal researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) to help them rid the house of whatever else moved in along with them.
When I first saw The Conjuring upon its initial theatrical release, I was astounded and thought it was a breath of fresh air in a genre that had become a little stale. I recently watched it again twice within the span of a few months (as well as seeing its “sequel”, Annabelle) and firmly believe The Conjuring is a modern horror classic.
It’s really tough to pull off what screenwriters Chad and Carey Hayes, cinematographer John R. Leonetti, and director James Wan accomplished with The Conjuring. Making a good horror film is difficult, especially a haunted house movie with mostly unseen apparitions. You can only get so far with things that go bump in the night before the audience clamors for more. People think they want to see what’s causing the haunting, but the creators of the film (which is based on a true story) wisely withhold revealing too much, allowing our fear to stem from imagination rather than gory visuals. The slow creak of a door opening, a random thumping, even the clapping of a child’s hands send more shivers up a spine than any fully fleshed out creature can.
I admire the fact that the filmmakers chose to retain the early 1970s setting of the film and it’s to their credit that they make it work in the film’s favor. Wan and Leonetti use drab, washed out colors giving the film a certain stark authenticity that would have been lacking in the hands of others. The Conjuring looks as if it could have been shot during the era and reminded me of 70s genre films like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and The Legend of Hell House.
The Conjuring is one of those rare films that elicits goosebumps on my flesh no matter how many times I see it and I’ll easily add to my Halloween rotation of haunted house movies like the aforementioned Hell House, 1999’s House on Haunted Hill, The Haunting and The Changeling. It’s a terrifying exercise in restrained horror and I love every minute of it.
“I’ll just tell them the truth flat out. Jane Hardy was on the edge…and she came back.”
In an attempt to regroup after the one-two punch of her mother’s death and a bad divorce, Jane Hardy (Trish Van Devere) decides to stay the summer in a country house she inherited from her late aunt. Shortly after moving in, she’s terrorized by a hearse, learns that locals believe her house to be haunted, and discovers deep, dark secrets about her aunt.
Wow. That trailer is actually pretty exciting. It makes The Hearse look like a lost horror classic and something I figured I’d been missing out on after all of these years. In fact, as the movie began, it reminded me slightly of an early 70s horror film called Let’s Scare Jessica To Death. In both films, the female protagonist had suffered some sort of mental breakdown and relocated to the country to recuperate. However, in Let’s Scare Jessica To Death, Zohra Lampert’s performance lends credence to the main character’s plight; in The Hearse, there’s very little indication Van Devere’s Jane is little more than an empty vessel, floating through life without a care in the world.
That’s only one of the many problems with this film.
The Hearse is “based on an idea” by Mark Tenser, but, apparently, that idea involved regurgitating cliches from other horror films of the past decade or so. They took a watered down “heroine” with mental issues (see above), added a car which may or may not be possessed (Duel, The Car), threw in some stuff about the devil and priestly guidance (The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror), and topped it off with the prospect of a ghostly presence (The Changeling). Did we forget anything? You know what? We need a potentially evil chauffeur (Burnt Offerings). That should do it.
Except it doesn’t. The Hearse is a complete mess of a film that goes nowhere. In fact, there’s really little or no mention of devil worshiping until an hour into the movie. And the townspeople who all bristle in horror when “the old Martin place” is mentioned are there only to do just that. Some you never see again. The ones that do pop up again, that you thought might play some part in the grand, evil plan? Nope. They don’t add anything either.
It’s almost as if the filmmakers were making this story up as they shot the movie. There’s no way a completed script could have resulted in this atrocity. One moment Jane has a terrifying (and I’m being really kind in that description) vision, then she just blows it off and forgets about it. She talks about being on the edge but we never really believe it because she rarely breaks down expect when the script calls for it–and that’s few and far between and comes much too late in the film.
There’s a fine line between making a film that’s enigmatic and suspenseful and making one that’s irritating and goofy. The Hearse not only strays away from that line, it runs full speed toward the latter of the two.
My advice? Watch any of the others I mentioned above (especially Let’s Scare Jessica To Death and The Car as a double feature or even the other 1980 far superior The Changeling) and let The Hearse rust.
Nine years after Psycho and seven after What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? came the twisted horror/black comedy What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Starring Academy Award winners Geraldine Page (The Trip to Bountiful, Sweet Bird of Youth) and Ruth Gordon (Rosemary’s Baby, Harold and Maude), What Ever Happened To Aunt Alice? is the story of serial killer Clare Marrable (Page), a widowed woman left with nothing but a rusty dagger, a butterfly collection, and a book of old stamps after her husband dies. To survive, she moves closer to a nephew in Arizona and, unbeknownst to him, bilks elderly housekeepers out of their money before murdering them and planting the bodies under trees in her lawn.
Enter Mrs. Dimmock (Gordon), a diminutive and crafty redhead who applies for Marrable’s housekeeping position, a job left open after the rather sudden disappearance of Miss Edna Tinsley (Mildred Dunnock). We see early that Dimmock is not all she appears to be, snooping around the house and knowing a little more about Marrable than she initially lets on. Aided by her nephew, Mike (Robert Fuller, Emergency), Dimmock works hard to gain solid evidence to prove that Marrable is guilty of foul play many times over. Will Dimmock be able to expose Marrable before it’s too late? And in the end, will we ever discover who Aunt Alice actually is and what became of her?
What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? isn’t exactly the movie I thought it would be. Amazingly enough, for a film nearly 45 years old, I managed to avoid any information about it so I went into my viewing under the assumption it would have more of either a slasher feel or perhaps something with supernatural overtones like Let’s Scare Jessica To Death. That’s not to say I was disappointed. In fact, What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? was enjoyable on many levels.
Geraldine Page not only sinks her teeth into the role of Marrable, she uses her acting chops to chew the scenery throughout the entire film, remarkably without creating an over the top caricature as a lesser actress might have done. Ruth Gordon, on the other hand, is more restrained as Dimmock, underplaying her role with a shrewd calmness that’s a perfect counterpoint to the domineering Page. Watching the two of them circle one another as predator and prey as the story unfolds is what elevates What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? above the normal thriller and it makes one wonder why the film has never gotten more exposure.
That’s not to say it’s a perfect film, however. Fuller’s Mike reminded me of a lesser Don Draper and the character really isn’t given much to do other than exist as a link to the outside world for Gordon’s Dimmock. His love interest, Harriet (Rosemary Forsyth, Days of our Lives) is something of a dim bulb and basically little more than a stock character. Beef up both roles and perhaps they could have strengthened the film.
Overall, What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? is a fun little film that really showcases the talents of two great actresses. Give it a look when you have a chance.
What I mean by that is the film is one I more or less would have caught on Saturday afternoon TV back in the days before cable, when impressionable young kids had access to some of the greatest. most offbeat horror films of all time. Growing up in the late 70s and early 80s, I was able to see movies like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, The Monster Club (reviewed here), Tourist Trap, and Theater of Blood (another Vincent Price classic) on both the local station, WPGH (now a fox affiliate) as well as Superstation WOR broadcast from Secaucus, New Jersey. However, The Abominable Dr. Phibes was not among the films I was fortunate to see back then.
As a result, it’s taken me around 40 years, but this afternoon found the perfect opportunity to spend a little time with the good doctor.
I’d always been under the impression that The Abominable Dr. Phibes was straight horror, but was pleasantly surprised to see dark humor interwoven with the scares. Of course, with this film, the word “scares” is used very loosely as the horrific elements are presented in a campy, over the top manner that probably wouldn’t have frightened me even as a preteen boy.
The story begins with the bizarre deaths of several prominent physicians, one of whom is shredded by bloodthirsty bats while another falls prey to having his head squeezed inside a frog’s mask at a masquerade party. The police investigation eventually leads them to discover all the doctors had ties to Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotton, Shadow of a Doubt), lead surgeon on a case involving Victoria Phibes, the wife of Dr. Anton Phibes, the former of which died on the operating table while the latter perished in a car accident en route to the hospital.
Or did he?
Turns out Dr. Phibes is alive, rather unwell, and out for vengeance. Phibes blames the surgeons for the death of his wife and sets out to eliminate those responsible (which include a nurse on duty that night) with inventive murders based on the Ten Plagues of Egypt (just because, ok?). Each person is taken out one by one with locusts, hail (rather creatively, mind you), and beasts (where a doctor is impaled by a brass statue and has to be unscrewed by the authorities in one of the film’s best and funniest sequences). And I’m certain it comes as no surprise to any viewer that one of the final attacks will come in the form of “death of the first born” and that Dr. Vesalius’s son will be the target. In the end, Vesalius races against the clock to save his son from being disfigured by acid while Phibes lives (dies?) to wreak havoc another day.
The Abominable Dr. Phibes reminds me a lot of Theater of Blood, a film I did see way back when and features a similar plotline (insane man wronged, kills victims in high concept manner). Both succeed because Price fully commits to the character and story, no matter how ridiculous the scene or dialogue might be, and that’s why he’s revered as one of the finest genre actors of all time. Cotton is above average in the role of main victim and Peter Jeffrey excels as Trout (or is it Pike?), the lead investigator.
While The Abominable Dr. Phibes is by no means a great horror film, its campiness makes it completely watchable and the film rightfully earns its place as a cult classic. If you’re looking for a nifty little movie marathon, it should be watched alongside Rocky Horror Picture Show and Phantom of the Paradise (if only because of Phibes’ mannequin band, the Clockwork Wizards, and the amount of time he spends jamming on his organ–pun totally intended).
I’m looking forward to Dr. Phibes Rises Again but hope it’s not another 40 years until I see it.
This Old Haunted House 