Lights Out (2016)

2016
Directed by David F. Sandberg
Starring Teresa Palmer, Gabriel Bateman, Alexander DiPersia, Billy Burke and Maria Bello

I've reviewed plenty of James Wan movies before, so you know the drill - he's the guy that introduced/unleashed Paranormal Activity on the world and has done a whole lot of ghost movies since.  That should about do it for the background information.

Which brings me to Lights Out.  Produced by Wan and with a screenplay by Eric Heisserer - a pretty prolific writer in the genre for the past few years all things considered - this is a somewhat different twist on the usual Wansploitation material.  There's a ghost, yeah, but it's no demon.  And there's no hidden cameras to be found, but I actually think horror has fully moved on from that particular subgenre, so huzzah for that.  Nope, what we get from this flick is a straight-up ghost movie that is very light on running time at 81 minutes and also a little light on scares, but we'll get to that in due time.  Fortunately, it's a got a few saving graces up its sleeve, so it's worth your time to track it down at the Redbox or download it on Amazon Prime or whatever the cool kids do these days.  So ends my laziest, shortest introduction in quite some time.  I'm very proud of myself, and hopefully you are.

The flick opens up with a prologue kill involving a textfile factory, a shadowy apparition, and the classic instance of the "dude who doesn't believe what's going on only to get tragically offed" come to life.  The twist that gives us the rest of our plot: said shadowy figure appears when the lights are out (what a clever title).  From here we meet our star character of the movie - Rebecca, the stepdaughter of the man who was just killed, played by Teresa Palmer. 

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the Skeevy Paragraph.  Longtime readers (you know, the ones that exist only in my own mind) are well aware of my love for the Ju-On/Grudge franchise.  The American Grudge 2 is a truly underrated gem in my book, in no small part due to the unreal quintology of hotties: Amber Tamblyn, Sarah Roemer, Misako Uno, Arielle Kebbel and...Palmer.  In that flick, she was the resident "bitchy blonde girl" who tormented the shy, sweet Kebbel, and her hotness has not diminished in that time.  I'm not going to list her entire filmography, but suffice to say she's stolen the show in her fair share of fairly crappy movies.  Fortunately, this isn't exactly a crappy movie that we're dealing with here, but she's still the best thing about Lights Out.

Well, the plot isn't going to unspool itself.  Looking back at it, this was actually a VERY lean and mean movie.  In addition to the aforementioned short running time, there's really only four characters in it of any substance.  Rebecca - that would be Teresa Palmer for those who remembered before I went back into full-fledged skeeve mode - is the daughter of the dude who bit it during the prologue kill.  She has a mother, Sophie, played by the always awesome Maria Bello, and said mother has been afflicted with mental disorders ever since the tragic death of Rebecca's real father.  There's also the little brother Martin played by Gabriel Bateman, and the boyfriend, Bret, played by Alexander DiPersia.  Any movie with a cast this small needs the roles to be nailed, and fortunately this movie has this quality.  I'm not talking Academy Award good or anything, but the supporting actors from Bello on down don't mail it in, which is more than you can say for some movies like this.

Caution, ahead be spoilers.  Soon enough, little brother Martin begins seeing the same mysterious figure, and he and Rebecca have a few close scrapes with death.  Gradually, the back story is given to us that the ghost is "Diana," a former friend of the Sophie's who had a horrific skin condition that made her terribly sensitive to light.  Cue sequence that shows her being roasted alive in a rather unscrupulous experiment, and that's why she's your star villain.  Now, maybe I'm just an idiot, but her EXACT motivation for killing off Sophie's family was a little unclear to me; supposedly, she's back to make sure that no one else "takes" Sophie, presumably back to an asylum, but I fail to see how her son and daughter have anything to do with this.  Who knows, I probably missed something and one of this here blog's nine subscribers can rightly call me out on it.

As I mentioned previously, this movie ain't scary.  Really, not at all.  It's got its fair share of BOO scares and a whole bunch of creepy shots of the "Diana" ghost skulking around in backgrounds that are meant to evoke a paltry sense of dread in the audience, but I was able to hit the sack immediately afterward with no problem at all.  I also think that the script doesn't follow its setup very carefully, which is kind of a theme with screenwriter Heisserer.  This guy also penned the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, the movie where we were told that the character would start having "micro naps" as their forced fast from sleep progressed, thus making it possible for Freddy to cut their asses up at a moment's notice.  Except for when it was convenient for the script to forget this for other stuff.  This movie also kinda does the same thing with its "the ghost can only attack in the dark" rule.  I'm not going to get into specifics because I don't want to bore readers to tears, but trust me...it's more than just a nitpick.  It's there.

Fortunately, what this movie DOES have going for it is the emotional investment factor.  Rebecca, Sophie and Martin are a pretty likable and engaging little familial unit, all things considered, with Palmer and Bello really digging into these roles with every ounce of the scale wage that they were no doubt paid on this $4.9 million-budgeted film.  Amazingly enough, the boyfriend also manages to not be too big of a douche, a welcome change of pace after last week's film, Don't Breathe. 

The movie has a pretty damn exciting final 15 minutes.  Not scary, but exciting.  And it even ENDS, definitively, with no final BOO scare and no setup for a sequel that is almost certain to happen anyway being that this film grossed the equivalent of a WWE fiscal quarter on its miniscule budget.  So, if I'm going to sum up this admittedly craptacular review, I guess I just have to say that it's not scary, but it's certainly a fun watch.  In an era of TV-dominated pop culture where every single show on the tube seems to revolve around post-traumatic stress - the worse the better - a nice, fun little horror flick is definitely a welcome change. 

Alright, rating time.  Let's give Lights Out *** out of ****.  It definitely won't leave you pissing yourself in terror or anything, but it's a damn entertaining movie that manages to feel quite a bit different from the usual James Wan story.  It even reminds me of the early 2000s wave of Japan-style thrillers on occasion, and there's definitely worse charges that can be leveled.  Give it a shot.

Don't Breathe (2016)

2016
Directed by Fede Alvarez
Starring Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto and Stephen Lang

Let's run down the various "eras" of this great, grand horror genre in the 21st century.  And boy, have they been some prestigious ones.  We started off the '00s still in the post-ironic Scream-inspired teen flicks with lots of hot actors and witty dialogue.  Then we got a massive load of Japan-style ghost thrillers in the wake of The Ring.  From there came the double-dose of suck that was torture porn and every single slasher film from the '70s on getting the remake bastardization to the point where we haven't had any movies with Michael, Jason or Freddy in six years now, although (supposedly) there is a new F13 coming out in the not-too-distant future, but I digress.  And, finally, we had more ghost movies brought to us by James Wan and all of his Wan-ton (HA!) followers, a trend that I actually LIKED at first but grew tired of in due time.  It should also be noted that this can be said for ALL of the above listed trends!

Folks, Don't Breathe is just the movie that we've been waiting for to break us out of these doldrums.  Presented by Sam Raimi's Ghost House production company, this film was directed by Fede Alvarez, the guy responsible for the Ghost House Evil Dead remake.  This dude intentionally went out of his way to craft something that (a) wasn't a remake, and (b) did not contain a single supernatural aspect.  Couple that with some absolutely kickass execution of its amazingly simple premise and you've got a slam-bang thriller that, while it isn't QUITE up to the poster's bost that this is THE BEST AMERICAN HORROR MOVIE IN 20 YEARS, I would say that it's the best in, oh, maybe five.  If it sounds like I did not study or research that last statement in the least bit, you're a very astute reader.  I haven't seen his version of The Evil Dead, but if this flick is anything to go by, Alvarez is somebody to follow from this point forward.  Enough waxing.  Let's get to the flick.

What we have here is a study in simplicity.  The four actors listed above are pretty much all we get for the VAST majority of the running time, and the first ten pages of Alvarez' script introduces us to three of them.  Meet Rocky (Jane Levy), quick-witted female thief who is flanked by two dudes of varying morality.  There's her boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto), the kind of dude who has a punchable face and is given dialogue to match.  And then there's Alex (Dylan Minnette), the trio's requisite "nice guy" who is able to help out in all kinds of ways due to the fact that his dad is some kind of security chief with passkeys to every house in town.  I honestly can't remember what city this movie took place in, but it isn't a big one.  All three want to escape this deadend life and need a big score...and that's when the big tip comes in.

Said big tip is a doozy.  The kind of thing ripe for the picking for three young kids just trying to make it out of their humdrum lives in Jerkwater, USA (thank you to Colonel Sam Trautman for that one).  It seems like there's a single, solitary ex-soldier living all by himself with no neighbors.  Said soldier is in possession of $300,000 in cash after a wrongful death settlement involving his only daughter.  After some lovely bits of character building and making the characters of Rocky and Alex more likable, they head out to the house.  And then all bets are off.

See, the soldier - named Norman Nordstrom in the characters' dialogue but known only as "The Blind Man" in the script - is just that.  A soldier who is blind.  But this dude is superhuman in pretty much every other aspect, and it doesn't take long for the home invasion to go wrong and Money to wind up dead.  Oh yeah, spoiler alert.  The blindness angle works to this flick's advantage, as it's a little bit easier to buy the Blind Man's ability to track these people down with some Rusev-level savagery.  Stephen Lang, though, makes this character COMPLETELY believable.  This is one of the best horror movie performances I've seen in quite some time.  He doesn't have much dialogue, but when he does speak, it counts.  His ACTIONS, though, are something else, and this character is just a badass, along with being completely detestable. 

From here, the movie turns into a very cleverly-paced and plotted game of cat and mouse, with the Blind Man boarding up his house to prevent the two remaining thieves from escaping.  There are a few close calls with death, but for a few brief moments, it looks like Rocky and Alex have managed to find themselves in a secluded part of the house.  And, amazingly, this movie is about to throw us a major curveball as to who this guy really is and what motivates him that makes the final trimester of this movie some pretty sick/awesome stuff.

The three longtime readers of this here blog know that no movie is perfect, and there were a couple things here that prevent me from QUITE going the full Dave Meltzer New Japan match verbal orgasm on this one.  For starters - the character of Money.  Just, the whole character.  I don't fault Daniel Zovatto in the least bit, as I'm sure he performed the lines and actions he was written with plenty of chutzpah.  But he's just SUCH a prick, and not in the good way.  You know how I spoiled his death earlier?  Don't be mad - the second this guy is onscreen, he screams "KILL ME" from the word go.  In addition to this doofus, we also get the return of a current cool trend in many films that I hope dies a death sooner than later, with the director showing us a brief scene from the END of the film before launching us into the beginning.  Which wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't spell out some major plot spoilers for us, except it kinda does.  So word of warning there.

/ end brief bitching

I suppose I should also say a few words about Jane Levy, the lead actress in this film.  Believe it or not, the Pervy Paragraph is getting a one-week reprieve.  However, I can't say enough good about the job she did in this flick.  She's tough, resourceful, and likable as Rocky, and I really felt for her character as the movie built up to its ultimate climax.  She also starred in the Evil Dead remake, but again, I haven't seen it - having nothing but this to go on, she's really good at what she does.  So I'm quite certain that she's destined for non-stardom hell for the remainder of her career.

I also need to confess that I didn't really find this film scary in the traditional way, meaning that I was able to go to bed afterwards and sleep like a baby.  But I DID think about parts of it the next day.  It's not a movie that's going to make you piss yourself in terror, but it IS powerful and disturbing.  And there is one scene in particular that is GUARANTEED to make you gasp and recoil in what could potentially happen.  I'll leave that up for you to discover. 

*** 1/2 out of ****.  This flick was creative, original and boasted a pair of tour-de-force performances from Jane Levy and Stephen Lang.  And if this one launches a new era of "human monster" movies, I promise I won't be sick of it for at least two years.

Christmas Runs Red: Five Essential Yuletide Horror Flicks

Oh yeah - poster spoiler alert for one of the selections. ;)

Folks, the horror genre is all about holidays.  New Year's Evils, Valentine's Day Massacres, the whole Halloween...thing.  Even Thanksgiving has a gigantic killer turkey dude in a movie that, amazingly enough, has a huge anti-drug message.  And the name of that masterpiece is Blood Freak, which was reviewed in a little write-up called "Horror Movie Reviews: The Fun-Sized Edition" by this guy, and it's all right here on the Lick Ness Monster blog! [/shameless self promotion)  But of all the holidays out there, I dare say that none has MORE horror movies devoted to it than the one that we're just days away from kicking off. 

I don't know what it is about Christmas, but it just lends itself so well to scary stories.  And so many VARIED horror stories.  Christmas has slasher flicks, ghost movies, straight-up schlofkests and even a few anthology pieces to its name.  Couple these movies together with twinkling nights and the very natural horror that goes with family gatherings and it's easy to see why there are something like 17 new Christmas-themed horror flicks that pop up on store shelves and online lists every year.  I own something like 10 myself.  In my entire horror DVD collection, I think that total is surpassed only by the number of times that I have purchased the Friday the 13th series, which currently stands at three.  Kids, you don't want to turn out to be me.

But enough waxing.  This Christmas, if you get tired of watching that annoying brat wishing so desperately for his BB gun and all the superfluous crap that happens in between, track down these five flicks and pop 'em in the ol' DVD player because they're guaranteed to liven up any office party or family gathering.

(1) Gremlins (1984)
The first movie that I remember watching, this is one of those rare movies that manages to achieve near perfection with everything that it's trying to accomplish.  Big budget, big stars and the biggest producer who ever lived in Steven Spielberg are all on display here as Billy Peltzer is given a cute, furry and mysterious pet for Christmas and promptly breaks all the rules of handling it, leading to all kinds of chaos as a horde of gremlins invades this idyllic little town.  Stripe, the leader of the gremlins, is just pure badass personified and a creature that has TONS of personality for an inanimate puppet.  Really, though, everything about this flick works.  Absolutely chock full of classic characters and scenes (love that gremlin in the microwave!), and a genuinely HILARIOUS script make this one of the most entertaining movies of all time.  Plus, how can you not love any movie with Phoebe Cates AND Dick Miller?

(2) Black Christmas (1974)
Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for everyone's favorite segment: LICK NESS MONSTER OGLES THE WOMEN OF HORROR FILM HISTORY.  This week's subect: Olivia Hussey.  She's always been a great actress, but she is also insanely hot and this did not change in later years in things like the Mel Gibson Hamlet and as Norman Bates' mother in Psycho IV.  Here, she's the leader of a group of sorority sisters who find themselves trapped and terrorized by a killer with an insanely awesome telephone voice over the Christmas holiday break.  Olivia alone is reason enough to check this out, but it's also a lesson in horror film history.  There are a lot of people who actually consider this to be the FIRST slasher film in existence.  Having said all this, stay miles away from the godawful 2006 remake.  I don't know how you make a movie with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Katie Cassidy, Lacey Chabert and Harriet the Spy suck, but they did it.

(3) Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
I don't know if it's fair to call this flick a "dark horse" candidate for a list like this since so many horror fans are familiar with it.  But Silent Night, Deadly Night is a film that everyone should check out at least once in their life.  Gloriously low budget and delightfully sleazy, this is the tender, tragic saga of Billy Chapman, troubled orphan who once witnessed his parents being killed by a killer dressed up as Santa Claus.  He is then raised in a convent and grows up to have a seething hatred for all things Christmas.  The cherry on top?  His job as a toy-store Santa Claus.  Oh, the irony.  This movie definitely ain't high art, and it might not even be technically a "good" movie, but it's a must-see for just how earnest they were with this material and how INTO the role Robert Wilson was as Billy.  Also, check out the sequel.  Why? It has this.

(4) Tales From the Crypt (1972)
Everyone in my age bracket knows about the awesome TV series of the same name that dominated HBO airwaves in the '90s.  One of my favorite episodes of that series was "And All Through the House," the story of a housewife who murders her husband on Christmas Eve only to be stalked and terrorized by an escaped mental patient in a Santa costume.  Little did I realize at the time that this was actually the SECOND time this particular story had been filmed.  Amicus Productions' Tales From the Crypt anthology flick features "And All Through the House" as the second of its five segments, and I actually consider it BETTER than the TV episode.  Joan Collins is simply aces as the murderous wife and mother who desperately cordons herself off from the killer.  In addition, the segment boasts really effective use of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and a final twist that's simply horrifying.  Fun for the whole family!

(5) Santa's Slay (2005)
Every list of great Christmas horror movies needs to have one intentionally awful film on it, and I can think of no better example than this cinematic masterwork from 2005.  I remember seeing this beauty on video store shelves when I was in college, slightly stunned that EVERY SINGLE COPY was checked out and wondering what all the fuss was.  Then I rented it, and something like 150 minutes later myself and a small group of friends all had huge smiles on our faces.  The reason it took that long to watch?  We kept rewinding various bits to laugh.  The story here is simply legendary.  You know Santa, the big guy you all love?  Well, he's actually been forced to be good for all these years after losing a curling match bet to an angel.  Only now he's free to kill again.  And Evil Santa is played by WCW/WWE wrestler Bill Goldberg.  Sound like fun?  Believe me, they top everything you would expect.

Well, if you're a longtime reader of this here blog, you all know that I'm not one for poignant wrap-up paragraphs after lists like this one.  This one isn't going to be any different.  So Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Delightful Life Day...whatever, just have a happy horror season.  See you all in 2017!

Some Kind of Hate (2015)

2015
Directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer
Starring Ronen Rubinstein, Grace Phipps, Spencer Breslin, Lexi Atkins and Sierra McCormick

I may or may not have mentioned this before, but here goes again: I'm just really, really not enthused about the current generation of movie "stars."  And going by box office numbers, I'm far from the only one.  It's a big problem that the movie industry at large is facing these days, as they have found no new crop of actors to replace Brad and George and Julia and Will and the Toms.  Now, there are some that I do like.  A great deal, actually.  Bradley Cooper, for starters, who I think truly is someone that is worthy of paying money to watch because he projects himself like a superstar.  Chris Pratt is also all kinds of kickass, and Emily Blunt is probably my favorite of the new bunch of leading ladies, as she can be tough or a girl-next-door with equal ease.  Aside from them and a few others, though...yikes.  Overall, I just think this generation of thespians comes across as way too nonchalant/emo to be taken seriously as stars.  Even worse, I think there have been a lot of missed opportunities when it comes to some of the actors coming up.  Seriously - why isn't Miranda Cosgrove in multiplexes right now?  She's got it all - looks, acting ability, relatability, and comic timing.  But nope.  TV hell with you, young lady.

Which brings me to the movie in question today, Some Kind of Hate.  In a swerve that is probably a little unexpected, this horror flick has better acting than any scary movie I've seen in YEARS.  We've got a crop of good, motivated young actors giving this material their absolute best, including a couple Disney Channel starlets like you've never seen them before.  And it makes me sad that pretty much everybody in this movie is going to be banished right back to the nothingness where we'll pretty much never hear about them again.  Even better, this movie is legit thought-provoking and disturbing at points.  Not SCARY so much, but it does stick with you and powers you right over.  THIS is what horror should be all about these days; it hits home with a story that any teenager could find themselves in (although not QUITE in the setting that this movie chooses, but we'll get to that in a moment), and it's that kind of investment that's missing from this day and age of horror TV shows continually patting themselves on the back for how self-aware and nerdy they are.  American Horror Story and Stranger Things, I'm looking at you.  Anyway, let's get to the movie.

The flick starts off with cruelty and shame, as high school student Lincoln Taggert (Ronen Rubinstein, who I really hope to see more from - he's dynamite) faces the wrath of his alcoholic biker dad (played by Andrew "Lattimer" Bryniarski in a cool little cameo) before heading off to school and facing the wrath of his bullies.  These scenes always get me in movies, although they're almost always exaggerated and it's no exception here, but bear with me.  Long story short, Lincoln - a cool dude who listens to heavy metal practices the "less is more" approach when it comes to dialogue - lashes back at one of his attackers.  With a knife, no less, and it's a move that lands him in reform school as the opening credits roll. 

So, a few words about this school.  If such a place actually exists, I would genuinely be surprised, and it's probably the weakest part of the script (by the amazingly named Adam Egypt Mortimer, who also directed).  The school is located in what seems like the middle of the f**king desert, with not a soul around for miles.  It's run by a couple of guys who operate more like cult leaders than teachers, along with a scorching hot sidekick/aerobics instructor of sorts played by Lexi Atkins.  Without looking up any of the other reviews of this movie, I'm going to go out on a wild limb and say that a fair amount of reviewers have probably napalmed this aspect of the movie, as such a thing is pretty unbelievable.  If you can accept this setting, though, hang on, you're in for a treat. 

Shortly after arriving at the compound, Lincoln - who continues to maintain his stoic demeanor - meets a new friend in geeky tech prankster Isaac (Spencer Breslin) and runs afoul of a new local batch of bullies.  A good portion of the first trimester of the flick consists of Lincoln's periodic verbal and sometimes not-so-verbal sparring sessions with this new bunch of assholes.  The leader of them in particular is a thoroughly dislikable prick, and while these actors aren't quite worth mentioning by name or putting in my handy-dandy pre-review facts rundown, they all do a decent-enough job acting douchy that y the time the s**t goes down a couple of their deaths are stand-up-and-cheer moments.  Of course, there's also a hot student/love interest for Lincoln here in bad girl/ex-cheerleader Kaitlin.  And Kaitlin is played by Grace Phipps.

Time for everyone's favorite section of Lick Ness Monster Reviews: SKEEVY PARAGRAPH TIME.  People...I absolutely adore Grace Phipps.  I have ever since I found myself watching Teen Beach Movie one night out of sheer boredom (don't judge me!) and she was, by far, the most entertaining thing in that piece of drek.  She's hot as liquid magma, she can sing, she can perform, and she has charisma in spades.  Which means, of course, that Hollywood doesn't want to put this beauty in anything big, but that's just fine.  More fun for us horror fans.  From the few things I'd seen her in before, I didn't know if I would buy her in the "dark" role of Kaitlin, but nope, she vanishes into this character like a glove.  When combined with Lincoln, this movie has a one-two punch of characters that we legit pull for.

You might be wondering how this is a horror movie.  Well, I'm glad you were wondering.  After a particularly nasty fight with the bullies, Lincoln runs off to a deserted part of the school and awakens a kindred spirit.  Folks, Some Kind of Hate is a movie about a ghost.  A real nasty ghost named Moira, with the power to kill people.  Moira is played by Sierra McCormick, and she's AWESOME in this role.  The bullies start to die, but Moira doesn't stop there.  She wants acceptance, and she isn't leaving. 

I've seen something like 50,000 horror movies in my life.  As such, I occasionally feel all hoity-toity like I've seen it all and know what's going to happen before it does.  I'll admit that this flick threw me for a loop on multiple occasions.  Since I compare almost every evil ghost movie to Ju-On and the similarities were there, I thought it was going to play out like that with everybody dead.  Nope.  Then, I thought it was going to be like Let the Right One In, with a slow burn leading up to an emotional climax.  Nope.  From the time Moira shows up, this movie is just balls-out ballistic, and everyone must pay.  There's a couple of not-so-surprising surprises in relation to HOW she died here that I won't spell out, but it's addressed.  Even better?  This movie is GORY.  Yeah, baby. 

If there's another complaint I can level at the movie, it's that Lincoln kind of fades into the background a bit once Moira shows up.  The story becomes more about the ghost and his tortured, tragic girlfriend Kaitlin.  It's a shame, because Rubinstein really is something else.  I could see this guy playing great everyman heroes, and unlike Shia LaBeouf, watching him onscreen actually makes me want to do something other than stab out my own ears with scissors.  Really, though, this entire cast was hitting on all cylinders, and you can tell that everyone involved - from Rubinstein to McCormick to Breslin to the red-hot Phipps - truly believed in this material and it shows.  It's kind of an EASY subject to tackle as bullying is such a hot-button topic these days, but it's never presented in a way that takes you out of the action.  And the action in the final trimester here is bats**t insane.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  Check this one out, especially if you're a teenager.

Windows (1980)

1980
Directed by Gordon Willis
Starring Talia Shire, Joseph Cortese and Elizabeth Ashley

Alright, kids, time for a quick detour.  Unlike a lot of my boring reviews, I'll try to make it short.  There are a lot of directors and screenwriters that I admire a great deal, but over the past few years I've become a HUGE fan of Joe Eszterhas. Well, everything pre-Showgirls, anyway.  That flick is unsalvageable.  The "erotic thriller" genre owes a huge debt to this guy, and I genuinely can't believe that there aren't more of these that pop up these days.  There was that one with Will Smith and Margot Robbie that billed itself as such, but it also looked terminally boring.  Why this is, nobody knows.  Well, maybe a quick Google search does.  But sex sells, and nobody did it better than Joe E.  So three cheers to this guy.  Obsessed fan confirmed.

With that verbal orgasm out of the way, allow me to introduce you to the amazing film that is Windows.  Released in 1980, this was a piece of Joe E Murderotica that had everything but the world's coolest Hawaiian shirt-wearing bearded guy penning the screenplay.  It might be more of a thriller than an out-and-out horror film, but the flick was designed to scare audiences.  And it's my blog, so it's going in here, dammit.  The film was directed by Gordon Willis, the guy behind the camerawork of some of the greatest films of all time (anyone with the Godfather films on their resume can safely lay claim to this).  It had Talia Shire, fresh off the mammoth success of the first two Rocky flicks and pretty much at the peak of her popularity and hotness.  So where did it go wrong?  Well...it's cheesy.  Like, really, really cheesy, with writing choices that would make M. Night Shyamalan blush.  Sound enticing?  Read up.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Lick Ness Monster ogles the women of cinema history time.  This movie stars Talia Shire...and oh man.  She's such an amazing actress, and in 1980, I dare say that few women on the planet were more attractive.  Not so much from a physical standpoint, but she had this amazing girl-next-door vibe.  And I'll cut myself off there.  In this movie, she has a role that's tailor-made for her talents.  Emily Hollander is recently divorced, all-kinds-of-vulnerable, and living alone in the big frightening city of New York.  She also has a stuttering problem to make her relatability quotient radiate all that much more.  As such, I was almost immediately in love with her and instantly drawn in when the movie wastes no time hitting us with a right-handed wallop in the form of the creep who breaks into her apartment.  Folks, you've never seen an assault movie like the one this one has, as this big dude holds a knife to her throat.  But he doesn't want rape - he just wants her to moan.  I swear on the church, this actually happens.  There's Adrian Balboa, making orgasm noises onscreen for all to enjoy.

If you want to know what the hell the plot of this movie is, we're getting there, believe me.  Of course, this incident devastates Emily.  And then comes the arrival of Andrea Glassen, her helpful new neighbor who provides her with a shoulder to cry on.

I think any casual observer who has never heard of this movie knows where this is going.  But the EXECUTION of this material is...well, it's something else.  Andrea, played by Elizabeth Ashley like a cross between a 7-years-too-early "Fatal Attraction" villain and the stereotypical romantic comedy BFF character, is utterly obsessed with Emily.  Who wouldn't be?  This is Talia Shire we're talking about.  It turns out that she was the one who paid the burly cab driver to break into her apartment and force her to make throes-of-passion noises, attaining a tape recorder of the incident that she repeatedly plays back for her personal enjoyment.  I'll give Ashley credit for diving into this role wholeheartedly.  The scenes where she listens to the tapes are comedic gold, mostly due to her insane level of overacting.  When held up next to the scenes involving her character and Shire getting to know each other and becoming friends, it results in this flick being a pretty jarring experience.

It's also where things start circling the drains.

See, this is about where the police detective in charge of the case enters the fray.  He's played by Joseph Cortese, he's very early '80s Italian dude, and he's the new love interest for Emily.  As you can imagine, certified wackjob Andrea isn't too happy about this.  Time for the script to start amping up the eyeroll-worthy stuff, including this one scene where Emily finds herself getting a cab ride from the same dude who broke into her apartment from before.  This scene is followed by the cops giving her what has to be the worst advice I've ever seen law enforcement give in any movie...ever.  And THIS is followed by an ending sequence that must be seen to be believed, and not in the good way.

Windows is a flick that almost nobody has seen, let alone heard of.  It was a flop then, and unless you were able to buy a copy from a video store's going-out-of-business sale like I was 10 years ago, it's pretty hard to find these days in places other than YouTube.  A huge money loser, this was the first and only movie that Gordon Willis ever directed, and (I believe) the last time that Shire ever got top billing for something other than the Rocky series.  And the PC police circa 1980 didn't like it, but you don't come to the Lick Ness Monster blog for information about stuff like that.

It really is a shame, because unlike the vast majority of critics, I think this story actually had some promise.  The two female leads are great, with Shire in particular able to get the audience on her side better than 99% of the lifeless pieces of cardboard you see in multiplexes these days.  And Ashley is just an insane cartoon character as Andrea, for better or worse, but I always dig it when somebody just dives right in to a crazy villain role and just goes totally over-the-top.  The bit with the staged rape and the audiotape is a creative setup.  As such, it really sucks that Act II veered so completely into the laughable.  So with all of that said - how about a remake, Hollywood?  Give a movie that WASN'T amazing to begin with another shot!  Sooner or later, this WILL happen, and it's going to be glorious.

** out of ****.  The first act hooks you right in and then we get a hard right turn into hilariously bad territory.  There's definitely worse ways to spend a night.  Check it out if you can find it online or for cheap somewhere.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)

2016
Directed by Osgood Perkins
Starring Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss, Bob Balaban and Lucy Boynton

Kids, this is one of those films that is very difficult to review.  Why?  Because...there's nothing.  And I actually mean that as a compliment.

Seriously, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (and I'm going to try to keep mentioning that title to a minimum, because typing it is a pain in the ass) is one of the most low-key and downright MINIMAL films I've ever seen.  I've seen Roger Corman flicks that contain something like seven spears and five loincloths and manage to recreate the Roman empire, and this one has it beat.  See those four actors listed above?  They're pretty much the only people in this movie, but it's not just volume that we're talking about here.  It's everything.  Thus, if you want to see Lick Ness Monster play mental gymnastics, this is the review for you.

Just released on Netflix, this film (1-for-1 on not typing that title again!) is the brainchild of Osgood Perkins, son of legendary actor and Norman Bates himself Anthony Perkins.  He's directed a couple other movies, but I haven't seen nor even heard of them, so I'm not going to italicize them.  You know...Osgood.  Now that's a name that seriously needs to make a comeback.  If we had more Osgoods running around, I dare say that the world might just be a much more happy place.  And now I'm just talking out of my ass to prolong this paragraph.  So Osgood wrote this movie as well, and I've got to commend the guy, because this script couldn't have been any more than like 40 pages and he managed to get 90 full minutes out of it.  A classic example of the "less is more" concept that gives me a half chub if there ever was one...so, let's delve into the dark, slow, and slightly impenetrable world of I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (that's two).

Stripped down to its barest essentials, the film is essentially a haunted house story.  A live-in nurse named Lily (Ruth Wilson) has just arrived at a rather sprawling residence to serve as the hospice care for aging horror novelist Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss, a former friend of Osgood's late father who came out of semi-retirement to do this mostly silent role).  See that last sentence?  That's almost all of the plot we get for the vast majority of the running time.  In this case, it's all in the spice and the presentation.  Fortunately, I can report that these are areas where Osgood really excels, along with the talent of his actors.

It's a good thing.  Keeping with the minimalism theme, the movie is also VERY sparse on both dialogue and background music.  If memory serves correctly, I can actually NAME the scenes that contain dialogue.  There's a bit early on where Lily calls one of her friends after arriving at the house while the camera conveys to the audience that something horrible is just out of frame.  There's the scene where Mr. Dalrymple from Seinfeld shows up as Lily's boss to give us all the exposition we need involving Iris Blum's most famous novel that may or may not be about the house's original residents.  And there's Lily's narration as she goes about reading the novel...or trying to.

See, Lily is kind of a wuss.  Her defining character trait is that she's skittish and afraid of everything.  The book in question is her Pandora's box, because she believes it to be connected to the strange noises that she hears at night in the house.  Why?  The earlier exposition involving Mr. Dalrymple, that' why, who explained that Iris explained that she wrote the novel not as fiction, but as it was dictated to her by a ghost that lived in the house.  And I think you know where it's going from here, especially since we'd seen some creepy flashback scenes earlier involving the original owners of the house.  What this film lacks in originality, though, it more than makes up for in execution and the tour-de-force performance from Wilson.

Quick side story: when I was a little bastard (like, 10 years old), I wrote a horror story for one of those "short story" assignments in school called "Fear of Blood" about a kid who finds himself facing off with a psycho killer.  The TWIST PART (proving that I, Jon Lickness, gave M. Night Shyamalan everything he knows) was that said kid had a crippling fear of cuts and blood.  Amazing writing, I know.  I even drew a title page for the story with big block letters dripping blood that probably got me more than one mention to the school doctor.  I mention this story because I wish this was a plot device used more in horror films - either a specific fear or a non-specific one that a character has to deal with in addition to the external threats, because it does WONDERS in getting us into a character.  Wilson does a fantastic job playing a scaredy cat, and because of this, we're fully in her corner.  +2 cool points.

So it goes with this movie.  Lily is able to read the book in roughly one-page increments, and, bit-by-bit, the haunting becomes more bold and pronounced.  It avoids the cliches of every other haunted house movie where the ghost starts to specifically target our heroine - it really does seem like we're dealing with your garden variety residual haunting (google that term if you're not a paranormal aficionado like me) in this movie instead of a malevolent one.  A lot of it is really clever, well-shot, and achingly tense.  And then the ending hits, one that is horrifying but left a sour taste in my mouth. 
As usual, it's probably just a case of me being a moron.  I'm sure that a film critic who knows their movies will tell you that the ending of this flick is all kinds of poetic, unexpected and awesome, and they're probably right.  And...I really don't know what I expected or how I would do things differently.  But I just wanted something different from what we got.  No spoilers here, and your mileage might vary.  The flick is easily viewed on Netflix for anyone interested, and it's something that I would actually heartily recommend despite how much I disliked the ending, because there's plenty to admire about this film.  There's atmosphere, there's creepiness in spades, and there's Ruth Wilson, who I really hope to see more from in the immediate future, because she's dynamite.

*** out of ****.  Check this one out, because it's creative, original and actually genuinely SCARY.  But...that ending.  Man.

The Legend of Hell House (1973)

1973
Directed by John Hough
Starring Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill and Gayle Hunnicutt

The horror genre has many different flavors.  There are movies that actively try to creep you out.  There are movies that are all about throwing the most out there gore and syrupy makeup at the camera as possible.  There are movies that are almost bad on purpose.  And then...there is 1970s horror, something that deserves an entire row in the great Neapolitan taste profile of cinema.  Simply put, '70s horror is DARK, man.  A lot of them were about demons and devils, still more of them were mystery-killer flicks with out-there endings a la Dario Argento and Mario Bava, and quite a bit of them ended with some hint of the idea that evil had, in fact, won.  This was still a relatively fresh concept in horror at this time, and the shock of seeing a lot of this stuff as it unfolded must have been as startling as anything Platinum Dunes can throw at the screen with loud noise stingers.  '70s BRITISH horror amps up that darkness even more, and The Legend of Hell House fits this motif like a glove.

This flick really is a prime slice of what British horror is all about.  It's one of the rare ones that I've seen that isn't produced by either Hammer or Amicus; instead, it was distributed here in the States by 20th Century Fox and boasted what had to be an impressive budget for 1973 horror standards.  More than anything, though, it's got that unmistakable British horror glow (if it's accurate to use that word about this sort of thing).  There's lots of creepy atmosphere, lots of fog, soul-destroying synthy music, and plenty of sexy chicks parading around on the screen.  This film has one of Lick Ness Monster's personal favorites in Pamela Franklin, the sex kitten who first wowed audiences in 1969's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and later went on to appear in a small host of horror films.  Nonetheless, seeing her name in the credits gave this movie a +1 from the jump, and then the movie hits you with its story.

Hey, kids, you want to know why horror is the best genre?  Because, most of the time, there is absolutely no time for bullshit, unlike my reviews.  LIKE a lot of the movies I review, this one follows the "keep it simple, stupid" edict with getting a story together.  There's a rich guy who wants to learn about life after death.  There's a creepy old castle that is reputed to be the most haunted house in the world (actually said in the film).  And rich guy wants to hire a group of paranormal researchers to venture to the house and see if they can attain proof of the ghost world.  With that, it's off to the film's omnipresent Belasco House, named after family patriarch and supposed head-ghost-in-charge Emeric Belasco, where all of the movie's seances, happenings, and other assorted chicanery unfolds.

First things first - the atmosphere in this movie is fantastic.  The Belasco House is made up to the hilt, with director John Hough and his production team decorating the place with enough menacing colors and shadows that this set could have easily been used in a Gothic period piece film.  +52 additional Fonzie cool points to the movie in this regard.  But where the movie starts to fall short in a few areas is its surrounding characters. 

Make no mistake, The Legend of Hell House has a fantastic group of ACTORS at its disposal.  In addition to Franklin, you've got Roddy McDowall up on the screen doing his thing.  Weirdly enough, I'd never seen this guy in anything until the last couple of years, but now he seems to be popping up in everything that I'm watching.  A first-season Columbo episode, the pilot movie of Night Gallery...yeah, while the rest of the world cares about zombies and Game of Thrones, I'm all about '70s horror TV, baby.  Clive Revill and Gayle Hunnicutt are also good actors all things considered.  But with the exception of Franklin, it's the characters that they play that let the material down. 

So...Revill plays the leader of the group, a scientist named Lionel Barrett who quickly establishes himself as the unabashed and slightly annoying skeptic in this story.  He's accompanied by his lovely wife Ann (Hunnicutt), a character who is essentially just along for the ride and to provide some sexual tension later.  Oh yeah, spoiler alert.  But Barrett's aces are the other two - the pair of mediums, one a spiritualist (Franlin) and the other a physical manifester (McDowall, and yes, I know that "manifester" isn't even a word - deal with it).  The early goings of the film have Barrett and his mediums attempting to contact the spirits of the house and get their holy proof, an early sequence granting the audience an earth-shattering long glimpse of Pamela Franklin in her medium...um..."costume."  And it's glorious.

This movie is all about the slow build.  Fortunately, the middle portions pick up after introducing us to this group of mostly milquetoast characters as the movie becomes all about Florence Tanner, the younger medium played by Franklin.  See, Tanner is convinced that the house is haunted by many ghosts, including family members and victims of the notoriously cruel Emeric Belasco.  There's a fascinating little saga involving Tanner attempting to release an entity that she believes to be Belasco's son from his prison in the house.  The relationship takes on the air of a tragic romance at points, at one point even evolving to the point of Tanner stripping down to nothing and inviting the ghost into her bed to share some ghostly action with.  Much like the medium costume scene, it's a cinematic masterpiece.  While all of this is going on, McDowall is in the background, simply watching the proceedings.  His character was involved in a similar operation years ago that ended with everyone besides himself dead, so surely you can understand his apprehension.

If I haven't spelled it out enough already, there's a heavy undercurrent of sex to this film.  There's a curious subplot involving Revill's wife Ann consisting of scenes where the prim and proper scientist's wife, who may or may not be acting under the influence of the ghosts in the house, throws herself at McDowall and feverishly describes what she wants to do to him.  For his part, McDowall always throws her away, although this does cause tension with Revill.  Since I'm a moron, I'm unable to gleam any of the metaphor that the film-makers were going for here, so suffice to say, we've got lots more near nudity to play around with.  Trumpets from the heavens.  Supposedly, the sex was actually toned down quite a bit from the book that this movie was based on.  Said novel was also written by Richard Matheson, a guy who created, among other things, the awesome TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which everyone should add to their Netflix list RIGHT NOW.

I realize that I haven't reviewed much of the plot of this movie, but really, it's not at all about plot.  It's all about the build, and that's a good thing, because the final trimester kind of flies off the rails.  We get a couple of quick character deaths followed by a wholly unsatisfying climax that involves lots of one particular actor doing a lot of shouting.  I won't reveal which actor this is...but really, it's a lot of shouting.  Figure it out. 

For all the things that this movie DOESN'T do well, it succeeds marvelously in crafting that sense of dread, something sorely lacking in most modern horror films.  That atmosphere is Richard Matheson's calling card; he wrote the script for this movie, adapting his own novel, and everything that I've seen with his name attached to it has that signature dark, foggy quality that looks like it could be appearing in the days of Jack the Ripper.  That dread makes up for the faults in The Legend of Hell House, along with the sheer conviction of its great cast.  British horror films from this time period are always a pretty safe bet to have great acting, because when you have David Warner, Peter Cushing, Pamela Franklin and Roddy McDowall at your disposal, you've got no excuse.  Yeah, it falls a little flat emotionally due to its weaksauce characters.  But I can guarantee that you'll remember this movie when it's over.  That's enough to get an endorsement from me.

*** out of ****.  Not an all-time classic or anything, but definitely worth a watch.  And hey...it's on Netflix instant as we speak.  Check it out.