6 Weeks of Halloween

Another entry from the Obscure Horror Auteurs file, this time catching up with a couple of Stuart Gordon films I had not seen before. Gordon is clearly a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft and is best known for making movies (loosely) based on his work, most notably Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Castle Freak (his episode of Masters of Horror is also a Lovecraft adaptation, and it’s one of the better episodes of that series). He’s become a fan favorite of the horror dork crowd, but hasn’t really broken out into true mainstream success. He has an interesting ability to balance horror, humor, and just plain weirdness in a sly way that often gets overlooked in favor of bigger names in the genre. So let’s dive into a couple of Stuart Gordon flicks:

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 6.5 – Stuart Gordon

• Halloween Hugs (short)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror III: Clown Without Pity (Disney+)
• Puppet Master (trailer)

Dolls – A motley crew of wayward travelers become the guests of a pair of doll-collecting senior citizens in their old, dark mansion. At night, the dolls come out to play. Hijinks ensue.

This is Stuart Gordon’s take on the Old Dark House trope combined with producer Charles Band’s obsession with killer dolls/toys/puppets (he’s perhaps most famous for producing the long running Puppet Master series). A VHS staple with memorable artwork that grabbed your attention in the video store horror aisle, it plays out almost like the horror version of Toy Story (before that movie even existed).

Tonally, it reminds me a little of Gremlins. There’s a clear vein of good natured humor throughout, but it also has a nasty streak and Gordon doesn’t skimp on the unsettling visuals and even some gore (even if it doesn’t quite ramp it up to absurd levels, it’s well established and effective). Part of this may just be the throughline involving a little girl and her unlikely friendship with a stranger who believes in the murderous dolls (most adults don’t, you see). That man is played by veteran character actor Stephen Lee (you may not recognize the name, but you will probably recognize him), and he puts on a lovable turn as a bumbling buffoon along for the ride. I don’t know that the themes of the story about keeping in touch with your inner child are entirely consistent or anything, but the two elderly doll-collectors are delightfully creepy and it all works out in the end.

Look, fine cinema… this is not. But it’s a whole boatload of fun, with surprisingly effective practical effects for the dolls (and there are a lot of dolls, dolls galore), and a svelt 77 minute runtime. What more do you want? ***

• Fishmen (short)
• Hot For Creature (Robot Chicken)
• The Shape of Water (trailer)

Dagon – A storm off the coast of Spain causes a boat accident. Paul and his girlfriend Barbara head ashore to the local fishing village to find help, but all is not what it seems, and they’re soon chased by a mysterious cult of fish-people.

This is a (loose, updated) mashup of two H.P. Lovecraft stories, Dagon and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. It’s all a bit silly, but played entirely straight. Once again, we’re treated to some surprisingly effective practical makeup for the fish-people, though there are a few far less effective CGI shots (made in 2001 on an obvious shoe-string budget and used sparingly, I think we can forgive that.) While the story starts and ends well enough, there’s a long interior portion of the film that consists of our hero being chased around town in circles. Some of this is fine, but it’s quite repetitive and wears out its welcome quickly, and by the time things pick up towards the end of the film, I wasn’t quite able to recover.

The acting and performances are clearly subpar as well. For example, the lead is played by Ezra Godden, who looks an awful lot like Jeffrey Combs (a longtime Gordon collaborator – I guess he has a type), but can’t quite sell the story (the way I presume Combs could). Much of the townfolk are simply assembled as a shambling mob, which is fine, but those who do have lines all feel a little… off. And I guess, as fish-people, they should feel a little otherworldly, but it doesn’t quite work as well as it should.

There’s lots of great atmosphere, some gnarly gore, and lots of icky aquatic imagery on display here, but I can’t help but feel that this should work better than it does. It’s not a blight on Gordon’s filmography or anything, but it’s clearly not his best work. **1/2

We’re in the homestretch of the Six Weeks of Halloween. Only the traditional Speed Round remains, though a small programming note: due to Halloween falling on a Tuesday, I may save the Speed Round for the big day itself (rather than the traditional Sunday publication).

One of the hallmarks of the Giallo film is the ornate, baroque titles. The best of these is quite obviously Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, but there’s plenty of other contenders out there. Many of these titles involve some sort of animal, though I suppose I should note that I’m not covering Dario Argento’s entire Animal Trilogy, the first of which, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, really kicked the Giallo genre into high gear in 1970 (though we will take a gander at the last entry in the Animal Trilogy). Giallo flicks have become a staple of my Six Weeks of Halloween celebration, and these three flicks are quite solid (this was probably the most successful weekly theme of the year). As it turns out, all three films were made in 1971 and they all have Ennio Morricone scores, which is an added bonus.

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 6 – Giallo Animals

• Thursday the 12th (Robot Chicken)
• Thanksgiving (Fake Trailer)
• Deep Red (trailer)

Four Flies on Grey Velvet – A musician gets pulled into a blackmailing scheme which quickly escalates into murder and mayhem. Hijinks ensue.

The aforementioned third of Dario Argento’s Animal Trilogy, everything is amped up a bit here. There’s your typical Argento protagonist, unobservant and gullible, who falls into a blackmail trap by inadvertently murdering a stalker. A goofy looking masked killer is toying with him. Police forensics that veer more towards the science fiction fringe than CSI. A never ending cast of colorful supporting characters: A flamboyantly gay private detective. A pair of hobo beatniks nicknamed “The Professor” and “God”. Slapstick coffin salesmen (a customer who worries that his prospective coffin/sarcophagus is “too tight” gets the response that no customers have ever come back with complaints).

Through it all, Argento pushes the stylistic boundaries of genre conventions he established only a year earlier. The visual compositions and camera movements become more complex and ambitious. Canted angles, several different types of POV shots, slow motion, elaborate set pieces, and numerous short tracking shots that all prefigure what would become Argento’s calling cards in later films. Plus, all of this is anchored by a fizzy, percussion-heavy Ennio Morricone rock score. Almost all of these stylistic conventions would be later taken to an extreme in Argento’s Deep Red (still my favorite Argento), but they’re fully formed here and the visual flare can add something interesting to even the most simplistic sequence (take, for instance, a scene where a rock band is rehearsing – pretty straightforward, but then Argento places the camera inside a guitar’s sound hole.)

The plot is probably the weakest point of the film, but the final reveal is effective enough and the stylistic excess that’s on display keeps the pace in check, even when the story starts to meander through the requisite red herrings (which aren’t numerous or particularly convincing – the killer is actually somewhat obvious). The way our musician protagonist escapes the killer at the end is a bit perfunctory, but without giving too much away, the film ends on a bravura note. So the overall story may have some plot holes and loose threads, but let there be no mistake: this is how you end a movie.

The Severin 4K looks fantastic, though it appears to be unavailable at the moment (unless you want to pay through the nose on the secondary market). It should come back in stock at some point, though you might not get the full 4 disc/slipcover experience. These niche physical media companies are great, but some of them, especially the smaller ones like Severin and Vinegar Syndrome, tend to have small production runs, so if you’re ever interested in something you see, you should probably buy it right away. Anywho, I’m already planning to include an Argento weekly theme in next year’s 6 Weeks of Halloween to catch up with the last few films of his that I haven’t seen (er, at least, the good ones). ***

• Driving Lessons – Halloween Deleted Scene (short)
• Hardly Working: Slasher (Short)
• Horror Friends Forever (Robot Chicken)

Black Belly of the Tarantula – A police inspector investigates a series of sadistic murders where the victim is paralyzed while they’re stabbed in the bellies, a method similar to how the black wasp kills tarantulas.

From the director of Mondo Cane comes this more conventional take on the genre, albeit one filled with red herrings, another elaborate blackmailing scheme, and a drug smuggling ring. Plus, we’ve got a few impressively conceived (if a bit repetitive) murders, and another lush soundtrack from Ennio Morricone. While not as stylish as Argento, director Paolo Cavara does manage to craft a few suspenseful set pieces, and of course there’s still plenty of nice compositions on display.

The story’s various red herrings feel a bit disjointed and the ultimate solution to the mystery is underwhelming, even if the sequence does carry a sense of suspense with it. For a movie with so many tangents and false starts, it winds up feeling very straightforward. It’s a solid example of the genre, but middle tier at best. **

• It’s the Gifts That I Hate (Robot Chicken)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VI: Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace (Disney+)
• Wet Nightmares (short)

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin – A sexually repressed housewife is having bizarre, erotic dreams about her uninhibited neighbor, who presides over literal orgies on a regular basis. When the neighbor shows up dead, the housewife becomes a prime suspect. Did she do it, or is she being framed?

Director Lucio Fulci is known more for his zombie gorefest jams than his Giallos, but this certainly exemplifies his more lurid approach to the already pretty horny genre. Depending on your preferences, this movie has two things going for it. First, a series of colorful, surrealistic dream sequences that emphasize our heroine’s psychosexual hangups and also kinda, sorta bleed into reality. There is, for example, one sequence in which she is being chased by a drug-fueled hippie and takes a wrong turn in a hospital, only to be confronted by a series of vivisected dogs with their insides exposed. It’s a memorable and quite disturbing sight, and I have no idea why it’s in the film at all, other than to shock viewers and potentially underline our protagonist’s mania.

The other thing this movie has going for it is the convoluted plot. Look, Giallo’s aren’t really known for their plots and this isn’t a great one or anything, but once the film establishes its surreal nature early on, there’s a surprising shift in the plot as some characters start to puzzle out what could be driving all the madness… and it actually sorta makes sense? I was surprised by how much I enjoyed that turn in the film, as that sort of thing actually appeals to me more than the shapeless dreamlike flow the film starts with. Your mileage may vary, but the juxtaposition of these two elements, the surreal dreams and more grounded mystery plot, are what make this film work as well as it does.

Certainly not my favorite Giallo and I don’t love Fulci’s more sleazy takes on the genre in general, but there’s lots to chew on here, and I found myself surprisingly engaged in the end. **1/2

It’s hard to believe we’re already in the final week (and a half, I guess) of the Six Weeks of Halloween… Stay tuned, we might get one more mid-week update in addition to the traditional Speed Round of stuff I watched, but didn’t cover yet…

Nunsploitation is a sub-genre that thrived in the 1970s, drawing on cultural shifts in religion and sexuality for its dramatic conflict. The archetypal examples are often set in the middle-ages, sometimes incorporating the Inquisition for added exploitation flare. I must admit only a passing familiarity with Nunsploitation, though I have seen The Devils, an infamous, x-rated, early art-house take on the genre with an impressive pedigree (i.e. directed by Ken Russel based on an Aldous Huxley book and starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed). It’s hard to find, even these days, but worth seeking out.

To be honest, the three movies I watched recently are only loosely affiliated with Nunspoitation, if at all. Two are actually listed on the Wikipedia page, but they both feature modern-day settings and have some cross-genre elements. None are as successful as The Devils, but there are some interesting things going on in a couple of these. Let’s get to it!

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 5 – Nunsploitation

• Sister Act 2: Back in the Valak (Robot Chicken))
• The Nun II (trailer)
• Nun Farts (Robot Chicken)

The Nun – A priest and novitiate are sent to investigate a suicide committed at a cloistered abbey in Romania. Naturally, they discover spooky secrets and eventually confront the demonic nun from The Conjuring 2.

I feel like a lot of critics value a film’s ambition more than they should. I tend to respect and find value in such films, but unless they can actually fulfill that ambition, I generally come away disappointed. On the other hand, there are some films that don’t have a lot of ambition, but execute perfectly on their premise, and I tend to prefer that approach to an interesting failure. My typical example of this phenomenon is pitting The Last Broadcast against The Blair Witch Project. Both feature found-footage of kids getting lost in the woods, but the former is a hugely ambitious critique of the media landscape that doesn’t quite stick the landing while the latter is a more straightforward genre tale. I like Last Broadcast and find the ideas it presents fascinating, but I love Blair Witch, even if it’s not as ambitous.

All of which is to say that The Nun aspires to mediocrity, and somehow can’t even really clear that bar. What’s more frustrating is that it actually comes close before falling apart. It’s got a great cast, with Taissa Farmiga providing an interesting spark of life to an otherwise dull mess. Demián Bichir is solid and of course, the demonic nun has become marginally iconic due to Bonnie Aarons’s performance. The set design is fantastic. Alas, the writing is abysmal, relying almost exclusively on thinly veiled excuses to separate characters and expose them to poorly executed jump scares. The backstory is barebones and uninteresting, the powers of the demonic nun are vague and ever-changing, the plan to defeat her is even more opaque than that, while the cinematography veers towards that overly dark trend that has become a common flaw in recent horror (which, I will admit, has gotten worse over the past few years since this movie came out, but it’s still not great here).

It’s a shame that the Conjuring Cinematic Universe has experienced such a severe dropoff in filmmaking quality after James Wan left the franchise. The curve of diminishing returns is really quite steep. Funnily enough, this particular movie frequently reminded me of The Pope’s Exorcist, which isn’t exactly a great movie, but has a lot of similar elements that are just executed better. Honestly, I would much rather see Taissa Farmiga’s nun teamed up with Russell Crowe’s exorcist in a crossover event (which honestly feels like it could work, given the incredibly loose “based on a true story” premises of both franchises) than whatever The Nun 2 holds in store (though I do see that it’s marginally better rated than the first Nun, so I guess there is that). I don’t think anyone truly considers this to be a Nunsploitation flick, but I think there are maybe some elements here that fit. *1/2

• The Devils (trailer)
• Halloween Socks (short)
• The Bloodstained Shadow (trailer)

Killer Nun – Sister Gertrude is the head nurse at a general hospital who has become addicted to morphine and slid into sex crazed madness. Her doctor and a fellow nun try to help her, but her increasingly psychotic behavior becomes harder and harder to control.

Too sleazy to be a respectable drama, but nowhere near lurid enough to be a shining example of the genre (though apparently it had enough racy content to become a Video Nasty). Indeed, it almost feels a little like a Giallo crossover in the end, but the pacing never really picks up even when twists start flying towards the conclusion of the film. As usual with this sort of Italian exploitation production, you get some stylish flourishes anchored by an excellent Alessandro Alessandroni musical score that is atypical but quite effective.

There are a couple of effective set-pieces, notably a morphine induced freakout about halfway through the film, filled with hallucinatory imagery and punctuated by that great Alessandroni score. Alas, that sort of psychedelic experience isn’t quite enough to make up for the wonky pacing, which never really finds a groove or builds properly. The conclusion has a nice twist, but I’m not sure it entirely fits.

Of the films covered in this post, this is perhaps the most fitting of the Nunsploitation label, though its “present day” setting is unusual for the sub-genre. It’s a fascinating little film, but not entirely successful. **

• Benedetta (trailer)
• The Nun Pitch Meeting (short)
• Lucy, Daughter of the Devil (short)

Agnes – Rumors of demonic possession at a religious convent prompts a church investigation by a priest and his student. Things do not go as planned, even when they call on a former priest who has become a famous TV exorcist.

Writer/Director Mickey Reece currently has 39 directorial credits on his IMDB page (it also claims 25 are feature films produced within about 10 years), which is impressive… but I’m guessing you haven’t heard of any of them because they’re mostly DIY micro-budget affairs (that are mostly unavailable on streaming). Agnes got some buzz when it premiered at Fantastic Fest a couple years ago, and it supposedly represented an increase in ambition for the indie director.

I’ve seen some folks refer to it as a horror comedy, but that doesn’t feel like the best way to capture it. It’s not so much funny as it is eccentric. For the first half of the film or so, there’s all the standard hallmarks of a possession/exorcism film, but everything is just slightly… off. This leads to some darkly comic moments (priests laughing about a student’s concerns for safety, the nuns commenting on how attractive the priests are, etc…), but I don’t think you could call it a comedy.

Furthermore, without giving anything away, there’s an abrupt shift in the narrative about halfway through the film. We move from the cliched but engaging exorcism narrative in the first half of the film to a more grounded drama in the second half. Whether or not you like this movie will greatly depend on how this shift hits you. I was, more or less, willing to go with it, but it’s certainly not a perfectly executed switcharoo, and it could leave a lot of viewers with some severe disappointment. I could kinda see what they were going for by the end, and there’s a thread involving a crisis of faith that wends its way through both segments reasonably well, but it almost seems designed to annoy people.

Hayley McFarland plays the titular Sister Agnes, and her ability to smoothly transition from innocent nun to demon-possessed monster and back again works quite well. Molly Quinn (probably most famous as Castle‘s daughter in the long running CBS procedural) plays Agnes’ best friend, and the star of the back half of the movie. Ben Hall and Jake Horowitz do fine work as the priests assigned to investigate, and Chris Browning is great as the sleazy former priest turned TV exorcist. For his part, Mickey Reece shows some stylistic flourishes and manages to give the film a 70s vibe, with effective use of camera movements and zooms, as well as the general tonal oddness and even the performances he evokes out of the aforementioned cast (particularly in the more sedate second half).

So I’ll chalk this one up as one of those interesting failures that has lots on its mind and plenty of ambition, but isn’t quite able to deliver on that potential. On the other hand, I’m not sure there’s an obvious way to “fix” this, other than making two almost completely separate movies. It does appear on the Wikipedia page as a Nunsploitation movie, but this is even more atypical of the subgenre than Killer Nun. This is one of those movies I’m really glad I caught up with, but would find hard to recommend except to more adventurous film dorks (it’s not a snobby movie, but snobs might like it). **1/2

It’s hard to believe we’ve already reached week five of the Six Weeks, though the way things timed out, it’s more like 6.5 weeks this year. Next week, we tackle some Giallo animals. In the meantime, if you’re still in the mood for some horror reviews, head on over to Film Thoughts where Zack is posting nearly daily updates (and covering far more films than I do, as per usual).

Insidious is that other James Wan franchise featuring demons, a ghost hunter team, psychics, and Patrick Wilson. It hasn’t spawned a cinematic universe like The Conjuring (er, yet), but there are now five entries in the series, and I haven’t seen any of the sequels. I don’t tend to be enthusiastic for sequels, so watching them all in the past few days might seem like a bad idea, but I really like the original (even if it gets confused with all the other one word franchises that started around the same time – Sinister, Ouija, the aforementioned Conjuring movies, etc…) and as it turns out, the sequels are perfectly cromulent. There’s some diminishing returns, for sure, but I enjoyed myself well enough… Before we get to far, minor Spoilers for the original Insidious (which is recommended! If you haven’t seen that, go watch it before reading this…)

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 4 – The Insidious Sequels

• Insidious (trailer)
• The Conjuring (trailer)
• Sinister (trailer)

Insidious: Chapter 2 – Picks up where the original Insidious left off. Young Daulton has been rescued from his coma by his Remote Viewing father, but he may have brought something back with him from the other side (er, sorry, the “Further”), and the family is still plagued by spooky happenings.

James Wan returned for this sequel (the same year he released The Conjuring), and by this point, he’s got his box of tricks well established. It’s all stuff you’ve seen before, so it can’t help but be a little less effective this time around. There’s only so much atmosphere that that fog machines and dry ice can provide before the Further begins to seem a little passé. However, they do this thing where they recontextualize a bunch of stuff that happened in the first movie, and it all fits pretty well. Not sure if it was something that was originally planned (thus, perhaps, justifying the “Chapter 2” subtitle) or if it’s just a retcon, but it works pretty well either way. It’s not quite as good as the first movie, but it’s a worthy followup that’s worth watching. **1/2

• Shining (Fake Trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror V: The Shinning (Disney+)
• The Chickening (short)

Insidious: Chapter 3 – The end of Chapter 2 didn’t leave a ton of room for sequels, so here we end up with something of a prequel that focuses on a different family dealing with incursions from the Further. It basically tells the story of how the psychic Elise met her sidekicks (a few years before the events of the first movie).

At this point, the series shifts into a sorta psychic procedural with the ghost hunting team of Elise, Specs, and Tucker. Lin Shaye had already anchored the franchise thus far, and as it turns out, she’s got the gravitas to survive the shift to a completely different narrative. It helps that Stefanie Scott and Dermot Mulroney are able to sell the family in trouble well enough to keep things moving. Leigh Whannell and Angus Sampson are along for the ride. Their ghost hunter sidekick characters are so funny because they serve basically no purpose in any of these movies and never really help, but, for some unknown reason, they remain endearing and fun to watch.

After having collaborated with James Wan on several Saw movies and having written and starred in the first two Insidious movies, Leigh Whannell steps into the directors chair for the first time. His later efforts would be more successful, but this is a perfectly cromulent debut. It’s not going to light the world on fire, but it gets the job done, and while there’s an overreliance on jump scares and stingers, Whannell is at least good at crafting them, so he lands a few before they start to wear you down. Certainly not a perfect movie, and the series has gotten pretty silly by this point, but it’s still pretty entertaining and well crafted. **

• Ouija Board Gone Wrong (Robot Chicken)
• Ouija: Origin of Evil (trailer)
• Orphan (trailer)

Insidious: The Last Key – This time it’s personal! Elise the psychic and her sidekicks take on a job in the New Mexico house where she grew up. Snore.

This is the sort of thing that any and every procedural TV show eventually resorts to: after years of fighting baddies, they finally confront the serial killer/international conspiracy/demon that explains something mysterious from their past (i.e. my mother wasn’t killed by a mugging, it was an international conspiracy with ties to the White House! Her killing was the whole reason I became a cop in the first place, and this time it’s personal! Snooore!) It’s usually saved for a season finale and perhaps even involves a cliffhanger. Fortunately, we’re spared the cliffhanger bit, but this is a narrative device that tends to annoy me, and this is no different.

There’s a moment, about halfway through the movie, where I thought they may have taken an actual chance in moving the franchise (or at least, this movie) in a different direction – one that’s less about the Further and more about human monsters (another narrative device that doesn’t always work for me, but it was genuinely surprising here, and I was willing to go with it). Alas, that lasts about five minutes before they break out the lanterns, dry ice, and fog machines again, and Elise confronts the demon who killed her mother, snooooore.

Sorry that I keep falling asleep while writing this and snoring. I should get one of those CPAP machines or something. Anyway, I didn’t totally hate this (it’s a testament to the ghost hunting team’s acting that I’m not entirely annoyed by their general uselessness and awkward jokes), but it’s definitely the low point in the series, and fortunately, it’s almost completely disconnected from the rest of the series, so you can skip it. *1/2

• Paranormal Pactivity (Robot Chicken)
• Purranormal Activity (short)
• Paranormal Activity (trailer)

Insidious: The Red Door – The family from the first two films returns for one last battle with the demons that live beyond the red door. Patrick Wilson returns to the franchise, this time behind the camera as well, with his directorial debut.

And after the missteps of The Last Key, this represents something of a return to form (that form being: solid horror programmer that’s entertaining enough). It takes place nine years after the second film; the kid is all growned up and has terrible long hair, and Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne have divorced (which made me chuckle, they weren’t exactly the greatest couple, though in fairness, he was possessed by a monster and/or hypnotized to the point of recklessness most of the time). The hypnosis put on both Wilson and his character’s kid is starting to break down, and as the kid goes to college, he starts to see strange things and draws strange pictures of red doors in art class.

It’s all more of the same and sure, there’s diminishing returns here, but the new settings, characters, and the introduction of daddy issues actually work for the series, even if it’s all a bit clichéd. Look, if you’ve gotten this far in the series, you’ll probably enjoy this one (at least better than The Last Key). The only real drawback is the relative lack of Elise and her sidekicks (they show up in YouTube videos that the college kids watch). It’s a fitting ending for the series, even if I’m sure there’ll be more movies and/or spinoffs in the future (this was pretty successful at the box office). Can you imagine the Conjuring/Insidious crossover that’s almost certainly going to happen in a few years? Anyway, this is fine, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, even if the franchise has gotten pretty creaky and strained by this point. **1/2

I enjoyed this series more than the ratings might indicate, even though the original Insidious is still clearly the best… They don’t have a lot of thematic heft and they’re somewhat repetitive, but they’re solid programmers that entertain well enough.

Hard to believe we’re more than halfway through the Six Weeks of Halloween… stay tuned, we’ve got some Giallo movies and Nunsploitation coming soon.

The power of Christ compelled me… to watch a bunch of exorcism movies this weekend. This is one of the more popular sub-genres since The Exorcist came out 50 years ago – there was an immediate glut of imitators after the release of that movie, but it’s remained a stalwart fallback over the decades. Today we’ll cover one of the first imitators, an exorcism-adjacent flick, and a more modern take. For the record, I also watched the new 50th anniversary 4K of The Exorcist (it looks fantastic!), which turned out to be a bad idea since it’s kinda the greatest, and everything else pales in comparison. Nevertheless, there was plenty of interesting stuff here and a few interesting (if wasted) ideas. Let’s get to it:

The Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 3 – Possession & Exorcism

• The Exorcist (amazing banned/unreleased trailer)
• Repossessed (trailer)
• The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XXVIII: The Exor-Sis (Disney+)

The Pope’s Exorcist – The Pope’s Chief Exorcist takes on the case of a young boy’s possession only to discover a deeper secret that the Vatican has been trying to cover up for centuries. Hijinks ensue.

I’m a man of simple pleasures, and the only thing I really wanted out of this was Russel Crowe doing a silly accent and riding a tiny scooter, both of which are amply covered here. But they went the extra mile: we get Franco Nero as the pope, which is a plus, and once the movie started to retcon one of the more tragic eras of Catholic history, I was fully onboard.

It’s a reasonably well made movie, with a minimum of CGI nonsense (though what’s there is probably unnecessary) and solid set design. The cinematography flirts with the overly dark approach a lot of modern digital stuff engages in, but doesn’t go overboard with it. (I need to start counting how often I sigh during these modern exercises in muddy cinematography so that I can develop a good measure of this stuff – I think I only sighed once during The Pope’s Exorcist, which is pretty good).

Look, this isn’t a great movie or anything and plenty of components are sub-optimal, but I had a surprising amount of fun with it. For instance, Russel Crowe teams up with another priest throughout the movie, and I guess they’re sorta going for a Catholic buddy-cop dynamic, but they don’t have that oil-and-water tension that crackles in the best examples of this approach. Still, it works out fine. Similarly, the demon in charge of the possession seems to be more powerful and clever than most, and has clearly had success in earlier eras. How will they be able to defeat this formidable foe? I dunno, the same way they defeat other demons I guess. But it’s, you know, fine.

Another funny thing that would normally bother me is the implication that they’ve set up a franchise with the space for 199 sequels, but that just made me chuckle in appreciation. Even with my normal aversion to sequels, I would sign up to watch big ol’ Russel Crowe ride his tiny scooter to combat more exorcisms. Your mileage may vary, but I enjoyed this way more than I thought, and scooters get great gas mileage. ***

• Hell No (fake trailer)
• The Entity (trailer)
• I Married a Witch (trailer)

Audrey Rose – A strange man has stalked a family for a few weeks before finally revealing that he believes their daughter is the reincarnation of his own daughter, Audrey Rose. Naturally, they’re not very receptive to this idea, but their daughter suffers from terrible night terrors and the strange man is played by Anthony Hopkins, so he’s able to calm the daughter down with ease.

There’s a nugget of a great idea here. Certainly a lot to chew on, and the dynamic that’s set up here leads to plenty of dramatic tension. That being said, I feel like the execution is way, way off.

Reincarnation isn’t exactly the same thing as possession, but this movie does seem to take a lot of inspiration from The Exorcist. The biggest problem is that they never really manage to convince the audience that reincarnation might be real and relevant to this situation; they just sorta take it as an obvious given. The Exorcist does many things really well, but two things are especially relevant here: First, they comprehensively exhaust the more mundane medical explanations for what’s going on, and even the psychological ones. Everyone is incredibly skeptical that young Reagan is possessed, including the priests who end up performing the exorcism. Second, Reagan’s symptoms escalate almost to the point of absurdity, such that accepting that she’s possessed by a demon feels reasonable and pragmatic.

Audrey Rose gestures towards this approach, but everything feels rushed and incomplete. They go to the doctor and do one invasive test, and they mention consulting with a psychologist, but never really follow through on that. And the young girl’s night terrors don’t really escalate in any meaningful way. She just sleepwalks and asks for her daddy over and over again (she does get mesmerized by a fire at one point and nearly burns herself, but it’s not enough to be convincing). There’s some neat stuff about timing and other coincidental circumstances that warrant further investigation, but said investigation never really happens. And this isn’t the sort of thing that ends with ambiguity. You’re clearly supposed to think the young girl is obviously the reincarnation of Audrey Rose.

There’s a lot to like here, but by the time the movie ended, I was furious. At what was happening on screen (Why would the mother act this way!? Is that really the ending?!) and at the wasted potential of the story. It’s a great premise and there’s opportunities galore for an interesting exploration of the idea, but they stop short. The only thing that keeps this even minimally watchable is Anthony Hopkins’ performance, which isn’t his best or anything, but at least makes you think you should look into this whole reincarnation thing. There’s a whole courtroom drama aspect of the movie that could be mildly interesting, but which ends up being laughably implausible. I dunno, I’m actually glad I watched it, but I don’t particularly like it. **

• Horror Movie Daycare (short)
• Rosemary’s Baby (trailer)
• Hell Sucks (Robot Chicken)

Beyond the Door – A woman becomes pregnant with her third child and immediately begins to display signs of demonic possession. When the pregnancy (and associated possession) develops with surprising speed, a mysterious man approaches with… answers?

One of the first Exorcist knockoffs to be produced, it also sorta recalls the other seismic horror movie based on a popular novel that was released a few years earleir, Rosemary’s Baby. Those two novels and associated adaptations kicked off the horror boom of the 70s and 80s. Beyond the Door has a reputation as being one of the better ripoffs out there, and there’s certainly a lot going on here.

The film opens with a black screen and a voiceover from the devil himself, informing us that he plays an important role in the story, but that we won’t actually see him, because that’s gone out of fashion in our modern age. It’s the sort of thing a parody might do, but it’s played completely straight and walks the line perfectly. I was immediately onboard with the movie. After this, his voice shows up a couple more times throughout the movie, but never quite recaptures the magic of that first sequence, which is probably a good summary of the movie: it starts off bugnuts crazy and fun, but that novelty wears out quickly and subsequent attempts to up the crazy quotient have diminishing returns. It’s never quite dull, but it does wear you down and the ending, while also quite batshit, just sorta falls flat.

There’s plenty of funny elements here, many stolen shamelessly from The Exorcist. For instance, lots of pea soup. One of the kids is literally drinking out of a can of Campbell’s pea soup with a straw throughout the movie. The other carries around several copies of the same book which she reads over and over again. She swears like a sailor, but isn’t the one who gets possessed. Speaking of which, plenty of exorcist tropes: spinning heads, levitating cakes, gross goo, and of course, a funky jazz score that’s completely inappropriate to the setting. It’s an Italian production from the early seventies, so it’s got some great visual compositions, but it’s also dubbed, even though everyone is speaking English (I have an affinity for this sort of thing due to loving Giallos that do that, but it can be off-putting to some).

I guess there’s some thematic heft here, associating pregnancy with possession isn’t particularly subtle and I’m not sure it’s appropriate, but I guess it makes a certain sorta twisted sense. This is not strictly a good movie, but if you like psychedelic Italian genre sensibilities, you might get a kick out of it. **

These six weeks are just flying by, aren’t they? I’m undecided on next week’s theme, but it will probably be either Nunsploitation or Insidious sequels, tune in next week to find out…