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13Apr

Experiment in Terror (1962)

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It’s a tough sell to describe any film from 1962 as “frightening” to an audience today. We live, after all, in a movie world of three-dimensional buckets of gore — not to mention terrorism in real life. So how about I just call Experiment in Terror “effective and creepy”? It’s definitely that, in no small measure thanks to an unlikely director and a musical genius.

Blake Edwards, whom most people associate with comedy (the Pink Panther films), made just one excursion into the realm of suspense, but it was a doozy. Experiment stars Lee Remick as unfortunate bank teller Kelly Sherwood, targeted by asthmatic menace “Red” Lynch (Ross Martin) to steal $100,000 from the bank where she works. Lynch, to prod Kelly along, embarks on a systematic terror campaign, including the abduction of her younger sister.

Edwards filmed the movie in black-and-white and his use of light and shadow is masterful; San Francisco at night never looked eerier. Bit by bit, Edwards reveals his villain to the audience — first shadows, then a closeup of a mouth, then a profile — as Lynch gradually escalates his threats against Kelly.

Aiding and abetting all of this is a hair-raising musical score courtesy of Henry Mancini. Mancini’s music is creepy and crawly, like footsteps slowly advancing up the basement stairs, making their way toward you in the dark. Grade: A

Director: Blake Edwards Cast: Lee Remick, Glenn Ford, Ross Martin, Stefanie Powers, Roy Poole, Ned Glass Release: 1962

Watch the Trailer (click here)

11Apr

Cube (1998)

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Cube is one of those little films you stumble upon while channel surfing at 1 a.m., fully intending to switch stations after watching for a few minutes. Or maybe just a few more minutes … hey wait — this movie is intriguing.

Six disparate characters — including a doctor, a cop, a math whiz, and an autistic young man — wake up inside a gigantic Rubik’s Cube, with no idea how they got there and, more to the point, how to get the hell out. The solution involves a lot of math, but for the number-challenged among us, that doesn’t detract from the fun. It turns out that our panicky protagonists are not in just one block, but in a master cube composed of thousands of interlocking rooms, many of them equipped with deadly booby-traps.

Cube gets a bit scrambled when the script calls for the characters to interact with each other, rather than the maze, because they aren’t written with much depth. And the conclusion will probably leave some viewers dissatisfied. But the ending isn’t really that important. It’s a bit like solving a crossword puzzle and leaving a few blank squares. It’s enjoyable getting to the end, even if the puzzle’s not 100 percent complete. Grade: B

Director: Vincenzo Natali Cast: Julian Richings, Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, Maurice Dean Wint, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Wayne Robson Release: 1998

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25Mar

And Then There Were None (1945)

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Who among us, in our misspent youth, has not hunched over a game board and contemplated Colonel Mustard doing something nasty with a lead pipe in a conservatory? “Clue” fans and Agatha Christie buffs, And Then There Were None is the movie for you. Christie’s classic whodunit has been filmed many times, but no version can match director Rene Clair’s tongue-in-cheek delight from 1945.

A group of strangers is summoned to a barren island and, sequestered in a cliffside mansion staffed by two servants, the guests are bumped off, one by one. Clair’s actors play all of this straight-faced, but the movie is loaded with sly wit and humor. And these really are the characters from “Clue.” Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Roland Young, June Duprez, C. Aubrey Smith, Judith Anderson, and Richard Haydn are all outstanding.

My only quibble is that, typically for films of that time, Christie’s ending has been altered. Rest assured, there is no happy ending for the young lovers in the book. Grade: A-

Director: Rene Clair Cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, Roland Young, June Duprez, C. Aubrey Smith, Judith Anderson, Richard Haydn, Mischa Auer Release: 1945

Watch the Movie (click here)

19Mar

The Name of the Rose (1986)

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When they decided to turn Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose into a film, they pretty much managed to push all of my movie-going buttons. Were I given millions of dollars and a producer’s job, I could not ask for a better star, setting, genre, and plot.

Start with the location: I can be a sucker for settings. Place any movie — no matter how mediocre in other respects — in a cool-looking spaceship, or at a polar research lab, or in a submarine, and I’ll drop the remote long enough to watch, at least for a few minutes. But until Rose came along in 1986, I would not have put a 13th-century Italian monastery into that category.

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud, filming near Rome and in West Germany, cranks up the atmospherics of Rose with catacombs (real), labyrinths (fake), cemeteries, and … what exactly is in that imposing tower (pictured below left), I wonder?

Into this Dark Ages milieu comes one of my favorite movie stars, Sean Connery. When abbey denizens begin turning up dead, Connery’s monk is forced into the role of Sherlock Holmes, aided by his young protégé (Christian Slater in his first role). Ancient books — thousands of them — play a pivotal role in the story.

So now I have everything I could ask for: Connery, a delicious mystery, a focus on rare books and, above all, one really, really cool setting. Grade: A-

Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud Cast: Sean Connery, F. Murray Abraham, Michael Lonsdale, Christian Slater, Valentina Vargas Release: 1986

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12Mar

The Last of Sheila (1973)

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First things first. There is an obstacle today’s viewer has to overcome to truly appreciate The Last of Sheila, and that obstacle is called 1973. I’m talking hairstyles here, and I also mean bell bottoms and facial hair. My advice: Get your chuckles out of the way in the first ten minutes of this neglected little gem and then concentrate on the movie itself.

I have to digress again, this time for a little celebrity trivia, circa late 1960s. Actor Anthony Perkins (Psycho) and composer Stephen Sondheim (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) were part of a group of showbiz folk who devised a unique form of self-amusement. They created scavenger hunts in which celebs including Lee Remick, George Segal, Perkins and Sondheim would scour the streets of Manhattan for clues to a mystery. The winners’ reward was typically champagne on ice.

Perkins and Sondheim took their fondness for this silly sleuthing and turned it into a screenplay. The result was Sheila, an absolute delight for puzzle-solvers and movie-star-gazers alike.

Spurred on by millionaire playboy James Coburn (at his Machiavellian best), Raquel Welch, James Mason, et al, race through the beautifully photographed streets and ports of the French Riviera on a quest to solve Coburn’s mean-spirited scavenger hunt — and to curry his favor. Of course, the game soon turns deadly.

But enough nonsensical jabbering and meandering in nostalgia. There — I just gave you a clue to the identity of the killer. Grade: A-

Director: Herbert Ross Cast: Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, Joan Hackett, James Mason, Ian McShane, Raquel Welch, Yvonne Romain Release: 1973

Watch the Trailer (click here)

08Mar

Black Christmas (1974)

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Black Christmas, the 1974 original, is the scariest movie ever made.

There. I’ve said it. And yes, I have seen The Exorcist. And Rosemary’s Baby, Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alien, The Ring, and Jaws. None of them match the creepy effectiveness of this little Canadian production from — of all directors — Bob Clark. Yes, that Bob Clark; the same man who also gave the world its beloved A Christmas Story and (less-beloved) Porky’s.

I tell people about this movie and, once they realize it’s not an episode of The Jeffersons, they ask about its plot. I hesitate to tell them, because the movie was so well-crafted that its innovations, so groundbreaking in 1974, have been copied and copied and copied, so that what was new in Black Christmas is now cliche. Halloween owes everything to this film, as do When a Stranger Calls and every maniac-terrorizes-young-people movie made since.

Clark taught all of these filmmakers lessons with Black Christmas: how to use sound and silence (a ticking grandfather’s clock, a howling winter’s wind), shadows, and pacing to scare the crap out of audiences.

It’s too bad Clark got little appreciation for this masterwork. If you see it now for the first time, you might feel as though you’ve seen it all before. The sorority house. The mindless killer. The multiple suspects. “The calls are coming from inside the house!”

But all of these elements were new in 1974 … and the ending of the scariest movie ever made is nothing short of brilliant. Grade: A

Director: Bob Clark Cast: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Andrea Martin, Marian Waldman, Art Hindle, Lynne Griffin, Michael Rapport Release: 1974

Watch the Trailer (click here)

05Mar

The Game (1997)

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If you check at Amazon.com, you’ll see The Game categorized as a drama, but also listed under “action & adventure” in the sales rankings. The Internet Movie Database calls David Fincher’s movie an “action/adventure/mystery.” And on rottentomatoes.com, it’s simply listed under “drama.” This is my burning question: Am I the only one who views this 1997 film as one of the funniest comedies of the past 20 years?

From the moment Michael Douglas’s staid businessman spills ink on his fancy shirt in an airport lounge, I know I’m in for a delightful ride, as Douglas’s misfortunes escalate from that inky blotch to, eventually, waking up in a dusty coffin in a Mexican slum. This is a Gordon Gekko comeuppance on a grand scale and, though the movie is certainly a thriller, it’s also one of a handful that can make me laugh out loud. Maybe you have to have a warped sense of humor ….

One thing I am certain about: The Game’s plot is absurd. No matter how many millions (or billions) at his disposal, the paces Conrad Van Orton (Sean Penn) puts brother Nicholas (Douglas) through as part of the “game” are pure fantasy. But thanks to Fincher’s sly direction, I was too busy laughing to much care. Grade: B+

Director: David Fincher Cast: Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, Deborah Kara Unger, James Rebhorn, Anna Katerina, Peter Donat, Carroll Baker, Armin Mueller-Stahl Release: 1997

Watch the Trailers (click here)