Reviews

When I first heard, some months prior to its release, that a new version of "Willard" was in the works, I wondered who would play the title role -- Crispin Glover? Bingo! And R. Lee Ermey similarly seems a natural choice to reprise Ernest Borgnine's role as Willard's one-dimensional troll of a boss. (Bruce Davison, who played the original Willard, is a good enough sport to allow the use of his face in pictures of the new Willard's late father.)

Regrettably, Elsa Lanchester's role as Willard's mom is played in a shrill, one-note fashion by whoever that was in the fright wig, making it impossible to believe that Willard loves her as much as he says he does, or indeed, that anyone could. And Willard's only unlikely sympathetic human connection, a young woman at his workplace who must be attracted to the worst losers she can find, bails on him at a critical moment, so that what starts out as unbelievable turns out to be inconsistent.

The remake has decent production values, including suitably creepy atmosphere in Willard's Norman Bates-ish house, and very good rat wrangling, involving (apparently) fewer CGI scenes than I'd expected. Unfortunately, the main element of the movie that doesn't work is the title character. Willard is such a spineless schlub that one wonders what even a rat would see in him. Crispin Glover could've given the character a dark, brooding, subtle intensity that erupts in a volcanic flow of rats from the id, and that appears, at times, to be what the director had in mind. But instead, Willard snivels, blubbers, whines, pleads, and screams to the point that he quickly becomes tiresome. If "Vampire's Kiss" was Nicolas Cage's over-the-top self-parody, and "The Witches of Eastwick" was Jack Nicholson's, "Willard" does the same for Crispin Glover. But it's no fun at all; it's as much of a wet blanket as Willard himself is. We can pretend we sympathize with him, but let's face it: if we knew somebody like this in real life, we'd alternately ignore him and take advantage of him too.

The movie's one apparent attempt at humor is an astoundingly wrong-headed scene involving the fate of a cat that finds itself alone in a houseful of rats. Scored (via contrivance) by the treacly title song of "Ben," the 1972 sequel to the original "Willard," the scene brings the story to a standstill, and is as embarrassingly bad as the sequel it evokes. It's one of those jaw-droppingly awful moments that make you wonder what the hell the writer and/or director was thinking. And as one who has lost three cats to various misadventures in a little over a year's time, I certainly didn't appreciate it.

Worst of all, "Willard" commits the unpardonable sin of being dull. It's a tedious, unpleasant chore to watch. This is a pity, since Willard Stiles may well be the role Crispin Glover was born to play.

"Henry Fool" is well-cast (then again, I'd pay cash money to watch Parker Posey read the phone book), but it's wildly uneven. And it goes on forever, apparently without figuring out what it's trying to say. Is it a comedy? a drama? a social/cultural/literary satire? At the supposed-to-be-funny parts, the rest of the audience were laughing more than I was; I found the humor to be rather obvious. This is one for the nose-ring crowd. Adults, keep moving.

"The Postman" represents the total squandering of 80 million bucks by people who should've known better. With this turkey and "Waterworld" back-to-back, somebody may have finally wised up and driven a wedge between big budgets and Kevin Costner's crummy, dated, post-apocalyptic ideas. (His more recent success, "Open Range," is carried out on a more modest scale.)

As hokey as it is overlong and dull, "The Postman" presents a post-nuclear-war 2013 in which, apparently, not a stitch of 20th-century clothing has survived. Everybody wears outfits that look homemade from drab gray and brown rags and tags; not one leather jacket, or sweater, or red windbreaker, or even a pair of jeans, is anywhere to be seen. Even the marauding army of the villain (idiotically named Bethlehem, as in "What rough beast," etc.) aren't dressed in camouflage. If the military's entire wardrobe perished, then how did their guns and ammo survive? It's also unbelievably inconsistent that the survivors, who sing '60s pop songs as though they're ancient folk tunes, don't recognize the name of Richard Starkey (aka Ringo Starr) when it comes up.

All told, an amazing colossal waste of time, talent, and money, good only for unintended and derisive laughter, and as more evidence that "Dances with Politically Correct Overlong Incredibly Boring Wolves" was a fluke.

"Joe's Apartment" is a feature-length adaptation of a short film previously seen on MTV. Joe is played by Jerry O'Connell, who had the lead whiz-kid role in the TV series "Sliders". His girlfriend Lily's father, a scheming congressman afflicted with deviant sexual fetishism (and therefore obviously a Democrat), is played by the remains of Robert Vaughn.

But of course the real stars are the hordes of digitally animated cockroaches who infest Joe's NYC digs. They not only talk, they also sing, dance, and do synchronized swimming in the toilet. Joe, an Iowa innocent new to the Big Apple, is horrified when the bugs take a liking to him because he's their kind of slob. But his new "friends" are impossible to get rid of, just like in real life, so Joe just has to make the best of the situation.

Otherwise, the plot is dumb to the point of irrelevance: the congressman wants to level Joe's building, the last one on its East Village block, to make way for the vast new Manhattan Maximum Security Prison (which makes him a Democrat who's caved in to Republican priorities -- again, just like real life). But Lily wants to make the block into a park-like garden. See? Just the sort of tooth-grindingly stupid drek that begs to be livened up by swarms of wisecracking, punning, music-loving arthropods. As silly fun, it works quite well, and would make an interesting second feature after "Phase IV," a dead-serious 1974 SF effort about a colony of intelligent ants in the Arizona desert.

This is a lavish, sumptuously-mounted version of the classic story. Great costumes and location work, with Prague as 18th-century Italy. Top-notch FX: Pinocchio himself; Pepe (not Jiminy) Cricket; a hUge, whale-like sea monster; boys morphing into jackasses.

Good cast: Martin Landau (fresh from his Oscar-winning portrayal of Lugosi in "Ed Wood") as Gepetto; Genevieve Bujold, whom I hadn't seen in ages (and who is aging very nicely), as his long-term love interest; Udo Kier as the heavy; plus an assortment of other character actors mostly unknown to me.

Altogether well-done, its only drawbacks being a couple of lame songs, plus occasional slapstick for the kiddies. And it must be admitted, the Diz cartoon is a tough act to follow.

Despite its vampire-'n'-werewolf content, "Underworld" isn't a horror movie, but an action/terror movie. Almost nonstop gun battles between the hunters (vampires) and the hunted (werewolves), who are about to turn the tables with a bit of insider help. For semi-coherent reasons, a young male human becomes a pawn in the war between bloodsuckers and shapeshifters.

As usual, almost nothing crosses over to the screen from actual folklore. Folkloric vampires are NOT destroyed or harmed by sunlight -- not literally much of an issue here, since almost the whole story takes place at night, though the werewolves have managed to get their paws on some ammo that fires an ultraviolet charge ("liquid sunlight"). Folkloric lycanthropy is NOT contagious by the bite. Folkloric vampires and werewolves are NOT social creatures who form "covens" or travel in packs. And the very premise of an ethnic war between vampires and werewolves is inauthentic. The two "species" are NOT anything like now-and-forever separate: in certain folklores, werewolves BECOME vampires after death, and vampires can transform into wolves.

All that having been said, what works? Good atmosphere: lots of darkness, rain, and subterranean locations. Good art design, ranging from the sets and locations to the props, weapons, and costumes. Good action and FX, and the pace generally keeps moving. Good cast, though none of them seem to be enjoying themselves.

What doesn't work? It's all very grim and solemn, and not very much fun. Kate Beckinsdale as Selene (basically Buffy the Werewolf Slayer) is admirably intense, focused, loyal, and fearless: like everybody else in the movie, she's formidable, but not likeable. We have nobody to root for: there are so many double-crosses and betrayals -- and, during the gun battles, both sides, clad in black, look so much alike -- that it's hard to ward off confusion after awhile, not to mention apathy.

A good dose of clever dark humor would have helped this movie a lot. But ultimately, all the characters take themselves SO seriously that it's like being a captive audience at a Goth party. This is how the Goths of my acquaintance view themselves -- sleek, sexy, and dangerous -- instead of as the chubby, pasty losers they are.

Recently had the occasion to see "Yellow Submarine" again for the first time in years. It's still beautifully and imaginatively rendered, but it's either dated poorly or else I've grown up a tad. It's an undisguised drug trip; its heroes (the Beatles in cartoon form) are aimless and muttering; the plot is underdeveloped, serving only to string the songs together into a 90-minute Beatles video. Worse, the flick illustrates the basic tenets of the liberal-moonbat philosophy: that life is a pastel dream; that All You Need Is Love; that anybody who harshes your buzz is a Blue Meanie; that pop music is the single most unifying force in the world; and that the answer, whatever the question may be, is YES. Candy-coated poison, and as dated in its own way as "Billy Jack."

Slam-bang high-tech action-thriller stuff. Ed Harris, as a much-decorated combat commander of legendary status, deploys a hand-picked squadron of elite renegade Marines to take over Alcatraz. He holds hostage not only a civilian tour group, but the entire city of San Fran, at which he's aimed 15 tactical missiles armed with the nastiest nerve gas in the universe. His goal? To get the US government to acknowledge, with posthumous honors and compensation to family members, about 100 men lost -- and unacknowledged -- in covert operations ranging from Vietnam to Desert Storm.

Here come the Feds: they send in a team of SEALs led by Michael Biehn (in a reprise, basically, of his role in "Aliens"). Their ringers: Nicolas Cage, in a rather John Cusackish performance as a lab-wonk toxic-weapons expert, hilariously short of combat experience; and Sean Connery, as a long-held secret prisoner of the US, a Brit agent who has all the dirt on the FBI. He knows all the secrets from Roswell (!) to the JFK assassination, and he's the only man ever to escape from Alcatraz.

The scripter's inclusion of the presence in San Fran of people who are near and dear to both these characters is more than a little contrived. It has MOTIVATION written all over it in the case of Connery's character, and UP THE ANTE in the case of Cage's. But what the hell: this isn't drama, but melodrama, essentially an hyperbolic mismatched-buddy-cop movie, and the pace, the action, and the stars' charisma are equal to it. An enjoyable cliffhanger, if wildly improbable.

Brian DePalma, whose earlier foray into big-budget Hollywood star-laden product was "The Bonfire of the Vanities," redeems himself here. Adapting an epic satirical bestseller for the screen is evidently far more difficult than adapting a '60s-'70s TV spy thriller.

Cast includes Tom Cruise, of course; Jon Voigt, whom I hadn't seen in ages; Ving Rhames; whatsisname, the guy who jerked Harrison Ford around in "Clear and Present Danger," playing essentially the same smarmy insider jerk here; and Charlie Sheen in a tiny and thankless role. The plot is a series of double and triple crosses in which Cruise is the patsy who has to figure out who's zooming who. Similar to "Eraser," the contemporary Arnie thriller, but miles more convoluted. Incomprehensible, in fact, but it works as a thrill ride.

"Lone Star" has the distinction of being probably the only movie ever shot in Eagle Pass, TX. Nor is that its only distinction.

Sam Deeds, the reluctant sheriff of fictional Rio County, TX, investigates a 40-year-old mystery when a human skeleton turns up in the desert. The body is identified as Charlie Wade, thug, murderer, racist goon -- and former sheriff, missing since 1957 or so. The investigation seems to cast suspicion on Buddy Deeds, Wade's successor, who became a local hero of legendary status -- to everyone except his son Sam. The resolution of the mystery reminds one of the conclusion of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

En route to that resolution, the movie takes an unhurried and unsentimental look at the dynamics and tensions of race -- white, Mexican, black, and Indian -- in a waning border town. A fine cast helps: Chris Cooper is Sam Deeds; Elizabeth Pena is his main squeeze and then some; and Frances McDormand is memorable in a one-scene role as Sam's ex-wife Bunny, an avid Dallas Cowboys fan accurately described as "highly-strung." In extensive flashbacks, Kris Kristofferson is Charlie Wade and Matthew McConaughey is Buddy Deeds.

A sad but absorbing story, "Lone Star" has the ring of truth.

An earlier commentor wrote: "This short film was detailed in the book YOUNG FILMMAKERS, by Rodger Larson & Ellen Meade." No, it wasn't. I found a copy of the book at an online source and ordered it. The book makes NO mention of "GORGO VS. GODZILLA, a short animated film that also included Rodan." The previous commentor continues, "Although I have never personally seen GORGO VS. GODZILLA, rest assured...it does exist." Well, it may or it may not. And to those of you who say it doesn't, note that this site describes it as a SHORT, not a feature film. But the book makes, I repeat, NO mention of it. The previous commentor concludes, "The book even had a few stills showing the renderings of Gorgo and Godzilla." No, it doesn't. No stills, no mention at all. I'm mystified as to why the previous commentor made these claims.

"Buffalo '66," written and directed by Vincent Gallo (whose name means "victorious chicken"), is basically just another life-is-bleak-and-I'm-such-a-loser exercise of the type I generally find so tiresome. Well-made, though at times heavy-handed: one of the very first scenes, with Billy Brown (Gallo again), fresh out of the joint, huddling on a park bench out front and flooded with (very '60s) multi-screen images of prison flashbacks, could've been effectively supplanted with a simple shot of him on the bench with the prison looming in the background. And Billy's parents' crass neglect of him (they're so out of touch with him they don't know he's been in prison!) is driven home with a nine-pound hammer. But Billy himself is such an unpleasant schmuck that one wonders why we should give a rat's a$$ about him.

A good cast is generally underused here: Anjelica Huston is Billy's mom, whose rabid Bills fandom was done better (i.e., chillingly) by Frances McDormand as a deranged Dallas Cowboys fan in "Lone Star." Ben Gazzara is Billy's near-catatonic father; Rosanna Arquette has a small role as Billy's unattainable life-long crush. But Christina Ricci, as the sexy baby-doll Billy abducts to take to dinner at his parent's place (he's told them he's married, and he forces the girl to pretend to be his wife), is most criminally wasted.

In dire contrast to the razor-sharp Dede Truitt of "The Opposite of Sex," here Ms. Ricci plays Layla, a passive and evidently very stupid little girl who's just along for the ride. That she doesn't take advantage of her many opportunities to escape her abductor tells us that she is, at best, easily dominated, and at worst, very dumb. That she ultimately (and predictably) falls for Billy tells us that she's either attracted to the bad-boy mystique, or that she's got a "nurturing" nature that thrives on taking in wounded (and dangerous) strays like Billy: in either case, again, very dumb. As always--if anything, even more so than usual--Ms. Ricci looks good enough to eat with a spoon; and in a surreal moment almost worth the price of a rental, we learn that she can tapdance. But the part is underwritten, and is as unworthy of Ms. Ricci as Billy is of Layla's affections.

The movie's "happy ending" (no spoiler; keep reading) is a grotesque cop-out, obviously not so much an ending as a pause. Billy will still, no doubt, end up losing the girl, some time after the credits roll. He'll lose her not so much because he doesn't deserve her (since she's such a dimbulb, maybe he DOES), but because of his appalling lack of people skills, and because of his poor judgment in general, such as the brilliant idea that got him sent to prison in the first place.

Gallo has made a semi-autobiographical self-therapy piece: he's from Buffalo, and his parents' house in the movie is, or used to be, his actual parents' house. Apparently he made "Buffalo '66" for the therapeutic, success-is-the-best-revenge purpose of having somebody with Christina Ricci's face and body (but, significantly, not her brains!) fall for him before the eyes of the entire art-house movie-audience world. Dream on, Vinnie.

ID4 is "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" with a budget. But it also owes a great deal to any number of other, earlier alien-peril/sky-fi flicks. Most obvious among these is "The War of the Worlds," including the unsuccessful use of the Bomb and the ultimate demise of the invaders by means of a virus (albeit a computer virus this time). "ID4" also borrows from the "Star Wars" saga, mainly the massive dogfight battles and an against-all-odds, intrusive attack on the Death Star-esque mothership.

Despite the spectacle of the destruction of entire cities, the movie is tremendously upbeat. Ironically (since director/co-writer Roland Emmerich is from Germany), "ID4" celebrates a lot of traditional American values: bravery, heroism, self-sacrifice, helping one another in the face of disaster, resourcefulness, love, loyalty, faith, the Bomb and the reluctance to use it, marriage, family--and ham radio. Emmerich also showed a similar grasp of basic Americana in "The Patriot," though his remake of "Godzilla" is about as non-Japanese as could be imagined.

Predictably, a great many critics sneered at the movie for its embrace of such "old-fashioned" values. They preferred that summer's "other" alien-invasion flick, "The Arrival." See my comments about that turkey for my take on why that was the case.

"The Arrival" was the "other" alien-invasion flick of the summer of 1996. Whereas "Independence Day" is the traditional-conservative-values treatment of the theme, in which American cleverness and firepower save the day, "The Arrival" is the liberal-environmental-disaster flick, wherein a cabal of aliens is deliberately speeding up the process of global warming so as to make Earth suitable for their colonies.

Charlie Sheen is a jittery radio astronomer whiz-kid who discovers this conspiracy of extraterrestrial terraforming (how's that for an oxymoron?), which is being financed by American investors in PlanetCorp, the aliens' front company. Naturally, the "power plants" heating the world are all built in third-world countries without "sufficient" environmental regulations. This situation rounds out the film's array of liberal conceits: big business is bad; big government is good; and global warming--with or without alien intervention--is happening anyway.

Credit where it's due: "The Arrival" is well-produced, well-paced, and well-acted, with some good FX (including stop-motion aliens) and a startling opening sequence involving a poppy field in the Arctic. It's defeated somewhat by its general familiarity, since it belongs to a long line of aliens-among-us flicks that go all the way back to the '50s.

But in the final analysis, I'm happy to say that the American public didn't buy into "The Arrival" or its politics. At the box office, "ID4" was a huge hit. "The Arrival" tanked. 'Nuff said.

"28 Days Later" is a gritty, low-budget UK suspense/actioner, well acted and sharply edited, but not really a "zombie" movie, as its ads claim. More of an apocalyptic plague movie, similar to David Cronenberg's "Rabid"; the "zombies" (referred to collectively as the "infected") are, in fact, living people afflicted with a virulent and incurable contagion that causes instant, murderous rage. (Shades also of "Last Man on Earth," "The Omega Man," and--with its small band of military holed up in a compound--"Day of the Dead," which IS a zombie flick.)

Strange to say, the infected travel in packs, which means they never seem to attack each other. Wonder why not? In any case, the only name we're given for their disease is "rage." It's been isolated in a lab and provided with a viral vector: all Hyde, no Jekyll, and no turning back. One character in the movie suggests that there's nothing particularly wrong with the "infected" that we haven't seen before; it's just the darker aspects of human nature in concentrated form.

Tellingly, the Brits have to defend themselves with such improvised weapons as baseball bats and machetes, thanks to the UK's totalitarian anti-gun laws. Remember the scene in "Dawn of the Dead" wherein American "rednecks" mount a heavily-armed hunting posse, gunning for zombies? Nothing like that here. Only Her Majesty's military have firearms. And in keeping with Machiavelli's observation that there can be no proper relationship between one who's armed and one who's not, they naturally become part of the problem.

It's July 4th as I write this. Hang onto your guns, America. They're the best tools for quickly ironing out the wrinklier problems human nature may present.

"Terminator 3" is a worthy successor because it continues the series in exactly the same way that, say, "Alien3" did not. Whereas "A3" basically said "forget those earlier two movies" and did something disastrously different, "T3" follows through on situations set up in the first two installations, neither contradicting anything we were told earlier, nor pulling any crucial but previously unknown info out of a hat. (Think "Halloween II": "Gee, we forgot to tell you that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers' sister." Never have bought that. None of that nonsense here.) "T3" sets up familiar scenes--e.g., Arnold arrives naked from the future and has to find some clothes--then plays against expectations, often humorously, to resolve them.

Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor is absent, but still has her own contribution to make. "T1" was about Sarah; "T2" was about Sarah and her son John; "T3" is about reluctant hero John. But since the tuff-heroine aspect is so important to this series, that baton is passed to former teenager Claire Danes, who's surprisingly capable as a pi$$ed-off action chick.

Arnold's Terminator--hostile in "T1", helpful in "T2"--is still helpful here, if a bit chattier. His matter-of-fact transmission of useful info, and his timely observations of human nature as he's been programmed to understand it ("Anger is more useful than despair"), make use of Arnold's gift of deadpan comedy. And the terminatrix, the TX, played by 23-year-old Kristanna Loken, is an absolute icepick. Combining the deadliest aspects of the earlier models' hardened skeleton AND liquid-metal body, this one adds built-in weapons systems and the ability to remote-control other machines. Loken has only two facial expressions here: a total blank, and a go-to-hell version of a Mona Lisa smirk. Both expressions are chillingly unblinking. Brrr!

Ignore the whiners who are going on about how bad a movie they think this is; they're the equivalent of Comic Book Guy on "The Simpsons" saying, "Worst episode EVER!" Killer robots, nuclear peril, over-the-top vehicle chases, and a two-fisted action heroine: what more could you ask? Surprisingly downbeat ending, all but guaranteeing a "T4." Bring it on.

Saw this one recently with some friends who have an ironic love of truly terrible movies, and in that context, it was just the ticket. It was a double feature with "Satanik," a 1968 Italian piece of junk that was just as bad but at least had a hot Eurobabe as the killer. Both flicks were made by the absolutely untalented, and can be watched only by dedicated students of bad film.

In a "climactic" scene in "Werewolf," the title critter kills a man apparently without touching him, or even being in the same general area. We repeatedly cut back and forth between shots of the werewolf going RARRR, and of the victim crossing his arms in front of his face (again and again), in a posture of defense. Finally, the bloodied victim drops to the ground. At no time do both the werewolf AND the victim appear in this scene together. It's as though the two "actors" involved couldn't coordinate their table-waiting schedules in such a way as to be both on the set on the same day. We all looked around at each other and said, "What just happened?"

See it for laughs, if this sort of bad flickage is your idea of fun. Otherwise, flee like a Texas Democrat.

"Countess Dracula" is a fictionalization--and ultimately, a trivialization--of one of history's true fiends, namely Elisabeth Bathory, the "Blood Countess" of Hungary. The Countess, who bathed in virgins' blood in an effort to maintain her youthful beauty, was responsible for the murders of some 650 young women and girls, many of whom were bitten to death. The premise of this movie is that the Countess's blood baths are successful, not simply in maintaining her beauty, but in restoring it.

This middling Hammer entry includes several good cast members, with lovely Polish actress Ingrid Pitt in the title role (even though that's not the character's name), and veteran character actor Nigel Green (who played a crusty Hercules in "Jason and the Argonauts") as her longtime lover and chief thug. Peter Jeffries, who played Inspector Trout in "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" and the Sultan in "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," is on hand as well, in a minor role. Regrettably, Sandor Eles as the youthful love interest is a total nebbish, complete with cheesy mustache. Since the whole arc of this story is a romance involving him and the Countess--who, her youth restored, is posing as her own daughter--his weakness is a liability indeed.

The historic ambience is well-researched: Hungary c. 1600, featuring correct clothing, architecture, music, etc. Gypsies, belly-dancers, and fortune-tellers are part of the picture, and there's frequent reference to the Turks, with whom Hungary and other countries of central and eastern Europe had been at nearly constant war for centuries. Even a passing reference to Hungarian "bull's blood," a red wine, is correct.

Unfortunately, the movie is underplotted. To serve the needs of a silly and unconvincing love story, the historic Countess's years-long spree of bloodshed and torture is shortened to a few days' duration, and the body count is reduced from hundreds to maybe a half dozen. The device of having the Countess's artificial youthfulness suddenly wear off at the most inconvenient times is a rather hoary gimmick; I would suggest that the real Countess's gradual descent into total madness was dramatic enough. Peter Sasdy's direction isn't bad overall, but at times is quite static. An attempt by the Countess's daughter, Ilona, to escape from a woodcutter's shed (where she's being held in order to cover up her mother's deception), is particularly clumsy.

Not a bad movie, given the strong leads and the good atmosphere. But not as good as it might have been. Still, worth a look, even though the definitive fictional movie about Countess Bathory has yet to be made.

"Se7en" was the serial killer movie of the week at the time of its release. Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt--apparently representing Reason and Passion, respectively--are cops on the trail of a serial killer. Kevin Spacey plays the killer as a Hannibal Lecter wannabe with a vengeful-angry-God complex: he bumps his victims off in ways that reflect the Seven Deadly Sins. Not a new idea; Vincent Price made two similarly-constructed movies in the '70s: "The Abominable Dr. Phibes," in which the inspiration is the ten curses of Pharaoh in the book of Exodus; and "Theater of Blood," in which Shakespeare's plays provide the motifs. ("Se7en" makes a nod in the direction of its predecessors by mentioning the "pound of flesh" associated with one of the murders.)

The difference is that the Price movies were jet-black comedies, while "Se7en" is a straightforward suspense thriller, and a relentlessly grim, gray, dark, rain-soaked one at that. It's technically well-made and unusually literate, drawing themes from Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, and medieval theology. And there's a strong echo of Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground": when the killer's lair is located, it's found to contain 2000 handwritten notebook journals of 250 pages each. (Quibbles: if he writes that much, when does he find time to do anything else... such as plan and execute fiendishly clever crimes? Also, we're told that none of the journals or entries are dated. As one who has kept a daily journal for ten years, I find that unlikely, especially since the killer is ultimately revealed to be even more, shall we say, detail-oriented than I am.)

The movie's ending (which I won't reveal here) is distressingly downbeat--and surprisingly so, as well. It leaves a nasty aftertaste. It could be argued that anything less would've been a cop-out, but it still was about as entertaining as a sucker punch. "The Silence of the Lambs" left us with Lecter on the loose, but at least there was salvation (the girl was rescued), redemption (the lambs were silenced), and retribution (the killer was dispatched without the incidental destruction of anyone else). By contrast, "Se7en," which offers none of the above, is easy to admire, but hard to enjoy.

"City of Lost Children" is a beautifully-realized if derivative dark fantasy in which a mad scientist named Krank, aided by a half-dozen clones, a midget woman, and a brain in a tank, abducts children to his offshore lab so he can steal their dreams. Seems he's unable to have any of his own. A sideshow strongman, played by a radiantly fit Ron Perlman, goes in search of his little brother, who has been taken by Krank's goons. Perlman, in another of his growing gallery of bizarre roles, is a perfect example of why I like character actors better than big-name stars. And how many languages does he speak, anyway? French here, Spanish (and English, of course) in "Cronos"; polyglot in "The Name of the Rose"; what next?

The strongman, named One, enlists the aid of Miette, a homeless, streetwise girl who, along with her fellow urchins, is part of a ring of thieves employed by a pair of sinister female Siamese twins named the Octopus. (Watch carefully how these evil twins smoke a cigarette. There are more weird characters per square inch in this flick than anywhere else outside a Heironymus Bosch painting.) Miette is played by Judith Villet, whose gonna-be-a-great-beauty looks, her air of intelligence and experience beyond her years, make her a sort of Gallic Natalie Portman.

Anyway, that's the plot: rescue little brother from the mad doctor. The images are the thing: with its rendering of a bleak, low-tech retro-future, "City" looks more like a Terry Gilliam movie than "Twelve Monkeys" does! And it slyly slips in ideas and images from other sources, to good effect: Krank himself is as much of the mad-doctor stereotype as is the character in "The Nightmare Before Christmas"; his outlandish electro-headgear is similar to that used in Disney's "Merlin Jones"; a nightmare on the loose swoops low along the ground through streets and alleys as a trail of green mist, improving on a similar image from "Bram Stoker's Dracula"; there's a confrontation in dreamland a la the "Elm Street" series; and while the idea of a brain in a tank isn't a new one, this is the first benign one I've ever seen. Familiar or not--and I'm thinking also of "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T"--"City of Lost Children" is still engaging, enjoyably weird, fantastic and funny, helped greatly by the fact that One and Miette are so endearing. The pace is a tad slower than it might have been. But this is, after all, a French movie.

When I think of the word "mutant" or "mutation," I think of a 2-headed calf, or of all those frogs that were being hatched a few years ago with too many legs, or too few. A kid who can freeze a cup of steaming coffee solid with a touch; a girl who can walk through walls; a woman who can control the weather... these aren't mutants. They're miracle workers.

Some of their powers are alarming: the chameleonic Mystique is a shapeshifter, the same category of being as a werewolf. Some of their appearances are disturbing: for all his mainstream religious faith and recitation of prayers, Nightcrawler looks like nothing so much as a high-Medieval European concept of a demon. And some of the "mutants" are hostile and dangerous; but in my long life, all of the hostile, dangerous people I've ever known--all of the people who used their gifts and talents for selfish or harmful purposes--were NON-mutants.

So what are we to make of, say, Iceman's chilling effects? If mutations are nature's way of adjusting to stimuli, what stimulus brought about this reaction? Or if mutations are simply random genetic misfires, what recessive genetic trait gave rise to this capability?

I look at the question from the point of view of one who rejects the "pure" scientific view of evolution: that life began by accident; that it (and we) developed completely at random; that it (and we) are simply biological phenomena devoid of any higher purpose or spiritual meaning. I favor the view variously referred to as "theistic evolution" or "intelligent design." Based on that viewpoint, I'd take a wildly unlikely talent such as Iceman's to be proof positive that God is up to something, and is doling out the equipment that'll be needed to cope with whatever it is that's coming.

But Iceman's capability is like the laser at the time of its invention in the early 1960s: it was an answer without a question. It took awhile to figure out the laser's usefulness in communications, surgery, etc. Similarly, the question presents itself: what is Iceman's gift FOR? and Storm's? and Mystique's? and Magneto's? and Pyro's? and so forth? What are nature and nature's God up to with these people? Why these gifts, and why these people?

At this time we have insufficient evidence to answer these questions. But it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Meantime, it's a good and appropriate thing that Nightcrawler introduces faith into the drama, and it's wise of the filmmakers not to caricature it.

When a movie delivers pretty much what I expect of it, I can't say it disappoints. Given that the title is "House of 1,000 Corpses" (H1KC), and that the director's name is Rob Zombie, one expects... what, exactly?...Right.

H1KC is an entry into the horror subgenre that could be called "Fear of Yahoos," wherein a carload of vacationing urbanites are beset by a clan of Hollywood's idea of country dwellers. This subgenre arguably traces its pedigree to the legends of Sawney Beane, and certainly has a 20th-century fountainhead in the career of Ed Gein. The granddaddy of the subgenre is, of course, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"; other entries include "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Race With the Devil." The nadir is probably "Razorback," while the most "respectable" example is "Deliverance." The previous entry H1KC most closely resembles is "Mother's Day."

As befits a movie directed by a musician (of sorts), H1KC looks and moves like a mid-'80s music video; its rapid-fire editing and surreal imagery also give it more than the occasional resemblance to "Natural Born Killers." H1KC also makes odd and occasionally surprising use of music: I certainly hadn't expected to hear from Betty Boop, and the movie does for "Brick House" what "Reservoir Dogs" did for "Stuck in the Middle with You."

The movie's nightmare landscape is littered with corrupted Americana: an evil clown, a TV horror host, a cross-country road trip, powerful handguns, urban legends, roadside kitsch, old movies, classic cars, fried chicken, and of course, loud rock and roll. And the center of the action is an American family (an insane one) gathered at their remote country home for a holiday celebration (Halloween, of course). (Several of the family members, as well as the evil clown, are named for characters once played by Groucho Marx. Compare, in "Mother's Day," the two insane sons named Ike and Adlai.)

This place swallows up everyone: cheerleaders, police, relatives of missing persons. How is it, one may ask, that such a crop (if "1,000 Corpses" is to be taken literally) can be amassed--such a huge field of white crosses planted--without anyone's having figured out that this vortex of missing persons is the end of the line? How is it that such ostentatious activities as huge nighttime bonfires have gone unnoticed, by both locals and investigators, for what must be years? How, indeed, do two such dorks as our "heroes" have girlfriends at all, much less cute and shapely ones? But these are questions that apply to the daylit world of logic. They don't cross over into the world of absurd nightmare, of live burial, of a tunnel lined with skeletons, of an evil doctor creating a superhuman army of the insane.

Like Captain Spaulding's roadside museum of madmen and murder, H1KC is itself a museum of horror cliches. Its sheer energy, fast pace, and high-spirited nastiness make it work to the extent that it does. It's beside the point to say that it's derivative, predictable, or overpoweringly unpleasant. Of course it is. So what's your point?

Bottom line: I liked it better than I expected. It's the most harrowing Halloween since Laurie Strode was a teenager.

Surprisingly enjoyable bad flickage. Sid Pink (may he rest in peace), the Danish auteur who served up "Reptilicus," presents "Solaris" on the cheap, more than a decade before the USSR's version. An evil, one-eyed alien brain in a cave on Uranus creates illusions based on what the astronauts are thinking. They keep thinking of lush forests and beautiful Scandinavian women, so where's the problem? Long as nobody thinks of Mr. Sta-Puft, they should be OK. I'm surprised The Duke doesn't show up, since John ("Look, I'm starring in yet another cheesy SF movie") Agar, just about the only non-(badly-)dubbed member of the cast, wears an embarrassed look that says: "I was in 'Sands of Iwo Jima' with John Wayne... SIGHHH..."

Now on DVD, double featured with "Invisible Invaders." Microwave the popcorn and enjoy.

In Venice-Long Beach, CA, a very young, sailor-suited Dennis Hopper gets involved with a mysterious young woman who may or may not be both a mermaid and a killer. The mystery ultimately is rather disappointingly rationalized, except insofar as the involvement of one occasionally-glimpsed person goes unexplained. Moody, quiet, eerie, and dreamlike; similar to "Carnival of Souls" in tone, though not quite a horror movie. Worth a look.