Mainlining Christmas

This will most likely be a short review, as well as an incomplete one. I typically write up these reviews the day after watching a movie (if not the same day), but I held off on Death is a Caress for a couple reasons. First, I was busy, but second... this isn't a Christmas movie (at least not using most definitions). I didn't put it on as such, and I've never heard anyone claim otherwise (though I haven't checked, either, so who knows?). The movie only features one sequence explicitly set during the holidays - New Year's Eve, specifically. It's about ten minutes long and is set around two-thirds of the way through the film. My initial instinct wasn't to write it up, at all. But as I digested the movie, my opinion shifted. The holiday's use as a thematic device is rather interesting and worth exploring. I'd still hesitate to call this a Christmas (or New Year's) movie, but it's certainly relevant to the topic of this blog. First some backgroun...

 Ah, November. Time to celebrate American democracy, at least in memoriam. And, of course, time to take a breather between kids extorting candy from us to kids extorting toys. Though around here we need no such respite. Christmas never really ends here, and so it never begins. That's why you won't catch us whining about Fred Meyer selling Santa ornaments midway through October. For us, it's always Christmas, at least as far as content is concerned. Speaking of October, we continued the tradition from last year of posting horror reviews through the month, albeit not as consistently. We did, however, manage to exceed 50%, if only barely, by posting reviews sixteen days last month. So... I don't know... be impressed or something. I'm certainly not committing to maintaining that pace this month. However, I will be posting new reviews when time allows, prioritizing material where Christmas isn't the main draw. I'm talking about movies that don't pass our usua...

So long as you're interested in the journey, no matter how unsatisfying the destination proves to be, the majority of The Legend of Hell House makes for an enjoyably quirky haunted house flick from a time when science (or at least semi-respectable pseudoscience) was considered compatible with the supernatural. To put that another way, this is the kind of thing Ghostbusters was parodying, a world where psychic phenomenon is considered commonplace and spiritual questions can be studied scientifically and associated problems potentially addressed with technology. That's one of several elements that make this entertaining, if not good. Likewise, the story (adapted by the legendary Richard Matheson from his own novel), populates the cast entirely with characters who are professionals in their field. This means the characters reacting (or through the first half of the movie mostly not reacting) to what's occurring around them have incentives to see this play out and unravel the m...

I'll grant it'd be a stretch to call this a Christmas movie. Only the last fifteen minutes or so are set at Christmas (and even then there's a little ambiguity surrounding the timeline), but that sequence is both thematically rich and interesting as a case study in how the holidays were viewed in the 1920s. More than that, if you think I'm above grasping at any opportunity to discuss a movie made by F. W. Murnau, the director of Nosferatu, through the prism of holiday media, you're seriously mistaken. In some ways, Faust is an even more impressive accomplishment than Nosferatu. The design and composition of some of these shots is incredible. Make up effects, set decoration, lighting, and camera angles are used to create some gorgeous sequences that - in the expressionist tradition - warp reality into something new. There were moments when actors almost looked more like stop-motion marionettes or animated figures than real people. Likewise, the balance between shadow...

Let's kick this off with a disclaimer. In fact, let's do a slew of disclaimers. I haven't seen the first Maniac Cop movie, nor have I seen the 1980 movie, Maniac (which I understand to be a different series, but I'm guessing there's some sort of tenuous thematic or conceptual connection, given both were directed by William Lustig). More than that, the Maniac Cop movies are drifting either into or adjacent to the exploitation genre, an area where my experience is limited. If you're a fan of that stuff, you're probably not going to think much of my opinion (though, for what it's worth, I do have a few nice things to say about aspects of this movie). But the corollary of that is if you're not a fan - or especially if you have no idea what I'm talking about or who William Lustig is - you're probably better off taking my advice and steering clear of this. For the most part, I found this boring, which is a surprising complaint given this movie is a...

Of the four Christmas or New Year's themed installments in the Blumhouse/Hulu "Into the Dark" series of holiday movies, this was my least favorite, though I should qualify that by acknowledging I'm not the target audience for this either way you slice its hybrid queer slasher genres. That said, skimming the Letterboxd reviews implies this was divisive among that audience, with some loving the exploitation angle and some finding the story and characters dull. Hopefully some context will help you determine where you'd fall in that continuum. At least according to my reading, the point of Midnight Kiss is metatextual, which is to say what the movie is  is more significant to understanding it than what it's about. The movie is essentially using the classic slasher formula, framing, and perhaps most importantly gaze to tell a story about gay men. Rather than exploiting female bodies for a predominantly straight male audience, Midnight Kiss focuses on male bodies fo...