I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE (US/Canada - 2016) Written and directed by Osgood Perkins. Cast: Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss, Bob Balaban, Lucy Boynton, Erin Boyes, Brad Milne. (Unrated, 89 mins) A cold, stark, slow-burning mood piece that received accolades at this year's Toronto Film Festival where it was acquired by Netflix, I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE is the first released film by actor-turned writer/director Osgood Perkins (his first film, THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER, has been tied up in distribution limbo since 2015 and is due to be released in early 2017). The film feels very personal for Perkins, the son of legendary PSYCHO star Anthony Perkins and photographer Berry Berenson, and named after his actor grandfather Osgood Perkins, best known as the doomed mob boss toppled by Paul Muni's title character in the original 1932 version of SCARFACE. It's a story of lingering ghosts, both supernatural and psychological, and it's something that almost certainly carries emotional weight for Perkins after the traumatic loss of both of his parents, his father (to whom the film is dedicated), who died of AIDS in 1992, and his mother, who was on one of the planes flown into the World Trade Center on 9/11 nine years later. This is an uncompromising film that's unquestionably a singular, unique vision by its creator, made with no commercial consideration whatsoever. Unfortunately, that's also its downfall. From a plot perspective, you'll figure out the Shyamalanian twist five minutes in, unless you've never seen a movie before. That may be by design: Perkins doesn't seem particularly interested in telling a story as much as creating a mood and atmosphere. He succeeds for a while, but it makes for a hard sit, with 89 minutes feeling like four hours. This would've made a fine, eerie short film. As it is, it feels like about 15 minutes worth of material stretched out to an hour and a half, and ultimately, the emphasis on mood and the pervasive sense of dread only feels like stylistic smoke and mirrors, absurdly prolonging the obvious direction in which the flimsy narrative is headed at the most laborious pace imaginable.
Ruth Wilson (LUTHER, THE AFFAIR) stars as Lily, a hospice nurse hired by attorney Mr. Waxcap (Bob Balaban) to care for a client, famed horror novelist Iris Blum (the long-retired Paula Prentiss, who hasn't headlined a movie in over 30 years), who's in the latter stages of dementia. Arriving at Blum's isolated, rural Massachusetts home, the quiet, spinsterish Lily narrates the story and sets the dark tone by stating "I am 28 years old. I will never be 29." Early on, she makes a phone call and the phone cord is yanked by an unseen presence. 11 months go by and Lily has little to do but explore the old house as Iris sleeps most of the time, and when she's awake, constantly refers to Lily as "Polly." Lily assumes Polly is a long-absent daughter or loved one, but Waxcap says Iris has no children, and that Polly was the main character in her most famous novel, The Lady in the Walls. It's around this same time that Lily notices mold expanding over a spot on one of the walls as she begins reading the book, noticing strong parallels between the mindset of Polly and her own mental state after nearly a year in total seclusion from the outside world.
Perkins gives up the ghost--no pun intended--early on, with Lily's narration (done in a very exact, literary, and overly affected style by Wilson) stating "A house with a death in it can never be bought or sold...it can only be borrowed from the ghosts that have stayed behind," and "It's a terrible thing to look at oneself, and all the while see nothing." The voiceover is so omnipresent and the shots so photograph-still that PRETTY THING often feels like an audio book with visual accompaniment. The minimalist score (by Perkins' younger brother Elvis) and sound design showcase subtle rumblings and barely audible whispers that may or may not exist in Lily's head, and by the time Iris, in a moment of clarity, tells Lily "See yourself as others see you...even the prettiest things rot," the endgame is pretty apparent. Lily herself seems like an odd misfit lost in time, prone to exclamations like "Heavens to Betsy, no!" and chirpily talking to inanimate objects, like "There you are!" when she finds an old TV, and "Well! There's no need to be rude!" when it doesn't work. There's no middle ground with I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE. The absolute slowest of the post-Ti West slow-burn horror films, people will either connect with its emphasis on establishing a distant chilliness with little to nothing happening or they'll quickly grow bored with its predictable story and exhausted with Lily's stilted, forced narration. I'm in the latter group, and while I appreciate what Perkins was doing and it's great to see Prentiss again after all these years (she and husband Richard Benjamin are longtime friends of the Perkins family), the approach is ultimately off-putting and the effect deadening after about 25 minutes.
Made during the post-GODFATHER days when theaters were flooded with mob movies, the obscure Italian-U.S. co-production CRAZY JOE is a sufficiently entertaining but simplistic and superficial look at famed NYC gangster "Crazy Joe" Gallo, who was gunned down outside an Italian restaurant in 1972. The film opens in 1960, as Joe (Peter Boyle) and his older brother Richie (Rip Torn) are fed up with their status as low-level errand boys after years of busting their asses for powerful New York mobster Falco (Luther Adler). Branching out on their own incurs the wrath of Falco and the other bosses, not to mention the Boss of Bosses, Don Vittorio (Eli Wallach), a character based on Carlo Gambino. When Vittorio tells Falco to reach a compromise with the Gallo brothers, Falco instead orders a botched hit on them, which sets Joe off on a revenge spree that gets him ten years in prison. During this time, former Gallo associate Vince Coletti (Charles Cioffi) gets vocal in his political ambitions, which worries Vittorio, who unsuccessfully tries to talk Coletti into backing off and not bringing so much attention to the families.
Joe is eventually paroled in 1970 and is pulled back into "This Thing of Ours" as Don Vittorio talks him into a hit on Coletti, but Joe is already partnered up with a Harlem crime outfit led by Willy (Fred Williamson), a gangster he befriended in the joint, with the intention of removing Don Vittorio from his throne. Producer Dino De Laurentiis hired Italian journeyman Carlo Lizzani (THE LAST DAYS OF MUSSOLINI) to direct a mostly American cast (Italian actors like Fausto Tozzi, Guido Leontini, and others are dubbed by the usual crew of Eurocult voice actors) in a film shot entirely in NYC, and it's a weird mix of actors and genres that makes the film consistently interesting if not altogether successful. The script by Lewis John Carlino (THE MECHANIC) changes many of the key figures' names and glosses over the details in almost bullet-pointed, Cliffs Notes fashion. Second-billed Paula Prentiss plays Joe's moll and in her few scenes, she has nothing to do but cry and sob and scrrech some variation on "You're in danger, Joe!" and "They'll come after you, Joe!" and "Are you crazy, Joe?" Her big scene near the end with Boyle is just a soapy, florid embarrassment for both actors and the film an uneven fusion of old-school gangster movie and then-in-vogue blaxploitation.
CRAZY JOE is obviously no GODFATHER (hell, it's not even THE VALACHI PAPERS), but it's a decent time killer, with enough action and an unusual enough cast that it shouldn't have fallen off the face of the planet like it has. It aired in prime-time on ABC just a year later in 1975, it never got a US release on home video in any format, not even on VHS, and even syndicated, late-night TV appearances were rare (it most recently surfaced for one airing a few months ago on ThisTV, a network that constantly looks like it's streaming using dial-up). You also get Michael V. Gazzo (the same year as his Oscar-nominated turn as Frankie Five Angels in THE GODFATHER PART II), Carmine Caridi (THE GODFATHER PART II, PRINCE OF THE CITY), future FANTASY ISLAND star Herve Villechaize as an unlikely member of the Gallo crew, RAGING BULL producer Peter Savage, Cornelia Sharpe (SERPICO), Louis Guss (THE GODFATHER, MOONSTRUCK), Sam J. Coppola (SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER), Dan Resin (CADDYSHACK's Dr. Beeper) as an FBI agent, and, just on the verge of blowing up as The Fonz on HAPPY DAYS, which premiered on ABC a month before CRAZY JOE's release, Henry Winkler in a prominent supporting role as a loyal Gallo capo who becomes Joe's right-hand man once he's out of prison. (R, 100 mins)
