The grim rural Alabama indie noir INTO THE ASHES seems to have all the ingredients for a compelling story that's heavy on the bleak hopelessness, but it just never quite manages to get its shit together and become the next BLUE RUIN or BAD TURN WORSE. Nick Brenner (YELLOWSTONE's Luke Grimes) lives a quiet life doing repairs for a local furniture company, but his past is about to come back and bite him in the ass in the form of Sloan (Frank Grillo). Just paroled after serving a several-year stretch because Nick hung him out to dry, Sloan wants revenge, and he doesn't care that Nick has cleaned up his act and built a new life--including buying a home with Sloan's money--with Tara (Marguerite Moreau). Sloan and two associates, Charlie (David Cade) and Bruce (Scott Peat), with the help of a sleazy private eye who learns the hard way that he shouldn't gouge Sloan for more money, end up at Nick's house while he's away for the weekend working on restoring a boat with his buddy Sal (James Badge Dale). When Nick returns, he's greeted by Sloan and his crew, who inform him that they killed Tara before shooting him twice in the back and leaving him for dead. He wakes up handcuffed to a hospital bed under the steely glare of Sheriff Frank (Robert Taylor, taking his LONGMIRE act for another spin), who also happens to be his father-in-law and always knew he was no good. Nick manages to escape from custody when Frank leaves him with his idiot deputy (Brady Smith), and teams up with Sal to go after Sloan, Charlie, and Bruce.
It shouldn't take much to make something like INTO THE ASHES function as an engrossing thriller, but writer/director Aaron Harvey (best known for the dismal 2011 Tarantino knockoff CATCH .44, one of Bruce Willis' earliest forays into the world of straight-to-VOD) keeps the pace at a lugubrious crawl, and repeatedly errs in having significant events take place offscreen, only to have the characters talk about them after. That includes a late-film POV switch from Nick to Frank, who arrives on the scene of a motel shootout, sending him on a search for his son-in-law. Harvey eventually shows what happened in a later flashback, but by that point it doesn't matter, since we know who was killed and whatever minimal momentum was building has been completely quashed by a director trying to be stylish. Grillo (among the team of producers, along with his buddy Joe Carnahan) is an effective bad guy, but he's absent for long stretches, a tell-tale sign that they only had him for a few days. Grimes is sufficiently glum and dour but he remains a blank slate throughout, and only Taylor manages to create a genuinely interesting character, which Harvey of course diminishes by giving him pretentious voiceovers referencing religious parables about Samson in reference to Nick. INTO THE ASHES would've been a lot better if it just told a straightforward story instead of incessantly stalling itself and fumbling around with Creative Writing 101-level subtext in an attempt to be "deep." (Unrated, 97 mins)
COLD BLOOD (France/Ukraine - 2019)
A thriller so blandly by-the-numbers that it actually fades from your memory while you're watching it, COLD BLOOD could almost qualify as Luc Besson fan fiction on the part of debuting director Frederic Petitjean, right down to the hiring of cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, a frequent Besson collaborator going back to 1990's LA FEMME NIKITA. But the real Besson worship is evidenced by the presence of Jean Reno in what amounts to an alternate universe incarnation of his Leon character from Besson's 1994 favorite THE PROFESSIONAL, only here he's called Henry. The film opens in the snowy nowhere of the Pacific Northwest wilderness, where Melody (Sarah Lind) crashes her snowmobile. Bleeding and unconscious, she's found and nursed back to health by Henry, who lives in quiet solitude in a cabin on the lake. Flashbacks reveal Henry is actually a hit man in hiding after whacking a billionaire CEO (Jean-Luc Olivier) in NYC ten months earlier. The CEO was actually born in the nearest town in Washington state and chose to be buried there (of all the places for Henry to hide), which prompts irate local detective Kappa (BACKDRAFT 2's Joe Anderson) to investigate the murder himself. Other characters exist on the fringe, like an assassin (David Gyasi) hired by the CEO's sinister chief aide (Francois Guetary) and a "surprise" involving Melody that will only surprise you if COLD BLOOD is the first movie you've ever seen.
A French-Ukrainian co-production shot in Kiev, COLD BLOOD never quite looks or feels "American," starting with most of the Ukrainian supporting cast being unconvincingly dubbed. But there's also a ton of awkward, stilted dialogue like Kappa's wizened old partner Davies (Ihor Ciszkewycz) asking him why he transferred from NYC to the middle of nowhere and being told, in a way that suggests a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma that's covered in pretentious bullshit, "Maybe I wanted to get lost." Or a head-scratcher of an exchange that actually sounds like Petitjean fishing for a distribution deal, where Davies asks Kappa "They got Netflix in New York?" and Kappa glowers "You see the things I see in New York City, you won't need Netflix." Or a floridly overwritten scene between Kappa and the CEO's estranged, dementia-stricken ex-wife (DOWNTON ABBEY's Samantha Bond, also Miss Moneypenny in the Pierce Brosnan-era 007 films), who's prone to surprisingly verbose purple prose and mellifluous exposition dumps for someone who can't remember a damn thing. For his part, Reno is Reno. At first, it's nice to see him in lethal assassin mode again, but he looks tired and bored, and after watching COLD BLOOD, one could hardly blame him. (R, 91 mins)
ANGEL OF MINE (Australia/US - 2019) Directed by Kim Farrant. Written by Luke Davies and David Regal. Cast: Noomi Rapace, Yvonne Strahovski, Luke Evans, Richard Roxburgh, Pip Miller, Tracy Mann, Rob Collins, Rachel Gordon, Finn Little, Annika Whiteley, Indy Serafin, Mirko Grillini. (R, 98 mins) The Australian-made Lionsgate VOD pickup ANGEL OF MINE, a remake of a 2008 French film of the same name, is a throwback of sorts to the "(blank)-from-Hell" thrillers that were so prevalent in the '90s and will sufficiently scratch that itch if you're nostalgic for the days of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE and SINGLE WHITE FEMALE. 25 years ago, this probably would've starred Sharon Stone and Nicole Kidman and been the #1 movie in America for at least a couple of weeks. But in 2019, it skips theaters and stars Noomi Rapace--forever the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO--and THE HANDMAID'S TALE's Yvonne Strahovski. Rapace has very quietly built a solid resume of strong performances in VOD and Netflix streaming fare (WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY, CLOSE) and she's at the top of her game here as Lizzie, the divorced mother of ten-year-old Thomas (Finn Little), who spends every other week with her as part of the joint custody she shares with ex-husband Mike (Luke Evans). But Thomas doesn't like being around his mother ("He feels your darkness," Mike admonishes) and Mike has petitioned for full custody. Seven years earlier, their newborn daughter Rosie died in a tragic hospital fire that left significant burn scars on Lizzie's back. She spent a year in a mental institution and hasn't been able to pick up the pieces. Her therapist thinks she's gone off her meds, she can't focus on her job at an upscale cosmetics store, and things start spiraling downward when she takes Thomas to his friend Jeremy's (Indy Serafin) birthday party and sees Jeremy's seven-year-old sister Lola (Annika Whiteley). She instantly senses that Lola is her daughter and becomes obsessed with her, slowly ingratiating herself into the lives of Lola's wealthy parents, Claire (Strahovski) and Bernard (Richard Roxburgh), first by pretending to be interested in buying the house they've just put up for sale, then by tagging along on a trip to an ice skating rink where she inadvertently causes Lola to fall and hit her head. Lizzie also starts lingering outside Claire's and Bernard's house, peering through the privacy fence, hanging out backstage at Lola's ballet recital and distracting her during her performance, and eventually breaking into the house and hiding in a closet.
While Bernard tries to give her the benefit of the doubt ("She lost her baby!"), Claire sees the fixation and doesn't ignore the red flags, warning the clearly unstable Lizzie to stay away from them. Of course, she doesn't, and even with an intervention arranged by Mike, her therapist, and her parents (Pip Miller, Tracy Mann), Lizzie refuses to listen to anyone and insists Lola is her Rosie and will stop at nothing to prove it. Directed by Kim Farrant (2015's little-seen STRANGERLAND), ANGEL OF MINE strains credulity the more it goes on, the pieces don't always add up (Roxburgh's Bernard being particularly clueless), and it ends in a way that's a little more restrained and sympathetic than aficionados of these sorts of thrillers would prefer. But it's carried entirely by the powerhouse performances of Rapace and Strahovski, the former being one of the best actresses around these days, though she still hasn't quite cracked the American A-list market beyond starring in Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS.
Nevertheless, ANGEL OF MINE is an essential for Rapace fans, as she fearlessly dives into this (including the most uncomfortable and cringe-worthy post-blind date hookup in recent memory), and wisely never overplays the hysteria or careens out of control on the crazy train. Lizzie is a profoundly sad and troubled woman who's crossing lines in increasingly unacceptable ways but still manages to elicit sympathy for her unimaginable loss (Rapace is just heartbreaking when she's in the middle of a tearful meltdown and insists to Claire "I used to be funny!"). Farrant and screenwriters Luke Davies (LION) and David Regal (a TV vet who logged time on RUGRATS, THE WILD THORNBERRYS, and ACCORDING TO JIM, among other shows) allow Rapace to create a fully-developed character instead of a stalker caricature in the way she means no harm to Claire's family--she just knows in her heart that Lola is her child and wants her back and she won't be deterred by threats of a restraining order or the police. A cut above the usual Lionsgate/Grindstone VOD fare, ANGEL OF MINE is generally well-done for this sort of thing, despite a weak and improbable wrap-up. The obligatory "big reveal" in the climax won't really surprise any seasoned movie watcher, but Rapace and Strahovski put forth some valiant effort in selling it.
Directed by Jimmy Sangster. Written by Jimmy Sangster and Michael Syson. Cast: Judy Geeson, Joan Collins, Ralph Bates, Peter Cushing, James Cossins, Gillian Lind, Brian Grellis, John Bown. (PG, 94 mins) A minor late-period Hammer thriller that's rarely referenced today, 1972's middling FEAR IN THE NIGHT gets by almost entirely on atmosphere alone, set in an eerily empty boarding school that allows director/co-writer Jimmy Sangster to maximize the sense of isolation felt by the film's terrorized heroine. But the story is so rote, predictable, and ultimately silly that the payoff isn't really worth the buildup. Recovering from what's been unfairly deemed a nervous breakdown (someone slipped her a mickey in a restaurant) followed closely by an attack by a one-armed man that no one around her believes really happened, Peggy (Judy Geeson) leaves her job as a caregiver for elderly Mrs. Beamish (Gillian Lind) when she marries teacher Robert (Ralph Bates) after a whirlwind romance. Robert moves them to an isolated rural area outside of London where he's accepted a position at a boarding school run by headmaster Carmichael (Peter Cushing). But right away, something is off and naive Peggy never does quite pick up on it: there doesn't seem to be any other teachers aside from Robert, and she keeps hearing voices in classrooms but there's no sign of any students. Carmichael--who has a prosthetic left arm--acts weird around her, she gets a strange vibe from his much-younger wife Molly (Joan Collins), and she's eventually attacked again by a one-armed man, but an incredulous, dismissive Robert tells her to "sleep on it" before talking her out of calling the police.
Hammer fans will recognize recycled elements from other Sangster-scripted women-in-peril thrillers like SCREAM OF FEAR (1961), PARANOIAC (1963), NIGHTMARE (1964), and CRESCENDO (1970), with some dashes of classics like GASLIGHT and DIABOLIQUE for good measure. But some of the big third-act reveals are so obvious that you'll figure out that someone is trying to drive Peggy insane and frame her for a murder long before Peggy does, especially with Robert's behavior and the presence of Collins, cast radically against type as a scheming, manipulative bitch. Robert's confession to Peggy about why he's actually at the school and what he's actually doing for Carmichael is utter nonsense, and the ultimate trick pulled off by Carmichael just comes off as one contrivance too many. Despite its myriad flaws, FEAR IN THE NIGHT is a reasonably enjoyable Hammer suspense thriller if approached with shrugged shoulders and an appropriately diminished level of expectation. Geeson (best known for co-starring with Sidney Poitier in 1967's TO SIR, WITH LOVE and more recently emerging from semi-retirement to appear in Rob Zombie's THE LORDS OF SALEM and 31) turns in an appealing performance even though you'll wish she wasn't so meek, passive, and slow on the uptake. It's obvious from the moment he's introduced sinisterly grimacing while adjusting his prosthetic arm like Dr. Strangelove that Cushing's Carmichael can't possibly be the villain, and with what's essentially a four-character story, it doesn't take much sleuthing on the part of the viewer to figure out what's going on and who's responsible.
Having written trailblazing Hammer titles like 1957's THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and 1958's HORROR OF DRACULA among many others, Sangster saw his short-lived and largely negatively-received directing career end with FEAR IN THE NIGHT, which followed 1970's THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN and 1971's LUST FOR A VAMPIRE. All three of Sangster's films starred Ralph Bates, FEAR being the last of several unsuccessful attempts at grooming the young actor to be Hammer horror's heir apparent, selected to help nab the youth market as Cushing was pushing 60 and Christopher Lee was nearing 50. Hammer and Bates parted ways by the time FEAR IN THE NIGHT was barely released in the US in 1974, and it marked the only film to team Bates with Cushing, the legend he was supposed to succeed. The film is old-fashioned enough and completely lacking in the lurid sex and skin in which Hammer was beginning to indulge that, aside from the hairstyles and the fashions and one shouted "Bastard!," it could've been made a decade earlier.
Ralph Bates and Jimmy Sangster
on the set of FEAR IN THE NIGHT
For all its stale twists and predictability issues, FEAR IN THE NIGHT (just out on Blu-ray from Scream Factory because physical media is dead), is probably Sangster's most accomplished directorial effort from a technical standpoint. The money shot that concludes the opening credits sequence is legitimately creepy, there's some unusual cutting techniques that are well-handled, and the use of all the open space in the hallways and abandoned rooms at the school indicates that he may have caught some of the early hits of the Italian giallo craze. But without the shocking violence and the innovative style of a Dario Argento, FEAR IN THE NIGHT can't really compete in that field, and the story is so old-hat that most of the "surprise" twists are really just hoary cliches. Sangster (1927-2011) would soon leave Hammer behind, relocating to Hollywood by late 1972, where he became a busy television writer, only periodically dabbling in big-screen horror (he wrote 1978's THE LEGACY and 1980's PHOBIA) while focusing on TV shows like BANACEK, IRONSIDE, CANNON, MCCLOUD, MOVIN' ON, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, WONDER WOMAN, and B.J. AND THE BEAR.
Gary Oldman really should have better things to do after his DARKEST HOUR Oscar triumph than dropping in for Bruce Willis duty on a straight-to-VOD Lionsgate/Grindstone clunker like KILLERS ANONYMOUS. So should Jessica Alba, who has even less to do here than Oldman, yet both are prominently displayed on the cut-and-paste poster art for this utterly dreadful dark comedy that squanders them and an interesting premise and crosses its fingers hoping that frantically piling on one nonsensical twist after another in the final act will gaslight you into thinking you're watching a more clever movie than you are (and just take a moment and look at that poster--it looks like the graphic design team had a 5:00 pm deadline and started working on it at 4:57). KILLERS ANONYMOUS opens with a prologue where Oldman's unnamed character (a mystery man known only as "The Man") is summoned from Los Angeles to London by underling Jade (Alba) to assess a botched assassination attempt on a popular US senator (Sam Hazeldine) who's a rising star with presidential aspirations. Jade is killed during the opening credits (and that's it for Alba, who couldn't have worked on this for more than a day) by Krystal (co-writer Elizabeth Morris), who heads straight to a meeting of Killers Anonymous, a support group for assassins dealing with job-related stress and burnout. It's a potentially amusing idea, but once everyone arrives--there's also group leader Jo (MyAnna Buring); player Leandro (Michael Socha); mild-mannered Calvin (Tim McInnerny); sensitive Ben (Elliot James Langridge); 'fookin' 'ell, mate!" LOCK STOCK knockoff rage case Markus (top-billed Tommy Flanagan); and new member Alice (EMPIRE's Rhyon Nicole Brown), a mysterious American who's hesitant to say much--the film stops dead in its tracks as director/co-writer Martin Owen (LET'S BE EVIL) gives each of the characters their own long monologue about who they are and what brought them to KA.
This goes on for about an hour, intermittently broken up by frequent bitching about quiet Alice by resident loudmouths Markus and Krystal, and while it might be a nice acting class exercise for the cast, it doesn't make for a very engaging film. Owen occasionally cuts away to Morgan (Isabelle Allen), a teenage runaway who's hiding in a crawlspace and eavesdropping on everything, and to a grimacing Oldman, whose enigmatic "The Man" is positioned on a nearby rooftop listening in on the bugged session while on the phone counseling a troubled killer (Suki Waterhouse) back in L.A. Not unlike a deadening mash-up of early Guy Ritchie, SMOKIN' ACES, and THE ICEMAN COMETH, the pointless and self-indulgent KILLERS ANONYMOUS is an absolute endurance test that doesn't have a single clever or even remotely amusing moment in its 96 excruciating minutes, which is pretty tough to accomplish considering the offbeat black comedy potential of a support group for assassins. Your first inclination would be to think that this must be some unreleasable dud that was shot four or five years ago and is only now being dusted off because of Oldman's DARKEST HOUR awards run. Nope...production began in July 2018, a good three months after the Oscars. Gary Oldman showed up on the set of KILLERS ANONYMOUS a newly-anointed Academy Award-winner. Did he lose a bet? Was his family being held hostage? Was he choking in a restaurant and Owen was there to successfully administer the Heimlich, making Oldman feel obligated to do him a solid in return? What is Gary Oldman doing in this movie? What is Jessica Alba doing in this movie? Hell, I don't even know what Tommy Flanagan is doing in this movie. (R, 96 mins)
ASTRONAUT (Canada - 2019)
It's hard to watch ASTRONAUT and not think that it might exist in some alternate post-CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND where an elderly Roy Neary is still watching the skies. That's because Richard Dreyfuss stars in this slight but sincere Canadian drama from debuting writer/director Shelagh McLeod. Dreyfuss is Angus Stewart, a 75-year-old retired civil engineer, astronomy enthusiast, and recent widower who's been forced to sell his home and move in with his daughter Molly (Krista Bridges), son-in-law Jim (Lyriq Bent), and adoring young grandson Barney (Richie Lawrence) after recurring TIAs and a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation and angina. Though Barney loves having him around and learning about space, his presence causes tension between between Molly and Jim, so he reluctantly agrees to move into a nursing home after Molly finds him in the midst of another mini-stroke. Though he befriends other residents--including a flamboyant Art Hindle and Graham Greene as a partially paralyzed stroke survivor--the irascible Angus quickly grows bored with the rigidity of the facility's director (Mimi Kuzyk), and at Barney's suggestion, enters himself in an online lottery created by Elon Musk-like multi-billionaire Marcus Brown (Colm Feore), where the winner gets a seat on Brown's ultimate dream project: the first commercial space flight. The age cut-off is 65, so Angus simply shaves off a decade and divulges nothing about his worsening health situation. And of course, he makes the cut.
A film aimed at senior audiences who might balk at all the R-rated talk and geriatric threesomes in Clint Eastwood's THE MULE, ASTRONAUT is corny, maudlin and shamelessly manipulative. But Dreyfuss admirably resists his innately hammy impulses and turns in a heartfelt performance as a man who knows the end is near and just wants one shot at his lifelong dream. There's certainly a strong argument to be made that everything that unfolds is just a fantasy of dying man, and an attempt at suspense in the third act where Angus' expertise in engineering helps avert a potential disaster for Brown is a little too hokey, but this is really all about Dreyfuss. He shows a genuine camaraderie with young Lawrence and his scenes with Bridges have a realism to them that will resonate with anyone who's lost a parent and knows the other doesn't have much time left. ASTRONAUT loses its way a little in the home stretch, but it's the kind of film that probably would've been a minor sleeper hit of the STRAIGHT STORY sort in the late '90s. And it gives Dreyfuss--last seen embarrassing himself by playing a deranged criminal mountain man like the love child of Walter Brennan and Strother Martin in the dismal Gina Carano actioner DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF--a worthy late-career dramatic lead. Call it MR. HOLLAND GOES TO SPACE. (Unrated, 97 mins)
ANGEL HAS FALLEN (US - 2019) Directed by Ric Roman Waugh. Written by Robert Mark Kamen, Matt Cook and Ric Roman Waugh. Cast: Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Danny Huston, Nick Nolte, Jada Pinkett Smith, Piper Perabo, Lance Reddick, Tim Blake Nelson, Joseph Millson, Ori Pfeffer, Rocci-Boy Williams, Michael Landes. (R, 121 mins) The third entry in a franchise so ridiculous that the only thing preventing Donald Trump from offering Gerard Butler a cabinet position is a presumed inability to correctly pronounce "Gerard," ANGEL HAS FALLEN dials down the raging "America! Fuck yeah!" boner of its two predecessors--2013's OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN and 2016's LONDON HAS FALLEN--which proved to be surprisingly popular mash-ups of the Cannon jingoism of the '80s with the dogshit CGI of the '10s. This time, Mike Banning (Butler), the head of Secret Service detail for OLYMPUS House Speaker, LONDON vice president and now President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), is in the running for a cushy D.C. desk job as a reward for his years of risking life and limb but is battling PTSD, chronic migraines, back pain, and a secret painkiller addiction that he's kept from his wife Leah (Piper Perabo, replacing Radha Mitchell). While on a routine detail on a presidential fishing trip in Pennsylvania, Trumbull's entire Secret Service team is wiped out by a drone attack, with Banning and the president barely escaping with their lives, the latter winding up in ICU in a coma. Banning awakens to find himself handcuffed to his hospital bed and informed by Secret Service director Gentry (Lance Reddick) and FBI Special Agent Thompson (Jada Pinkett Smith) that he's under arrest for the attempted assassination of the president and the premeditated murder of nearly two dozen Secret Service agents. His fingerprints and DNA were found in a van used to house the bat-like drones, and they've uncovered a secret bank account in his name with $10 million traced back to Russia.
With Trumbull incapacitated, Vice President Kirby (Tim Blake Nelson) is sworn in as acting president and, seeking revenge against the apparent Russian plot to assassinate Trumbull, immediately announces a return to the use of paramilitary contractors, namely Salient, a company owned by Wade Jennings (Danny Huston), Banning's old Army buddy who was really hoping that Banning could talk the anti-contractor Trumbull into offering him a lucrative deal. Meanwhile, Banning can't convince anyone he's been set up, and when Salient mercenaries take down his prisoner transport, he manages to escape and make his way to the isolated, rural West Virginia makeshift compound of his estranged father Clay (Nick Nolte), a grizzled, paranoid, anti-government mountain man who was so haunted by his time in Vietnam that he left his wife and young Mike and went off the grid. Realizing he's been set up by his old friend--and perhaps someone more powerful pulling the strings--and is now the most wanted fugitive in America, Banning reluctantly bonds with and gets some help from Clay before heading back to the hospital in Pennsylvania in an attempt to save the president's life and prove his innocence once and for all.
The last time Morgan Freeman played the US president was in 1998's asteroid-headed-toward-Earth opus DEEP IMPACT, and that was probably a more plausible film than ANGEL HAS FALLEN. The villainy of Wade is obvious from the outset, since he's played by Danny Huston, but the mid-film reveal of the real string-puller will only be a surprise if you've never seen a movie before. But relatively speaking, ANGEL is a bit less cartoonish than the two films that came before it, and is refreshingly devoid of Banning's smart-ass quips clanging to the ground, such as OLYMPUS' "Let's play a few rounds of Fuck Off...you're it!" and LONDON's "Why don't you boys pack up your shit and go back to Fuckheadistan?" That doesn't mean it's a gritty political thriller, but director and former stuntman Ric Roman Waugh (FELON, SNITCH, SHOT CALLER) has a knack for solid action and suspense sequences, including a striking late-film shootout over multiple stories overlooking a hospital lobby. There's also some--but not much--attempt at timely, nudging commentary with Banning being accused of Russian collusion and one key character being a dead ringer for (at press time and subject to change at any moment) Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, which should guarantee that actor's casting in the inevitable HBO miniseries chronicling the Trump presidency.
NOLTE!
Look, like the entire HAS FALLEN trilogy, ANGEL is dumb. But unlike OLYMPUS, it doesn't show a series of establishing second-unit shots of the Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, and the White House accompanied by the caption "Washington, D.C." (it was shot at London's Pinewood Studios and in Bulgaria, with the interstate highways of Pennsylvania and West Virginia looking strangely Eastern European). And it is amazing how Banning has managed to have the kind of career he's had, being the human shield for two presidents, with no one ever finding out about his crazy, off-the-grid, government-hating dad, or how every new-looking truck he manages to steal while on the run is somehow lacking in GPS or anyone reporting it stolen, or how Salient goons manage to get into Banning's house despite cops, Feds, and the media camped right out front. It is what it is, and the digital effects by the Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX are as amateurish as ever, but Butler does his thing, Freeman's dignified presidential gravitas comes natural and is curiously comforting, and Huston is as smug and sneering as ever, which is the reason you hire Danny Huston. But never mind all that. What's really key in making ANGEL HAS FALLEN the most entertaining of the trilogy so far is Nolte. The 78-year-old living legend doesn't turn up until the midway point, but from his first appearance, he steals the film from everyone and instantly reminds you that he's a goddamn national treasure. Notoriously eccentric enough that his casting as a grizzled old mountain man seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Nolte gives this everything he's got, reveling in some hilarious one-liners ("You're welcome!") and back-and-forth bantering with Butler ("What is this, your manifesto?" Banning asks when he sees a stack of papers on Clay's table). Clay delivers an emotional, gut-wrenching monologue about how he felt chewed up and spit out by his country after his time in Vietnam that's so good that I wouldn't be surprised if Nolte wrote it himself. ANGEL HAS FALLEN is pretty standard as far as these formulaic things go, but it comes alive and steps up its game whenever Nolte is onscreen. When it's all over, you might ask yourself if every movie could benefit from having a madman-bearded Nick Nolte muttering, grumbling, and being a conspiratorial, cantankerous, and shotgun-toting old curmudgeon. The outtakes on the eventual Blu-ray have to be gold.
THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (UK - 1970; US release 1971) Directed by Jimmy Sangster. Written by Jeremy Burnham and Jimmy Sangster. Cast: Ralph Bates, Kate O'Mara, Veronica Carlson, Dennis Price, Jon Finch, Dave Prowse, Joan Rice, Bernard Archard, Stephen Turner, Graham James, Neil Wilson, James Hayter, James Cossins, Glenys O'Brien, George Belbin. (R, 95 mins) One of the least-loved films in the Hammer horror cycle, 1970's THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN was intended as a reboot of their FRANKENSTEIN series as part of a calculated effort to skew toward a younger and more hip audience. By this time at the dawn of the '70s, audience interest was waning and Hammer decided to shake things up, with their general feeling being that 48-year-old Christopher Lee and 57-year-old Peter Cushing--the faces of "Hammer horror"--were starting to get on in years, relatively speaking. Cushing had just co-starred in THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, the first of the so-called "Karnstein trilogy," a film that represented a sort-of turning point for Hammer in that it went all-in on excessive gore and gratuitous nudity from Ingrid Pitt and the female cast members. But when it came time for the follow-up to 1969's FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, Hammer opted to head in a different direction, ditching Cushing to make a desperate grab for the youth market and placing most of their hopes on the shoulders of one Ralph Bates. A busy British TV actor (most notably appearing as Caligula in the 1968 six-episode ITV series THE CAESARS), Bates was already being groomed as Hammer horror's heir apparent when he was cast in 1970's TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, which, in its earliest stages, wasn't even supposed to feature Christopher Lee's Dracula, instead focusing on Bates as Lord Courtley, a Satanist disciple of the vampire. Lee was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of the DRACULA series and made no secret of his feelings to anyone who would listen. Nevertheless, it was at some point decided that he had to be in it, so the script was hastily rewritten to have Courtley supernaturally transform into Dracula, thus reducing Bates' role in the film to make way for Lee. The 30-year-old Bates took one for the team, and was rewarded by being made the new Victor Frankenstein in the same year's THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN, replacing Cushing as part of Hammer's new youth-driven direction. This didn't seem to bother Cushing in the slightest, as he paid a visit to the set and even posed for some publicity shots with Bates. Perhaps he was as tired of playing Dr. Frankenstein as Lee was of playing Dracula, but just wasn't such a surly pain in the ass about it.
Ralph Bates (1940-1991)
THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN was the directing debut of veteran Hammer screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, a key figure who was instrumental in establishing the studio as the UK's premier House of Horror, having scripted their first three Cushing/Lee teamings: 1957's THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, 1958's HORROR OF DRACULA, and 1959's THE MUMMY, among many others. Sangster would ultimately prove to be a better writer than a director, quickly bailing on his short-lived directing career after just three films--all of which starred Ralph Bates--to return to his better-suited screenwriting occupation. A loose remake of THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN again tells the Frankenstein origin story, beginning with Bates' sociopathic Victor in school, where he's introduced showing up a harumphing professor and and manipulating him into believing he's having a heart attack. When his rich father Baron Frankenstein (George Belbin) refuses to pay for Victor to attend medical school, Victor rigs his father's shotgun to blow up in his face the next time he goes hunting. With the Baron out of the way, Victor inherits Castle Frankenstein, leaving it in the care of 16-year-old servant and the Baron's sexual plaything Alys (Kate O'Mara) while he goes off to university in Vienna. Six years later, Victor and his friend Wilhelm (Graham James) return to the castle, where Victor grows obsessed with reanimating the dead and assembling a man out of body parts collected by a team of husband-and-wife grave robbers (Dennis Price and Joan Rice). He picks up where his father left off with Alys ("She gave satisfaction to my father and she can do the same for me," Victor sneers to Wilhelm, adding "I hope she can cook"), and is so focused on his work that he barely picks up on the vibes he's getting from former classmate Elizabeth (Veronica Carlson), whose professor father (Bernard Archard) ends up being the source of the brain used in the Monster. Unfortunately, that brain is damaged when the grave robber drops the jar it's in and a glass shard gets stuck in it, turning the Monster (bodybuilder and future Darth Vader David Prowse) into a rampaging lunatic and convenient hit man when Victor needs his enemies eliminated.
Peter Cushing visiting Ralph Bates on the set.
As much if not more so than Cushing's interpretation of the character, Bates' Victor Frankenstein is an outrageously vainglorious prick who has absolutely no use for anyone. Starting with orchestrating his father's "accidental" death, Victor will let nothing stand in his way. He electrocutes Wilhelm when he expresses his outrage over his experiments, he kills the grave robber when he decides he knows too much, he has the Monster kill the grave robber's wife when she starts asking questions about her husband, and he tries to pin it all on his hapless, slow-witted cook Stefan (Stephen Turner) when former classmate and current chief of police Henry (Jon Finch, soon to star in Roman Polanski's MACBETH and Alfred Hitchcock's FRENZY) comes around to investigate. Bates' smug, arrogant Victor is like a Donald Trumpenstein, throwing everyone under the bus at the first sign of minor inconvenience or demonstrating even the slightest threat of disloyalty, treating Alys like shit, and stopping just short of shouting "FAKE NEWS!" when too many people have seen the Monster roaming around the woods and Henry demands to search the castle. All the pieces are in place for THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN to work, but it just never quite pulls itself together. Bates is fine in the role and much of the humor is intentional (Victor's killing of a pair of highwaymen is very funny), but the film just plods along, taking forever to get going (it's nearly 70 minutes in before the Monster even appears), and as a director, Sangster lacks the style and verve that guys like Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis, Roy Ward Baker, and even Peter Sasdy, for that matter, would always bring to the table. The film looks stagy and cheap, and Prowse's square head apparatus doesn't hold up under the scrutiny of HD on Scream Factory's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead). Prowse, who would soon have a small but memorable role as the hulking nurse of Patrick Magee's wheelchair-bound Mr. Alexander in Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, is imposing enough, but he looks ridiculous, spending most his limited screen time shirtless, wearing only bandages from the waist down, which many have observed makes him look like he's wearing a diaper.
In short, nobody liked THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN, neither in the UK nor in the US, where it appeared in the summer of 1971 on a drive-in double bill with the harder-edged SCARS OF DRACULA, easily the most violent of the Christopher Lee DRACULA outings. Hammer continued in their attempts to make Bates happen, first by reuniting him with Sangster on the second film in the Karnstein trilogy, 1971's LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, then by casting him as Dr. Jekyll opposite Martine Beswick in the same year's gender-bending DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE, and finally teaming him with Joan Collins, Judy Geeson, and--wait for it--Peter Cushing in Sangster's 1972 thriller FEAR IN THE NIGHT. By this time, it became apparent to Hammer that Ralph Bates wasn't the answer to the problems (nor, for that matter, was having Sangster behind the camera). Other than occasional non-Hammer supporting roles (he appeared with Lana Turner and Trevor Howard in 1974's PERSECUTION, and with Collins and Donald Pleasence in the 1976 demonic baby outing THE DEVIL WITHIN HER), he spent the rest of his career as a regular fixture on British TV, including the lead on BBC's DEAR JOHN, which ran for two seasons starting in 1986 and would be remade a couple of years later into the hit NBC sitcom with Judd Hirsch. Bates' last screen appearance came in a small role in 1990's little-seen period adventure KING OF THE WIND. He was just 51 when he died of pancreatic cancer in 1991.
What Hammer didn't realize at the time in their grooming of Bates was that the horror landscape was changing. In 1968, ROSEMARY'S BABY was a sign of things to come, but it didn't become apparent until THE EXORCIST in 1973 that the concern wasn't Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing (or Ralph Bates)--it was simply a genre trend that saw a declining interest in "classic" horror. This became clear with 1972's DRACULA A.D. 1972, and 1973's THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, which found Hammer reaching a compromise in their shameless youth pandering by dropping their "aging" stars and their respective Dracula and Van Helsing characters into mod, swinging 1972 London in all its shagadelic glory. It wasn't any kind of happening and fans were decidedly not freaked out, and as a result, ambitious, inventive, and very entertaining period adventure/horror hybrids like CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER and THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES were forced to languish on the shelf for extended amounts of time because Hammer had grown skittish about their product. 1974 saw the release of FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (like CAPTAIN KRONOS, completed in 1972 and unreleased for two years), which brought back Prowse as a much-different and more ape-like monster than he played in THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN. Even with veteran Hammer director Terence Fisher returning (in what ended up being his final film before retiring from the business), along with Peter Cushing stepping back into his signature role, its focus was less on classic horror and more on graphic gore. And still, it was a critical and commercial flop and marked the end of the road for Hammer's FRANKENSTEIN series.
READY OR NOT (US - 2019) Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy. Cast: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Andie MacDowell, Henry Czerny, Mark O'Brien, Melanie Scrofano, Kristian Bruun, Nicky Guadagni, Elyse Levesque, John Ralston, Liam McDonald, Ethan Tavares, Hanneke Talbot, Celine Tsai, Daniela Barbosa, voice of Nat Faxon. (R, 95 mins) "Fucking rich people."
That's the central theme of READY OR NOT, the strongest effort yet from the filmmaking collective known as "Radio Silence," consisting of directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and producer Chad Villela, whose work will be familiar to fanboy-approved anthologies like V/H/S and SOUTHBOUND. Their debut feature film was 2014's uninspired and instantly-forgotten DEVIL'S DUE. READY OR NOT seems a little familiar at the outset--with a set-up that's reminiscent of the excellent YOU'RE NEXT, which opened exactly six years ago--but it soon goes its own way, almost like a satirically-charged old dark house horror movie about the extent to which the wealthy will go in order to protect their fortune and privilege that's part CLUE and part MOST DANGEROUS GAME. It's wildly entertaining and contains maybe the most hilariously bonkers finale of the summer, but what really makes READY OR NOT something special is a star-making performance by Australian actress Samara Weaving. Perhaps best known for the Showtime series SMILF, Weaving (Hugo is her uncle) has been making a name for herself in cult horror circles with the 2017 Netflix original THE BABYSITTER, which was better than a movie directed by McG has any business being, and she was the only good thing about the obnoxious splatter horror comedy MAYHEM.
Weaving is a force of nature in READY OR NOT. She plays Grace, an orphan who grew up in a series of foster homes and has always longed for a permanent family to call her own. She gets that when she marries Alex Le Domas (Mark O'Brien), a scion of the Le Domas "dominion," an obscenely wealthy family of billionaire one-percenters whose past generations made their fortune in the board game industry, allowing the current patriarch, Alex's father Tony (Henry Czerny) to be the proud owner of four professional sports teams. Self-conscious Grace is concerned that she's being perceived as a gold-digger who's only in it for the money, but Alex has long been the black sheep who willingly distanced himself from the family, and for that, his mother Becky (Andie MacDowell) is grateful to Grace for convincing him to return home. It's a beautiful wedding at the expansive Le Domas mansion but Grace's perfect wedding night hits a snag when Alex informs her of a longstanding family tradition: when someone new joins the family, they have to play a game at midnight, all part of an agreement Tony's great-grandfather made with a mysterious "Mr. Le Bail" that was soon followed by success and fortune. The game is a way to honor that deal and the new family member chooses a card. It all seems like harmlessly eccentric family fun--they played Go Fish when Charity (Elyse Levesque) married Alex's cynical, alcoholic older brother Daniel (Adam Brody), and Fitch (Kristian Bruun) led a game of Old Maid when he married Emilie (Melanie Scrofano), the youngest of the three Le Domas offspring. But Grace draws Hide and Seek, which produces a palpable wave of unease, starting with Alex, who was afraid something like this would happen. Hide and Seek is the big one, the game where the stakes are much higher, something Tony's bitter harridan of a sister Helene (Nicky Guadagni) learned the hard way 30 years earlier when her new and soon-to-be-dead husband picked the same game. Drawing Hide and Seek means that it's time for "Mr. Le Bail" to be appeased with a ritual sacrifice so the Le Domas family--a sort-of Satanic Parker Brothers who sold their souls sold in perpetuity for all time--can continue wallowing in their limitless fortune. And if they want to continue living, because if the target isn't found and sacrificed by sunrise, they're all going to die.
The concept is utterly preposterous and probably sounds moronic in synopsis form, but it's a surprisingly engaging blast as Grace learns quickly that this game is dead serious, and the reason why Alex seemed so worried and distracted all day long. He makes every effort to keep her hidden and get her out of the house when things get really bad--usually due to coke-addled Emilie (she's overshadowed by Weaving, but Scrofano turns in an inspired comic performance) repeatedly killing the servants by accident ("Does she look like she's wearing a giant white wedding dress?" Daniel asks Emilie after she blows a maid's head off). The filmmakers make terrific use of the massive house and the long corridors, plus dumbwaiters and hidden passageways in the walls that the servants use. Once Grace realizes that it's kill or be killed, it's game on, and the shock that the Le Domases experience when the bride starts fighting back is quite amusing, whether it's Czerny's enraged, dialed-up-to-11 bloviating ("DO YOU THINK...THIS IS A FUCKING GAME?" to which Daniel replies "Yeah, it's Hide and Seek, remember?") or an incredulous McDowell declaring "Holy dick!" Grace is a new horror hero brought to vivid life by Weaving, who throws in funny bits like a cute little snort when she laughs too hard, eventually becoming a portrait in volcanic fury by the end, covered in blood, muck, and assorted viscera, with a wedding dress in tattered ruins, a hole shot through her left hand, and a guttural howl of rage that rivals any Swedish melodic death metal singer. READY OR NOT works in spite of its eye-rollingly silly concept, and while it's not the best horror movie of the year so far, it's definitely the most fun.
