HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD (Italy - 1961; US release 1964) Directed by Mario Bava. Written by Alessandro Continenza, Mario Bava, Duccio Tessari and Franco Prosperi. Cast: Reg Park, Christopher Lee, Leonora Ruffo, Giorgio Ardisson, Marisa Belli, Ida Galli, Franco Giacobini, Mino Doro, Ely Drago, Gaia Germani, Raf Baldassarre, Elisabetta Pavan, Aldo Pedinotti, Claudio Marzulli. (Unrated, 84 mins) The global success of 1958's HERCULES, an Italian production starring American bodybuilder and former Mr. Universe Steve Reeves, led to countless peplum films coming out of Italy over the next several years. Stanley Kubrick's epic 1960 blockbuster SPARTACUS also had a hand in this exploding subgenre's immense popularity, and before long, muscle-bound guys like Reeves, former Tarzan Gordon Scott, Mark Forest, Brad Harris, Gordon Mitchell, Mickey Hargitay, "Alan Steel" (Sergio Ciani), "Kirk Morris" (Adriano Bellini), Dan Vadis, Ed Fury, and "Rock Stevens" (American actor Peter Lupus, who would later act under his real name when he was on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE) were headlining dozens upon dozens of these things, playing heroes like Hercules, Samson, Ursus, Goliath, and Maciste (Reeves even played the son of Spartacus in 1962's THE SLAVE), though by the time many of these ended up dubbed in English and headed straight to syndicated TV, the hero could be a completely different character. British bodybuilder and three-time Mr. Universe Reg Park (1928-2007) had a very short-lived movie career courtesy of the post-HERCULES muscleman craze, starring in five films over a four-year period, starting with 1961's HERCULES CONQUERS ATLANTIS, aka HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN.
Park made enough of an impression that he was immediately cast in another Hercules outing with the same year's HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD, directed by trailblazing Italian horror auteur Mario Bava, who served as the cinematographer on the initial HERCULES and was coming off his highly influential official directing debut with 1960's BLACK SUNDAY (Bava's mentor Riccardo Freda let him direct large chunks of 1957's I VAMPIRI and 1959's CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER, though only Freda was credited). One of the most innovative stylists and special effects craftsman of his day and a guy who could work phantasmagorical wonders on tight budgets using matte paintings and colorgasmically garish lighting techniques, Bava would seem to be the only choice for a horror peplum that sends Hercules into the bowels of Hell, and the end result is one of the subgenre's strongest entries. As explained in verbosely muddled detail by Medea (Gaia Germani), oracle, sorceress, and mythical Basil Exposition, Hercules, son of Zeus, must venture into the depths of Hades on a quest to recover the Stone of Forgetfulness in order to break a spell cast upon his true love Princess Dianara (Leonora Ruffo) by her uncle, the diabolical King Lico (Christopher Lee!), who is conspiring with the forces of darkness to rule Italia for all eternity and have Dianara for himself. Hercules is joined by his friend Theseus (Giorgio Ardisson) and a bumbling comic relief sidekick in Telemachus (Franco Giacobini) as the trio embark on a journey to retrieve the Stone, save Dianara's soul, and defeat the treacherous Lico.
Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber in a stunning restoration with three different versions (distinctly unique US, UK, and Italian releases) because physical media is dead, HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD is as hokey as any other peplum of this sort (it's no surprise that some of them became prime MST3K fodder). But Bava's visual flair and the effectively-executed horror elements make memorable impressions, whether it's Theseus being tortured on a stretching rack by a stone creature lumbering around like an ancient Frankenstein monster, Hercules and Theseus encountering obstructive vines that "imprison the souls of the damned" and bleed and emit cacophonous shrieks of agony as the two heroes hack their way through them, or an enraged Lico resurrecting the dead and forcing Hercules to battle on onslaught of zombies. Lico is also described as a "vampire," an obvious nod to Lee's notoriety from 1958's HORROR OF DRACULA and undoubtedly just another brick in the wall in his decades-long resentment of being typecast in horror roles. This was one of several films Lee made in Italy during this period, most of them taking advantage of his Dracula connection, including the 1959 spoof UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE and the 1963 Karnstein riff TERROR IN THE CRYPT. Lee's best film in his Italian sojourn was a reteaming with Bava on 1963's THE WHIP AND THE BODY, released in the US in 1965 as WHAT! The unfortunate downside of both of Lee's Bava films is that he didn't dub himself, and there's unquestionably something missing when an actor has a voice as distinctive as his. Nevertheless, Lee's presence--even though he's absent for a long stretch in the middle--is as vital a component in establishing HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD's horror bona fides as Bava's innovative directorial touches.
Reg Park and Christopher Lee
goofing off on the set
with Leonora Ruffo
The horror/peplum crossover worked, and inspired a few similar mash-ups, like Gordon Scott in 1961's GOLIATH AND THE VAMPIRES (Scott played Maciste, but became Goliath via dubbing), and Park battling werewolves in 1963's HERCULES, PRISONER OF EVIL (filmed as URSUS: IL TERRORE DEL KIRGHISI, but again, magically transformed into a Hercules movie through its English dub). The Italian peplum fad died down by 1965, when everyone moved on to spaghetti westerns and 007-inspired Eurospy knockoffs, and while some--Mitchell, Hargitay, Vadis, Lupus--shifted into journeyman actor mode, others called it a day and moved on. Reeves took a few years off and attempted a one-off non-peplum comeback with the 1968 spaghetti western A LONG RIDE FROM HELL before retiring from acting, while Park left the movie business altogether after starring in HERCULES THE AVENGER in 1965, the same year that he won his third and final Mr. Universe. He continued to be a staple in bodybuilding events well into his 40s, and at 42 and nearly two decades after winning his first Mr. Universe, he was the runner-up in the 1970 competition, with that year's title being the third straight for 23-year-old Austrian phenom Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has long cited Park as one of his heroes and inspirations. Park retired from bodybuilding by the mid-1970s, having already relocated with his South African-born wife to Johannesburg, where he opened a chain of successful gyms. He died in 2007 at 79 after a battle with metastatic melanoma.
THE PREY (US - 1984) Directed by Edwin Scott Brown. Written by Summer Brown and Edwin Scott Brown. Cast: Debbie Thureson, Steve Bond, Lori Lethin, Robert Wald, Gayle Gannes, Philip Wenckus, Jackson Bostwick, Jackie Coogan, Carel Struycken, Connie Hunter, Ted Hayden, Garry Goodrow. (R, 80 mins) If nothing else, THE PREY serves as proof that anything can merit cult classic status if it's the product of a bygone era that's held in much sentimental regard by genre fans. A fixture in video stores and in regular rotation on late-night cable back in the day, THE PREY has fallen into almost total obscurity in the decades since. So of course, scenesters lost their shit when Arrow announced a deluxe edition Blu-ray, because physical media is dead and every long-lost, forgotten slasher movie must be an unheralded classic waiting to be rediscovered (have none of you seen PET SEMATARY? Sometimes dead is better). Shot in 1979 and 1980 but unreleased until 1984, THE PREY would seem to be indebted to the survivalist likes of RITUALS and it also prefigured the post-FRIDAY THE 13TH slasher explosion (THE BURNING, in particular), but manages to do just about everything wrong. The story seems foolproof enough: three young couples--Nancy (Debbie Thureson) and Joel (future PICASSO TRIGGER star Steve Bond), Bobbie (BLOODY BIRTHDAY's Lori Lethin) and Skip (Robert Wald), and Gail (Gayle Gannes) and Greg (Philip Wenckus)--are hiking and camping through the remote Northpoint area of Keen Wild, the location of a destructive forest fire in 1948, and there's a monstrous, deformed, burn-scarred killer (Carel Struycken) in the wilderness and before long, he's stalking and offing them one by one.
But THE PREY takes a long time to get to where it's going, which is hard to fathom when you consider that it's only 80 minutes long. Director/co-writer Edwin Scott Brown has so little material that he pads the running time with shots of everyone talking, hiking, standing around, and sitting around, in addition to a ton of nature stock footage. It gets even slower with the introduction of a weirdo park ranger (Jackson Bostwick, who looks like a creepy 1979 Zac Efron), who's seen strumming a banjo and having a heart-to-heart chat with a fawn (!) before joining his flummoxed boss (Jackie Coogan, who died in early 1984, several months before the film's belated release) and sharing some cucumber-and-cream cheese sandwiches on oatmeal bread that both actors eat in real time while they alternately discuss a missing middle-aged couple and just sit chewing in silence. It's possible that the free cucumber-and-cream cheese sandwiches are why Coogan even signed on, as he's a long way from his days as Uncle Fester on THE ADDAMS FAMILY and an even greater distance from his time as cinema's first famous child star opposite Charlie Chaplin in 1921's THE KID (as if appearing in THE PREY wasn't demeaning enough, Coogan's introduction is accompanied by the sound of a flushing toilet). Brown and his producer/co-writer wife Summer Brown were undoubtedly working outside of their comfort zone on this one-and-done attempt at mainstream crossover, having already established themselves in the hardcore porn industry, with Edwin directing under a variety of aliases, including "Edwin Durell" and "Stephen Lucas."
And yet, somehow, THE PREY has a following. And if you're so inclined, rest assured, it's granted a Criterion-level Blu-ray package that offers more of this film than even its most ardent defender thought possible or even within the realm of reason or sanity. While this languished on the shelf for several years before hitting a few American theaters and drive-ins, the financiers at Essex Productions decided to overhaul the whole thing for the overseas market, losing almost all of the nature stock footage and inserting a 25-minute (!) flashback sequence set at a gypsy camp and showing the origin of the killer and how it related to the forest fire in the opening shot. This new footage was shot at some point in 1981, and neither Edwin nor Summer Brown had anything to do with it, despite the presence of some moonlighting XXX stars like John Leslie, Arcadia Lake, and Eric Edwards in a few softcore sex scenes.
When THE PREY was finally picked up by a post-Roger Corman New World Pictures in 1984, it was the Browns' preferred 80-minute version, minus the "gypsy flashback." As you might guess, Arrow's Blu-ray features not only the 80-minute domestic version and the 97-minute international version, but also a 103-minute (!) composite fan cut which combines the footage from both versions into the ultimate (?) PREY experience. Even in the short version, THE PREY is tedious, terribly-acted, and boring as hell, with absolutely nothing happening until the last 15 minutes, but there are a few scattered positives to be found: the score makes significant use of Stravinsky's "Glorification of the Chosen One," from The Rite of Spring (also known to trash connoisseurs for its presence in Mario Bava's THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM); John Carl Buechler's makeup and latex work on Struycken serves as an amusing test run for the stuff he'd do for Empire Pictures a few years down the road; the last shot is queasily perverse; and some of the location work in Idyllwild and San Bernardino National Forest (the same area where the recent BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK was shot) is impressive, as are some shots of Bond scaling the famous Suicide Rock. Most importantly, the New World poster art's killer tag line--"It's not human and it's got an axe"--is an '80s exploitation gem that deserves to accompany a much better movie.
JOKER (US/Canada - 2019) Directed by Todd Phillips. Written by Todd Phillips and Scott Silver. Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Shea Whigham, Bill Camp, Marc Maron, Brian Tyree Henry, Glenn Fleshler, Leigh Gill, Josh Pais, Rocco Luna, April Grace, Sondra James, Murphy Guyer, Douglas Hodge, Dante Pereira-Olson, Sharon Washington, Chris Redd, Hannah Gross. (R, 121 mins) After a month of thinkpieces and endless debate, praise, hand-wringing, and outrage following its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, the revisionist origin story JOKER is, at this point, pretty much a scorching hot take that happens to be accompanied by the incidental release of a movie. Certain to provoke divisive reactions and possibly more, the film has admirable aspirations of being a loving homage to the gritty NYC of old, particularly two Martin Scorsese classics in 1976's TAXI DRIVER and 1983's THE KING OF COMEDY. It gets it right for a while, starting with the old-school 1970s Warner Bros. logo and various pop culture indicators (BLOW OUT and ZORRO, THE GAY BLADE on a theater marquee, and posters for WOLFEN, EXCALIBUR, ARTHUR, and DRAGONSLAYER) placing the setting in 1981 and, for the most part, successfully nailing the period detail. While partially indebted to the classic 1988 Alan Moore/Brian Bolland graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke, JOKER's title character as a cackling, chain-smoking amalgam of TAXI DRIVER's Travis Bickle and THE KING OF COMEDY's Rupert Pupkin, with a bit of DEATH WISH's Paul Kersey and the infamous 1984 Bernhard Goetz NYC subway shooting, an incident reminiscent of a sequence in DEATH WISH a decade earlier.
All that aside, the whole show here is Joaquin Phoenix as the eventual title character, a mentally-disturbed clown-for-hire named Arthur Fleck, who lives in a rundown Gotham tenement with his gravely ill mother Penny (Frances Conroy) and is generally treated like a punching bag by the entire world. On seven different medications that aren't helping, and often making others uncomfortable with a neurological, Tourette's-like condition that causes screeching laughter at inappropriate moments, Arthur is doomed to be a loner ("God's lonely man," as Travis Bickle might say), but he has visions of getting organizized and being a stand-up comedian ("Don't you have to be funny for that?" his mother asks). But bad luck follows Arthur like a fly on shit: he's rolled by a group of teens who viciously beat him and steal a sign he was waving on a job, and his boss threatens to take the cost of the sign out of his paycheck; he's given a gun by co-worker Randall (Glenn Fleshler), only to have it fall out of his pants while entertaining some kids in a children's hospital, after which Randall throws him under the bus and gets him fired; and that same day, he's taunted again on the way home by three Wall Street douchebags who start beating him, causing Arthur to snap, shooting and killing all three of them in an act of self-defense that turns into cold-blooded murder. All the while, a class war is brewing in the garbage-strewn streets of Gotham, with the city's downtrodden growing tired of the gutting of social services ("How do I get my medication?" Arthur asks his social worker when she says her department's funding has been cut and she's being let go) and of being overlooked by the city's wealthy movers and shakers, represented by billionaire Wayne Enterprises CEO Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), who's just announced a mayoral run because he's "the only one" who can fix Gotham.
Like everything in JOKER, the "I alone can fix it" Donald Trump comparisons aren't subtle, but what happens in Gotham is tantamount to a revolution when word gets out that a guy in a clown costume killed three rich assholes on the subway. Soon, protesters flood the streets dressed as clowns, intent on taking the city back by any means necessary. Though his identity remains a mystery, Arthur has started a movement, and finally, people are starting to notice him. That includes attractive, single mom neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz), who lives down the hall, as well as a leaked videotape of a nervous, cackling Arthur bombing at Gotham comedy club open-mic night, with the humiliating footage making its way to TV courtesy of LIVE WITH MURRAY FRANKLIN, a late-night talk show hosted by Arthur's Johnny Carson-like idol and fantasy father figure Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro, looking embalmed). De Niro's presence is the most overt example of the Scorsese worship on the part of director/co-writer Todd Phillips (the HANGOVER trilogy), and while it's obvious Phillips loves vintage Scorsese movies and is trying to stretch beyond his bro comedy filmography that also includes ROAD TRIP and OLD SCHOOL, he doesn't quite have the knack of pulling one off himself. JOKER works very well for a while, but after about Phoenix's 26th or 27th laughing fit with accompanying dancing and pirouetting, it starts to become clear that the story is secondary to indulging the star's extreme Method tendencies. Make no mistake, an emaciated Phoenix gives this everything, but it grows tiresome no matter how remarkable it is at times, and starts to resemble a hammy version of his ultimately stronger performances in films like THE MASTER and YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE.
While it gets off to a good start as the most transgressive, depressing, and unrelentingly bleak comic book movie ever made, it's a safe bet that, despite the incessant media coverage, a lot of mainstream multiplexers are still bound to go into this expecting a Batman movie and are seriously going to hate it (you could also envision it as a comic book movie made by Abel Ferrara at his KING OF NEW YORK/BAD LIEUTENANT pinnacle). Augmented by a suffocatingly downbeat Hildur Guonadottir score that's beyond oppressive, JOKER begins to work at cross purposes in the markedly inferior final act. Part of this stems from the disastrous way that Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver (8 MILE, THE FIGHTER) handle Beetz's character, but also in the way the messaging becomes so heavy-handed once Arthur--by now a deranged murderer going around in full Joker makeup--finally appears as a guest on Murray Franklin's show, where he gives a rambling speech that sounds like a love letter to be quoted as a enraged rallying cry by self-pitying incels everywhere.
THE KING OF COMEDY did a brilliant job of conveying reality's blurred lines with the delusions of the hapless Rupert Pupkin, but Phillips--again, no Marty Scorsese and probably not the right director for this--either lacks the finesse to communicate that or doesn't trust the audience to figure it out, perhaps a combination of the two, though there's certainly an argument to be made that the entire film is just a figment of Arthur Fleck's imagination. The casting of De Niro is a missed opportunity, and not just because of his limited screen time. While Scorsese superfans and hardcore movie nerds will get some amusement out of seeing the one-time unstoppable dreamer Pupkin aged into Jerry Lewis' cynical Jerry Langford, De Niro seems indifferent to the material, much the way he did in his stumbling, cue-card-flubbing appearances as Robert Mueller on the last couple seasons of SNL. While functioning as a standalone film, JOKER does tie into the Batman mythos by the end and is an interesting major-studio experiment that's worth seeing once. But barring any real-life tragedy that keeps it in the news, the buzz on this is likely to quiet down quickly once initial curiosity about Phoenix's performance is satiated (Heath Ledger's DARK KNIGHT Joker still retains the crown) and word of mouth gets around.
Hot on the heels of gems like THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE and BACKDRAFT 2, Spike Lee's hit 2006 bank heist thriller INSIDE MAN becomes the latest unlikely Universal catalog title to be belatedly sequelized by their "1440" DTV division (bring on Scott Eastwood in HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER 2!) with the South Africa-lensed INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED. Of course, no one from INSIDE MAN--Lee, Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, etc--is back, though some characters are mentioned. And you can't help but admire not only how the production designers try to pass Johannesburg off as NYC (at least it's more convincing than Bulgaria) but also the way a character exclaims "It's a copycat heist!" to justify more or less remaking INSIDE MAN with a cast of cable and streaming actors with varying degrees of recognizability. BETTER CALL SAUL's Rhea Seehorn will probably be the most familiar face as hard-nosed FBI agent Brynn Stewart, summoned to work point on a robbery taking place at the Federal Reserve in NYC. She's joined by NYPD hostage negotiator Remy Darbonne (SENSE8's Aml Ameen) as they try to meet the rigid demands of the robbery team's masked leader, who calls herself "Most Wanted" (Roxanne McKee, who's logged time on GAME OF THRONES, DOMINION, and STRIKE BACK). She's after a stash of gold hidden in a secret vault, and both Stewart and Darbonne notice (not quickly enough) that Most Wanted's methodology mirrors that of Dalton Russell, the brains behind the now-infamous "Nazi diamond heist" depicted in Lee's film (and played there by Owen, whose photo is seen numerous times throughout). So instead of diamonds, we've got gold bars, and instead of Plummer's aging Nazi sympathizer--who's passed on in the interim--we get that character's pissed-off son (Greg Kriek) pulling the strings because he wants the rest of his late dad's riches.
There's been flimsier foundations for a sequel, and INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED is hardly the worst of these 1440 titles. Busy TV director MJ Bassett (ASH VS. EVIL DEAD, STRIKE BACK, ALTERED CARBON) began her career as a second-string Neil Marshall with 2002's supernatural WWI chiller DEATHWATCH and 2007's underseen gem of a survivalist thriller WILDERNESS before going on to SOLOMON KANE and SILENT HILL: REVELATION, and she keeps things moving briskly. Seehorn and McKee turn in solid performances, and British Ameel does a decent job of masking his accent by spending the whole movie doing a two-for-one impression of Will Smith and Kevin Hart. The South African supporting actors fare much worse, none of them even remotely convincing as New Yorkers and all of them sounding like Leonardo DiCaprio in BLOOD DIAMOND. INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED is completely forgettable, but maybe worth a half-attentive glance if you liked Seehorn on BETTER CALL SAUL or have enjoyed Bassett's earlier work (definitely seek out WILDERNESS). Just don't think too hard about it, or else you'll be asking questions like "If the original Nazi diamond heist is such a legendary case in law enforcement, and they know it's a copycat case, then why don't they see any of the same shit coming long before it happens?" (R, 106 mins) JARHEAD: LAW OF RETURN (US - 2019)
Hey, remember that 2005 Jake Gyllenhaal movie JARHEAD? Did you know it's spawned three DTV sequels so far courtesy of Universal's 1440 division? There's no real connection between any of the films, though Dennis Haysbert's JARHEAD character made a brief appearance in 2016's JARHEAD 3: THE SIEGE. The only sense of continuity offered by the latest stand-alone installment, JARHEAD: LAW OF RETURN, is the return of JARHEAD 2: FIELD OF FIRE writer/director Don Michael Paul, a former B-movie supporting actor-turned-DTV specialist, whose other credits include three TREMORS sequels, two SNIPER sequels, LAKE PLACID: THE FINAL CHAPTER, KINDERGARTEN COP 2, DEATH RACE: BEYOND ANARCHY, THE SCORPION KING: BOOK OF SOULS, and the upcoming BULLETPROOF 2, a sequel to the 1996 Damon Wayans/Adam Sandler action comedy BULLETPROOF that will not in any way involve Damon Wayans or Adam Sandler. Like JARHEADs 2 and 3, JARHEAD 4 is more Bulgaria-shot jingoistic military porn, just more forgettable than usual. JARHEAD 3 at least had Scott Adkins. This offers PRISON BREAK's Amaury Nolasco as Sgt. Flores, a career Marine who's a month away from retirement (uh-oh) when he ends up in a covert mission to extract pilot Ronan Johnson (Devon Sawa) when he's shot down and taken prisoner by a Syrian terror outfit headed by the nefarious "The Ghost" (George Zlatarev). The catch: Johnson is the son of a Catholic US senator (Robert Patrick) and a Jewish mother. He married an Israeli woman (Shanti Ashanti) five years ago, obtained dual Israeli citizenship, and joined that country's military via Law of Return, which gives all Jews the right to come to Israel and become Israeli citizens. The Israeli government declares "He's ours!" and assigns the rescue operation to a Mossad agent (Yael Eitan), but a bloviating American general (Ben Cross) yells "This is Benghazi all over again!" to get your Hillary-hating uncle all riled up, and demands US military special ops be involved because of the political ramifications involving the package's father.
What follows are a bunch of dull firefights and a lot of hardass Marine bro-downs, filled with witty dialogue like "Fuckface? He called me a fuckface! Hey, I'd fuck your face!" and "This ain't our first time swingin' at the pinata, lady!" when the female Mossad agent in charge gives a final run-through of the assignment. Because, you know, this is...what they do. Also note how some stock news footage early on shows Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking English, followed by some footage of Iran's prime minister with an English translator speaking over him, yet the slightly-accented translator's words are accompanied by subtitles like it's all pops and buzzes and we can't understand a word with these people. JARHEAD: LAW OF RETURN: come for the formulaic, by-the-numbers action, stay for the bonus One America News Network-pandering xenophobia. (R, 103 mins) Note: Universal 1440 also released the DTV sequel DOOM: ANNIHILATION this week, directed by Tony Giglio (writer of the three Universal 1440 DEATH RACE sequels), but life's too short.
THE WAX MASK (Italy/France - 1997; US release 2000) Directed by Sergio Stivaletti. Written by Lucio Fulci and Daniele Stroppa. Cast: Robert Hossein, Romina Mondello, Riccardo Serventi Longhi, Gabriella Giorgelli, Aldo Massasso, Umberto Balli, Valery Valmond, Gianni Franco, Antonello Murru, Daniele Auber, Massimo Vanni, Omero Capanna, Goffredo Unger. (Unrated, 98 mins) 1997's THE WAX MASK began life as a heavily-hyped collaboration between Italian horror legends Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, the latter ailing and inactive since 1991's little-seen DOOR TO SILENCE, and far removed from his furiously prolific 1979-1984 glory days that gave us the likes of ZOMBIE, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, and THE BEYOND among others. After scrapping plans to make a new version of THE MUMMY, producer Argento and director Fulci settled on THE WAX MASK, a new take on the 1953 classic HOUSE OF WAX, itself a remake of 1933's MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, with some elements of Gaston Leroux's short story "The Waxworks Museum." The writing process and pre-production--delayed while Argento finished THE STENDHAL SYNDROME--brought numerous disagreements, with Fulci unexpectedly wanting to go for atmosphere, while Argento wanted more splatter, since that's what established Fulci's fame, but Fulci's already precarious health took another downturn and before filming could even begin, the Godfather of Gore died on March 13, 1996 of complications from his long battle with diabetes. With the script already written, Argento pressed forward as a tribute to Maestro Fulci, assigning directing duties to renowned makeup effects wizard Sergio Stivaletti, whose trailblazing work was a highlight of latter-day Italian horror classics like Argento's PHENOMENA, Lamberto Bava's DEMONS and DEMONS 2, and Michele Soavi's THE CHURCH, THE SECT, and CEMETERY MAN. Making his directing debut, Stivaletti was given some wide latitude by Argento to tailor the project to his own vision. As a result, he significantly reworked Fulci's initial script--written with Daniele Stroppa, with some uncredited contributions from Argento--and the end result is a bizarre hodgepodge of giallo, gothic horror, and steampunk, almost like HOUSE OF WAX and Mario Bava's BARON BLOOD mashed up with a looney tunes third act that veers unexpectedly into sci-fi territory.
It's not very good, but it's better than anything else Fulci made after 1988 and it's better than Argento's next project, his career nadir THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, for which THE WAX MASK occasionally feels like a stylistic test run. In Paris in 1900, a little girl witnesses a black-clad figure murder her parents, with police determining that her father's heart was ripped out with a claw-like instrument. Cut to Rome in 1912, and the girl has grown up into Sonia (Romina Mondello, later seen as Rachel McAdams' obnoxious friend in Terrence Malick's TO THE WONDER), who went to live with her blind Aunt Francesca (Gabriella Giorgielli) after being orphaned. Shy Sonia gets a job as a costume designer at a new wax museum operated by Boris Volkoff (Robert Hossein), whose villainy should be obvious the moment you hear that he's named "Boris Volkoff," and has not one but two super-creepy assistants (Umberto Balli, Antonello Murru). The wax museum has made news before it's even opened, as a local man took a bet that he could spend the night in it and ended up dying of a fright-induced heart attack over something he saw (that's the plot of the Leroux short story). Volkoff is very protective of his exhibits and refuses to allow them to be photographed, and while a pestering reporter (Riccado Serventi Longhi) investigates the local man's death while also trying to make time with Sonia, the body count increases along with the number of Volkoff's exhibits, as a black-clad figure in a hat murders various people--mostly prostitutes from a nearby brothel--and transforms their corpses into new wax museum figures.
Anyone who's seen MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM and HOUSE OF WAX knows who's responsible, especially once a new exhibit echoes the Paris 1900 murder scene, triggering traumatic memories for Sonia (Volkoff doesn't initially know who she is) while attracting the attention of French detective Lanvin (Aldo Massasso), who's been obsessively chasing clues for the last 12 years and is especially interested in Volkoff's Paris 1900 exhibit since it includes details of the murder scene that were never made public. It's at about this point where Stivaletti steers THE WAX MASK to Crazytown in ways that are best discovered by going in cold, but even then, it still won't make a whole lot of sense. Veteran French actor/director and RIFIFI co-star Hossein--whose career dates back to 1948 and is still working today at 91--is appropriately sinister without hamming it up, though one wishes he would cut loose a little more, especially considering how batshit things get by the end.
Then again, it's really difficult to judge anyone's performance in this if you watch the English dub, which is absolutely atrocious, filled with florid line readings like Balli's character telling Sonia about his childhood abuse: "My father beat me until I bled...my skin carries the scars and my heart carries the hate which I shall always bear." Though venerable dubbing stalwarts like Carolynn de Fonseca and Ted Rusoff are briefly heard voicing some minor characters, most of that old gang had died or moved on by this point, leaving relative amateurs to do much of the heavy lifting, and anyone who watches enough of these Eurocult movies will instantly hear that the dubs on these later Italian genre titles just don't have the charm, the chops, or any sense of quality control. While there is some striking production design and some eye-popping colors, the entire film has a television feel to it, starting with the video-burned title and some stagy interiors. The climactic fire at the wax museum tries to emulate the exteriors of the witch houses burning at the end of Argento's SUSPIRIA and INFERNO, but Stivaletti can't pull it off with primitive CGI that already looked dated even by late '90s standards. THE WAX MASK opened in Italy in April 1997, just over a year after Fulci's death (he gets a dedication at beginning of the opening credits, which is a nice touch). As expected, it skipped US theaters and went straight-to-DVD courtesy of Image Entertainment in September 2000 in a non-anamorphic, early-days-of-DVD transfer that left much to be desired. While the dubious One-7 Movies released it on Blu-ray in 2016, Severin's new extras-packed Blu-ray set (because physical media is dead) is a huge improvement if you've only seen the Image DVD. Plus it offers an Italian track with English subtitles, though Hossein spoke French on set and is still dubbed in Italian, and everyone else speaking Italian sounds dubbed as well.
KILLER CROCODILE (Italy - 1989) Directed by Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis). Written by David Parker Jr. (Dardano Sacchetti) and Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis). Cast: Anthony Crenna, Ann Douglas, Thomas Moore (Ennio Girolami), Van Johnson, Wohrman Williams (Bill Wohrman), Sherrie Rose, Julian Hampton (Pietro Genuardi), John Harper, Gray Jordan, Marte Amilcar. (Unrated, 92 mins) A very late-to-the-party "Nature Run Amok" Italian JAWS ripoff shot in the Dominican Republic, 1989's KILLER CROCODILE was never too hard to find even back in the VHS bootleg heyday prior to the circa-2000 Eurocult explosion on DVD. But for whatever reason, it's never been officially released in the US until now, courtesy of Severin's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead). Directed and co-written by veteran producer (THE BEYOND, THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS)-turned-exploitation knockoff specialist (the Rambo-inspired THUNDER WARRIOR trilogy, the Namsploitation OPERATION: NAM, aka COBRA MISSION) Fabrizio De Angelis under his trusty "Larry Ludman" pseudonym, KILLER CROCODILE doesn't waste any time, showing the titular beast front and center about 40 seconds into the film. Taking a page from 1980's ALLIGATOR, the croc here is an oversized mutant thanks to chemical contamination, in this case radioactive waste in barrels clandestinely dumped in a river surrounding an impoverished Caribbean island. A team of environmental activists led by Kevin (Anthony Crenna, son of the late, great Character Actor Hall-of-Famer Richard Crenna) are journeying along the river to find and expose the illegal waste disposal that's been orchestrated by corporate hatchet man Foley (Florida-based regional actor Bill Wohrman--credited as "Wohrman Williams"--who had a small role as a cop in PORKY'S and PORKY'S II: THE NEXT DAY), who keeps getting away with it because he's got a flunky with the corrupt local judge (Van Johnson--a long way from THE CAINE MUTINY--as Murray Hamilton) who represents the law on the island.
When one of the activists disappears, the judge blows off the concerns of her friends, and when her mutilated body is later found with clear evidence of crocodile chomping, the judge and Foley go full "Fake News" and accuse Kevin and the others of killing her. That lasts about a minute and a half until the massive croc destroys a dock and kills a few locals in the process. With the judge nervous about his corruption being made public and Foley threatening to "reveal who you really are," in a pointless attempt at throwing in a red herring (unless he's the croc wearing a Van Johnson disguise), Kevin and the activists team with wily local crocodile expert Joe (Ennio Girolami as Robert Shaw) to hunt down the beast and expose Foley's nefarious actions. De Angelis throws in a good amount of gore and dismemberment in the croc attacks, and there's no shortage of nonsensical bits that connoisseurs of Italian ripoffs know and love, such as the repeated mention of a big reveal about the judge not being much at all (he's a fugitive ex-con...big deal); dubious dubbing; Riz Ortolani's score being little more than barely tweaked John Williams/JAWS cues; members of Kevin's group swimming around in contaminated water and deciding to make camp right by a shore lined with visible barrels stamped "Radioactive," ample proof that Foley and the judge are doing a pretty shitty job of keeping their activities buried, and a riotous outboard-motor-in-the-mouth demise for the croc at the hands of a crazed Kevin.
The most ridiculous character is Joe the Crocodile Whisperer, with his good luck hat that he tosses to Kevin for inspiration in an incredible scene that begins with Joe riding the Giannetto De Rossi-designed croc like the redressed immobile surfboard that it likely is, and earlier sensing the croc is near and talking to it from the boat, calling it a "pollywog" and advising Kevin that "They get really crazy when you insult them." It's not quite the USS Indianapolis monologue, but you get what you pay for, and it's good enough for KILLER CROCODILE. It's not quite Henry Fonda in TENTACLES or Richard Harris in STRIKE COMMANDO 2, but it's still strange seeing a beloved figure from Hollywood's Golden Age like Johnson doing some late-career slumming here, but work's work, and he was appearing in quite of few of these Italian exploitation obscurities during this period, including Stelvio Massi's never-completed slasher film TAXI KILLER, Ettore Pasculli's post-apocalyptic sci-fi FLIGHT FROM PARADISE, and Pierluigi Ciriaci's DELTA FORCE COMMANDO 2. KILLER CROCODILE never even made it to US video stores and didn't even make much of an impression in Italy, but that didn't stop De Angelis from releasing the immediate sequel KILLER CROCODILE 2 the next year, shot back-to-back with its predecessor.
KILLER CROCODILE 2 (Italy - 1990) Directed by Giannetto De Rossi. Written by David Parker Jr. (Dardano Sacchetti), Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis) and Giannetto De Rossi. Cast: Anthony Crenna, Debra Karr, Thomas Moore (Ennio Girolami), Terry Baer, Hector Alvarez, Alan Bult, Paul Summers, Tony De Noia, Peter Schreiber, Franco Fantasia. (Unrated, 87 mins) Now available as part of a limited-edition two-disc Blu-ray set with KILLER CROCODILE, the even lesser-seen 1990 sequel KILLER CROCODILE 2 was cranked out so cheaply and so quickly that it doesn't even bother roping in a past-his-prime, "and with"-worthy name actor to pull Van Johnson special appearance duty. Fabrizio De Angelis farmed out directing chores to veteran Italian makeup effects designer Giannetto De Rossi, best known to genre fans for his trailblazing splatter work on Lucio Fulci gorefests like ZOMBIE and THE BEYOND. De Rossi designed the croc in KILLER CROCODILE, and constructs a bigger and even more ridiculous one here. An offspring of the first film's title monster, Killer Crocodile Jr. proves to be a huge disruption to the development of a tourist resort that's certain to boost the economy of the impoverished area, which somehow hasn't become a huge cancer cluster with all the barrels of radioactive waste being dumped in the area. The potential contamination is why NYC reporter Liza Post (Debra Karr) is sent to investigate only to spend much of her time fighting off leering locals in addition to the rampaging croc. It's first seen devouring a vacationing couple, then attacking two boats filled with schoolkids and their nun chaperones, followed by an insane scene where it plows into a hut in what looks like the world's worst Kool-Aid Man impression. Once Liza confirms the existence of radioactive waste, her boss calls in ace environmentalist Kevin (a returning Anthony Crenna, now dubbed by Ted Rusoff), who seeks out his old buddy Joe the Crocodile Whisperer (Ennio Girolami, dubbed by Robert Spafford), left hobbled and even more crazy after his fateful encounter with the first toxic monstrosity, resulting in him behaving less like JAWS' Quint and more like an Obi-Wan Kenobi-like Jedi master ("I feel something," he says, looking out at still water).
Starting with using the same Riz Ortolani score, KILLER CROCODILE 2 has all the tell-tale signs of a quickie sequel. While the crocodile set pieces are more over-the-top in terms of execution and splatter--with a climactic battle between Kevin and the croc that features an Anthony Crenna action figure attached to a toy croc in some shots that not even Antonio Margheriti would deem acceptable--the rest is padded with stock footage from the first film (including recycling the same initial appearance of the crocodile, which is just flipped) and absurdly longer-than-necessary establishing shots of buildings, people walking into offices, Crenna and Girolami on the boat, pans across the river, etc. It has to resort to these tactics just to make it to 87 minutes, yet somehow, top-billed Crenna doesn't even appear until around 40 minutes in. The actor is on hand for an interview in the KILLER CROCODILE extras (he now goes by "Richard Anthony Crenna") and explains that he went to Rome in the late '80s when his dad was working on a movie (most likely LEVIATHAN) and decided to test the waters of the Italian film industry since he wasn't catching any breaks in Hollywood. He quickly nabbed the KILLER CROCODILE gig, probably on the basis of his known surname, and recalls it being a fun shoot in Santo Domingo even though there were language barriers, the production got caught in a hurricane, and he contracted dysentery at one point. He returned for the sequel, which again took him to Santo Domingo, but when De Angelis offered him the lead in De Rossi's TERMINATOR ripoff CY WARRIOR immediately following the back-to-back KILLER CROCODILEs (and again scheduled to shoot in Santo Domingo), he turned it down because he was ready to return home, with the part eventually going to Frank Zagarino. Crenna's only notable acting job came with a recurring role on ROSWELL a decade later, as things ultimately didn't pan out for him like they did for his father. As with John Wayne's youngest son Ethan Wayne in 1985's THE MANHUNT and 1987's OPERATION: NAM, De Angelis did his best to make Anthony Crenna happen, but the young actor probably would've found more success in the Italian B-movie industry if he made the move a few years earlier. By 1989-90, the entire Italian genre scene was on life support aside from whatever Dario Argento or Michele Soavi were doing, as evidenced by neither KILLER CROCODILE film finding any US home video distribution.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON (UK/US - 2019) Directed by Jim Mickle. Written by Gregory Weidman and Geoffrey Tock. Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Cleopatra Coleman, Michael C. Hall, Bokeem Woodbine, Rudi Dharmalingam, Rachel Keller, Sarah Dugdale, Quincy Kirkwood, Philippa Domville, Tony Nappo, Al Maini, Julia Knope, Colton Royce. (Unrated, 115 mins) After a trio of films that were well-received in indie horror scenester circles (2007's MULBERRY ST, 2011's STAKE LAND, and 2013's WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, a remake of a 2010 Spanish film), director Jim Mickle delivered an instant cult classic with 2014's East Texas noir COLD IN JULY, adapted from a Joe R. Lansdale novel. Following that, he devoted his energies to the three-season run of the Lansdale-based Amazon series HAP AND LEONARD. Now, Mickle--working for the first time from a script by others and not with writing partner Nick Damici, though Damici is one of the producers--returns to features for his most ambitious effort yet with the Netflix Original film IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON. Written by TV vets Gregory Weidman and Geoffrey Tock (both worked on the CBS series LIMITLESS and ZOO), the film has a doozy of a high concept involving a time-traveling serial killer hitting Philadelphia once every nine years beginning in 1988, on a fateful night that will forever affect the future of young patrolman Thomas "Locke" Lockhart (Boyd Holbrook). With a pregnant wife (Rachel Keller) due to give birth at any moment, Locke heads out for another night on the graveyard shift with his partner Maddox (Bokeem Woodbine) when the entire department ends up in a state of chaos over a string of identical deaths--a sort-of hemorrhage where the victims' brains seemingly melt out of their eyes, ears, nose, and mouth--simultaneously taking place miles apart across the entire city. The victims all have puncture wounds on the backs of their necks made by some kind of undetermined weapon, and witnesses mention a black female in a blue hoodie fleeing a club where the weapon was used on a young woman, who soon dies in the same manner while she's giving a statement to police.
After hitching themselves to the investigation against the wishes of Capt. Holt (Michael C. Hall, Mickle's COLD IN JULY star), who also happens to be Locke's brother-in-law, Locke and Maddox manage to catch up to the blue-hoodied killer, a young, shaven-headed woman named Rya (Cleopatra Coleman) after cornering her on a subway platform. Rya breaks Maddox's leg and gets into a violent scuffle with Locke, who injures her with her own strange weapon, causing her to stagger off the platform into the path of a speeding train, killing her instantly. Cut to 1997, Locke and Maddox are now detectives who made their names on the events of nine years ago, which has come to be known as the "Market Street Murders," though the department managed to get away with never divulging the identity of the killer and keeping many of the details secret. But on this day, his daughter's ninth birthday, a string of copycat killings take place, with Locke eventually coming face-to-face once more with Rya, who was splattered into pieces nine years ago but is somehow back to pick up where she left off with the killings.
To say anymore would involve significant spoilers, but this will pattern of Rya returning will repeat in 2006, 2015, and into 2024 over the course of the film, a time frame that finds Locke growing more obsessed and disheveled over time, at the expense of his job and his relationship with his daughter (played by Quincy Kirkwood at 9 and then Sarah Dugdale at 18 and older). The story is a wild mash-up of THE TERMINATOR, TIMECOP, DEJA VU, ZODIAC, LOOPER, and TRUE DETECTIVE among others, all wrapped into what plays like a feature-length episode of BLACK MIRROR with some incendiary present-day social commentary that's actually pretty ballsy in what it's trying to accomplish. But the more it goes on, the more muddled it becomes and the realization sets in that Mickle and the writers are simply trying to do too much in the timeframe they've been allotted. That's especially true in the deployment of about ten minutes worth of voiceover narration in lieu of a climax, which feels last a last-ditch Hail Mary because there's too many loose ends and no other way to resolve them while keeping it under two hours. It's still very much worth a watch, and the opening 35 minutes stands as a terrific extended suspense/chase set piece, but IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON is ultimately a film whose incredibly lofty thematic ambitions would've perhaps been better served as a two or maybe three-part Netflix limited series.
