A doomed marriage, a dangerous toy, the quest for fame, and intergenerational violence.
THE BRIDE (1973)
This 1973 film directed by Jean-Marie Pélissié was given a lot of different titles when it was making the drive-in and grindhouse rounds back in the day; The Bride, The House That Cried Murder, Last House on Massacre Street, Scream, No Way Out... It was listed as The Bride on the Tubi streaming service, which is how I saw it, so that's what I'll always think of it as - even though the print on Tubi actually had the nonsensical Last House on Massacre Street title on it.
Written by John Grissmer and Pélissié, The Bride starts with a young woman named Barbara (Robin Strasser) giving her boyfriend David (Arthur Roberts) a tour of the house she's having built out in the countryside. Honestly, this house was the most fascinating thing about the movie for me because it looks incredible. While I was watching, I couldn't help but wonder what the story behind this house was. It was still under construction when the film's cast and crew was inside it, but the overgrown yard surrounding it made it look like the place had been abandoned before it was finished. I hope that wasn't the case, because this was a house that deserved to be lived in and enjoyed. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information about this location, so I'm just left to wonder.
Barbara and David are acting like a perfectly happy couple, but it's pretty clear that they're both odd ducks. I found Strasser to be captivating as Barbara, a character who's vibrant and loving, yet simultaneously creepy. When David comments that she's the first girl he's known who has built a house, she replies that she's "the last girl" he's going to know, and that comes off as more of a threat than a promise of a happily ever after. There's something shady about David, and Barbara's father (John Beal) is quite aware of it. Her father - who is financing the construction of that house - is David's boss at an accounting firm, and he feels that the guy doesn't have any real affection for his daughter, he's just using her. Barbara insists on marrying David anyway.
Father knows best. David proves to be a scumbag when he sneaks off to hook up with his ex Ellen (Iva Jean Saraceni of Knightriders and Creepshow) in the middle of the wedding reception. Barbara is still in her wedding dress when she catches them, and she snaps and slashes David's arm with a pair of scissors before jumping in her car and speeding away from the party.
Two weeks later, Barbara still hasn't been seen or heard from, and it doesn't seem like many people are too concerned because apparently no one even thought to look for her at the house she's being built. Ellen has moved in with David, he's pondering divorce options, and he's shown to be a real charmer when he tells Ellen to make herself "look human" (his way of saying she needs to put on makeup) before they leave the house on a romantic outing.
Things for David and Ellen begin to fall apart when David starts receiving phone calls from an "answering service" that gives him messages from Barbara and hints that his wife is watching them. The situation gets even stranger and more troubling from there, and in the end The Bride ends up feeling like an extended episode of Tales from the Crypt. (Not a very extended one, because it's only just under 77 minutes long.) That's a compliment, because I grew up on Tales from the Crypt and think it's awesome. I really enjoyed The Bride, and there will be repeat viewings of it in my future. It's interesting, it's strange, it's creepy, and Strasser gives a terrific performance.
And that house. That place is really something. I hope there are people calling it home right now. If there are, I envy them. I wish I was living there!
INTO THE DARK: POOKA LIVES! (2020)
For the first season Christmas installment of Hulu and Blumhouse's holiday-themed anthology series Into the Dark, director Nacho Vigalondo made a film called Pooka!, which became an instant fan favorite. A lot of viewers felt that Pooka! was the best movie of the twelve features that made up season one, with some even saying it was the only one of the movies that they really liked. Personally, I wasn't really into it, as I don't tend to enjoy trippy movies where the lead character (and the viewers) can't be sure what's happening in reality and what they're just imagining. That said, the jingle "Pooka see, Pooka do, Pooka me, Pooka you, you never know what Pooka will do. Pooka loves, Pooka fights, Pooka laughs, Pooka cries, you never know what Pooka will do" has never been far from my mind in the year and half since I first watched the movie.
The producers clearly realized how popular Pooka was, because there have been nods to that movie in other Into the Dark entries that have followed. And then the sixth installment of the second season, released in April of 2020, turned out to be a sequel, Pooka Lives!
In these films, Pooka is a strange-looking toy that repeats words it overhears in either a nice or a naughty voice, seemingly at random. The idea of this thing was inspired by a creature of Celtic folklore that can bring either good or bad fortune. The creature has its own day, and while one version of the legend says Pooka Day is November 1st, another version says the first day of every month is Pooka Day, which is how Into the Dark could deliver Pooka Lives! in April.
Directed by Alejandro Brugués from a script by Ryan Copple, this sequel was actually much more appealing to me than its predecessor was, because this isn't a story of someone questioning their reality. This was a straightforward creature feature that has Pookas of various designs attacking people.
Set in the town of Spring Valley, the story begins with Pooka toy creator Ellie Burgis (Rachel Bloom) losing her mind when she hears that the toy is going to be re-designed. She puts on a Pooka mask, kills her husband (Wil Wheaton), then sets herself on fire... Jump ahead one year, and we're introduced to lead character Derrick (Malcolm Barrett) as he escapes from New York and returns to his hometown of Spring Valley because he's being tormented by a social media influencer who wasn't pleased with a book Derrick wrote about online personalities. Once back in town, Derrick hangs out with his old pals Bennie (Gavin Stenhouse), who is now a police officer, and married couple Molly (Felicia Day) and Matt (Jonah Ray), parents of a young daughter who has her own Pooka doll and costume. Derrick gets a job as a copywriter for the company that puts Pooka out into the world, and finds that his ex Susan (Lyndie Greenwood) is working on the soon to be unveiled re-design.
On a whim, these friends decide to attempt to go viral by creating a "Pooka Challenge". If people perform a little ritual to invoke Pooka, the creature will appear to them and judge whether they're naughty or nice. The challenge does indeed go viral, and the problem is that violent Pookas do start appearing to people - and if they're deemed to be naughty, they're killed. The first time we see Pooka appear to a character, it looks like the classic Pooka costume, but after that the Pookas start to look different, and Derrick and his friends realize this is because the supernatural creature is being influenced by the popularity of the ever-changing Pooka stories people keep posting online. If someone says Pooka wears lederhosen and that post becomes popular, Pooka will be wearing lederhosen the next time someone sees it.
So, of course, the way to stop this rampage of Pookas seems to be to write a weakness for the creature, post that weakness online, and hope it will become popular. There was a Supernatural episode that did this same basic thing, just without Pooka.
Pooka Lives! is a fast and entertaining movie that, as some of the casting indicates, leans heavily toward comedy. This was just a fun, goofy way to give the world more Pooka while really being nothing like Vigalondo's Pooka! The monster attacks start around 30 minutes into the 80 minute running time and come at a steady pace from that point on, and I enjoyed watching them.
INFAMOUS (2020)
Anyone who watches writer/director Joshua Caldwell's crime thriller Infamous will be smarter than the film's lead characters, which may be an issue for some viewers. When the movie starts, you have to strap in and prepare yourself for the fact that you're about to watch two stupid people do some really dumb things over the next 100 minutes. If you don't mind being able to laugh and scoff at the stupidity of the leads, you may find that Infamous is a captivating film.
Bella Thorne, who has become a genre regular in recent years, stars as Arielle, a young waitress whose only dream in life is to become famous. She gets bummed over her low number of social media followers, but she is certain the universe is going to bring her fame in some way, even though she is incredibly trashy and, as mentioned, not too bright. She meets her match when she crosses paths with Dean (Jake Manley), a parolee staying with his abusive father in Arielle's Florida hometown. Arielle and Dean quickly fall for each other, and when circumstances force them to go on the run together, Arielle knows exactly where she wants to go: Hollywood. And they decide to fund the cross-country drive there by robbing gas stations and weed dispensaries.
Robbery is a bad idea to begin with, but Arielle takes the poor decisions even further. In her quest for followers and internet fame, she decides to broadcast their crimes online, starting a new Instagram page dedicated to showing off their robberies, and not caring at all that their identities soon become public knowledge.
"Criminal couple on the run" is a classic set-up, we've seen this sort of thing play out many times before and we have a pretty good idea where this is heading from the moment begins, but this is a very modern take on the concept, since Arielle builds her entire existence around her social media account. This aspect of the story had me shaking my head at several points throughout the film, and yet it felt very true-to-life to me. It was no leap at all to imagine a modern criminal being just as vapid and obsessed with internet fame as Arielle is, filming robberies and celebrating with selfies. Caldwell handled the social media part of the story perfectly.
Thorne plays the off-balance fool quite well, she's thoroughly believable as Arielle and makes the character equally repellent and fascinating - and when she really goes off she has some line deliveries that may leave you laughing while also wondering if she's possessed. Manley does very well playing just the sort of dim fellow who would get caught up in Arielle's schemes, while also being able to show that Dean has a bit more depth than his significant other.
Amber Riley also makes a memorable appearance in the film as a telemarketer who is one of the millions of followers the couple has online. She briefly gets involved with Arielle and Dean - at gunpoint. And when an abrasive fellow played by Michael Sirow shows up, you can tell that things are really about to fall apart for the characters.
Boasting some terrific cinematography by Eve M. Cohen, Infamous is a well-crafted, familiar-but-fresh movie that kept me interested and entertained for the duration, even when I was appalled by the dumb actions of the characters and worrying how far they would go.
The review of Infamous originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
TONE-DEAF (2019)
Millennial Amanda Crew and baby boomer Robert Patrick have a disagreement that saying "Okay, boomer" isn't going to have any impact on in this quirky, comedy-tinged horror film from writer/director Richard Bates Jr. Crew plays Olive, who decides to spend some time in a country house while getting over the fact that she has just broken up with her boyfriend (played by Nelson Franklin) and been fired from her job (her boss is played by Ash vs. Evil Dead's Ray Santiago) on back-to-back days. Unfortunately for her, the place she rents is owned by Patrick's character Harvey, who fears that his son is going to put him in an assisted living home and has something to scratch off his bucket list before he goes - he wants to know what it feels like to kill someone, and Olive's arrival at his property makes her the perfect choice of victim.
The set-up sounds like the makings of an odd film, but that doesn't prepare the viewer in any way for just how odd this movie is. Bates allows Harvey to occasionally break the fourth wall so he can rant about millennials directly to the camera; Harvey has some very strange nightmares; Olive takes an LSD trip and at one point goes on a date with a man who turns out to be a serial killer; there are scenes at a commune involving Olive's mom Crystal (Kim Delaney) and her boy-toy; Olive and her friend Lenore (Hayley Marie Norman, who I've been a fan of since her days opening briefcases on Deal or No Deal) have a video chat while Lenore's coked-up hook-up struggles to get an erection in the next room... Tone-Deaf is quite unique, and it gets its title from the fact that Olive is a piano player who doesn't realize she's a terrible piano player. One aspect of her back story involves her dad Michael (Ray Wise) committing suicide on the night of one of her childhood recitals, and Olive and Crystal haven't figured out what to do with his ashes because he requested that they be launched into space.
If you want to watch something weird that's both amusing and unsettling, Tone-Deaf is worth a watch.
Millennial Amanda Crew and baby boomer Robert Patrick have a disagreement that saying "Okay, boomer" isn't going to have any impact on in this quirky, comedy-tinged horror film from writer/director Richard Bates Jr. Crew plays Olive, who decides to spend some time in a country house while getting over the fact that she has just broken up with her boyfriend (played by Nelson Franklin) and been fired from her job (her boss is played by Ash vs. Evil Dead's Ray Santiago) on back-to-back days. Unfortunately for her, the place she rents is owned by Patrick's character Harvey, who fears that his son is going to put him in an assisted living home and has something to scratch off his bucket list before he goes - he wants to know what it feels like to kill someone, and Olive's arrival at his property makes her the perfect choice of victim.
The set-up sounds like the makings of an odd film, but that doesn't prepare the viewer in any way for just how odd this movie is. Bates allows Harvey to occasionally break the fourth wall so he can rant about millennials directly to the camera; Harvey has some very strange nightmares; Olive takes an LSD trip and at one point goes on a date with a man who turns out to be a serial killer; there are scenes at a commune involving Olive's mom Crystal (Kim Delaney) and her boy-toy; Olive and her friend Lenore (Hayley Marie Norman, who I've been a fan of since her days opening briefcases on Deal or No Deal) have a video chat while Lenore's coked-up hook-up struggles to get an erection in the next room... Tone-Deaf is quite unique, and it gets its title from the fact that Olive is a piano player who doesn't realize she's a terrible piano player. One aspect of her back story involves her dad Michael (Ray Wise) committing suicide on the night of one of her childhood recitals, and Olive and Crystal haven't figured out what to do with his ashes because he requested that they be launched into space.
If you want to watch something weird that's both amusing and unsettling, Tone-Deaf is worth a watch.
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