Worth Mentioning - A Very Real and Very Tough World

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

Perkins post-Psycho, an immortal Theron, 1800s chills, and '80s ninja weirdness.

PRETTY POISON (1968)

Stephen Geller wrote screenplays for every major studio, but he didn't write the screenplay adaptation of his novel She Let Him Continue when it was turned into the movie Pretty Poison. Instead, the scripting duties went to Lorenzo Semple Jr., who's best known for his work on the '60s Batman TV series. Pretty Poison was directed by Noel Black, making his feature directorial debut after catching attention and accolades for a short film called Skaterdater. The result was a movie that's very interesting, quite quirky, and occasionally befuddling.

While Anthony Perkins made several movies in the '60s, this was the first Hollywood production he worked on following Psycho eight years earlier... and he's not exactly perfect for the character he plays. Since he was in his mid-30s, he comes off as being older than the character was probably supposed to be, but he plays the role very well nonetheless. The character is Dennis Pitt, who has just been paroled from a mental institution after serving some time for starting a fire and accidentally killing his aunt when he was 15. Although his parole officer Azenauer (John Randolph) warns him there's no place in the outside world for fantasies, Dennis's entire life is fueled by fantasy. He breaks contact with Azenauer and goes out on his own, and soon enough he has a job at a riverside factory where he becomes fascinated by the sight of the place's chemical waste being dumped into the river. He comes up with the idea that he's going to sabotage the factory's chemical-pumping pipes, either overlooking the fact that he's going to be causing a lot more of the chemical to go into the water in the process or figuring one big dump is better than allowing the usual chemical dumps to continue on a regular basis. I really don't think he has put much rational thought into it at all.

As Dennis builds up to carrying out his plan, he imagines himself to be a secret agent thwarting an international conspiracy. What makes this especially problematic is that he ropes local girl Sue Ann Stepanek, a 17-year-old high school senior played by twenty-something Tuesday Weld, into his sabotage scheme. You can tell from early on that there's something not right about Sue Ann, because she buys into Dennis's secret agent act completely and keeps taking it as fact when it's gotten far beyond ridiculous.

Dennis and Sue Ann are caught up in fantasies, nonsense, and lies, and as they plot to carry out criminal acts together, deal with Sue Ann's rather awful mother (played by Beverly Garland), and try to avoid Arzenauer, it's clear that these two should not be around each other. Things are going to go terribly wrong at some point, but how? When? And how bad will it get? It's fascinating to watch where the story goes.

I have seen Pretty Poison a few times over the years and enjoy revisiting it now and then. I've never read Geller's novel, but I am curious if it gives deeper insight into the characters' thought processes, but it's not obvious to me what they believe or what they think they're accomplishing at times. I might have to seek out She Let Him Continue someday. I'm definitely going to be watching Pretty Poison again someday.

THE OLD GUARD (2020)

It's certainly not necessary that you think the person responsible for the entertainment you're watching is likeable, but sometimes it's nice. While I was considering watching the Netflix action film The Old Guard, which was written by Greg Rucka and based on his comic book of the same name, I saw an interview with Rucka on an episode of Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin's video podcast Fatman Beyond and found him to be a cool, interesting person. So when I finally got around to watching The Old Guard a year after it reached Netflix, I was glad to find that I enjoyed the movie Rucka had made with director Gina Prince-Bythewood.

The Old Guard didn't win me over right away, it took some minutes for me to really get into it. The film introduces viewers to a small group of people who are immortal - for a time. Eventually their healing abilities will cease to function and they'll die like the rest of us, but it could take many centuries for that to happen. So for now, the extremely old Andromanche of Scythia, a.k.a. Andy (Charlize Theron); Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), who fought under Napoleon; and deeply-in-love couple Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), who met while battling during the Crusades, put their abilities to use taking mercenary jobs in an effort to help the world around them. Problem is, Andy is bitter and over it all, feeling there's no point to any of it - and not only is a disenchanted immortal a real bummer to watch, it turns out that they seem a lot like a petulant adolescent. Thankfully, Andy ditches the bad attitude before too long, and that's when I started to enjoy the movie more.

Immortals have something of a psychic connection to each other, they're drawn to each other, meant to be together. So when U.S. Marine Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne) receives her first should-be-fatal wound while serving in Afghanistan, Andy and her cohorts receive a vision of the incident, they can feel and see it happen. They have to seek out Nile and bring her into the group - making her the audience stand-in character who has to have the concept explained to them so the viewer gets it as well. But in this case, the audience stand-in character is also an unkillable ass-kicker.

Nile is discovering her own immortality just as outsiders have discovered the immortality of the mercenaries. Former CIA agent James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) contacts Andy and co. under the pretense of having them rescue abducted children in Africa, but there are no children to rescue. This was a set-up to lure them into the clutches of pharma CEO Steven Merrick (Harry Melling), who wants to study them for pharmaceutical purposes. This is an interesting idea, but at the same time, we've seen how capable and badass the immortal mercenaries are, so we know that these villains are not going to be any true threat to them whatsoever. Merrick does have his own small army of mercenaries working for him, but they're just sacks of meat for our heroes to lay waste to in action sequences. Still, the movie does make us care about the situation because we don't want to see these characters get experimented on - plus Andy's healing is slowing down, so she might be in danger after all.

Andy gets more tolerable as the film goes on, and Booker, Joe, Nicky, and Nile all turn out to be good characters to spend time with, even if one of them might make a questionable decision along the way. The Old Guard is an entertaining action flick, a good way to spend a couple hours. Now a sequel is on the way, and I am very much looking forward to it.

THE LAST THING MARY SAW (2021)

The feature debut of writer/director Edoardo Vitaletti, The Last Thing Mary Saw is not a movie to turn to if you’re looking for something that will provide straightforward answers. Nor is it a movie to put on if you’re looking for something exciting and eventful. This is very much a slow burn, and over the course of its 89 minutes (which feel substantially longer than 89 minutes) it weaves its own strange mythology without fully explaining itself. A lot of viewers will probably find sitting through this movie to be a rather frustrating experience, but Vitaletti has assembled a solid cast for the film, the sort of cast some may stick around to watch even if they’re not enjoying the movie the actors are in.

In the lead roles are Stefanie Scott (Insidious: Chapter 3) as Mary, a young woman who’s part of an extremely strict religious family, and the Orphan herself Isabelle Fuhrman as Eleanor, the maid that Mary embarks on a romantic relationship with. Unfortunately for these women, they’re living in the year 1843 and their relationship is seen as being shockingly sinful, so Mary’s family sets out to punish this wickedness out of them through torturous prayer sessions that involve them kneeling on uncooked rice. Presiding over their punishment is Mary’s grandmother The Matriarch (Judith Roberts), an intense and cruel woman who becomes target #1 when Mary and Eleanor start plotting a way to get revenge on the family and free themselves from this horrific situation.

That sounds straightforward and easy to follow, but there are levels of strangeness to the story beyond that. There’s the guard Theodore (P.J. Sosko), who is forced to watch the family’s property, faces bodily harm if he attempts to quit, and will do anything for a loaf of a bread. There’s the little book that Mary’s father brought into their household, filled with parables that reflect what’s going on with Mary, Eleanor, and characters around them. And there’s the poisonous method the women choose to use against the family, which functions in a way I didn’t quite understand. Any slight bit of exposition on these things was delivered in whispers and metaphors, so there are aspects of the story that remained baffling to me throughout.

In addition to the unclear story elements, another thing that makes The Last Thing Mary Saw and its glacial pace difficult to sit through is the dark, heavy atmosphere that hangs over every scene – but given that we’re talking about a horror film, an uncomfortable atmosphere is a positive. We know things are going to go terribly wrong for Mary and Eleanor, since the film begins with a blindfolded Mary being interrogated while blood runs from her eye sockets, but we have to stick with the movie to see how badly it will turn out. Vitaletti kept me hooked to see how things would fall apart, and Scott, Fuhrman, and the intensely creepy Roberts held my attention. This despite the fact that we’re not told much about Mary and Eleanor as characters, and given little reason to care about them aside from them being less awful than most of the people around them. The actors do well with the material they were given, which wasn’t always a great deal because the characters in this film are very subdued. Even the death of a loved one appears to be nothing more than a mild disappointment to these people.

One actor who livens things up when he appears on screen is Rory Culkin, who arrives late in the film as a character credited as The Intruder. The Intruder may be a scumbag, which is no surprise in this movie, but Culkin turns in a captivating performance during the minutes he has to bring the character to life.

The Last Thing Mary Saw is an interesting debut for Vitaletti, a well put-together film that is certainly unique. Its brand of uniqueness is just not one that appealed to me, even though the cast did. Not only was I wanting to see something more happen throughout, I also wanted to have a better understanding of the things that were happening, and Vitaletti didn’t want to provide information or convey it in a clear way. The movie has a tone and style that will draw some viewers in, but I found the execution of the story to be off-putting.

The review of The Last Thing Mary Saw first appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

NINJA III: THE DOMINATION (1984)

It seems really unnecessary that the Cannon Ninja movies are considered a franchise, since the only thing the three movies - Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, and Ninja III: The Domination - have in common with each other is the fact that each one features ninjas and has Sho Kosugi in the cast, playing a different character each time. I don't think it would have made much difference if they had each been released as standalone movies, and they're so separated they should have been. Ninja III especially stands out from the group, because it goes off the rails into supernatural horror.

David Chung plays an evil man who keeps his ninja gear stowed away in a glowing case hidden in a mountain cave. As the film begins, he puts on his gi, grabs his weapon, and goes on a killing spree... which only comes to an end after multiple police officers have shot this very hard to kill fellow many times. Dying, the evil ninja seeks the help of telephone line worker Christie Ryder (played by Lucinda Dickey of Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo), who happens to be working alone in the middle of nowhere. There's no way this ninja can be nursed back to health, but he does have a way to recover from his wounds: by handing her his sword and speaking some words Christie doesn't understand, he passes his soul into her body. It's sort like serial killer Charles Lee Ray putting his soul into a doll in Child's Play a few years later. And that soul transfer brings an end to this film's very action-packed, violent opening 17 minutes.

From there, Christie has to find time to work her jobs as telephone line worker and aerobics instructor while pursuing a romance with police officer Secord (Jordan Bennett) and dealing with the fact that her body is inhabited by an evil spirit that has given her martial arts skills. The relationship with Secord moves fast; he's licking V8 juice off her body by the end of their first afternoon together. The build-up to the ninja's spirit causing serious trouble for her takes slightly longer. It begins with odd dreams and disturbing memories from the ninja's final moments - but then the ninja starts using Christie's body to hunt down and murder the cops who killed him. At that point, the movie turns into a slasher where the slasher happens to be a supernatural ninja, and that is awesome.

Sho Kosugi enters the picture as Yamada, basically the Dr. Loomis of this story. Like Loomis was tracking Michael Myers in Halloween, Yamada is out to put an end to this evil ninja's reign of terror. An exorcist played by the great James Hong of Big Trouble in Little China and more than 400 other credits also gets involved with the effort to help Christie, so the movie goes from being an action flick to being a slasher, passes through The Exorcist territory, then ends with a duel between two ninjas.

Well, horror is my favorite genre, so I have to admit that Ninja III was even more appealing to me than the two Ninja movies that came before, even with it being much crazier and more ridiculous than the other two films in this "franchise". Actually, the craziness and ridiculous elements just enhanced the film's appeal for me, making it all the more fun. But you can't really compare Ninja III to Enter the Ninja or Revenge of the Ninja, it's a completely different sort of movie that shouldn't be tied to those two.

Kosugi went from being a villain in the first film to being the hero in the second, and then playing a small role in this film. This was a decision made by Menahem Golan that Kosugi didn't understand or agree with. He didn't like being demoted, he didn't like the idea of mixing ninjas and the supernatural like this, and he thought the idea of a female ninja was absurd. He still agreed to work on the movie, but made his displeasure with it known, and was allegedly quite rude to Lucinda Dickey. His objection to getting the franchise basically pulled out from under him was understandable, but it's a shame that Dickey had to deal with the moodiness. It wasn't her fault Golan had such an out-of-left-field vision for Ninja III.

Like Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III was a collaboration between director Sam Firstenberg and writer James R. Silke, and it's another movie that's highly entertaining.