Steven Rubio's Online Life

dead & buried (gary sherman, 1981)

This is the fourteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 14 is called "Voodoo, Hoodoo & Afro-Caribbean Religions Week":

Western films that depict religions and traditions with roots in African spirituality are often highly problematic, containing many inaccuracies and stereotypes that vilify practitioners of Voodoo, Hoodoo, and the many other varied religions, traditions, beliefs, and practices of diasporic Africans as they were enslaved and forced to labor in North and South America. Fear of the role that practitioners of Vodou had in the successful Haitian Revolution led to action against practitioners of Voodoo in the United States and elsewhere and since then Voodoo has been synonymous with a generalized evil, dark magic or even witchcraft or satanism in direct opposition to white Christianity. The most famous trope of Voodoo in popular culture is Voodoo dolls, which are not even a part of either Haitian Vodou or Louisianan Voodoo. The term Zombi also comes from Voodoo and refers to people who are magically emptied of agency and thus easily manipulated, a great metaphor for enslavement.

This week's challenge is to watch a movie featuring Voodoo, Hoodoo or other Afro-Caribbean religions from MikkelHH's list here.

Way back at the beginning of my foray into the Letterboxd Season Challenge (the second movie from my first participation), I watched a pretty terrible movie. The director of the movie actually saw this and left a comment, explaining what had gone wrong with the film, and recommending another of his movies that he was more proud of (I later saw it, and it was a definite improvement).

I mention this because, while I don't have a very large readership, I still worry when I am going to pan a film, that I'll be stepping over the bounds of fairness if one of the creators pops in.

Dead & Buried came out in 1981, but a lot of the people who worked on the film are still around, so if any of them see this, I want to emphasize that this is an honorable attempt at a horror film, one that has developed a cult following over the years. (It has a Metascore of 71/100). Having said that, Dead & Buried didn't work for me.

The best thing about the film is the work of special effects artist Stan Winston (in his career, he won four Oscars for his work). There are lots of truly gruesome things in Dead & Buried, great stuff if you're so inclined.

Another selling point was the participation of Dan O'Bannon, although O'Bannon later denied having influenced the film.

The budget was small, which makes Winston's work all the more impressive. The cast was filled with recognizable actors. The lead, James Farantino, had been a regular on the TV series The Bold Ones, and had plenty of other TV credits. Melody Anderson was another who was frequently seen on television (and we remember her from Flash Gordon). The biggest name was Jack Albertson, who had won an Oscar, an Emmy (as "The Man" in Chico and the Man), and a Tony. Albertson had cancer during filming, and died soon after the film's release. The movie even has Robert Englund, who three years later began his long run as Freddy in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

These people are all professionals, and they do a professional job. It's pointless to complain, especially since the movie has a lot of fans. It's not so-bad-it's-good, it's not embarrassing, it's not a waste of time. But I'm going to forget about it as soon as I am done writing this.

For a different take, here is the great Guillermo del Toro:

host (rob savage, 2020)

This is the ninth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 9 is called "Found Footage Week":

Popularized at the turn of the century with The Blair Witch Project, found footage is a genre/style with much older roots than you might expect. In literature we have a "found letters" or "found diary" form in the epistolary novel, which dates back to at least 1684 with Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, and horror novels have used the technique from Frankenstein to Dracula to Carrie. The first found footage movie was Shirley Clarke's The Connection from 1961, and Cannibal Holocaust brought the style to horror films in 1980. With low production costs, the potential profit margins are huge, as evidenced by the explosion that followed Blair Witch, most notably the Paranormal Activity franchise. The oft-maligned style spans all genres, from superhero sci-fi to comedy to more recent "screenlife" thrillers where the footage is on computer screens. What will we find this week? This is a fairly exhaustive list.

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen found footage film.

Whoa!

Host is an example of a movie where the less you know going in, the better, so stop reading if you haven't seen it. Hell, I'd never even heard of it, much less knew what it was about. I figured at best it would be OK-not-awful, like Smile, which was better than I expected. Well, Host was better than I expected. If The Babadook is the standard bearer for recent horror, Host is its equal, albeit in a different way.

Both films are more than simply scary. The Babadook is a crucial film about grief (and is scary as shit), Host is about the impact of social media (and is scary as shit). I'd say The Babadook has more depth, but Host has a lot to say without drawing attention to its arguments.

Host was made during the pandemic quarantine, and Rob Savage used the opportunity in a smart fashion. The entire movie takes place on Zoom ... all of the actors were in different places during filming, shooting their own footage with iPhones taped to their laptops, Savage himself directed from another location. The scenario is that a group of friends decide to have a seance via Zoom.

There is a reason this feature film is only 57 minutes long, and I'll avoid at least one spoiler by letting you figure out how the plot makes this necessary. Essentially, Host is just a scary movie, effective, a good scary movie, but even with the novel production, I don't know if I'd go further than that. Except Savage is really effective, and the setting invites post-mortem thinking about social media that is a little bit deeper than what you usually get after a good horror movie.

So consider this a big thumbs up. But if you are easily scared, avoid Host.

terror of mechagodzilla (ishirō honda, 1975)

This is the sixth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 6 is called "Strange Beasts Week":

An excerpt from "What is Kaiju?", an essay by Kenta McGrath:

"Although the origins of kaiju can be traced back to long before Godzilla and indeed, cinema itself, the fact remains that the rise of kaiju in popular culture occurred in tandem with the rise of the kaiju eiga ('Japanese monster movies'). But first, we must be attuned to the fact that the kaiju eiga spans decades, covers many aesthetic trends, and varies widely in its use (and non-use) of allegory and socio-political commentary. It is not static but, like Godzilla, always evolving and adapting, according to when, how, and why it is produced, and who is behind the wheel. As with any genre, it has produced formidable works that will stand the test of time, and forgettable efforts designed to do little more than cash in on what came before it.

"Where many saw only the strange, giant monster, others recognized the art and craft behind the strange, giant monster. More than anything else, it is the art of cinema—the combination of image and sound, the collaboration of artists and craftspeople, and the considered use of the resources at their disposal—that allowed the meanings and allegorical potential of kaiju to be articulated in the first place. Beasts, creatures, monsters, and yokai—strange, giant, or otherwise—never needed cinema; it is just one medium in which they have appeared and flourished. Meanwhile, discussing kaiju as separate from cinema seems to me a fruitless exercise. Without cinema, kaiju are relatively unremarkable—just another variation of monsters of which there have been many throughout history.

"From King Kong to Clifford the Big Red Dog, the world of kaiju is vast. For this week's challenge, let's focus on the films in David Haddon's What’s That Coming Over The Hill? - Kaiju Films list and bask in the spectacle that decades of gigantic strange beasts on film have wrought."

Terror of Mechagodzilla has some historical significance in the franchise. It's a sequel to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. It marked a return for director Ishirō Honda, who had directed the very first Godzilla movie, as well as six subsequent films with the iconic monster prior to Terror of Mechagodzilla. It was his last film as a director, but he wasn't done in the industry ... he worked on five late films with Akira Kurosawa.

Sadly, Terror isn't a very good movie. It's nice in that it avoids the appeals to kids that had marred many Godzilla movies ... it's a movie for adults, with adult characters. And if you like kaiju battles, the final sequence between Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, and Titanosaurus is fun. Criterion thought enough of this one to include it in their 15-film box set of Godzilla movies.

pearl (ti west, 2022)

Prequel to X (you could even call it an Origin Story) that shows what the old woman in the first film was like in her younger days, filmed simultaneously. As often happens with prequels, there is some disagreement about the proper order to watch the two films, chronologically with Pearl first, or in release order with Pearl second. I saw them in release order, for what it's worth. (And of course, a third movie in the series has since been released.)

Pearl shares a style and attitude with the first film, and I thought it mattered that I knew who Pearl was because I watched this second, but my daughter, who knew nothing about the series, didn't seem to mind that she was coming to the character cold. The horror is once again extreme ... this is not a movie for the faint-hearted. At this point it is clear that writer-director Ti West and writer-star Mia Goth think they are offering more than pure horror. The movies are a character study. But for all of the stylishness, it's Goth's acting that raises the film. Her long monologue near the end is masterful.

no

28 weeks later (juan carlos fresnadillo, 2007)

Sequel to 28 Days Later delivers. It had been a long time since I saw this one, and even longer since I saw the original, but my memory is that they are equally impressive. The zombies are truly frightening; although 28 Days Later wasn't the first fast zombie movie, it's the one that got the most attention at the time, and if 28 Weeks Later lacks the surprise factor of its predessor, its relentless terror is still nearly unbearable. (And yes, I know they aren't technically zombies but rather victims of a virus.) The cast is terrific, full of people we think of now as stars who at the time were better described as "known": Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba.

 

the masque of the red death (roger corman, 1964)

It seemed appropriate to visit the films of Roger Corman on the news of his death at 98. I've probably seen Attack of the Crab Monsters more times than any of the others ... I could watch it again right now. And that film could easily stand in for much of Corman's work. But I thought I might honor his passing by watching one of his better films, The Masque of the Red Death (I'd choose either this or A Bucket of Blood as Corman's best).

Corman's Poe films are in general his classiest, and The Masque of the Red Death might be the creme of that creme. Masque was the penultimate film in the Poe series that began in 1960 with House of Usher. It gives the lie to any notion that Corman was an inept filmmaker ... he may have considered turning a profit to be the primary aim of a movie, but he wasn't incompetent about what turned up on the screen. (I just finished reading a book by Katharine Coldiron, Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter, and Corman only gets a brief mention ... Attack of the Crab Monsters might be awful, but compared to Plan 9 from Outer Space, it's Citizen Kane.) The budget for Masque was limited, of course, but it was still 20 times higher than that for A Bucket of Blood. And Corman was always a master of finagling to reduce costs ... a deal with the studio allowed Corman to film in England on a slightly longer shoot, and he was able to use sets leftover from the Oscar-nominated Becket. Nicolas Roeg signed on as the cinematographer, fresh off of second-unit work on Lawrence of Arabia ... the cinematography is one of the highlights of The Masque of the Red Death.

Vincent Price once again added his pleasingly hammy touch. Poe's story is short indeed, so another of his stories, "Hop-Frog", is worked in as a subplot. The build up is a bit draggy, and the final appearance of the Red Death lacks something ... Corman himself said he was dissatisfied with the sequence. The point isn't to dismiss the movie, which is better than just "Roger Corman's best", but it's a good movie without reaching the heights of a great movie.

film fatales #202: trouble every day (claire denis, 2001)

Claire Denis (Beau Travail, 35 Shots of Rum) is a favorite director of mine, and I looked forward to Trouble Every Day, but I was aware that it is not as acclaimed as her other movies (it has the lowest Metascore, 40, of any film she has directed). I think that low Metascore is understandable, and Trouble Every Day isn't up to her best. But it's an interesting attempt to make an arty erotic horror movie ... I'm thinking of Park Chan-wook's Thirst, which is a better movie than Trouble Every Day but has a similar blend of sex and gore shown with arty excellence.

Trouble Every Day seems like it is going to be a vampire movie, but it turns into something different, which allows for subtexts that don't necessarily match those of vampire pictures. Denis shows a connection between erotic attraction and cannibalism that is unexpected. It's thought-provoking, but I'm not convinced it goes deeper than the basic connection. Once you get what Denis is doing, there's not much else to say about that connection, leaving an arty horror movie that isn't all that great.

The acting is variable. Béatrice Dalle (Betty Blue) brings her idiosyncratic presence to her scenes, but Vincent Gallo is too low-key ... he struggles with what he has become, but his struggle isn't moving because Gallo is inert. There is also a big plot hole at the beginning (not that horror doesn't often have plot holes): Gallo plays a recently-married man who, we assume, has become intimate with his new wife, but given what we learn of him in the movie, it's impossible for his wife not to have noticed long before. It's hard to suspend disbelief in this case.

Despite that Metascore, the film is #793 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time, #103 on the 21st century list.

creature features: son of frankenstein (rowland v. lee, 1939)

Universal's third Frankenstein movie is the last with Boris Karloff. Director Rowland V. Lee does a solid job, supposedly reworking the script as he shot the film to give more emphasis to Bela Lugosi's Ygor. The movie has the look of German expressionism, and it's effective. The novelty of the monster has worn off, but this is still a decent picture, arguably the last time the Frankenstein story is played mostly straight by Universal.

The absence of James Whale reduces the amount of obvious queer subtext, but the acting lends a definite feel of camp to the proceedings. Basil Rathbone as the titular son, Lionel Atwill as a one-armed police inspector, and Bela Lugosi as Ygor all overact outrageously ... Lugosi, who is used to such things, comes off best, and some consider this his finest performance. Meanwhile, Boris Karloff once again imbues the monster with pathos, but he isn't as central to the picture (and he has lost the ability to speak that he showed in Bride of Frankenstein). He is the best thing about the movie, avoiding the camp stylings of his co-stars.

Son of Frankenstein goes on too long ... it's more than 20 minutes longer than its predecessors ... it's good compared to what followed, but it is clearly the least of the three Karloff Frankenstein films.

creature features: dracula's daughter (lambert hillyer, 1936)

Although it came 5 years later, this was the actual sequel to Dracula, starting off with the deaths of Dracula and Renfield. It's slow moving, and not particularly interesting, but the subtext has fascinated analysts to this day. There were suggestions of lesbianism in the script, but by the time the film made the screen, the Code had taken care of that. So you have to look pretty hard to see it. But once you've seen it, you can't shake it. Dracula's daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden), wants to be freed from the curse of being a vampire, but her impulses get the best of her time and time again. A couple of her victims are women, and the element of seduction which underlies so many vampire stories is here as well. It has also been argued that the isolation from society the Countess feels reflects the status of lesbians at the time.

All of this is enough to get us through the short running time, but don't exaggerate its greatness. Eventually, movies got more explicit, and subtext often moved to context. I saw 1970's The Vampire Lovers at a drive-in, and it was filled with nudity and horseplay among the women. But in fairness, it wasn't any better than Dracula's Daughter ... nudity didn't guarantee quality.

Here is a scene from Dracula's Daughter, where the Countess takes a woman off the street to pose for a painting:

And something from The Vampire Lovers:

creature features: werewolf of london (stuart walker, 1935)

Universal's first stab at the werewolf genre, six years before Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolfman. While movies like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man were based on literary sources, Werewolf of London was basically invented out of thin air (it was the first feature-length werewolf movie). Much of the lore we think of when werewolves come to mind was invented here.

Werewolf of London is one of the few early Universal monster movies I had never seen. Like the others, it's quick, wasting little time getting to the good stuff. The makeup wherein the doctor turns into a wolf is similar to what Chaney Jr. underwent for The Wolfman. It's OK "for its time", even if it seems old-fashioned now. Overall, it's an OK film but no classic, eventually replaced in our minds with the version Chaney Jr. gave us. Henry Hull, who plays the lead, had a long career, with his last movie coming in 1966 (one of my favorites, The Chase). Valerie Hobson, who was Frankenstein's wife in The Bride of Frankenstein, once again plays the scientist's wife (she was 18 years old, working opposite much older men). Warner Oland, a Swede who played Charlie Chan in many movies, is also in The Werewolf of London ... he died a few years later. And Spring Byington turns up (in the 1950s, she starred in the radio/TV series December Bride).