(BP)

Unfortunately Eszterhas can’t adapt it himself since he turned into a sentient pile of cocaine in the mid 90s.

I kind of want to double feature the 70s Evel biopics. I don’t remember a lot from the George Hamilton one other than it’s a, “Evel Knievel needs to think about his entire life before he makes a jump” story. The one where Knievel plays himself has one of the most unhinged casts in cinema history: Gene Kelley, Red Buttons, Dabney Coleman, Lauren Hutton, Leslie Nielsen, and Frank Gifford.

The user reviews on Shudder for both of Mackay’s 2024 films are very normal and not insane.

Kinski plays Orlok as a human being trapped inside of a monster, so it’s a lot of self loathing and ennui. I think the brilliant counterbalance is that Herzog has such a light touch with Thomas and Ellen, and it’s the best version of that relationship in any Nosferatu/Dracula adaptation. There’s a warmth and romance at the beginning that doesn’t seem to have interested Eggers. You get the sense that Orlok ruins theirs live out of pure envy for what they have.

I watched Cuckoo today. I liked it, even if it feels underdeveloped. It’s true that Stevens as a villain is a bit obvious at this point, but I liked the detective character being his tweener counterpoint so that the showdown between them and Schaefer has a Good/Bad/Ugly dynamic. It kind of feels like an editing chop job because there’s a few dropped threads, but there’s still plenty to admire. I caught an early New Year’s Day screening of Nosferatu, so maybe I was just wiped, but it wasn’t a home run for me. The production is marvelous, and I think Lily Rose Depp and Scarsgard are both phenomenal. The Orlok design rules. Maybe there’s just an inevitable rote quality to such a canonical story that I couldn’t look beyond. The Orlok scenes are affective, but I think the movie truly comes alive during the scenes where Ellen is being afflicted by her connection to him. It’s where Eggers seems most comfortable building out the story and playing with themes; to me, his take on the story has a lot to do with the long history of women being dismissed with diagnoses of “female hysteria.” Anyway, I think it’s the third best version, but that it’s quite good, and there’s no shame in placing third to Murnau and Herzog.

This week is great. I can’t believe I’m going to get to see biopics about both of my heroes: Bob Dylan and Count Orlok.

Several months ago, my daughter burst into tears when wasn’t in the trailer, so it was a relief that they appeared.

Part 2

I watched a holiday season horror movie every day this month. (Part one)

I said it when Travolta made that Gotti movie, and I’d say it to Nolan now: No Armand Assante, no buys.

Today in Nature is Healing: They’re opening a brand new Roy Rogers near me, and it’s not in a truck stop. The uncertain future’s storm clouds may gather, but there is a silver lining and it’s at the Fixin’s Bar.

There should have been a series of Hardcore spinoff films about Peter Boyle’s gross private detective character.

That certainly is a list of well-known horror movies. The only one I was totally blindsided by was What Lies Beneath. I guess if you look at the past 30 years of Zemeckis’s filmography he is sort of a master of horror.

You’ll get milfs in goofy disguises doing kung fu to needle drop dance music and you’ll like it!

Phibes is such a great balance of the gothic horror and camp that Price embodied. It’s fascinating how it functions as both a love letter to Price’s earlier work and an antecedent to movies like Seven.

@Andrew POE! have you seen Grand Hotel? Very similar vibe to Dinner at Eight; it also has Beery and John Barrymore, among a number of other huge names from the time.

It has some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read, but after the fourth or fifth gruesomely vivid description of the gang mindlessly destroying indigenous villages, I thought “okay Mr. McCarthy, I get it.”

Dwayne’s probably the only A lister who has anything in common with destitute Amazon warehouse workers. They both look at the bitter fruits of their labor and ask, “I piss in a water bottle every day for this?” Truly the People’s Champion.

The only competent member of Top Dollar’s crew.

Silent Night Deadly Night 5: The Toymaker…also pretty good! This franchise is very unique. The first three are all essentially about the two psycho Santa orphans, and they go the Halloween III where characters in 4 and 5 are briefly shown watching those movies. The latter sequels are connected, as the surviving characters from Initiation return in Toymaker as family friends of the protagonist. The two films don’t share any salient plot points and the returning characters are more than walk-on cameos but less than integral supporting figures in the story. Very curious. Yuzna returns as producer and co-writer, but the film’s director is Martin Kitrosser, who also wrote two of the Friday the 13th installments. He’s been most successful as a script supervisor, including credits on every single Tarantino film. This is the goofiest and lightest of the five; it’s like an extended Are You Afraid of the Dark episode with some gore and the most chaste sex scenes I’ve ever witnessed. I’m bummed I slept on these for so long. They’re for sure going into my rotation for annual Xmas horror watches.

The world would be a better place if actors couldn’t play real people in movies unless they’d shared cocaine together at least once.

I’ve always loved the story about Tony negotiating a $1000 bonus per individual bee sting for Candyman and walking away with an extra $26k.

Netflix’s new release Time Cut is a very lazy facsimile of the high-concept comedic slashers of the past decade. Totally Killer and The Final Girls are both significantly better versions of it, not to mention several of Christopher Landon’s movies. I also watched Silent Night Deadly Night 4: Initiation. I’ve never heard much about this other than that it’s unrelated to the original killer Santa storyline, so I had no idea it’s a Brian Yuzna movie that’s arguably just as grotesque and bizarre as Society. It’s LA-based occult coven body horror that just happens to take place during the Christmas season, it doesn’t make much sense, and it’s quite fun and sleazy.

I read somewhere that since it’s not a period piece, the screenwriter approached it like he was writing a reboot of the Thanksgiving from Grindhouse. It references the trailer quite a bit, but tonally it’s less of an exploitation movie and more like a modern neo-slasher.

My absolute favorite giallos: