Knives Out; Queen and Slim; Dark Waters; Frozen 2 and Horror Fest 2019 on Monday Morning Diary (December 2)

Screen cap from fabulously stylish murder-mystery “Knives Out”

by Sam Juliano

I trust that everyone stateside had a fabulous Thanksgiving Day as we did in a grand gathering in Butler, New Jersey on Thursday.  Now we move fast steam ahead to the “Happy Holidays” time of the year and all the frantic preparation with a keen eye for what Mother Nature may throw our way.

Lucille, Sammy, Jeremy and I saw four films in theaters over the past two weeks, and aside from the mediocre, though reasonably engaging “Frozen 2” it was a solid batch methinks. Not a single five star movie, but three receive the excellent 4.5 rating, one received the very good 4.0 and one a fine 3.5. “Knives Out” is a stylish murder mystery with mostly terrific performances and red herrings aplenty that is one of the best in its genre in quite a while; “Queen and Slim” is a powerful drama of prejudice, police brutality and betrayal; “Dark Waters” directed by Todd Haynes is for the most part a searing legal drama about the Dupont chemical fiasco that caused the death of numerous people and contaminated the environment, and it features Mark Ruffalo and an impressive cast; “Ford vs. Ferrari” is rather a lightweight affair, but the leads are captivating and film is an undeniably entertaining sports-themed race car movie; “Frozen 2” is a far cry from its beloved predecessor, but still captures some of the general appeal even with a weaker plot.

We visited theaters in northern New Jersey and Manhattan to access this impressive batch:

Knives Out **** 1/2   (Wednesday, Secaucus multiplex)
Queen and Slim **** 1/2  (Friday, Teaneck multiplex)
Dark Waters ****   (Saturday, Cineopolis)
Frozen 2 ****  (Saturday afternoon, Secaucus multiplex)

Jamie Uhler offers up two more superlative entries in his gloriously ongoing 2019 Horror Fest series of capsule reviews:

Ghosthouse (La Casa 3) (U. Lenzi… 1988)

Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell (S. Fukazawa… 1992)

Pairing these two films together this year I thought would be a pretty interesting enterprise, as each point in a way references the other; first their creation as homages or direct lifts to Sam Raimi’s first two Evil Dead films highlights how massively influential those works were for Horror. Not just stylistically, but as low-budget prods to young aspiring filmmakers to go out and make their own gonzo bloodfeast. Mavericks seeing in them accessibility of production and DIY spirit they could emulate. That seemed obvious, it’s not hard to like Horror as long as I have and understand that—you take these two films and add New Zealand’s Dead Alive and you suddenly have a trio of films from three different continents all bowing down to Raimi’s originals almost immediately after their release—but it buttressed into my second point. That being, that I’ve largely been lukewarm to the Evil Dead franchise, certainly all the screenings post High School are in this evaluation, and I thought perhaps I could probe what it is that so many love about these films, what they see in them outside mere blood and guts humor, how the changes in an Italian and Japanese variation comment on this fandom and their countries own Horror traditions. It’d all be a microcosm inside the VHS era, where Horror production and especially distribution saw a tremendous boom. In short, I could maybe probe into my own feelings about Evil Dead I and II (since I’m decisively in the minority) by viewing the ultimate critique of a film—in the paraphrased words of Godard—by others that have “made their own film in response”. Perhaps what is nicked in these films from the Evil Dead franchise is its true essence, something I’d previously missed. Or, once and for all, I can see just how different my aesthetic is on the fringes from the average Horror fanatic. 

I’d last rewatched Evil Dead II during 2016’s Horror-marathon*, and came away disliking it more than I ever had. I didn’t exactly hate it, but it’s worth noting for commentary on it being fresh in my mind, an important distinction when comparing it to the films here. Recalling it makes you realize how different the Lenzi film is, Ghosthouse included here via a producers slight of hand—being titled La Casa 3 in Italy, a thinly veiled attempt to ride the coattails of the success of La Casa I and II, the translated names of the first two Evil Dead films when they got screenings in Italy. As such, Ghosthouse isn’t that similar to Evil Dead as it wasn’t intended to be, save a possessed home in the sticks, it’s more in line with the Italian Horror aesthetics of the era than Raimi’s gonzo bursts. This isn’t to disparage it, as I might enjoy it more than any film mentioned in this piece (with the exception of Dead Alive probably), but when we open to a remote farmhouse, and witness the two graphic Butler murders (the old couple who resides in the home) we know we’re in for something different. At the completion of the title sequence, we’re 20 years later, experiencing a strange radio transmission Paul has began picking up. He alerts his girlfriend, Martha, when they grow stranger and others in his radio circle also begin experiencing them. They decide to locate the source and investigate, a trek that puts them squarely into the deserted Butler farmhouse. From here, it’s pure Italio-Horror, with an entertaining mixture of outrageous connections and stylish, often brutal kills. Apparently, if you’re the owner of a funeral home, you probably shouldn’t take a doll from a coffin and give it to your daughter as a present. The film is well made, the photography is atmospheric and controlled despite its gory intentions and budgetary concerns, and moves without Raimi’s hyper-speed. A testament to Lenzi’s craft, which has been making Horror works for about 2 decades by this point, it’s hard to judge his career as this might be his best Horror film (sure, Seven Bloodstained Orchids is probably more sustained). But then most of his giallos aren’t nearly the films his poliziotteschi are, and then there’s all that trash intermingled throughout. But, clearly you can see here he could make a creepy, highly entertaining film.

Meanwhile, Fukazawa’s film, Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell, is an altogether different beast. It’s a poverty row romp that features a run time more in line with today’s prestige, glossy television than feature films, scrapping in at about 62 minutes. Just how low budget is it? Well accounts somewhat vary—it’s said to be a 1992 release, but I’ve also read shooting began in 1995 and took some 14 years to complete. That’s a tale of threadbare American Movie/Coven (or hell, Northwestern was Borchardt’s real dream) stuff, a passion project that its creators refuse to give up until it’s completed but nevertheless have to wait months or years for the necessary funds to finish. I’m not totally sure, I just know that no one really could see it, a fact (slightly) remedied when Terracotta released a DVD in 2017 (which, hilariously, added additional confusion: you’ll see the movie listed as a 2012 film [imdb], a 2014 one [rotten tomatoes] or, the default, 2017, which is probably due to the DVD distribution). With Terracotta’s inventory sold out, I had to track down that DVD via import, which revealed a curious oddity. It shows the closest affection for Evil Dead within a hyperkinetic rhythm, one that sadly sort of comes and goes, slowly resulting in a film of (slight) lulls and climaxes, which oddly produces a film more in line with the pacing of a successful film (read below for how I found Evil Dead’s unending kinetic fury to be slightly one-note). This helps the first half, roughly the films first two acts, where we open to a man and his partner in the midst of a disagreement. Things quickly escalate and she pulls a knife in attempt to stab him, which he turns and plunges into her chest, killing her. Rather than seeking a a self-defense plea, he digs out his basement floor and drops the still bleeding corpse underneath. The symbol of their affection, a necklace, animates unbeknownst to the man, whose story more or less ends here. We smash cut to 30 years later, with the son, working out in his basement gym, next door to the (now haunted) home where his father murdered in self-defense. The son, Naoto, has retaken up body building as a means to cope with his loneliness from losing his job and his girlfriend in succession. She re-enters his life when she asks for a tour of the house next door on he hope of making a documentary about it since she believes it to be haunted. This portion of the film is measured, even creepy at times, riffing on the Japanese kaidan tradition. The second half of the movie is then them in the house being terrorized by the ghost zombie of the departed, and we are treated with the quick zooms and gory, visual gags in the Evil Dead films. When a head is stabbed in the back and the point of the knife comes out the front with the eye speared out you laugh, but in the end we’re not treated to nearly enough of these over the remaining half hour to have that good a time. 

It’s hard then for me to take anything that new away; you know the Evil Dead series was massively influential and I’d be lying if I said an even cheaper Japanese knockoff would alter my thoughts on it. But these are two relatively forgotten works—the Fukazawa is incredibly obscure—so I’m happy to have gotten to them now. I’m now thinking I’ll do the trio of films that technically constitute Demons III next year now in this sense of experimentation and contrast. This was fun. 

*Here is my email from that revisit (from September 2016): 

Yesterday saw a matinee revisit of Sam Raimi’s often revered splatter film classic Evil Dead II. I’ve long been very ambivalent to its charms, finding it overly silly and lacking much of what I seek out in cinema. Most of this is intentional of course, me finding faults in precisely what the film is setting out to do. One would be foolish to watch Bugs Bunny or the Three Stooges (to me Evil Dead‘s closest precedents) and expect sophistication, but then, Bugs Bunny and Three Stooges shorts run from anywhere to 7 minutes to 20 or so, making their modus operandi perfectly expressed with such a compacted runtime. Evil Dead II then seems like an endless involuntary muscle spasm, a film for the Ritalin ADHD crowd given sufficient cover by Jack Black’s character in High Fidelity calling it the ‘greatest film of all time’ (no doubt due to its embracing of so many clashing styles not usually seen in such a film: musical hall romp, aggressive gore, heavy use of miniatures in a fun way, etc.). We all have our guilty pleasures, and more power to them, but since there are equally manic films (hell, in many cases much more so), with actual subtexts and attention to plot dynamics, my guilty pleasure list will continue to not include this one†. I’ve now watched it twice in the last 11 years, feeling much the same thing both times.

I don’t doubt that many love it, I just doubt its standing as a Horror masterwork. 

†Several years ago when I attempted to encapsulate my lifetime of Horror watching with the completion of a ranking of every Horror film I’d seen (or recalled seeing as looking at the list from time to time I see missing works) I’d placed Evil Dead II at 190 and Evil Dead at 387. When I get around to reordering that list—hopefully this year at the conclusion of all this Horror viewing [edit: sadly I’m yet to do this, but again hoping to complete it when my run of films this year are done]—I expect the sequel to experience some sort of free fall. 

Screen cap for powerful chase drama dealing with police brutality