The Amityville Horror (1979)

Houses don’t have memories. Amityville, New York. In the early morning hours on November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. murders his entire family with a rifle at their home at 112 Ocean Avenue. One year later, newlyweds George Lutz (James Brolin) and his wife Kathy (Margot Kidder) move into the house with Kathy’s three children from a prior marriage: Greg (K.C. Martel) , Matt (Meeno Peluce) and Amy (Natasha Ryan). It’s a big deal for Kathy, who comes from a family of renters. Despite George’s lack of religion, Kathy, a nominal Catholic, requests Jesuit priest Father Delaney (Rod Steiger) to bless their new family home. Delaney arrives while the family is out boating on Long Island Sound. Upon entering the house, Delaney is swarmed by flies in an upstairs room and hears a hostile voice ordering him to get out causing him to flee. The next day, Kathy’s aunt Helena (Irene Dailey) a nun visits the house but immediately senses evil within, becomes violently ill and leaves abruptly, confounding Kathy. The Lutzes’ domestic life begins a sharp decline over the ensuing weeks: George becomes uncharacteristically volatile and abusive, and obsesses over keeping the home warm with firewood, despite Kathy’s insistence that it is not cold. George recurrently awakens at 3:15 a.m. – when the DeFeos were murdered – while Kathy suffers disturbing nightmares. Before Kathy’s brother Jimmy’s (Marc Vahanian) engagement party one night, $1,500 cash to be paid to the caterer inexplicably goes missing in the house. Meanwhile, the babysitter Jackie (Amy Wright) watching Amy for the evening is locked inside a bedroom closet by an unseen force. Amy simply says her invisible friend ‘Jody’ told her not to let her out. Further unexplained incidents occur – Greg suffers a crushed hand when a sash window falls on it. Kathy realises that Amy’s imaginary friend has a malevolent nature. One night, Kathy glimpses two red, pig-like eyes outside Amy’s second-storey bedroom window. Delaney makes several attempts to intervene that seem to be thwarted by unusual accidents and occurrences: His phone calls to the home are frequently experienced by Kathy as static noise and on one occasion his car malfunctions en-route to the house, nearly causing a fatal crash. Convinced there are demonic forces at work, Delaney grows frustrated by the lack of support from his superiors in the diocese. Meanwhile, George’s land surveying business begins to suffer due to his lack of attendance, concerning his business partner, Jeff (Michael Sacks). Jeff’s wife, Carolyn (Helen Shaver) who has psychic abilities is both repulsed by and drawn to the things she feels when at the house. In the home’s basement, Carolyn notices a brick wall that the family dog, Harry, has repeatedly scratched at and she begins dismantling it with a hammer. Discovering the damage, George takes down the rest of the wall, uncovering a small room with red walls. Carolyn, in terror, shrieks that they have found the passage… to Hell!, her voice resembling Father Delaney’s. Later that night, Delaney prays passionately at his pulpit for God to save the Lutz family before he inexplicably loses his sight and becomes catatonic. Kathy visits the library to research the property’s history, where she finds county records suggesting that the house is built atop a Shinnecock burial ground and a Satanic worshipper had once lived on the land. She also discovers newspaper clippings about the DeFeo murders and notices Ronald DeFeo’s astonishing resemblance to George … Jody doesn’t like George. Adapted from Jay Anson’s true-ish fact-based 1977 bestseller this is really the tale of a money pit – what happens when a blended family moves into a fixer-upper and sinks under the weight of impending debt, personal dislikes and the little issue of the previous owners being murdered en masse by their own son. The screenplay by Sandor Stern was originally proposed as a TVM written by Anson himself to be produced by American International under Samuel Z. Arkoff, presumably sniffing at the box office from The Exorcist, which had so many films follow in its wake. Brolin’s portrayal of a man dissipating under pressure, incessantly chopping logs, regularly losing his rag and exhibiting signs of psychosis could be straight out of The Shining (the film adaptation was still a year from release). I believe we create our own demons in our own minds. Kidder has to cope with an intuitive grasp of the problems within the house in a more physically obvious fashion and we infer that this might be due to her Catholicism ie a deeper spiritual connection to the ineffable. Steiger’s entire performance is separate from the leads, many of his scenes being in the company of his curate Fr Bolen (Don Stroud) and his hamminess earned criticism at the time. The structure over twenty days lends credence to the premise that this is a document of real incidents, establishing a timeline in which day to day actuality is recorded with no particular buildup to any terror, day or night. This failure to unite the storylines might be true to life as it is proposed here but it presents a screenwriting problem. The experience of the house is quite separate depending on the personality and there is no big moment with the priest which includes the family. The entirety of the communication is static on the phone line. The other issue is that the scares aren’t particularly scary – it seems so much more obvious that the mortgage repayments are the biggest terror and only the flashbacks to the DeFeo rampage are unpleasant. That and the rocking chair that moves with invisible Jody in the seat. And the eyes outside the window. And … ! It’s also odd that with the change of location (this was shot in New Jersey) that more wasn’t made of the waterside situation. With a lilting score for strings by Lalo Schifrin, a house that in no way resembles the original at 112 Ocean Avenue (which had a terrifying Alsatian guarding the gates when we visited) and no mention of Ronnie DeFeo’s likely acid trip motivation for massacring his own family, this is probably more about financial than supernatural horrors and was allegedly mostly a hoax dreamt up over a few bottles of wine. Many lawsuits ensued concerning the original story and the several publications and film sequels. Like most domestic trouble, the answer is simple – move. We’re still packing a crucifix, however. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg.  I checked into the murders. And I checked into the twenty year old boy who killed his parents, and his four brothers and sisters. And when he was at trial, he testified that he heard voices in the house. He heard voices in the house and the voices told him to do it! Now, I was in the house and I heard the voices, too! And I also felt their presence in the house! I’m telling you, there was a presence in that house!

Great Expectations (1946)

Pip – a young gentleman of great expectations! Orphaned Philip ‘Pip’ Pirrip (Anthony Wager) lives with his older sister and her blacksmith husband Joe (Bernard Miles). He encounters runaway convict Magwitch (Finlay Currie) on the marshes and assists him with food and helps him cut himself free. However Magwitch is recaptured when he has a fight with a fellow escapee. An eccentric elderly spinster Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt) wants company for herself and her teenage ward Estella (Jean Simmons) a cruel but beautiful teenager who mocks Pip but with whom he falls in love from afar. Pip is apprenticed to a blacksmith when he turns 14 and Estella goes to France to become a lady. Years later Pip (John Mills) is visited by Miss Havisham’s lawyer Jaggers (Francis L. Sullivan) and he is to be the beneficiary of a mysterious benefactor to become a gentleman of great expectations in London where he befriends Herbert Pocket (Alec Guinness) who tells him that Miss Havisham’s life is dedicated to revenge against men because she was jilted at the altar and Estella was brought up likewise. They are reunited when Pip is 21 and he visits Miss Havisham after getting his living stipend of £500 a year and he finds that Estella (Valerie Hobson) is engaged to a man she doesn’t love. Pip is visited by Magwitch who reveals he was his benefactor and that Miss Havisham was using him. He confronts her and she realises the great harm she has done and as Pip is leaving a terrible accident occurs. Magwitch should not be on the territory and is commiting a felony and Pip undertakes to help him escape England … I want to be a gentleman on her account. Director David Lean recalled a perfectly condensed theatre adaptation of the Dickens novel and wrote the screenplay with producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, Cecil McGivern, Ronald Neame and Kay Walsh. From its magnificent opening sequence on the marshes (shot by Robert Krasker) and the atmosphere conjured by the decaying mansion housing Miss Havisham, this is a film of such dazzling detail and character, brilliant playing and staging and flawless pacing, as to merit the description perfect. Lean came of age as a director and the cinematography by Guy Green and the soaring score by Walter Goehr pick out, express and complement the heart of the drama. It never dodges the little social critiques (Mills’ reaction to the public hangings) or the touches of humour (Pip popping Pocket in the jaw; his silly fashionable get up) nor the ideas of snobbery, stupidity, guilt or social injustice that characterise the text of the novel. The final scene, when Pip returns and throws light upon Estella is heartbreaking and delightful. A simply bewitching masterpiece. What larks!

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

I’ve been having a bad day for a year now, maybe I’m growing up. Novelist Charles Wills (Van Johnson) returns to Paris to claim custody of his young daughter Vicki (Sandy Descher) and recalls his life there… On VE Day in Paris, American journalist Charles Wills is on the crowded streets of Paris when he meets an unknown woman Helen Ellswirth (Elizabeth Taylor) who kisses him and runs away. He discovers who she is when he encounters her lovely sister Marion (Donna Reed) in a cafe and is smitten. He meets their father James (Walter Pidgeon) and finds a man from the Lost Generation who is flat broke but encourages his daughters to live in his lackadaisical fashion, dreaming big dreams but making no firm plans. Charles falls in love with Helen and they marry but when he parties away the unexpected dowry from James’ oil investments it drives a wedge between them then his ambition to write a book sunders them completely … What kind of wife are you, dancing with other men?  Adapted by Julius J. & Philip G. Epstein and director Richard Brooks from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story Babylon Revisited, updated to after WW2, this is a wonderfully atmospheric portrait of the Lost Generation and the clash with the post-war world of the Forties generation (which altogether alters the story’s theme). Sensitive to both male and female perspectives, disappointments in life and love and tragic to the core, this is an unusual production because it’s chiefly from the perspective of the male protagonist and even if Johnson’s no dream boat he acquits himself well. Taylor is rather wonderful and Reed is equally good as the responsible older sister who settles for dull marriage to a decent man, prosecutor Claude Matine (George Dolenz). Roger Moore has a good role as Paul Lane, a tennis pro who romances Taylor; while Johnson is diverted by Eva Gabor. A good old-fashioned melodrama, beautifully made despite the constraints of the studio set. Happy VE Day. I’m sick to death of death. I want to enjoy things, have fun, live every day like it’s the last day. Wouldn’t that be nice, a lifetime full of last days?

Affair in Trinidad (1952)

It’s dangerous to presume with the Trinidad lady. Post-war Trinidad and Tobago, a territory under British control. When nightclub performer Chris Emery (Rita Hayworth) discovers that her husband Neil has died in suspicious circumstances, initially thought to be suicide, she resolves to help the local police Inspector Smythe (Torin Thatcher) and Anderson (Howard Wendell) find his killer. Soon she is caught between two men, her late husband’s suave foreign friend Max Fabian (Alexander Scourby), who has designs on her; and her brother-in-law, Steve Emory (Glenn Ford), who arrives on the island and begins his own investigation into his sibling’s death since he cannot take the suicide verdict remotely seriously due to a letter his brother sent him. As evidence begins to point to Max as the killer and her feelings for Steve grow, Chris finds herself in an increasingly dangerous situation with a political plot that threatens the stability of everyone around her, even her homeland of the United States … The worst tortures are the ones we invent for ourselves. Reuniting the stars of that perverse noir Gilda, this essays a variation on the theme but this time the S&M is ingrained in the political subtext of Nazis planning an attack on an unsuspecting US from the British-controlled Caribbean. Hayworth was making her comeback after four years away from the screen gadding about with the jet set and getting married and what have you. She is at her most lustrous and dazzling, singing, dancing to calypso and generally slinking around being sexily begowned by Jean Louis; while Ford is befuddled and anxious, as befits the role of the concerned brother-in-law investigating murderous island-hopping foreigners. The script by Oscar Saul and James Gunn is just ringing with memorable lines decently distributed through a wonderfully sinister ensemble nourishing a rich atmosphere. Valerie Bettis snarls vixen-like among the Germans she accompanies; and even Juanita Moore as housemaid Dominique gets her moments – This one is a man. The other is a shadow of him.  The gallows humour doesn’t end there as tensions escalate and intentions are clarified – Even at the risk of dislocating your personality, try to be calm. You’ll recognise the references – Notorious, Casablanca, even All About Eve. Fabulous stuff, nimbly directed by Vincent Sherman and produced by co-writer Virginia Van Upp who devised the story with Bernie Giler. I am just a pawn, a weak man. I am very easily dominated!

American Woman (2018)

We’re supposed to just sit here and wait. In a small blue-collar town in Rust Belt Pennsylvania, a 32-year-old single woman Debra Callahan’s (Sienna Miller) teenage daughter Bridget (Sky Ferreira) goes missing. Left to raise her infant grandson Jesse (Aidan McGraw/Aidan Fiske) alone, she desperately seeks the answers behind her daughter’s disappearance while her sister Katherine (Christina Hendricks) and mother Peggy (Amy Madigan) lend their support but Police Detective Sergeant Morris (E. Roger Mitchell) has no leads. After years of re-training at college and abandoning her habit of sleeping with married men, indulging a horrific coercive relationship and living from hand to mouth waiting tables, she has a job in administration and a prospective younger husband Chris (Aaron Paul) whom she marries after a couple of months but eventually life comes crashing down again …You think you’re special. More than anything else, this tale of working class people concerns the pain and difficulty of single motherhood (like mother, like daughter, both teen moms) which creates a cycle of poverty, low paid work and promiscuity. The story of generational mistakes is a somewhat run of the mill and depressing exercise, not caring to particularise the different phases of femininity save in its biological underpinnings which is after all a zero-sum game:  no matter what you do, you’re wrong and you’re trapped. Melodrama is substituted for mystery and Bridget’s disappearance is all but forgotten while life is dramatised as a series of betrayals. It finally obtains a power and focus in the closing sequences when Debra achieves a meeting with her daughter’s (inevitable) killer in prison: we just see the reflection of his face on hers, before they have an unheard conversation that leads Debra to Bridget’s final resting place, buried with his other victims. She is just a number in the earth now. Ironically, Debra now looks younger than she did eleven years earlier because is no longer the trashy tramp she essayed to survive:  with an answer to what happened she has a kind of equilibrium, at last. Very well performed by a great cast – how good is it see Amy Madigan even in a small role. Miller is superb, encompassing her character’s stop-start odyssey of rage in the smallest of gestures. Written by Brad Ingelsby and directed by Jake Scott. This is it Mom. The moment you’ve been waiting for for forty years

Everybody Knows (2018)

Aka Todos lo saben. It’s for our daughter. Laura (Penélope Cruz) and her two children travel from Argentina to her home town outside Madrid to attend her younger sister’s wedding, an old-style village party. The joyful family reunion soon turns tragic when her impulsive teenage daughter Irene (Carla Campra) gets kidnapped that night and a ransom is demanded without police involvement in order to guarantee the girl’s safety. Laura’s brother-in-law Fernando (Eduard Fernández) who is married to Laura’s older sister Anna (Elvira Minguez) and whose daughter Rocio (Sara Sálamo) has split from her husband, asks retired police officer Jorge (José Ángel Egido) for advice and he tells Laura she should suspect family members. Laura’s husband Alejandro (Ricardo Darín) arrives from Argentina: not only is he not wealthy, he is bankrupt and unemployed, a recovering alcoholic who invokes God all the time. Her former lover Paco (Javier Bardem) who acquired some of her family’s land where he grows vines assists Laura and then she make a request of him which has the ultimate effect of revealing a dark web of hidden secrets that could have triggered the kidnapping in the first place … Why is she telling you now? Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi’s drama winds inexorably tighter until it has the viewer in a vise, quite unexpectedly, in a melodrama driven by suspicion. It starts as a conventional family gathering, devolves into a crime scenario and finally pivots on a revelation that supposedly nobody knew. It is that scintilla of knowledge, a closely guarded secret, which has brought about a reckoning. Real-life husband and wife stars Bardem and Cruz are as committed as you’d expect in an observational narrative which has a different kind of focus from the standard thriller setup – it’s shaped from ongoing family issues, unexpressed bitterness about money and who knows what kinds of resentments that have developed over the years. Only Paco, the outsider, whose roots are deep in the family circle, has the finances to secure Irene’s release but it will destroy him if he gives it up. This is a story that refuses the usual genre stylings and focuses on the familial – scrabbling for money in an impoverished if scenic setting, pushing people to make admissions they’d rather not, ending in a kind of fug of denial despite the crushingly obvious:  all families are built on secrets and lies and it takes just one expertly aimed splinter at the heart to rip them apart and yet people persist in acting as though nothing has happened. There is a sense of paralysis here that makes this frighteningly true to life. Everybody knows

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

Everybody got honourable mention who showed up. Opthamologist Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau) wants to preserve his marriage to Miriam (Claire Bloom), and his dangerous brother Jack (Jerry Orbach) comes up with what appears to be the only viable solution – murder. Initially he is plagued with guilt about his infidelity and confides in his Rabbi client Ben (Sam Waterston) whom he is treating for sight loss. However when he becomes certain that his neurotic and hysterical mistress Dolores (Anjelica Huston) is about to tell his wife about their four-year long affair, Judah agrees to Jack’s plan. Cliff Stern (Woody Allen) is a documentary maker whose films make no money and he spends his afternoons at the movies with his orphaned niece. His wife Jenny (Joanna Gleason) chides him for his failure and refuses to have sex with him but things seems to be resolved when her brother, horribly successful TV comedy producer Lester (Alan Alda) says he can make a film about him, which introduces him to associate producer Halley (Mia Farrow), who shares his love of movies …Without the law it’s all darkness. A film of two halves in which Allen tries to unite the ideas of tragedy and comedy – happily Alda is at hand to illustrate it via Oedipus Rex using the hoary saying, Comedy is tragedy plus time. It’s a wholly ironic work in which Huston’s death should trigger guilt in Landau but he escapes scot-free while his rabbi advisor ends up with sight loss; and Allen’s character who wisely advises his orphaned niece about life through daily trips to the movies doesn’t see what’s clear to his wife – that the object of his affection Farrow is in lust with the obnoxious Alda. Meanwhile his philosophical hero Professor Louis Levy (Martin S. Bergmann) whose interviews form a Greek chorus of morality for a proposed film commits suicide. That the entire tragicomedy is concluded in a wedding is the greatest irony of all in a work which balances like the finest of high wire acts. God is a luxury I can’t afford

 

 

 

Knives Out (2019)

I suspect foul play. I have eliminated no suspects.  When crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) dies just after his 85th birthday, inquisitive Southern detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) arrives at his estate to investigate despite the presence of police officers (LaKeith Stanfield and Noah Segan). He sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind the writer’s untimely demise as each of the family members and the immigrant nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) who cared for Harlan is questioned in turn. Harlan’s daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a successful businesswoman with a an unfaithful husband Richard (Don Johnson) and a layabout son Ransom (Chris Evans). Harlan’s son Walt (Michael Shannon) runs the publishing company his father founded for his writing output, but they’ve been fighting. Daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette) is an advocate of self-help and has been helping herself to the old man’s money. His ancient mother (K Callan) never seems to die. Harlan’s devoted nurse Marta then becomes Harlan’s most trusted confidante but who hired him in the first place? … This is a twisted web, and we are not finished untangling it, not yet. The closed-room murder mystery is a staple of crime fiction and it’s not necessarily where you’d expect writer/director Rian Johnson to turn after a Star Wars episode (The Last Jedi) although it harks back to his debut, Brick, a take on Chandler/Hammett with teenagers. The touchstones are pretty clear:  Agatha Christie; the game (and film) of Clue(do); Peter Sellers and Elke Sommer in A Shot in the Dark; and some of the grasping familial mendacity we recognise from Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. If truth be told, it’s not very mysterious and barely suspenseful with two big twists a regular filmgoer or mystery reader will see through easily which means that they of course are not the point. It’s the dismantling of those hoary old tropes that provides the narrative motor. Much of the entertainment value derives from game comic playing by an established cast with a soupçon of political commentary provided by the nurse’s immigrant status which leads to a good line featuring Broadway hit Hamilton and everyone gets her native country wrong, one of the running jokes. Another is her need to vomit when telling a lie. The other one is stretching out the syllables in Benoit’s name so it sounds like Ben wa although personally I find Craig more prophylactic than sex toy and his ‘tec is Poirot X Columbo with an affected drawl. It looks quite sober and already feels like Sunday evening TV. For the undemanding viewer. CSI KFC!

Too Late for Tears (1949)

Just where did you stash my cash? Jane and Alan Palmer (Lizabeth Scott and Arthur Kennedy) are driving to a party in the Hollywood Hills when someone in another car throws a satchel into the back seat of their convertible. They open it and find $100,000 cash.  She wants to keep it, he doesn’t. They put it in a locker in Union Station. Then Danny (Dan Duryea) shows up at their apartment when Alan is at work and they scheme to get his money back, a once in a lifetime payoff from a blackmail/insurance scam. Jane persuades him to help kill Alan on a boat trip. She reports Alan as missing. Kathy Palmer (Kristine Miller) suspects Jane has murdered her brother and investigates with a man claiming to be his friend Don Blake (Don DeFore), who look into her dealings. Meanwhile Jane is plotting to keep all of the money for herself …  Looking down her nose at me like a big ugly house looks over Hollywood.  Scott has a great showcase as a ruthless, mutinous femme fatale, a silky smooth siren desperate to shake off the shackles of middle class unease:  the kind of people who can’t keep up with the bills every day and die a little. Duryea is good as the villain/accomplice, like a musical comedy star who’s wandered onto the wrong movie set and likes the fit of his suit but his taste for drink proves his undoing. Miller is particularly good as Kennedy’s sister. It was her second time to be paired with Scott following I Walk Alone; while DeFore proves the magic ingredient that unlocks the mystery of Scott’s first husband’s death. A vicious portrayal of venal post-war Los Angeles society, a cautionary tale laced with venom that is brilliantly conceived, shot and performed with lashings of good lines. Written by Roy Huggins (later famous as TV writer/producer of The Fugitive, Maverick and The Rockford Files) and adapted from his novel which was serialised in the Saturday Evening Post.  Directed by Byron Haskin.  I let you in because housewives can get awfully bored sometimes!

Mr Winkle Goes to War (1944)

Mild-mannered middle-aged bank clerk Mr Wilbert G. Winkle (Edward G. Robinson) finally throws in his job to open a repair shop, to the consternation of his status-conscious wife Amy (Ruth Warrick).  Little orphan Barry (Ted Donaldson) is delighted and he’s roped in to work with Winkle. However the US Army comes a calling and before he knows it, Winkle is conscripted and forced to do the book keeping but persuades his CO to let him do some mechanical work instead. Then to everyone’s surprise, he makes it through basic training and even though he’s now too old to see active service, he refuses an honorable discharge. Meanwhile Barry runs away from his orphanage to see him when Winkle’s furlough is cancelled – he’s shipped out to the Pacific where his friend Joe Tinker (Robert Armstrong) seeks revenge for his brother’s death and they’re up close and personal with the Japanese in armed combat … This adaptation of Theodore Pratt’s novel is of interest for the contribution of blacklisted screenwriter Waldo Salt (as well as George Corey and Louis Solomon) because at the height of WW2 this is something of a pacifist film with a message of friendship. Robinson is quite the sweetheart here, his talent for friendship exemplified in his treatment of little Barry. He shot this between Double Indemnity and The Woman in the Window – reminding us of his performing strengths and variety, bringing a decency to this story of a hen-pecked husband but also a man who believes it is his patriotic duty to serve. The woman making his little life a misery is Mercury Theater alumnus Warrick, best remembered for being the controlling and superior wife to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane before her long soap opera career. As well as the enjoyable sight of Robinson in boot camp there is also the edifying experience of hearing him sing Sweet Genevieve. Directed by Alfred E. Green.