SHADOWS LIGHT -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 8/1/08

The opening titles sequence of the supernatural thriller SHADOWS LIGHT features an exorcism and contains what are probably the most effective images in the entire movie. Father Cuth Abelard (Tom Phillips), who apparently specializes in such work, succeeds in expelling the evil force but is physically and emotonally exhausted. Thus, he's ordered to return to his hometown in Kentucky for a two-week vacation, little suspecting that here he will encounter the most grueling and perilous good vs. evil battle of his lifetime.

Father Cuth meets a pretty blonde waitress named Dana (Tucky Williams), whose sister Evan (Jessica Kline) works as a stripper. When Evan starts running with a fast crowd that revolves around mysterious local tycoon Ashton Lagares (John Schoering) and eventually becomes romantically involved with him, Dana begins to fear for her safety. And for good reason, since Lagares is a pawn of Satan. Father Cuth discovers Lagares' plot to spread his evil influence over the entire community and beyond, and must spring into action with the help of a warrior angel (Marshall Fields) and an immortal creature known as a Djinn (Vince Bingham), who is part angel and part human but lives in the shadows between their worlds.

Director Stephen Zimmer and his cast and crew display plenty of enthusiasm and conviction, but they generally lack the finesse to carry it out. Action scenes aren't that well-staged, with one lightsaber battle (okay, they're flaming swords, but they look like lightsabers) between Lagares and the Warrior Angel looking particularly awkward. Much of the exposition is conveyed by having people talk while taking leisurely strolls, which tends to get a little repetitive.

As for the acting, there are two or three standouts among the cast, including Cynthia L. Allen as Lagares' delightfully wicked accomplice Lily. A malicious MILF who literally sucks the life out of her hapless male and female partners, Lily is the most interesting and exciting character, and you may be surprised when you see the actress who plays her without the wig and makeup--they look almost nothing alike. Vince Bingham is also good as the Djinn, thanks in large part to a pretty cool makeup job, and Tucky Williams is likable as Dana. The rest of the cast tend to come off as either amateurish or overly melodramatic, but at least they give it their all.

Aside from some nice makeup effects on Lily and the Djinn, we also get a cool Grim Reaper-like creature known as the Soul Collector and a not-so-cool monstrosity that Lagares morphs into right before the climactic battle. The Warrior Angel looks pretty stunning the first time we see him--wings outstretched, eyes aglow, he seems to be wearing a reflective outfit that makes him appear to be made of light. Later, though, he just looks like a guy with a white wig, white clothes, a couple of limp wings sticking out of his back, and boots. It's too bad they couldn't have sustained the impressive effect of that first shot. 

 A lot of poor-man's green screen and cartoony CGI are used here as well, and the effect varies widely in quality. Even when these fantastic creations and visuals aren't entirely successful, however, it's still fun to see talented SPFX artists doing what they can with a meager budget.

The DVD is 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with 2.0 sound. There are actually three commentary tracks here--director, cast, and production--along with a photo gallery, a 17-minute featurette of actor interviews, and an almost 40-minute-long conversation between effects artists Dave Workman, Sven Granlund, and Matt Perry.

I can't really urge you to run right out and get SHADOWS LIGHT expecting it to be awesome. As an epic battle between good and evil, its reach exceeds its grasp by a wide margin. But as with all low-budget independent features by filmmakers who actually care about what they're doing, it's interesting to see how Zimmer and company try to overcome their limited resources to create the best and most impressive movie they possibly can.

SHADOWS LIGHT -- DVD Review by Porfle

VERY Visible Stagehand in "HORROR ISLAND" (Universal, 1941) (video)

This long take is really quite nice...

...even when one of the lighting guys appears in the shot.

It's so obvious, he's practically a part of the cast!

Originally posted on 1/28/18
Suggested by Friend of Daniel of the CHFB.  I neither own nor claim any rights to this material.  Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!

VERY Visible Stagehand in "HORROR ISLAND" (Universal, 1941) (video)

THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933) -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 4/1/2017

 

Who'd have thought, back when we were watching dark, battered prints of this on public domain DVDs, that one day we'd get to see it on Blu-ray in (almost) tip-top shape and in all its original glory? 

Thanks to a new HD restoration by The Film Detective (in conjunction with UCLA Film & Television Archive) that day is today, and the golden-age horror classic THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933) hasn't looked this good in ages.

Sure, there are still imperfections--this thing is ancient, after all, and has been in the public domain for a very long time--but heck, I love for a film to have SOME imperfections, if only for nostalgic value.

For the most part, however, this cinematic treasure is bright, sharp, and clear, and oh, does that glorious black-and-white photography ever look gorgeous.  Especially when the equally gorgeous leading lady Fay Wray is gracing the screen.

Sharing the cast list with Fay is the exquisitely evil Lionel Atwill as Dr. Otto von Niemann, a scientist--a very mad one, as it turns out--conducting some rather unsavory experiments in the laboratory of his castle in a small German village. 

Fay is his unsuspecting lab assistant Ruth, whose boyfriend, police inspector Karl Brettschneider (Melvyn Douglas) is stymied by a rash of murders in which the victims are found dead in their beds, drained of blood, with two puncture wounds on their throats.

In a reversal of the Van Helsing character in DRACULA two years earlier, Karl is the only man in town who DOESN'T believe the deaths are the work of a vampire.  Everyone else suspects Herman, a half-wit who loves bats (of which the village seems to have an inordinate amount fluttering about and hanging from trees).  

Herman is played wonderfully by the great Dwight Frye, in a performance both disturbing and sympathetic.  Dwight deftly blends elements from some of his other characters such as FRANKENSTEIN's hunchbacked assistant Fritz and the cackling madman Renfield from DRACULA.

Here, however, he's simply a pathetic outsider whom the townspeople regard as a pariah and eventually hunt down as members of the usual torch-bearing mob (with the torches beautifully hand-tinted in color as in the original release prints).

Meanwhile, the vampire murders continue to terrorize the countryside as Atwill's supremely sinister Dr. Niemann carries on his unholy experiments.  As in DR. X. and MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM before it, THE VAMPIRE BAT features yet another climactic encounter between Atwill and seminal scream queen Fay, while Niemann's assistant Emil (played by Robert Frazer of 1932's WHITE ZOMBIE), under Niemann's hypnotic spell, is ordered to kill Karl in his sleep. 

Scripted by Edward T. Lowe (HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, HOUSE OF DRACULA), this independent production has hints of the Universal Pictures style along with some of their familiar players such as Dwight Frye, Lionel Belmore, and Melvyn Douglas (of James Whale's THE OLD DARK HOUSE).

Director Frank R. Strayer (THE MONSTER WALKS, CONDEMNED TO LIVE) has a restrained yet fluid style during the more frenetic scenes, and a pleasingly stagelike handling of the longer dialogue exchanges. 

While nowhere near as stylish as Whale, Strayer does share that director's fondness for comedy relief in the form of Maude Eburne as Ruth's hypochondriac Aunt Gussie. If you enjoy the comedy stylings of Whale favorite Una O'Connor--I do, many don't--chances are you'll find Eburne a welcome relief from the grim proceedings surrounding her character.

Strayer uses lots of wide shots but then rewards us with some frame-able closeups of the lovely Fay and the not-so-lovely Atwill and Frye.  Production design is well-done and highly atmospheric. Some of the laboratory scenes are rather morbid in this pre-Code era.  There's no musical score save for brief snippets of library music during the opening and closing, but this only adds to the somber mood.

The Blu-ray for this special restored edition is in the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio with Dolby Digital sound. It is, in the words of the press release, "restored from a 35mm composite acetate fine grain master and a 35mm nitrate print."  Extras consist of a charming featurette by Film Detective featuring Melvyn Douglas' son, and a wall-to-wall audio commentary by film historian Sam Sherman which is scholarly and informative. 

It's nice to see this neglected gem reintroduced to the public in this form after languishing in the public domain for so long.  For lovers of vintage black-and-white films, golden age horror, Fay Wray, and classic film in general, watching this version of THE VAMPIRE BAT is like viewing fine art or savoring a vintage wine.  That is, if you drink...wine.

http://www.thefilmdetective.com/

Release date: April 25, 2017

THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933) -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

THE EYE 3 -- Movie Review by Porfle

(This review first appeared online at Bumscorner.com in 2008.)

First off, THE EYE 3, aka "Gin gwai 3" (2005) is directed by the Pang brothers, who also directed THE EYE and THE EYE 2. But the international English title for it is THE EYE 10. And according to IMDb, Tsui Hark is in the process of directing another movie called THE EYE 3. Also, this film is known in some European countries as THE EYE: INFINITY, which I guess clears things up, not.

Now we've gotten all that out of the way, I'll admit that I haven't seen THE EYE 1 or 2. But from reading their summaries I see that they are referred to during an early scene in which five young friends--one living there in Thailand, the other four visiting from Hong Kong--are staying up late telling ghost stories. When these stories fail to produce sufficient giddy scares, the Thai dude, Chongkwai (Ray MacDonald), whips out a book he found one night in a dark, mysterious bookstore. The book claims to contain ten surefire methods for calling forth ghosts. This, of course, gets the other youngsters all goose-pimply with excitement and they can't wait to try them out, which they will later learn to deeply regret.

These early scenes let us know that at least part of THE EYE 3 is pretty much a comedy laced with mildly scary elements. As I watched the five friends using the various tips from the book to conjure up ghosts and then writhing in rubber-faced terror, it reminded me, of all things, of Don Knotts' THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN. As in, more amusing than actually scary. The ghosts look pretty cool and there are some fairly good goose-shots here and there, but very little of this is truly creepy or disturbing. Much of it, in fact, might even be labeled "family friendly" Halloween-type fare.

Things start to get somewhat more serious when one of the rituals backfires and Gofei (Chris Gu) disappears. When days go by with no sign of him, cousins Ted (Chen Po Lin) and May (cutie-pie Kate Yeung) dejectedly return to Hong Kong while Gofei's inconsolable girlfriend April (Lok-si Leung) stays behind to continue the search. A series of frightening ghostly encounters in Hong Kong drives Ted and May back to Thailand to put the matter to rest once and for all, with the help of Chongkwai and his spirit guide mother. Meanwhile, April has turned up missing as well.

All of this is nicely directed and shot and the performances are good. Little of it is very scary, though. May has a run-in with a ghost in the hallway of her apartment building, and when Ted comes to her aid he gets possessed and ends up in a break-dancing contest with a couple of teenagers, which he wins by walking on the ceiling. We also get the old "between the knees ghost peek", which gives the Pang brothers a chance to offer us a great view of May's rear baggage compartment.

Later, when Ted and May enter the spirit dimension in search of Gofei and are surrounded by hostile ghosts, they discover that the best way of warding them off is by--get this--farting. I don't know about you, but watching some intrepid ghostbusters farting back a bunch of oncoming wraiths doesn't exactly send chills up my spine. So, even in the midst of what should be the most frightening place of all, we get more of a sense of amusement than fear or dread.

There's a bit of a surprise at the end, and it fades out on a serious note that's rather poetic and haunting (pun intended) and somewhat sad. If the whole movie had maintained this sort of feeling in addition to ramping up the scare factor, it might have been memorable. As it is, though, THE EYE 3 is much like those ghost stories the kids tell each other early on--good, giddy fun for awhile, but soon forgotten.

THE EYE 3 -- Movie Review by Porfle

NOISE -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 8/30/08

If you're like me, you love your peace and quiet. And you hate for it to be constantly shattered by everyday noises such as jackhammers, back-up beepers, sirens, leaf blowers, cell phone yakkers, and the like. Ever wish you could do something about it?

In the 2007 comedy NOISE, David Owen (Tim Robbins), a successful businessman with a wife and daughter, is finally driven over the edge by the constant racket of New York City and goes on a one-man rampage that centers on his most hated source of unwanted noise--car alarms. After an opening titles montage of nerve-wracking city noises, the movie begins with a comical essay on how useless car alarms are, since even the police have learned to ignore them as they blare away unheeded. But David no longer ignores them as they blast him awake at night, keep his baby daughter crying at all hours, and finally even cause him to be impotent with his wife Helen (Bridget Moynahan). So, with a hammer and a pair of wire cutters, he begins to disable every car alarm he hears and vandalize the cars.

This lands David in and out of jail and puts a strain on his marriage when his wife just can't understand his sonic fanaticism. After she kicks him out, he pursues his quest in earnest as "The Rectifier", stalking the streets in shades and a hoodie and eventually gaining a measure of support from the locals. One of his victims, a beautiful young Russian woman named Ekaterina (Margarita Levieva), becomes fascinated with David and joins him in his crusade, refining his methods by helping him organize a petition to ban car alarms. (They also have an affair, of course.) But standing in their way is the crooked, abrasive Mayor Schneer (William Hurt), who has about as much regard for "The Rectifier" as J. Jonah Jameson has for Spiderman.

Writer-director Henry Bean, who based the screenplay on his own wire-snipping exploits, gives much of NOISE a casual, freewheeling visual style. Split-screens show us how certain situations might be ideally resolved (David calmly and politely handling a couple of cops) and how they actually end up (David freaking out and getting thrown in the slammer). The non-linear narrative fiddles around with the story in interesting ways as David meets Ekaterina early on and fills her in on his history in a series of flashbacks that eventually fit together like puzzle pieces.

David's anti-noise obsession and his feelings of helplessness in the face of the general public's weary acceptance of such affronts comes to represent the way people have gradually relinquished their rights over time and become willing pawns of those in power. As Robbins says in an interview segment: "We're dealing with a lot of encroachments on our peace of mind, we're dealing with it simply by accepting it." 

 Strangely enough, Robbins the well-known liberal plays David as a Wall Street Republican type, since the moral relativism of his own political persuasion would necessitate the philosophy of "I think that's noise, but you don't--and that's okay." So, interestingly, Robbins felt the need to get into conservative mode in order to say "This is wrong, dammit, whether you think so or not."

It may not sound like much of a comedy, but there's a lot of funny stuff here. Tim Robbins is good at being the everyday guy going quietly over the edge until he can't take it anymore, expressing his rage with a sort of suppressed, indignant disbelief. And it's fun to see him bashing car windows so he can pop the hoods and snip the battery cables, or simply taking a hammer to various alarms and other noisemakers after reasonable requests for their deactivation have fallen upon deaf ears.

His friend Judson (Michael J. Burg), a reformed car thief who runs a garage, advises him on the best ways to deal with offending autos. In one of the best scenes, Judson helps him create a sort of sonic deathmobile packed to the gills with ear-splitting car alarms, which David uses to blast Mayor Schneer's vitally important meeting with some Japanese businessmen all to hell. The final courtroom sequence is fun but tends to get a tad farcical at times, and doesn't quite come off as the fist-in-the-air finale that the film needed. Nor is there a Travis Bickle-type "go for broke" ending that I halfway expected. 

The biggest "WTF?" moment in NOISE, perhaps, is a crude, softcore-porn scene with David, Ekaterina, and her friend Gruska (María Ballesteros), whose dissatisfaction with the aesthetic appearance of her genitals leads David to a philosophical epiphany that didn't really require three naked people lounging around gabbing about their junk.

With a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation and Dolby 2.0 surround, the DVD looks and sounds good, although much of that sound is, as you might guess, noise. Extras include almost forty minutes of interview segments with the cast, director, and producers, a director commentary, some behind-the-scenes footage of the courtroom sequence, and a trailer.

Silence is indeed golden, and if it weren't for the constant ringing in both my ears, I'd enjoy it as much as possible. So I could really identify with the hero of NOISE and root for him as he smashes and destroys things that make noise for noise's sake. There's even a small bit just for us cell phone haters--while David and Helen are having an emotional discussion about the state of their deteriorating marriage, her cell goes off and she instantly grabs for it, prompting David to snap, "Go ahead and get that--it's not like we're having a conversation or anything." Amen!

NOISE -- DVD Review by Porfle