Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Sisters (1972)

Grace: I want to write about the apathy in the police force, 

about where the heroin goes after a bust,
about the fat political cats! 

Mrs. Collier: You don't have to shout right here on the street. 

What's the matter with you? I've never seen you like this. 

Grace: I'm on to something big! 

Mrs. Collier: Are you on diet pills again?

A happy 81 to actress Jennifer Salt, who's the lead in this incredible early De Palma movie and yet always gets overshadowed -- for obvious reasons, but still -- by Margot Kidder's deranged double performance as killer twins. I'm as guilty of it as anybody -- every time I sit down to re-watch the movie I'm like, "Oh right, her!" Which is mean of me because she's a lot of fun in the movie -- just in the not-quite-so-showy part. (Her and Kidder were roommates before they made it big.) Salt hasn't acted since 1990 but when she was acting she did lots of notable stuff, from Play It Again Sam to Brewster McCloud to Midnight f'ing Cowboy. (Her father won an Oscar for writing the latter's screenplay.) And here's something you might not know -- she's spent the past twenty-plus years being a producer on several Ryan Murphy projects including Nip/Tuck, Ratched, and American Horror Story! How great is that? She also co-wrote the script for Eat Pray Love! We love this for her.

Supes of the Day

There's a scene very early on in James Gunn's Superman that is the best scene in the entire movie. And as good as the movie is -- and it's perfectly good! -- one wishes that one scene had been the template for all of the scenes around it. It's the scene where Clark Kent (David Corenswet) and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) fall into each other's arms in the comfort of her apartment, safe from prying eyes -- we quickly learn that the sarcastic banter the two have perfected at work in the Daily Planet is a cover for their downlow relationship (of three months), and the Lois in this movie is fully aware that Clark is Superman's disguise. She starts ribbing Clark for publishing easy interviews with his alter-ego in their paper, and so he playfully suggests she interview him this time. 

This being Lois f'ing Lane though she chooses to ignore Clark's patronizing tone and snatch at the opportunity to interview the biggest story in the world, relationship or not -- she does warn him, but he's Superman right? We've already seen him at this point take mega-punches from flying monstrosities -- surely he can handle some questions from a mere lady reporter. (That's not me talking -- you can clearly, and to the film's benefit, see Lois bristle at Clark's condescension.)

What follows is a wallop of a scene where we watch two entirely game actors slapping dialogue and actual (can you believe it) ideas back and forth at one another like a verbal Wimbledon -- it's the best action scene in the movie and it's basically two people sitting on chairs the entire time. Corenswet and Brosnahan have mega-chemistry, and what the characters are debating -- the reality of what Superman's god-like powers mean in a complicated world with borders nad laws -- sets the and tone and the story's main thrust for everything that comes after it. Point being: whoever came up with this scene deserves an enormous raise.

If all of Superman had adhered to that emotional and intellectual coherence this film would be a stone-cold insta-classic -- it's sure got a pile of great ingrediants and ideas bouncing around. The cast is pretty much head to toe wonderful -- I'll admit Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder will always be the Clark & Lois I picture when somebody asks me to picture Clark & Lois but the two here are far and away the best iteration of the greatest couple in comic-dom that we've seen since then. 

So it's truly a shame that after this scene the two barely share the screen again for the rest of the film! The Donner films (and a few television series since then) knew that Superman works best as a romance-story --  as much as the villainous Lex Luthor (here played with delightful relish by a spit-flecked Nicholas Hoult) has come to represent Superman's greatest antagonist it's the relationship with Lois, as our cynical but hopeful representative of humanity, that really beats the Big Blue Boy Scout's heart. 

And it's not that Brosnahan doesn't get stuff to do in the meantime. While the hero is off fighting kaiju and slipping into pocket dimensions she's working with what she's got to straighten out the world and it ultimately integral to its saving. And perhaps Gunn didn't want the film to solely define her in relation to Clark & Supes -- I get that. But there's no denying the film feels its most alive and meaningful when all its extra stuff (so much extra stuff) gets swept aside and it focuses on that heart. And one does wish they'd found a way to really anchor the movie around that more consistently.

But still -- a perfectly good time. Whenever the John Williams' theme swept in my tear-ducts spontaneously erupted, and adorable Krypto more than earns his keep. It's not that there's anything absolutely terrible on hand that I can point to here -- well except that maybe a couple of girly girl characters on-screen come off as an eensy bit misogynistic. It's more just a lack of focus that turns out to be Gunn's Kryptonite. How much of that is the no-doubt-suffocating pressure to reboot an entire Cinematic Universe being heaped onto him I'll leave to the business-side pundits -- as for Superman, the movie itself, it's not a fatal glitch in the matrix. But it is a Trojan Horse that splits everything at its seams somewhat. I guess that's just the movies in 2025 though -- nothing can be just itself. Everything's gotta be everything to everybody. Superman most of all.

Good Morning, World

I'd been wanting to re-watch the original 1978 Superman film ever since Richard Donner passed -- well scratch that, ever since Ned Beatty passed a couple of weeks before that, even. Bad month for Superman fans! Somebody check on Gene Hackman, please. Anyway I finally got around to that last night and man is it just a delight every time I revisit. I know some people think the prologue -- everything before we have Chris Reeve...

Watching Superman which is a good reminder Christopher Reeve pic.twitter.com/kaauS5wTXT

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 12, 2021

... and Margot Kidder setting off their charisma fireworks inside the Daily Planet -- goes on too long but I actually love all of that stuff, the time spent on Krypton, the Smallville origin stuff, I wouldn't cut a lick. That said the film really flies (I apologize) once it hits Metropolis, and there will never be a better Superman than Reeve. That was just casting fallen from the heavens. And speaking of Godly, here's a video I'd never seen before I found it last night of him hitting the gym for the role!

13 Cakes of Halloween #11

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A good chunk of the first act of Brian De Palma's 1973 flick Sisters revolves around a cake. Philip (Lisle Wilson) hooks up with a girl he meets through outlandish circumstances (it involves a prank television show) and overhears it's her birthday...

... so while he runs out for an errand for her (that involves medication) he on the sly picks up a birthday cake and brings it back to her apartment to surprise her. Unfortunately for sweet Philip he's the one that gets the surprise. 

What's meant to be an act of kindness, of sweetness, is turned rotten by the ol' switcheroo -- the fact that Philip met this girl via a prank television show has already set up he's the oblivious type but this is the sort of prank that nobody sees coming and that nobody's laughing at. And now I have to break this sequence down into individual  shots because this is some prime stuff from De Palma:

The scene before this section was long and drawn out in order to lull us into that sweet sense of false security, and then boom Margot Kidder comes bursting out from under the blankets and all hell breaks loose. I love the shot of the not the knife itself but the knife's shadow passing over the birthday cake and blowing out the candles as it does -- and then the reverse as it's pulled back.

Like the "Shower Scene" in Psycho (sorry but all critics are contractually obliged to bring up Hitchcock while talking about De Palma) BDP wants us to follow the movement of that knife and the action through his edits...

Cause and effect though cuts. The gag here of course is the literalization of "cuts" -- what Hitch and De Palma have done is inextricably link the actual process of film-making with violence in the telling of their violent stories. It drags us into this and it implicates us as we watch. We made this happen too. We wanted our cake, and now we gotta eat it.

Great Moments In Movie Shelves #188

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As mentioned in yesterday's piece on Margot Kidder over at The Film Experience it was the 40th anniversary of The Amityville Horror this past weekend -- as also mentioned in that same piece I re-watched that movie this past weekend and it is dreadfully bad, piss poor, dreckitude. But even in the garbage you can find a treasure or two -- if that wasn't true where would we be as horror movie fans? -- and this movie has its few and far between moments.

Granted they mostly involve James Brolin walking around in tighty-whities or flashbulb eyeballs popping in the darkness, but I have to admit my own eyeballs popped amid the darkness when a frazzled half-possessed Jimmy wandered into the local library stacks -- you know me and my movie shelves. The prominently featured children's fly drawing is a hysterically on point touch...

... since by this point in the film we've already seen the extraordinary power of devil flies unleashed -- they attack a priest, they drive cars off they road, and they even speak!

But frazzled James Brolin isn't there for fly pictures, he's there for books and learnin' dammit, and before you know it he's shoving learnin' right down his tight pants.

On the topic of down the pants -- my main issue with Amityville is it never decides what kind of movie it wants to be. It lives (literally) in the gap between The Exorcist in 1974 and Poltergeist in 1982; it's not really about religion like the former or the suburban family like the latter. It's just sort of a collection of things that happen -- the walls bleed, the windows slam, the dog barks and Margot Kidder wears one leg warmer. 

It can't even be sexual properly, which is the movie it needed to be, what with the way it leers at Kidder and occasionally Brolin too -- these are Horny Hot Parents whose sex life keeps getting fucked up by their kids; that's your horror movie, movie! The Amityville Horror tiptoes towards that idea, but it never commits. The flies scream, but they should be fucking.

Speaking of Professional Virgins...

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Our second round of "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" over at The Film Experience is hitting up one of our forever favorite scary movie performances, Margot Kidder in Black Christmas. To watch her is to never hear the word "fellatio" the same way ever again, I tells ya. But it's Barb's sadness that really sells it, if you ask me...

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Little Buggers Schnockered, Son of a Bitch

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I was all set to say that all these years in having heard the name Imogen Poots -- not really a name you miss -- and I still had no idea what work I actually knew her for, but then I looked at her IMDb page and remembered that she was in, and was excellent, in Green Room, a movie I deeply adore, and I decided to stuff a sock in my snark's filthy mouth. She has cred left over from that still.

Anyway Poots is on my lips because of today's big horror news, which is that Blumhouse is going to try their hand at remaking Bob Clark's horror holiday classic Black Christmas again, which immediately raised them hackles... until I saw who they'd hired to direct. They have hired Sophia Takal, the director of my beloved film Always Shine from 2016, which starred...

... my beloved Mackenzie Davis and Caitlin FitzGerald as two actresses whose friendship was based more on competition than any actual bond who found themselves deteriorating a la Persona over a long weekend in the woods. Here is my ol' review -- that is a good ass movie.

If you recall Blumhouse made some news last year-ish over their shitty hiring practices with regards to female directors and Jason Blum stepped in it with some comments he made -- they then hired Takal to direct an episode of their horror anthology series Into the Dark; I reviewed her episode right here, it's worth seeking out. Anyway I guess they all liked working together and now she's graduated on up to the feature division, as well she oughta.

Now we just turn our eyes to the rest of the cast, since Black Christmas is such a group thing taking place in a sorority house full of young ladies, and we must wonder... who the hell could they possibly get to replace Margot Kidder? Good luck, whoever!

ETA oh and look they dropped a teaser poser already:

Getting High On Your Own Supply

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If you head over to The Film Experience I just listed some of my favorite female performances in Brian De Palma movies in honor the his 78th birthday today. And don't be surprised if you see that lovely lady above there...

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Eight Hours Ahoy

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The minute that I first heard that Rainer Werner Fassbinder's somewhat lost and definitely obscure 1972 TV series called Eight Hours Don't Make a Day was getting a little theatrical run here in New York (watch the trailer here) I assumed it was prefacing a nice fancy blu-ray release and voila, I was right - Criterion just announced their October releases and there it is, nice and fancy! The most exciting thing to me on the disc, besides the series itself (which looked absolutely gorgeous when I saw it projected at MoMA) is the 2017 doc that talks to several of the surviving actors from the eight-hour-long series, including  Fassbinder regulars Hanna Schygulla and Irm Hermann.

The other titles that Criterion announced are hardly slouches - Brian De Palma's Sisters is getting the 4K upgrade (supervised by De Palma himself) which is pretty fantastic since every copy of this movie I've ever watched over the years has been kind of muddy and if ever a movie needed its colors to pop it's this blood freak spectacle starring Margot Kidder as conjoined twins. Also on tap: Shampoo and The Princess Bride! Wow Criterion's killing it.
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Quote of the Day

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Bless you, Margot pic.twitter.com/EEDxrtbj9U

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) May 14, 2018

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It's a very sad day here at MNPP HQ and elsewhere I assume too what with the news of the great Margot Kidder's passing. I've been trying to figure out a post to honor her, maybe something about Black Christmas or Sisters or of course Lois Lane... but you know what? This fabulous and funny woman wouldn't want us to be sad, and she should be remembered for more than just her iconic roles - she should be remembered for everything, all of her. So let's let her speak for herself - there's a tremendous interview with her from 2009 at The AV Club where she goes through her career talking about some of the experiences she's had, I recommend the entire thing, but this portion will give you an idea of what a bright light we lost:

"I did a version, a very bad version, of Crime And Punishment that [Menahem Golan] directed in Russia, with Vanessa Redgrave and John Neville and John Hurt and Crispin Glover. Now, he was not a good director, but again, you had this humongous personality. [Laughs.] Just this humongous, humongous personality, who took it upon himself to rewrite Dostoyevsky, and got very flustered whenever Crispin Glover would point out that the script was betraying the book.
At one point, I remember he screamed my favorite line in movie history, when we were arguing about a scene. I had this great death, initially, where I died in great sobbing heaps on a bridge, and I go mad and die of tuberculosis, blood spurting out of my mouth and lungs. Every actor’s dream. And we got there, and there was some demonstration and then a counter-demonstration by the communists that day, and it was really exciting coming to Russia. And I’ve always loved Russia, and Russian history. So I was kind of, again, having a really good time.
But I remember getting to the set, and Menahem said, “I’ve cut the death. We can’t do it anymore, because the communists are demonstrating,” or something. And so Crispin said “Cut the death? You can’t cut the death, it says right here in the book—” and he brings out this dog-eared copy of Crime And Punishment and Menahem says “This book, I’m sick of hearing about this book. I wrote the script!” Which was just my favorite thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, it was just fabulous."

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The Little Bugger's Schnockered

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This week's "Beauty vs Beast" will be the last one until after the holidays, and so I went for a double-dip with the holidays classics of one Mr. Bob Clark this time around -- head on over to The Film Experience to make your opinions on Santa's Helpers & Turtle Sex well known to one and all.

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Amityville Horror (1979)

Kathy: I just wish that... all those people hadn't died here. 

I mean... ugh! A guy kills his whole family. 

Doesn't that bother you? 

George: Well sure, but... houses don't have memories. 

Silly silly George -- soon enough you'll learn better.

Soon enough you'll find out that all the tighty-whities 

in the world can't save you from the beast about to strike...

At least not if the beast is me, James Brolin.

A happy birthday to him today...

Which Is Hotter?

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Margot Kidder as Kathy Lutz in The Amityville Horror or

Vera Farmiga as Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring?

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poll by twiigs.com

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Happy 66, Margot Kidder!

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10 Off My Head - Post-Pazuzu Scares

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One week ago yesterday we The Team Film Experience voted on our ten favorite horror movies from before The Exorcist, which came out in 1974. That same day I shared my own personal list, right here. Well now it's time for the movies that came after The Exorcist, you can see the Team's Top Ten right at this link. I have to say, the communal list surprised me as I read through this it this morning - even though there's a lot of overlap (six out of the ten) it somehow feels more contemporary than I was anticipating. But then I suppose my own personal list, which I'm about to share, does skew pretty old-school - seven of my ten fall from between the years of 1974 and 1980. What can I say - that is The Age of Horror as I see it, and I couldn't deny them. Anyway I could make a top 20 list from movies that didn't make the communal list or my own list, and that would be 20 great films too. But here's what I picked.
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10. Black Christmas - The eyeball behind the door, you guys. The eyeball behind the door! The body in the attic. The phone calls. The fact that the bad guy (spoiler alert) never gets caught! Oh and Margot Kidder's monologue about turtles, natch. Halloween gets all the credit (and yes, places higher on this list) but Bob Clark did it all first (Psycho is its own thing). And even beyond claims of "First!" what he did first is still wholly unnerving today.

9. Wolf Creek - Depending on how broad your definition of "slasher" is I'm just realizing that my own list is pretty slasher heavy, which doesn't really surprise me - I came of age in the 1980s, y'all. The lone killer stalking and killing his victims one by one just speaks to me. Greg McLean's 2005 film, the second most recent one on my list, gives us that lone killer with oodles of personality (John Jarett's performance is never not entirely both charming and terrifying all at once), but beyond that it's the film's sense of atmosphere that never stops astonishing me - this is a beautiful film, capturing the cold and barren beauty of the middle of nowhere, and plunking us down in a place where we can't help but know, feel it in our bones, that we are nothing.

8. Suspiria - From the very start - the red lit airport terminal, the violent swishing sound of those sliding glass doors slicing open, Dario Argento's fairy tale sense of gaudy menace never ceases to sweep me up and away in its horrible strange miasma. Goblin's score, chanting and pounding and plinking away, while the kaleidoscopic awfulness swirls around.

7. The Blair Witch Project - I feel like I'm always having to be defensive about Blair Witch, the blow-back against it was so strong, when all I wanna talk about it how it curled up inside my brain and died, and rot, and took with it my ability to ever go camping ever again. I love Daniel's write-up over at TFE (it came in at #8 on the communal list) because I too have such vivid memories of the night after I saw the film, and the way the darkness took on a horrible life of its own.

6. Martyrs - This movie is only five years old but I have had no qualms, pretty much since I first saw it in 2008, at placing it amongst the best the genre has ever offered, will ever offer. It sucked me in and disturbed me on par with anything horror has ever done. The frenetic unsettling pace of the first three quarters is one thing, where the director Pascal Laguier makes you realize you're in the hands of a madman who's got no problem with telling ten more stories in one sitting than you were ever expecting, but it's the brutal last section, when he slows it all down just to break your brain, where Martyrs steps straight into the light and towards the profound.

5. The Shining - I was just saying this recently, when Stephen King once again felt the need to malign the film and more specifically Shelley Duvall's performance (or how Kubrick framed her performance, or whatever), but The Shining really is entirely about Wendy for me every time I watch it, and it is through Duvall that I have felt some of the most real, palpable fear that I have ever experienced from a movie. Close your eyes and tell me you can't immediately summon up the trembling limp-wristed way that she holds that butcher knife clutched to her chest in the bathroom.

4. Alien - I don't know that anyone will ever design a greater movie monster than we got out of HR Giger & Co. in Ridley Scott's classic 1979 haunted space-ship film. And I always think of it as being so strange and different from us, the monster, but then the thing that always unsettles me the most when I rewatch the film is just how very nearly human it is in far too many ways for me to ever be comfortable with. It's just us, turned inside out, dipped in acid and slime and chrome, and shot full of every single nightmare that you've ever had.

3. Halloween - Michael Myers remains the only horror movie villain that I have ever had a nightmare about where I woke up in tears and could not go back to sleep for the entire night, and had trouble sleeping for days after. And I hadn't even watched a Halloween movie any time recently! That mask, that horrible blankness, it just seeps right into you.

2. Carrie - I wrote the write-up for this movie over at TFE's group list, where it came in at #4, but I'll just add this over here: I can see your dirty pillows. Seriously though, as much gloriously over-the-top fun as I find DepPalma's film to be, the real lingering sensation is this deep, deep well of sadness. I can hear the break in Sissy Spacek's voice as she says, "Mama..." and I just want to sob.

1. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The scariest movie ever made, before or after The Exorcist - ever, says me. When that metal door slams open and Leatherface comes stepping out, everything starts spinning, Tobe Hooper turned the world on its axis. Nothing has ever felt so wrong. (And yes, therefore, so right.) The madness, dear god, the madness. This film captures madness.

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