every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the I’s, with random anti-alphabetical cheats)

Identity Theft of a Cheerleader (2019)

Vicky tries out to be a high school cheerleader, but doesn’t make the squad. Then years go by, as tends to happen, until she’s 30 and married to a lazy good-for-nothing. She’s dissatisfied with him and her life, so she lies that she’s 17, enrolls in high school as ‘Caitlin’, and this time she makes the cheerleading squad.

Also, she sabotages the other cheerleaders and murders her husband.

It’s a Lifetime TV-movie, “ripped from the headlines” as they say, so the story is unhinged but plausible. There’s nobody in the cast familiar to me, and nobody I particularly want to see again, but the performances are adequate. It is what it is, never tries to be anything else, and it gets better as it goes along. By the time Vicky/Caitlin started getting violent, I was rooting for her (which was probably not the filmmakers’ intent).

Could the leading lady, playing 30 playing 17, pass for a teenager? Hell no, but she passes for an actress playing a teenager on TV. She looks younger than some of the movie’s “real” high school kids.

Verdict: It’s schlock, but YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

A man’s horizons get larger as he diminishes, and with excellent sets and tricks of photography, you will believe a man can shrink.

Visually it’s a grabber, and the script is intelligent but subtle, offering more than mere entertainment. Is it another 1950s sci-fi warning against nuclear weaponry? Is it a philosophical pondering on what it means to be human and alive? Is it a meditation on how we’re never really in control of our lives, and a stroke of bad luck could alter anyone’s expectations? Yup, yup, and yup, it’s all of that, plus bleak and thrilling, and the ending is poignant & poetic & approaches perfect.

I’ve seen this movie half a dozen times, but this is the first time in twenty years or so, and I’d forgotten how much ass it kicks — all the ass.

Screenplay by the great Richard Matheson, based on his novel. Hugo winner for Best Dramatic Presentation. Directed by Jack Arnold, who made plenty of great golden-era sci-fi — Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space, The Mouse That Roared, Tarantula, and 15 episodes of The Brady Bunch.

My only complaint is that the film needs a restoration. Time has nibbled away at the greenscreen work, leaving a few scenes looking rather washed out. Other than that, though, it’s an epic journey inside a man’s head as he recedes into near-nothingness, only inches tall and attacked by his house-cat, even smaller and in a battle to the death with a spider. Good times.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)

Here’s a retelling of the above from a female perspective, starring Lily Tomlin and written by Jane Wagner, a combination that ought to make it something special … but, meh.

The revamped story takes enjoyable swipes at advertising, chemical capitalism, animal experimentation, and society’s general dismissal of women unless they’re naked, but it’s too silly to work as science fiction or drama, and, surprisingly, it’s not funny enough to succeed as comedy.

Tomlin plays the lead, but also plays her best friend, which is confusing, since there’s no attempt to make them look different. Nobody wants Mike Douglas to sing, and yet he does. Rick Baker in the ape suit doesn’t help. And I don’t even know what to make of the screwball ending.

The Incredible Shrinking Woman isn’t awful, but it’s short of incredible. Directed by Joel Schumacher.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

The India Rubber Head (1901)

This is a two-minute short by the brilliant Georges Méliès, wherein a living human head is molded from rubber, then inflated via bellows until it’s huge, all while the head looks around the room and wonders what’s going on. It’s freaky, effective, and almost certainly an inspiration for David Lynch’s Eraserhead.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Comedy Of Terrors (1963)

Mr Trumbull (Vincent Price) is an undertaker who kills people to drum up business. Felix (Peter Lorre) is his assistant, who’s in love with Trumbull’s wife. To save on expenses, they recycle the same coffins.

This is a horror comedy, with Boris Karloff, Joe E Brown, Basil Rathbone, and Rhubarb the Cat. Written by Richard Matheson, directed by Jacques Toruneur.

There are some inside jokes that’ll only work if you know the same actors’ roles in The Raven and Tales of Terror, both of which were also written by Matheson.

Matheson was brilliant — he wrote such novels and movies as Bid Time Return (Somewhere in Time), Duel, I Am Legend, The Night Stalker, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. He was not a famously funny guy, though, and the comedy here is very broad, without enough laughs to earn my recommendation.

Verdict: MAYBE.

9/14/2025

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.

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