A guy in a frilly shirt is inexplicably in love with an allegedly sickly young woman, an affair her sickly brother (Vincent Price) opposes, because they’re Ushers, you see, and the entire Usher family is cursed through all history and into the future. Brother and sister are both chronically sickly, we’re told several times, though they look healthy to me. Slap on whiter makeup and they’d be 2024 goth.

From the twitchy mind of Edgar Allen Poe, the cheapskate finances of Roger Corman, and the casual creepiness of Mr Price, this is… OK, I guess.

There’s a cool nightmare sequence toward the end, and the movie is never boring, because it’s written by Richard Matheson (Duel, I Am Legend, The Morning After, Somewhere in Time, etc). It’s set in circumstance so far removed from the human experience, it can’t really be scary or affecting, but Vincent Price is always worth watching.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

I’m skeptical that prison for women was ever as it’s depicted here. Inmates max out at about 35, and they’re all white, except a few black inmates who exist only in the kitchen, of course. The guards are unarmed. The warden is a man, which seems like a bad idea at a women’s prison, but it’s the truest element here.

Nuttiest of all, female inmates who have children raise them in the prison, until the child’s third birthday, at which point they’re instantly up for adoption.

If you’re looking for catfights and lesbianity, you’re about ten years early. What’s offered instead is weird but interesting melodrama, with a stirring and successful “author’s message” scene.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

This is a fevered family farce that’s uncomfortable from the start, blooms into bonkers, and eventually becomes hilarious. “Excuse me, I’m going to go baste the turkey and hide the kitchen knives.”

Marty (Josh Hamilton) brings his fiancée Lesly (Tori Spelling) home to meet the family for Thanksgiving dinner, and the family is nuts. Jackie-O (Parker Posey) is Marty’s twin sister, and they’ve always been close — she came out of their mother’s womb holding Marty’s penis. Oh, also she imagines she’s Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Their mother (Geneviève Bujold) is intricately miswired, and doesn’t approve of Marty & Lesly’s engagement. Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr) is their younger brother, mousy and unsure of himself, but he thinks Lesly is hot.

Based on a presumably terrific play by Wendy MacLeod, this has a script full of clever but never too-clever lines, delivered deadpan perfect. Directed by Mark Waters, who also made Mean Girls, and whose brother Daniel wrote Heathers.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

This is an odd, overly-stylized mystery-thriller, about a bleeding-heart liberal (Kelly McGillis) who’s big on helping refugees. It’s the 1950s, so she’s blacklisted from her magazine job in the movie’s first scene.

After that, she befriends an immigrant, and gets embroiled in an all-American plot to smuggle Nazis into the USA after World War II.

Having never seen Top Gun, this is my introduction to McGillis, and her acting is fine but her wardrobe is ridonkulous. She’s supposed to be a low-level schlump, but she wears stunning dresses and gowns in every scene, and when the script calls for it she runs like an Olympic sprinter despite her high heels. When two men fight, she cowers instead of beaning the bad guy with a brick.

Jeff Daniels plays an FBI agent who’s oddly not monstrous, but instead wants to help McGillis solve the mystery. In one scene he takes a severe blow to the balls, and I do hope he’s not a ‘method’ actor, because the incident and aftermath both seem realistic.

But everything else in the movie is kinda glossy and unbelievable, with pristine 1950s sets and scenes and cars. It’s all filmed in a yellowy hue that’s supposed to evoke nostalgia, but kept reminding me I’m out of margarine.

Directed by Peter Yates (Breaking Away, Bullitt).

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

… and out of alphabetical order …

From the good guys at Crimethinc, here’s a brief short about, like the title says, shoplifting from big corporations. The story is good and the philosophy is sound, but the sound is a bit hinky.

Personally, I pay at chain stores, but only because I can afford it and don’t need the tension and hassle of ‘stealing’. Absolutely, though, without hesitation, qualification, or waffling, everyone who’s not a big corporation should be on the shoplifters’ side.

Verdict: YES.

12/4/2024

The House on Haunted Hill (1959)
The House on 92nd Street (1945)
The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)
The House that Jack Built (2018)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises …

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