Nothing could be more American than a haunted house party, where all the guests are scared so the host gives them guns.

The host is Vincent Price, eccentric millionaire, and he’s offered the guests $10,000 each if they make it through the night without, you know, dying. His wife hates him, and they have several delightfully acerbic conversations, while noted ham Elisha Cook Jr laments his brother, killed by the ghosts, and reminds us that two other people were murdered on the grounds, but their heads were detached and never discovered.

It’s complete nonsense, but lots of fun, from the one and only William Castle. There’s loud screaming, bad special effects, and three hot women, one of whom’s almost my age (meaning, in her 60s then, which would make her in her 120s now — hubba hubba).

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

A true story, we’re told, of the FBI’s undercover investigations of German spies in America, who were trying to gain top secret info on “process 97,” the code name for atomic research before it was dubbed the Manhattan Project.

As a thriller, The House on 92nd Street is quite good. I was thrilled.

We’re shown feds reading mail addressed to (suspected) German agents, and clandestine filming and tracking of everyone who visited German embassies, everyone who goes into or leaves a particular book store, and “even the most trusted individuals working on process 97,” including “tracing all of their activities and all of their contacts.”

And all through the movie, my bullshit detector was blaring. The story is narrated by an unnamed but very deep-voiced man, but much of what Deep-Voiced Man says sounds like propaganda. The film worships the heroics of the FBI — there’s even a cameo for J Edgar Hoover, wearing pants.

If it’s really a true story, then golly, the FBI saved America. But I was taken aback by the proud declamation of Deep-Voiced Man that the FBI had 100-million sets of fingerprints on file, when the entire population of the US in 1945 was about 140-million. That’s a lot of prints.

And there’s only one house on all of 92nd Street?

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Directed by Robert Wise, which is usually a plus, but if it’s a plus here then wow, this would’ve been awful without Wise.

There’s this Czech chick in a Nazi concentration camp, and she’s best friends there with a rich American woman. Now, Czech me if I’m wrong, but I doubt there were many rich American women in Nazi concentration camps. And I double-doubt that rich American women in Nazi concentration camps were allowed to keep their passports.

Anyway, the rich American woman dies in the camp, and her best buddy there (Valentina Cortese, from Day for Night and The Barefoot Contessa), who’s neither rich nor American, assumes her identity. She makes her way to America, where she meets her “son” and lures in the son’s guardian (Richard Basehart, from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).

Cortese rocks her role, coming across as smart, complicated, and conflicted, but Basehart was never a good actor, and simply can’t deliver a character who has any nuance. If the semi-ludicrous plot isn’t enough to sink the movie, Basehart is.

The titular house is a triumph of set design, and if there’s any reason to recommend the film, that’s it. It’s on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, and the cameras were there, but I’m skeptical that the cast was. It looks like they’re standing in front of San Francisco greenscreens.

And there’s only one house on all of Telegraph Hill?

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

This 8-minute film is a modernized and animated retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, about Jack and an entire city of men just like Jack — all with similar houses, TVs, bills, cars, and jobs that none of these men really like. Jack and all the city’s men are married to wives who cook and turn on the TV and aren’t really satisfied with their all-too-similar lives, either.

On his way home from work one day, Jack trades the family car for a handful of beans, which grow overnight into a giant beanstalk. Jack climbs the beanstalk, and finds a much richer world high above, where a millionaire giant pursues him and cries, “Fe fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a middle-class scum!”

I saw this when I was a kid and remember it well, but can’t remember where. It’s so blatantly subversive it couldn’t have been shown on TV or screened in a classroom at school, so my guess is, it might’ve screened at a sci-fi convention I attended in my teens? Whatever, it’s delightfully cynical, with a soft-pedaled but unmistakable and maybe radical moral to the story.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

A serial killer commits several gruesome murders, accompanied by philosophical introspection at the depth of a belly button, with set-ups designed to make us sympathize with the perp.

I have not had a good time with the films of noted arteest Lars von Trier, having seen and disliked Breaking the Waves, Dogville, Europa, and now half of The House that Jack Built, which is irredeemably dogpoop.

Verdict: BIG NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

… and out of alphabetical order …

Corey Feldman stars, which you might not expect as a selling point, but he wears a tux and an odd persona, talks with an unlikely accent, and has whatever it takes to carry a bizarre story for an hour and a half.

He’s a nerd with a stuck-up girlfriend, attending a party at the ornate Royal Fulton Hotel, where he’ll be meeting her parents. But he’s not on the guest list, and his future father-in-law hates him at first sight, and then there’s surreal and supernatural wackiness afoot.

This was written by two Spanish dudes I’ve never heard of, but filmed in English. Originally deemed too weird to be released, it was recently rescued from obscurity after being praised by Jordan Peele.

I saw it at Seattle’s Grand Illusion on election night, trying to avoid the returns for as long as I could. It’s sorta like early David Lynch plus laughs, and it works, all the way to its disturbing finish, which helped prepare me for the disturbing surreality called reality that was waiting when I came home and turned on the news.

Music by the Baltimore Flamingos Rainbow Orchestra, with haunting instrumental renditions of “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To” peppered throughout the soundtrack.

Verdict: YES.

12/6/2024

Housekeeping (1987)
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
How (Not) to Build a School in Haiti (2022)
How the West Was Won (1962)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises …

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