DailyView: Day 160, Movie 241

How about a Victorian era London horror/mystery/thriller featuring a Jack the Ripper style killer and a mystery worthy of the Scotland Yard gentlemen detectives? Yes, please. I found this one going through the film available on Hulu tonight and this sounded like a good one.

I have always had a fascination with Jack the Ripper and other serial killers, which they would eventually be labeled.

So I wanted to go ahead and watch this movie from 2016 called The Limehouse Golem starring Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke.

The infamous Limehouse Golem killer was running around London causing panic and fear. Scotland Yard sent the well known detective John Kildare (Bill Nighy), an act that Kildare suspected was a plan to set him up as a scapegoat, a detective to be a failure to the public.

Kildare started investigating the case anyway and the evidence led him to the sensational trial of Lizzie Cree (Olivia Cooke) who was accused of poisoning her playwright husband John Cree (Sam Reid). She was facing losing the case and her life, but Kildare had the suspicion that John Cree was the Limehouse Golem killer.

The performances of the film were good, especially Bill Nighy as the Scotland Yard inspector. Olivia Cooke played her damaged character extremely well and you were never sure exactly what had happened with her. I liked how her character was played.

The story was filled with red herrings trying to make us confused with the killer. They did a neat thing during flashbacks of showing the suspect narrating the murder of the certain victims. It was clear that the film was using the technique to help tell the story and not just cause confusion. I liked that trick very much.

I did have a pretty good idea about who the killer was going to turn out to be. That did not bother mem even though it typically does. It all did fit together and I like when a movie works.

This was a good watch and a nice addition to the October DailyView.

DailyView: Day 159, Movie 240

I love Edgar Allan Poe. I teach an Edgar Allan Poe unit at my middle school every October/November. One of the key stories we look at is The Tell-Tale Heart and I always show the students the one man show version of the Tell-Tale Heart as performed by Vincent Price. In the 50s and 60s Vincent Price and director Roger Corman did a cycle of Poe stories together and this was the fourth one.

In fact, there were several stories included in this anthology. A couple that I did not recognize and a few more that I could see.

Part One: “Morella.”

This is a story I did not know and I was impressed with what the film did. The estranged daughter Lenora (Maggie Price) returned to her father Locke (Vincent Price) who had spent years mourning the loss of his beautiful wife Morella (Leona Gage). He had also spent years blaming her for her death. Morella claimed that the infant was responsible for her death. Lenora, who only had a few months remaining to live, discovered that her father had been keeping the corpse of her mother in his estate because he could just not say goodbye.

This was very creepy and Vincent Price does an admirable job selling the work, but it feels as if we are missing too many pieces of the story to really make this work. They seem to imply that she had died in childbirth, but it messes that bit up some. Locke changes his tune very quickly. At first he wanted no part of her, but he quickly changed that up. Too quickly. They could have used a few extra scenes to make it less like a slingshot. Then the weird ending really came from nowhere. This story needed more to it to have it make sense. Looking at the Poe story, it sounds as if those questions are all dealt with and it was more of the adaptation issue.

Interestingly, the daughter in the Poe story does not have a name and she is named here after one of the famous lost loves of Poe’s writing, Lenore from The Raven.

Part Two: “The Black Cat”

The Black Cat is one of my favorite Poe stories. I find that it is one of his most underrated ones. However, this version takes The Black Cat and mishmashes it up with The Cask of Amontillado. Those two stories do share a few similarities and this one works reasonably well together. Starring Peter Lorre as Montresor, Vincent Price as Fortunato, and Joyce Jameson as Annabel (perhaps after Annabel Lee?), The Black Cat tells the story of the drunkard Montresor who wants nothing more than to have his wife give him money to fund his nights of drinking.

When one of those nights introduced him to Fortunato, the wine tasting gentleman assisted the drunken Montresor home where he met Annabel. They began an affair on nights when Montresor would head out to do his drinking.

This story employs a more comedic tone, and Peter Lorre gives a solid comedic performance. However, I believe that the comedic aspect robs both of the two stories of their depth of emotion. Both stories end with someone being bricked up inside a wall, one of Poe’s favorite means of disposing of bodies. I was hoping that the film would maintain the wonderfully ironic twist at the end of the story of The Black Cat, and, to my pleasure, it did so. I thought this one improved as it went along, but truthfully, you did not need to combine the two stories into one.

Part Three: “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”

I was unfamiliar with this Poe story, but it was the one that seemed to work the best with the time allotted. Price this time played M. Valdemar, a man dying of a painful disease. He had made a deal with a hypnotist Carmichael (Basil Rathbone of Sherlock Holmes fame) to allow him to hypnotize him to take away the pain. Then when the moment of death would come, M. Valdemar agreed to let him use his hypnosis to see how long they could put off his death.

Valdemar’s wife, Helene (Debra Paget, and another famed Poe female name) was horrified by the deal, but she could do nothing to prevent it. What turned into a horror show was when Valdemar’s body died, Carmichael was able to keep control of him and Valdemar was communicating with him from the afterlife. Carmichael refused to let control of him go no matter how much they begged him.

Seeing Vincent Price in the bed during this time was creepy as can be and the story was brought to a satisfactory conclusion. This was the best of the three tales in my opinion. The Black Cat suffered from my knowledge of the two stories and the Morella felt too short and missing some important information.

These were clearly low budget films with high class talent. There was one really great, one okay and one lacking of the three tales of terror, but they were all well worth the watch. Go read some Edgar Allan Poe.

DailyView: Day 158, Movie 239

Found footage films are inconsistent. Some are really well done and others are just silly. With the success of The Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity franchise, found footage became a big deal, especially in the horror genre. Recently, there have been fewer found footage films, which is a good thing because it was really becoming stale. However, the 2018 film Butterfly Kisses took the subgenre to another level.

Director Gavin York (Seth Adam Kallich) discovered a box full of tapes from a student film school project by Sophia Crane (Rachel Armiger) and her friend and cameraman Feldman (Reed DeLisle). They had been recording a local urban legend, The Peeping Tom, for a documentary. Gavin sets out to prove that the tapes were real, leading him to become lost in his project as nobody believed what he was saying. He was accused of creating a hoax.

This movie does an amazing job of blending the two stories together, from Sophia and Feldman in the past and the present with Gavin. The two stories work extremely well with each other.

The Peeping Tom is a cool design and the film uses the character in a proper manner. It does not over use the images of the creature and it keeps us wondering about what it is. In fact, there is a doubt from the movie whether or not the original tapes are real or were they just a pair of students who needed to make a splash.

Like many great found footage film, there were some times where I thought this might be a real story. When the director of The Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sanchez, showed up it really crossed the real world with the fantasy. I knew this was not a true story, but with all of these people playing themselves in the film, it kept that little doubt inside.

Butterfly Kisses proves that the found footage subgenre is still alive. You just have to have a smart story with effective use of the footage that will create a mood. This movie does that in spades.

DailyView: Day 157, Movie 238

Jean-Claude Van Damme leads a tournament called Kumite, the ultimate martial arts tournament. He was a military man Frank Dux who wanted to compete in the Kumite in honor of his master. The military did not want Dux competing because of the danger involved as many times there had been fights to the death.

The martial arts in the film are excellent, albeit repetitive. The acting…not so much. The characters are underdeveloped and not worth the time.

There are a bunch of montages throughout the film.

I don’t really want to say much more about this one. The acting was terrible and the action solid, but repetitive.

Jean-Claude Van Damme fought well. The ending fight with former champion Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) was well done, but Chong Li was a real dirty fighter, which makes one wonder where the respect in this tournament was.

Bloodsport is a weak movie overall.

DailyView: Day 156, Movie 237

The DailyView binge has reached October and, while I will not be strictly watching the horror genre in honor of Halloween, I will be increasing the number of horror movies I watch this month. The first one was a 2012 independent horror movie called I Am a Ghost.

Emily (Anna Ishida), a troubled spirit, haunts her house, repeating normal daily chores and actions. Emily is unable to leave the house and finds herself confused and lost. As things begin to add up, Emily winds up having discussions with Sylvia (Jeannie Barroga), a clairvoyant hired by the current residents of the house to remove the spirit contain within.

Through the therapeutic discussions, Emily is forced to face terrors from her past that may hold the key to why she is unable to pass on to the other side.

This film is very disturbing and keeps audiences unsettled. The music, the repetitive scenes and the truth of what was going on was nerve-wracking and frightening. Anna Ishida, who provided the only real face in the movie, does an amazing job of giving us every level of emotion possible.

The third act of this movie is David Lynch level of filmmaking. There are terrifying moments and images that are just beautifully tragic. Exceptionally unnerving, I Am a Ghost started slowly, but built up extremely well and, as I said, the finale was unbelievable.

I Am a Ghost is directed by H.P. Mendoza, who did a spectacular job. It is a very eerie and unsettling film worth the time for a Halloween viewing.

DailyView: Day 155, Movie 236

A powerful and compelling documentary about the life of Harvey Milk, one of the leading voices supporting gay rights in the late 1970s, his struggles to battle the prejudice and hatred of people and the terrible assassination by a former political adversary.

Narrated by Harvey Fierstein, the documentary presented information on Harvey Milk and his charismatic manner of working for his causes. You could see just what kind of a wonderful man Harvey Milk was in news reels and footage. Just as compelling was the aftermath of the trial of Dan White, the man who murdered Milk and Mayor George Moscone, where protestors took to the street and violence erupted.

The documentary is just as relevant today as it was back in 1984. In fact, I think it may be even more relevant in today’s society because it can be seen in many different levels. It is almost impossible to watch the doc and not think about the riots and the protests after the George Floyd murder in early 2020.

I was unaware of this story and that is a shame. This kind of tragic tale is one of the deepest seeded problems our country has to this day. While gay rights have become a more accepted topic, the underlying hatred is still there and hopefully can be carved out. Harvey Milk is a figure that should always be remembered.

DailyView: Day 154, Movie 235

Sherlock Holmes on a train.

The murder mystery on a train is a classic trope of the mystery genre and Basil Rathbone brought the iconic detective to the screen in one of his series of black and white thrillers from the 40s.

When a brilliant diamond is stolen and a man is murdered, Sherlock Holmes is on the case, anticipating that an old enemy is behind the theft.

Basil Rathbone does his typically great job as Sherlock Holmes. Nigel Bruce once again takes up his sidekick role as Dr. John Watson, being a little more bumbling than the last time I saw him.

In Terror By Night, the story does a good job of setting up suspects, but it feels a tad rushed as the run time was just under an hour. What was involved in the movie was fun though.

Rathbone carries himself with the gravitas of Sherlock Holmes as this is one of his later films. The end of the film was pure unadulterated Holmes.

DailyView: Day 153, Movie 234

I have always liked Vincent Price and his body of work. He is an iconic figure in the genre of horror for many reasons, but one of the most distinct is his recognizable voice.

Scouring through the list of films on Shudder tonight, I came across Witchfinder General starring Vincent Price and it seemed like a perfect fit for the evening’s DailyView.

I have come to discover that Matthew Hopkins, Vincent Price’s character in this movie, is a real historical figure. He was a man who, empowered by Parliament, to travel with his henchmen to different villages and towns during the English Civil War to search out witches and carry out their execution. His brutal methods led to the “word of God” being brought down on these innocent people. Hopkins would collect silver for every witch that he was able to find, making his motives anything but pure.

This film is a highly fictionalized version of Matthew Hopkins, and places Hopkins in the sights of a soldier Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy), whose fiancé Sara (Hilary Dwyer) was taken advantage by Hopkins and his second hand man (Robert Russell) and whose uncle (Rupert Davies) was hanged as a witch. Richard Marshall swore vengeance against Hopkins and pursued the witchfinder across England.

Vincent Price does a marvelous job of making the audience hate him. Even I, who watched the movie in the first place because of Price, really wanted him to get his in the end. The horrible facts of how people were handled when accused of witchcraft was shocking although it was not 100% accurate in timing. In reality, there were court cases, but the fact that people were still accused and executed is a terrible moment in human history.

Considered “historical horror,” Witchfinder General was originally called The Conqueror Worm” in the United States. The film faced plenty of troubles because of the violence within it, especially back in England. The film has become a cult favorite over the years.