All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

Exhuma (2024)

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Operating somewhere between science and superstition, a shaman and her protégé (Kim Go-eun and Lee Do-hyun, respectively) acquire the case of a wealthy client (Hong Seo-jun) whose newborn son won’t stop crying. As the shaman determines, the baby and father are part of a lineage in which all firstborns are haunted, thanks to an ancestor having a tantrum.

With assistance from a mortician (Yoo Hai-jin) and an aging, vaping geomancer (Oldboy himself, Choi Min-sik), the solution exists in an exhumation ceremony. Or so they think. 

Told in chapters like a thick, chewy novel, Exhuma is a slow burn of high order, almost to the level of The Wailing. The way writer and director Jang Jae-hyun gets into the story is intoxicating, giving his audience a good 15 minutes to determine on our own whether the principal characters are believers or scammers.  

Following up his first two films, the acclaimed Svaha: The Sixth Finger and The Priests, writer/director Jang Jae-hyun completes an unofficial trilogy of religious-based horror. Rather than merely use the themes as a crutch or entry point, Exhuma positively drips in adherence to rituals, as well as man’s ability to set aside skepticism in times of desperation.

While the movie maintains an ominous vibe for more than two hours’ time, breaking tension only for masterfully constructed scares, its best scene is when our protagonists set out to ease the restless spirit in the excavation rite. We see it in full, step by step, including fire, knives, drums, dance and five impaled pig carcasses — all carefully choreographed in such a massive production it could take Broadway by storm. We accept it because the actors sell that their characters do; their incredible and realistic chemistry goes a long way, too.

Even if my knowledge of Korean culture isn’t up to the level the movie assumes, it doesn’t matter. I also can’t deny the mastery at work. With a few surprises up its sleeve — or in the ground and within mirrored surfaces — this is horror on an epic scale. Resist the urge to pause and rewind to confirm what you think you just saw. At least give yourself over to one full viewing first, the way it’s intended. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

Invaders from Proxima B (2023)

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Looking like Oscar the Grouch made from your Memaw’s discarded fur coat, an alien named Chuck lands in the backyard of the Howie Jankins family. Chuck’s made this pilgrimage to save the human race because he says Earth is up for auction to the highest celestial bidder. He simply needs to swap bodies with Howie (Chillerama’s Ward Roberts, dressed in full Bespoke Church Bro mode) for a couple of hours to secure the planet.

Simple, right? Not when Chuck’s also being pursued by a dreadlocked conspiracy theorist/influencer (Sarah Lassez, The Clown at Midnight), a religious nut from animal control (Jeremiah Birkett, CB4) and two nitwit intergalactic bounty hunters (Office Space’s Richard Riehle and The Mortuary Collection’s Mike C. Nelson) in — wait for it — Hawaiian shirts! Ho-ho, let the wackiness begin! 

Despite its kid-unfriendly title, Invaders from Proxima B is a family-friendly sci-fi comedy, what with its cartoon sequences, ninja lizards and the ALF-esque Chuck. As Proxima’s writer and director, Roberts overloads his passion project with lowest-hanging-fruit jokes on farts, poop and Howie’s wife (Samantha Sloyan, 2016’s Hush) having boobs. I don’t mean to imply the movie is offensive; it’s not.

But it is strikingly unfunny. Like the puppet at its hollow center, Invaders bares no teeth. While its attempt at satirizing YouTubers suggests an intended bite, the overall comedic vibe is physical and slapstick. When Chuck and Howie swap bodies, Roberts’ worst impulses to manifest Jim Carrey circa 1994 are not only realized, but cringe-inducing.

Rugrats might be more open to such silliness, as well as the effects and action — well-staged, if a bit too Sam Raimi-cribbed. However, children also may be confused trying to keep track of all the swapping, as everybody trades bodies with everybody else. It’s like the movie’s grooming youngsters for key parties.

That last line’s a joke, to be clear. But this is not: In terms of enjoyment, I expected Proxima B to at least surpass Nukie. That shouldn’t be so much to ask. —Rod Lott

Horror

Pandemonium (2023)

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Hell is other people. That, you knew. But in the case of Pandemonium, an artful French anthology, the saying is literal, as a newcomer to the underworld gets to see the origin stories of the corpses strewn about him.

That person is Nathan (Hugo Dillon, The Sisters Brothers), entering hell through a portal appearing on the snowy highway after he’s involved in a car crash that claims three lives in total. Upon arrival, it looks like he’s stepped into the barren wasteland at the finale of Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond. 

Furthering examining and exorcising themes he explored in 2018’s All the Gods in the Sky, writer/director Quarxx — just Quarxx, merci beaucoup — shows us how two others arrived there. First, a little girl (Manon Maindivide) who wakes to find her parents murdered, presumably at the hands of a deformed man (Meander’s Carl Laforêt, acting behind a triumph of makeup) residing in the cellar.

In another scenario, a single mother (Ophélia Kolb, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life) goes to extremes in denying that her bullied daughter (Sidwell Weber, 2014’s Among the Living) has committed suicide. Finally, it’s Nathan’s turn. Then, unlike the others, we get to witness punishment meted. And, with Quarxx as a card-carrying member of the New French Extremity, it ain’t pretty.

Story to story, the acting is superb. As a child, Maindivide deserves special mention for turning in a performance somehow in line with the segment’s dark comedic overtones. Throughout, whether the vibe is philosophical or unspeakable, the visuals startle. As Pandemonium descends further and further, building to a depraved ending Clive Barker would admire, Quarxx’s imagination grows. Pretentious moniker notwithstanding, he’s one to watch. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mystery

The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb (1980)

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If you weren’t alive and aware of your surroundings in the late 1970s, you can’t comprehend the level of popularity and pervasiveness the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen gripped on our culture. It’d be impressive for anyone, but it’s extraordinary for a dude who’d spent the previous 3,000 years as a pile of dust. 

Among the cashing-inners: NBC, broadcasting The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb, a horror-tinged, mystery-minded work of fiction somehow based on Barry Wynne nonfiction book. A dapper Robin Ellis (TV’s original Poldark) headlines the made-for-telly movie as real-life tomb raider Howard Carter, whose bowtie looms larger than the bottom half of his face. Carter endears himself at the start by asking a local boy his name and, apparently not liking all the consonants and weird accents, tells the kid dismissively, “I’ll just call you ‘Fishbait.’”

In the sands of Egypt, archeologist Carter and his crew unearth an artifact that warns of death for anyone who dares disturb the king’s sleep. Near immediately, “accidents” befall others: a scorpion attack, a snakebite, an earthquake, the snapping of a biddy’s parasol in two! Say, how do you expect that biplane with a skull-and-crossbones decal will fare? 

The “mystery” at play is whether is the harm — fatal or not — is proof of a true supernatural curse or the work of a corrupt dealer played by Raymond Burr (Godzilla 1985) in brownface and various color sashes. Only everybody watching knows for sure! 

Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest) is on hand to lend Oscar-minted credibility to the project, but her role as Carter’s love interest is thankless. Somehow they also recruited the venerated Paul Scofield (Quiz Show) to deliver narration, which only adds to — rather than offsets — the telepic’s old-fashioned fussiness. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Reading Material

Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers

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I don’t recall a time in which I wasn’t aware of ’70s porn sensation Marilyn Chambers; growing up watching Johnny Carson’s monologue from the foot of your parents’ bed will do that to a kid. Let’s put aside whether a child should even understand what Behind the Green Door was, much less what went on there. The fact is, Chambers’ name was everywhere, even if her work wasn’t as accessible as the three network TV channels. 

To this day, I’ve never seen her appear in anything other than David Cronenberg’s Rabid, which, being rated R, kneels a level below the style of films for which she became famous and/or infamous. I hold neither either affection nor attachment (nor ire, it should be noted.) 

All that to say, for 2024, Jared Stearns’ Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers is the biography I didn’t know I needed. 

Given the subject matter, I was concerned Pure might reveal itself as hackwork. I can’t tell you how many fringe-culture bios read like public records, even beginning with, “[Name] was born on [date] in [city and state].” My worries were unfounded; like his subject, Stearns is determined to defy expectations from the outset. 

You wouldn’t know this was his first rodeo. He’s a gifted writer who knows how to tell a story, and it would be difficult to imagine a tale with as many ups and downs (and ins and outs) as Chambers’. From his own interviews and extensive research, he relays her modest beginnings as a “show-off” among in an emotionally cold Connecticut family to a high school model wholesome enough to be selected for the Ivory Snow detergent box. 

By the time that packaging hit grocery shelves, Chambers had accidentally leapt into the career that forever defined her: porn star. She thought no one would see Behind the Green Door; instead, it rode the Deep Throat wave into a cultural behemoth of “porn chic,” making the actress an instant icon. 

Most of the remainder of Pure, published by Headpress and named after Ivory’s “99 44/100th pure” slogan, details her attempts to use porn as a stepping stone, only to be shoved aside every time. Whatever she reached for — Hollywood legitimacy, a recording contract, a loving spouse — was removed from her grasp. Although Chambers could be her own worst enemy, many of her setbacks can be blamed on husband No. 2, Chuck Traynor, the former Mr. Linda Lovelace and professional piece of shit. (Not for nothing does “Dog Fucker (short)” appear atop “domestic violence” in the index.) 

It’s a hell of a survival story — and one without a happy ending, as Chambers died in 2009 at the tragically young age of 56. 

Stearns’ portrait is mostly sympathetic. Clearly, he holds magnificent reverence for her, yet does not shy away from sharing incidents that place her in a negative light. In total, the point of Pure is granting Chambers the credit and acceptance she deserves, which the author argues go beyond acts captured on celluloid. She was, after all, what most of America refused to see her as in her lifetime: human. —Rod Lott

Get it at Headpress.