All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

The Lodge (2019)

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One otherwise sunny afternoon, Richard (Ocean’s Eight’s Richard Armitage) deserves a World’s Worst Estranged Husband award for telling his wife he wants to finalize their divorce and marry his new girlfriend — a one-two punch of info that drives the spouse to suicide. Six months later, over Christmas vacation, he earns a World’s Worst Dad trophy to add to that hypothetical mantle by forcing his two kids to spend time in their snow-covered mountain cabin with said girlfriend, Grace (Riley Keough, Logan Lucky), and then leaving them with her for a few days.

Not only is Grace a stranger, but they blame her for their mom’s death. Furthermore, they know she’s literally a psychopath, being the daughter of a Christian cult leader (played by her real-life dad, Danny) whose members killed themselves in a mass suicide à la Heaven’s Gate. Only Grace, befitting of her name, survived, yet bears heavy emotional scars, all of which Keough rightly and consistently plays in the key of dour.

What begins to happen in The Lodge once Richard temporarily vacates is best left to audiences to discover on their own. More eerie than scary, the picture marks just the second narrative feature for the Austrian duo of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, following up the acclaimed twin terrors of Goodnight Mommy. This one is even better; call it Goodnight Stepmommy-to-Be. Just when you think Franz and Fiala are pulling pages from their 2014 film for recycling, the course of events changes wildly, and viewers might not be willing to follow if the actors weren’t so good.

Keough is, in particular, excellent, but let’s not diminish the two other equally tricky roles of Richard’s children, played by Jaeden Martell (Knives Out) and Lia McHugh (Along Came the Devil). They interact like real siblings, with McHugh believably conveying grief for which Martell, in turn, provides the big-brother support she needs. And far from Clueless, Alicia Silverstone is terrific in a brief appearance that neither requires nor allows her to lean on her trademark charm.

As was the case with Goodnight Mommy, one important character goes unbilled: architecture. Franz and Fiala build so many shots starting from that foundation, giving The Lodge a touch of delicate elegance even in its darkest corners. Their compositions are crisp and symmetrical, much like the microscopic snowflake of this arthouse horror’s poster. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Mommy’s Day (1997)

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As the direct sequel to his 1995 Mommy movie, Max Allan Collins’ Mommy’s Day is the superior effort on every level. This achievement is reached despite its love-to-hate lead meta-quipping, “Don’t you know the sequel is never as good as the original?” Then again, this is uttered one moment before pushing a character’s head through a plugged-in computer monitor, so perhaps she didn’t mean it.

Yes, Patty McCormack is back and The Bad Seedier than ever as murderous matriarch Mrs. Sterling — still preppy, still malicious and still xenophobic! She’s an hour away from getting the needle in death row when she’s selected to be a guinea pig for a “revolutionary antipsychotic drug” implanted within the arm, making her — in her own words — “new and improved, like a laundry detergent.” Although sprung from the pokey and into an experimental halfway house, Mommy is banned from seeing her beloved teen daughter, Jessica Ann (Rachel Lemieux, who only acted again in Collins’ next and best film, Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market), now in braces and deep in training for an ice-skating competition.

Oh, and homicides soon happen.

Pulp-fic legend Mickey Spillane and scream queen Brinke Stevens reprise their supporting roles, alongside comedy improv legend Del Close and WKRP in Cincinnati program director Gary Sandy, respectively joining this second go-round as the warden and a nose-pokin’ police sergeant. Jessica Ann cedes the spotlight as Collins makes Mommy the focus. Perhaps with her coronation to front and center, McCormack dials the hysteria up one notch, and is more fun to watch as a result.

Apparently, her spirit was infectious; Collins seems more engaged with the material this time around. In particular, he adds a subplot as Mrs. Sterling appears on a daytime talk show, allowing him to satirize (if only mildly) the “trash TV” format popular at the time, à la Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, Jerry Springer, Maury Povich and their collective ambush techniques. Shot on higher-definition video, Mommy’s Day boasts a sharper picture throughout and a well-earned twist in the third act. With a meatier mélange of kill scenes than its predecessor, Mommy’s Day is often mischaracterized as a slasher film, but it remains a thrifty thriller — albeit one with a shower-set murder via ghetto blaster — from the good ol’ days when America made it a Blockbuster night. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Mommy (1995)

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Although Mommy isn’t officially a sequel to 1956’s classic The Bad Seed, the idea for the shot-on-video thriller sparked from a “what if?” scenario in writer/director Max Allan Collins’ mind — namely, what would Patty McCormack’s killer-kid character be like as a grown-up … y’know, if she hadn’t been fatally fried by a bolt of lightning and all? Mommy knows best. Call it The Bad Seed: The Cougar Years.

McCormack’s titular matriarch, Mrs. Sterling, is a 40-something, double-“widowed” single woman dripping in pearls, entitlement and racism. She enters the Iowa-lensed movie like a boss, strutting into school after final bell to have a word with the teacher (Majel Barrett, 1973’s Westworld) who has decided to give this year’s outstanding student award to someone other than her daughter, Jessica Ann (newcomer Rachel Lemieux). Only one woman leaves the conversation alive, thus making Mrs. Sterling the ultimate stage mother.

As the body count increases, 12-year-old Jessica Ann’s distrust in her mom grows, boosted by the elder’s ability to open jars with minimal effort. When the girl goes snooping in Mommy’s bedroom, Collins cooks up genuine suspense, with viewers nervously looking at the open door in the far right of frame, for any sign Jessica Ann is about to get busted.

A prolific novelist — and a damned good one — Collins based Mommy on his same-named short story from the 1995 horror anthology Fear Itself. On the page, you can write anything, but on the screen, everything comes with a price tag; this being Collins’ first feature, his ambition sometimes gets reality-checked. Nowhere is this more evident than the night scenes, lit with saturated red, blue and orange gels … that get washed out on video (but are more visually pleasing than the credits’ use of Comic Sans and other egregious fonts). Collins acknowledges this limitation on the 25th-anniversary “widescream” Blu-ray set (which also contains the 1997 sequel, Mommy’s Day). By his third movie, Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market, he expertly had reversed the equation to make minuscule resources work in the flick’s favor.

Luckily, McCormack’s performance doesn’t depend upon a line item. She’s clearly having a ball. As much of a hoot she is to watch, not everyone else aligns to her frequency of camp. Having no acting experience at the time, Lemieux isn’t up to that challenge as Mommy’s distrustful daughter, but she does a decent job in what is the true lead. Famous faces also in the cast include The Exorcist’s Jason Miller, Mike Hammer creator Mickey Spillane and B-movie scream queen Brinke Stevens (The Jigsaw Murders), here completely clothed. —Rod Lott

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Sex

Dangerous Cargo (1977)

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What a ship captain thinks is cotton below deck is actually nitroglycerin — Dangerous Cargo, if you will. This Greek-language picture of peril takes place almost entirely on the potentially doomed boat, but is far more interested in explosions of another sort. And with Body Double femme fatale Deborah Shelton aboard, who can blame it?

Resplendent in Crystal Gayle hair and a rainbow-sherbet dress when she first appears, the gorgeous Shelton plays the wife of the captain (Nikos Verlekis, Land of the Minotaur) on his maiden voyage. She used to be a thing with the ship’s first mate, which gets a little confusing since both men look the same: as the Greek James Brolin. The only one you need worry about, however, is the lead pirate (Minotaur alum Kostas Karagiorgis) of the group that smuggles the nitro on before departure (in a container labeled “DANGEROUS NITRO” in — no joke — peel-’n’-stick letters) for eventual ship takeover and subsequent destruction of oil wells.

The graying, bloated pirate has eyes — and hands and crotch — for Shelton, all of which he employs in multiple rape/sex scenes that uncomfortably teeter toward the near-gynecological, hairy ass cracks and all. An entirely different Kostas, last name Karagiannis, is the director of this clumsy, double-drachma enterprise, proficient only in zooming in to his fellow Kostas’ constant groping and squeezing and suckling of the most unfortunate American leading lady.

Dangerous Cargo may be a shaggy-dog precursor to the Cinemax-ready erotic thrillers that kept Shannons Tweed and Whirry busy for most of the 1990s, but imagine if the Andrew Stevens/Marc Singer role were filled by, say, Dennis Farina. (No offense, Dennis, and R.I.P.) —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Reading Material: Short Ends 1/30/20

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After the 2015 documentary Doomed!, one might wonder what’s left to be said on the unreleased Fantastic Four film. Turns out, plenty! For BearManor Media, William Nesbitt has written Forsaken: The Making and Aftermath of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four. While I initially felt misgivings upon learning the book does not present a front-to-back narrative, its structure of nearly 30 individual Q&As actually works well; because the interviews don’t have to be read in order, so you can pick and choose those whose viewpoints interest you most. I most recommend those of principal actors Carl Ciarfalio and Alex Hyde-White, screenwriter Craig J. Nevius, director Oley Sassone, producers Corman and Bernd Eichinger, storyboard artist Pete Von Sholly and Film Threat’s Chris Gore. (Elsewhere, Stan Lee and Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman seem nowhere near as untrustworthy.) One small quibble: the title. I would’ve gone with Foursaken, because c’mon!

Cleaver Patterson could have collected various essays on fright films, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, he does something unique for this paperback, which you can probably infer from its title: Don’t Go Upstairs! A Room-by-Room Tour of the House in Horror Movies. Many of the approximately 60 blueprint entries cover the iconic works, from Psycho’s cellar and up The Exorcist’s stairwell to Poltergeist’s kitchen. But making the book all the better is that Patterson doesn’t forget exposing readers to more obscure titles, including the guest room of The Uninvited or the conservatory of Symptoms. In each case, the scene(s) in question is discussed and reviewed, rather than the movie itself. The McFarland & Company release isn’t essential, but its different angle is much appreciated.

If nothing else, you will gain an enormous amount of knowledge of and respect for the craft of film editing after reading Academy Award winner Paul Hirsch’s autobiography for Chicago Review Press. A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away: My Fifty Years Editing Hollywood Hits ― Star Wars, Carrie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Mission: Impossible, and More delivers exactly as promised, brimming with film-by-film remembrances of epic battles and epic solutions inside and outside the editing room. While Star Wars will attract the lion’s share of attention to the book, other chapters have no trouble sharing delightfully unfiltered stories. Those include Tom Cruise’s incredible generosity with coconut cake, John Hughes’ habit of suddenly cutting people out of his life, Tim Robbins’ crankiness at having to loop dialogue, Julia Roberts’ epic disgust of co-star Nick Nolte, and Joel Schumacher’s HR-unfriendly blowjob talks on set. But why no Extreme Ops anecdotes, dude?

One activity lost in this internet age: poring over movie ads in the newspaper. As a child, it was about the only way to get a taste of films I wasn’t allowed to see. Throughout middle school, I would cut out ads for movies I saw or desperately wanted to, and posted them on my bedroom bulletin board alongside admission ticket stubs. (Why, yes, I was a hopeless nerd! Why do you ask?) Minus the crushing embarrassment, all those feelings came rushing back while reading Ad Nauseam II: Newsprint Nightmares from the 1990s and 2000s, Michael Gingold’s immediate follow-up to last year’s original Ad Nauseum. Although the years it covers may be less revolutionary for the horror genre, this sequel is superior to the first book based on the “story” it tells. The chronological coverage amounts to an actual narrative arc as the glory years of Voorhees, Krueger, et al., fade to a near-death. Notes Gingold, 1994 saw a mere nine titles for fright films … and then came Scream and Paranormal Activity, and suddenly, horror once again was — and still is — a Very Big Deal. The proof is in the pages, detailing quite a comeback. Meanwhile, sci-fi suffered no such doldrums, in part because the public views it as an Eagle Scout compared to horror’s high school dropout. That hardly makes Ad Astra: 20 Years of Newspaper Ads for Sci-Fi & Fantasy Films less enjoyable. Rather, the all-SF&F companion — released in tandem with Nauseam II by 1984 Publishing — enriches the Gingold experience as a whole; both come highly recommended. Hailing from New York, the author had exposure to more movies than we flyover states got, resulting in some true obscurities: Wired to Kill, War of the Wizards, Freeze Me and more. Page after page, these books bring back the glory days of phone recordings (Call D.A.R.Y.L.!), day-one freebies (Henry II: Portrait of a Serial Killer T-shirts, anyone?) and genuinely great marketing (“Who Is Darkman?”). Now do action, Gingold! —Rod Lott

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