All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

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Late Night with the Devil tells the story of an American cultural institution — the post-prime-time talk show — turned into a circus of satanic trickery by a malevolent force. Other than Jimmy Fallon, that is.

The movie is cleverly presented as a long-suppressed live episode of the syndicated, ratings-starved Night Owls from Halloween night 1977.  Although still smarting from the death of his beloved wife (Georgina Haig, TV’s Snowpiercer), host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian, The Last Voyage of the Demeter) has lined up a really big show in hopes of staving off cancellation.  

The lineup includes a medium (Fayssal Bazzi, We’re Not Here to Fuck Spiders) and, for built-in friction, paranormal investigator/skeptic á la James Randi (Ian Bliss, Man-Thing). Last but the furthest from least, a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon, Saw V) brings a young patient (feature-debuting Ingrid Torelli) rescued from a fringe church rumored to sacrifice children. The girl also claims to be possessed by a demonic entity she calls — and this isn’t eerie at all — “Mr. Wriggles.” 

With millions of eyeballs watching, what better time to attempt to draw this Mr. Wriggles out, right? 

From the monologue to each guest segment — with black-and-white backstage footage during commercial breaks — Late Night with the Devil admirably replicates the ’70s-era vibe of the chat format, particularly for those who grew up ending each weekday evening with Johnny Carson. All the details are here: the corny jokes, silly skits, forced patter with the bumbling sidekick (first-timer Rhys Auteri), cheesy title cards, smoking guests — plus subliminal images, gushing fluids, fateful on-air “demo” and so on. It’s nearly as faithful to its ruse as the infamous Ghostwatch, but with its time-capsule approach, likely owes more debt to WNUF Halloween Special.

A never-better Dastmalchian, who also produced, anchors the Australian pic with a committed performance that skillfully takes his character from empathetic to pathetic at a moment’s notice. If only he were able to convince sibling directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres) to end their script 10 minutes earlier, the movie would resonate with the intended staying power. After the prologue, it never needed to leave the studio. But do tune in, ladies and gentleman, and don’t touch that dial. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Riddle of Fire (2023)

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Fans of The Goonies, you’re never getting that sequel you so nakedly desire. (Also, the original movie is not as good as you remember it, but that’s neither here nor there.) So make do with Weston Razooli’s debut feature, Riddle of Fire. It may be as close as you’re going to get.

Wyoming-set, but Utah-shot, this “faerie” tale follows a trio of kids it dubs the Three Immortal Reptiles (Charlie Stover, Skyler Peters and Phoebe Ferro). With dogged determination — not to mention motorbikes, paintball guns and ski masks — they embark on a quest for a particular blueberry pie for the boys’ bedridden mother (Danielle Hoetmer). If they can bring her that, she’ll give them the TV password in exchange to play video games.

Easier said than done, of course, as the Reptiles run afoul of those “woodsy bastards” known as The Enchanted Blade Gang, led by a witch (Lio Tipton, 2016’s Viral) who’s up to some shit both criminal and mystical. Throw in a ragamuffin forest sprite (Lorelei Mote), a speckled egg, malt liquor, frozen crag legs, a ’76 Cadillac Delta and the theme from Cannibal Holocaust, and you have an unfailingly sunny-vibed adventure comedy steeped in folklore and shining in 16 mm splendor.

Riddle of Fire’s success hinges most on its casting of the kids, the small pints with big imagination. Razooli struck something akin to gold, particularly with Ferro and even with Peters’ slight speech impediment gaining subtitles. As a whole, the kids are as rambunctious as they are charming, giving audiences a glimpse of what The Little Rascals might look like, had it dabbled in the occult, with a smidge of O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” spread on top.

For the film’s last quarter or so, Riddle loses its way. A dance sequence teed up as an intended showstopper (à la Little Miss Sunshine) instead pushes the cuteness too far without allowing the off-kilter material to keep pace — and in cloyingly slow motion, no less. That deflates a balloon that heretofore avoided such Stevia-sweetened manipulation.

Helping Riddle of Fire cast its freshman-film spell of amusement is a killer “dungeon synth” soundtrack featuring Fog Crag Records, Lost Cascades, Hole Dweller, et al. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Reading Material: Short Ends 3/18/24

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Damn you, Scream Queen filmmaker Brad Sykes. Damn you to hell! Do you expect anyone to ever get through your new book, Neon Nightmares: L.A. Thrillers of the 1980s? You’ve made so many of the movies sound so intriguing, one has to stop reading immediately to hunt down and watch the film under discussion before proceeding. Was this part of some master plan all along? Are you receiving a cut of royalties for every VOD stream of Richard Gere’s Breathless remake? Judd Nelson in Relentless? The computer-dating oddity Dangerous Love? Because this took me a month to finish reading, rather than my usual weekend. Do you not realize what that much lunch-hour viewing does to an iPhone battery in a day? A laptop battery? A marriage? I hope you and your addicting BearManor Media paperback, richly illustrated as it is, are happy for hijacking so much of my free time. Highly, highly recommended.

For Cloudland Revisited: A Misspent Youth in Books and Film, the venerable Library of America rounds up the late S.J. Perelman’s 22 New Yorker articles in which the literary rapscallion casts his adult eyes and poisoned pen on the pulpy paperbacks — and their flicker adaptations — of his boyhood. More often than not, the results allow Perelman to exercise — and exorcise — his considerable, even intimidating wit. The more familiar I was with the topic at hand, like Tarzan and Dr. Fu Manchu, the funnier the pieces struck. That said, I also drew heavy amusement from his discussions of then-“spicy” works, today as tame as Perelman is revered, after “greasing my face with butter to protect it from the burning prose.” One caveat: These pieces were written as early as 1937, when a learned vocabulary wasn’t an obstacle to readers; prepare yourself for “fantods,” “sachem,” “gravid” and more words Google’s ready to tackle. 

You may not believe me, kids, but before your fancy internet rolled around, we got information about new and upcoming movies from artifacts called “magazines” and “newspapers.” On-set articles and interviews for more than two dozen beloved genre movies are collected in companion volumes The Dreamweavers: Fantasy Filmmaking in the 1980s and Science Fiction Filmmaking in the 1980s: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers. To read them is to be transported back to the days of thumbing through issues of Starlog, Twilight Zone and Fangoria at the magazine rack while your mom shopped for groceries. As with 2022’s The Joy of Sets, both trade paperbacks come from Lee Goldberg‘s Cutting Edge imprint; unlike The Joy of Sets, Goldberg shares space with William Rabkin and spouses Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier. Whether a movie qualifies as fantasy or sci-fi sometimes seems arbitrary, yet it hardly matters. In Dreamweavers‘ lineup, you’ll meet Buckaroo Banzai, James Bond and a few guys who ain’t ’fraid of no ghosts; in the other, Mad Max, RoboCop and the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Half the fun is seeing how prescient these journalists were. Case in point: Of Howard the Duck, Rabkin predicts, “There’s a chance that American audiences simply don’t want to see a duck starring in anything besides a plate of orange sauce.” —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Good-Bye Cruel World (1982)

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Most people only know this obscure comedy for its VHS box art, depicting an arm jutting from a toilet bowl to flush itself. Befitting of that porcelain throne, Good-Bye Cruel World is an unqualified stinker. 

Comedian Dick Shawn (1967’s The Producers) plays Rodney Pointsetter, an evening news anchor who melts down on air after his divorce. He resolves to blow his brains out — ho-ho-HO! — but goes to visit some family members first. One of those is his obese brother-in-law, essayed by Chuck “Porky” Mitchell; that’s how the credits list him, which may be the saddest thing imaginable. 

In between these reunion scenes, brief sketches and parodies play, as if broadcast from Pointsetter’s employer’s channel. Most were outdated by the time Cruel World hit video store shelves, like a hemorrhoid ad featuring “Jimmy Carter,” a spoof of Brooke Shields’ Calvin Klein jeans spot (but with a naked woman and a brand called Joy Crotch) and a commercial for Psycho Soap, with co-writer Alan Spencer (creator of TV’s Sledge Hammer!) doing a better-than-decent Norman Bates impersonation. 

The only amusing portion is a faux trailer for An Officer and an Elephant Man, which is just like it sounds. Novelty value seeps from this bad-taste bit as future Daily Show correspondent Larry Wilmore makes his screen debut making light of Louis Gossett Jr.’s drill sergeant role.

Although not truly interactive, Good-Bye Cruel World comes presented in “Choice-A-Rama,” allowing for a recurring gag of a host asking the audience to vote on what they’d like to see next. The results are never funny, but at least you get Angelique Pettyjohn (The Lost Empire) as a stripping nun. 

Ultimately, Rodney decides life’s worth living because sexy journalist Cynthia Sikes (Arthur 2: On the Rocks) wants to get in his pants. Too bad she and Rodney perish in a tragic accident of slapstick proportions in a finale so “wacky,” it includes a marching band. From a cloud in heaven, Rodney sings a song about life being “a mammy-jammer.” These are the jokes, folks. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

The Animal Kingdom (2023)

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Although The Animal Kingdom won five of its 12 nominations for the Césars, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, don’t mistake it for homework. It’s a superb work of fantasy. With feet planted on terra firma as its head takes a flight of fancy, the picture draws influence from David Cronenberg’s The Fly to the X-Men franchise, while somehow pulling off the appearance of originality.

Director and writer Thomas Cailley (Love at First Fight) presents a world challenged by a new pandemic, in which people undergo zoological mutations that may as well be named for Dr. Moreau. “Critter” is considered a slur; they’re “creatures,” TYVM, and they grapple with adjusting to feathers, tentacles, scales and prehensile tails.

One of the infected is the wife and mother to, respectively, François (an excellent Romain Duris, 2022’s Final Cut) and teenaged Émile (How to Make Out’s Paul Kircher, quite the young find). She’s also vanished. François can’t face the prospect of losing her, although most would agree that, in a way, he already has.

Meanwhile, while searching high and low, Émile comes face to face with startling examples of evolution’s next step. Whether said step leaps forward or diverges off to the side, the path he’s shown goes further than he’s willing to follow. He may not have a choice.

The Animal Kingdom operates on multiple levels of allegory: mortality, minority, puberty — take your pick! Cailley holds such tight control over his material, he’s able to steer deftly from moments of compassion to comedy (a visual gag involving kayaks slays) with no swerve feeling false. One memorable scene nails the tricky balance of conveying both heartbreak and joy as François and Émile drive through the forest at night while blasting their missing matriarch’s favorite song in hopes of triggering recognition.

Irony exists in The Animal Kingdom having the most humanistic viewpoint among movies in recent memory. Technically impeccable with seamless effects, it makes the case for Cailley being his country’s Steven Spielberg. A feel-good film about a bad hand dealt to all involved, it ends not in a cop-out, but a triumph. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.