Horror

Strange Aeons: The Thing on the Doorstep (2005)

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At feature length, Strange Aeons: The Thing on the Doorstep is based on H.P. Lovecraft‘s well-known — but not always well-liked — 1937 story “The Thing on the Doorstep.” I was looking forward to seeing this adaptation … but that’s because I had it confused with “The Outsider,” for some reason.

Once that misunderstanding was cleared up, it was obvious that director Eric Morgret’s film follows the original plot pretty closely, even retaining the occasionally odd character names — Asenath, anyone? — despite being set in the present day. Its hero is bearded, mild-mannered college professor Dan Upton (J.D. Lloyd), whose graduate assistant Edward Derby (Erick Robertson) falls under the spell of the mysterious and beautiful Asenath (Angela M. Grillo).

And no wonder: He has magical sex with her, during which she implants all sorts of weird-ass thoughts and tentacled visions directly into his brain. That kind of thing tends to set a girl apart from the rest of the pack, especially when she does so while naked.

Seriously, though, this relationship marks changes in Derby’s personality, thus driving a wedge in his friendship with the professor, thus creating a bizarre love triangle that can’t end well. At all. (And you know that even without the appearance of that infernal Necronomicon.)

While Doorstep has no shortage of freaky-deaky imagery, it also sports a few sound issues and performances that bend toward the amateur level. Its main problem, however, is even with the benefit of variances from Lovecraft’s source material, simply not enough ideas are present to sustain it for an hour and a half.

It might help if its characters seemed more real. For instance, when someone shambles into your house on a dark and stormy night, saying nothing, their head tucked down and hidden under a hat, hell, yes, something is wrong! Be. Fucking. Scared! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Kitchen Sink

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021)

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WTFAt the age where teens tend to feel most alienated, the short, spunky Casey (Anna Cobb) is further alienated by living in a dreary small town. Entertainment provides her escape. In fact, she loves scary movies so much, she’d like to live in one.

Wish granted.

Casey tells this to the camera — both the one on her phone and the one employed by Jane Schoenbrun to make We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. In doing so, Casey broadcasts every brooding thought of her boring life, often painfully and in real time, to the world — or, more realistically, about 50 followers.

The DIY ADD horror show opens with her taking “the World’s Fair challenge.” What it involves — a Candyman-style chant, a pricked finger and a trippy video — is of no importance against its supposed consequence: a gradual loss of self-control. Indeed, as she reveals via chat to a total stranger (predator?) known only as JLB (Michael J. Rogers, Beyond the Black Rainbow), she’s starting to feel … changes.

Cobb makes quite an impression and an assured screen debut as Casey, best exemplified when dancing to a pop song and … well, I won’t spoil it, but the moment is terrifying. Throughout, to say Schoenbrun implies more than shows or tells would be an understatement. Their picture is itself a challenge — so aggressively unconventional in all regards, it seems to dare viewers to like it. Given the fervent cult already forming around it and its experimental narrative, enough have taken that dare and urged others to do the same.

Feeling empty at its closing, I wondered: What had I failed to see? Turns out, a transgender subtext. As a heterosexual male, that completely escaped me, yet I still found chunks of the movie to be fascinating: the clip-based ones between the parts cast (purposely, no doubt) in a heavy shade of blah. The videos Casey lets play at random possess a peculiar, near-narcotic pull to her and us, knowing we can’t wait to see what might confront us next. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mystery

Death Cruise (1974)

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Congratulations! Welcome to the free, three-week Caribbean cruise you’ve won for you and your guest! Don’t remember entering that contest? That’s okay, it’s not like this is some elaborate setup to murder you or anything! That’d be crazy, right?

We’ve got swimming, shuffleboard, table tennis, homicide, dancing, drinks and more! If you should happen upon a photograph of you and your fellow winners, I implore you to think nothing of the “X”s grease-pencilled over some of the faces! That’s just our way of keeping track of who wants decaf, and how delightfully odd to suggest it’s some sort of assassin’s to-do list! Ha-ha, now I have heard everything, good sport!

Don’t believe us? Just ask Tom Bosley! After all, you loved him as the dad in Happy Days, like he was your very own, so he’s bound to tell you the truth! Oh, dear, he appears to have taken a sudden nap. With the breadth of activities, who can blame him? Let’s just step over him and leave him rest. Come back to him later, okay? I’d say you could bend Kate Jackson’s ear, but she’s on her second honeymoon, and you know what they say: “If this boat’s a-rockin’, we do not wish to be disturbed, please.” I may have that wrong. No matter.

Instead, ask Polly Bergen. She’s not busy since her slimy husband’s out chasing young tail on the ol’ poop deck, if you know what I mean! What’s that? No, I’m pretty sure she’s dozed off as well. Maybe field your inquiry to our ship’s captain instead? He’s the one with lamb chops — on his face, not his supper plate, you silly! Or maybe our brand-new temporary doctor who’s here on super-short notice for no dubious reasons whatsoever! He’s the one who looks like Michael Constantine. Come to think of it, golly gosh, that is Michael Constantine! Well, whaddaya know …

Our cruise is produced by Aaron Spelling. Yes, the same gentleman who gave us The Love Boat! So you know you’re in good hands — very good hands that would never, ever tighten themselves around your lovely throat, so please just get such thoughts out of your mind and feel free to reach out to any member of our staff, from your bartender to your murderer. Beg pardon? No, I clearly said “your purser.” Perhaps you should visit the aforementioned doctor for a complimentary cotton swab?

All right, then, away we go on our Death Cruise. Excuse me? “Depth,” I said “depth,” because we’re on the ocean, see, where the waters can run as deep as a knife wound. Trust me, you’re perfectly safe or may you be struck down by the pointed arrow from a well-aimed crossbow. I mean, me, may I be struck down, not you — oh, heavens no. All ashore who’s going ashore! —Rod Lott

Get it at dvdrparty.

Comedy

C.O.D. (1981)

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With sales of Beaver Bras sagging, ad man Albert Zack (Chris Lemmon, Wishmaster) is tasked with front-loading the next campaign with five famous curvaceous ladies to model the goods: a chart-topping singer, a Swiss countess, an Olympic wrestler, a sex-kitten actress and the daughter of the President of the United States. With that mission set, the meat of C.O.D. is watching Zack humiliate himself to make contact for contracts by donning a variety of disguises, because what else screams “zany”?

For example, the actress (Corinne Alphen, Amazon Women on the Moon) is shooting a Doctor Butcher M.D.-style horror film, so Zack dresses as a zombie to crash the set. For the singer (Marilyn Joi, Black Samurai), he dons his discotheque best. For the POTUS offspring, it’s cringingly offensive Fu Manchu garb. Hey, it was the ’80s.

One of pornographer Chuck Vincent’s earliest efforts to go legit, the PG-rated C.O.D. plays remarkably tame, even with its big-busted premise. Nudity is light enough to be near-nonexistent, and the most risqué gag requires literacy; as Zack — in a Santa Claus outfit — realizes he’s followed the countess (Carole Davis, Piranha II: The Spawning) to a Madison Cawthorn-style orgy, she chases him around a room lit with Christmas lights and a neon sign reading “THE FUCK IS ON.”

If you didn’t already know C.O.D.’s leading man fell from the same Lemmon tree as his legendary father, nothing here would shed that light. But let’s give the lesser Lemmon this: As the straight man opposite five shapely women, he’s easily likable, whereas had he played it any differently, he’d be alienating. Almost all the laughs come from first-timer Teresa Ganzel (The Toy), genuinely funny as the prez’s daughter. If she didn’t improvise much of her scene after ditching Secret Service, color me amazed. Either way, one wishes her co-stars — not to mention her writer/director — worked as hard. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Escape the Field (2022)

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Six people wake in a cornfield. None have any idea of why or how they got there, but each finds an object next to them: matches, a compass, a gun, etc.

Is this a cruel prank? A Hangover scenario? A sociology experiment? A government conspiracy? The work of Malachai? A concussion-involved LARP? A holiday party for pawn shop employees? Or Cube as serialized in The Old Farmers’ Almanac?

Answer: It’s Escape the Field, an inconsistently diverting puzzle thriller from first-feature director Emerson Moore. The survival tale quickly establishes its central mystery, intros the characters and amps up the stakes as the unwitting players search for answers, not the least of is which is a way out. And how these objects might help them. And hey, who/what else is hiding among the acres of ears?

With Jordan Claire Robbins (TV’s The Umbrella Academy), Theo Rossi (Kill Theory) and Shane West (Awakening the Zodiac) leading the cost-efficient cast, Escape the Field appears more than capable of being an agriculture-dependent take on the Escape Room franchise. After all, Moore and co-scribes Sean Wathen and Joshua Dobkin have packed a season’s worth of Lost into an untaxing hour and a half, without all the side stories to detract from the action.

However, they also bring the divisive series’ mountain of frustration — less in how it ends and more about just what the heck we’re looking at in the final shot. After three rewinds, I still don’t know. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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