“George Lucas said the most useful thing to me as I was about to do Body Heat. I said ‘George, I don’t know that much about the technical stuff.’ And keep in mind that George is Mr. Technology, right? He said ‘Making movies has nothing to do with the technical stuff. It has everything to do with what kind of person you are.’ It was the most important thing anyone ever said to me about directing. I had a lot of confidence in the sort of person I was. I knew the kind of stories I wanted to tell. I knew the kind of atmosphere I wanted to create on my set. I knew the kind of life I wanted to live and how I wanted my work to embody that life, so the fact that I didn’t know anything technically didn’t really matter.” Lawrence Kasdan interviewed by Alex Simon for Venice Magazine, September 2001

Body Heat (1981)
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Written by Lawrence Kasdan
Produced by Fred T. Gallo
113 minutes

To call Body Heat the greatest dirty movie ever mounted by Hollywood wouldn’t be giving Lawrence Kasdan enough credit for the agility in which story, character, dialogue, mood and mystery come together in his directorial debut, along with some of the most combustive sex ever thrown down on film. Instead of feeling like a relic of what filmmakers were getting past the MPAA at the time, this is one movie whose temperature rises with each viewing. As the Florida town of Miranda Beach melts under a heatwave, attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt) divides his time between bedding nurses or meter maids and defending penny ante crooks in Okeelanta County Court. Entertained by Racine’s tales of wanton sexual lust, Assistant County Prosecutor Peter Lowenstein (Ted Danson) and Detective Oscar Grace (J.A. Preston) are also aware of Racine’s desire for a score that will satisfy his financial needs.

Cooling off on the Miranda Beach boardwalk, Racine’s dick leads him after a stunning blonde in a white blouse named Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner). Matty maintains that she’s married, but rather than discourage Ned’s come-ons, hints that she’s game for more than talk. Ned tracks Matty down to a bar in the waterfront town of Pinehaven and his scruffy charms win him an invitation back to Matty’s home to “see” her wind chimes. Needing more than just garden decor, Ned smashes into Matty’s home and the couple plunge into an explosive affair. Seeing how miserable Matty is married to real estate investor Edmund Walker (Richard Crenna), Ned works out a scheme to make Edmund’s murder look like a botched arson, ignoring the advice of a grateful client, rock ‘n roll arsonist Teddy Lewis (Mickey Rourke). Sure enough, the more Ned learns about Matty Walker, the more it seems she’s setting him up.

With his original screenplays The Bodyguard and Continental Divide finding buyers and George Lucas hiring him to write Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back, Lawrence Kasdan was red hot when he began turning down work in 1979. Alan Ladd Jr., president of Twentieth Century Fox, inquired why and Kasdan answered that he wanted to write and direct his own films, specifically, a film noir of his generation. When Ladd left the studio to form his own company and Fox’s new regime put Body Heat into turnaround, the mogul invited Kasdan to make his directorial debut for The Ladd Company if he found a “sponsor” who could give the project some leverage. The first time director approached Lucas, who balked at putting the Lucasfilm label on a movie titled Body Heat, but as de facto executive producer, promised Ladd he would cover any budget overruns out of his own pocket.

What makes Body Heat so hot and bothered isn’t sex, but foreplay. Kasdan puts us in a novel location, builds mood and reveals the desires of his characters with dashes of wit and kinkiness before we get to watch anyone fuck. Instead of using sex to intensify the story, the story intensifies the sex. Plucked off the soap opera The Doctors by casting director Wally Nicita for her film debut, Kathleen Turner embodies a woman any man might contemplate committing murder to possess. Turner handles the vulnerability and the gentle cunning of Matty Walker with as much gusto as she does the sexuality. Kasdan’s flawless script builds mystique by leaving Matty’s true nature ambiguous until the final shot. While we can see the end coming, Ned never does, which makes it feel surprising. Equally mesmerizing are the amiable sleaze summoned by William Hurt, the electricity of Mickey Rourke (in his breakout role) and an elegant noir musical score by John Barry.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 8,664 users: 71% for Body Heat

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“Talking about it was so important to that film. I think some people could despise it. If you don’t like the story or what it’s saying, then you just end up hating everything. It’s not a movie for everybody. Some people really dug it. Others thought it was disgusting and sick. And, of course, it is but it has two sides. You have to have the contrasts. Films should have power. The power of good and the power of darkness, so you can get some thrills and shake things up a bit. If you back off from that stuff, you’re shooting right down into lukewarm junk.” David Lynch interviewed by Chris Rodley for Lynch on Lynch

Blue Velvet (1986)
Directed by David Lynch
Written by David Lynch
Produced by Fred Caruso
120 minutes

Taken at face value, Blue Velvet is the most primal tribute to Alfred Hitchcock to be conjured by another director outside of Alfred Hitchcock. Shadow of a Doubt found diabolism under the eaves in a small town, Rear Window warned voyeurs against peeping through the blinds of their neighbors and Blue Velvet hands out literature with a similar message, complete with a portrait of evil more unsettling than Psycho. If David Lynch had been satisfied making a thriller about other thrillers, his fourth motion picture would have still been one of the decade’s most powerful. Kyle MacLachlan (in his second film role after debuting as The Chosen One in Lynch’s unwieldily adaptation of Dune) plays Jeffrey Beaumont, a college student who returns to his “woodsy” hometown of Lumberton after his father suffers a terrifying stroke.

Strolling home, Jeffrey discovers a human ear in a field. The police detective on the case stays mum on who belongs to the ear, but his teenaged daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) is game to let Jeffrey in on what she’s heard through the walls, specifically, the name of a singer named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini). Jeffrey’s thirst for “knowledge and experience” leads him to Dorothy’s apartment on the dark side of town. He’s forced to take cover in a closet and see what should have been left unseen: an amyl nitrate inhaling psychopath named Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) has kidnapped Dorothy’s son and husband, clipping off her spouse’s ear to keep the songstress dependent on him. Jeffrey is repulsed by and attracted to his subject and it takes more than a hell ride with Frank and his crew for him to put Dorothy Vallens out of mind.

David Lynch grew up in Spokane and began noodling on Blue Velvet as early as 1973, starting with Bobby Vinton’s haunting version of the melody, some suburban mise-en-scène and Lynch’s obsession with sneaking into a girl’s room at night, where a mystery might be revealed while he watched her. The script frightened Warner Bros. and perplexed Lynch, specifically, how it should end. He accepted an offer to adapt and direct Dune for Dino De Laurentiis and though the results didn’t live up to expectations, De Laurentiis rolled the dice on Lynch again and his gamble paid off. The National Society of Film Critics voted Blue Velvet the Best Picture of 1986, but with Children of a Lesser God, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Mission, Platoon and A Room with a View vying for Best Picture, Blue Velvet was left in the dark at the Oscars.

With the eerie steadiness of a planchette being nudged across a ouija board, the mastery of Blue Velvet is how it drifts away from safety and discovers perversity lurking under what passes for normal in the suburbs. In terms of visual composition, this is watercolor come to life. Cinematographer Frederick Elmes immerses the film in electric blues, verdant greens and nightmare black. Even with extras who look like they were stolen from a circus, there’s not a bad performance in the picture; Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper have never been stronger, with Hopper cracking the screen with white trash intensity. In the daylight scenes, Lynch lets his infectious sense of humor come out to play. After dark, he forces viewers to question the foundation of evil. Angelo Badalamenti composed the lush orchestral score.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 67,823 users: 88% for Blue Velvet

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“For me, it’s still, emotionally, falls short of total satisfaction because I just think there is an emotional logic and a sort of a narrative logic that doesn’t run as true as I feel that it should do, and in a sense I felt that what we made was an incredibly beautiful looking – as one would expect with Rid – but it’s almost like an art movie.” Ivor Powell interviewed in 2007 for Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner.

Blade Runner (1982)
Directed by Ridley Scott
Screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Produced by Michael Deeley
117 minutes

One of the most massive electric train sets ever constructed, Blade Runner doesn’t address logic or emotional depth as much as it lays down magnetic track and sails a bullet train over them. Arduously drafted, painstakingly constructed and overwhelming in scale as well as detail, it’s a marvel of science fiction engineering all right, yet climaxes with such insight into the nature of humanity that a poet dipping his toes in a pond might even give it up for the movie. With a tumultuous production history chronicled by a 3-hour documentary (Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner) and book (Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner by Paul M. Sammon), the film’s genesis was a creative storm by author Philip K. Dick, who capped a prodigious decade with the publishing of his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in 1968.

Ten years later, struggling screenwriter Hampton Fancher was urged by a friend to consider the book as something he might make some money off of. Fancher optioned the film rights and found particular empathy for Dick’s vision of overpopulation and ecological malaise. His untitled adaptation was strong enough to ultimately attract producer Michael Deeley, whose choice to direct was Ridley Scott, a U.K. commercial stylist then mixing the sound for his second feature film: Alien. Scott had sensed the seismic industry shift toward sci-fi following the public reception of Star Wars and when he was unable to decipher an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, agreed to board what was then being called Dangerous Days. Fancher didn’t care for that title and jacked one from William S. Burroughs that he preferred: Blade Runner.

In a dark narrative that screenwriter David Peoples was hired to punch into a shooting script, Los Angeles of the year 2019 is drenched in industrial pollution and overrun by those too sickly or poor to relocate to an off world colony. The Tyrell Corp has created the Replicant, a being identical to a human, superior in strength and at least equal in intelligence. Retired cop Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is summoned to hunt down four Replicants who have arrived in L.A. for reasons unknown. Deckard visits Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), who shows off his secretary Rachael (Sean Young), a Replicant implanted with memories so vivid she believes herself to be human. Rachael does not react well to news that she’s an artificial being and seeks out Deckard in an effort to cope with this. Meanwhile, the fugitive Replicants — combat model Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), laborer Leon (Brion James), assassin Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) and pleasure model Pris (Daryl Hannah) — seek reprieves on their lives and the meaning of their existence.

Dumping a wallop of psychic despair on audiences and losing critics in a labyrinth of wayward plot, Blade Runner was salvaged through midnight screenings and one of the first ever “director’s cuts” that in 1992 permitted Ridley Scott to smooth over miscues he made a decade earlier. Where the Replicants are or how Deckard finds them still seem as clumsy as they ever were, but the film dances with questions about what it means to be human and where we might be headed if we stop troubling ourselves with that question. Deliberate and dangerously close to paralyzing the viewer with sensory overload, Scott’s eye for detail and his design virtuoso are stamped in every shot, while the nighthawk cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth, electronic score by Vangelis and spellbinding visual effects work are a triumph in mood over matter.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 288,583 users: 89% for Blade Runner

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

Detroit 9000 (1973)
Directed by Arthur Marks
Written by Orville H. Hampton
Produced by Arthur Marks
106 minutes

Despite using formulas from just about every cop thriller you’ve ever seen, Detroit 9000 has a refreshing taste that’s difficult to resist. The first black themed film shot in Motown, Detroit 9000 was financed and produced by General Film Corporation, a B-movie distributor co-founded by Arthur Marks, who’d segued from Perry Mason episodes in the ’60s to drive-in features in the ’70s. Marks would make three highly entertaining pictures dubbed “blaxploitation”  due to the racial complexion of their casts — Bucktown (1975), J.D.’s Revenge (1976) and Monkey Hustle (1976) — but Quentin Tarantino was so enamored by Detroit 9000 that he chose it for a theatrical and home video re-release in 1998 through his short lived retro distributor Rolling Thunder. Tarantino even devoted a track on the Jackie Brown CD soundtrack to a line of dialogue from the movie.

Ridiculously over the top — with a body count that keeps pace with the annual homicide figures for Detroit and cheeseball dialogue whenever men and women mix it up — Detroit 9000 has a pleasing familiarity more welcoming than worn out. A country cousin to Lethal Weapon, budget limitations reduce the pyrotechnics and give the audience room to chew over the racial complexities of a black cop struggling to identify with a white partner on a case where the racial profile of their suspects is political dynamite either way. The plot is both idiotic and irrelevant. What makes Detroit 9000 worth viewing are the performances, with Alex Rocco as an irascible Archie Bunker cop and a vivacious Vonetta McGee as the most wonderful archetype in the movies, the call girl with a conscience. Luchi De Jesus composed the pulse pounding music.

Trouble hits the Motor City when U.S. Congressman Aubrey Hale Clayton (Rudy Challenger) returns home to announce his candidacy for governor at the “Hail Our Heroes” ball for the black community. In a crackerjack robbery, four masked thieves make off with Hale’s war chest of $400,000 in jewelry and cash contributions. Detroit PD puts its best cop on the case: Lt. Danny Bassett (Alex Rocco), who makes up for what he lacks in racial sensitivity with street savvy. Meanwhile, pro footballer turned homicide cop Sgt. Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes) investigates a dismembered body pulled out of the Detroit River. Running with a hunch that their cases are linked, Williams proposes they work together. Hesitant to the idea of a partner, Bassett is overruled by Captain Chalmers (Robert Phillips), an old friend Bassett accuses of taking his promotion.

Visiting his stressed out wife at Longview Sanitarium, Bassett is harangued for refusing to sacrifice his ethics to do a favor here or there for some cash. Unsure whether his enigmatic white partner is on the take or not, Williams works a tip that Congressman Hale’s right-hand man isn’t too thrilled about his pompous, self-serving boss running for governor and might have organized the robbery. Bassett has more luck with the manager of the brothel he frequents, who reveals that two out-of-town clients came in and aroused suspicion. Bassett & Williams suspect that the thieves must have had contact inside the cathouse and sure enough, professional lady of leisure Roby Harris (Vonetta McGee) warns her manager Ferdy (Herbert Jefferson Jr.) that the cops are on their trail. Shootouts, boat chases and double crosses ensue.

What do you say?

“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Directed by Dan Curtis
Teleplay by William F. Nolan (segments: Julie, Millicent and Therese) and Richard Matheson (segment: Amelia), based on the short stories The Likeness of Julia, Needle in the Heart and Prey by Richard Matheson
Produced by Dan Curtis
81 minutes

Like the Zuni fetish doll that appears in one of its segments and sent American kids diving behind furniture during prime time, Trilogy of Terror is a relic best left in a box. Producer/ director Dan Curtis and screenwriter Richard Matheson scored the highest Nielsen rating of all time with a made-for-TV movie titled The Night Stalker for ABC in 1972. Matheson notified Curtis that he had three stories he was willing to package for the boob tube. Matheson’s 1962 short story The Likeness of Julia had appeared in the author’s anthology Alone By Night; Needle in the Heart was published in the October 1969 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; Prey in the April 1969 issue of Playboy. At Matheson’s request, his friend William F. Nolan was hired to adapt the first two stories. Knowing he had an ace in his sleeve, Matheson held onto the third story to adapt himself.

Despite lobbying by her manager, Oscar nominated actress Karen Black had no interest in doing what was going by the title Trilogy in Terror. Black gave in on the condition that her then husband, an aspiring actor named Robert Burton, was thrown a part. Premiering March 4, 1975 as an ABC Movie of the Week, Trilogy of Terror was another ratings smash for Matheson, who’d written the teleplay for Duel (1971), the feature length debut from a promising director named Steven Spielberg. Trilogy of Terror is not engineered with much precision, a pedestrian effort by one of the more prolific genre writers of the 20^th century and reminder of a time when TV was mostly junk. Segments 1 and 2 are as thin and disposable as Kleenex, while the beloved Segment 3 is some impressive snot, at least. The kooky Karen Black is no better than the material, sadly, all leftovers.

Mild-mannered literature professor Julie Eldridge (Karen Black) finds herself pursued by Chad Foster (Robert Burton), a photography enthusiast who suddenly develops the hots for teacher. Following the advice of her roommate Anne (Kathryn Reynolds), Julie agrees to a date with Chad at the local drive-in, unaware he’s been prowling around her home. A drugged beverage and a set of amateur photos put the professor in a compromising position with her pupil, until one of them realizes they’re way over their head. In the second story, a spinster named Millicent Larimore (Karen Black) laments the wild ways of her twin sister Therese (Karen Black), who she blames for her father’s death.Millicent succeeds in warning away of one Therese’s suitors, but the evil one retaliates by ripping up the doll of a neighbohood girl.

Millicent’s therapist Dr. Chester Ramsey (George Gaynes) pays his patient a house call, fighting off the advances of her blonde twin. At the end of her rope, Millicent elects to use Therese’s own black magic against her. In the third and final story, Amelia (Karen Black) returns to her apartment with a present she picked up at a curio shop: a Zuni fetish doll. According to the instructions, spirit and doll will become one if the gold chain around its waist is removed. Distraught after a phone conversation with her mother, Amelia is tormented by noises in her apartment. Finding the doll has disappeared, her calf is slashed with a carving knife wielded by the malevolent doll, possessed in a bloodthirsty rage. Amelia barricades herself in her bedroom, until the little Zuni bastard demonstrates a troubling ability to open doors.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,293 users: 57% for Trilogy of Terror

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

This month’s theme was hatched after yet another person with better taste than me recommended that I add the 2005 romantic drama Shopgirl to my queue. Looking for nine more films with similar themes, “Chopsticks”, “Slacker” and “Fitting Room” were all considered and rejected before I settled on “May December Romance”. So in the month of December, I’ll take a look at love separated by much more than just six months on the calendar.

Shopgirl (2005)
Directed by Anand Tucker
Screenplay by Steve Martin, based on his novella
Produced by Ashok Amritraj, Jon Jashni, Steve Martin
106 minutes

As dazzling as Christmas pageant and equally bloated, Shopgirl is blessed and dogged by its formality. Not exactly an autobiographical account, Steve Martin drew on 25 years of relationships for a novella, published in 2000. A film version was set up at Lakeshore Entertainment, with director Anand Tucker and actress Claire Danes attached. Thrown into turnaround, film rights were picked up by Ashok Amritraj, who was sold on the property while working with Martin on Bringing Down the House in 2002. The former tennis pro’s production company Hyde Park Entertainment had a deal with Touchstone Pictures and once Jason Schwartzman took a role vacated by Jimmy Fallon at the last minute, they had a movie. A 45-day schedule commenced October 2003 in Beverly Hills and Silverlake. Several of the interiors were filmed at Delfino Studios in Sylmar.

Steve Martin had gambled on Englishman Mick Jackson to direct his script L.A. Story and 14 years later, the Thailand born, U.K. bred Anand Tucker certainly brings a European depth to Martin’s material. Deliberately paced and nearly devoid of chuckles, the approach is eye popping, a poor man’s David Fincher for better or for worse. Claire Danes & Jason Schwartzman are superbly cast as L.A. lovers who meet a year too soon, but Martin’s subdued older gentleman intrudes like an afterthought from a previous draft. Shopgirl is worth watching for Danes, whose gifts of refinement seem rarely in demand for high concept Hollywood these days. David Cronenberg’s frequent DP Peter Suschitzky provided the carnivale lighting scheme, though the musical score by Barrington Pheloung suggests something heartbreaking is set to occur at any moment.

In Beverly Hills, Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes) is relegated to working the lonely 3rd floor of Saks Fifth Avenue, where she sells the antiquated women’s garment of hand gloves. Returning to her plain apartment building in Silverlake, Mirabelle dedicates herself to etchings, which she sells here or there to local art galleries. The Vermont native otherwise toils in obscurity, hoping someone important heralds her unique talent. At the Launder Land coin-op laundry, Mirabelle instead meets the slovenly Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a fellow artist who stencils fonts of his own design onto amplifiers. After an awkward first date totally devoid of chemistry, she throws Jeremy’s phone number in the trash. Succumbing to loneliness, Mirabelle initiates a sexual tryst that ends up being cut short by her reclusive house cat.

Back at Saks, Mirabelle receives a customer in the silver haired Ray Porter (Steve Martin), whose reserved approach and taste in shoes catch her eye. The mystery man sends Mirabelle a gift of gloves attached to a dinner invitation, which she accepts after he pays her work station another visit. A Seattle logistician who rents a home in Los Angeles so he won’t have to spend time packing when visits, Ray plays it proper with the emotionally maturing Mirabelle, making a speech the morning after they consummate their affair that his job doesn’t permit a long-term relationship. Mirabelle translates this as Ray planning on being with her long term as soon as work permits it. While Ray continues to keep Mirabelle at arm’s length, Jeremy follows her advice, showing some initiative in his field. Finding great success, he returns to Mirabelle a man.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 17,747 users: 51% for Shopgirl

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 62 for Shopgirl

What do you say?

As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

The Substitute (2007)
Directed by Ole Bornedal
Written by Ole Bornedal & Henrik Prip
Produced by Michael Obel
93 minutes

It doesn’t quite hold up under a complete engine diagnostic, but as far as a movie that takes you on a spin around the block, The Substitute is a blast. Filmmaker Ole Borendal shot to international acclaim with his 1994 Danish language thriller Nightwatch, sank to anonymity with a poorly received U.S. remake in 1997 and returned home. One of his ideas was a science fiction comedy geared for kids that would be produced in Denmark. Borendal passed his outline for The Substitute to actor/playwright Henrik Prip, an old friend. Revising Prip’s draft, Borendal took the property to producer Michael Obel, whose Copenhagen based Thura Films had collaborated with Borendal on three prior films. Financed for roughly €3.2 million, the genre bender became a hit in Denmark. Sam Raimi and his Ghost House Pictures are in the process of developing a U.S. remake.

The Substitute could be summed up as Fright Night meets The Simpsons if you wanted to stop at two genre related movies or TV shows riffed on for the film’s mad dash to the finish line. When Borendal slows down to let us savor the intelligence and wit of his schoolroom scenes, his movie soars. The half dozen or so 6^th graders in the cast come off like real kids occupying a real classroom, while Paprika Steen is beautifully cast as their nemesis in a role the Danish actress/director devours like candy. The wildly divergent elements — sci-fi, comedy, horror, coming-of-age, melodrama — suggest that appealing to every moviegoer was more of a concern than coherence; the musical cues by composer Marco Beltrami are like Coca Cola shot through a crazy straw. Stylishly shot on a low budget, The Substitute somehow makes those kinks work in its favor.

On a distant planet whose inhabitants know only war, a probe is dispatched to Earth to gather an understanding of love. A silver ball crashes into a chicken farm on the outskirts of Copenhagen and after a luminescent firefly immobilizes the farmer, the critter takes over the body of his snoozing wife. In the city, 12-year-old Carl Osböll (Jonas Wandschneider) copes with the loss of a mother killed in a traffic accident by holding one-sided conversations with her in heaven. Carl’s widowed father Jesper (Ulrich Thomsen) is a sociologist whose latest book deals with the quality that makes human beings unique in the universe: love. At school, Carl receives a new classmate named Rikke (Emma Juel Justesen), who moves in next door with a single mother (Sonja Richter) whom Jesper realizes is a cop only after he disparages the police force.

Alerted by their principal that their teacher has salmonella poisoning, a substitute arrives to a strange chorus of every student’s cell phone ringing at once. Giving the name Ulla Harms (Paprika Steen), Class 6B’s new teacher exhibits whip-like callousness, a mind as vast as a computer and the uncanny ability to read the minds of her pupils. When news of her behavior gets out, concerned parents flock to the school. Their fears are allayed by the appearance of the Education Minister, who vouches for Miss Harms and allows her to win over the adults. Having observed the substitute conjure the government official from a silver ball in her bag, Carl steals several slides from Miss Harms, one of which is a photo that over time is populated by more of Carl’s classmates, all staring up at the sky. Rallying his fellow students, Carl sets out to discover Miss Harm’s plan and stop her.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 452 users: 46% for The Substitute

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

As days get shorter, nights get longer and All Hallow’s Eve beckons, I can say that I won’t be wandering the streets dressed as Chewbacca begging for candy. What I can’t say is whether or not at my age, horror movies still have any surprises left in them. In the search for originality, it’d be a good idea to start anywhere but Hollywood. For the month of October, I take a trip around the globe to see what’s scaring some of my favorite countries these days.

Let The Right One In (2008)
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist, based on his novel
Produced by John Nordling, Carl Molinder
115 minutes

The wonder of Let The Right One In is that you could remove the vampires, clean up the blood and what’s left would still rate as one of the most potent visions of young love in recent memory. John Ajvide Lindqvist transitioned from aspiring magician to comic to writer producing material for other performers in Sweden. Struggling with a “real” novel, in 2001 Lindqvist began writing about his youth in suburban Stockholm of the 1980s. Deciding that his young protagonist would befriend something terrible, a horror story took off. Drawing a title from the Morrissey tune “Let The Right One Slip In”, Lindqvist’s debut novel was rejected until Swedish publisher Ordfront distributed it in 2004. Appearing in U.S. bookstores three years later as Let Me In, the novel was such a success in Sweden that interest in a film version was avid.

John Nordling and Carl Molinder, co-owners of EFTI, secured film rights and hired Tomas Alfredson, a respected young Swedish director who’d never tried a horror film, to direct. The producers raised a budget of €2.2 million (roughly $2.9 million USD). Building strong word of mouth at film festivals, Let The Right One In opened October 2008 in Sweden, Norway and the U.S. to modest box office but instant cult acclaim. Despite confusion about certain elements in the film, its triumph is how deeply it affects the growing pains of two kids in the suburbs rather than throwing horror at the audience. Tomas Alfredson delivers the goods and then some for those in a vampire mood, while 12-year-old Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson cut right to the bone with film debuts sharp enough to detox anyone hung over on Twilight hype.

In a cheerless apartment complex behind the Iron Curtain, 12-year-old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) passes evenings with his single mother, fantasizing about revenge while his days include regular torment at the hands of his sadistic classmate Conny (Patrik Rydmark). Withdrawing into puzzles, Oskar bonds with another solitary 12-year-old, Eli (Lina Leandersson) who appeared in the night to move in next door. Eli’s creepy guardian Håkan (Per Ragnar) wastes no time luring a local teenager to his death in the woods. Håkan’s attempt to drain the teen’s blood is interrupted and he has to flee. Enraged at Håkan’s ineptitude, Eli leaves the apartment for a bite to eat, ambushing a drunk wobbling home. After she sinks her fangs into her victim’s neck and drinks his blood, Håkan disposes of the body.

When Oskar brings home scars from his run-ins with Conny, Eli urges her friend to stand up to the bully. Oskar asks her to go steady with him and on the promise that nothing much will change between them, Eli agrees. Attempting an Indian blood ritual with his new girlfriend, Oskar slices open his palm and is met with a response he did not anticipate. With Håkan out of the picture, Eli is left to fend for her own sustenance and selects another barfly, Virginia (Ika Nord). Her meal is cut short when the victim’s boyfriend Lacke (Peter Carlberg) appears. Waking the next day adverse to sunlight and to cats, Virginia sends Lacke in search of her young attacker. Oskar appears to have gotten the upper hand over his tormentor at school, but protecting Eli while she sleeps during the day proves more dangerous.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 25,029 users: 89% for Let The Right One In

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 82 for Let The Right One In

What do you say?

The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Directed by Karyn Kusama
Written by Diablo Cody
Produced by Mason Novick, Daniel Dubiecki, Jason Reitman
102 minutes

Jennifer’s Body is the Heathers of horror comedies, which could be a checkered flag or a red one depending on how many grade levels you’ve completed. Screenwriter Diablo Cody began working on the script in the summer of 2006 as her first screen credit Juno was being directed by Jason Reitman. Obsessed with ‘80s horror movies like The Lost Boys, Cody wanted to write a genre film in her voice with female characters. 20^th Century Fox took Cody’s script off the market via their short lived genre label Fox Atomic, with Cody’s manager Mason Novick producing with Daniel Dubiecki & Jason Reitman. To direct, Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Aeon Flux) was hired. Financed by Fox in association with private equity partner Dune Entertainment at roughly $16 million, shooting commenced March 2008 in and around North Shore Studios in Vancouver.

As devoted as Diablo Cody may be to horror movies, Jennifer’s Body resembles Heathers more than anything else, laced with acidic wit pointed at high school and the hypocrisies of a community coping with tragedy. Energy is siphoned to poke fun at indie bands as well. While most mainstream horror movies these days are remakes starved for one good idea, Cody crams enough ideas for two or three movies into this one. The problem is none of the threads tie together, while Karyn Kusama isn’t up for the job of pulling together a dark comedy. Even Cody’s pop culture powdered dialogue reaches the point where you can see the tampon joke coming before the characters do. In one word, Jennifer’s Body is lame. Amy Sedaris is criminally underused as Amanda Seyfried’s mom, while Megan Fox — who may never appear in a movie with this much prestige again — is criminally miscast as a girl who speaks.

“Hell is a teenage girl,” reveals Anita “Needy” Lesnicky (Amanda Seyfried) from behind the walls of a mental institution. Needy reacts to a comment about Toastems by kicking the tooth out of an orderly’s mouth. Thrown in solitary confinement, she begins her story. In the town of Devil’s Kettle, Minnesota, the geeky Needy has remained loyal BFF to Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), the femme fatale of the flag corps, since they played in the same sandbox as girls. Jennifer pressures Needy to drop plans with her percussionist boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) and to go see an indie band called Low Shoulder perform at a local bar. The band’s pretty boy lead singer Nikolai Wolf (Adam Brody) sizes Jennifer up as the virgin they’ve been looking for and when the bar burns down in a blaze, makes off with a disoriented Jennifer in his van.

Needy is worried sick about her friend until Jennifer shows up at her house late that night, covered in blood and vomiting an evil black pool onto the kitchen floor. Arriving for the biology class of Mr. Wroblewski (J.K. Simmons) the next day looking fine, Jennifer acts as if Needy imagined the whole thing. Low Shoulder rockets to fame as a result of the fire and their song “Through the Trees” becomes the town anthem as people work to overcome the tragedy. Meanwhile, Jennifer begins luring horny boys to their death, turning into a demon and devouring their innards. She confides to Needy that the night of the fire, Low Shoulder sacrificed her to Satan, who apparently rejected the offering as far from virgin material and endowed Jennifer with the powers of a succubus. Needing to eat in order to stay beautiful, Jennifer sets her sights on Needy’s boyfriend Chip.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 129,517 users: 38% for Jennifer’s Body

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 47 for Jennifer’s Body

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Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Bitter Moon (1992)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Jeff Gross & Roman Polanski and Gérard Brach and John Brownjohn, based on the novel Lunes de Fiel by Pascal Bruckner
Produced by Roman Polanski
139 minutes

It’s not clear whether Bitter Moon is a bad movie on accident or if its giddy banality was designed, but the end result is a debacle either way. Roman Polanski’s producing partner Alain Sarde had purchased the film rights to a 1981 novel by French essayist Pascal Bruckner titled Lunes de Fiel. Seizing on the salacious paperback cover, Polanski adapted a screenplay with Jeff Gross in Paris, while Gérard Brach and John Brownjohn drafted their own scripts separately. Titled Bitter Moon, the erotic drama was a French-English co-production shot largely at Paris Studios Cinema. While the finished film features only brief nudity and no graphic copulations, it struggled to find a U.S. distributor out of fear that it’s overall tone of degraded sexuality might draw an NC-17 rating. Fine Line Features ultimately released Bitter Moon in March 1994.

Like Showgirls, it’s arguable that the hokey dialogue and aberrant sexual situations were stuffed into Bitter Moon on purpose, maybe as a satire of holiday romances. One miscalculation is the casting of Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner. An adequate actress, Seigner lacks the charisma of Kristin Scott Thomas, who along with Hugh Grant — playing (what else?) a stiff, goofy Brit — are the redeeming factors of the picture. Peter Coyote (taking a role James Woods turned down) does such a good job basking his character in impurity that the act of watching him becomes repellent. The sexual encounters combine old fashioned sophistication with laughable sleaze, as if the men who cooked them up conducted their research at the Playboy Mansion. Vangelis contributed a musical score that comes off too overpowering for such a trifle.

Seeking a holiday after seven years of marriage, Nigel (Hugh Grant) and his wife Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) set sail for Istanbul aboard a cruise ship in the Black Sea. Fiona comforts a distraught French woman in the loo and that evening, Nigel discovers her dancing in the bar, but the precocious Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner) brushes off the stiff Brit. On the deck, a vulgar cripple named Oscar (Peter Coyote) reveals himself as Mimi’s husband and invites Nigel back to his cabin to tantalize him with tales of their love life. Oscar first saw Mimi on a bus between Montparnasse and Porte des Lilas. An American in Paris with grand literary ambitions, Oscar finds himself unable to write until he can reunite with his “sorceress in white sneakers”. Bumping into the apparition as she waits tables, Oscar asks Mimi to dinner.

As Oscar reveals the sadomasochistic routines the couple resorted to out of contempt for their co-dependence on each other, Nigel grows uncomfortable, but is compelled to stay and hear more. Seeking to end their relationship, Oscar concludes the only way to get rid of Mimi is to treat her as inhumanely as possible. After convincing her to have an abortion, Oscar books them a flight to Martinique, only to sneak off the plane and send her off alone. Two years later, a drunken accident cripples him. Mimi returns to Paris under the pretense of caring for her ex-lover, but uses his condition to exact a slow and bitter revenge. Oscar now gives Nigel his blessing to pursue Mimi sexually, but the Brit discovers his wife may be better suited to pushing the boundaries of marriage than he.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average: Not available

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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