Yeah, I know I threw some of you yesterday when I said I was going to do a follow-up to that post on Saturday, which is usually when I post the Double Feature, but that’s because I knew (and y’all didn’t yet) that the DF was moving to Friday.
So, the way the Double Feature usually works is that I pick a movie that’s opening this weekend and pair it up with a movie from the past (I like to generally go 80s or before, but that’s variable, especially now that we’ve moved into 2020 which means that even movies that came out before 2000 are older than this year’s crop of college freshmen) that relates to it in some way. It could be thematically, it could be an actor or director, it could even just be something that the title reminds me of. The main point is just to hopefully introduce some folks to movies that they may not know about or perhaps just re-contextualize things a bit.
But, here’s the thing. January is pretty well known as a dumping ground for the studios. They’ve saturated the market with their Oscar hopefuls, trying to get them qualified with December screenings, and at the same and at the same time they’ve dropped the last of their blockbusters trying to get all the folks bored with their families and the holidays or who have extra time off into the theaters to get that nice big year-end boost of cash. So that doesn’t leave much for January, and this year is starting off as no exception, with the only movie opening wide this week being the latest take on The Grudge, and honestly, that just left me kind of uninspired.
So, I seriously considered just skipping this week and re-starting the column next week until I realized that there was a big flick that came out recently that I hadn’t done a column on, and once i gave it a little thought, i realized that I knew the absolute perfect film to pair it with.
Which brings us to… Cats. Yeah, the nightmare musical. The CGI monstrosity that should never have been made (or at least not made this way). Okay, yeah, I know it’s got singing cockroaches with human faces, and you might think that would redeem it some, but in the end even that can’t save it.
It wasn’t until I was listening to somebody talk about the “plot” of this movie that it occurred to me that it was… extremely familiar.
Okay, so the way I understand it, the main “story” of Cats is that each year, this particular group of “jelly-bowl cats” has to get together and perform a song and dance routine to introduce themselves to the group (even though they do this every year) and to try to please the main high-father cat, Old Dootybooty, and if they do, then they get to… umm… die and go to the afterlife? live and go to the afterlife? eat a can of Afterlife Flavored 9 Lives cat food? I dunno, but apparently it’s something that they all want to do even if they’re only on, say, life three of their supposed nine.
Maybe it’s one of those karmic reincarnation things where actually having nine lives is a punishment and they’re supposed to be learning from each one, and once they hit the 9th they’re stuck unless Ol’ Geteroffame says they’re worthy? But only one gets chosen each year, so what happens to the ones already on their ninth that die before the next round of Jenitals Got Talent?
Oh! I gt it now! That’s where the roaches come from! Okay, see all you unbelievers out there? It does make perfect sense after all!
Anyway, like I was saying, I was listening to someone describe this and it suddenly struck me that I had seen this exact same plot before. A group of creatures gets together, has to perform for their king, and if they please him enough, they get to move on to the afterlife?
Yeah, I know that movie.
Ed Wood Jr. made it 54 years ago.
Only he called it Orgy of the Dead.
Oh, and instead of filling his movie with some kind of hybrid (or possibly inbred) cat creatures from outer space, he filled it with women from the local burlesque show who strip down to their panties and don’t even try to sing – they just have to do an interpretive dance that relates to who they were in life.
Other than that, and the fact that the person they are dancing for is the “King of the Night” (played with his usual gusto by Wood regular Criswell) and instead of cats, the ones looking to move on to a more positive afterlife are the spirits of the dead who killed their lovers or committed other crimes, meaning their motivation actually makes more sense than what we are given in the “respectable” movie, it’s almost exactly the same “plot”.
Oh, and Wood also inserts a slight subplot about a writer’s-blocked author and his wife who are driving at night, have a wreck, stumble upon the proceedings, are eventually discovered, are then forced to watch, and are threatened with being dispatched before the end of the night, meaning there’s actually some extra tension beyond just who can give the king a boner worthy of the afterlife (and apparently I could be talking quite literally about either movie here, since that’s what they both seem to boil down to).
Oh, and did I happen to mention that Wood throws in a mummy and a werewolf and a Vampira knockoff just for good measure?
And that nobody has to eat tap-dancing cockroaches? (Yes, that’s really what happens… apparently Rebel Wilson strips out of her fur (?!?!) and eats them before they can get away!)
And that Wood even has a dancer that starts out (for reasons I can’t remember at the moment) in a cat costume that is far less disturbing than anything in the newer movie?
Anyway, I know that there are those horror movie fans out there that will opt for the most terrifying thing they can find in to watch, and for you guys it’s going to be a tough choice between Cats and The Grudge, but for me, well the choice of what to watch seems quite obvious.
Here’s your very NSFW trailer:
This was a very interesting week for this column. My usual procedure when preparing to write it is to take a quick look at the upcoming release schedule over at Box Office Mojo, pick out what looks to be either the most likely to be the big release of the week or, alternately, the most interesting, and then start thinking about what track I want to take to find something to pair it with. Usually the first step is to take a look (or another look if it’s a film that I’m already familiar with) at the trailer to see if that inspires some connection. if not, then I’ll maybe look at what seems to be the theme of the film, or maybe some other aspect of it that stands out. Honestly, it’s usually not a very long or complicated process. Every once in awhile, if I’m really stuck, I’ll ask a friend of mine who might have more knowledge on a particular topic or genre for suggestions, but in the end, the final choice is always the pairing that appeals to me the most.
Okay, so even with that, there’s still the “what looks most interesting to me personally?” option. The problem there is that, though there may be a dearth of truly huge movies opening this weekend, the smaller films that are making an appearance contain a number of movies that look like they could either be truly interesting or at the least quite entertaining. I actually went through a little game with a friend of mine where I had him try to figure out which of the movies on the list i would choose to feature and what I might pair it with, and he went through four of them and a couple of hints before finally figuring it out, and even then he wasn’t sure what the pairing would be.
Or, there’s Dark Light, which Box Office Mojo describes thusly: “A woman returns to her family home and discovers it to be inhabited by monsters.” There also seems to be some hullabaloo about her daughter going missing and her being suspected of having done something dastardly. I dunno, but honestly I’m still feeling a bit burnt out on horror, so I decided to give that one a pass though I suppose you could make a case for pairing it up with The Amityville Horror.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (the original French title is Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) appears to be another exploration of this idea. the twist this time is that the “lady” of the title is not yet married, merely betrothed. As a matter of fact,she has never even met her husband-to-be and has no real idea of what her life with him will be like. Of course, since they have never met, he also has no idea of even what she looks like, and has refused to go any further with the wedding until he sees a portrait of her. Her family, desperate for the marriage to happen has hired a number of painters, but each of them has quit, because she is so obstinate and hard to work with.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, Rebecca is the story of a young girl (we are never even told her real name who meets the wealthy Maxim de Winter while she is serving as the paid companion to a friend of his. They are soon married, and she is quickly brought to his cliff-side manor known as Manderlay.
Ever since I saw his first feature, Brick, I have been a fan of Rian Johnson. For those who may not be familiar with that flick, it’s a pretty great neo-noir set in a high school, that not only hets the trappings of the genre right, but also the atmosphere of desperation and inevitability that, for me, is a hallmark of a good noir.
The movie features Truman Capote in the host role as Lionel Twain, who has invited five of the world’s greatest detectives and their relatives/assistants to his mansion for an evening of “dinner and a murder”. The detectives include Peter Falk as Sam Diamond, a take-off of the hard-boiled detective (the name is just a bit too point-on, but hey… honestly, this ain;t what you’d call a…. ummm… subtle film), Elsa Lanchester as Jessica Marbles, (the Agatha Christie Miss Marples stand-in), James Coco as Christie;s Hercule Poirot… I mean as Milo Perrier, David Niven and Maggie Smith as Dick and Dora Charleston, the Nick and Nora Charles (from the Thin Man series) knockoffs, and…
When I first heard the title Ford v Ferrari, I have to admit I had no idea at all what the movie was about. Probably some kind of Fast and Furious rip-off was my first thought.
With John Frankenheimer in the director’s chair shooting in 70mm Super Panavision, 1966’s Grand Prix may not be the best racing movie ever made, but no one can deny that it is full of stars and spectacle. The cast includes Eve Maries Saint, Brian Bedford, Yves Montaud, Jessica Walter, Antonio Sabato, and Toshiro Mifune, along with cameos from real-life race drivers such as Phil Hill, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, and Jack Brabham. It also features footage that was shot during actual races on the F1 circuit.
News Flash! The Japanese have launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor!
I really don’t know how much I need to say about this we’d opener. Terminator: Dark Fate is the 437th film in the Terminator franchise, and marks the return of Linda Hamilton and Arnie’s beard to the franchise. If that excites you, then obviously both your friends will know where to look for you this weekend.
So this week we get a gender-swapped version of the old trope of the police officer who sees something they shouldn’t involving their colleagues and then has to go on the run and find some way to bring the bad cops to justice. In the case of this week’s movie Black and Blue, it’s Naomie Harris who sees fellow cops murder someone (and since it’s 2019, the crime is caught on her body cam) and who has to somehow stay alive long enough to bring the crime to the attention of someone who will do something about it.
Serpico is based on the true story of Frank Serpico, a straight-shooting New York cop who quickly rises from patrolman to detective, but he soon discovers that beatings, bribes, and corruption are a way of life in the precinct and that he isn’t trusted by his fellow officers because he won’t participate in the wrongdoing. His partners even fo so far as to put him in deadly situations hoping that he will either change his mind and play ball or, just as well for them, be killed. When his superiors turn a blind eye to everything that is going on, Serpico finally decides he has no other choice but to go public with his allegations.
Yeah, it’s been a minute… but we’re back, and let’s kick things off with a double feature, shall we?
1994’s Cemetery Man finds Rupert Everett starring as the caretaker of a small cemetery in Italy who finds himself busier than one might expect because, for reasons that are never really explained (the question does at one point come up as to whether this is an isolated phenomenon or perhaps part of a more widespread issue,but it’s pretty well dismissed with a simple “I don’t know”) the people who are buried in the cemetery return as zombies seven days after they are buried.
It looks like there will be two movies vying for the top spot this weekend, but the one that interests me most is Spoke Lee’s latest project, BlacKkKlansman,
Back when the original Jurassic Park came out, it was a fascinating blend of practical effects and the latest CGI technology. It brought the featured dinosaurs to life in a way that had never been seen before, and that, coupled with a compelling adventure movie plot catapulted it to the top of the box office and ensured that we would be seeing a number of sequels.
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