BEFORE: Alfred Molina carries over from ""Don't Let Go" to tonight's short AND feature. That's right, I'm resurrecting the practice of watching a short before my feature, and both films feature Mr. Molina, but only the FEATURE will count in the standings for the most appearances this year. Yes, I never specifically stated that all of my "Movies" would be features, technically a short is a movie, too. But if I count a short in one of my 300 slots, that feels like cheating. So I'm going to watch it, but it doesn't count. Make sense?
Tonight's short is "Frankenstein's Monster's Monster, Frankenstein". It's on my Netflix list because it seemed like a horror movie, i.e. Frankenstein related, but it turns out to not really be a monster movie, and it's only sort of Frankenstein-adjacent. It features David Harbour talking about his father, David Harbour Jr. and some recently-found TV footage of a strange teleplay he was in that was loosely based on the "Frankenstein" novel, only just barely.
I pegged this as some kind of vanity spoof project right away, because David Harbour's father's name is different in real life, a quick check of Wikipedia confirmed that his father's name is Kenneth, and is not an actor. Also, quite obviously David Harbour is playing his "father here", the footage was digitally altered to look like an old lost kinescope or something, and then once you realize that, it's plain that nothing about this was meant to be taken seriously. It's a "Spinal Tap"-like exploration of a non-real fading actor in the style of Orson Welles, someone who's a false idol with feet of clay, and the more he learns about his father, the less grand his legacy seems. Harbour Sr. was forced to do commercials for a chain of beef Wellington restaurants, and made appearances on "Inside the Actor's Trunk", a TV show loosely about the craft.
In the play-within-the-play, "David Harbour Sr." stars as Victor Frankenstein, who needs to secure funding from a woman who runs a research institute, and for some reason he thinks that by switching places with his assistant, Sal, this ruse will help with the fund-raising efforts - which really makes no sense, but then, nothing about this short really makes any sense. But that's what got David Harbour Sr. into Juilliard, only it turns out he didn't really go to Juilliard, and then it also turns out that he wasn't an actor and his name wasn't David. Whatever, I just cleared another slot on my Netflix list so it's all good.
I thought maybe this film might touch on a new angle to the Frankenstein story - like, which one is REALLY the monster, in the end? But it just didn't go there, it had other ground to cover, I guess. Anyway, on to tonight's feature film.
THE PLOT: Stranded at a desolate Nevada motel during a nasty rain storm, ten strangers become acquainted with each other when they realize that they're being killed off one by one.
AFTER: I've gotten pretty good at spotting scams, e-mail ones of course, but this summer my wife and I did get tricked by a window repair service that we found on that home repair app. They seemed legit, got good ratings, so they quoted us a price and we put down a $500 deposit, and were told it would take about a month for the parts - we have about 7 busted cranks that open the windows, so why not get them all fixed in one go? But a month went by and when we checked in, we were told their supplier lost the order, so they had to place it again. Another month went by, then they were having supply chain issues, or something. A month after that, they weren't answering their phone, and I realized we'd never see that $500 deposit back.
I'm also entering film festivals for a director, just a couple hours work a week, but it helps me pay the bills, and I got a few requests from her to enter festivals that I'd never heard of, but before doing so I checked their web-sites, and on a few I couldn't find any evidence that an in-person screening had taken place or was scheduled to take place, so I wrote them off as "scam" festivals - sure, I realize many festivals switched to virtual screenings during the pandemic, that used to be a tip-off, but one festival had bogus "awards" given out according to their Instagram feeds, and I couldn't find any evidence on IMDB that those films even existed. Plus all of their testimonials could be faked, you never know. So I stuck to only entering festivals that I'd heard of, ones that have been around for a few years and have something of a reputation - because you have to admit, it's a great scam, post a listing for a bogus festival, let 1,000 eager filmmakers pay an entry fee of $50 each, collect the $50,000 in entry fees, and then just never get around to holding an actual festival screening. I kind of wish I'd thought of it, but nah, it's a really shitty thing to do.
My point is that I don't appreciate fake-outs, being told one thing is happening when that's not really the thing that's happening, and that applies to movies, too. I just went through this with "Sweet Girl" last week, and now here's another film that isn't exactly what it pretends to be at first. I won't spoil the twist here, because that's a shitty thing to do also. But at the start this appears to be some kind of one-location murder mystery where someone is killing off the characters, one by one, and getting away with it, because the suspicion keeps falling on different people, some of whom then end up dead themselves, which means that there's still a killer on the loose, and it's probably who you'd least suspect.
The opening of the film is flat-out ridiculous, as one traveler after another gets stranded near this Nevada motel, because of the terrible rain storm that's happening. In the desert, mind you, although nowadays these terrible storms seem to be able to happen anywhere - but this was made back in 2003, before the worst of the climate change effects. It's a complete cascade of failure as one person's bad luck affects the next, one woman loses her shoe from her car, which causes the next person to get a flat tire, which causes the next person to hit someone with their car. It's a series of unlikely events that gets more unlikely with each one added.
Then once everyone is gathered at the same motel, more bad luck - a policeman escorting a prisoner from one jail to another gets simiilarly stranded, and suddenly his radio won't work, so he can't call for an ambulance for the struck motorist. The convict is a psychopath who manages to escape, and then the body parts being found. OK, no mystery here, the murdering murderer probably did the murder, right? Wrong. When he turns up dead, then clearly something else is going on, or somebody isn't who they say they are. And somebody is leaving room keys next to each body, #10, then #9, #8 and so on - it's some kind of gruesome countdown? What happens when we get to one, then everyone's dead, right? Well, sure, and then it will be easy to know who the killer is, he or she will be the last one standing.
But then there's the fake-out, and probably the less said about it the better. But it turns out that all of the stranded strangers have something in common, and that's statistically impossible. That also suggests that something else is going on, other than what we've been told. It's a bit of a shame, because I kind of liked where this one was going, I would have like to see where it was headed if it had continued as just a straight murder mystery story. But it's not, and we shouldn't wish for things we can't have. Let's just say that the "B" story is really the "A" story, and that's a bit of dirty pool. You can get all high-falutin' and say that there are references here to Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" and Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author", or perhaps something by Jean-Paul Sartre, but I think then you'd be giving this film too much credit. It's just a fake-out, most likely because the writer managed to paint himself into a corner, story-wise. So he kind of had to break a window to get out of that room.
Look, I get it, reality is a set of constantly-shifting sands. And nothing is real, because it's a movie. But ir a movie presents a different reality, it needs to stay true to it. Doesn't it?
Also starring John Cusack (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Ray Liotta (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Amanda Peet (last seen in "Trust Me"), John Hawkes (last seen in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer"), Clea DuVall (last seen in "She's All That"), John C. McGinley (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), William Lee Scott (last seen in "October Sky"), Jake Busey (last seen in "The Predator"), Pruitt Taylor Vince (last seen in "Bird Box"), Rebecca De Mornay (last seen in "One From the Heart"), Carmen Argenziano (last seen in "Gone in 60 Seconds"), Marshall Bell (last seen in "The Last Word"), Leila Kenzle, Matt Letscher (last seen in "13 Hours"), Bret Loehr, Holmes Osborne (last seen in "All About Steve"), Frederick Coffin, Joe Hart, Michael Hirsch, Terence Bernie Hines, Stuart M. Besser (last seen in "Our Brand Is Crisis").
RATING: 4 out of 10 unnecessarily complicated back-stories
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