Just Getting Started

Year 15, Day 308 - 11/4/23 - Movie #4,583

BEFORE: I admit that after all this time, I still don't know how Amazon Prime works - I mean, I understand that my wife has a subscription, so I can watch movies.  And I know that I can access it through the Sony PlayStation, which puts movies on the big-screen TV, but I still don't understand which MOVIES are available through AmazonPrime.  This one, for example, was "free" on AmazonPrime (I know, nothing is ever free...) when I put it on my watchlist, and now it costs like $3.99 there.  Why was it free then and not free now?  Who decides what costs extra and what doesn't?  There's a contract, probably, but when does it expire and why?  Oh well, guess I'm watching this one on Roku today, which means commercials, because nothing is ever free, I know.

Joe Pantoliano carries over from "The Mean Season". 

THE PLOT: An ex-F.B.I. agent and an ex-mob lawyer in the Witness Protection Program have to put aside their petty rivalry on the golf course to fend off a mob hit.

AFTER: I almost put this film in the romance chain, and there are little bits about older people hooking up at this retirement community, but this is not a romance film, not foremost anyway.  It's also set during the Christmas season, but it's not primarily a Christmas movie, either.  It's comedy mixed with action, I guess, living in between all of these categories, though, and that's not usually a good thing, because if a movie tries to be about everything then it sometimes just ends up being focused on nothing.  But look, the linking process somehow KNEW where to put this film, because even though it's the first week of November, all I see are Christmas-themed commercials on TV, so the season is here - but also just getting started. 

The setting is this retirement community in Palm Springs, called Villa Capri or Casa Villa or something innocuous, and the property manager, Duke Diver, is an older fellow who just happens to be in the Witness Protection Program, because I guess even those people need to do something for a living.  But he's seen in a TV commercial for the property by a mobster's wife in New Jersey -  the movie's just three minutes old and I have to call my first NITPICK POINT.  Don't you think that if you were in Witness Protection, and there were mobsters out there who would want to kill you, that you might just want to keep a low profile and maybe avoid appearing in a national TV commercial?  Just a thought.

Over the next few days, a number of new people arrive at the properly, including Leo, a former fed or military man (or so he claims) who moves into one of the cabins, also an attractive older lady who spends most of her time in the bar, and also a number of seasonal workers like a new Santa Claus from corporate, camel handlers for the life-size nativity scene and so on.  But which of the new people at the resort might be there to fire Duke, and which one might be there to kill him?  Duke becomes frenemies with Leo, because Leo gains the attention of the older single ladies at the resort, taking their attention away from Duke.  Tough guy, ex-military, can handle firearms and maybe explosives, Leo could be the hitman - or he could just be an older guy looking for a place to retire where he can also get laid on a regular basis. 

Duke challenges Leo to a "Caddyshack"-like golf showdown, which gets cut short after a rattlesnake is found in Duke's golf bag.  Umm, that could have just crawled into the bag, or maybe not - but who would try to kill duke with a poisonous snake?  Honestly, just about anybody, maybe he's not as charming as he thinks he is.  Jealous lovers, mob hitmen, or male rivals, really, anybody could have rigged that golf cart with explosives. Duke's also got a bad habit of signing out wads of petty cash, so he could also be a financial liability for the resort's management company, and it turns out the attractive older lady IS there to fire him.  Or maybe not, because soon she realizes what a fun place it is around the holidays.  Maybe she'll move in  there and start managing the place herself. 

Meanwhile the rivalry continues, Duke and Leo decide that there's only room at the resort for one top dog, so they have their own seniors version of the "Do-Deca-Pentathlon" to determine who gets to stay.  Chess, ping pong, weightlifting and limbo contests don't seem to settle the matter, so they end up throwing cards into a hat.  Was there no shuffleboard available?   It didn't help that Duke got Johnny Mathis to come and sing some Christmas songs, but that didn't win Suzie's heart, she danced with Leo instead.  Duke, you might have won the battle but lost the war.  In the end, it's back to the golf course to settle things, because that's a game that we all understand and that Duke's pals can help him cheat at. 

I don't know who thought some weird mix of "Caddyshack" and "Midnight Run" was a good idea, but it sure wasn't. Reviews of this film ranged from "a thoroughly unfunny misfire" to "a complete waste of time, money and talent". I didn't think it was THAT bad, but then again, I didn't have money invested in this film in the hopes of it being a hit. It wasn't a hit, either, it bombed, perhaps because its target audience couldn't get out of the nursing homes to buy tickets at theaters. Well, with a 90-minute run time, at least it won't waste TOO much of your time. 

Also starring Morgan Freeman (last seen in "The Queen of Versailles"), Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Val"), Rene Russo (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Glenne Headly (last seen in "The Circle"), Nick Peine (ditto), Sheryl Lee Ralph (last seen in "The Flintstones"), Elizabeth Ashley (last seen in "Coma"), George Wallace (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Graham Beckel (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Mel Raido (last seen in "Legend" (2015)), Jane Seymour (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Johnny Mathis (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), Kristen Rakes (last seen in "The Space Between Us"), Eli Goodman (ditto), Tasos Hernandez (last seen in "Fast Color"), Ramona King (ditto), Vic Browder (last seen in "Blood Father"), Oscar Avila, Whit Washing, Susan Conklin, Alma Sisneros

RATING: 5 out of 10 elf costumes for the staff

The Mean Season

Year 15, Day 307 - 11/3/23 - Movie #4,582

BEFORE: I'm going way back for this one - JK, just to 1985.  But I've watched so many classic films already, from Alfred Hitchcock's whole filmography to every movie I could find that Fred Astaire danced in, I rarely go back to past the 1980's any more.  So far the oldest movie I've watched in 2023 was "Coma", which came out in 1978, and the second oldest was "The Fog", released in 1980.  And if they hadn't been worked into my horror chain, I might not have even watched them at all.  But something happened since I started doing this in 2009, now the 1980's have become this long-ago, almost mythical time.  Did they really happen?  Does anybody besides me remember them?  

The oldest film on my watchlist right now is 1931's "M", but now I don't know if I'll ever get around to watching it, not unless I break the chain or change my format.  'The Grand Illusion", "The Prisoner of Zenda", "Holiday Inn", and a bunch of Mummy movies are still outstanding, maybe if I go to work for TCM someday I can find the time to get to these, but right now, they're taking up valuable space on my list, so I'm going to have to work something out one of these days, or perhaps just drop them and admit I'm never going to watch them.  Or else I have to find a lot of bridging material and maybe just start with the oldest film on my list and devise a chain that will clear out the oldies. 

Andy Garcia carries over from "Night Falls on Manhattan". 

THE PLOT: When a teenager is shot at the beach, a reporter from the Miami Journal is sent to cover the story. He's called by the murderer and told there'll be four more. 

AFTER: The 1980's were a different time - we played our video games at the arcade, not at home, if you needed to make a phone call while outside your house, you needed to find a phone booth and some dimes, the only mail we had was the non-electronic kind, and even serial killers worked differently.  The Son of Sam was active in NYC in the 1970's, and he pled guilty to eight shootings, and he formed a professional relationship with Jimmy Breslin, who wrote about him in the newspapers.  Debate raged whether the publicity encouraged the killer to keep his streak going, but my point is that David Berkowitz killed eight people one by one.  Today's murderers just buy an automatic weapon and take down 30, 40 people at a time in a shopping mall or something, it's not artful, that's just a massacre.  People used to take pride in their work, really make it personal, what the heck happened to that?  You can't keep a whole metropolitan area on edge and fearing for their lives unless you really work that serial killer thing, make them afraid to go outside at night, like death is waiting for them on the corner.  Shooting up a crowd in a nightclub or a stadium means that the killer's going to have to shoot himself afterwards, because who wants to stand trial for 50-plus murders?  This is why my message to anyone who wants to shoot up a school or a crowded parking lot is - why not just skip to the end and shoot yourself first, because you know that's how it's going to end.  Spare all those other people and their families the agony and just take yourself out, you'll be doing everyone a big favor.

But that Berkowitz-Breslin connection is kind of mirrored here in the plot of "The Mean Season", just transferred from NYC to Miami during the hurricane-heavy part of the year. And the murderer says he's planning to kill five people - totally do-able, five seems like an achievable goal of sorts - I mean, why aim high when you're just not sure about it.  Maybe you'll kill five people and then that will scratch that itch, and you may then just not be in the mood to kill a sixth person.  It's not like eating potato chips or something, you can stop whenever you want to.  Umm, unless you're mentally ill or you somehow develop a taste for it, but I say that planning to stop after five is probably a good idea.  See how you feel after that and go from there. 

Reporter Malcolm Anderson really wants to leave Miami, and his girlfriend wants to move back to Colorado, where her parents still live.  Malcolm's taken a trip out there for a job interview as the editor of a small newspaper, and he's ready to take that job.  The only thing that could keep him in Miami is a late-breaking story about a serial killer who confides in him and gets his hopes for a Pulitzer up.  Now he can't leave Miami, he's too invested, he's gained the trust of the serial killer (He's called the "Numbers Killer"?  What was wrong with the "Miami Madman"?  The "Nephew of Bernie and Rosalynn"? Is this reporter even TRYING?) and the police are having him record all the incoming calls in case the killer lets something slip that could be the key to identifying him.  

The problem is that the killer and the reporter are working a bit TOO well as a team, Malcolm's girlfriend thinks he's not just reporting on the murders but he's somewhat complicit, since he gives the serial killer a platform, and therefore a reason to kill again.  And the killer is pissed because Malcolm's getting interviewed on national TV, stealing the spotlight for himself.  Well, what do you expect, you can't both stay in hiding AND appear on TV and take credit for your crimes, it's one or the other.  But the killer doesn't see things that way, so he kidnaps Malcolm's girlfriend, I guess to get the attention back on himself?  Jeez, what a narcissist.  

Oddly, it's the best thing for Malcolm's relationship, because she was getting ready to move out since he'd been so focused on the reporting of the killings, and he was basically ignoring her - they were like two people living in the same house, but not together.  AND then he broke his promise about moving to Colorado, because he got so engrossed in the serial killer thing and she quit her JOB to get ready for the move.  So she was about to dump Malcolm's ass, but then she got held prisoner by a serial killer, and I guess after that, living with Malcolm didn't seem so bad by comparison.  There's a relationship lesson in there somewhere, but it's not really a good one.  Don't try this to fix your own relationship, it's not recommended. 

I recorded this movie and "Night Falls on Manhattan" on something of a whim, about two months ago.  I didn't really know much about either film, I think I thought "The Mean Season" was about football or something.  But sometimes I just get a feeling about movies, I record them on the DVR sometimes at random - and I had no idea I would find a linking reason to watch both of these so soon.  But you just never know, they turned out to both be helpful in connecting my Halloween movies with my Thanksgiving movies - but I suppose if I didn't have these two, I would have found another way to get there. Maybe?  It's tough to say - maybe it's true that for every film I've put on my list, there's a reason I put it there, even if I don't know yet what that reason is. Or maybe it's all just random at this point, there do seem to be different ways I can look at it. 

Anyway, Kurt Russell will be back in time for Christmas, if the plan is solid and the chain holds up.  And weirdly, that's just 17 movies away - it'll be here before you know it. 

Also starring Kurt Russell (last seen in "De Palma"), Mariel Hemingway (last seen in "Sunset'), Richard Bradford (ditto), Richard Jordan (last seen in "Klute"), Richard Masur (last seen in "Val"), Joe Pantoliano (last seen in "Bad Boys for Life"), Rose Portillo (last heard in "Encanto"), William Smith (last seen in "Irresistible"), John Palmer, Lee Sandman, Dan Fitzgerald (last seen in "In Her Shoes"), Cynthia Caquelin, Fred Ornstein, Fritz Bronner, Mike DeRienzo, Michael Clay, Fred Buch (last seen in "Cocoon: The Return"), Bruce McLaughlin (ditto), Robert Small (last seen in "Recount"), Tamara Jones, Joan Murphy (last seen in "Midnight Cowboy"), Richard Liberty, Morris Zuckerman, Lillian Zuckerman.

RATING: 5 out of 10 misspelled headlines (there should be two "P's" in "kidnapped)

Night Falls on Manhattan

Year 15, Day 306 - 11/2/23 - Movie #4,581

BEFORE: It's Nostalgia week here at the Movie Year, apparently - "Species" and "Species II" were both released in the 1990's, and now I've got two legal/crime dramas that are similarly back-dated, one's even from the 80's.  Let's hope there wasn't some kind of expiration date on these, because I'm running about thirty years behind. In honor of Nostalgia Week, I went out last night to Barcade after work - just to play the video games, not to drink - so I only spent $3.00 on the games, I'm sure they love it when people come in and don't drop money on a few beers.  Played 4 games of Q-Bert, a little Mr. Do, Galaga and some Tapper - got the high scores on TWO of those games, and thought about all those hours I spent in arcades when I was a teenager. Remember when you didn't have video games at HOME and you had to go out to a bar or arcade to play them? 

Bill Boggs carries over from "Species II", speaking of the 1990's.  Boggs was a fixture on TV in and around New York City starting in the late 80's, on the station that later became the FOX affiliate, but he also had shows on the Food Network and then became a producer on "The Morton Downey Show" (look it up). He also made frequent cameos on shows like "Oz" and "Miami Vice" and in movies, of course, which helps me a great deal. (Movies always need people who look like newscasters and talk-show hosts to play, well, newscasters and talk-show hosts.)  I saw him in person at the theater where I work last year because he introduced that Dean Martin documentary "King of Cool" during a festival. Keep on working, Bill...

Oh, yeah, the year's almost over and the holidays are almost here, so these are the actor links that will get me to Christmas: Andy Garcia, Joe Pantoliano, Glenne Headly, Denise Dowse, Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, Tim Meadows, Julianne Moore, Hope Davis, Michael Sheen, Kris Marshall, John Cleese, Darby Camp, and Kurt Russell & Goldie Hawn. It'll be over before you know it...

THE PLOT: A newly-elected District Attorney finds himself in the middle of a police corruption investigation that may involve his father and his father's partner. 

AFTER: Speaking of nostalgia, about half the cast of "The Sopranos" is in this film, one way or another. But instead of mobsters, they all play cops and judges here.  However, the whole point of the film is that the whole system is corrupt, from the cops to the judges to the D.A.'s, everyone acts the way they think they need to in order to keep the city safe, even if that means breaking the rules just a bit. Or a lot.  So then, really, is there much difference between the good guys and the bad guys?  

That's the weird thing about New York City, though - people rise through the ranks in the police department or the legal system and then things happen, I don't know how or why, but they do.  Remember that Rudy Giuliani used to be on the side of the angels, he was a district attorney in New York and prosecuted the biggest mob bosses around in the 1980's. He got elected mayor, served two terms, during which crime rates went down, and the sex clubs were closed down in Times Square. Then something happened, not sure what, after he ran for President in 2008 and failed. Instead of just writing a book and making money from public speaking, he went back to work in the legal arena, and ended up on Trump's team, now of course there are allegations of. corruption, spreading conspiracy theories about the 2016 election, and he came under investigation for violating lobbying laws, and he's a co-conspirator in the attempts to overturn that election. Look, I know life is long and we all go through changes over time, but that's a pretty wide swing, isn't it?  

Mr. "Law and Order" is now on trial, and he's not the only one - I'm also thinking about Bernard Kerik, former commissioner of the NYPD, who almost got nominated to head the Dept. of Homeland Security, but he withdrew his nomination because he had employed an illegal nanny, and that's the sort of thing they check when you get nominated for a cabinet position.  A little more digging and they found ethics violations and charges of tax fraud, and eventually he pleaded guilty to eight felonies, and served time.  So there's definitely some kind of shift that can happen when people rise high in the ranks of law or government, and now of course we're watching the trials of Trump and also the ethics violations of Clarence Thomas, to see if karma exists and if these officials will end up serving hard time.  

So this movie's not very far off, I think, regarding what's possibly going on behind the scenes, and the higher you go up the chain, the more serious the transgressions.  Two veteran detectives are setting themselves up to take down a drug kingpin, but perhaps things are not all what they seem to be.  During the confrontation, Det. Liam Casey is shot, and it also appears that one police officer shoots another, this is chalked up to the chaos of the incident, but is that really what happened?  The drug kingpin kills another two cops, and escapes in a squad car dressed like an officer, prompting a city-wide manhunt.  In the meantime, the District Attorney appoints Sean Casey, the son of the detective who got shot, to lead the prosecution against the drug dealer when he is caught. 

In a surprise move, the drug dealer turns himself in, escorted by his attorney, who first made a show for the media of having the drug dealer appear before the press naked, to show he was unbruised and unharmed, because he feared the police would beat him as soon as he was in custody.  Umm, yeah, he was right, because the police couldn't wait to use excessive force on him.  In the trial's opening statement, attorney Sam Vigoda admits his client killed two cops and shot a third, but he claims it was in self-defense because the police from two precincts were coming to kill him, as they were not being paid enough protection money.  Allegedly another drug dealer was offering the police more to deal drugs in their precincts, and he wouldn't match the other guy's offer. 

The question then becomes - is there any truth to the attorney's claims, that the police are all corrupt and on the take, or is this just an attempt to create some reasonable doubt?  The defense attorney keeps asking everyone on the stand if they know some officer named Kleinhoff, and after the trial that man's dead body turns up in the river, with an address book that has the names of several officers involved in the initial shooting.  Every officer is questioned and some end up confessing to bribery charges, so it seems like maybe there was some kind of narcotics scandal in those two precincts after all.  Sean keeps pursuing the case and ends up finding out that his father's partner was taking bribes, and also that his father didn't technically have a warrant for the drug dealer that night - well, he had one but it had expired.  

OK, well, hey, nobody's perfect, I guess that's an OK lesson, and things are never really black and white but often exist in the gray areas in between, I guess that's another lesson.  But then the drug kingpin's own lawyer doesn't fight for his release, even though the self-defense claim did have some merit, it's determined that prison is still the best place for that guy to be.  Umm, sure the city will be safer, and yeah, he did kill two cops, but there was one drug dealer and like twenty corrupt cops, what about all of them?  Not to mention the cop who didn't have the valid warrant and the judge who back-dated one after the fact, what happens to them?  They just get to keep leading their lives, how is that fair?  Who determines what is for the greater good, and when we do and don't prosecute?  Turns out there are no easy answers, which is not always something that people want to hear. 

This film was directed by Sidney Lumet, based on a novel called "Tainted Evidence", which was loosely based on the case of Larry Davis, a drug dealer who shot six cops and escaped from the scene of the shooting, evading capture for six days.  His lawyer, William Kunstler, later claimed that the police were trying to kill him as they were corrupt and involved in taking bribes. 

Also starring Andy Garcia (last seen in "De Palma"), Ian Holm (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), James Gandolfini (last seen in "Welcome to the Rileys"), Lena Olin (last seen in "Havana"), Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "Spielberg"), Shiek Mahmud-Bey (last seen in "The Bonfire of the Vanities"), Ron Leibman (last seen in "The Hot Rock"), Colm Feore (last seen in "The Red Violin"), Dominic Chianese (last seen in "The Night We Never Met"), Paul Guilfoyle (ditto), Vic Noto, Marcia Jean Kurtz (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Richard Bright (ditto), Jude Ciccolella (last seen in "Beloved"), John Randolph Jones (last seen in "Dogville"), Chuck Pfeiffer, Jim Moody (last seen in '28 Days"), Teddy Coluca (last seen in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things"), Bonnie Rose (last seen in "Inside Llewyn Davis"), Norman Matlock (last seen in "Clockers"), Sidney Armus (last seen in "Heartburn"), James Murtaugh (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Santo Fazio, Anthony Alessandro (last seen in "Jacob's Ladder"), Ronald von Klaussen (last seen in "Nixon")

with cameos from Bobby Cannavale (last seen in "Blonde"), Vincent Pastore (last seen in "The Family"), Frank Vincent (last seen in "Gun Shy"), Donna Hanover (last seen in "Just a Kiss"), Jack Cafferty (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Kaity Tong, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 trips to the sauna

Species II

Year 15, Day 304 - 10/31/23 - Movie #4,580

BEFORE: Happy Halloween!  I wasn't sure I was going to get here on time, but even with a vacation, a birthday and a Comic-Con (and a NewFest and a New Yorker Festival) I was able to make it work.  It took a lot of late nights and early mornings, but it's done, and now I can relax quite a bit on the way to Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Twenty more films in 55 days - not a problem. Here's the format breakdown for October, then tomorrow come the November links:

11 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Barbarian, Jeepers Creepers, Jeepers Creepers 2, Swamp Thing, Antlers, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Overlord, Devil, Species, Species II

7 Movies watched on cable (not saved): One Missed Call, The Fog (1980), Dead Ringers, Beautiful Creatures, Dark Skies, De Palma, Eight Legged Freaks

2 watched on Netflix: R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned, In the Shadow of the Moon

1 watched on iTunes: Coma
2 watched on Amazon Prime: Cocaine Bear, Godsend

1 watched on Tubi: Creepshow 2

1 watched on a random site: Creepshow

TOTAL: 25 movies

Yeah, it's been quite a month.  A lot of classic horror films got crossed off the list, and I worked in some newer ones, too.  My thanks to Justin Long and Keri Russell and Bokeem Woodbine for choosing to appear in so many horror films and making this possible.  

Three main actors carry over from "Species" - Marg Helgenberger, Natasha Henstridge and MIchael Madsen.  Nobody from this film carried over to "Species III", so I'm not continuing with the franchise.  If they don't respect my process then I'm done with them. 

I'm working tonight at the theater - a special screening of "Five Nights at Freddy's" for one of the guilds, but it's open to students at the college, too.  They only promoted it ONCE in the school newsletter, so we're not expecting a big crowd.  I checked the cast list, that film won't fit into my chain so I'll have to catch up with it somewhere down the road.  Also still on the watchlist for horror movies: "The Relic", "The Babadook", "Slender Man", "The Wolf of Snow Hollow", "Zombie Honeymoon", "Pet Sematary" (2019), "The Woman in Black 2", "Scream" (2022), "Smile", "Old", "Army of Darkness", "Blair Witch" (2016), "Freaky", "Maggie", "Dorian Gray", "The Amityville Horror" (1979), "The Night House", "The Haunting", "What Lies Beneath", 'Black Christmas", "Black Friday", "Dark Water", "Life After Beth", "Bones and All", "The Black Phone", "Ghost Ship", "Pearl", "X". "Jennifer's Body", "A Haunting in Venice", "Haunted Mansion" (2023), "Army of the Dead", "Army of Thieves", "Knock at the Cabin", "Day Shift", "Graveyard Shift", "M3GAN", "Prey", "Renfield", "The Pope's Exorcist" and several franchises like "Saw", "Final Destination", "Hocus Pocus", "The Ring" and "Child's Play", Whew, that's a lot and there's probably a lot more out there, I just don't know how much of it I can watch next October, or how many more years this is going to take.  I'll have to go through everything next summer and connect what I can from this list. 

THE PLOT: An astronaut gets infected with alien DNA during the first mission on Mars and runs amok on Earth. Preston and Laura team up with a peaceful, genetically re-engineered Sil to track the monster down. 

AFTER: Well, at least this sequel wasn't just one big chase scene.  I mean, it kind of was but at least it was less obvious about being that.  There was also a big will-they-or-won't-they plotline - actually, two of those.  After the reveal of the new deadly alien hybrid (male this time) they sort of got the team back together, what was left of it from the first movie, anyway.  Namely Preston "Press" Lennox and Dr. Laura Baker, who got together physically in the first film, but then they must have drifted apart. Well, sure, he's a hard-scrabble mercenary and she's a molecular biologist, what did they really have in common besides hormones and desire to track down that alien?  They're forced to work together again - awkward - and she's now working for the government, and in charge of the cloning of a NEW version of the female alien hybrid, now named Eve.  Umm, even more awkward?  

The new male alien hybrid is an astronaut, the son of a U.S. Senator, and when he comes back from Mars, he's SUPPOSED to wait 10 days in quarantine before having intimate relations with anyone, but of course he doesn't.  Because all the ladies want to have sex with the astronaut who walked on Mars - wait, is that a thing?  Did Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have groupies back in 1969?  Anyway, he kind of brought something back with him, and it's not an STD, unless STD stands for "Sexed to Death", because that's essentially what happens.  But he also impregnates both women in a threesome, and they gestate and give birth very quickly, just before they die.  It's not pretty, and now the astronaut has two rapidly-aging children, who he hides in a barn.  

This alien DNA keeps motivating him to mate and kill, and then before long he's got a whole brood of half-alien kids living in that barn, and he just doesn't know what to do.  Umm, did you try NOT having sex with every woman you meet, and then impregnating them and killing them?  Because that might be a possible answer to the problem.  Eve, the new "Sil" can sense from very far away when Patrick is having sex, so this leads one to wonder if these crazy kids are ever going to get together - nearly everybody agrees this would be a VERY BAD idea, because if one of them is destructive to women and the other is capable of being destructive to men, you have to figure the two of them together is bound to be TWICE as bad, right?  Or hey, maybe not, maybe they'll just kill each other, and then problem solved, right?  

Well, it takes nearly the whole movie, but it's just bound to happen, right?  I mean, they didn't put a male alien hybrid and a female alien hybrid in the same movie for them to NOT HAVE SEX, right?   As much as the team and the government try to keep Patrick away from Eve, they're just plain desperate for each other.  SO the flesh-skin comes off and the fancy alien armorings come out, and then things that are probably not-dicks go into various holes (on him or on her, I can't really tell - anyway, does it matter?) and things that are probably not-knives also impale him (I think) so yeah, basically the climax of the film is a whole bunch of alien tentacle porn, so you've been warned if that's not your thing, or maybe you're enticed if that IS your thing, no judgements here, this is a safe space for your kinks after all. 

Anyway, by saving this film for Halloween itself I pretty much nailed it, this is as monster-y as it gets, and it's full of silly, stupid, disgusting alien sex, and isn't this holiday all about things that are silly, stupid, disgusting and also a bit sexy?  I mean, come on, that's Halloween in a nutshell.  You watch disgusting horror movies and you act silly and you believe in stupid things like ghosts and witches, just for a day, and maybe you also see people in sexy costumes.  It's OK, let your freak flag fly even if tentacle porn is your thing. (You sickos...)

This film takes place in an alternate U.S. history, where James Cromwell is a U.S. senator and Richard Belzer is the President.  I don't hate this idea - too bad Belzer never ran for office, I would have voted for him.

Me, I'm putting the horror films back on hold for another 11 months, unless I need one of them to make a crucial link somewhere else, of course.  I'm going to take tomorrow night off and then I'll begin the 13-film countdown to Thanksgiving.  Stay safe out there while you're having your Halloween fun, and watch out for the sexy aliens.

Also starring Mykelti Williamson (last seen in "Don't Let Go"), George Dzundza (last seen in "City by the Sea"), James Cromwell (last seen in "The Promise"), Justin Lazard, Myriam Cyr (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol") Sarah Wynter (last seen in "The 6th Day"), Baxter Harris (last seen in "Mermaids"), Scott Morgan (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Nancy La Scala (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Raquel Gardner, Tracy Metro, Kim Adams, with cameos by Bill Boggs (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Richard Belzer (last seen in "Gilbert"), Peter Boyle (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed")

RATING: 5 out of 10 boxes of Space Flakes cereal

Species

Year 15, Day 303 - 10/30/23 - Movie #4,579

BEFORE: The voice of Frank Welker carries over from "Eight Legged Freaks". At least he got credited in the IMDB for the alien sounds he made for this film.  On yesterday's film he was listed in the screen credits for "special vocal effects", and I had to go to Wikipedia to prove that included the sounds of one particular giant spider.  The judges have ruled that this was enough evidence to prove his voice was used in that film, however they ruled against "Graveyard Shift", where he allegedly did the voice of a giant bat.  But since there was no credit for that at all in the IMDB, I just couldn't prove it, so I decided to drop that film from the chain, because if I don't have proof that the chain is solid, then, is it?

It's a shame because that film, based on a Stephen King story, doesn't link to anything else on my list right now - so I don't know when, or even if, I'll be able to program it.  But hey, there were too many films in the 2023 chain anyway, and also too many horror films for this October to hold, so something had to go - why not the film that I wasn't 100% sure connected to the others?  I'll try again next year, "Graveyard Shift", keep hope alive. 

THE PLOT: A group of scientists try to track down and trap a killer alien seductress before she successfully mates with a human.

AFTER: Now here's a film that exactly proves the point I was making just the other day - after watching "Swamp Thing", which really was just one extended chase scene, over and over, until there was a bit that was different at the end, but very weird. "Species" is really just one big chase scene, also - the human/alien hybrid escapes from the lab, a team of experts is put together to hunt/kill her, so they chase her to the hotel, they chase her to the club, they chase her to some guy's house, and always, always they're one step behind - they find the bodies of her lovers/victims but she's always JUST left the scene.  You'd think after a while this would get tedious, and you would be right. 

Oh, sure, they try to distract you on two fronts, either by having the woman get naked or having her turn into a disgusting monster-thing, take your pick, name your poison.  Are you turned on or grossed out, or maybe a little bit of both?  You sickos....  But then they just have to repeat the pattern again and again until they get close to the 100-minute mark, and then it's time to wrap things up.  Once again, it's down to the weird underground cavern or mine, where things are either explosive or flammable - it's symbolic of hell, sure, I get it - but then twice this month those underground caverns weren't just symbolic, they led to ACTUAL hell.  Maybe that's the running theme for the month - "R.I.P.D. 2", "Barbarian", "Jeepers Creepers", "Antlers", "Ghostbusters: Afterlife", "Overlord", "Eight Legged Freaks", and now this one - they all had underground caverns or mines or tunnels under houses, evil always lives or comes from down below, get it? 

Unless, of course, evil comes from up above - as it did in "Dark Skies", or "The Fog", or also this one, where humans got a response from their Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, and it was a broadcast from space with a DNA sequence.  You see, twenty years before, mankind started sending out signals with information about the human race, including our DNA pattern.  (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?). And so when a message came back with a response, the natural inclination was to mix that DNA information with human DNA, just for kicks, you know.  Je-SUS, why don't we just send the aliens a bunch of recipes for how to cook humans once they get here?  I bet we're totally delicious and filled with all the nutrients they lack on their home planet. GOD, we're so stupid.  Sure, the aliens sent us a formula that would solve the energy crisis, but let's ignore that and instead build a creature with this DNA sequence they sent us. WTF?

The scientists create this human/alien hybrid, which they realize has strange powers and could easily get out of control - so they try to kill their genetic experiment, but it's too late, she's already too powerful and she uses her powers to break out of the lab and sneak aboard an Amtrak train for Los Angeles.  Yeah, that tracks.  If she's comfortable doing full nudity she should go far in movies, at least until she turns 30.  Oh, bad news, she also ages very fast, so yeah, she better get that acting career going while she can.  

Oh, wait, it's too late because now she really wants to mate and have a baby - boy, that was a short acting career, but again, this also tracks.  Every young actress wants to get to L.A., do a few nude scenes (as long as they're artfully done) then land a husband and start a family.  But then she keeps getting spooked and killing the men she picks up at the club, so this relationship thing sure seems to be hard for her to get the hang of.  Can somebody please tell her what she's doing wrong?  You sleep with the guy, you marry the guy, you get him to sign a life insurance policy, THEN you kill him.  It's really not difficult, but remember, she grew up in a lab, so she just doesn't know any better. 

Meanwhile that team of "experts" (one's essentially a mercenary hitman and another one is an "empath", so yeah, at least half of them are probably bogus) is closing in on her, but they're led by the head of the government team that created her, and I think really he's more concerned with erasing his mistake and not creating a government scandal than anything else.  The British anthropologist guy has the hots for the female molecular biologist, but she seems more enamored with the tough-guy mercenary.  Yeah, this also makes sense, the woman overlooking the nerdy scientist because she's drawn to the "bad boy" killer.  But if she had given the nerdy scientist a chance instead, obviously their quest for the alien hybrid might have been more successful.  Just saying. 

Instead, there's a car crash and the team believes that the body in the car is Sil, the alien hybrid.  But it's not, it's a woman that Sil kidnapped and held hostage, probably for this exact purpose.  Sil then cut off her own thumb and left it at the scene, so the scientists would think she was dead. Really?  Gotta call a NITPICK POINT here, the molecular biologist tested only the thumb that was inside the purse to confirm the identity of the dead body?  Did she not notice the corpse had two thumbs, and therefore there were THREE THUMBS present at the accident?  No, let's not test the dead body for alien DNA, but let's test this extra thumb that we found inside a purse in the car instead.  Ridiculous.

NITPICK POINT #2 - after another failed attempt to catch up with the hybrid, the government guy determines that the team should go back to the nightclub and look for her there again.  Sil was in a car at this point, saying the exact same thing he was - for a minute I thought she had psychic powers and was giving him a mind-push to go back to the club, but then in the Wiki plot synopsis it says she was reading his lips.  I guess that's correct, because she didn't have psychic powers at any other point in the movie, but it's so unclear what's happening this way, couldn't she just have super-alien hearing and learn the information she needed from a distance, just by listening?  Instead of reading his lips and saying the same thing out loud, which nobody does?

Then Sil catches up with the team when they go back to their hotel - and the biologist REALLY wants to get it on with the mercenary guy, so he goes to their room. Sil listens in, because she's REALLY curious about this whole sex thing, and what she maybe has been doing wrong all this time.  But then as she's watching/listening from the room next door, JUST before she figures it out, the British anthropologist returns to the room she's in, and for some reason he doesn't recognize her (because really, he never got a good look at her the whole film, and also, her hair color is different).  So, naturally they start having sex, as people do, and she's really, really going to get it right this time - just kidding, she kills him too.  But at least this time she waited until AFTER sex to kill her partner, so maybe she is learning something, after all.  

The team then tracks her down in that underground cavern, where she's already given birth to a son (geez, that was fast...) and also mutates herself into an alien-looking thing with some kind of armored shell.  Yeah, but humans have guns and fire on their side, so we're GOING to win.  We simply can't have an alien female running around killing all her sexual partners, before or after getting pregnant.  And we CERTAINLY can't have her son grow up and start impregnating women all over the place, that's how the alien race takes over, right?  The invasive predatory species wins by both killing humans and also using them for breeding, until there are more of THEM then there are of US.  

I can't help but think this is all some kind of metaphor for something, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Immigration? Racism? Sexism toward promiscuous women? Or just plain old alien xenophobia?  If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em, or something like that. What's the lesson here, is it keep the Earth safe from aliens, or maybe stop sending out our genetic information and exact location to outer space, maybe? 

Also starring Natasha Henstridge (last seen in "Bounce"), Ben Kingsley (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Michael Madsen (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), Alfred Molina (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Forest Whitaker (last seen in "Street Kings"), Marg Helgenberger (last seen in "Almost Friends"), Michelle Williams (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Scott McKenna, Virginia Morris (last seen in "The Bonfire of the Vanities"), Esther Scott (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Shirley Prestia, Herta Ware (last seen in "Practical Magic"), Melissa Bickerton (last seen in "Saving Mr. Banks"), Lucy Rodriguez (last seen in "Deception"), Gary Bullock (last seen in "The Handmaid's Tale"), William Bumiller,  Anthony Guidera (last seen in "Armageddon"), Caroline Barclay, Matthew Ashford, Whip Hubley (last seen in "A Very Brady Sequel"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Jeepers Creepers"), Richard Fancy (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Marliese Schneider (last seen in "Thirteen Days"), Dendrie Taylor (last seen in "Antlers"), Kurtis Burow with cameos from Jellybean Benitez (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Coati Mundi (last seen in "On the Road").

RATING: 4 out of 10 stolen credit cards (OK, that makes NITPICK POINT #3, doesn't anybody in the film check the name on her credit card at any point?)

Eight Legged Freaks

Year 15, Day 302 - 10/29/23 - Movie #4,578

BEFORE: Well, I was right, I could have gone just about anywhere linking away from "De Palma", there were THAT many actors in it, seen in archive footage.  I could have, if needed, skipped tonight's film and the next two and linked straight to my November 1 film, via Andy Garcia, who appeared in the archive footage from "The Untouchables".  So if I fell behind in October, which was VERY possible, I could have dropped three more films and still linked up with my planned chain, I just would have had to fill in those slots later with something else.  

But here we are, three days left in October and three horror films left on the docket, so let's just proceed as planned.  Scarlett Johansson carries over from "De Palma", where she appeared in archive footage from "The Black Dahlia", which, as Brian explained, was all about the Black Dahlia.

I spent about two hours yesterday JUST going through which actors appeared in the archive footage in "De Palma" - and I tried for a second time, in vain, to get the IMDB to list those actors.  BUT they turned me down again, which is just ridiculous.  I mean, it was a documentary about the films directed by Brian De Palma.  Therefore, it used a lot of footage from those films, including Al Pacino ("Scarface", "Carlito's Way"), Piper Laurie ("Carrie"), Michael Caine and Angie Dickinson ("Dressed to Kill") and Kevin Costner ("The Untouchables").  I've never lied to the IMDB before, yet my voluntary submission of 82 actors who appeared in "De Palma" got turned down TWICE - what, exactly, is the problem here?  Why do I do all this work for the IMDB and get zero results?  Can't somebody who works for the IMDB just watch the damn movie, like I did, and agree that I clearly know what I'm doing?

Then I spent a few more hours adding films to the watchlist, and some other films to the pre-watchlist-list, and updating a few other lists that were tangential to the main list, and before you know it, my whole Saturday day off was gone.  OK, so I also did laundry and grocery shopping, but either way, my whole day off kind of went away.  So here's hoping there are a few more days off in November.  Let me just take some time today to work out next month's schedule...

THE PLOT: Venomous spiders get exposed to a noxious chemical that causes them to grow to monumental proportions. 

AFTER: What year was this film made?  2002?  Yeah, that tracks, since the big motivating fear that drives the plot is toxic waste.  We're storing toxic waste in underground mines, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  Actually one barrel falls off a truck and polllutes a bog, and this creates slightly larger radioactive crickets, and this would only be a problem if somebody were to collect the crickets and feed them to the predaory spiders in his pet store.  Which of course is exactly what happens.

The pet-store owner is played by Tom Noonan, who I happen to have met in real life.  If you're not aware, he played a serial killer in "Manhunter", the first film with Hannibal Lecter in it.  He's also gone back to the thriller genre several times, in "Last Action Hero" and the "12 Monkeys" TV show, often cast as a villain because of the way he looks.  But he's a very nice man, we both recorded voices for the same animated film and we were roommates for a few days during a Sundance Festival.  Again, he was nothing but friendly to me, but you try getting to sleep when the guy who played the "Tooth Fairy" killer is sleeping right...over...there...  The sheriff/mother character doesn't want her son hanging out with the pet store owner because he's creepy and he keeps spiders for pets - I'm on her side, I think, but also because kids shouldn't be hanging out after school with any adults their parents don't know.  Just saying, there were parents who let their kids hang out with Michael Jackson and they thought everything was fine - and he had a whole zoo in his yard.

Anyway, the pet store owner becomes the spiders' first victim, after they get all hopped up on the toxic waste but before they grow to Unusual Size.  The people who keep spiders as pets will also tell you they're perfectly safe, that they won't bite a person unless they're provoked.  OK, fine, but just to be on the safe side, I'm going to avoid them, OK?  Because I can't communicate to a spider that I'm no threat to them.  I realize that I'm like planet-sized compared to most spiders, but still, I'm not taking any chances.  There was a spider in my living room about two months ago, a tiny one, and it was walking across the ceiling. It would move about six inches, then drop down on its filament about a foot, then climb back up.  Again, move six inches, drop down, climb back up - but each time it got a little closer to me.  Eventually it was right above where I sit on my recliner, and it started descending - Jesus, has it been sizing me up all this time?  Does that spider think I don't see it, and it's somehow going to web me up and live off my blood for the rest of its natural life?  I was willing to let it be, but if it was going to drop right on me, then it had to die. I hate to kill anything larger than an ant, but I need to be able to watch my movies in peace, and I can't do that if a spider is stalking me. 

About five years ago we had a big spider on our front porch, I mean, it must have been Australian or something, it was the size where it started to look more like a crab than a spider.  It would pick a different spot each day and spin a web between the poles that hold up our awning, and in a way it was just nice to know where it was each day, so I could avoid that spot on the porch.  Again, I try to just live and let live, it's one of God's creatures and all that.  But when it built a web that blocked off the front door, well, then I couldn't help but feel that it was out to get me. It spent all day building that web over the door, thinking it was going to catch ME in it when I got home.  Sure, there's a metal grate over the door that opens OUT, which would destroy the web before I could walk through it, but I wouldn't expect the spider to figure that out.  Since it was the size where it would have been difficult for me to kill (both physically and ethically) we had to wait for it to go up to the light fixture above the door, my wife then hit the light with a broom handle, and when the spider dropped down on a filament I caught it in an empty peanut container.  I screwed the lid on and walked it two blocks to a cemetery, where I quickly opened the lid and dropped the container there.  I apologize for littering, I apologize for moving a wild animal to where it would be someone else's problem, I even apologize to the spider on the off-chance it had a peanut allergy.  But I needed it to be GONE so I could get on with my life.  Anyway this was about a month before Halloween in 2018 so maybe it went on to build some webs that decorated the cemetery for the season. 

Of course, when the spiders are bigger than people are, it's a whole different ball game.  The movie does its best to throw in a little bit of knowledge about the different kind of spiders seen here - there are orb-weavers, jumping spiders, trapdoor spiders, Tiger Wolf spiders, spitting spiders and one big ol' tarantula named Tank.  Probably the only town residents who even care are the now-deceased pet shop owner and the nerdy kid who hung out with him.  It might have been a nice touch if this kid's knowledge ended up being the key to defeating the spiders, but the movie chose not to go this way.  Once in a while the kid's intel is important, like he knows that spiders react to noise and vibrations, but overall this wasn't that helpful.  Mainly because at the size they grew to, all of these spiders were deadly to humans, either through their venom or their webbing or just plain eating the humans outright.  So any distinction between venomous or non-venomous was a moot point, as this Arizona town was just full of walking snacks for them.

In the middle of it all is that family with the nerdy kid - mom's the town sheriff and her daughter is the town's "bad girl", also in the mix is Chris McCormick, who comes back into town after ten years away, his father ran the mine and he's the one who told the sheriff her husband was cheating on her, and he'd love to express his feelings for her, but thanks to the spiders it's really not the time.  Also his father owned the town mine, which for ONCE this month isn't a gateway for demons to come through, but it does get filled up with giant spiders, so there's that. There's also a bumbling deputy, a local conspiracy theory radio DJ and a corrupt mayor who supported the now-abandoned mall which then became the toxic waste dump that started all this trouble. 

Location scouting is a powerful thing - this film shot in and around Glendale, Arizona, which provided an old mining town location (Superior, AZ), a ranch where ostriches could be raised, and also an abandoned mall in need of demolition.  I hope some location scout got a nice bonus for finding all of the things the movie needed within a short distance of each other.  Sometimes the plot drives the location and sometimes it's the other way around, and by that I mean having a mine filled with methane gas right near a mall that you could explode without consequences seemed like an ideal fit for an explosive climax that could also neatly solve that spider problem.

The problem here, though, is that there's really no third act to the story, there's barely even a second act.  The majority of the film is the same thing, over and over - this person sees a big spider, they're shocked, they try to fight the spider, they lose.  On to the next person, they see a big spider - and so on until we get near the end of the movie.  It's like if the movie was just one big car chase, you'd probably get tired of that pretty quick - same goes for repetitive arach-attacks.  

But hey, if you're worn down by the usual horror films this October, you're tired of ghosts and zombies and witches and creepers and you want to FEEL something again, you could do a lot worse than this one.  Spiders are universally hated and nearly everybody is afraid of them (I haven't done the research, just a gut feeling here) so you're bound to at least have a visceral reaction to the effects work here.  

My link to tomorrow's film is a little bit suspect - usually I only go by the IMDB credits, but they're not always sufficient for my purposes.  I'm going to rely on another source, which tells me that a certain noted voice actor performed the sounds of Consuela, the giant female orb weaver spider, and also that he did similar vocal effects in tomorrow's film.  I'll explain, I promise. 

Also starring David Arquette (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Kari Wuhrer (last seen in "Higher Learning"), Scott Terra, Doug E. Doug (last seen in "Mo' Better Blues"), Rick Overton (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Leon Rippy (last seen in "The Color Purple"), Matt Czuchry, Jay Arlen Jones (last seen in "The Patriot"), Eileen Ryan (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Riley Smith (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Matt Holwick, Jane Edith Wilson (last seen in "Catch Me If You Can"), Jack Moore (last seen in "Welcome to the Rileys"), Roy Gaintner, Don Champlin, John Christopher Storey (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), David Earl Waterman, Tom Noonan (last seen in "Seraphim Falls"), with the voice of Frank Welker (last heard in "Scooby-Doo".

RATING: 5 out of 10 missing pets