Noirvember Watch: Deadline at Dawn (1946)

Watched:  11/04/2025

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Director:  Harold Clurman

I know a tiny smidge about the Group Theatre in New York in the pre-WWII era, and have made a few connections over the years.  And so it was that I saw Clifford Odets' name come up during the opening credits as the screenwriter, and I got a rough idea of the film that was about to unspool.  Odets was an actor who participated in the Group Theatre movement before finding his footing as a writer - in fact, the writer upon whom the Coen Bros. based the titular character in Barton Fink.

So while Criterion included this movie in with "Blackout Noir", as in "people who lost time and are trying to recover what happened", my attention shifted to the usual social issues and naturalism that I expected to populate the film.  Curiously, the film is also directed by Harold Clurman, one of the Group Theatre directors - in his sole film directing credit.  Methinks it did not go well.

The major spoiler I'll drop here at the beginning is that this movie seems like a wandering mess until the finale slam dunks everything you've seen before, tying together themes, plot elements and character motivation that has seemed... wandering at best.  Honestly, tip of the hat to that end, which is how I'll remember the film.  

Actor Diane Ladd Merges With The Infinite

I first came across Diane Ladd - at least saying "I know that actress is named Diane Ladd" - when I rented Wild at Heart in high school.  And that is one hell of an introduction to any actor.

Over the years, of course she's shown up in all sorts of things I've seen.  World's Fastest Indian, figuring out she's in Christmas Vacation, Something Wicked This Way Comes, etc...  She also is the mother of Laura Dern, with whom she appeared in several movies in addition to Wild at Heart.  

Here's to remembering Ms. Ladd and sharing condolences with her family.

Noirvember Watch: Winchester '73 (1950)

Watched:  11/03/2025

Format:  Criterion Disc

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Anthony Mann

I don't think I've seen Winchester '73 (1950) since Jamie and I rented it circa 1998 when a Hollywood Video opened near us, and unlike Blockbuster, Hollywood prided itself on having a section for older films.  And the nice thing about that was that they had limited shelf-space, so if they had it in, the movie was pretty solid.  

The movie often gets mentioned in the discussion around "Western Noir", and seeing it now, I can absolutely see why.  It doesn't hurt that director Anthony Mann rewrote the film to better suit his interests, and his prior films included noir classics like Side Street, Border Incident, T-Men and plenty of others.  At any rate, Mann was familiar with putting a lead through the ringer and understanding that they can have an irrational obsession and still be a compelling protagonist.  

In this case, all we know is that Jimmy Stewart is playing Lin McAdam, who comes to Dodge City looking for Dutch Henry Brown, and it's a vendetta.  In Dodge City, he and his partner (Millar Mitchell) have to hand in their guns just as they come across Brown, also without a gun.  A lengthy shooting competition for a prized Winchester '73 rifle takes place with McAdam winning, but Brown steals the gun and makes off.

Soon, the gun is changing hands from Brown to an Indian Trader to a chief on a warpath, to a cowardly would-be criminal.  It's great stuff.  And along the way, we see early appearances of Rock Hudon as a war chief and Tony Curtis as a young cavalry soldier.  

Stewart's obsession will be reflected in 6 years in Johns Wayne and Ford's The Searchers, but here it feels like pure noir.  Millar Mitchell's sidekick is there to comment upon said obsession as well as keep our hero on the straight and narrow.  And even the ending, where our hero has accomplished his task (spoiler) sure feels like noir with Stewart looking haunted and having to realize even as he holds the female lead (Shelley Winters), he has no idea what to do now, or if the murder of his brother did anything at all to soothe the rage.

Yes, the movie co-stars Shelley Winters, and this may be the movie where she's totally fine.  At no time did I want to shoot her out of a cannon.  Dan Duryea shows up to add to the noir flavor and play Dan Duryea, even letting his hair flop in a scene.  God, he's an amazing asshole on screen.  It's amazing.*  Charles Drake plays "Steve", the world's greatest coward.  Character actors John McIntire and Jay C. Flippen are used exceedingly well.  

It's also shot (in monochrome) in the Tucson area, and makes excellent use of the western landscape.  Gorgeous stuff.  

I guess this movie was a sort of career-saver for Stewart, and allowed him to start playing more complicated roles.  I need to check out his re-teaming with Anthony Mann on The Naked Spur.  But I certainly think of Stewart as a guy who can and did do everything in his work, from Vertigo to Harvey.  I mean, come on.  

Anyway - I kind of loved it.  On the disc there's actualy a commentary track with James Stewart and I want to give it a listen ASAP.  

*I would pay $400 to watch a movie that was just 1950 Duryea and 1950 Richard Widmark insulting each other

Hallmark Holiday/ Paul Watch: A Newport Christmas (2025)

Watched:  11/02/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dustin Rikert

Pal PaulT worked behind the scenes on A Newport Christmas (2025), and had nice things to say about the production, so I wanted to get to this movie when it aired.  I did not expect it to air in early November, but I have a broken foot, anyway, and had been laid up all weekend, so here we go.

From time-to-time, Hallmark's willingness to indulge in Christmas Magic has included Time Travel of the Somewhere in Time variety - people falling in love after one of them gets time-shifted, sometimes someone from modern times going into the past, and sometimes someone from the past coming to the here-and-now.  This movie is the latter, with a Newport, Rhode Island heiress of 1905 coming to 2025.

I was messaging Paul a bit as the movie rolled along asking him questions and I did mention to him that it was very odd that this Hallmark Christmas movie had some of the tightest time travel logic I'd seen on display in a time travel movie in a while.  

At Hallmark, it's been Christmas Since October 17th

In case you were wondering, we're already Counting Down to Christmas over at the Hallmark Channel.  

Back in September we shared Hallmark's forewarnings, and the schedule, as it was then published.  What it didn't indicate was that Hallmark was dipping into its now endless stash of movies and that, as near as I can tell, they went into Christmas rotation on two of the three Hallmark channels on October 17th with the arrival of a new seasons of The Mistletoe Murders.  But, for days beforehand, they had been playing Christmas stuff, but I didn't really pay it much mind.

For those who don't check in on these things, Hallmark moves around when it goes all in on the Christmas season, and in many years refuses to stick to the internationally favored Mariah Carey Calendar, which declares 12:00 AM on November the First as when we can begin prepping for the holidays.  

Final Hallo-Watch: Frankenhooker (1990)

Watched:  10/31/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Frank Henenlotter

So, I wrapped up Halloween with Frankenhooker (1990) a movie I've somehow not seen before in the past 35 years, but been aware of since at least 1993.

Wow.  They truly do not make them like this anymore.

I was never a Troma guy, but my continual viewing of USA Up All Night in the 1990's should be a sign of what I will tune to on a Friday night.  I am happy to go in for questionable taste.  I am a person of deeply questionable taste, if this blog is any indication.

My favorite bit was the revived Elizabeth storming around Manhattan spouting prior dialog and knocking people over.  That's just good stuff.  I guess Patty Mullen was a Penthouse pet who barely did any movies, but she really went for it and she's really funny.

Anyway, the movie is kinda exactly what I expected in some ways, but vacillated between truly hilarious and "okay, I get it.  We can move on." in the ways of these kinds of movies.  What I will say is that the end was *chef's kiss*.  Glad I finally watched it.

JLC Hallo-Watch: Halloween H20 - 20 Years Later (1998)

Watched:  10/30/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steve Miner

This movie has a "and introducing Josh Hartnett" credit at the beginning, and knowing what we'd soon know about Hartnett's quality as a lead and Hollywood hunk...  it's absolutely inexplicable that he has one of the dumbest haircuts in cinema.  I was alive and a young adult in 1998.  Nobody had this haircut, this was not a haircut I literally saw on anyone then, before then, or since. It's somewhere between the male version of the Karen/ Kate Gosselin haircut, like he just woke up, like maybe he deeply offended a barber, or someone pulled a prank on him or her took pinking shears to his own head.  

"...so you're saying there's a chance?"

It's so odd, in part because the hair changes moment by moment in the film, like they really couldn't manage it.  It required some weird trimming, and in some shots it's one way, and some shots it's not, and he just looks insane through the whole movie.

The haircut is just a minor indicator of what's happening with Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998), a shockingly unnecessary movie and a reminder of why sequels and horror movies have such a bum rap with many critics.  It is predictable, it's not enough and too much, doesn't seem to know when Halloween occurs or think the holiday matters in the Halloween franchise.   

Hallo-Franken-Watch: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Watched:  10/30/2025

Format:  4K

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

What's not to like in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)?

Yes, if you come in expecting to be genuinely scared, that won't happen.  If you want to see something weird, uncanny, funny, touching, cheer-worthy, wildly subversive and camp (a word we throw around a lot but don't correctly use), Bride is your movie.  

This movie is about so many things.  

Rather than have someone directly speak to the audience in this installment, we recreate the Percy and Mary Shelley (nee Godwin) and Lord Byron conversations that famously spawned Frankenstein.  Mary Shelley is posed as the one explaining the hubris of what we're to see, as the scene echoes what will come later with Dr.'s Frankenstein and Pretorious.  

Hallo-Franken-Watch: Frankenstein (1931)

Watched:  10/28/2025

Format:  4K

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  James Whale

As longtime readers know, every year I watch Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) as we enter the spooky season.  

Since last Halloween, I picked up the first film in 4K, curious about how a film I know as much for its 1930's black and white grain and the hiss on the soundtrack as I know any other aspect of the movie would present in the format.  Would they clean it up, or if would they leave those artifacts intact?  

The answer is: aside from one shot, I highly recommend this 4K transfer.  There's some hiss and some grain, but especially that hiss familiar to early sound films has been reduced to a less noticeable white noise.  The grain is still there, more or less.  I was replaying it with a commentary track (that was great) and walked close to the TV and it is WILD to see what the pixels are doing with this black and white.

I didn't pick up any weird AI mucking with the picture, and it just mostly looked like a very clean print, with many of the minute defects corrected.  In one shot, an item in the foreground is kind of wobbly, like the algorithm didn't know what to do with it.  But I'll leave that for you to discover (though I'll never not see it now).

Happy Birthday, Elsa Lanchester

 

Today marks the birthday of Elsa Lanchester, born this day in 1902.  

Lanchester was born in England, participated in bohemian and cutting edge theater of her day before arriving in the United States with husband Charles Laughton.  

She played parts large and small, and is by far best remembered for her portrayal of both Mary Shelley and The Bride in The Bride of Frankenstein, in which she has no speaking lines as the Bride (but several as Shelley) and appears for maybe seven or eight minutes of the film.  And, yet, a pop culture icon.

It's almost like James Whale was trying to say something here....

Hallo-Watch: Werewolves (2024)

Watched:  10/25/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Steven C. Miller

On paper, I totally get what Werewolves (2024) was doing.  We're going to do The Warriors' run across a city plagued by monsters.  And the monster that makes the most sense to run from, without spending a lot of time worrying about the set-up, is werewolves.  We all get werewolves.  Moon.  Roar.  Kill kill.

It's basically an excuse to have a straight hour of nothing but action sequences as Frank Grillo and Katrina Law shoot their way across the city.  What's interesting is that it's a movie completely devoid of character moments, themes or story.  It is just a series of things happening.  Which is really a weird way to do things, because it *looks* like a movie in many ways.  It just functions more like...  a horror action screen saver.

Initially I was like "huh, this is like a SyFy movie but with good actors and a budget", but it's actually a Bizarro SyFy movie.  SyFy movies are mostly people standing around talking because they can't afford to do their bad FX.  Or driving from place to place looking mildly cross.  And then you get a giant CGI shark and snake at the end.  SyFy movies pull from the Banal Character Development Playbook and run through the motions of how this giant shark attacking people ties to their personal struggle.  But in the case of Werewolves, ain't no one got time for that.  What we do have are several practical werewolf suits, one detailed werewolf head we'll see in profile about 55 times during the movie, and Frank Grillo.  And shooting up sets, fighting and explosions.  And no real character beats.

June Lockhart Merges With The Infinite

June Lockhart, born during the silent era of film and when Calvin Coolidge was president of the US, and who had her first credit in 1938 (the same year Superman debuted and Orson Welles freaked people out with a radio show) has passed at 100.

What's crazy is that Lockhart was in a *ton* of big movies in smaller roles right out of the gate.  I'll be watching, say, Meet Me in St. Louis, and there goes Lockhart, who has such a particular look (twinkly eyes and a huge smile never hurt anyone in Hollywood), you know it's her.

So, she was working with Judy Garland, Gary Cooper, Joan Leslie, Red Skelton, Lana Turner...  I mean...  She saw some stuff.  

Lockhart is most famous to folks of my generation and the prior generation as Ruth Martin, the matriarch of the second family featured in the popular Lassie program (the first kid was Jeff Miller, the second was Timmy Martin).  Or, they know her as Maureen Robinson, the matriarch of that space-faring family in Lost in Space.  

Lockhart's last appearance was in the 2016 film The Remake, but she had done voicework for the Netflix Lost In Space reboot.  The last thing I saw her in was a recent viewing of Holiday in Handcuffs from 2007, but which I watched in 2022.  

Here's to Ms. Lockhart, and a heck of a career and life.

Crampton Hallo-Watch: From Beyond (1986)

Watched:  10/25/2025

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  Third?

Director:  Stuart Gordon

Pal @iffywizardry watched From Beyond (1986) as part of his horror-a-day Halloween watching, and I decided, yeah, I wanted to re-watch it this year.  Because who doesn't need more Barbara Crampton in their movie-watching, really?

I wrote this up just last year, so no real need to re-litigate.  If you read that brief write-up, I kinda underplayed the push the movie makes about the pineal-gland stuff and madness and sex intertwining.  And it's right there.  And leads to the most famous scene in the movie, which sure made an impression on a generation of horror fans.  

But, yeah, this is a movie about a bunch of people with sexual hang-ups, and very little in the way of discussing it, and instead manifesting as weird shit.  And it's kind of great.  

It's a movie with transdimensional monsters, a warped villain, and a guy eating brains.  What's not to like?

Anyhoo, like Re-Animator, this is an oddly perfect movie hitting all the right notes and gets better every time you watch it, which for genre film I think is *the* defining sign of greatness, whether we're talking horror or The Third Man.    

I would pick this up on 4K, but it's currently $47.  Which... come on, man.

Hallo-Watch: The Crimson Cult (1968)

Watched:  10/24/2025

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vernon Sewell

The past few years I had seen a few stills of Barbara Steele in this movie, and it was enough to make me wonder what American International Pictures was up to with this one.  This movie exists with a few names, but I found it under the title The Crimson Cult (1968) on Amazon, but it also is known by The Curse of the Crimson Altar.   

And who wouldn't be curious about whatever is happening here?

it's a living

Our movie is about a very British alpha-male who is an antiques dealer whose brother sends him some items at his shop, where our lead is very handsy with his employee, when he learns his brother didn't return from a trip as planned.  He picks up and heads to an old mansion in a small town where he first comes across people reveling in the way of the swinging 60's that is supposed to look wild but looks like a room of people in need of an intervention.  

Upstairs, just chilling, he comes across Christopher Lee who is like "I've never heard of your brother.  But why not just stay here at the mansion with my hot niece and her drugs and booze?"  Our Hero does, which:  fair.

He meets a professor, played by Boris Karloff, who is the foremost authority on local history and seems to take their local witchery stuff very seriously, indeed.  And *hates* that Our Hero is unimpressed with his selection of brandy.

Our Hero goes to a sort of lo-fi pre-Wicker Man burning of an effigy that is part of a town's ritual around a witch.

Our Hero, while manhandling the niece occasionally, lazily looks for his brother, who he, 2/3rds of the way through the movie, recalls used a nom-de-voyage, and suddenly everyone remembers him.  Sigh.

The movie has some really fun bits.  All of the cult-dream sequences are just gold, and it's the only place we get to see Barbara Steele in her glory as the blue-tinted witch.  There's other general wackiness, secret passages, etc...  but the story just feels like it was a total afterthought.

It is Karloff's last movie, and he's clearly mentally 100% there, and physically declining.  Which, fair enough, he was born in 1887, so by 1968, he's not a kid.  And, in a twist, he is NOT evil in this movie.  He's just crotchety.  Which we don't know til the last 1/4th of the film.  

Anyway, the movie is *fine*.  But the highlight is 100% the cult sequences, which are just fun.  (This is not an endorsement of witchy cults, but it looks like a good Saturday night activity.)

Hallo-Watch: John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987)

Watched:  10/24/2025

Format:  Simon's 4K

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Carpenter

As I said to Simon 3/4ths of the way through this movie, "I would have loved this in high school".  

That isn't to say I didn't like it *now* on my first viewing.  I did.  I just never got around to it, which is kind of a bad call with John Carpenter.  

Once again Carpenter tells a story about a group of people stuck in a single location as things go sideways (Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing, etc...) but this time he's getting metaphysical.  

Donald Pleasance plays a Catholic priest who learns a secret Catholic sect has been keeping the world's biggest secret.  Apparently they have a cosmic horror buried under a church in LA, but they need SCIENCE.  

To this end, they recruit a world famous physicist and his PhD students to come in and take a look at what they've got (a cylinder spinning and full of green liquid), and scientists from a few other disciplines.  They all set up shop in an old church, and begin to try to sort out what's happening.

Team, what's happening isn't good.  

What follows is a bit of cosmic horror that plays out over about two days inside the church.  And I am not here to spoil it.

Now, the movie has some issues.  I think they could have cut off the first ten minutes and we'd lose very little.  We could have had more of the great characterization we got in other Carpenter films with large casts like The Thing and Escape From New York.   Someone could explain who was keeping all 700 candles going in the basement of the church.   And I kept wanting to know why the movie wasn't about a school like Georgetown that is both high end and is also a Jesuit school.  We could have had a nice connection there, but it also might have undercut the idea Carpenter had about faith in both religion and science failing in the face of horror.

And that's the bit that I would have dug in high school.  Gimme that "your much beloved rules aren't going to help you now" jazz, and back then, especially peering into the unknown.  

I do wish Carpenter had found more ways to tie in the quantum physics conversation into what was going on with our cosmic problem.  It's okay that it kind of doesn't, but so much time is spent worrying about Schroedinger's cat and the nature of reality once we're talking particle physics, I can make some loose connections narratively, but it would have been cool to see those things tie directly together, even with some hand waving.

Anyway, I'm super bummed I took so long to get to this one, but it sure feels like a great movie to team up with The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness.  

Fun fact!  That's a young Dirk Blocker in this movie, who would go on to play Hitchcock on Brooklyn 99.  

Hallo-Watch: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Watched:  10/22/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Eli Craig

Ha!  I had zero idea what this was.  I just googled "Halloween Horror Comedy" and this came up on every list, so I gave it a spin.

I don't want to spoil this for anyone, but I'll say...  if you think the first twenty minutes are a little awkward or slow, hang in there.  There are absolute looney tunes moments in this that had me laughing so hard I missed the next minute.  Maybe that's me!  But I get why people love this movie.  

It's not perfect, but for a movie that knows "okay, you get it, we're out" just under the 90 minute mark, it's kinda ideal.  

Hallo-Watch: The Exorcist (1973)

Watched:  10/21/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  Third or Fourth

Director:  William Friedkin

I put on The Exorcist (1973) before Jamie went to bed, and she immediately asked and then answered the question I'd asked myself.  When had I last seen this?  She informed me I'd shown her the movie circa 1998, so that is likely when I last saw it.  Which is wild.  I quite like The Exorcist.  But it is a journey.   It's not a movie I put on without wanting to watch the whole thing.  Obviously.

I have no notes.  I think this is one of those movies that is beyond comment in 2025, and has already been talked to death.  I wouldn't change a damn thing about this movie, and I have no questions about it.  

JLC HalloWatch: Halloween (1978)

Watched:  10/20/2025

Format:  4K disc

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  John Carpenter

I had been a bit dissatisfied with my Halloween horror movie viewing and decided to put on a favorite to cleanse the palette.  

Also, I don't always feel like an upgrade to 4K is necessary if I have a BluRay, but somehow I'd made it to 2025 without a BluRay of Halloween (1978), and I have to say, a 4K disc was the right choice.  The picture is phenomenal, the blacks and shadowing, which are key to the whole movie, are rendered perfectly (on my aging Samsung TV) and the image looks great without anything I detected as artificial or weird in the 4K transfer/ clean-up.

Halloween probably seems slow to modern audiences used to getting carried along on a rocket ride from the start of the credits, but I think for this movie to work, you need the sharp shock of the opener and then the hard gear shift to suburban normality as Michael Myers circles closer and closer, slowly building up the speed until we land in the red zone.  

That is far from a new observation, but what do you want from a free internet site?

Hallo-Watch: Werewolves Within (2021)

Watched:  10/19/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Josh Ruben

I recall Werewolves Within (2021) coming out right on the heels of The Wolf of Snow Hollow, a Jim Cummings film I highly recommend.  And, wanting to let Werewolves Within breathe and not draw comparisons between two movies about guys in uniforms being asked to hunt down werewolves, I punted, and then forgot about this movie until it came by on my Hulu menu.

A sort of comedy/ horror/ murder mystery - it's a movie set up to keep you guessing in a locked-room mystery where there may or may not be a werewolf.

SPOILERS

Hallo-Watch: Suitable Flesh (2023)

Watched:  10/18/2025

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joe Lynch

Written by Dennis Paoli, who wrote Re-Animator, From Beyond, Bodysnatchers, and Castle Freak, which Stuart Gordon would film, Suitable Flesh (2023), directed by Joe Lynch, carries on the same tradition of adapting H.P. Lovecraft and creating a weird, off-kilter, occasionally hilarious horror film that was what I was looking for after a few Halloween horror movies had left me cold.

Heather Graham plays a psychiatrist associated with good ol' Miskatonic University who is in a padded room, speaking with her fellow doctor and friend, played by Barbara Crampton.  Graham relates the tale of how she was visited by a young man (Judah Lewis) who has found her as she wrote the book on out of body experiences.  And, boy howdy, is he, Asa, having them. He claims a man, his father who is not his father, is trying to steal his body.