Tag Archives: Hoopla

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte

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There’s this ’80s song by Kim Carnes called Bette Davis Eyes, which I had always previously assumed was about “her”[1] being super attractive in a golden age of Hollywood kind of way. It is not a song for which I have paid extremely close attention to the lyrics. But I think I will have to the next time I hear it, because after seeing her[2] turn as Charlotte Hollis, I have a very different impression of what Bette Davis eyes actually are.

The podcast randomization was normal people as the scare, and period piece as the style. And, okay, technically the first 10 minutes were in a different period, but I think it is fair to say that a movie made in 1964 and set in 1964 for the remaining two hours is not truly a period piece. Oh well, they’ve missed before, they’ll miss again. It’s not a big deal when the movies are good, or at least fun. And Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is definitely good, albeit not as good as it would have been if the one sentence description on Hoopla hadn’t been a massive spoiler. Oh well for that.

So the deal is, Charlotte is the daughter of the guy who owns the Louisiana southern gothic plantation town where they live and that is named after him. Well, probably after his daddy, or his granddaddy. Whatever. In 1927, Charlotte is about to elope with a married man, only her daddy found out and put a stop to it. So he breaks up with her at a big garden party, and next thing you know, his hand and head are chopped off and with a meat cleaver, Charlotte is covered in his blood, and the murder was never solved, and it’s 37 years later, and Charlotte is the old crazy lady in a decaying mansion who kids sing rhymes about because even though she got away with it, everyone knows she did it, oh and also they’re about to tear down her mansion to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so she asks her cousin to come help her out of this jam. Because with daddy long dead and her particular social circumstances, Hollisport doesn’t really belong to the Hollises anymore.

The rest of the movie is Charlotte slowly going crazy as time and circumstance and the people around her gradually close in on the last tattered shreds of her sanity. It’s a hell of a character study, and even if the best acting in the 1960s does not hold a candle to the best acting today, it still runs rings around average acting today. Plus, I’ll always be a fan of psychological thrillers from the point of view of the crazy person, because it’s impossible to know what’s actually going on. And that is my favorite way to watch a movie, not actually knowing what comes next. (Which I sort of did in this case, but also sort of did not. And that in itself is an impressive piece of storytelling, when even spoilers can be subverted.)

[1] The her in question regarding the line, “she’s got Bette Davis eyes”
[2] Bette Davis’s, I mean

Godmonster of Indian Flats

There were actually several episodes in a row of my horror podcast that covered movies I had already seen, which was a nice change of pace. But then they got (via the scare being “animal” and the theme being “Western”) to a movie nobody has ever seen before, Godmonster of Indian Flats. This is one of those movies that has two plots that have nothing to do with each other, and the payoff is in seeing how everything comes together in a thunderous crescendo.[1]

In the first story, some kid is awkwardly introduced to a town near Reno called “The Comstock”, a goldmine boom and then bust and then historically recreated town that might even be real for all I know, so he can get beat up and then rescued by a scientist and then exposed to some weird mutant sheep embryo, so we can follow the sci-fi horror portion of the movie. The second, and far weightier by volume, story is about a conspicuously black dude who represents a mining magnate who wants to buy up parts of the town and reopen the mines, in direct opposition to the “this place is a historical recreation now” ethos the mayor(?) is espousing.

The first story proceeds with lots of science talk mostly and very little plot or character advancement of any kind. The second story is an increasingly (but subtly) racist game of cat and mouse between the buyer and the town, where nothing is as it seems if you’re the buyer character, but also everything is exactly as it seems if you’re the person watching the movie. (Which, by the way, you should not be. Big mistake.)

The climax of the second story kicks off the actual start of the first story, but then it quickly fizzles out after a big lassoing demonstration, and now we’re at the thunderous crescendo where everything comes together, and it… well, it’s not fair to say it fizzles out again, because nothing this inexplicable is a fizzle. Basically, the big reveal about what’s really been going on in the first story happens, and then people react to it in ways that first make sense, and then make no sense at all, and then I cannot even figure out what is supposed to be happening, and the whole time the movie’s villain is laughing maniacally and monologuing about how inevitable his (ie, capitalism’s) victory is and always was, and then there’s an explosion, and then the movie ends, bad guys firmly victorious and good guys in total disarray.

I just don’t even know.

Also, if it seems like I basically forgot to talk about the mutant sheep monster that was the whole reason I saw this? If it seems like that to you, reading, imagine how it seemed to me, watching, when the movie also basically forgot this seemingly integral plot element.

[1] I’m actually stealing from my future self here, as it will [I anticipate, at least] be a better metaphor for the thing I’m reading right now.

Pánico en el Transiberiano

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I have learned about a new streaming service funded by libraries. My local does not offer Kanopy, but apparently they offer Hoopla. Which is nice, because the last two movies [that I haven’t seen] presented by my horror movie podcast were both available on said network. Thanks, Carrollton Public Library!

Anyway, the randomness this time was Hammer Studios[1] crossed with aliens, which is a hard sell since Hammer makes mostly movies with draculas. In fact, I’m being informed that this is not a Hammer Studios production, and my podcast people done screwed up. But in their defense, the movie stars both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, so the only thing missing (aside from a dracula and/or some of its brides) was a couple of gallons of just enormously bright red paint. I can understand, when you’re desperate for a match, overlooking a little thing like not technically made by Hammer, if almost everything else lines up, y’know? They were in a real fix.

So, Christopher Lee is a paleontologist I guess, and he’s just dug up a maybe missing link in China, and now he’s on a train back to civilization with his find. But Peter Cushing wants to see inside Lee’s comically overprotected trunk in the storage compartment, which sets off an unlikely chain of events when the thing in the trunk is not as dead as previously believed, and is furthermore[2] a visitor from the depths of space and not the missing link at all! …sort of.

Soon undead alien apes and countesses and Rasputins and Hammer Studios talents and Tellys Savalas are running up and down the train, trying to solve the mystery without getting their eyes boiled out of their heads and/or without being caught and exposed as the alien. If Horror Express were wildly popular, one could easily imagine a hidden roles boardgame being developed from the IP. But my point is, hijinx ensue as they necessarily must have, until there is eventually a final showdown for the fate of humanity. (I mean, probably? It was after all just the one alien.)

Still, good times. I especially liked the sci-fi backstory,

[1] out of London, although the movie was made in Spain, and furthermore my brief research indicates this was not in fact a Hammer Studios production at all, and great, now I have to talk about this outside the footnote.
[2] I would consider this a spoiler, but as an alien was necessary to this being the movie I watched, the cat was kind of already out of the bag.