Noirvember Watch: Saigon (1947)

Watched:  11/27/2025

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  First

Director:  Leslie Fenton

I was pretty psyched to see a new-to-me movie starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.  And one that was set in a post-WWII Saigon.  I was very curious how they'd handle the dynamics of the French colonialism, Japanese occupation, rise of Communism, etc...  

Well, the answer is, none of that comes up.  In fact, I don't think there's a single Vietnamese person in this movie.  That's... wild.

I *do* like the basic idea of the plot.  

Three Army Air Corp soldiers in post-War China are getting discharged.  One of them doesn't know he has only 2-3 months to live due to an ailment (cancer?  something else?) but will likely just die suddenly.  So, the other two decide to show him the time of his life, which they can do if they take a lucrative but shady gig flying a businessman from Shanghai to Saigon.  

But when they go to get the plane and fly him out, the cops stop the businessman, while his secretary, Veronica Lake, jumps in the plane and they fly off.  The plane crashes in Vietnam, and they make their way to Saigon.  Along the way, the dying man falls for Lake (reasonable) while she spars with Alan Ladd.

Oh, and she has a briefcase full of cash.

And, as Lake humors the dying guy, she and Ladd start to fall for each other.

Anyway, it's super weird.  They treat it as if everyone in Vietnam is French?  Or vaguely European?  There's only one Asian person in the movie at the very beginning who sounds very Southern Californian.  

The movie is fine.  It'll never be a favorite, but when I was thinking "I don't think this is working", it kind of changed directions a few times and saved itself.  It fits into that "it's fine" category, but closer to "it's good".  But I just wasn't 100% on board.  But I maybe need to give it another shot.

Hallmark Holiday Watch: Holiday Touchdown - a Bills Love Story (2025)

Watched:  11/25/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dustin Rikert

So, for reasons beyond my understanding, the NFL has entered into an alliance with Hallmark to produce movies about super-fans of their teams falling in love at Christmas.  

In no way will this get repetitive after 32 movies.

Despite some real star-power (for Hallmark) the first movie was a complete mess.  And I expected more-of-same.

Holiday Touchdown: a Bills Love Story (2025) actually solved some of the issues of the first movie but then blew my mind by trying to create a sort of MCU of NFL-themed movies by showing the characters from the first movie in this one.  And the magical Santa is in this one mucking with people's lives.

The last movie had some star power with Diedrich Bader, Richard Riehle, Ed Begley Jr., Christine Ebersole, et al.  What it didn't really have was much actual representation by the Chiefs players.  

This one had Joey Pantoliano playing a version of himself as a wacky uncle.  Our stars are Woman (Holland Roden) and Man (Matthew Daddario, who I didn't know, but people keep fan-casting his sister as Wonder Woman, and... fair).  They're childhood friends and neighbors, and the running gag is everyone knows he's pining for Woman.

There's lot of Bills-specific humor which I vaguely get, and lots of regional-specific stuff, which did not lose me, but sure felt like them making sure we knew they were in Buffalo and not doing the usual "we filmed in Vancouver, but please believe this is Arizona" thing Hallmark will do.

The pair find out Joey Pants has been receiving gifts every year from an anonymous source, going back to when he was drafted and this same anonymous person also sent his family groceries and money.  The movie is them solving the mystery.  

Along the way, they fall in love, blah blah blah...  but there's also LOTS of Bills players and coaches and owners and whatnot.  And the main character is a project manager on the new stadium, so there's lots of discussion about that.  But none about how expensive tickets are supposed to be in the new stadium.

I dunno, like a lot of the new Hallmark movies, it's actually kind of funny.  Not gut-bustingly, but I had a chuckle or two.  It feels more like a sitcom than a Hallmark movie.  And that is not a complaint.  Anyway, they fixed a lot that didn't work in last year's offering.

Thanksgiving Watch: Squanto - a Warrior's Tale (1994)

Watched:  11/24/2025

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Xavier Koller

I don't know that I've ever seen a movie make me decide, while watching an uplifting story that's part of the well-worn self-mythologizing of America, that the hero is 100% wrong.  But that's where I landed with Squanto: a Warrior's Tale (1994).   

And maybe that's what director Xavier Koller truly felt we should think.  He's Swiss, not American, and based on the script Disney gave him, it really isn't a compelling argument that Squanto was right that what his fellow locals needed to do was put down their weapons.

Before we get rolling, I have not thought about the narrative of Squanto since I was probably eight years old and we had a children's book about his life, which I can safely say:  I do not remember anything from that book, just that Squanto helped keep the Native Americans and the Pilgrims from murdering each other which led to the first Thanksgiving.  I also vaguely remembered he was not part of any tribe.

As the movie starts, Squanto is having a good week.  He just married Irene Bedard, which is a check in the win column.  But no sooner do they go for a lovers' leisurely stroll than he sees an early 17th Century British ship pulling up to his beach.  He's promptly kidnapped by the Brits who take him back to England, along with a warrior from the neighboring tribe.   

Doc Watch: Selena y Los Dinos (2025)

Watched:  11/24/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Isabel Castro

Living in Texas in the early 90's, if you had your head up at all, you heard about Selena.  While I didn't listen to Tejano or Cumbia, she'd become so big that a dumb Anglo kid like myself heard Bidi Bidi Bom Bom somewhere along the way, and I admit that I probably paid more attention to Selena because she was very pretty with a Colgate smile.

I could tell you pretty much exactly when I figured out who Selena was from the cover of her album Entre A Mi Mundo.  The cover art was everywhere.  

Candidly, in the 1990's and now, the names of most Tejano acts were just not known by Anglos and English speakers.  But Selena was rapidly breaking down that particular divide through sheer force of scale - she was selling out the Astrodome, something reserved for the biggest acts on the planet - and wildly popular local acts like ZZ Top.  

As a Texan whose first language was English, it seemed like Selena was about to cross-over to a larger audience the second she put out a record in English (see: Shakira).

But then, in 1995, at the age of 23, Selena was killed.  

As popular as she was at the time of her death, it's very hard to quantify the scope and duration of the public mourning that spilled out.

Noirvember Watch: Ace in the Hole (1951)

Watched:  11/22/2025

Format:  Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Billy Wilder

If you ever wanted to crush the human soul with a pair of slick mid-century movies, you could do worse than to schedule this movie alongside The Sweet Smell of Success.  

The movie probably seems a little over the top in some ways, but holy christ, you kind of know it's more accurate about our relationship with the media and how the media keeps us invested than any of us really want to admit.  

Kirk Douglas plays a talented journalist who has been run out of every decent newspaper on the East Coast.  He rolls into town in Albuquerque in a broken down car and takes a job at a small paper that insists he publish only the truth.  

A year later, he's sent to go cover a rattlesnake roundup but en route stumbles across an accident.  At a roadside shop and restaurant they find that across the way the owner of the place has gone into an old cave where he often finds Native American artifacts, and the place had collapsed on him.  Douglas smells a story, and calls it in.  It's the first time he's really been able to cut loose with some real sensationalism, and the story gets picked up by the wire.

"Hallmark Channel's Christmas Concert" (2019) might be the Hallmark Channel's Star Wars Holiday Special

This item does not appear on the IMDB for Ms. Lacey Chabert under "actor", but under "self" so I'd initially missed it.  But it popped up on Hallmark as an option, and I wasn't going to not watch it.  

So, what is it?

It's a bizarre artifact of where Hallmark was in 2019, I guess.  And the watchword for the whole show is "awkward".  There clearly was a lack of rehearsal time, and a spirit of "we're pros, we'll wing it" that doesn't play particularly well.  No one here is Bob Hope and keeping this on the rails.

The show is *not* exactly a concert, but kinda, sorta framed like one of those old-school Christmas specials where a celebrity pretends they're in their house.  Lacey Chabert is throwing a party where other Hallmark stars are her guests, but she's also acknowledging the camera (and sometimes awkwardly looking at it).  

One-by-one, a series of Hallmark stars come in, and then they each sing a Christmas standard in what I assume is not actually Chabert's livingroom and kitchen.  But it's not a set - I'm pretty sure that's a real house.  No set would be this poorly designed for television coverage.

Chabert Holiday Watch: Matchmaker Santa (2012)

Watched:  11/20/2025

Format:  UP Faith and Family

Viewing:  First

Director:  Davis S. Cass Sr.

Job: Baker

Location of story:  Somewhere in California?  Outside of San Francisco

new skill:  Elfing

Man:  Adam Mayfield

Job of Man:  Bitch Boy to a CEO

Goes to/ Returns to:  Goes to

Event:  Christmas tree lighting ceremony

Food:  Cookies

Editor's note: I was unable to find this movie during ChabertQuest2025, but saw it was now available on "UP Faith and Family", and so got a 7 day free trial.

So, new to me and not a Hallmark movie, exactly.  This movie is about a Santa who will stop at literally nothing to make sure Lacey Chabert and her boyfriend break up so that he may force her into a relationship with someone else.  Kris Kringle will bend the very laws of nature, create life, destroy roads...  

This Santa is mad with power.

Anyway, for a long time, and maybe still, a lot of the movies on Hallmark were technically independent movies.  I am unclear how it works now, but basically Hallmark would help fund movies in exchange for North American distribution.  But after X amount of time, these movies were back in the hands of the producers.  And so it was I now am enjoying a 7-day trial of the UP Faith and Family Network.

Part of how Hallmark had so many movies in the years where it seemed like a factory cranking out way too many movies, this was the trick.  Hallmark was essentially licensing very cheap indie movies, and part of them funding those movies was that Hallmark was given script approval for kicking in some percent of the film's budget.  

And, thus, the sameness of Hallmark.  They managed to pull off low-risk/ high-reward for years and people learned to write for them.

Thus, Matchmaker Santa (2012) is also, technically, Chabert's first Hallmark Christmas movie.  So, bit of trivia for you.

But you want to know about Santa and his unstoppable interest in getting people to hook up.

Netflix Watch: Trainwreck - Poop Cruise (2025) and Balloon Boy (2025)

Watched:  11/17/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  

I will never, ever get on a cruise ship.

No, but seriously, it's a minor miracle that no one died on this ship.  Or contracted some awful disease.  

What were the odds no one needed to be evacuated after the second day?  Pretty close to zero, and it sounds like that didn't have to happen.  

What's most wild, that the doc touches on but doesn't really ever explore, is how *fast* society breaks down predictably when the lights are off.  From public fornication to Bible studies breaking out.   It really is a testament to the crew that things felt enough under control that violence was contained.  

But, no, really.  I always assumed Carnival, etc... had emergency plans for this sort of thing, but they sure do not.  Fun!

The "Trainwreck" series of docs is pretty fascinating.  Little hour-long nuggets of "oh yeah, that disaster".  We also watched "Balloon Boy", which is just as frustrating to watch as you'd imagine.  If you have any radar for people who are both full of shit and people who think they can lie to you because they assume you're not as smart as they are, this is a doc about someone living neatly in that intersection.  

Also, everyone needs to get a better idea of how much helium you would need to lift a whole kid and still buffett around like that.  But I guess physics is not on your mind when you think a kid is whizzing through the sky.

Hallmark Holiday Watch: Three Wisest Men (2025)

Watched:  11/16/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

Three Wisest Men (2025) is the third film in the very popular (for Hallmark) Wise Men series.  We previously covered the first and second installments.  

The problem with this movie is that we've established not just three characters, but their mom, spouses and partners, children, etc...  and it is not a small cast.  And everyone needs to get a plotline.  So it's a lot of movie.  I couldn't help but notice that this one was an "extended cut", which means whatever aired with commercials had less movie, and I have to assume that made this even more of a jumble.  

From a business perspective, it's a fascinating peek into how Hallmark now functions like an old-school studio with their constellation of stars.  

Noirvember Watch: Blind Spot (1947)

Watched:  11/11/2025

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Gordon

A cheap and cheerful B-noir from 1947, Blind Spot is a quick watch that depends on charm of its talent and two or three gags to keep it moving.

The film was programming on TCM's Noir Alley, which I confess I am not watching as much as I should be of late.  The good news is that I found myself, once again, enjoying the intro and outro by noirista Eddie Muller as much or more than the movie.

This film follows an alcoholic writer of novels with an artistic bent (Chester Morris) who, while on a bender, goes to his publisher's office to try and sneak in and tear up his contract, which he has decided is unfair.  While there, he meets a sultry blonde (Constance Dowling) and argues with his publisher in front of a successful writer of mysteries (Steven Geray).  It is suggested that Morris switch to writing mysteries to make more money, and he agrees to do so.

He retreats to the bar in the lobby of the publisher's building and makes time with the blonde, who has just quit after the publisher got handsy.

That night, the publisher is found dead, and Morris seems to be the suspect.  But the evidence is circumstantial.  

It's a lost-time mystery as the now sober Morris tries to pull the pieces together, including possibly condemning himself as the murderer.  It seems the technique he dreamed up for his own murder mystery novel is what was used to kill the publisher.  Meanwhile, both Dowling and Geray are working overtime to assist the writer.

It's no award winner, but it plays like a solid novella or short story, and the characters are colorful.  Morris and Dowling play very well off each other, even if she seems drawn to him for absolutely no reason.  And part of the cost-savings appears in overly long scenes where the same ideas keep getting conveyed as we work to fill the necessary runtime.

It's absolutely not crucial viewing, but you could do way worse.  Oddly, it would also fit in neatly with Criterion's current "Black Out Noir" showcase of film's where a lead is trying to account for lost time while they were drugged, asleep, drunk, hallucinating, etc...  

Hallmark Watch: A Keller Christmas Vacation (2025)

Watched:  11/09/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing:  First

Director:  Maclain Nelson

Hallmark fans are never happy.  And maybe with good reason.  There's a contingent that seems to get mad if anything actually happens in the movies, and others who get mad if it's not a particular kind of movie. Which leaves Hallmark in a pickle as they can't keep making the same movies over and over from a decade or two ago, but anything *new* is also a threat to part of their audience.

But, all that matters is if people watch, and apparently they are watching.  And, given the viewership habits of Hallmark viewers - which means a lack of awareness of debuts of new movies, watching later, catching the movies on the app or whenever...  that's a pretty good turn out of viewership across streaming and cable.

This year it seems Hallmark is cramming more value into fewer movies to drive up advertising during broadcast and draw eyeballs to the app.  This is opposite the decade-ago strategy of going for quantity over quality - ie: they chose not to release 75 new movies in a single Christmas and hope the novelty kept folks locked in.  But it's a risk when you make new kinds of movies and fewer of them, and give people a chance to tune away.

Neo-Noir Waddingham Watch: The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025)

Watched:  11/07/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Simon Stone

It's Noirvember, so I need to keep fitting in noir, neo or otherwise.  I also had foot surgery yesterday, so I am couch-bound and taking drugs.  So maybe all of my choices are not great in the moment.  I vaguely remember putting on like 4 Hallmark movies yesterday as I rode out a hydrocodone adventure.

Anyhoo...  I was pretty excited back when I heard Hannah Waddingham was going to be in an ensemble locked-room-murder-mystery.  She seems kind of perfect for being a little extra in a Murder on the Orient Express sort of movie.  And I like Keira Knightley well enough.  And I've been pulling for Guy Pearce since Memento.  

I was even planning to make time for this movie the weekend it dropped on Netflix.  And then the reviews hit.  Not great.   

And having had watched this movie, I am not surprised by this.

First:  all the acting is fine to good.  You cannot blame Ms. Knightley, Mr. Pearce or Hannah Waddingham (especially not Ms. Waddingham).  

The directing is... fine?  The script is awful.  The cinematography is beyond dreadful.  Who even knows about the editing...

But the movie feels like it has no idea why people find these movies interesting.  

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.  

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.  

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: Frankenstein (2025)

Watched:  10/26/2025

Format:  Drafthouse

Viewing:  First

Director:  Guillermo del Toro

Twenty years ago, on the heels of the runaway success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson was given carte blanche to make an adaptation of the 1933 film King Kong.  It's tough to get into all the details and I'll spare you, but the basic gist is that Peter Jackson had long said his favorite movie of all time, and the one that inspired him as a filmmaker, was the Fay Wray screamer.  

The 2005 Kong film was not well received by critics or audiences.  Yes, it looked beautiful and was technically well-directed, but a near 3 hour run-time is quite a bit more than the 100-minute runtime of the original.  It was just too much of everything, a movie lasting the duration of two movies, where everything is turned up to an 11.

And, so it was, I was nervous going into Frankenstein (2025).  

Director Guillermo del Toro broke out with a few key films at the turn of the century, and made a reputation for himself as a master of the macabre.  Some I've liked, some not so much.  For a long time, he's very loudly proclaimed the 1931 Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff his favorite film.  And, hey, it's all-timer for me, as well.  

And, look, I will publicly say:  the book came out in 1818.  Monkeying about with the story is fair game.  After all, I love stuff like the Universal movies, I like Frankenstein comics sometimes, I love Creature Commandos...  sure.  Do whatever.

But I'm not sure what del Toro was doing, what he was trying to say or why he changed so many things in his movie from the novel when it seemed like it made the overall story of the novel weaker.  But I also think I'd need to watch the movie again to understand what he was doing and why as I'd be far less distracted by his careening variations from the text while also playing up certain aspects of the text. 

Light Spoilers

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.

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.