Place of Bones, Starring Heather Graham

Pandora is a frontier widow. That means she is a survivor, by definition. The homestead she shares with her willful teen daughter Hester looks dangerously secluded, but they have their faith. They are also surprisingly resourceful, but they need more guns in Audrey Cummings’ Place of Bones, which releases today on DVD.

They might live in the middle of nowhere, but trouble still finds Pandora and Hester. First, they hear gunshots. The next day, Hester stumbles over Calhoun’s bleeding body near her late father’s gravesite. Pandora manages to stop his bleeding, but his gangrene-infested leg needs to go. Of course, she confiscates his bullets first.

Slightly perturbed by the amputation, Calhoun assumes Pandora intends to steal his saddle-bags stuffed with cash, which he himself stole from his fellow bank-robbing bandits. However, she has no desire for blood money. Instead, she is rightly concerned someone will come looking for it—and Calhoun must reluctantly admit she is not wrong.

That someone is Bear John, along with three of his henchmen. Calhoun already killed three others, including Bear’s idiot brother. Unfortunately, he and his tracker, Cherokee Jack (who isn’t really Cherokee), are probably about as dangerous and lowdown as outlaws get. Eventually, Pandora will have give Calhoun his gun back, so they can try to hold off the killers together, but it will take them a while to work up to that level of trust.

The first 95% of Place of Bones consists of serviceable but rather unremarkable revisionist Western material. However, there is such a shocking twist ending, it seems strange the film has not generated more online buzz. Indeed, Cummings (who also helmed the pedal-to-the-metal horror film, She Never Died) and screenwriter Richard Taylor so scrupulously avoid telegraphing the big reveal, it genuinely surprises—even stuns.

Regardless, Heather Graham is surprisingly intense and forceful as Pandora, even though Cummings and the makeup department appear conflicted whether to accentuate her magazine-cover image or glam her down for the sake of gritty naturalism. Essentially, they split the difference, presenting her as impossibly clean for a dirt farmer, decked out in a primly schoolmarmish wardrobe.

Suitable Flesh, from Barbara Crampton & Team Stuart Gordon

Appropriately, this Lovecraft film starts in a padded cell. It then flashes back a few weeks to Miskatonic University, which is ominous but also quite fitting. Originally written with the late, great Lovecraftian filmmaker Stuart Gordon in mind, Dennis Paoli’s screenplay is the perfect vehicle to get the old gang back together, including executive producer Brian Yuzna and producer Barbara Crampton, who also co-stars in Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh, releasing this Friday in theaters and wherever you rent movies.

Dr. Elizabeth Derby is in an agitated state. She insists her friend and colleague, Dr. Danielle Upton must destroy “the brain” before it is too late. That definitely sounds crazy, but Dr. Upton will be seeing some crazy stuff during the course of this film. So will Dr. Derby when Asa Waite walks into her office, very much like Lester Billings in The Boogeyman, but worse. Waite clearly needs help for his schizophrenic behavior and what Derby assumes is an acute multiple personality disorder. She also feels a reckless sexual attraction to him, which makes her even more vulnerable to what will happen.

Soon, Derby discovers Waite was plagued by a body-swapping entity that becomes a full-blown body-snatcher after the third transference. She will need the help of her friend, Dr. Derby, to avoid such a fate, but convincing her without sounding crazy will be tricky. She also worries what the elder god-worshipping body-hijacker might do to her husband, Edward.

Paoli, who previously wrote Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dagon, and “Dreams in the Witch House,” certainly knows his way around a Lovecraft adaptation. Despite some Cthulhu imagery, Suitable Flesh does not feel as Lovecraftian as other Lovecraft films, but it very identifiably (and somewhat kind of faithfully) based on his story, “The Thing on the Door Step.” Regardless, it is a charmingly unhinged movie, featuring spectacular freakouts from its stars, Heather Graham and Crampton, who are absolutely amazing as Dr. Derby and Dr. Upton, respectively.

Judah Lewis and the great character actor Bruce Davison (who is also becoming a horror star in his own right, thanks to work in Creepshow, The Manor, From the Shadows, and the like) are similarly freaky and sinister as Waite and his father, Ephraim. You can also look for Graham Skipper playing a horrible morgue attendant.

The Last Son

Isaac Lemay has been cursed by a tribal elder, who has apparently read his Sophocles. The old man actually called it a prophecy, but the way Lemay lets it consume him definitely makes it a curse. Told he will one day be killed by one of his offspring, Lemay sets out to systematically kill his kin in Tim Sutton’s The Last Son, which releases today in theaters and on-demand.

Killing is what Lemay does best. It is what earned him the “curse.” However, he still found time to visit many prostitutes. Anna is one of the last, whose sons are not yet accounted for. Lemay makes quick work of the one she acknowledged, but Cal, the one she gave up for adoption for his own protection, is a slippery outlaw. In fact, he is a lot like his old man.

Cal’s feelings towards his mother are a little confused (again, see the literary allusion above), but the man who makes her swoon is Solomon, a hardboiled cavalry officer. Having been raised by the Cheyenne as a foundling, Solomon always remains a bit of an outsider in white society. Nevertheless, he is determined to bring to justice the outlaws who stole a gatling gun and murdered a detachment of troops. Yes, that would be Cal and his associates.

This is a dramatic change of pace for Sutton, who was previously known for moody art-house fare like Memphis. There is still a whole lot of brooding in Last Son, but everyone also takes care of Western genre business. As Westerns go, it is super-revisionist, but there is also a pinch of Weird West too, which makes things interesting.

Last Rampage: Robert Patrick as Gary Tison

Gary Tison secured a place in history for his family. Unfortunately, it was with the landmark death penalty case, Tison vs. Arizona. He exerted a dysfunctional Svengali-like control over his sons that made everyone suffer, particularly their victims. With their assistance, Tison escaped from prison, igniting a spectacularly ill-fated flight from justice. If ever there was a compelling argument for the death penalty, it would be Tison, who chillingly comes to life in Dwight Little’s true crime drama, Last Rampage (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

While doing well-deserved time, Tison was a model prisoner, so he was duly moved to a lower security annex. In retrospect, that was a huge mistake. His three sons just sauntered in on visiting day, just like they always did, except this time they had a picnic basket full of guns. At least Tison was a loving father, albeit in a seriously warped way. His cellmate and fellow escapee Randy Greenwalt was a stone-cold sociopath. Donnie Tison, the only Tison brother exhibiting any capacity to think for himself clashes early and often with Greenwalt. Their father will also try to shift the blame for the worst of the post-escape crimes on his former cellmate, but it is hard for the Tison boys to ignore what they see with their own eyes, especially for Donnie.

Of course, it is not just their father who poisoned his sons’ heads. Their mother Dorothy is sort of like a Lady Macbeth-instigator, who keeps herself in a willful state of denial regarding her husband’s dangerously erratic nature. Sheriff Cooper already lost friends and colleagues to Tison, so he will have Tison’s wife and semi-estranged brother closely watched.

Rampage is a somewhat frustrating film, because it assembles some truly terrific performances in a cookie-cutter TV-movie-of-the-week package. Frankly, Robert Patrick’s charismatic ferocity as Pops Tison will be an out-and-out revelation for those who only know him as the T-1000 in Terminator 2 and subsequent self-parodying appearances. In a more distinctive film, his performance could have been a dark horse awards contender.

Likewise, Heather Graham is unusually intense playing against type as Ma Tison. It is a neatly calibrated performance that leaves viewers unsure to what extent she has been deluding herself about her beloved husband. As always, Bruce Davison is rock-solid as Sheriff Cooper, providing a grounded, moral center to the film. John Heard only appears briefly, but he makes the most of it as the “colorful,” ethically questionable Warden Blackwell. Chris Browning is also all kinds of creepy as Greenwalt, but in a quieter, clammier, low-key kind of way, which nicely compliments Patrick’s flamboyant bluster. Sadly, the Tison brothers are rather dull compared to everyone else.

You have probably seen some of Little’s earlier films, like Halloween 4 or Marked for Death, back when going to the latest Steven Seagal film in theaters was a serious option instead of a depressing joke. Most of his recent work has been in episodic television (Bones, Prison Break, Nikita), so maybe it was inevitable Rampage would have a TV vibe. Nevertheless, Little brings out the best in his cast and the film’s late 1970s period details are spot-on. It is certainly far more polished and professional looking than Do It or Die, another recent true crime indie film helmed by a TV veteran (a comparison only a handful of us truly intrepid film dissectors would ever think to make).

Patrick and Graham really do some first-rate work in Rampage, so it is a shame it will probably not be screened and covered more widely. As big-screen storytelling, it is serviceable at best, but the turns from the two well-known co-leads could change viewer and industry preconceptions of them. Recommended as a future Netflix or Shudder stream, Last Rampage opens this Friday (9/22) at the Laemmle Music Hall.