The Medium, on Shudder

Shamanism in Southeast Asia represents a general fusion of early animist beliefs with Buddhist stylistic trappings. There are ample examples of similarly coopted pagan traditions here in the Western Hemisphere—and we have duly mined them for horror movie inspiration too. Regardless, if you think have a case of possession in Thailand, you are much more likely to consult a shaman rather than a priest (especially in the era of Benedict). Nim is such a shaman, but the supernatural incident she investigates hits much too close to home in Banjong Pisanthanakun’s The Medium (produced and co-written by Korean genre auteur Na Hong-jin), which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

Some possessions are benign, like the local goddess Ba Yan, who made Nim the village shaman when she entered her body. Originally, she chose Nim’s sister Noi, as the next in line for the matrilinear succession, but the younger sibling fought her selection and converted to Christianity. After months of struggle, Ba Yan eventually settled on Nim instead. When a mysterious ailment befalls Noi’s daughter Mink, the family automatically assumes it is Ba Yan once again attempting to possess a successor. However, as the symptoms become increasingly severe and disturbing, Nim concludes a more sinister force has latched onto her niece, mostly likely related to some of the old skeletons rattling around their family closet.

Technically, The Medium qualifies as found footage, because we see everything unfold through the cameras of a film crew shooting a documentary on Nim. However, it really feels like a doc rather than a quickie Blair Witch knock-off. Wisely, Pisanthanakun takes his time, fully and respectfully establishing the characters, isolated setting, and shamanistic beliefs. The first fifteen minutes really do not horror business per se, but from there on, he slowly builds the tension drop by agonizing drip, until it finally explodes into utter bedlam.

This would indeed make a suitable companion film to Ha’s The Wailing. (Honestly, if Hwang Jung-min’s swaggering character from that film had suddenly appeared, we would have completely flipped out.) Ultimately, the gory chaos of the third act works against The Medium, but Pisanthanakun’s prior mastery of mood and foreboding still quite distinguishes it.

Robert Mugge’s Deep Blues

In 1990, you could walk right into Wade Walton’s Big Six Barber Shop in Clarksdale and get a shave, a haircut, maybe even a song from the Blues and civil rights icon, just like Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin’ Wolf once had, back in their day. As a local activist, Walton’s shop had once been bombed during the 1960s, but he had been largely overlooked by the music industry since cutting a few records in the 1960s. He was exactly the sort of real-deal Blues artists music journalist Robert Palmer and Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart set out to document in Robert Mugge’s freshly 4K-restored Deep Blues, which opens virtually tomorrow.

If you scratch a rock guitarist with chops, you will probably find Delta Blues in his blood. Stewart is no different from Keith Richards in that respect, so he seems to get along famously with Palmer (who wrote extensively about both Block and rock). They started their Blues tour in North Mississippi, which has its own harder-edged Blues sound, working their way down to the delta.

Their first encounter was with Booker T. Laury, a Blues and Boogie-Woogie pianist, who was a contemporary of Memphis Slim and Sunnyland Slim. He was still attacking the keys with explosive energy, making his rendition of “Memphis Blues” a fitting way to kick-off the film. Their next stop is with R.L. Burnside, whose plaintive vocals and rhythmic guitar sounds on “Jumper on the Line” were about as North Mississippi as you could ever hope to find. When you see his neighbors gather round his porch to listen to him play, you have to wonder if they understood how much European Blues fans would have paid to hear Burnside in such an intimate venue.

Palmer definitely kept it real, capturing Jessie Mae Hemphill performing both with her fife-and-drum band and her juke-joint Blues combo. Sadly, it is clear many Blues artists could not quit their day jobs, because Big Jack Johnson, a.k.a. “The Oilman” still held the day job that inspired his nickname, while Walton was still cutting hair in his barber shop. Weirdly, Walton is the only musician whose performance, an appealingly easy-going take of “Rock Me Baby” is not presented in its entirety. However, Big Jack Johnson’s “Daddy When is Mama Comin’ Home” is definitely one of the film’s highlights.

It is also cool when Mugge and Palmer literally take viewers into the jukes and soak up the ambiance while Junior Kimborough and Roosevelt “Booba” Barnes tear up multiple numbers. Barnes also happened to own the club where he played, on Greenville’s notorious Nelson Street. At the time, Barnes’ Playboy Club was part of the mayor’s campaign to revitalize the historic Blues district into a musical destination, much like Beale Street today. Sadly, that has yet to happen.

Creepshow: Stranger Sings & Meter Reader

Monster movies are different than horror films. Godzilla and King Kong are supposed to inspire shock and awe, because they are so far removed from human-scale, whereas monsters in horror movies are unnerving because they are all too human. Those are kind of-sort of the monsters we meet in this week’s episode of Creepshow, which premieres this Thursday on Shudder.

It is a siren that leads poor Barry astray in “Stranger Sings,” directed by Axelle Carolyn and written by Jordana Arkin, but as a doctor, he has a usefulness that could save his life. Miranda is tired of life as an immortal siren, so she wants Barry to swap her voice-box (and powers) with that of her mortal pal Sara, who is eager to assume her uncanny existence.

“Stranger” initially appears to be a tiresome gender-warfare exercise in woke horror, but it rights itself at the last minute. Still, the uneven comedic tone never really clicks and Barry, earnestly portrayed by Chris Mayers, remains the only remotely sympathetic character (at least if you hold to notion that killing people is bad).

“Meter Reader,” directed by Joe Lynch and written by John Esposito is not perfect either, but it is much more successful. It happens to be another story of pandemic horror, which always sounds like fun, doesn’t it, but in this case, it is different. The pandemic in question involves a massive outbreak of demonic possession. Abigail’s father Dalton has natural immunity, making him a logical choice to serve as a “Meter Reader,” a sort of blue-collar exorcist. In fact, he considers himself more like a plumber than a priest. The problem is Dalton is late returning home, calling into question the continued validity of his immunity.

This is not the best Creepshow story, but it is the one that stands the most to gain were it to be expanded into a full-length feature. Lynch and Esposito give us a full narrative, but they only scratch the surface exploring the implications of their demonic plague-world. Indeed, they could easily use more time to address the question “can evil be a pandemic” and the corollary “can a pandemic be evil?” Regardless, Abigail Dolan and Jonathon Schaech are quite strong as Abigail and her father. Plus, Lynch’s cool duster-wearing-motorcyclist-at-sunset visuals are well-suited to the Creepshow aesthetic.

Despite an uneven start, “Meter Reader” takes this week’s Creepshow to some interesting places. Anthologies tend to be uneven by their nature, so we can give an above-average one like Creepshow a pass on its occasional misfires. Recommended for “Meter Reader,” the latest episode of Creepshow start streaming Thursday (10/14) on Shudder.

Needle in a Timestack: Ridley Adapts Silverberg

If there is one subgenre that brings out the romance in science fiction, it would be time travel (as in Richard Matheson’s Somewhere in Time, etc). Nick Mikkelsen wants to keep time travel romantic, but his desperate attempt to save his marriage might turn it into tragedy in director-screenwriter John Ridley’s Needle in a Timestack, a surprisingly faithfully adaptation of the Robert Silverberg short story, which releases in theaters and on-demand this Friday.

Nick and Janine Mikkelsen are happily married, with a dog. However, he suddenly finds they are happily married with a cat. He hates cats (who doesn’t?), so he quickly deduces someone has altered their timeline. In their near future (which looks a lot like the here and now), time travel is a thing for those who can afford it. Changing the past to influence the future is strictly forbidden, but it happens all the time.

Mikkelsen tries to “back-up” their marriage, but it is not sufficient to stop Janine’s wealthy ex-husband Tommy Hambleton. He is determined to get her back, so after a particular severe time distortion results in Mikkelsen’s alternate marriage to his old flame, Alex Leslie, Mikkelsen decides to fight fire with fire and jaunt back himself.

Ridley’s adaptation of Silverberg keeps all the clever parts, while shrewdly cranking up the romantic vibe. The well-balanced balanced results should appeal to fans of the author, as well as light time travel romances. Yet, there is an element of darkness to the film that effectively cautions against rashly fooling around with the time-space continuum.

Voces: Letters to Eloisa

It is hard to understand why Hollywood’s radical chic was so enamored with the brutal dictator Fidel Castro. Not only did he regularly censor his own artists, he brutally oppressed Cuba’s gay and lesbian community for decades. The wrong sexuality could lead to arrest and internment in “re-education” camps (actually, the commentators in this PBS/ITVS production refer to them as “concentration camps”). That put a writer like Jose Lezama Lima doubly at risk. He was gay, Catholic, asthmatic, and aesthetically non-conformist. Lezama’s revolutionary work and tragic life are chronicled in Adriana Bosch’s Letters to Eloisa, which premieres this Friday on PBS, under the Voces imprimatur.

Although young Lezama was not political by nature, he still initially supported Castro’s revolution. In return, he was rewarded with publication support for his work. However, as the regime became more controlling, Lezama unambiguously aligned himself with dissident elements in the writers’ union that openly criticized censorship. As a result, he was already on thin ice when he published his masterpiece, the novel Paradiso.

Lezama’s friends and admirers liken its impact to the detonation of a “bomb.” Before its release, Castro thought it was too boring to require censorship, but he obviously did not get as far as the notorious chapter eight. Apparently, readers were requesting it in libraries, by chapter number, for its explicit homoerotic passages. Soon thereafter, Paradiso was officially censored by the regime and Lezama became a pariah. He largely survived thanks to the packages sent by his sister Eloisa living abroad.

Alfred Molina’s warm, sensitive readings of his letters to her help shape the structure of Bosch’s film and also supply its title. What unfolds is a tragedy, not just because of the hardship Lezama endured. When Paradiso released internationally, Lezama was considered an equal to the likes of Julio Cortazar and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but he would be far less prolific, due to the stress of the state surveillance and the difficulties of his mean living conditions.

50 States of Fright: MI, KS, OR, MN, FL

The Quibi short-bite 5-to-10-minute programming-platform folly was only in business from April to December last year, but it still managed to squeeze in two “seasons” of Sam Raimi’s horror anthology. They still didn’t have time to get to all fifty states, let alone territories like Guam. Nevertheless, if any of their series had a following this would be it, so fans will be happy to see Raimi’s 50 States of Fright will be available again this Friday on the Roku Channel.

To hook fans, Raimi himself helmed the first episode, “The Golden Arm (Michigan),” up in Hemingway’s and Nick Adams’ neck of the Michigan woods. The golden arm has nothing in common with Frank Sinatra in Man with the Golden Arm. It is the sparkly prosthetic of the old folk tale Mark Twain and scores of others used to tell. In this case, it belongs to Heather, the vain wife of Dave, a rugged furniture artisan, following her misadventure in the forest. She intends to keep that arm with her even if it kills her and even then, she still isn’t letting go.

Michigan probably boasts the most star-studded cast of the anthology, with Rachel Brosnahan and Travis Fimmel portraying the ill-fated couple. However, it is John Marshall Jones who really makes the three-episode arc work with the way he tells the tale as Dave’s friend Andy. Old man Clemens would approve.

Yoko Okumura’s “Ball of Twine (Kansas)” should have been titled “What’s the Matter with Kansas.” Regardless, it does a nice job tapping into both the nostalgia of road trips and the uneasy feeling you get when driving through long, flat, not-particularly-well-lit states like Kansas. In this case, the scenic attraction Susan and her daughter Amelia stop to gawk at, the titular twine, seems to exert an uncanny control over the entire town. Even Sheriff Stallings is rather unhelpful when Amelia disappears, but Susan is not about to be intimidated by their cultish small-town ways.

Ming-Na Wen really makes these three ex-quibis standout with her fierce axe-wielding performance as Susan. She is pretty awesome, plus Karen Allen is quite sinister, in an unusually understated kind of way, as Sheriff Stallings. There are also some cool makeup effects going on, as an extra bonus.

VIFF ’21: Lamya’s Poem

Nobody was more responsible for the massive human tragedy in Syria than Iranian Quds commander Qassem Soleimani. That would be the same Soleimani FilmTwitter mourned after Trump took him out in an airstrike, in the mistaken notion the enemy of Trump couldn’t be all bad. In contrast, the Syrian people were celebrating. You can understand why when watching the suffering he set in motion for Lamya’s family. However, she takes comfort from the poetry of Rumi, as well as a magical time-spanning friendship with the young poet in Alexander Kronemer’s animated feature Lamya’s Poem, which screens online as a selection of the Vancouver International Film Festival.

There is only one teacher left in Aleppo, but Lamya is still one of his favorites. He even lends her books from his library, like a treasured volume of Rumi’s poetry. That becomes his party gift to his pupil when the bombing forces her widowed mother to evacuate the city. Braving the seas on a refugee raft is a dangerous and expensive undertaking, but she believes it is the only way for her daughter to have a future.

During moments of high stress, Lamya is somehow transported back centuries, where she befriends the young Rumi, who is also fleeing Mongol invaders. However, his father makes a fateful decision to take advantage of their refugee state, to make pilgrimage to Mecca. While it is unclear whether these sequences are meant to be dreams or magical realism time travel that ambiguity probably increases their effectiveness. Frankly, it would not be surprising if Slaughterhouse Five was an influence on Kronemer.

Welcome to the Blumhouse: The Manor

Judith Albright is checking into an assisted living facility housed in a converted mansion. The architecture is early American gothic and the staff has a specialization in gaslighting. The question is to what end? Albright must figure out their game before it is too late in screenwriter-director Axelle Carolyn’s The Manor, one of the Welcome to the Blumhouse features premiering today on Amazon Prime.

As a former dancer, Albright was always physically healthy and even after a mild stroke, she is still of sound mind. However, she believes she should have a little help just in case, so she voluntarily moves into what looks like a nice facility. Unfortunately, the staff turns out to be a bit more controlling than she expected, especially about things like cell phones and the front door code. Her ailing roommate is also petrified with the anticipation that she could die very soon. It turns out her fears are well grounded.

Soon, Albright starts to believe she cold be next. She has vivid nightmares of a demonic figure and the staff appears to be playing mind-games with her. Yet, their diagnosis of schizophrenic Alzheimer’s protects them from all her accusations. Only her beloved Josh will half-listen to her, but even he is fast losing faith.

Throughout The Manor Carolyn skillfully uses the indignities that come with aging to intensify the suspense. We can clearly see they’re out to get her, but it is equally obvious nobody will believe it, due to society’s condescending assumptions. In some ways, The Manor could be considered a Get Out for oldsters, but it is actually a much more effective film.

Barbara Hershey is terrific as Albright. So many of us always associate her with her classic 1980s and 1990s roles (as in Hannah and Her Sisters, Tune in Tomorrow, and The Entity), so it is pretty mind-blowing seeing her in a septuagenarian role (which could also be called acting her age), but she does so with great humor and vitality. She also brings a distinctive doesn’t-suffer-fools-gladly attitude that well serves the character, while compounding the precariousness of her situation.

Golden Voices: Refusenik Cineastes

Some call it an artform, even though most cineastes can’t stand the practice. Nevertheless, Victor and Raya Frenkel enjoyed a small sliver of prestige as the top film dubbers in the bad old Soviet Union. They were also Jewish, so their positions were always a little complicated. When the Soviets finally allowed the Refuseniks to immigrate to Israel, they decided to get out while the getting was good. However, adjusting to a new country and a new way of life will be more difficult than they expected in Evgeny Ruman’s Golden Voices, which opens tomorrow in New York.

For many Soviets, the Frenkels were the voices of international films in Russia. However, Russian dubbing is not an obviously marketable skill in 1990 Israel. Yet, due to the large influx of Russian immigrants, Raya manages to find a job requiring Russian fluency. She tells her husband she is tele-marketing. Her boss considers it phone sex, but they way she practices it, she is more like a voice in a chatroom for lonely men like Gera.

Meanwhile, her husband finally thinks he has found an outlet for his talents with a couple of low-rent Russian film pirates, but they just don’t have his commitment to quality cinema. As they try to go about their new lives, Israeli society keeps on rolling, while preparing for potential chemical weapons attacks from Saddam Hussein.

That part was no joke. If you lived through the lead-up to the first Gulf War, you should recall how George H.W. Bush insisted Israel not retaliate against any potential Iraqi attacks, so as not to jeopardize his international coalition. One can only imagine how intense the atmosphere was in Israel, but Ruman and co-screenwriter Zev Berkovich do a pretty good conveying the vibe.

Although it is billed as a comedy, Golden Voices is thoroughly bittersweet in tone and generally much more serious than whimsical. Mariya Belkina gives an extraordinarily accomplished performance as Raya, especially in her acutely sad and sensitive scenes with Alexander Senderovich, who is also a standout as the nebbish Gera. Vladimir Friedman is achingly dignified as Victor Frenkel, but there is also more than a little sentimentality in his ardent movie love.

Creepshow: The Last Tsuburaya & Okay, I’ll Bite

Generally speaking, adherence to a good Protestant work ethic will go a long way’s towards keeping you out of a horror anthology. On the other hand, the idle rich and lowlife thugs are tailor-made for uncanny comeuppance. That is certainly true of the extravagant wastrel and violent prison inmates appearing in this week’s episode of Creepshow, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

In “The Last Tsuburaya” (directed by Jeffrey F. January and written by Paul Dini & Stephen Langford), Wade Cruise gives conspicuous consumption a bad name. The fabled last painting of Tsuburaya, a notorious Japanese painter of the macabre, has just been discovered and Cruise is determined to have it all for himself. However, his unwise stewardship will come back to haunt him, somewhat literally.

This week’s opener is vintage Creepshow, with a snappy visual style that truly represents the spirit of old school horror comics. The Tsuburaya paintings and the monster design work are also both really cool looking. As Cruise, Brandon Quinn chews the scenery like nobody’s business, while Gia Hiraizumi and Jade Fernandez provide engaging art world counterpoints as Dr. Mai Sato, his rival, and artist “Geesa,” his increasingly disenchanted lover. Genre fans might have a general idea of where it is all headed, but there are still a few zigs and zags that heighten the enjoyment.

Similarly, “Okay, I’ll Bite” (directed by John Harrison, who also adapted his short story) hews closely to the EC Comics template that inspired the franchise, but it is not as stylish or slyly subversive. On the other hand, it has spiders—lots of them. After Elmer Strick, a fundamentally decent pharmacist was convicted of his age-addled mother’s mercy killing, his only friends in prison are the spiders he shares his cell with. Unfortunately, the corrupt guard who forces him to cook up meth is out to get both Strick and his eight-legged companions. Of course, in horror anthologies, it is always a bad idea to bet against anything that creeps and crawls.

Nick Massouh is quite good as Strick, but obviously the spiders are the reason to watch “Bite.” Still, the tone is rather downbeat, so this segment is not nearly as fun as the one that came before it.

Nevertheless, the combination of ghoulish art and angry spiders makes this week’s episode a solid outing for the series. In fact, “Last Tsuburaya” is definitely a season highlight. Highly recommended for fans of the franchise and the horror anthology format, the latest episode of Creepshow starts streaming tomorrow (10/7) on Shudder.

V/H/S/94, on Shudder

Never take collectors lightly, because they know how to get what they want. That is especially true of old school VHS collectors. Indeed, the framing device truly puts the “cult” in cult film fanatics when the V/H/S franchise returns with V/H/S/94, which premieres today on Shudder.

In Jennifer Reeder’s wrap-arounds, “Holy Hell,” a SWAT team thinks they are executing a search warrant on a drug den, but the industrial warehouse actually houses what appears to be the video-head equivalent of the Heaven’s Gate cult. There are lots of dead bodies seated in front of video monitors, where naturally, we will watch the constituent stories unfold.

Chloe Okuno’s “Storm Drain” consists of the footage shot by Holly Marciano, a local Ohio TV reporter, and her cameraman, when they ventured down into the titular sewer in search of a weird rat creature. It is pretty straightforward, but nicely executed and it ends on an amusing kicker. Also, Anna Hopkins probably delivers the film’s most memorable performance as the shallow, soon-to-be freaked out Marciano.

Arguably, Simon Barrett’s “The Empty Wake” is the most effective and economical installment, in which, per a grieving family’s odd request, a mortuary worker must record an overnight wake, even though nobody comes to mourn—almost no one. It really is creepy, because it is so grounded in the lonely, late-night setting.

If you have the opportunity to see V/H/S/94 on a big-screen with audience, “The Subject” (directed by Timo Tjahjanto, one half of the Mo Brothers), might turn out to be the highlight instead, because it is so deliriously gory and unhinged. In this case an Indonesian SWAT (this is not a great film to elite squad cop in) raid a mad scientist’s lair in search of a kidnapped woman. What they find is a bit disturbing. Tjahjanto does his thing, but it plays better in a group. On your own, you might notice the thinness of the story, but the over-the-top splatter effects do their best to compensate.

Playing Frisbee in North Korea

One of the pleasures of traveling is the experience of exploring new cities and countries on your own and maybe even getting a little lost. That opportunity is not available in North Korea. Those who participate in state-run tours have to get on the bus and stay on the damn bus. Taking pictures out the windows is not an option either. As a result, filmmaker Savanna Washington was strictly limited in what she could film, even surreptitiously, but at least she was always aware her minders were minding her (and telling the regime’s propaganda lies) during the trip she documents in Playing Frisbee in North Korea, which releases today on DVD.

Washington understood she might be one of the first African Americans many of the North Korean locals had ever seen. Unfortunately, she would have relatively few chances to meet them, outside of scripted tour events. The minder/guides kept a tight rein on her group, while average North Koreans were too busy with the constant struggle of simply staying alive.

It is unclear what the other “tourists” were expecting from their DPRK experience, since they are only briefly seen in the margins of Washington’s field of vision. However, she states they were all eventually exhausted by the minders’ tight control. To her credit, Washington intersperses her tour footage with expert commentary and the testimony of defectors. They clearly establish the magnitude of the famines and the severity of the Yodok prison/concentration camps. They also conclusively dispel any misplaced faith in the standards of “free” medical care offered by Communist regimes. However, several talking heads also advocate for continued and increased humanitarian food aid, due to the dire living conditions endured by average North Korean.

Fauci: The Commercial

It has all the stirring music, flattering lighting, and cherry-picked soundbites from strawman critics you would find in the sort of promotional videos they show during political party conventions. That prompts the question: what office is Dr. Fauci running for? Whatever it is, clearly filmmakers John Hoffman & Janet Tobias are eager to vote for him, based on their hagiographic treatment throughout Fauci, which hits Disney+ tomorrow.

Fauci has had an impressive career at the National Institutes of Health, serving since 1968. The film mainly focuses on his work combating AIDS and COVID, but also briefly touches on his efforts during the Ebola scare. However, in light of the current pandemic, it would have been interesting to hear more about his responses to SARS, Swine Flu, and MERS, because they are more closely related to COVID. Rather clumsily, the film tries to draw parallels between AIDS in the 1980s and COVID today, but whereas Fauci made a concerted efforts to de-stigmatize patients of the latter, his admirers seem to be doing their best to de-humanize the latter, at least if they are unvaccinated.

Frankly, the best segments of the film chronicle his involvement in Pres. George W. Bush’s landmark emergency AIDS relief for Africa (PEPFAR), which literally saved millions of lives. In contrast, the coverage of COVID is considerably problematic. Hoffman & Tobias allot zero time to his critics, aside from a few snippets from blowhards on talk radio, transparently selected to discredit anyone who would dare criticize their subject. Two words that are also conspicuously absent would be “gain” and “function.”

The truth is we can admire Fauci and still be critical of some of his decisions. We feel the same way about the late Sec. Donald Rumsfeld. Now imagine a Rummy doc that allowed his critics no say, only presented his finest career moments, and released in theaters days after the revelations of the Abu Ghraib abuses. Perhaps “film twitter” might have a problem with such a theoretical, but Fauci is not appreciably different.

Dark Shadows and Beyond: The Jonathan Frid Story

It debuted the same year as Star Trek, but for a lot of 1960s kids, this show was their first experience of cult TV fandom. The vampire was a major reason why. In many ways, the classically trained actor was an unlikely teen idol, but he was the first brooding TV vampire, predating Angel and True Blood by decades. The fanbase is still out there and growing, so there should be plenty of interest in Dark Shadows and Beyond: The Jonathan Frid Story, directed by Mary O’Leary, his friend and co-producer of his one-man shows, which releases tomorrow on DVD and VOD.

Dan Curtis’s Dark Shadows was on the brink of cancelation when he introduced a vampire storyline, mostly as a personal lark. Much to everyone’s surprise, Barnabas Collins caught on big, turning the struggling show into a hit and making Frid an overnight celebrity. It took him a while to get used to the run-and-gun production methods of a daily soap opera, but he was always popular with his co-stars. It also took him a while to adjust to his new fame, but there was no question he was the focus of fans’ attention.

Frankly, Dark Shadows didn’t last so long during its initial run, but unlike just about every other soap opera, it enjoyed subsequent lives in syndicated reruns and through healthy multi-million copy sales of its DVD collections. Post-cancelation, Frid appeared in two horror movies (including Oliver Stone’s first film, Seizure), but he was unhappy with his agency, so struck out on his own, largely concentrating on the stage.

If you look at Frid’s IMDb page, there is not much aside from Dark Shadows, but he constantly appeared in regional theaters. He also had a pretty big hit leading an all-star tour of Arsenic & Old Lace (co-starring WKRP’s Gary Sandy). (Actually, I remember enjoying the show as a kid, but I didn’t appreciate who Frid was at the time. We can only hope some long lost tape of the production eventually turns up.)

That sort of leads into what really makes this doc valuable for fans. Unless, you saw him perform readings at Dark Shadows conventions, he sort of disappeared. On the other hand, he largely did things his way. In a way, it is both good and bad that we can’t watch him doing guest shots on Murder She Wrote and the like, because what we have of him on film is pretty high quality.

New York Ninja: The Return of John Liu

When Taiwanese-born martial arts star John Liu started filming his first American production, it captured the violent grittiness of early 1980s New York. It was roughly thirty-seven years before that film finally screened for audiences, but ironically, it currently feels just as representative of the lawless city, as it did then. We need his masked martial arts avenger now, more than ever. Fortunately, the new rights-holders at Vinnegar Syndrome restored and re-edited the unseen footage, recording an entirely new audio track. It might not exactly match Liu’s original vision, but he still cleans up the big apple in the re-conceived New York Ninja, now credited to directors Liu and Kurtis Spieler, which had its world premiere at this year’s Beyond Fest.

No scripts or records of any kind survived after the production was halted, apparently due to conflicts with the production company. All that was left was a pallet of film cans. However, what Spieler and his associates saw in there still had value to cult film fans, especially Liu’s signature high kicks and the street-level scenes of New York, in which viewers can often see the World Trade Center as Liu’s characters practices his moves along the waterfront.

The story, as re-written and re-edited by Speiler, follows John, a mild-mannered news crew sound tech, who happens to be highly skilled in the martial arts. Tragically, his pregnant wife is murdered by a gang of human traffickers when she witnesses the abduction of their latest victim. Enraged by his grief, John dons the white garb of a good ninja to do the dirty work the cops just won’t do. Soon, he breaks up enough of their kidnappings attempts to get the attention of the gang’s radiation-mutated boss, now known as the Plutonium Killer.

The acting and production values of NY Ninja are not that different from what can be seen in Y.K. Kim’s The Miami Connection, but Liu’s high-kicking skills are still impressive. It is also cool to watch time-capsule-like footage of New York, including pre-Giuliani Times Square (where we see Ninja III: The Domination is playing—one of the hit Cannon Ninja films NY Ninja was clearly trying to cash-in on). If you check out NY Ninja for the right reasons, you should have fun, but if you are looking for sensitive drama and finely turned performances than maybe not so much.

Shrewdly, Spieler recruited a who’s who of genre favorites for the voice ensemble, starting with Don “The Dragon” Wilson, perfectly cast as John. Likewise, his old pal Cynthia Rothrock fittingly gives voice to the martial arts proficient cop, who gets kidnapped by the traffickers. For 1980s action fans, it is a real treat to hear Penitentiary’s Leon Isaac Kennedy dubbing her detective colleague, who has been investigating the abductions (his last prior credit goes back a ways). Michael Berryman nicely suits the weirdness of the Plutonium Killer, while Linnea Quigley is so good as TV reporter Randi Rydell, the original actress, Adrienne Meltzer (one of the few identified cast-members) thought her audio had survived.

Indeed, Meltzer proves to be a good sport in the interview segments she recorded for Michael Gingold’s Re-Enter the New York Ninja, the behind-the-scenes re-making-of featurette that screened with Ninja at Beyond Fest and will be incorporated in the film’s eventual physical release. Gingold’s experts provide a lot of useful background and context on Liu’s career. At the time, he really was a Kung Fu connoisseur’s favorite, so Ninja might have found a small but appreciative audience had it been released at the time. Instead, Liu went completely off the grid and his film was entirely forgotten, until now. It is a shame, because it obviously had a deranged spirit that plays well around midnight.

It might have been a crazy low-budget operation, but a lot of effort still went into New York Ninja, so it is nice to see it finally get some attention. Despite its limitations, NY Ninja is far superior to Miami Connection and Liu himself is probably due for a resurgence of genre fan interest. At the very least, the film scratches your 1980s action nostalgia itch. Recommended for what it is (and what it might have been), New York Ninja has risen from movie purgatory, following its world premiere last night at Beyond Fest.

The Laws of the Universe: The Age of Elohim

Religious parables used to share a thematic affinity with the fantasy genre, with all the swords and sandals. Increasingly, they are shifting to science fiction—and it isn’t just Battlefield Earth. The controversial Japanese religious fusion movement Happy Science has become a regular producer of anime features. The Mystical Laws happened to be a pretty entertaining sf-geopolitical-conspiracy thriller, but the conflict plays out on a more galactic scale in director-chief animator Isamu Imakake’s The Laws of the Universe: The Age of Elohim, which screens tomorrow at the Laemmle NoHo 7 (and opens October 22 in New York).

This is Earth, but you wouldn’t recognize the place 150 million years ago. Elohim, the God of Earth (formerly known as Alpha) benevolently rules over the planet, which offers sanctuary and the potential for reincarnation to all races of the universe. The Dark Side of the Universe does not appreciate such values, so the malevolent titan Dahar manipulates Evol, the ape-like military leader of Centaurus Beta into waging war on our planet.

Yaizel, the champion of planet Vega is dispatched to rally Earth’s defenses, just in the nick of time. As the forces of evil (and Evol) mass for an invasion, Sagittarius also sends reinforcements to Earth in the form of seven archangels, including Amor (who looks a heck of a lot like J.C.), Michael, and his brother Lucifer, who does indeed seem to be rather arrogant.

Frankly, it was hard to tell what Mystical Laws was proselytizing, which is why it was so watchable. In contrast, it is easy to pick out the precepts and principles in Age of Elohim (how could you not?). The narrative, written by Sayaka Okawa, but based on the ideas of Happy Science founder Ryuho Okawa, is not exactly an origin story, but it is definitely an explain-how-things-came-to-pass parable. However, the animation looks first-class and there is still a lot of action.

Coming Home in the Dark

It is the land where they shot The Lord of the Rings, but this ultra-violent NZ film will make you think twice about visiting as a tourist. “Hoagie” Hoaganraad thought he would take his family on a nice driving tour, but instead he finds himself in a grim abduction drama that agonizingly unfolds during James Ashcroft’s Coming Home in the Dark, which opens today in New York.

Alan’s step-kids can tell from a distance the two ominous drifters will be trouble, but the talkative Mandrake and Tubs, his socially-stunted companion, are even worse than they can imagine. They do not merely rob the family, they start inflicting real, lasting pain. “Hoagie” tries to be cooperative, but it soon becomes clear they are not to be reasoned with. Thus begins a desperate struggle to survive.

However, the psychopaths are especially motivated, because they seem to recognize Hoaganraad—and they carry a grudge against him, for some mysterious sin from the past. Even though only about nine years separate the actors portraying Hoaganraad and Mandrake, it looks more like a gap of fifteen or twenty, so we can easily guess their grudge. Instead of shocking, it is all quite predictable and frankly rather boring. That also means the audience is essentially left with only his wife Jill to root for and identify with.

The relentlessly depressing violence Ashcroft and co-screenwriter Eli Kent constantly serve up will remind horror fans of the grisly Australian grindhouse film, Killing Ground, but at least Coming Home also incorporates some effective cat-and-mouse business for Hoaganraad and Mandrake. Nevertheless, the film is still much more focused on shock than suspense.

The Haunted Museum, on Discovery+

Instead of based on a true story,” these anthology tales are based on a “true” object. Each episode takes its inspiration from exhibits collected in the spooky Las Vegas museum curated by Discovery Channels’ resident paranormal investigator, Zak Bagans. He doesn’t claim the stories really happened, but they are consistent with the artifacts’ purported powers. For horror fans, the museum collection has a vibe similar to Friday the 13^th: the Series and the Warrens’ occult collection in The Conjuring franchise. The concept still works pretty well in Discovery+’s rare foray into scripted drama, The Haunted Museum, produced by Bagans and Eli Roth, which premieres this Saturday.

Naturally, Bagans introduces each episode and provides some colorful background on the evil item viewers are about to witness in action. The dramas that follow have the sort of low-fi look that we have come to expect from reality show re-enactments, but they are definitely self-contained stories in their own right (at least this is very definitely true of the first three episodes provided to reviewers). In some cases, the grungy look actually serves the stories well.

Frankly, the series premiere, “Doll House of the Damned,” might even be scarier if viewers have not already seen Creepshow’s thematically similar (and even creepier) “The House of the Head.” Nevertheless, screenwriter-director Justin Harding pulls off some clever sequences and the satanic imagery the grieving father finds in the titular doll house he unwisely purchases will definitely raise the hair on the back of your neck. However, the tone of this excursion into family madness and terror is more than a bit depressing.

The back-to-back premiere night also includes “Monster in the Machine” (directed by Ethan Evans and written by Evans and Jesse Bartlett), which is probably the best of the series, so far. It follows Esther Levin, a somewhat discredited academic, who has devised a series of machines (now in Bagans’ museum, of course) that can contact spirts from other dimensions. Initially, she believes she has reached a guardian angel, but when its voice falls silent, she starts to suspect she also contacted something much more sinister.

There is a bit of a Lovecraftian dimension to “Machine,” but it is more grounded and ultimately more disturbing. Evans masterfully controls the mood, milking tension from eerie settings, weird noises, and images half-seen out the corner of viewers’ eyes. Lawrene Denkers is also terrific as the brilliant but tragically flowed Levin.

Blush (short), on Apple TV+

In 1942, science fiction author Jack Williamson coined the term “terraforming” in his short story “Collision Orbit.” He never thought the process could be so easy for a space-faring horticulturalist like this young chap. The unnamed astronaut just needed the help of a pretty alien woman in Joe Mateo’s animated short Blush, which starts streaming tomorrow on Apple TV+.

Clearly, the astronaut’s defense system did not provide enough advance warning against asteroid collisions. As a result, he is stuck on a dwarf planet just marginally larger than the Little Prince’s, but it lacks handy features like an atmosphere or vegetation—until the alien girl also makes a sudden crash landing.

She looks very human, aside from a very flat nose. She also seems to magically supply oxygen and spurs the horticulturalist’s plants to take root and blossom on the formerly desolate rock. Soon, the planetoid is an oasis and the former travelers are happily in love. Naturally, they start a family, but eventually we see signs that the usual cycle of life must continue, even in paradise.

Arguably, Blush is a more poignant and thoughtful depiction of humanity hitting the reset button than Apple’s Foundation. Although it holds great symbolic weight, it also represents a personal labor of love for Mateo, who was inspired by the passing of his own wife. It is accessible, but not dumbed-down. In fact, the absence of dialogue quite distinguishes it from the noisy pack (yet kids shouldn’t have any trouble with it, just like they could deal with Shaun the Sheep).

Cleanin’ Up the Town: Remembering Ghostbusters [Extended]

There are good reasons nobody has managed to recapture the magic of the original Ghostbusters. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis were riffing at the top of their games, Koch-era New York was still gritty, but not too Dinkins-gritty, and the villain was an EPA regulator. Unfortunately, the studio tried anyway, but the woeful reboot is mercifully ignored and the so-so sequel is only mentioned in passing during the new extended cut of Anthony Bueno’s Cleanin’ Up the Town: Remembering the Ghostbusters, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Ghostbusters is a prime example of why the 1980s were such a great decade for movies. In some ways, it was an unassuming buddy film, yet Ghostbusters broke new ground in its use of special effects in service of comedy and became one of the greatest box-office hits of all-time. Bueno talks to just about everyone involved in the making, except Bill Murray, but that is to be expected, given his rep for media-shy eccentricity.

Aykroyd and director Ivan Reitman trace the film’s origins, starting with Aykroyd’s initial off-the-wall, futuristic treatment that sounds almost like a ghost-busting version of Starship Troopers. Eventually, Ramis sat down with Aykroyd to script out something more contemporary and grounded. Their writing flowed nicely, not that the stars always kept to the printed page. To Reitman’s credit, he also directly addresses the scaled-down role of fourth Ghostbuster Winston Zeddmore (probably the great Ghostbusters controversy), about which actor (and fan favorite) Ernie Hudson maintains a philosophical tone.

When watching Cleanin’ you realize it is unlikely future filmmakers could make equivalent documentaries about the big superhero tentpoles of our current day. Whereas Bueno’s film is chocked full of clever work-arounds devised by the special effects team, contemporary CGI films would just have SFX artists on laptops and actors wearing motion capture suits. In contrast, an awful lot of the effects on Ghostbusters were practical—and they had to render them relatively cheaply and with a much faster turnaround time than was previously standard practice.