The Swarm, on CW

The oceans have always been dangerous. Ships sink. People drown. That was even before something started apparently weaponizing marine life against us. Obviously, the most responsible course of action would be draining the oceans and paving over the sea floors. Presumably, that is the intended message of this new European-produced English-language environmental thriller. Adapted from Frank Schatzing’s door-stopper novel, the eight-episode The Swarm kicks off Tuesday night on the CW.

First the whales started acting strangely homicidal, which is quite puzzling to First Nations cetologist Leon Atawak. Then an outbreak tears through France, which virologist Dr. Cecile Roche traces back to mutated lobsters. Dr. Sigur Johanson, reluctantly consulting for a Scandinavian energy corporation, finds a similar mutation in sea worms right in a trench they were prospecting. It turns out those little creepy crawlers can burrow at a remarkably fast clip—so much so, they could destabilize continents.

Grad student Charlie Wagner also identifies strange oceanic hotspots that seem to correspond to areas of unexplained marine phenomenon, including the sinking of the research vessel her best friend was assigned to. Eventually, these globally scattered scientists (not including any Americans) will discover strange signals that possibly tie all these events together. Unfortunately, the world’s bureaucrats are not ready to listen to them. They are too busy with the armies of mutant crabs over-running coastal populations. At least there is a Japanese shipping tycoon who has been monitoring their findings.

Beyond the environmental finger-wagging, the series’s greatest drawback is the shallow characterization. Each major character gets one really nice, emotionally resonant scene, but they are all spread out over eight episodes. Mostly, we watch Johanson, Wagner, Atawak, and Roche point at computer screens and complain about how nobody listens to them. Meanwhile, there is a cameo from Dr. Fauci admitting his agency funded a Chinese study that created aggressive mutant crabs and lobsters, purely for research purposes, but that is totally coincidental to the current outbreaks. Okay, just kidding.

This was clearly an expensive production (reportedly, it is the biggest budgeted German TV production ever), featuring a lot of decent looking underwater cinematography, maritime disasters, and mollusks behaving badly. Yet, ironically, it largely neglects the human element.

Hide: The Graphic Novel

You can count on the horror genre to find the dark side of all our childhood games. These days, you can also count on young adult (YA) fiction for unsubtle political commentary. This graphic novel adaptation of a popular YA novel does both—and as you would expect, the former is more interesting than the latter. As the story opens, Mack reluctantly agrees to participate in an adult hide-and-seek contest, because she doesn’t have many options and she has always been good at hiding. Of course, the game is more serious than players realize in Hide: The Graphic Novel, Scott Peterson’s adaptation of Kiersten White’s YA novel of the same name, illustrated by Veronica & Andy Fish, which goes on-sale this Tuesday.

Mack will be one of fourteen would-be-influencers, under-achievers, and general screw-ups competing in the long-deserted amusement park for the $50,000 prize. Some are not so bad, like Ava 1 (or Ava 2 depending on which of the Avas you were speaking to). The one who was a veteran takes a liking to Mack, which rather surprises her. The other Ava isn’t so bad either, but she cannot resist making an alliance with jerkweed Jaden.

In a game like hide-and-seek, it should be every man for himself, but there is something weird about this contest. Readers can see players leaving the game meet a particularly gruesome fate, but it takes a while for the Millennial-nothings to catch on. They think they are participating in a potential reality show, but they have been set-up by a sinister cabal. All will be revealed in the ancient journal hidden somewhere in the labyrinth-like grounds of the creepy old Amazement Park.

Hide is not just another And Then There Were None rip-off. There is a very explicit fantastical horror dimension to the characters’ two-by-two disappearances. However, there is a privileged human cabal also involved. It isn’t exactly the patriarchy, because the busybody hostess Linda is secretly running the show, but very clearly represents the elite of the economically elite. (Ironically, Linda makes a better case for the exploitative schemes afoot than maybe Peterson or White intended, when she bemoans Millennial/Gen Z slackers’ eagerness to participate in her “reality show” rather than do real work.)

The Changeling, on Apple TV+

North Brother Island near the Bronx was once a quarantine site for Riverside Hospital, but it is now an uninhabited bird sanctuary managed by the City. Somewhere nearby, there is a mysterious island that maybe holds the answers to some sinister fantastical questions. To get there, you must take a detour through the Twilight Zone, or the Looking Glass, if you prefer. A series of unimaginable tragedies will motivate Apollo Kagwa to seek those answers in creator Kelly Marcel’s eight-episode The Changeling, adapted from Victor LaValle’s novel, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

There are a lot of parallels between Kagwa’s family history and that of his future wife, Emma Valentine. Kagwa’s long, slightly stalkerish courtship of Valentine also mirrors that of his father’s pursuit of his mother, way back in the garbage-strike-stricken New York City of the 1970s. We will go back to that time frequently, because The Changeling loves its flashbacks.

Just when Kagwa thought he was making progress with Valentine, she leaves for a year-long research trip to Brazil, where she has a disturbing encounter with fortune-telling witch. (The Portuguese is accurately translated in the scenes, by the way.) Kagwa is delighted Valentine wants to pick-up where they left off when she returns. However, she still carries “something” from the witch.

Eventually, they have a baby, which should be great. Sadly, Valentine’s post-partum depression metastasizes into paranoid psychosis. She becomes convinced their baby is not really their baby. She is also bedeviled by harassing texts that apparently magically disappear whenever she tries to show them to Kagwa. Eventually, she does something unspeakably rash that will deeply scar Kagwa. Yet, after some time passes, he seeks greater understanding into her state of mind by seeking out the mysterious Cal (short for Callisto).

The Changeling is jam packed with pretentious literary allusions. It also has an annoying habit creating more obscure mysteries with every ostensive revelation. Throughout it all, it is impossible to miss its fairy tale inspirations from LaValle’s constant once-upon-a-time narration. Frankly, viewers will get a general sense The Changeling is an unadaptable novel Marcel tried to adapt anyone, on a dare. Perhaps the production ran out of money too, because the final episode clocks in at a mere half hour and suddenly transforms from a weird micro-scale fable into a macro-scale earth-shaking fantastical spectacle, with little transitional warning.

The Nun II: Back to The Conjuring Universe

She is not really a nun. It is a demon, who has assumed the shape of a nun, to pervert a symbol of Christianity. Everything Valak does is evil, but there is also good in the “Conjuring Universe.” Eventually, Lorraine Warren will vanquish Valak at the (absolutely terrifying) end of Conjuring 2. Until then, Sister Irene will continue battling the demon in the 1950s-set prequels. Sadly, she will have to face Valak without Father Burke in Michael Chaves’s The Nun II, which opens tomorrow nationwide.

Of course, The Nun I set up a sequel, most likely involving “Frenchie,” the well-meaning lug who saved Sister Irene during the conclusion of the first film. He has been working his way west from Romania in the four years since, as has a disturbing rash of clerical suicides and desecrations. As the only still-living Romanian convent exorcist, Sister Irene is ordered to investigate, whether she likes it or not, which she doesn’t. However, her new friend, the rebellious Sister Debra, invites herself along, even though Sister Irene gravely warns the inexperienced nun that her tenuous faith will be profoundly tested.

The trail leads to France, where Frenchie now works as a custodian at a religious but not Church-administered school for girls. The bullied Sophie thinks he is charming and her mother Kate, one of the school’s teachers, does not necessarily disagree, but weird things have been happening since he arrived.

Catholic theologians can probably nitpick The Nun II to death, but it is probably more respectful of the Church and more thoroughly steeped in its teachings than just about any horror movies since William Peter Blatty’s first and third Exorcist films. Frankly, the way it incorporates Catholic rituals in its climax turns out to be a shockingly rewarding payoff. It also teases an “apostolic” connection that makes a lot of sense in the Conjuring Universe.

Taissa Farmiga is terrific as Sister Irene, especially when showing how she draws strength from her faith. Jonas Bloquet, Anna Popplewell, and Katelyn Rose Downey really engage viewers’ sympathies as Frenchie, Sophie, and Kate. One of the things that made the primary Conjuring series so effective were the family dynamics of both the Warrens and the people they helped. The audience cares about everyone in those films and Nun II really follows their example.

Gold Run: Norway’s WWII Gold Convoy

In 1940, Norway’s Krone had real value, because they had a gold standard. Of course, that meant the national bank had a lot of gold in its vaults, to back up its currency. When the Germans invaded, stealing that gold was a high priority. Bureaucrats from the central bank and finance ministry worked with the military to deliver Norway’s gold to the Allies for safe keeping. They are losing the battle, but the Norwegians complete their heroic mission in Hallvard Braein’s Gold Run, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Fredrik Haslund is a boring mid-level political appointee, but that is why his boss trusts him. Unfortunately, that means he gets the call when it is time to ferry Norway’s gold reserves to a British destroyer waiting not so patiently along the coast. The minister knows Haslund will meticulously account for each and every gold bar. That is also why he so annoys Maj. Bjorn Sunde, the crusty commander of his military escort, which includes a celebrity, former communist poet Nordahl Grieg. (To his credit, Grieg broke with Stalin and the Party when they signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact). At least Haslund’s activist sister, Nini, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, will lend her skills as a scout and English translator to his make-shift convoy.

Haslund is not an obvious hero, but Ingvar Berge from the finance ministry inspires even less confidence. However, he will be reluctantly paired up with Odd Henry, a grizzled truck driver, who is man enough for the both of them. They will all have to get their acts together and work as a team, because Major Otto Stoltmann is hot on their trail.

Gold Run is a solidly respectable war drama that sometimes feels more like the streaming/TV movie that it started its life as in Scandinavia, representing Viaplay’s first original film. It is a great story, especially when it shows two undeniably heroic professions, soldiers and economists, working together at a time of national emergency. However, most characters are just deep enough to give them an internal crisis to exploit during critical turning points.

Although the battery of three screenwriters never really delve into Grieg’s politics (he was an honest anti-fascist, instead of a Party stooge), the depiction of the national bard is still far from hagiography. He often appears somewhat full of himself, but his “first reading” of his classic wartime poem is pretty stirring stuff.

Amerikatsi, in the Epoch Times

AMERIKATSI somehow finds the uplifting elements in its tale of a prodigal Armenian's return to his homeland, straight into a Stalinist-era prison. There are some issues, but its merits are greater. EPOCH TIME review up here.

Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind

Stig Bjorkman certainly had a number of advantages in his choice of documentary subject. As of yesterday, she has published two memoirs and a collection drawn from her journals, as well as a wealth of fiction and non-fiction writings inspired by her life. Plus, for someone who describes herself as a “private person,” she recorded quite a few television interviews over the years. If you want to become an expert on Joyce Carol Oates, your biggest challenge will be finding the time to read all the primary sources, including the book of interviews Bjorkman released in Sweden. For years, he regularly proposed a potential documentary. Finally, she agreed to participate in what became Bjorkman’s Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind, which opens Friday in New York.

Obviously, JCO is first and foremost a writer, as acres of paper-stock can attest. She is best known for long “great American novel”-style works that use the family saga as a vehicle for social and political commentary. However, readers who do not share her Ivy League perspective might find her genre outliers more rewarding, including her more mass market pseudonymous thrillers, which Bjorkman duly covers. (I particularly recommend her gothic mystery Mysteries of Winterthurn). Black Water is also a significant work, of manageable novella length, transparently inspired by the untimely death of Mary Jo Kopechne in Ted Kennedy’s car.

Unfortunately, JCO’s politics are much more predictable and much less interesting. During the Trump era, she became something of a Twitter warrior, which seems like a colossal waste of her time and ours. As the son of a Vietnam veteran and a Vietnam-era vet, her and her husband’s relocation to Canada during the war and her shallow anti-war sentiments are disappointing. Apparently, the plight of the Vietnamese “boat people” refugees and the sacrifice of those who did serve left little impression on her. For those with a somewhat different perspective, this section of Bjorkman’s film is a bit of a poison pill.

8 Found Dead

Here are two things horror movies hate: online B&B’s and old people. This one has both, so it is highly likely several people are going to die. Just how many? Off the top of my head, I’m going to guess eight. Annoyingly, there are probably even more flashforwards and flashbacks than corpses in Travis Greene’s 8 Found Dead, which releases Friday in theaters.

The prologue is totally unfair to Jenny, because when she arrives at the desert party house, she spends hours cleaning up after the previous renters, before the slasher finally gets around to killing her. There will be more bodies, as we can tell when Greene flashes forward to two divorcing sheriff’s deputies, Blake and Bobby Miller, responding to a 9-1-1 call. However, they only count five bodies.

Presumably, whatever happened involved Richard and Liz, a weird old couple (for horror movies, that is a redundancy) who claim they have reserved the house instead of Sam the influencer and Dwayne her boyfriend. They make the same claims when the couple’s friends Carrie and Ricky finally show up several hours later—but they never mentioned having met Sam and Dwayne earlier.

Screenwriter Jonathan Buchanan’s fractured timeline is not nearly as clever or effective as Greene hopes. Frankly, it mostly comes across as a labored attempt to build misleading suspense. The film also feels like an homage/rip-off of Ti West’s X, given the creepy hyper-sexual talk that comes out of the mouths of the scary old people. Several of the victims in this film look exponentially healthier than Richard and Liz, so there are basic physical credibility issues too, especially since their suspicious behavior should nullify the element of surprise.

The Truth About La Dolce Vita, on Film Movement Plus

Giuseppe "Peppino" Amato would have appreciated the notorious behind-the-scenes chaos during the production of Apocalypse Now. While the Vietnam drama nearly killed Coppola and Sheen, the stress of producing Fellini’s La Dolce Vita very directly led to Amato’s financial ruin and early demise. Filmmaker Giuseppi Pedersoli combines traditional documentary elements with re-enactments to tell Amato’s side of the story in The Truth About La Dolce Vita, which premieres Friday on Film Movement Plus.

Arguably, Amato only had himself to blame. He bought the screenplay from Dino De Laurentiis, after receiving the blessing of Padre Pio. He then brought in his frequent producing partner Angelo Rizzoli, who never really got the film and eventually left Amato holding the bag. Throughout much of the increasingly costly production, Amato acted as a go-between, taking heat from Fellini, Rizzoli, and everyone else the director was feuding with.

Throughout Truth, it is clear Pedersoli is showing us Amato’s truth. Fans of Fellini should be warned the hybrid doc often makes the auteur appear to be little more than a spoiled child—and Rizzoli fares even worse. (However, De Laurentiis, seen in archival interviews seems admirably philosophical about losing out on a masterpiece.)

Luigi Petrucci is also quite engaging playing Amato, in what nearly amounts to a one-thesp show. However, his dramatic sequences exclusively focus on the troubled titular production and they are largely drawn from studio memos and trade interviews. As a result, the re-enactment dialogue is a little dry at times.

Korean Cinema’s Golden Decade: The Devil’s Stairway

There is no way Dr. Oh’s hospital is up to code. The first and second floors are connected by a rickety staircase, with a banister that constantly falls apart. There is also an incredibly steep fire escape out back. Frankly, old Satan would probably approve of either and they both contribute to the skullduggery in Lee Man-hee’s The Devil’s Stairway, which screens as part of the film series, Korean Cinema’s Golden Decade: The 1960s.

It is Dr. Oh’s hospital, but since he has no sons, he hopes his chief surgeon, Dr. Hyeon Gwang-ho will take over when he retires, assuming he marries Oh’s flighty youngest daughter, Oh Jung-ja. Hyeon has had the same idea, which is why he has kept his affair with Nurse Nam Jun-sik on the down-low. However, when Dr. Oh’s succession plans become known to the general hospital, Nurse Nam makes it clear she is more than willing to cause a scandal for Hyeon. While they are “discussing” the matter, Nurse Nam “falls” through the rotten banister.

The good news is Nurse Nam is already at the hospital, so she receives immediate treatment. The bad news is Dr. Hyeon will be her attending physician. Frankly, there is a good chance she will not survive her convalescence, but then again, maybe it isn’t quite that simple. There will indeed be a lot of twists and turns, which is why the copy for the series justifiably invokes Clouzot’s Diabolique.

Stairway is definitely a noir thriller, but Lee and cinematographer Seo Joeng-min often play with the visual language of horror, especially as Hyeon’s paranoia warps his perception of reality. Admittedly, cineastes who have seen Clouzot, Hitchcock, and similar masters will probably guess what is going on, but it is jolly entertaining to watch. Lee triples and quadruples-down on atmosphere and the first act’s lurid sexual tension would have been considered risqué for Hollywood movies of 1964, its original year of release.

Little Richard: I Am Everything, on CNN

He truly was the “architect of rock & roll.” Richard Wayne Penniman was rocking before Elvis and at one point he had Jimi Hendrix in his band. His shows had more energy than Springsteen’s and more flamboyance than Elton John’s. Actually, his flamboyance is a major focus of Lisa Cortes’ documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything, which airs Monday on CNN.

Penniman was the third son out of twelve children for his father, a Pentecostal deacon and bootlegger, who often took issue with the future rocker, because he was small, sensitive, and gay. That last part is maybe a little more complicated, but not to his dad. Of course, Penniman could sing, starting in the Church and then on the chitlin circuit (which sometimes included drag performances).

While giving a rough chronology of Little Richard’s life and career, Cortes’ central theme is the tension between his sexuality and his Evangelical Christianity. She also interviews his longtime off-and-on girlfriend Lee Angel at length, which is where some of those complications come in. Yet, there is no mention of his classic supporting turn in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, which contributed considerably to his 1980s comeback (the soundtrack also featured one of his final hits, “Great Gosh A’Mighty”). On the plus side, the coverage of Little Richard’s gospel period is pretty solid.

Maybe his identity issues will mean a lot to some people, but his fans would probably rather hear more about his music. Little Richard is a legend, so it is nice to get some sense of his personality. Even today, his wicked sense of humor still often plays like knowingly outrageous performance art. Yet, he is still entitled to some privacy, even posthumously, which is why Cortes’ obsessive interest in his romantic life and sexual pursuits sometime feels excessive and intrusive, especially when there is so little song-by-song discussion of his recorded output.

Orca, in The Epoch Times

In some ways, ORCA is a crowd-pleasing sports film, but it also vividly reflects the current Iranian regime's misogyny and the violent thuggery dissenters often face, especially those involved with the "Women, Life, Freedom" protest movement, which helped inspire the film. EPOCH TIMES review uo here.

Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose

"Gef the Dalby Spook” was probably the most famous fictional mongoose after Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Supposedly, some people actually believed he was real, but seriously, a talking mongoose with clairvoyant powers? Nevertheless, well-known paranormal researchers of the 1930s duly schlepped out to the Isle of Man hoping to catch a glimpse of the conveniently illusive weasel-like creature. The Hungarian-American Nandor Fodor was one of them. His increasingly absurd investigation unfolds in Adam Sigal’s Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, which opens today in New York.

Lately, Fodor has been a bit out of step with his fellow paranormal investigators, because he has become more of a debunker. Nevertheless, his old friend and mentor Harry Price (famous for the Borley Rectory haunting, as seen in films like The Banishing) insists Fodor needs to check out “Gef.” Frankly, Price’s account of his own investigation is less than convincing. He admits he never saw the mongoose with his own. Oh, and by the way, the daughter of Irving family, who own the farm where Gef supposedly lives, just so happens to be a ventriloquist. Despite his skepticism, Fodor agrees to make the trek, bringing his long-suffering and possibly torch-carrying assistant Anne, with him.

It seems like Sigal is striving for ambiguity on the question of Gef’s existence, but he never earns our agnosticism. Frankly, it all looks like a fortuitously timed hoax that coincides with Fodor’s middle-life crisis and possible nervous breakdown. It is hard to tell just what kind of tone Sigal was going for, because the film slips and slides all over the place.

However, if it was indeed intended as a comedy, the funniest part (maybe the only truly humorous segment) is the stinger, featuring the cast and crew unloading on Sigal’s unprofessionalism. Anyone who endured Sigal’s previous film, the messy island-of-broken-toys Chariot, might like to add choice comments of their own.

By far, the best part of the film is Christopher Lloyd, who is charmingly eccentric playing Price. Poor Simon Pegg labors like a coal-miner working a double shift as Fodor, but Sigal’s script does not supply the material to support his conversion from Scully to Mulder. Minnie Driver always brings a lot of fresh energy to any film she appears in, but the role of Anne feels conspicuously tacked-on and tangential.

Frankly, the only reason many fans will be watching Nandor Fodor is to hear Neil Gaiman, supplying the voice of Gef. He does sound appropriately eerie. I suppose if a mongoose could talk, he might sound a lot like Gaiman.

Sigal just cannot fit these pieces together and even at what should be a manageable ninety-six minutes, his pacing drags. This probably sounds like an eccentric lark, sort of in the tradition of the 1980s films Michael Palin made without Monty Python, but it is weirdly flat and inert. Not recommended, Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose opens today (9/1) in New York, at the Quad Cinema.

Les Blank’s I Went to the Dance

For some reason, French lyrics sound so much better when accompanied by accordion and violin. When you add washboard, you’re really in business. You will hear a lot of serious Louisiana sounds, particularly Creole, Cajun, and Zydeco music in the late great music documentarian Les Blank’s 5K-restored I Went to the Dance (a.k.a. J’ai ete au Bal), co-directed with his longtime collaborator (and editor) Maureen Gosling & Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz, which opens today in New York.

As you should know, Cajuns were originally the Arcadians, who came Louisiana, the nearest French-speaking region on the continent, after the English expelled them from Nova Scotia. Tourists often get chewed out for confusing Cajuns with Creoles, but Blank’s experts, folklorist Barry Jean Ancelet and songwriter Michael Doucet, emphasize the cross-pollination between the two Louisiana cultures.

Blank always had a sly, slightly eccentric sensibility that some people still don’t get, because they aren’t sufficiently hip. I Went to the Dance is a great example. It starts with a very funny musician’s joke from accordionist Marc Savoy, who later delights Blank by standing on his instrument to demonstrate its strength.  Of course, there is also a whole lot terrific music from musicians like Clifton Chenier (whose appearance is relatively brief, since Blank already devoted a full documentary to him, Hot Pepper), Queen Ida, Dennis McGee, Marc & Ann Savoy, Michael Doucet & Beausoleil, and Dewey Balfa, who gets credit for launching the Cajun music revival at 1960s folk festivals.

King of Killers, Starring Frank Grillo and Alain Moussi

If Jorg Drakos were more like big tech or big unions, he would just bribe politicians to regulate his competition out of business. Instead, the notorious assassin plans to personally usher his rivals into an early retirement. Should any hitman survive his unlikely tournament, they win 10,000,000 dollars. That money would help Marcus Garan care for his sick daughter, Kimberly, but Drakos might also hold some answers regarding the murder of Garan’s wife in Kevin Grevioux’s King of Killers, which opens Friday in New York.

After his wife’s untimely demise, Garan walked away from contract killing, but he needs money fast for Kimberly’s heart surgery. According to mystery man Roman Korza’s initial pitch, Garan was supposedly hired to kill Drakos. Then he discovers Drakos has set up this little assassin convention for his own satisfaction, to decide who is really the best of the best. He has lured them to a Tokyo highrise (it looks more like a mid-sized building in Cleveland, but whatever), which he tricked-out with secret mirrors and traps. The idea is the draw numbers to face him, like the Minotaur in the labyrinth, one by one, but Garan quickly figures out they need to break the rules to survive.

King of Killers (that’s Drakos’s nickname) is based on Grevioux’s graphic novel, but the narrative itself is pretty straightforward, in a meatheaded kind of way. However, it builds to an improbable twist ending that implies some extraordinarily irresponsible risk-taking. Nevertheless, it clearly teases an intended sequel that I would be totally down for.

Despite its moronic attempts at cleverness, King of Killers still has some terrific fight scenes. Frankly, this is probably Alain Moussi’s best showcase since the underappreciated Kickboxer reboots. He definitely has the right chops for Garan. Likewise, Frank Grillo chews the scenery spectacularly as Drakos, who is way more amusing than most shadowy super-villains.

We Kill for Love: The Erotic Thriller Doc

They were quite a thing in their time, but they could not survive the double-whammy of the collapsing video store market and the rise of puritanical woke-ism. Somehow, low-budget horror has weathered the perfect storm, but sexy thrillers with words like “deadly,” indecent,” “eyes,” “body,” and “night” in their titles just could not maintain market share. The filmmakers and stars who worked prolifically in the genre look back on their work in director-producer-editor Anthony Penta’s documentary We Kill for Love, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

The genesis of it all was Brian de Palma’s Dressed to Kill, which established just about all of the genre’s tropes and motifs. Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat was its Citizen Kane and Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction were its Star Wars-sized hits. In between, there were a lot of cheaper films, promising, but not necessarily delivering naughty thrills, for customers of independent video stores and late-night cable TV.

The phenomenon was well underway during the mid-to-late-1980s, but it maybe reached its peak in the early 1990s. Andrew Stevens is a major reason why. He leveraged his notoriety as an actor (from films like The Fury and Death Hunt) to get his screenplay produced. He also starred in Night Eyes, which is definitely one of the documentary’s touchstone films. To Stevens’ credit, he is a good interview subject, who can discuss his career with self-aware perspective and a sense of humor.

Occasionally, there is some horror crossover in We Kill for Love, mainly thanks to Fred Olen Rey. Penta and his academics (whose political commentary on the 1980s is often dubious) also convincingly identify straight-to-video erotic thrillers as the disreputable offspring of film noir and hardboiled pulp on the male side and gothic romance on female side. (However, class envy played little role in the genre’s success. The characters’ luxurious lifestyles were just a further dimension of its voyeurism.)

Indeed, voyeurism often factored very directly in the storylines, but they were not X-rated. They were “naughty” rather than “dirty” movies. Yet, many of the actresses who frequently appeared in these films have had to push back when they were unfairly labeled “porn stars,” like Amy Lindsay (whose credits also include guest shots on Star Trek: Voyager, Silk Stockings, and Pacific Blue), who explains what it was like to be smeared with the “p” word when she appeared as an average voter in a commercial for Ted Cruz. Give Penta credit for covering this incident fairly.

Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz

He was a man of deep faith and deep neuroses. Despite his extraordinary success, Charles Schulz remained a very humble and humane man. What better means to tell his story than through the artform he perfected? Writer Luca Debus and artist Francesco Matteuzzi chronicle Shulz’s life with comic strips (including a double color panel every seventh page) in Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz, which releases today in bookstores.

Clearly, much of Debus’s dialogue is fictionalized. In real life, we usually don’t have reliable punch-lines on every third beat, but a comic strip pro like Shulz would surely appreciate it. Presumably, the Schulz family did not sanction Funny Things, because none of the Peanuts gang are ever pictured, but it is hard to imagine they would object to its lovingly humanistic portrayal.

Most of the major events will be familiar to fans, especially if they have seen Apple TV+’s Who Are You, Charlie Brown, but Debus places much greater emphasis on the impact of various family tragedies on the young Schulz. He also devotes a good deal of time to the cartoonist’s wartime service, his early professional service, and his long history of church work (which Apple predictably overlooks).

Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia

Evidently, society can learn a lot from a bear and a mouse. In their first film, Ernest and Celestine taught us a lesson in tolerance. This time around, they tackle artistic freedom and rigidly controlled labor markets. Sadly, there is little social or economic freedom in Gibberitia, Ernest’s hometown of bears. That is why he left in the first place. Unfortunately, he must return to have his prized Stradibearius violin fixed in Jean-Christophe Roger & Julian Chheng’s Ernests & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia, which opens Friday in New York, from GKIDS.

Ernest just woke up from a long sleep and boy is hungry, but there is no food in the house, so Celestine suggests they busk for money. Unfortunately, she trips on his slipper, breaking his beloved Stradibearius. The only luthier who can fix it lives in Gibberitia, so that is where she goes, with the reluctant Ernest trailing after her.

When they finally reach the Balkan-looking Gibberitia, Ernest finds it has drastically changed. All music consisting of more than one note is now forbidden and instruments are confiscated (ironically, some extreme punk could still be legal). However, there is an underground resistance, which presumably includes Ernest’s luthier, but they might not be so happy to see him. The law outlawing music is known as the “Ernestov Law,” named in his honor by his father, Nabokov, Gibberitia’s chief judge. He passed the anti-music regulations when his son left home to pursue music, rather than follow in his father’s jurist footsteps, as required by Gibberitian law and tradition.

Trip to Gibberitia takes an unexpectedly dystopian turn, but it works much better than the third act of Mark Osbourne’s The Little Prince. Clearly, the “-ov” suffixes added to the character names suggest a commentary on Russian authoritarianism, either from the Soviet past or the Putinic present. It is also easy to hear Eastern European influences in the score composed by jazz cellist Vincent Courtois, which further emphasizes the Iron Curtain vibe.

The Spanish Dancer, Restored, with an Original Score by Bill Ware

Maritana, the dancing Roma girl, and her lover, Don Cezar de Bazan, are characters created by Victor Hugo, who subsequently inspired works by Massenet, Mendelssohn, W.S. Gilbert, and a French stage adaptation by D’Ennery & Pinel, on which this film was also partly based. It further inspired a competing silent movie from Ernst Lubitsch that released around the same time, but to less acclaim. Despite its popularity at the time, the restored print had to be assembled from two 35mm nitrate prints and two 16mm prints. Fortunately, we now have every scene, representing almost the entire original running time. Yet, what really brings the restoration of Herbert Brenon’s silent The Spanish Dancer to life is the new score composed by jazz musician Bill Ware, which cineastes can hear when it releases on BluRay tomorrow, from Milestone Films.

Maritana is a wild spirit, who definitely never does anything the easy way. Perhaps that is why she falls in love with the wastrel Don Cezar de Bazan after reading his dreadful fortune. He does indeed lose his money and his social standing, but he finds allies among Maritana’s people. Don Cezar must keep moving to evade the sheriff determined to send him off to debtor’s prison, but he and Maritana arrange to meet in the Square of the Galloping Charger, when it will be thronged with people for the feast day festival.

Unfortunately, the cash-poor honor-rich Don cannot resist dueling despite the King’s decree to the contrary. That gets him sentenced to death. All is not lost, because the French-born Queen owes Maritana a favor. However, the deceitful Don Sallustre is working behind the scenes, to undermine everyone, for his own benefit. You know he is a devious snake-in-the-grass, because he is played by Adolphe Menjou.

Spanish Dancer is a rollicking swashbuckler comedy that almost feels like an early silent predecessor to the Richard Lester Musketeer movies, but probably nobody involved in their production had the opportunity to see Brenon’s film in its full glory. It actually turns into a deliciously ironic farce, albeit one that still holds life and death consequences.

Milestone’s Spanish Dancer really gallops along at a brisk tempo thanks to Ware’s original score. As you would expect from a vibraphonist and bassist, it has a strong rhythmic drive and a propulsive underlying beat. Ware’s percussive elements often evoke the vibe of flamenco and other forms of Spanish music, while the orchestration remains rooted in jazz forms. Regardless, it sounds great. In addition to the composer on vibes and bass, it also features Steven Bernstein on trumpet, Curtis Fowlkes on trombone, Bobby Previte on drums, and Rez Abbasi on electric guitar.

It is amazing what a fresh new score can do for a silent film. Suddenly, we are more receptive to the images, because we can better relate to the music (instead of an old timey-sounding piano). What looks exaggerated in isolation becomes passionate or “extreme” in a contemporary sense, when working in concert with the music. This is especially true for the generation that was raised on music videos, who are used to seeing music related only by theme or mood layered over an otherwise unassociated narrative. Ware’s score is a great example, even though he maintains some Spanish and Roma flavorings.

Korean Cinema’s Golden Decade: The Great Monster Yonggary

Forget Godzilla vs. Kong, because it was so disappointing. What would really be cool would be Yonggary vs. Wangmagwi, a battle of the Korean kaiju. There is even some bad blood between the respective monsters. Yonggary was completed first, but Space Monster Wangmagwi beat it into theaters, earning accusations of plagiarism. Wangmagwi has recently been restored to its full earth-shaking glory, but Yonggary still only exists in the English-dubbed print produced by American International Pictures. Even with dubious English dialogue, it is still fun to watch the Godzilla-like monster smash stuff up in Kim Kee-duk’s The Great Monster Yonggary (a.k.a. Yonggary, Monster from the Deep), which screens as part of the film series, Korean Cinema’s Golden Decade: The 1960s.

Ever so coincidentally, Yonggary starts with a newlywed pilot, recalled to duty after his wedding, to monitor a nuclear test in the Middle East from space. In Wangmagwi, our hero pilot was forced to postpone his wedding, so it was totally different. Regardless, the Korean space program is way more advanced in Yonggary than it is in The Moon. Be that as it may, the nuclear blast unleashes a monster buried deep within the Earth and it starts making its way straight towards the Korean peninsula, triggering catastrophic earthquakes in its wake. The prognosis is bad for South Korea, but that should mean a good part of the Mideast and China must be reduced to rubble. Tough luck for them, but we won’t be worrying about their fate in Yonggary.

You can also forget the astronaut. Instead, Kim and co-screenwriter Seo Yun-sung follow Il-woo, the socially awkward scientist, who has been dating the bride’s sister, Soon-a. Il-woo seems to get along better with her bratty brother Icho, who takes it upon himself to investigate Yonggary, to find his Achilles heel—again, not unlike Wangmagwi.

Presumably, the original Korean print of Yonggary is better. Presumably, fewer characters speak with English and Transatlantic accents, but that is part of the eccentric fun of the AIP dub. What matters is the suitmation is awesome. It was Cho Kyoung-min in the rubber Yonggary suit and he totally devastates every scale model in his path, like a tornado bearing down on a trailer park.