Halloween Movie Review: Rifftrax Live presents Manos Hands of Fate

     This year, Steve, Sarah, Hilary and I settled in to watch the Rifftrax Live version of Manos: Hands of Fate.  Hilary and I had seen the original MST3K version many times and were excited to see this new take.  The movie is crap.  We all know this.  But it's worth taking note of just how bad.  It appears to be made up of completely unrelated outtakes of film with dubbed dialogue and a nonsensical aesthetic.  Here's the thing though.  The plot, which takes up about 10 minutes of the whole movie, is actually very dark, and even scary.  Torgo wants to keep the wife as his love slave and Manos wants to keep the wife and daughter as his zombie brides.  It ends on a deeply disturbing note.  Of course it's hard to be effected by it since the movie is so laughably bad, but the darkness is there.
     Now, the Riff.  It's impossible not to compare it to the original MST3K version, so I'm going to lean in to that.  I'm typically not a fan of the MST3K host segments, but in Manos they actually come in quite handy.  You need a break from that movie.  This is a Joel episode (though Mike Nelson is great as Torgo delivering pizzas), and I think that's for the best.  Joel's nonchalant zingers play best in a movie like Manos.  Overall, I'd say the original is better, but the Rifftrax version is a worthy follow-up.  The conversational style of this crew helps get you through the monotony, but they also have to avoid making the same jokes as the earlier version.  I think sometimes that leads them down some odd paths.  There were certainly laugh out loud moments and I don't think we were bored, but if ever I have to rewatch Manos, I will reach for the MST3K version.
     As is usual with Rifftrax Live events, this was preceded a by a few educational shorts.  Norman was right up there with the best of them, but Cylinders was just okay.

I give it 3 Goat Legs.

Bonus!  The following week Steve and I got together and watched What Lies Beneath.  This has long been a favorite of mine and was actually Hilary's pick for Halloween Team 2016.  Beat for beat this movie is just on it.  It has some great red herrings and unexpected turns.  Harrison Ford nails his only role of this kind and Michelle Pfeiffer plays the hot mess expertly. They have great chemistry too.  I find the movie to be genuinely scary in all the right ways.  Hats of to Clark Gregg for the great script and Robert Zemeckis for stylish direction. If you haven't seen it, check it out.

I give it 5 Braids.

Halloween Team 2018: The Gunning Picks

For four years now the Gunnings, Mikols and Jacoby-Murphys have been taking turns picking Halloween movies.  I covered our first batch for 2018 in my last post.  Here are some more.

Next up was Hilary's turn.  This year she chose Ghost Stories with Martin Freeman.  It was basically a series of vignettes following a man trying to debunk ghost stories that convinced other skeptics.  The real success of this movie, was the buildup.  In each section, the main characters would move through a series of escalating events with plenty of time in between each jump.  It was the anticipation that really amped up the scares.  Up through the penultimate theme we were feeling like this was the scariest movie we'd watched.   And I think in some ways that is true.  BUT.  The ending really knocked the legs out from under it.  I don't know where I wanted the story to go, but I think the end retroactively made even earlier good parts a little less good.  Still, worth the watch and a very good pick.

I give it 80% of the movie 4 faulty flashlights, with the final bit getting 1 goat man.

Now... our next pick. I don't think it's really important to say who chose it. That's not even the point.  It's a mistake anyone could make. I don't think the selector should be held accountable. Anyway, at the appointed time we gathered and began the mid-90s horror, comedy, drama, thriller  movie Wolf starring Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer and James Spader (for some reason).  I guess if I have to give one compliment, it is pretty impressive that the team behind Wolf manged to get such wooden, confusing performances out of Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer and James Spader (for some reason.)  I would expect more from any of those people and was actually pretty excited to see Nicholson and Pfeiffer together. Look, this movie sucked. It was the worst.  Let me see if I can stitch together the plot.  Spader is gunning for Nicholson's job as managing editor of... something.  A publishing house?  Michelle Pfeiffer is the sullen daughter of the new owner of the publishing house (?).  For some reason she likes Nicholson.  For some reason Spader likes Nicholson's wife.  Oh and also, several people are werewolves.  I give up. This is more like a super hero movie for middle aged people, and an unsuccessful one at that.  There are no silver linings here and I'm too bored to make some sort of silver bullet joke. Whoever picked it would like to apologize to the group.

I give this 1 full moon.

Halloween Team 2018: The Eric and Sally Picks

This tradition has legs!  (Spooky, spindly spider legs, but still.)  We've been doing this for four years now and the hits keep on coming. With Sally and Sarah in North Carolina, we've had to get a little more technical to keep the tradition undead, but so far so good.

Kendra used some black magic to set the order and Eric was up first. I always look forward to the Eric pick. (With the exception of Eight Legged Freaks, of course.)  This year he chose Fright Night, the 2011 remake of the 80s cult classic.  This one starred Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrel and just hit the mark at every turn. It was spooky and actually scary here and there, but it was the general weirdness that really sold it for me.  David Tenant pops up and delivered as usual. Finding the balance in a movie like this is tough, but I felt like this walked the line well.  It made me want to check out the original.  We watched this at Eric and Kendra's with the movie on one screen and Sally and Sarah on the other. It was great when it worked.

I give it 4 McLovins.

The following week was the Jacoby-Murphy pick.  Sally and Sarah were actually in town for this one.  So after Sally, Eric and I recorded the annual Halloween episode of the podcast we settled at our house for the movie. Every year I'm terrified that Sally's going to go off-book and pick something that will live in my brain forever, but she relented and they ultimately settled on John Carpenter's The Thing.  I was actually all in for this movie. The feel was absolutely right. It's grim and unsettling in places, but Kurt Russell sells it. It was scary enough and a fun movie to talk through with a group of friends.  I'd kinda like to see the updated version now.

I give it 4 Spider Dog Alien People.

Bonus!  After the movie we watched the original David S. Pumpkins skit from SNL.  Still hilarious.  I don't know why it works, but it does.  Tom Hanks is just so game.  Then we rolled right in to the David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special.  Making this was not a good idea and it definitely doesn't deliver on the same level as the original brief skit.  BUT.  I like it. There are enough laughs to get you through and it does maintain the same offbeat vibe.  I wish it was more kid friendly so I could show my son, but I can see this being the kind of thing that gets funnier the more you watch it.  Maybe not.  Time will tell.

I give it 3 Beat Boys.

She Loves Me (2018): Debrief

     Sometimes I finish plays and can just sit back and be pleased.  (Don't get me wrong, even then, there's always a thing or two I would do differently in hindsight.)  However, the She Loves Me revival has brought up a different feeling altogether. Overall it was a good experience. I thought the final product turned out really well.  The audience responded and things came together nicely. I got to work with some of my favorite actors. It was the first time I got to direct my little brother. I love the symmetry in capping our first 10 years with a re-staging of  our first show.  I liked having the chance to appraise 25 year old Nic's directing. (He missed some things.)   I'm glad we did it, but it also served to reaffirm my feeling that I just shouldn't do musicals.

     Back in the days when I was performing more I gravitated towards musicals and looked at plays as a nice change of pace every now and then. Now that I approach scripts as a director, I just don't find a lot that excites me in the libretto of a musical.  I prefer to be able to put my own stamp on things and I think the nature of the musical just makes that difficult.  In this show, for instance, there are many subplots that are mentioned but not explored. I kept trying to find ways to lean in to those moments, to build them up to the level I wanted them to be.  That's a mistake though. In play you maybe get three pages to work through an issue.  In a musical you get three lines, then the songs flesh things out a bit more.  That's the kind of thing I missed.  I wanted to go down these side streets and add a little weight.  I think we did manage that here and there, but the format just ties your hands.  That's not to say that you can't do great and even deep stuff with a musical.  I've certainly seen that and I think I even did it once.  But that's usually the exception to the rule.
     Think about The Sound of Music.  A man loses his wife and is left to care for seven children. A young nun comes in to care for the children while the Nazis move in on their home.  Meanwhile, Dad's best friend is a lovable Nazi sympathizer.  The nun and widower fall in love and and then drag children through the Alps on foot. To me that sounds like a dark story with a little hope sprinkled in.  How much time we give to the kid's dead mom or the fact that the Captain lost his wife?  What about the fact that a nun is contemplating breaking her vows because she's falling in love with an engaged man?  And we haven't even gotten to the Nazis! Anyway, the answer is that each of these things gets about 3 lines.  So does that mean The Sound of Music is bad?  Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-NO!  I love it.  It's one of my favorites.  But do I want to direct it? The hills are alive with the sound of me saying NO.
    All that to say,  I love She Loves Me.  There was a ton of talent in our cast.  Again, I'm glad we did it. It was great to get the chance to do it in Houghton and expand to the Wellsville stage. Basically, what I'm saying is that until someone writes this dark take on Sound of Music, I'm probably done with musicals for a while.   (The Sounds of Music in a Minor Key?  We'll workshop it.)

Tune in here for a special interview with the cast: https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/episode-160-she-loves-me