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It won’t be hard to dismiss Fortress as a comic book, trying to disguise itself as a serious action movie.  But sadly, Fortress may be a more accurate prediction of the prison system than people want.  

     Worse, it may be a prediction of what people do want.  If you had the time to watch the recent Escape at Dannemora, you may feel some disturbing similarities between that and Fortress.  

     I worry how many MAGA people feel that prisoners have no right to talk about rehabilitation.  Or any kind of harsh conditions.  That prisons exist to punish criminals, period.  Fortress never mentions rehabilitation.  But it shows you a system where punishment is everything, the only thing.  For me, it also shows you some ominous signs of where our country is heading.

     One ominous warning near the beginning of Fortress.  An announcement to the new prisoners that this place is deep in a barren desert.  Even if you got out, the desert would kill you—fast. The upstate New York location of the real Dannemora is less deadly.  

     True, but tough enough.  Frigid temperatures, wind, snow, isolation.  People prepared for this location…in summer months anyway, stand a fighting chance.  Most escapees don’t.

     More subtle but ominous too.  The movie starts with a highly decorated war veteran and his wife arrested for conceiving a second child.  Never mind that their first child died as an infant.  No laws to protect couples whose baby died that young.  That’s their bad luck, the law is the law.  Crime does not pay, as they hear over and over and over again.   Law and order.   No talk about what is fair.  Don’t whine about fairness.  Don’t do the crime, blah blah you know the rest.

     Another similarity between Fortress and Escape at Dannemora; prisons run by corporations.  I understand; some of the technology in Fortress is still in the future.  John Brennack, the hero in Fortress gets a warning his first night in the prison.  “Don’t dream.”   What could that mean?  

     He dreams of better times, he and his wife making love.  Cut to a guy in a control room with multiple screens watching the action.  Brennack wakes in excruciating pain.  

     People can say, c’mon… that stuff’s way in the future.  But I suspect many felt the same way about AI, not too many years ago.   Or tasers or electronic ankle bracelets years before that. Another obvious question, who monitors the corporations running the prisons?  In Fortress, the corporations’ emphasis is heavy on threats and pain.  Prisoners are intestinated—an internal device inserted in their bodies (you’ll never guess where) to keep them in line.  A quick, easy way to subdue them—with devices to cause intense pain…even kill them when security feels it is necessary. 

     Another movie to use as comparison, Clint Eastwood, Escape from Alcatraz, released 1979, set in 1963.  So many themes in common: A cruel muscle man {the Wolf} intent on raping anyone weaker than him, a vicious warden intent on breaking your spirit, an escape through the guts of the prison infra-structure.

     Okay but what are the main differences?  Frank Morris {Eastwood} is serving a long sentence—for armed robbery.  In Fortress, Brennack and his wife Karen are serving long sentences too.  But their crime; wanting another child; that they will love unconditionally.  Even with the brutality and sick blackmail they face, Brennnack and Karen never lose their compassion in this hell on earth.  it is society that has lost any sense of justice, fairness; and empathy.  Is this where the MAGA people are steering our country?  Ii’s looking that way.  

     Brennack comes in contact with a cross-section of the standard maximum-security prison characters.  Clearly he is a survivor but much more sympathetically sketched out than Frank Morris or Manny (Jon Voigt} in Runaway Train.  Does it matter?

     Yes, and I think this is why.  The prison system shown in Fortress aims to grind everyone, not just the hard-asses, into ground concrete.  Those who raped, killed and tortured twenty five years ago and still enjoy remembering those days; need to stay locked up…of course.  But these are not the only prison inmates,

England, 1921.  A country still in shock from World War I and an influenza epidemic that killed more people than the war.  “A time for ghosts” the opening titles read. A whole industry has sprung up; taking advantage of people’s desperate need to reach those they loved, now dead.  Seances, psychic readings, mediums, the works.

     Florence Cathcart is not a believer in ghosts, and has written a well-respected book stating her views.  One of her activities is exposing the scammers who take advantage of people’s grief.  So many potential victims out there.

     We see her breaking up one seance, and her contempt for the people staging it.  You’re charlatans and more than that, poor charlatans, she tells the people staging the event.  

     As effective as Florence is, she shows no satisfaction at protecting her clients.  One of them is furious; she asks if Florence ever lost a child.  Florence, who never seems at a loss with words, has no quick answers for her.  She seems drained of emotion.

     Soon after, a schoolteacher at a boarding school asks her for help. A boy has died at his school under mysterious circumstances. He knows her reputation as a ghost hunter.  You can’t hunt what doesn’t exist, she answers.  

     “We think it does,” he tells her quietly. He is assertive but she gives him a flat-out no.  Yet we see them soon after in a car headed for the school.  No explanation given; a mystery that will unfold at a slow pace.

     The school is a colorless, bleak place.  Strict discipline but empty of warmth.  Maud Hill, the matron, provides what little kindness we can find.  Maud says she’s read Florence’s book…more than once.  She is definitely an admirer.  Again, we feel the staff’s desperation.  They may or may not believe in ghosts but they are at their wits’ end.  The boys are terrified too.  Almost too scared to answer any questions but direct enough: “Kill it, miss.” 

     Florence has come prepared with equipment; the latest instruments to capture supernatural phenomena—if she finds any..  

    She finds the death of the boy easy to solve.  Not the work of ghosts.  The students and the staff are much grateful to her.  And yet Florence is neither satisfied nor eager to leave.  What is keeping her?   The school is empty of warmth.  Maud Hill, the matron, provides what little kindness we can find.

     Florence has come prepared with equipment; the latest instruments to capture supernatural phenomena—if she finds any to capture.  

    She finds the death of the boy easy to solve.  Not the work of ghosts.  The students and the staff are much grateful to her.  And yet Florence is neither satisfied nor eager to leave.  What is keeping her?   
The easy explanation—to find what is missing in her life.  She has heard brief references to a boy dying years before at the same location—someone’s home then, not a school.            Something in those questions is drawing her in.  The angry question from the woman on the street—it may be an isolated experience.  But it may pose questions as to what Florence is searching for.  People in her life she treasures.  A mission of some kind that brings her fulfillment.
The school schedule has reached half-term.  All the boys get a week off with their families.  Except for Tom, whose parents live in India, an impossible trip in just one week.  Tom and Florence talk about her dead fiancé…killed in the war. Florence loved him.  But she sent him a letter saying she had no feelings for him.  He died soon after.  

     A miniature doll’s house in an empty room brings back other memories to Florence.  A man insane with jealousy, ready to kill his wife—he is sure of her unfaithfulness.  Florence and Tom find themselves staring at the doll’s house…inside the house that later became the school. 

     How much is Florence’s imagination, how  much is her memory?  The matron Maud seems to recall a lot of the tale.  “I don’t think there’s a place on Earth where people can understand loneliness better than here,” she said to Florence earlier.  You can’t take her words lightly. She was a servant too when the school was home to a doomed family, then a matron after it became a school.

     Don’t expect many jump scares in The Awakening.  Instead, you will get emotion; you watch a woman searching for answers—a woman who once felt she knew everything she needed to know.  She solved one mystery—people can’t understand any reason for her to stay after that.    The last 30-40 minutes of this movie shoot by quickly.  Stay with it, stay with Florence as the revelations come to her.  These discoveries pack a punch, a mean one. Her story—and Maud’s and Tom’s, will rivet you.  

Under its trashy-looking surface, Death Line holds some unexpected treasure for those who pay attention.You’d expect a wide spectrum of opinions from its viewers.  Especially from those lucky enough to catch it without cuts for time or violence.   

     For me, and for a lot more people, one theme couldn’t be missed. While we are living our quiet, ordinary, uneventful lives, a hidden sub-society is living out a miserable existence just out of reach. People neglected, then soon forgotten. But able  to reach out and grab one of us at certain isolated, unexpected moments.

     Anyone who heard about them, saying, Don’t look at us, we declared bankruptcy—these creatures are no longer our responsibility.  Don’t tell us we needed to do anything more for a bunch of cannibal-monsters living underground.  Except maybe request the police to round them up or shoot them dead.   

     Sorry, but we filled out all the legal documents required.  If you have to, we can even show you—they’re all on file.  

     About eighty years before, (so the story goes) people started work on some new subway lines in London.  But a roof collapsed and the people in charge decided to scrap the whole construction..

     But no one took responsibility for the subway workers left underground.  They were simply left to die.  Some rumors that their food was soon gone but they might have enough water to survive a short while…maybe not so short.  At least that was possible. 

     Death Line paints a vivid picture of that nightmare.  Decades later several generations of people had survived.  Did they survive on meat from people they slaughtered in the subway near their hiding places…or were they forced to eat each other?  And what was life like for the people they grabbed, as they waited to die?

     Another, more subtle theme in Death Line—a class system, with the monster-survivors at the lowest step on the ladder.  

     Watch the law enforcement people investigating disappearances in the subway system.  Calhoun, the chief inspector (Donald Pleasence, great as always).  Then Detective Rogers, who is expected to follow Calhoun’s every command and to tolerate his frequent sarcasm.  One step below Rogers, a desk officer who reports to him.

   Near the top, above Calhoun, is an M.1.5 officer investigating the disappearances.  When he runs into the M.1.5 officer, Calhoun bluffs, tells him, this is my jurisdiction, I have every right to be here.

     Maybe for murders of greengrocers and other nonentities, the M.1.5 man tells him.  But the missing person is a fellow M.1.5.  You’re way out of your depth.  “Bye bye.”  Calhoun knows it’s time to stop bluffing.

     At the bottom of the totem pole, the cannibals.  Starting out with a long painful scene of the wretched place where they live.  A constant, intruding sound of water dripping.  Grating inside your head as the camera moves too slowly through rooms…endless agony.  Hold on, I don’t need to see all this, you think.  Let’s go back to the other people, the other locations.  

     Instead, you are trapped, as the camera moves through the ruins where people live and die, virtually alone.  Recently killed, side by side with corpses dead much longer, their eyes empty sockets.  Propped up against walls or piled on top of wooden bunks.  Along with the freshly-killed, maybe even a few not yet dead.

     Then another severest, the most unexpected shock—a deep empathy for the surviving creatures. In the sixty-odd years since Death Line’s release we have sat through an endless parade of zombie movies, endless sub-humans shot, beheaded, maybe ground up into bloody mush.  Here, you see creatures from a different subculture.  They will kill when they have to, but mostly they want to be left alone in peace., 

     But all their attempts at reaching out fall on deaf ears.  They have only learned one phrase of English, “Mind the doors,”  (spoken by subway conductors just before the train doors shut 

     For me, and for a lot more people, one theme couldn’t be missed. While we are living our quiet, ordinary, uneventful lives, a hidden sub-society is living out a miserable existence just out of reach. People neglected, then soon forgotten. But able  to reach out and grab one of us at certain isolated, unexpected moments.

     Anyone who heard about them, saying, Don’t look at us, we declared bankruptcy—they’re no longer our responsibility.  Don’t tell us we needed to do anything more for a bunch of 

cannibal-monsters living underground.  Except maybe request the police to round them up or shoot them dead.   

     Sorry, but we filled out all the legal documents required.  If you have to, we can even show you—they’re all on file.  

     About eighty years before, (so the story goes) people started work on some new subway lines in London.  But a roof collapsed and the people in charge decided to scrap the whole thing.

     But no one took responsibility for the subway workers left underground.  They were simply left to die.  Some rumors that their food was soon gone but they might have enough water to survive a short while…maybe not so short.  At least that was possible. 

     Death Line paints a vivid picture of that nightmare.  Decades later several generations of people had survived.  Did they survive on meat from people they slaughtered in the subway near their hiding places…or were they forced to eat each other?  And what was life like for the people they grabbed, as they waited to die?

     Another, more subtle theme in Death Line—a class system, with the monster-survivors at the lowest step on the ladder.  

     Watch the law enforcement people investigating disappearances in the subway system.  Calhoun, the chief inspector (Donald Pleasence, great as always).  Then Detective Rogers, who is expected to follow Calhoun’s every command and to tolerate his frequent sarcasm.  One step below Rogers, a desk officer who reports to him.

   Near the top, above Calhoun, is an M.1.5 officer investigating the disappearances.  When he runs into the M.1.5 officer, Calhoun bluffs, tells him, this is my jurisdiction, I have every right to be here.

     Maybe for murders of greengrocers and other nonentities, the M.1.5 man tells him.  But the missing person is a fellow M.1.5.  You’re way out of your depth.  “Bye bye.”  Calhoun knows it’s time to stop bluffing.

     At the bottom of the totem pole, the cannibals.  Starting out with a long painful scene of the wretched place where they live.  A constant, intruding sound of water dripping.  Grating inside your head as the camera moves too slowly through rooms…endless agony.  Hold on, I don’t need to see all this, you think.  Let’s go back to the other people, the other locations.  

     Instead, you are trapped, as the camera moves through the ruins where people live and die, virtually alone.  Recently killed, side by side with corpses dead much longer, their eyes empty sockets.  Propped up against walls or piled on top of wooden bunks.  Along with the freshly-killed, maybe even a few not yet dead.

     Then another severest, the most unexpected shock—a deep empathy for the surviving creatures. In the sixty-odd years since Death Line’s release we have sat through an endless parade of zombie movies, endless sub-humans shot, beheaded, maybe ground up into bloody mush.  Here, you see creatures from a different subculture.  They will kill when they have to, but mostly they want to be left alone in peace., 

     But all their attempts at reaching out fall on deaf ears.  They have only learned one phrase of English, “Mind the doors,”  (spoken by subway conductors just before the train doors shut ).

Even the monster in Bride of Frankenstein finds a friend in the blind hermit and learns to speak.  In Death Line, every meeting between the cannibals and the ordinary people (us) is doomed to violence.  This is one reason Death Line packs such a sting, even after order is restored and the situation is returned to normal.

Stake Land is a movie with such power that it’s difficult to put into words what makes it hit so hard.  Its basic premise is far from original; some unforeseen plague has turned most of the population into vampires.  People live in small groups—or alone, without law enforcement—or the military, to protect them.  Basically—it’s everyone for themselves.  

    So far, no one seems to know whether a cure or remedy has been found, or even worked on.  No media is left to give people that news…or any other news.

    Probably the closest movie to Stake Land is the great road movie The Road.  But I don’t want to write a point by point, compare-and-contrast between that and Stake Land.  (So many other movies you can use as comparisons, even the horror/comedy Zombie Land.)   Many others can surely stand on their own.  Many even portray a similar theme—strong father/son relationships growing as the journey continues.

     I expect not everyone will love the dialogue and voice-overs as much as I did.  Especially people who don’t like Westerns—an inspiration for much of it.  The main characters—Mister and Martin, father-figure and foster son, rescue a nun who’s trying hard to hold onto her faith after rape and more violence.  “How many of those things did you kill?” she asks.

     “Not enough.”

     “What about him?  He’s just a boy.”

     “Yeah.  A live one.”  

 Martin’s family are killed only minutes into the movie.  Mister shows him all he can about protecting himself—his number one priority in this savage land.  In an early scene he puts a football helmet and shoulder pads on Martin and shows him how to use a sword.  Martin’s a fast learner.  So many times you sense he is watching Mister—what he says, what he does in order to survive.  Early in the movie their road is blocked—not just a truck but an actual  freight train.  But Mister knows his ticket out—prescription drugs, exchanged for escape. “People just trying to go home,” you hear on the voice-over.  Not exactly lyrical but so poetic at this moment.

     Another time, speakers blaring an Evangelical message from a pick-up truck, then a young woman hanging dead from a tree.  “In desperate times, false gods abound.” 

     But Martin learns from Mister’s generosity too.  They rescue a nun, then a woman in her final month of pregnancy.  No hidden motives on Mister’s part.  Martin can see it—Mister has clearly not lost his faith in humankind.

Another part of Mister—unhesitating courage.  In one town, Mister talks about heading north.  A man advises against it—rumors of cannibals in the north.  (One of the scariest parts in The Road.)  “Fuck the cannibals”, Mister tells him. 

     The music in Stake Land is nothing sophisticated but works with great effectiveness.  You will find yourself noticing the music various times, as you stare at the wastelands and the dead sprawled out around the roads and the ruined towns the characters pass through.  If I had to sum up what the music conveys, I would mention the sense of loss people are experiencing.  Their wish to recover what they have lost.  Life before was no paradise but people are starving for it.  They want it back…they want it so bad.

    

    The first time I saw The Mist, I was floored…period.  Not by the special effects.  Not by the explanations near the end; clearly they were no more than a throwaway.

    What moved me, really scared me, were the changes in the characters as they boarded themselves up in an average supermarket, watching horrific creatures dead set on killing them. Yeah, the people, way more than the monsters.  The people changed in ways that terrified me, though a few became heroes for sure. Equally scary, you ask yourself too, did some of these people change at all, or were they like this to begin with?

    You see at least six well-drawn characters; you closely watch their reactions and their actions at desperate moments.  Some give way to the hopelessness, to their lack of answers about the terror closing in.  Others discover, get in touch with, courage they didn’t know they had.  Still others give in to their fears, especially one fear; do the people trapped with me, hate me/feel only contempt for me?  

    The Mist starts off as a day like so many others in an average Northeast community on the Maine coast.  The night before, a violent storm with high winds. 

   David Drayton is a graphic artist who did not grow up in this town.  Next morning.  He drives into town for groceries, taking his young son Billy and his neighbor Brent, a respected attorney whose car was totaled by another falling tree.  Earlier, they watched a mist moving across the water near their houses.  

         The mist creeps up on the strip mall; no one can see more than a few feet into it.  The first to make it out of the mist screams, “Something in the mist!” his eyes wide. 

    Quickly, some of the tension between townspeople comes to the surface.  Jim, a machinist and handyman, dislikes David from the beginning—and feels David is talking down to him.  Jim won’t take any shit from an out-of-towner who went to college.  

    Brent, David’s neighbor, an Afro-American, is still simmering over a civil suit with people in town.  He senses that people like Jim have been lying in wait for him ever since…and he’s not all wrong.  Jim is tired of keeping his feelings to himself—it shows.  Ironically Brent and Jim have something in common.  They feel David is telling them what to do…trying to push them around.  David’s not military…or a police officer.  No way they’re taking orders from him.

    When night falls, huge insects begin slamming against the front window.  When larger creatures break holes in the glass, the store is invaded; people start dying. 

    Mrs. Carmody, perhaps the most compelling character out of many compelling characters, watches with the same terror as the others.  It’s where she goes with her terror that makes her riveting.  She is known around town for emotional problems she never addressed.  And for her hellfire and damnation outlook, the logical outcome of her belief in a cruel, jealous god.

    If her plan had been to lead a revolution, what happens would not be as scary.  She wasn’t born evil, she is no “bad seed.”

    Mrs. Carmody actually does some lengthy soul-searching; speaks to God.  I saw a lot of similarities between her searching and Hitler’s long search during the years before and after World War I.  Mrs. Carmody’s ideas are almost all based on the bible. 

    You may have expected a serene reaction from Mrs. Carmody when the terror begins; she had expected something like this a long time, god’s final judgment.  But her ego seems to overcome that calm; she intuits she must redeem herself before the destruction is complete.     You watch her sitting on the bathroom floor…quietly waiting for god to speak.  When a woman asks to use the bathroom, Mrs. Carmody is incensed.  Partly that she sees the woman’s offer to help her as mocking her.  But I saw something else.  Mrs. Carmody may have pictured herself walking with god…something like Jesus walking in the desert.  Then suddenly, she sees herself as only a woman in a bathroom.

    But scarier still, people begin flocking to her.  It makes sense.  Monsters are outside, trying to break the window and fly in.  People are desperate for answers…and for somebody to blame.  This woman believes she has answers.

   Another revelation.  Insects the size of hawks invade the store.  One lands on Mrs. Carmody.  She remains still, speaking a long quiet prayer.  Then—it flies off; it draws no blood.  Likely Mrs. Carmody sees it as a sign, that she was chosen to lead her people.

    In 1930’s Germany, many fatally underestimated Hitler.  One intellectual at the time said Hitler had no substance; he was only the noise he made.  We know now how wrong this man was.  

     In The Mist, more than half the people inside the store wind up firmly behind Mrs. Carmody, and her end-of-days prophecies.  Even when she tells the gathering they need to make a sacrifice for god—David’s young son Billy.

    Jim’s (the character who challenged David) changes give you a lot of insight into this woman’s disciples.  Early on, he presents himself as salt of the earth, one of the unheralded guys in the trenches.  He sees David, a graphic artist, as an ivory-tower wuss; someone you can’t count on when things get rough.

    But Jim is stunned into inaction time and again, by tentacles, by huge insects, and most of all by the monster spiders in the pharmacy next door.  He watches David, the college boy, lead the action, put himself in harm’s way again and again.  Jim looks as though his courage has failed him…he is nothing. For a while, he appears unhinged, helpless.  Then he drifts over to Mrs. Carmody’s disciples and finds his courage.  He becomes one of her enforcers.  He has a purpose, a mission now.  No reason to think, to search for rational explanations.  Now he has a leader who can make his decisions for him.

    A year or so after The Mist was released, the USA took a chance.  They elected a black president.  Eight years after that, many people felt that our country needed desperate measures to solve our problems.  Their patience had worn out with leaders saying things were evolving in the right direction.  Then, in 2016 you had a candidate saying things were fucked; that certain people were responsible and it was time we put the searchlights on them.  Sadder still, many of those voters still feel they chose the right candidate for the job.

     People forced to live lives in shadowy fog.  Their curiosity gnawing at them but their indoctrination still catching hold: don’t ask too many questions.  We will tell you all you need to know…in our own time.  Till then, keep your fucking mouth shut.

     They have gotten messages like that since they were young kids.  That in itself makes it harder to disobey…especially when “disobey” covers so broad a spectrum.  Three main characters: the narrator, Kathy H,  Ruth and Tommy.  More restless than out-and-out rebellious.  Almost resigned to their fate.  But unable to stop questioning their reality—so many unanswered questions.

     Never let me Go takes its time to reveal…just some of the questions.  II’s set in an alternate reality, but so much will feel familiar compared to our own..      

     Many diseases we fear (in our own reality) have been eliminated.  Longevity has increased to well over 100.  But the price of these medical breakthroughs is a steep one.  Young people raised as a sort of sacrificial lamb—donors of organs needed for medical research.  These donations will kill most of them before the age of 30. 

     Ironically, the people in charge have not lied to the young people raised as sacrificial lambs.  The lambs are doing a good job.  Disease numbers are way down, and likely to continue that way.

     But Never let me Go does not deal with statistics.  It wants to focus on the people whose lives are already mapped ou†.  Paying the price for people who can now be cured from diseases which were once killer diseases.

     This movie is based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, writer of the superb The Remains of the Day.  It’s not in the same league as that movie, but that is no condemnation—only a handful are.  

     Many people have Never let me Go listed as one of their all-time  best horror movies.  Does it belong there?  Well it doesn’t have any scenes that make you jump, or pull back from blood being spilled.  And yet things about it will keep gnawing at you…the fate of the main characters being the first.  Yes, they have choices they can make.  But virtually all of their choices lead to the same place in the maze—early death with no escape, no one to hear any appeal you can summon up.

     It starts out like a sensitive-kids-coming-of-age story: vulnerable kids trapped in a quiet but deceptively doomed environment.  A prison they gradually realize has numbed their spirits.  Hailsham, the upscale school where the kids have grown up, does have some unexpected kindnesses.  Sympathetic staff people who sometime listen to students’ concerns.  

     But major questions stay unanswered—who are we, what exactly are we doing here, what is our destination, regardless of whether we are carers or donors. Hailsham pupils are deliberately left in the dark.  

     I mentioned “sensitive kids coming of age story” because this is where the movie spends most of its time….getting to know Kathy, Ruth and Tommy.  We see Kathy—generous to a fault, watching Tommy and Ruth bonding while Kathy stays painfully alone.  We share Kathy and Tommy’s pain when they re-unite after a long separation. Only to learn they will only be allowed weeks together at most.  

     Gradually the theme of sensitive kids growing up is overshadowed by that of their inevitable fate.  The future of the carers is not made as clear as that of the donors.  

     Gradually the donors start to understand—few of them will survive past thirty.  They will miss out on a major part of average people’s lives.  Years that so many of us take for granted, or complain about instead of stopping to appreciate them  

     Falling in love.  Seeing their kids born.  Watching them grow up.  Experiencing our careers develop, grow.  Many of us won’t appreciate those years—we are pre-occupied with buying more things and keeping up with credit card payments.  But some of us —the fortunate ones, may grow old and eventually treasure those times.

      Think of the many movies showing us how painful is the yearning to live through exactly those years.  Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein.   A surprisingly large number.of werewolf stories and even a few vampire tales—the pain of missing out on those times.

That makes the sting so much more painful. Kathy and Tommy believe they’ve discovered an escape clause; they can find the time to experience their newfound love.  

     They find out the hard truth.  Kathy maintains her good manners and accepts her reality with grace.  Tommy stands in an empty road and screams in agony.  The movie has shown us just enough of their brief happiness together to feel what Tommy feels. 

Note—-Not to be confused with the 2007 movie The Premonition starring Sandra Bullock or a 1972 movie of the same title written and directed by Alan Rudolph

     The small-town Deep South, the mid-’70’s.  A beautiful young woman gets off a bus near a traveling carnival.  A man from the carnival, dressed as a mime/clown, clearly glad to see her.  The woman glad to see him, but she’s got other things on her mind.  “Have you seen her?” she asks him right away.  She asks to borrow his SUV; he says yes.

     The Premonition is a movie about people searching for love, but few of them able to find it.  You watch them and learn; most of them are too fragile, too damaged to give love, despite how much they want to.  They dream of a love that can save them.  Maybe it can but  it is out of reach.

     The mime, Jude, believes he loves this mysterious woman Andrea.  They knew each other in an institution/mental hospital; both are released now.  Andrea is obsessed with starting life again with her daughter Janie, who was taken from her and given for adoption.  After she borrows Jude’s SUV her first drive is to Janie’s school to see if her daughter remembers her.

     You may recall an obscure Stones song, Out of Time. 

“You don’t know what’s going on/

You’ve been away for far too long/

You can’t come back and think you are still there” 

     But the movie does show the other side of the coin: Janie’s adopted parents, Sheri and Miles.  Sheri tends toward the hypersensitive but her love for Janie is strong.  

     Despite losing two previous babies in infancy, Sheri is able to love unwaveringly.  Her husband—an academic— is preoccupied with his job and with other women.  But he is clearly open to new ideas and willing to reach for new solutions to get his daughter back when things later turn desperate.

     And Miles’ faculty colleague Dr. Kingsley has learned how to “think outside the box” in reference to psychic phenomena and how to apply it to unique situations; Andrea may be alive or dead but either way her obsession with Janie threatens the little girl’s life.

     Jude the mime may be the saddest character.  Hopelessly In love with  Andrea but just able to see how fragile is her grasp on reality.  The two of them go to Janie’s house to kidnap her.  But Andrea grabs Janie’s doll, lying right next to Janie.   Andrea continues talking to the doll as if she were a real girl; Something has changed this woman in her hospital commitment; something has been cut out of her.  

     You may recall Wesley in I Walked with a Zombie.  Drunk every day, in love with Jessica, who has lost her mind, most likely her soul, to the high fever that almost killed her.  Jude has a good heart but nearly no capacity to love; watch the scene where he tries to reach out to Janie.  

     Richard Lynch (God Told me to, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Scarecrow) was a much under-rated actor, limited mostly to blackhearted villain or psycho roles.  Jude is much more complex and Lynch makes the most of his part.  This is a quiet subtle movie without much melodrama and violence.  See it anyway.   

     Most of us feel we were brought up upholding certain responsibilities—to forces we’ve been born into.  So many ways to state what these are:

      Defending/Fighting for our country, our community.  

      But we find ourselves bound to another set of vows: 

      Promises to our family, our religion/our spiritual codes.

     Occasionally we experience a stark conflict between the two.  We Just struggle to reach a decision in reconciling this stark conflict.  In Kureneko we find three people trying to find answers between such opposing forces.  

     One sad irony.  Kuroneko is set in Japan, centuries ago.  But it was released in 1968 when such conflicts were tearing our country apart like never before.  The words “Vietnam Era” will bring back brutal memories to many in the baby boomer generation. They faced such conflicts then, splitting their consciousness.

     In the years Kureneko is set, Japanese nobility was in desperate need of someone to protect them, to fight for them.  Warriors called samurai filled that need.  But eventually the samurai’s power grew stronger than the nobilities’. The samurai felt that they were the rulers now—unstoppable.  “It’s a samurai’s world now”, one of them says, without any doubt in his voice.  

     Kureneko sets up its conflict between samurai and a farm family just managing to keep itself alive in wartime.  Near a house, samurai emerging from a forest like a swarm of army ants.  With barely a word, they devour food, then rape and kill a middle aged woman and her daughter in law.  They burn the house to the ground then leave in silence.  

     The two women lie dead in the smoking ruins.  But the silence is broken by the quiet sounds of a cat.  It stops to lick the faces of the dead women.

     Soon after, samurai begin to die.  Killed by ghostly women spirits who float, more than walk, in dense forest, asking protection from the samurai…then murdering them, then drinking their blood.  The killings done in the dark woods, occasionally in a small house deep in forest.  The samurai polite, expecting only a short respite from their soldiering for more raping, more murdering.  The last thing the samurai see before dying—a woman’s arm and hand transformed into a cat’s leg and claw.

     The samurai leader calls out for the strongest, bravest hero to stop the murders.  An abrupt shift in tone from the early, subtle scenes; from darkness to something closer to a 1960’s Bible epic.  These scenes feel wider in scope, the sunlight far brighter, the voices much louder, more abrupt.  You can almost hear it translated into modern English, soldiers answering their U.S. Marine commander—“Sir, yes sir!”  Gintoki, the samurai chosen to protect his comrades…carries around the head of his last opponent.  Not the man anyone wants to fuck with.

     Up till now, Kureneko feels like two different movies.  But here begins the third, where the two worlds start to collide: soldiers’ world and supernatural (ghosts’) world.  What will Gintoki’s fate be when he enters the realm of the ghosts?  

     At first, things go the way you expect.  Gintoki on his horse in a dark forest, sees a woman walking ahead of him.  He tells her she is about to enter a dark grove. But he offers his protection.  She accepts; they reach a house and go inside.  

     So far, all the conversations between the women and the samurai have been set-ups—for inevitable killings.  No killing this time.  The two women and the samurai circle each other like feral cats.  The man draws his sword, the women appear to vaporize, then re-appear outside.  The samurai, unable to see them again. 

     And so it begins.  Irony piled upon irony.  Gintoki, a farmer till recently, now an accomplished killer.  Two women, one previously Gintoki’s mother, one previously his wife…now sworn to kill.  

     The women’s lives before, trapped, victims.  Now they have made some mysterious pact with a supernatural  force, empowering them to commit violent revenge against samurai.  

     Yet Gintoki and the female spirits—bound to their past. Struggling to get past their previous roles, yet committed to more killing. 

An everyday guy…locked inside a men’s room at a rest stop off a highway.  A voice telling him he is the one who’s imprisoned him.  And who demands a heavy price to set him free.  The main character, Wes is no pushover.  He’s not about to take anyone’s disembodied voice for granted, especially a voice who claims to have god-like powers.  Even someone’s voice who seems able to back up his claims, at least some of them.

     After a while we realize—this story is about Wes’ redemption.  And redemption, any kind, is something most of us can relate to.  It’s a theme that draws us in. 

     From this description, Glorious may sound like a movie working (or maybe not working) on several different levels.  My strategy was this: try to keep myself free, enough to jump back and forth between the levels I saw.  Admittedly not easy with things going so fast.    

     Wes’ girlfriend Brenda died recently.   But her death was not a highway accident, DUI or an incurable illness.  Wes had much to do with it—he broke her heart.  Try as he will to deny it, he hurt Brenda.

     In a movie full of possible symbols, Brenda might represent the faith Wes destroyed.        

     Or, she might represent someone able to sense anyone’s redemption.  This might explain Wes’ agony when we first see him, as he drives, hoping to die.

     You can anticipate a viewer’s impatience, even contempt for a story setting its sights so high.  A big theme is the fate of the universe—will it survive the next 24 hours. The voice says he (the voice) may have the means to save the universe, but only with Wes’ help. But the universe’s fate being determined in a men’s room with a floor covered with puke?  Pretentious?  You bet.  

     You can imagine ratings of 1/2* or 1* out of 5* and I can understand where people could rate Glorious that low.  I could argue—give Glorious serious credit for presenting some profound questions without blinking.  In a men’s bathroom no less.  (I was surprised Glorious received much better reviews than I had expected from imdb and from Rotten Tomatoes.) 

     The question—with things coming at you fast and furious; will you be intrigued enough to stick with this?  

     You may start off expecting some kind of mind games—a duel between Wes and the voice he’s hearing.  A quietly menacing voice slightly reminiscent of HAL, the computer in 2001.

     But this isn’t a movie about sick mind games.  The voice has a name—a long mysterious name with a mnemonic: “ghat.”  Ghat needs something from Wes…Wes needs to understand what he is expected to accomplish and why.  

     And ghat’s messages for Wes: Wes must redeem himself.  But first he must experience the pain he caused Brenda. Another courageous decision in this movie.  Asking you to identify with Brenda’s feeling of betrayal instead of presenting her as a woman with problems: “who loves too much,” or “loves guys who won’t love her back.”

     Wes can’t get around this.  “Her memory has to be worth something,” he reflects.  And it will be the worst pain he ever experienced.  Ghat can talk all he wants about saving the universe but Wes’ ordeal will be equally painful.

     Slowly but surely Glorious pulls us into Wes’ journey towards redemption.  What pain must he endure?  Do we know  him well enough to care?  Can we accept ghat’s word for it—that  Wes’ redemption in Brenda’s suicide  is chained to the fate of the universe?

     Wes can’t get around this.  “Her memory has to be worth something,” he reflects.  And it will be the worst pain he ever experienced.  Ghat can talk all he wants about saving the universe but Wes’ ordeal will be equally painful.

     Slowly but surely Glorious pulls us into Wes’ journey towards redemption.  What pain must he endure?  Do we know him well enough to care?  Can we accept ghat’s word for it—that  Wes’ redemption in Brenda’s suicide  is c. Slowly but surely Glorious pulls us into Wes’ journey towards redemption.  What pain must he endure?  Do we know him well enough to care?  Can we accept ghat’s word for it—that  Wes’ redemption in Brenda’s suicide  is chained to the fate of the universe?

     I can’t answer that question for each of us.  Give yourself a chance to answer.

     I can’t say enough good things about Sleepy Hollow.  And I only hope I can express how much I loved it…when I first saw it 25 years ago, and again this year.  This movie has something for everyone: horror, detective mystery, a great love story, and Young Adult horror/fantasy..

     It’s loosely (very loosely) based on one of the oldest known works of American fiction, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820)written by Washington Irving.  The best known adaptation till then was a Disney animated feature.  Another adaptation was actually a made-for-TV movie starring Jeff Goldblum and Dick Butkus.  

     Its director Tim Burton was on a hot streak around that time and got a lot of freedom to do as he wanted.  Burton had a vision and was able to capture a lot of that vision.  That included a wonderful cast including the great Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci and several horror movie veterans you will probably recognize.

     Burton used some subtle touches too: the views of the river upstate; like a painting from the Hudson River School, but with all of its primary colors drained away.  The drawing room of the inn where Ichabod meets the town elders. Their faces—grotesque but grotesque in a way you can’t quite put your finger on.  Other things you can’t help but notice, the dark gloomy grey color enveloping the town of Sleepy Hollow.

     Johnny Depp plays Ichabod Crane, a  New York City police constable sent to solve a series of murders in an upstate town…all the victims beheaded by a phantom with a sword.  No clue where the heads wound up. 

The city police force are glad to get rid of Ichabod.  They despise his preference for “scientific” detective methods, his refusal to torture confessions out of suspects.  The people holding the power in Sleepy Hollow appear willing to tolerate Ichabod—for a short stretch anyway.  They are that desperate to stop the killings. But they don’t hesitate to tell him, you’re long way from home, son. 

     Ichabod arrives just in time for a party at the one big inn in town.  The guests in the midst of a game of pickety-witch; a woman designated “the witch” blindfolded, trying to guess the man who has just kissed her.  She is Katrina Van Tassel, the innkeeper’s daughter.  You can sense the chemistry between Katrina and Ichabod; so thick you can cut it with a knife.  

     But you can feel the distance separating Katrina and Ichabod too.  Sleepy Hollow is a tight-knit community; just a few families closely intertwined…almost inbred.  Anyone else is treated as an outsider and must pass rigorous tests before being accepted.  It won’t be long till you sense the dirty secrets in town history…and Katrina’s family is a part of those secrets. 

     Before the end of the next day, things change—quickly and dramatically.  Ichabod, who believes in scientific methods, not superstition, sees the horseman for himself.  At first, the sight overwhelms him; a supernatural creature he’s always insisted would not, cannot exist.  Immobile in bed, he lies, shaking, while townspeople stare at him, “Well I guess it’s back to the city then,” someone blurts out.   You can understand their impression.  Ichabod can barely ride a horse.  He has a phobia of insects and spiders.  All in all, not a tough guy.

     But Ichabod finds his courage the next day.  He may not believe in witches but he meets one in the flesh.  And he is able to discover some of what he needs to know.  It’s a brilliant scene, combining humor with some visceral terror.  A tightrope-walking feat that scenes like this seldom achieve.   Even some elements of the original Psycho where Lila Crane (Vera Miles) encounters Norman Bates’ terrible mother and his mother’s worst secrets.  

     Humor too—Ichabod is so agitated he uses the word “which” three times in a matter of seconds.  The witch’s whole face is covered with shaggy grey hair.  When he finally sees her face it is a nightmare-ish vision.  But like Norman’s mother the witch supplies a major clue in Ichabod’s search.

     In addition you watch a different sort of clue; Katrina and Ichabod’s growing chemistry.  Riding away from the witch’s cave, Ichabod faces a stranger—face covered by a hood.  To his astonishment he sees Katrina.  What are you doing here, he asks.

     None of the men in town were willing to come here, Katrina says.

     Then I am twice the man, Ichabod says…Subtle but powerful partnership.  And not the last time.

     I don’t want to give away any more of the story line.  The story has way more twists and turns—more than you can keep track of.  Even Ichabod has some childhood memories he wants to forget…but memories he needs to deal with in the here and now. 

     The world where Ichabod finds himself cannot be dealt with entirely with science and reason.  He has to use some methods he had thought to be supernatural, borderline-magic.  Watching him combine the scientific and magical methods, you can see how much he grows.  You’ll want to take that journey with him.

    

     Some people have trouble resisting any movie they are told was ever banned.  Even if they know the reason in advance and they doubt it’s  justified.  I admit to being one of those curious people.  My curiosity about Kill Baby Kill got the better of me. Even though I knew the general argument for banning it—the theme of revenge but the avenger being a little girl, ten or younger.  Not long after, this movie would be overshadowed by at least two others: Night the Living Dead and The Exorcist.  Little girls doing some major violence.  Then what did the censors find so unacceptable about Kill Baby Kill?

     Melissa, the avenging angel in this movie is actually fairly bland.  No satanic expressions on her face.  No demonic voices.  No dire threats.  (“The sow is mine.”).  But we do know she is seeking revenge…probably she is justified.  And others have died in the neglected, backward village where she lived all her life.

     The movie has more than its share of weaknesses.  Bad dubbing from Italian into English.  Generally shallow characters.  Acting—average at best.  A plot that’s nothing new—apart from Melissa.

     Then what are the movie’s strong points?  (Keep in mind, it has more than its share of admirers.)  Atmosphere—an overall sense of an isolated village with its mysteries well hidden.  Well guarded against strangers.  People determined to keep their secrets to themselves.  An overall sense—sickness, a cancer that needs to be cut out.  But a strong resistance to permitting anyone to do it.

     A physician, Dr. Eswai, arrives in the village on a bright day, in broad daylight.  Still, the coach driver refuses to come close to the main street.  Inside the inn, hostile looks, silence.  As though a stranger can only make life worse for them.  Karl, the burgomeister is the only one in town willing to speak to Dr. Eswai.

     Irena, a village woman has died recently, falling from a balcony onto a row of metal spikes.  Besides Eswai, a government inspector is in town to investigate Irena’s death.  Villagers, the few willing to speak, have suggested to the inspector and to the doctor that the solution lies within the villa Graps—a huge mansion dwarfing the town.  But they warn the outsiders—never go inside…for any reason.  Dr. Eswai suspects the inspector has gone there…and may be already dead.

     An unwavering materialist, Dr. Eswai has no fear of ghosts and avenging spirits.  He walks through an open door into the huge, ominous villa.  The atmosphere he finds inside is one of the movie’s strong points…maybe the strongest. 

Cobwebs, everywhere he looks, obscuring portraits and mounted animals and birds, straight out of Norman Bates’ office in Psycho.  And the size of each room, dwarfing the doctor, who is a tall man himself.  Hard to believe he will ever find his way out.  A spiral staircase, narrow but seemingly endless.  Bright blue and red colors.  Many believe the blues and reds were an inspiration for the ways Dario Argento colored his masterpiece Suspiria.  I find that hard to dispute; just watch Argento’s movie for yourself.  

     Dr. Eswai is not an exciting character yet he is someone you respect for keeping up his search for Melissa, her reputed curse and a way to finally end it.  He finds a long string of secrets and plot twists inside the villa.  As bland as he may be, you have to admire him for his determination to solve the mysteries.  So many characters have long-buried secrets.  As I stated, you experience the secrets as cancers that need to be cut out.  None of the people are evil people.  But their quests for vengeance have corrupted them.  Both the baroness Graps and Melissa have suffered wrongs that explain their parts in the larger tale you watch unfold.  Try to follow each character carefully and unravel their part in this tragic story.

     In the 70’s, the great success of The Exorcist opened the floodgates for possessed and evil children in horror films.  People now will probably look at Kill Baby Kill as a historical relic—-a symbol of big changes to come.  For better or worse, just read a list of 70’s releases; you can’t miss it.

Anja Plaschg—Austrian musician, a superb portrayal as Agnes

     Imagine yourself face to face with the devil as he smirks at you.  He tells you; take a good look at what damage organized religion has done.  Why don’t we start with Austria, around 1750, he says.  Let’s see now…historic records of babies and children murdered by their families.  

   The reason?  It’s a little bit complicated he says.  In that time and place, people can be forgiven for murdering babies and children…if they beg for mercy

     No such forgiveness for committing suicide.  You have disobeyed god’s command to treasure his greatest gift—thrown it away.  God can forgive murder but not that.

 Agnes—Joyous expectations for her marriage

      Clearly, a lot of people hated their lives—hundreds of murders were committed in these decades.  The devil smirks at you again; your churches did people a real favor, didn’t they?

     Or maybe people were evil to start with, he goes on.  They chopped the heads off the child-murderers.  Then drank the blood as it sputtered out, they danced and sang.  Talk about partying.  Yet the murderers were forgiven.

     The devil smirking at you can be a terrifying vision but I think The Devil’s Bath wanted to go in a different direction. Not strictly a condemnation of religion. Not to create a tale scaring the shit out of you.  Though it does a good job of scaring you too.  

     Instead, it wants to move closer to tragedy.  To show you one individual’s story; one that will illustrate just one tragedy of many.      

     From the beginning, you have some idea what to expect.  A woman tossing her baby over a huge waterfall, then confessing her monstrous sin.  You know she will surely be condemned, and executed.  No other way things could go.

  As is customary a man with a sharp sword will behead her.  Her mutilated body left sitting in a chair, her head next to her, in a metal basket.

     Agnes, a woman on her way to her wedding ceremony.  Dreaming of being lifted up by the congregation, a joyful smile on her face.  She stops a moment to play with a spider crawling on her hand.  Not a butterfly, not even a ladybug.  Most people can relate to touching one of those.  But a spider; something that will disgust most of us, nothing we ever want touching us.  She cherishes all living creatures.  You can smell tragedy ahead.

          Her life ahead is not a life of brutal slavery.  Her husband Wolf is not a bad man; he is actually a gentle man.  You can see that he wants to make Agnes happy.    

     But their life has an ugliness to it; along with a sense of something missing.  Every day the same work, fishing in chilly, muddy water. Hints that Agnes hoped to experience the sensuality of their marriage bed.  For Wolf, the sex act is just something you indulge when you feel the need, like jerking off.

     Wolf’s mother, a mother in law from our worst nightmares.  A woman in charge of the fishing crew, unsparing, unforgiving.  She feels she is in charge of Wolf’s house too.  Little praise, endless 

criticism for all that Agnes does.  Wolf never stands up to her.  Agnes is unable to.

     The outside world is much the same.  No one ever speaks out  against the crowd—and Wolf’s mother specifically.  Don’t talk to that slut.  No extra money to that guy who says his family is hungry.  

     No one questions the church’s authority.  A man hangs himself—a crowd forces their way into his house while his mother screams at them to get out.  No effect; they drag his body away and literally throw it onto a garbage heap.

     You keep hoping you are wrong—that Agnes will never become the woman tossing her baby away.  But all the warning signs point that way.  In this country, “the devil’s bath” describes the state of depression and repressed anger causing someone unable to work…then unable even to function.  

     I reminded myself about historical changes still to come, in Austria and in other places.   People attending churches who saw more to god’s plan than intimidating commands, threats, retribution.  After watching The Devil’s Bath, you will need to remind yourself of that history. Here you experience the horror of the dark times, people inflicting their worst on those they lived with.  Believing they are doing god’s will.  

     The introduction mentions hundred of people condemned for murdering children.  Only numbers.  Here, you get to watch one individual for yourself. You find it agonizing to watch Agnes drift into that place—especially after remembering her smile as she watches the spider, her look of wonder.