November '25
November is always a bittersweet time for me. On the one hand, it marks the end of the Halloween season, which is my favorite time of year. It's always sad to see it go knowing that it won't be back for another year. That's why I'm typically still watching horror movies at the beginning of November. Holdovers from Halloween, I suppose. Anyway, I watched a couple of the Children of the Corn sequels. I've had this old DVD with seven (!) of these movies on it for years but never watched it. I think I got it at one of those Halloween flea markets at Now That's Class. Frankly, I don't know why I bought it. There was just no way these movies could be good at all. For one thing, they already biffed it pretty hard with the first one. They took a bleak and chilling story and made it into a bland cheesefest. Just look at the differences between the movie and Stephen King's original short story. Instead of a quarreling husband and wife sacrificed to a demon by a cult of possessed children, Burt and Vicky are a happy couple who convince the children that their religion is nothing more than intolerance and defeat He Who Walks Behind the Rows in a hail of explosions. In my opinion, these changes rob the premise and the original story of its power. According to the film's Wikipedia page, King actually wrote the initial screenplay but writer George Goldsmith was hired by Hal Roach Studios to rewrite it. Interestingly, there's also this weird section on there that focuses on Goldsmith's assertion that the film was actually a metaphor for the Iranian Revolution. The town of Gatlin being taken over by "quasi-religious zealots" is a stand-in for "the Ayatollah Khomeini and his revolutionary guard taking over Iran." This was meant to be a cautiounary tale about the evils of religious fundamentalism, although the Wikipedia points out that this is something that "few critics recognized."
All of that to say is that the movie is pretty dumb and on this basis I couldn't really conceive of the possibility that the sequels were any good, either. I already knew that they were made purely so Dimension Pictures could hold onto the rights and I also couldn't imagine what they could possibly do with this story. The second one, Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice, which is a hilarious subtitle for obvious reasons, starts off fairly unremarkably. In it, a reporter travels to Gatlin to cover the events of the first film. For some reason he brings his son, with whom his relationship is strained. Meanwhile, the surviving children of Gatlin are sent to live with concerned citizens in the neighboring Hemingford, who are about to learn the hard way that He Who Walks Behind the Rows isn't done just yet. A series of brutal killings follow. Two reporters are slashed and impaled, respectively, by levitating corn stalks. An old woman is crushed by her house which was supported by hydraulics. Another old woman on a wheelchair that the kids have somehow taken control of is steered into incoming traffic, struck by a semi, and thrust through a storefront window. Another guy bleeds to death after a kid uses a voodoo doll on him in church. These kills alone are more entertaining than anything that happens in the first movie but it doesn't stop there. This features some great acting and writing of the "so-bad-it's-good" variety and, while obviously failing to capture the grounded but otherworldly horror of King's original story, succeeds where the first one failed in being, well, entertaining. It's stupid, straight-to-video fun, except this was somehow a theatrical release in 1992. Mind you, this is about eight years after the release of the first film. I guess they really wanted to hold onto those rights.
I also watched Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest. This one was even better than the last. The movie itself is, as you can imagine, quite dumb but it has pretty great kills, featuring incredible special effects work from two absolute legends, Screaming Mad George and Kevin Yagher. They've done amazing work on some of my favorite horror movies and their work here is actually pretty incredible. I'm specifically referencing the last fifteen to twenty minutes, an absolutely relentless torrent of blood and goop and guts and slime on the level of Society or The Substance. We even finally get a good look at He Who Walks Behind the Rows and He does not disappoint. He's basically a kaiju. It's awesome. This one is actually highly recommended. It's got this funny 90s feel to it and is really a good time. Don't just take my word for it, though. Stephen King himself said that he actually likes this one.
After that, though, I actually moved onto something else pretty quickly. Normally I watch horror movies for a little longer but I happened to go up to the library to grab some movies. Lately I've been trying to take advantage of my library's pretty awesome selection of movies and CDs. One of my favorite things is the monthly display shelf they do. October was obviously horror and for November they did noir films, or "Noirvember," you see. I've watched some noir films before but haven't really done a deep dive on the genre before. They always seemed a little too tropy to me, which is funny because I'm a huge fan of slashers, the tropiest of movies. Whatever. Consider me a noir fan now because I watched some bangers. I watched some classics, of course. I watched Double Indemnity and The Night of the Hunter. The former checks all the boxes for film noir tropes, namely Barbara Stanwyck's iconic femme fatale and the hardboiled crime narrative. It was a good time, though! The dialogue and performances were great. The Night of the Hunter was also excellent. I could see it becoming a favorite of mine, actually. I found the battle of wills between John Harper and Harry Powell to be utterly captivating. Robert Mitchum is easily in the pantheon of great "evil guy" performances, sitting comfortably next to Peter Lorre in M and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. I also really loved Lillian Gish as the hardheaded but caring Rachel Cooper. She brought a welcome warmth to an otherwise truly eerie and unsettling film. Seriously, it got under my skin at times, something I wasn't really expecting going in. In addition to Mitchum's performance, the stark, black-and-white photography has a lot to do with it. It's incredible. There's also some great shots of various creatures and critters in this one, mostly in this great sequence where the two kids are traveling down the river by boat. That part was incredible. It was so vibey.
I definitely want to watch more of these classic films. I mostly watched what would be called neo-noirs. There were a lot of bangers in this lineup, as well. Funnily enough, I picked out two movies where Michael Douglas trips over his own dick, Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction. I guess this genre of "erotic thriller" really took off in the late 80s and early 90s and Michael Douglas was in a couple of them. Fatal Attraction wasn't all that good but I did really like Basic Instinct. It was an absolute roller coaster of a movie. It was constantly playing with my emotions. I felt like I was being gaslit. I suppose that's what happens in these noir films. Though it came out in the 90s, it basically functions as a noir. It's got the crime narrative, detective of dubious morals (that's putting it lightly, Douglas's character is an absolute piece of shit), femme fatale (Sharon Stone is honestly probably one of the most famous femme fatales of all time, on the level with Rita Hayworth or Barbara Stanwyck), beautiful cinematography, and the like. It also had incredible car chases for no reason. Those winding hills of San Francisco look terrifying.
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Two other movies I watched were Blue Velvet and Chinatown. Both were excellent. Here are two more great "evil guy" performances in Dennis Hopper and John Huston, respectively. They're obviously very different performances. Hopper as Frank Booth is an endlessly watchable villain. Though he does a lot of truly repellent shit you can't help but watched transfixed as he huffs gas and screams obscenities, among other things. He's quite a dynamic character, undeniably goofy yet deeply sinister. Huston, meanwhile, is practically a portrait of pure evil. As opposed to Booth, I was cringing and shivering everytime Noah Cross was onscreen. His brand of evil, as opposed to the utter lunacy of Booth, is more mundane but almost more terrifying. The ending was similarly bleak and probably closer to reality than the radiant optimism of the ending of Blue Velvet. Both are incredible movies, though, movies I'll hopefully be watching for years to come.
One more film I watched for Noirvember this year (hopefully I do this next year and for many years to come) that I think is worth noting is Under the Silver Lake. This is one of those movies I'm always recommending to people because I want to hear what other people have to say about it. Personally, I think it's long and a little boring and can see why they put David Robert Mitchell in director jail for this one, but it's also such a fun movie. I love any movie that accurately captures the experience of reading a Thomas Pynchon novel, even if I think the film uses its Pynchonesque qualities as a postmodern screen, so to speak. Andrew Garfield is genuinely so good in this movie. He gives a very dynamic performance, ping-ponging effortlessly between this sort of stoner-noir vibe and unhinged insanity. The movie is definitely a bit of a mess and probably could've used more time in the oven but it's also a pretty wild ride. I mean, I personally had no idea where this was all going. I'm still on the fence about whether the movie is merely a postmodern riff on the noir film as well as conspiracy culture and modern paranoia or actually has more under the surface to decipher among the various codes, ciphers, Easter eggs, and subliminal messages or whatever. Personally, I think it's the former but would probably be really happy if it was the latter.
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Speaking of Thomas Pynchon, I read his new book, Shadow Ticket! It was so great to hear from him again. The Crying of Lot 49 is one of my favorites and I love all of his work that I've read and this was no different. As with all his novels, it's incredibly funny in a postmodern sort of way but never insufferably so. Postmodern literature can be a tough pill to swallow for a variety of reasons but with Pynchon the dense prose, metahumor, and historical allusions are more rewarding than annoying. Though Pynchon is pushing ninety at this point his prose is still absolutely electrifying and as always probes deep into American culture and the rise of fascism. That's why the interpretation of Pynchon's work as silly postmodern satire has always rubbed me the wrong way. Humor is obviously one of the defining traits of his work (and even Thomas Pynchon is never above a good, old-fashioned dick or even fart joke) but Pynchon has always been writing about some very serious shit. Look at The Crying of Lot 49. In my opinion, this is probably his most accessible book and a great place to start with Pynchon's work if you haven't yet. It's a lean, mean one-hundred and fifty pages that somehow manages to touch on examinations of paranoia, secret societies, MKUltra, and Operation Paperclip. It's crazy that he even knew about this stuff back in the sixties. It really makes you wonder what he saw when he worked at Boeing.
Anyway, I really enjoyed Shadow Ticket. It was difficult at times but overall immensely rewarding. It's also, despite taking place in the 30s, a deeply and troublingly relevant book given the state of things in America. I'm glad we finally got to hear Pynchon's take on Trump. His views on, well, anything are always appreciated.
I also read Stephen King's Night Shift. I'm less inclined to listen to what King has to say these days but I'll always be a huge fan of his writing. This is a collection of King's early work that, for one thing, features "Children of the Corn." There are definitely some misses but overall I had a lot of fun with this one. My favorite stories in it were probably "I Am the Doorway" and "The Last Rung on the Latter." The former felt very similar to the Dark Tower books' vibe and the latter was one of King's more "literary" stories. I always appreciate those. I wouldn't be surprised if you had a different favorite, though. There's a little something for everybody here. If you're reading this, we should start a book club.