Rosemary’s Baby - Roman Polanski - 1968

★★★★ - From hell night for the Nightmare on Film Street challenge. 

My first ever watch of this believe it or not. My dad was just telling me that he saw it at the drive-in with his parents when he was like eight years old or some thing and it scared the shit out of him. Watched it on the plane on the way to New York. Liked it enough that I went and checked out the building it was filmed that.

Never gets better than early on in the weird orgy scene where Mia Farrow’s husband rapes her in the best case scenario. Dreamlike and fucking crazy, getting crazier. Then she realizes it isn’t a dream. “Oh my god! This is real!” Really fucked and terrifying. 

Ultimate mother terror as excitement about being pregnant gives way to terror. 

Lot of solid talent in this movie. Mia Farrow is cute AF, by the by. Maude from Harold and Maude. Husband’s an asshole. Gives Mia Farrow shit about her hair, for example. She has had a pretty rough in her day. 

Not an all-time favorite, but I really appreciated it for its influences down the line. Hereditary, for example. A Horror 101 movie.

Nightbreed is the greatest movie of all time

Nightbreed. The Director's Cut. Apparently people didn't like the original. 

"Everything is true. God's an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live... And you came to die." I loved this movie. It is batshit, but interesting and visually insane. It is at least equally as good, and way more fun than Clive Barker's better-known hit, Hellraiser. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Nightbreed's imaginative world-building and startling creature designs are no match for its clumsy, uneven plotting.

Released in 1990, most people thought it sucked. Considered a "dark fantasy horror film," it stars Anne Bobby as the female lead (only know her from this but she was in this weird show I watched in the early 1990s called Cop Rock), Doug Bradley (Pinhead from Hellraiser), David Cronenberg (the director of The Fly among other things), Charles Haid (do not recognize), Hugh Quarshie (don't recognize him either), and Craig Sheffer (the quarterback from The Program). Sheffer plays the lead. People bought a lot of Craig Sheffer stock in the 1990s. I wasn't among them, though he is solid here. 

Gist is a mental patient played by Sheffer is led by his shrink, played by Cronenberg, to believe that he is a brutal and truly terrifying masked serial killer. Fucking sweet mask, I shit you negative. Anyway, the police catch up with him while he is hiding out in a cemetery named Midian. This post escape from said mental institute where a buddy of his rips off the skin from his head. It's pretty much comedy with the guy handing it to Sheffer with a move like, "well, here ya go." (Check out the video of that below.) 

Turns out a group of monsters (who look fucking awesome) called "Nightbreed" hideout and maybe eat humans in this Midian place. One of the monsters tries to eat him but just takes off a chunk of flesh. Figures, might as well go with the cops, but Cronenberg sets him up saying he had a gun. So the cops do what they do and shoot the fuck out of the guy. But after getting bit, he becomes Nightbreed. This causes some issues and all hell breaks loose over the last act of the film in a big fucking way. 

So, yeah, the monsters look amazing. One freak has a straight-up Jay Leno head. It was to the "point" where I googled "Nightbreed" and "Leno" and this came up.

Another favorite was the one with dreads that looked metal as fuck. Then there was the "hot" one. She was like a porcupine/human hybrid. I liked how at one point she chick killed a dude with one of her poison quills and then this maniac cop who saw it all go down looks over at her. She is topless at this point and he is all like BOOBS! and he goes to grab them and dies. Fucking hilarious.  

Some serious action when everything goes to shit in that last 3/4 of the movie. Talking massive explosions, the earth opening up and swallowing trucks, trigger happy cops and militia types mowing down monsters just because (of course they are the real monsters), flamethrowers, monsters flipping cars, bazooka friendly fire. It's a half-hour of carnage. 

Cronenberg is great in this. Whoever designed his mask and the Nightbreed is a fucking genius. Clive Barker's vision was fucking sick as well... But I'm giving the MVP to the Boston Terrier. Such a sweet, cute, good boy. Bostons are the best. Always. 

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is seriously the greatest movie of all time

Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood. Oh my fucking gawd ya'll. Two lines from the movie sum up my reactions to the movie, "That was the best acting I've ever seen in my whole life" and "You're real, right?" Or something like that. Sort of Tarantino's way of telling you what he thinks about the film. Like when Aldo at the end of Inglourious Bastards says, "I think this just might be my masterpiece." At least the first one, any way. Lot of chicken mole, amigos. Rotten Tomato score is 85% Fresh. This is a travesty. In no frame of mind to definitively say this, but after one viewing, it is my favorite Taratino movie. At least on this night.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Thrillingly unrestrained yet solidly crafted, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood tempers Tarantino's provocative impulses with the clarity of a mature filmmaker's vision.

Gist of the movie is that a "has been" actor (who lives next door to Sharon Tate), one Rick Dalton played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his stunt double, Cliff Booth played by Brad Pitt, who is more than a brother and not quite a wife go about and hang around, doing their things in L.A. in 1969, building up to the violence that you know is coming at the hands of the Manson Family. The trailer makes it look like a Manson flick mostly dealing with the murder of Sharon Tate, played wonderfully by Margot Robbie, but it is really a buddy hangout movie. Great one at that. Minimal violence for a Tarantino movie and then we get what we were waiting for.

The Tate family, notably sister Debra, was originally pissed that Tarantino and company were making this movie that they planned on being released on the 50th anniversary of Sharon and company's murder. Then the director met with her and she gave the film her blessing. Now she come down firmly in Tarantino's defense, saying that the movie made her cry and how touched she was by Robbie's performance. She has even gone as far to say that she wished he would make a movie completely dedicated to her and what not. So really came around on that one. After seeing, you can totally see why.

Some of the bullet points. Leo and Pitt. These two together are the perfect duo and their performances are amazing. They should both be nominated for Best Actor.

First, Pitt. Cliff is one of the great Tarantino characters. Little bit of Aldo in him from GB. Also some shades of Rusty Ryan and Tyler Durden. He and Tarantino both independently saw the character as a Billy Jack type which he totes is. If you haven't seen that, it is basically about an extremely masculine but cool dude who can kick some fucking ass. We find out maybe halfway through the movie that he has done some shit that makes him a bastard. But he is such a great dude otherwise and is so fucking cool, you don't care. A personal fave scene with him is the one where he ends up at the Spahn Ranch, taking one Pussycat back to her people. It is tense as fuck as Manson Family members come out of the woodwork and ominously stare him down. You feel that he is in real danger and there are red flags popping up everywhere but he is a coffin nail, this guy. When he kicks the shit out of Steve "Clem" Grogan for slashing his tire, this is the guy who in real life was recommended to die after the Manson Family trial but then sentenced to life (he would get out on parole in 1985, incredibly) because as Judge James Kolts said during the sentencing, "Grogan was too stupid and too hopped on drugs to decide anything on his own," for slashing his tires when one of the hippy chicks runs off to get Tex Watson (the kid that plays Tex is one Austin Butler who was also in The Dead Don't Die whom I had never seen before a month ago and is now everywhere) who hauls ass back to the scene. The way he moves and the crazed look he has about him, you know shit was really about to go down. Plus, all this echos what happened to the real life stuntman Donald Shea at the hands of the MF. Shea was checking on George Spahn just as Cliff does in the film and calls the police on them. After the cops raided the ranch, Manson and company murdered the guy, burying his body near the property. Anyway, yeah, if you know about this shit it is even more ominous and you are even more freaked out. Also, him being a guy who never was in shit sort of follows an alternative path for the actor. Like if he was just a guy who played little roles like the one he had in True Romance.

Now Leo. Dude wins the film. Pitt was fucking sick. It is almost unbelievable, these two together, acting the shit out of this movie. A cool ass actor doing good ass work. That's Leo and his character, Rick fucking Dalton, in the film. Best when is sort of losing his shit. His is career is basically over with the arrival of New Hollywood (also called the "American New Wave") ushered in in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde. No more Rick Dalton as a leading man, he is now relegated to television, playing a big that gets his ass kicked by the next big thing that comes along. The show that his character is acting in with the movie, Lancer, was a real show that ran from 1968-70. In the movie Lancer looks amazing.  I tried to watch an episode, "Blue Skies for Willie Sharpe," and it was fucking terrible. Production wise it was like watching someones home movie or something. I was expecting Howard Hawks. I think it was Tarantino joke. Having Dalton telling himself in the mirror that if he doesn't get his lines right, he was going to go home and blow his brains out, taking this shit so goddamned seriously for a show that was meh. That's his best scene in the movie. Might be saying it is a job and this guy fucking takes it seriously. In any case, love all the acting stuff with character. This is where he really shines, Leo that is. So many layers there. Pretending to be a good actor doing a shitty job and then freaking out. Then acting as this guy acting and fucking killing it. It was mind blowing how good that stuff was. So much so that they address it in the film.

Finally, there is Robbie as Tate. Her portrayal is so bubbly and likable, you feel protective of her. She is almost larger than life at first. Hanging out with Mama Cass and Michelle Phillips at the Playboy Mansion. Driving around LA with Roman Polanski. She is New Hollywood and very cool. But then were see her out and about. Stopping at a theater to watch a movie that she is in. No one knows her. It is sort of humbling but she is just excited to be there and hear people's reactions to her work. She isn't famous at this point, but this isn't something she seems to really care about. More just happy to be a part of it. She doesn't say a lot but she does such a good job and it is all done so delicately, you really get a sense of who she is and what she was like. You want her to live and you think of what she could have become. It feels like this is a woman picked for stardom for a new era, she just hasn't gotten there yet. Plus, Robbie is so pretty and that 1969 look is good for her. I don't mean to objectify her because she is so talented. But she is like painfully beautiful in this movie. Some critics have made a big deal of her character's lack of lines and shit. This is bullshit and sort of demeans her performance. She doesn't need to say a lot to knock it out of the park, which she does.

Some other things that really stand out include the cool as shit 1960s world that Tarantino builds, (getting into spoilerish territory here) the crazy ass ending, and the fucking insane cast. Not sure there has ever been a cast like this. There are three above. Fucking sick, right? Then there are the other people that kill in the couple of minutes where they are on screen. Folks that play historical figures like Bruce Dern as George Spahn, Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring, and Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen. Random industry people some of which are real and others not like Zoë Bell and Kurt Russell play a stunt coordinating couple, Nicholas Hammond as Sam Wanamaker, Timothy Olyphant of the TV western Lancer James Stacy, and Al Pacino as a film producer. Various recognizable faces in the Manson clan, like Butler as Tex, Lena Dunham, Dakota Fanning as the notorious Squeaky Fromme, Danielle Harris from Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and Margaret Qualley was sort of the biggest standout from the Family as Pussycat. A few kids of famous people like Kevin Smith's daughter Harley Quinn Smith (still sour on him after he was an asshole at a comedy club appearance in town) who was a random Manson Girl--whom I found out is a vegan, so totally in my cool book--and Rumer Willis, the spawn of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, who played Joanna Pettet. A couple of 1990s people that were tapped for stardom that never came, in this camp were Rebecca Gayheart (Urban Legends star/Noxzema Girl from the 1990s) as the wife Cliff kills and Luke Perry as Wayne Maunder who shows up as an actor on Lancer. Then there are a lot of people that would maybe get second billing in a lesser movie, guys like Clifton Collins Jr. and Michael Madsen and James Remar, for example, that are basically just extras in this flick. Hell, even Clu Gulager makes a cameo as the bookstore owner.

Also, Tarantino doesn't seem to like Bruce Lee (portrayed in the film by one  Mike Moh). The character is sort of a prick and overall looks ridiculous. Plus, Pitt's character makes him look like a loudmouth who can't really even fight. That is a fantastic scene by the way. Everyone in the theater I watched it with was losing their minds when Lee challenges Cliff to a fight and has a random guy hold his jacket and the guy tells him that Cliff has a rep for being crazy. "What did he do?" "Killed his wife and got away with it." Lee looks at him like WTF. Fucking great. Apparently, Lee's surviving family is pissed.

A personal aside I think is relevant on how good I felt the movie was. So I am definitively an ex smoker. However, I allow myself one a year which I've not partaken in for some time. So, yeah, great Tarantino movie, second to last, supposedly. So I had my first cigarette since 2013 to commemorate it. I smoked about half of it and tried to really enjoy it which I sort of did. Could go for one of those acid dipped ones though. That I'll tell you.

Midsommar is the great movie of all time

Midsommar. I loved this movie. Definitely my favorite of the year. Probably my favorite film for the last several years. Totally my type of flick; it is really a beautiful film. Like it way more than Ari Aster's previous film, which is more or beloved, Hereditary.  I wasn't that crazy about it. Saw Midsommar on psychedelics (which I knew factored in heavily going in). After the opening, almost left 15 minutes in, I thought this was a huge mistake, almost left 15 minutes in, but I was glad I took the plunge once they got to Sweden. All of that was visually beautiful. Plus it put me in the right mainframe to really get this movie, I think. Has gotten mixed reviews but if you go in with the right mindset, totally an experience.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Ambitious, impressively crafted, and above all unsettling, Midsommar further proves writer-director Ari Aster is a horror auteur to be reckoned with.

Gist of the film is that a group of grad students tag along with one of their classmates to the commune  (which ends up being run by a pagan cult) where he is from in Sweden for their annual Midsommar festival. Only this is a special one that only happens once every 90 years and involves ritual sacrifice. Has its roots in The Wickerman and Cannibal Holocaust. One of the students has a girl friend that he reluctantly invites after she suffers a horrific loss that most of the dudes, including her boyfriend, sees as a huge drag. The only one among them that isn't a complete piece of shit to her is the Swedish native, Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren). Beyond this setup, the couple, Christian (played by one Jack Reynor) and Dani (played by Florence Pugh who is really great and wins the movie), their relationship, it deteriorating. In this aspect, director Ari Aster, sites the Albert Brooks film Modern Romance, which I've never seen, about "a successful film editor with far too many issues that affects the relationship between him and his remarkably patient girlfriend" as a direct influence. Only actor I have ever seen before is William Jackson Harper, who is Chidi from The Good Place, who plays the most ambitious/driven of the grad students, Josh.

So lets just throw this out there. There is this suicide at the beginning where Dani's sister kills herself and murders her parents. She cryptically tells Dani in a text that she is going to do this. It's something like "I'm done. Mom and dad are coming, too. Goodbye." Her dick boyfriend tells her to stop giving in to her sister's attention seeking behavior. He then talks shit about her to his buddies, basically saying that he is finally going to break up with her. You know all you need to know about him at this point of the movie but he just keeps getting worse. Next thing you know she calls him just screaming. The sister indeed killed herself by taping a hose attached to the exhaust of a car to her mouth and murdered the parents by pumping the gas into their bedroom. We see the cops dealing with it, corpses and all. It is truly horrific. In my altered state, I almost had to leave. There is also, spoiler, a pair of suicides when they get to festival. All this is obviously the last thing you want to see when tripping but the characters, at that point, have several days of psychedelics in their systems.

Going to throw out a spoiler warning for the rest of this review. Ok. The movie scores high marks in the dipshit dudes ignoring huge red flags department. For these dudes, the movie is straight up horror. Don't feel so bad about them dying, honestly, though in my youth I could see myself as potentially among them although I was always a pretty good, respectful dude. But this sort of got me asking the unanswerable question of if they had followed the rules or whatever, would they still have died? They sacrifice non in all. Four new bloods. Four of their own. One to be chosen by the May Queen. All of the natives died voluntarily and it would appear, by breaking the established rules, so did the new bloods. It is unclear if they would have survived if they hadn't been dicks but I guess not. Would they have just chosen their own if that was the case? Another unanswerable is if they do this every year or this is part of that once every 90 years stuff the master of ceremonies was talking about. Seems like they would blow through their ranks pretty quickly if they are offing at least four of their own every single year or whatever.

Midsommar kinda of feels like it's maybe in the same universe as Cabin in the Woods. You've got Will Poulter, who plays Mark, as the fool who wears a jester hat in the burning at the end (he and all but three of them are dead by that point). The scholar in Chidi. You have sort of the harlot or whatever with the English chick who went on a date with Pelle's brother before meeting her fiancé, which might be a stretch. Sort of the alpha male Christian who is chosen by the May Queen, his girl friend Dani, to wear the bear carcass (he takes on the beast persona and he was just all virile and what not). Not exactly sure what the fuck the fiancé is other than an arrogant Westerner prick. I guess he was just extra. Oh, and they keep captive and kill a bear. Fuck that shit. For this I can't be a part of this community.

A bit on more on Christian. Dude fucking sucks. Not only is he the worst boyfriend of all-time, he is also a shitty friend. After the ritual suicide on the second day, Christian tells Josh that he is going to write his thesis on this place. Josh, Chidi, is like "fuck you, man, that is bullshit and lazy, you knew I was going to do this." But Christian feels no goddamn shame. Academic fraud, this piece of trash. After being just terrible through the whole movie, he ends up boning this young red-haired girl in this fucking insane ritual in what is likely the craziest movie sex of all time. It involves the dudes in the village sort of egging him on at the start of it and then like 10 or so older ladies standing around the chick trying to get pregnant whilst experiencing vicariously all of her pleasure and what not. Some of them even kind of join in with what I assume is her mom holding her hand and what not and some old lady pushing on his butt and shit. Dani looks through a key hole in the door and sees this going down. She freaks out, understandably, screaming and what not. The other girls that are following her around as the May Queen or whatever, which she won in a psychedelic fueled dance competition, scream with her in her pain, lightening her load. Empaths, all of them, in this commune. Anyway, after Christian cums, he immediately freaks out and runs the fuck out of there, naked, penis flopping, hiding in the chicken coupe with Simon who is technically alive, we see, as his lungs, which are out of his body like wings, hard to describe, filling up with air and shit. Finally figures it out, this fucking moron.

It is there that he is further drugged with some neurotoxin that won't allow him to move. This is where we learn that Dani, as the May Queen, must choose who is to be the ninth sacrifice: Christian or some dude chosen at random. She goes with Christian. She needed to choose him to let that shit go and move on with her life. Also, the choice symbolizes her leaving behind American society which has brought her nothing but pain and entry into the group, her new family. For her the movie is wish fulfillment. She has a family again and she has rid herself of her traumatic and relationship baggage. This is truely total transformative experience. How every psychedelic trip should be.

As you can see, a lot going on in this movie. Haven't even touched on the runes or the paintings and what not. Haven't thought about a film this much in a long time. Highly recommend. 

Hereditary is the greatest movie of all time

Hereditary. Man, this sure goes to some unexpected places. This is a new movie and there will be massive spoilers so don't fucking give me any shit if you read on. It rarely happens but still. So, anyway, yeah, weird. Was one of four people in the theater. The other three, a little family consisting of middle-aged couple and a high school (ish) daughter, were like, "uh, well, what did you think of that? Really something, huh?" Yeah, that sentiment, I'd say that pretty much summed it up.  I can totally see why critics love it and audiences hate it. So if you liked that movie The Witch that came out a couple of years ago and that everyone is comparing this to, you'll probably like this in that it was a lot of "what the hell is happening" followed by an "oh my god it's over." Yeah, they are both very much those critics A-, audience D movies, if you know what I mean. An extremely disturbing ending will do that for you. So, if you liked that other movie or movies that have endings that are super fucked, then I've got something for you over here... Hereditary is the greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Hereditary uses its classic setup as the framework for a harrowing, uncommonly unsettling horror film whose cold touch lingers long beyond the closing credits.

Pros: Ending is super out there. Toni Collette is a hell of an actress. Does a pretty good job of insane. A lot of detail to make the reveal believable (much like Get Out). A slow burn that builds to insanity.

Cons: Not all of it holds up under any sort of scrutiny. Little too over-the-top.

Here we go. Movie opens with the death of grandma Ellen. Her daughter, Annie played by Toni Collette, and the grieving family begin having strange occurrences having to do with their shared ancestry that becomes increasingly horrible as per use in the horror genre. Early on we lose one of the two children when son Peter, played by Alex Wolff from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, gets baked at a party and his little sister Charlie, played by Milly Shapiro, eats a piece of nut cake despite her nut allergy and the brother decapitates her in a freak accident while driving her to the hospital (I'll get into this later). From there we get seances and possession and hauntings and crazy people and all that fun stuff. It is a pretty standard horror movie you've seen 100 times for the first three-fourths of the movie. Then shit gets cray. This is a motherfucker of a beast of a domestic breakdown flick. It is writer/director Ari Aster's first feature film. It also stars Gabriel Byrne as the dad and Ann Dowd as the creepy-ass "friend" Joanie.

While Hereditary is most compared to The Witch, I thought it more in tune with the mumblegore film (movies with naturalistic acting and often improvised dialogue, low-budget film production, and a focus on the personal relationships)--which, to be clear, this film is not--is House of the Devil. That film, set in the '80s during the "satanic panic", was directed by one Ti West who is a genius, and deals with a broke college girl that babysits for a strange couple in an old house. When she gets there, the home owner informs her that it is not their child that she will be watching but his ailing mom. As the story goes on, she starts uncovering weirder and weirder happenings revolving around a cult bent on ushering in the antichrist. Like that film, this is a slow burn that gets more fucked as shit goes down, ultimately building into one hell of a crazy ass conclusion.

Joanie. Huge bitch

The breakout star of this flick is 100% Toni Collette who is just incredible. She was totally unhinged and insane with grief. Two scenes that really did it for me were the one where Joanie is trying to tell her about how she conjured up the spirits of her dead son/grandson. There is this crazy desperation to the scene with Joanie pawing at her and her resisting the whole thing as nonsense. It is obviously too much for her and she doesn't know how to handle it. She then turns around and does this same shit to her family much to her husband and son's annoyances. The next scene that really shows off her chops comes at the end when she is just fucking devastated. She is completely leveled in a truly horrible way. It is uncomfortable as fuck to watch but is an undeniably great performance.

This is a flick that requires a lot of attention, likely a second viewing. So basically the whole movie revolves around this body snatching, demon worshiping cult that has maybe already put the demon's consciousness in the girl (it is somewhat unclear if the demon has fully manifested in the girl as it prefers male hosts). Everyone in this world seems to be in on it and everything that goes down was all according to plan (no matter how outlandish). Regardless of if Charlie was always possessed or not, the demon needs a male host. The grandmother tried this once before as Annie, the mom, explains her brother committed suicide because he believed that their mother was trying to put people inside of him. We see that she was basically always willing to sacrifice her family for this cause and even went so far as to Hand-that-Rocks-the-Cradling her granddaughter (i.e. breastfeeding her). With me so far? Probably not. I too was lost.

"It's alright, bra. She'll shake it off. She's a rock."

As this was not a super clean movie, there were so many things that confused me. So my questions are why did Gabriel Byrne catch fire instead of the mom? Who possessed the mom when she cut her own head off? Was this like an Oedipus type of fucked situation that caused instant insanity? Why did the demon baby need to be a boy exactly? Is the boy like in the sunken place forever? Or will splashing with water wake him up as it did when Annie was possessed. Also, why go about possessing the daughter in the first place? Why not perform the ritual on the boy when he is like a toddler or something. The movie definitely requires multiple viewings but I'll be damned if I ever watch that shit again.

I was able to answer one glaring plot hole through a bit of research which I guess makes it not a plot hole, technically. This was from the scene where the girl, who was maybe a demon already, ate a piece of cake with nuts in it and her brother takes her to the hospital but gets into an accident and decapitates her instead (he drives home and goes to bed in shock after this takes place by the way, leaving her head on the side of the road). The issue was if the cult was just like hoping the little girl would die or if they forced that to happen in some way.  Apparently when the decapitated head shot pans up, that one Paimon symbol that everyone wheres is on the pole. The shock of that scene was fucking terrible and insane. It sort of makes you sick to your stomach. Holy fuck, man. That is basically the holy movie. Great but not one to watch more than once.