Liberated woman suspects foul play after moving to Connecticut town where nearly all her peers are or are becoming strangely contented housewives. And, she realizes, she's next. Short, subtle, and tightly plotted horror thriller is also a not-entirely-one-sided satire of American gender roles. The prescient blurb for the first edition mentions "Stepford Wife" as a potential cultural buzzword. Filmed twice, seriously in 1975, farcically in 2004.
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Liberated woman suspects foul play after moving to Connecticut town where nearly all her peers are or are becoming strangely contented housewives. And, she realizes, she's next. Short, subtle, and tightly plotted horror thriller is also a not-entirely-one-sided satire of American gender roles. The prescient blurb for the first edition mentions "Stepford Wife" as a potential cultural buzzword. Filmed twice, seriously in 1975, farcically in 2004.
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** Woman (Barbara Hershey) with three kids is assaulted and raped by discarnate entity -- a "spectral rapist" -- and seeks help from a psychiatrist, who thinks she's mentally ill, and paranormal investigators, who believe they've hit the motherlode of psychic phenomena. Based on the book by Frank De Felitta which in turn was based on a "true story," the case of Doris Bither. De Felitta, who also wrote the screenplay for this film, sides with the investigators (the attacks happen, they're real), in the process marginalizing the movie's best character, the psychiatrist, played by Ron Silver. Blueprint adaptation squeezes in as much of the novel as it can, but is poorly paced, somewhat monotonous, and, ultimately, not particularly scary. (Martin Scorcese, however, puts it at #4 on his list of the eleven "scariest films of all time.") ** Good Ray Harryhausen stop-motion special effects fail to generate much excitement in film with overwrought premise of giant octopus attacking San Francisco. Includes a wonderful scene of a lady scientist (Faith Domergue) berating a Navy Commander (Kenneth Tobey) for not appreciating her value in the field, whereupon the monster appears and she screams like a girl. Tries to be both "documentary" and monster movie and ends up as merely impersonal. Tobey, a bright spot in 1951's The Thing From Another World, tries hard, but is undercut by a script that has him sharing time -- time this movie hasn't got -- with a rival for the lady's affections. For stop-motion fans only. *** After one spy novel and another about alcoholism, Jaws author Benchley returns to the sea with a straight up thriller about a seasoned fisherman coerced into helping a couple of crazies (one a scientist, the other a grieving and obsessive dad) bent on killing the giant squid that has taken up residence in the fished-out waters off Bermuda, where people are rapidly slipping down the food chain. No romantic subplots of note, no children either, just old-fashioned adventure, comfortably set in Benchley's wheelhouse, and anchored by his knowledge of boating, the sea, and ocean life. Solid escapist fare. Adapted for TV in 1996 as The Beast, starring William Petersen. ** Weak adaptation of the Jay Anson book is decent haunted house shocker starring Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George who, along with George's three children, move into a house where several murders were committed just a year before, by a man claiming to have been influenced by "demons." A film with more negatives (including the addition of a tiresomely trite new backstory focusing on Native Americans) than positives, yet which delivers purely cathartic chills more consistently than many other movies of its type, several of which will no doubt occur to you as the scenes in this film play out. Subtle, it ain't. ***** Stellar adaptation of the book by lawyer and Michigan Supreme Court justice John D. Voelker (writing as Robert Traver) that was itself based on one of Voelker's real-life cases. Stars James Stewart as defense attorney who accepts the case of Army lieutenant (Ben Gazzara) accused of murdering the man who raped his wife (Lee Remick). Not that there's any doubt the lieutenant did it; the question is whether or not the lawyer can get him off on a bogus plea of temporary insanity. Where the book lacked suspense, the movie has no such weakness, thanks to Preminger's taut direction, a sparkling script by Wendell Mayes, and gripping performances, including those of George C. Scott, who plays one of the prosecutors, and Murray Hamilton as a hostile witness. Follows the book quite well, but includes one significant change to a secondary character that, frankly, is all for the best. With a score by Duke Ellington, who appears in a roadhouse sequence, and (the film's only mistake) real-life lawyer Joseph Welch as the judge. Briefly banned in Chicago for its language, the movie comes off even today as unusually frank and realistic. *** One hundred years in the future, a star with its own planetary system passes near Earth. Four of its five planets are gas giants, but the fifth, dubbed Achilles, is Earth-sized and evidently Earth-like. Two expeditions, one Russian, one American, set out for Achilles, where they discover endless swards of grass and long, shallow lakes. Then things get weird. In fact, it's all a little weird from the beginning. Written by astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and his novelist son Geoffrey, this book doesn't read like any ordinary science fiction novel. This is a good thing: it's different and it suits the subject matter. It has the deliberateness of the scientific mind and also its leaps forward, as well as its odd digressions. In a way, its characters are digressions. They aren't quite colorless, yet they aren't quite what one would expect in a science fiction novel, either. The astronauts, for example, are strangely laid-back, largely unmoved by the momentousness of exploring a new, living world. And then there's the hero of the story. He isn't one of the astronauts; he isn't even on the trip. And he's happy about it. This is because his wife's lover is on the trip, and he's looking forward to having her all to himself for awhile. Find another science fiction book with a cuckold as the hero. There aren't many. Though its doubtful that any of this was intentionally designed this way, it all dovetails to give this book a slightly off-kilter feel that keeps it surprising -- and eerie, once the explorers begin to realize there's more to Achilles than grass and water. ** Interesting progression from character (book) to action (original movie) to special effects (this film). Not that there isn't plenty of action here, but with very little attention having been paid to the characters, it's the special effects that carry the day. It's another one of those movies claiming to be "based on" a book (in this case, The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico) when "suggested by" would be a more accurate credit. Nothing remains of Gallico's novel except the bare bones plot of passengers on a capsized luxury liner making their way up to the bottom of the ship in hopes of rescue. None of his characters survive the adaptation except in distant echoes. Our new heroes include a professional gambler who just might be James Bond working undercover (Josh Lucas), an ex-firefighter who is also the ex-mayor of New York (Kurt Russell), his semi-rebellious daughter (Emmy Rossum), and a gay man who is gay (Richard Dreyfuss). So, yeah, let's root for these clowns. The special effects are good, though. *** This movie about time travel has its own peculiar timeline. Evidently author John Varley based a screenplay on his short story "Air Raid" then wrote a novel based on the screenplay, fixing it so that the movie is technically based on the story while the events of the film in fact mirror those in the novel. So perhaps it's fair to say that this film is not a poor adaptation of the book, but that the book is an excellent adaptation of the film. Either way, of the three -- story, book, and film -- the movie is the least entertaining. That said, this is an okay adventure about what happens when a woman from the future whose job it is to snatch passengers from doomed airliners meets the NTSB man investigating the mid-air collision of two passenger jets. When a weapon from the future is lost aboard one of the jets, it sets up a potential paradox that could -- not to put too fine a point on it -- destroy all humanity. It's this story, with its shifts in point of view from the man (Kris Kristofferson) to the woman (Cheryl Ladd), that keeps the movie interesting; everything else just holds it back. Michael Anderson proves that the triumph of Logan's Run was in its production design rather than his direction, while production designer Rene Ohashi probably wished he had a bunch of pretty domes to create rather than an ugly, claustrophobic world of dying men, women, and human-machine hybrids. Then, too, both Kristofferson and Ladd do their part to keep this vehicle strictly in the middle of the road. Ripe for an expensive remake, based on the book. ** Seemingly the only book written by co-authors Larry Levine and Steven Greene, this is a thriller about an NBC newswoman who wakes up an inexplicably changed person after agreeing to undergo experimental cryonic freezing until a cure for her rare disease is discovered. "Greene" pokes his nose into Robin Cook territory, but lacks the medical expertise to make it believable, relying instead on another Cook staple -- silly characters doing silly things -- to drive an underwritten plot to an unimaginative, why-bother conclusion. Not exactly a forgotten gem from the 80s. |
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