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Ogdred_Weary
Met a man with a vast black moustache.
She cried, "Shave it! Oh, do!
And I'll put it with glue
On my hat as a sort of panache."
-Gorey
Reviews
Frenzy (1972)
Decent thriller-type
Well, I'm not terribly impressed with this movie, though it wasn't bad. The basic Hitchcock elements are there and the actors are quite good, making it a fun enough experience if you don't want to think too hard about your movie. Warning: spoilers ahead.
I managed to feel sympathy for our hero, who seems to be plagued with one of the most dire cases of bad luck ever to be visited on mankind. He does tell his wife at the beginning how dratted unlucky his life has been, and at first it just sounds like whining, but by the end I truly believed him. Events just pile up at an alarming rate as evidence against him, and this is made the more unbelievable by the fact that the man setting him up does an awfully sloppy job of doing it. So much seems to be sheer coincidence that I actually wonder if Rusk was trying to set up Blaney in the first place. Yeah, he murders Blaney's ex the day after Blaney has been to see her (and about ten minutes before Blaney arrives at the office, so he can be seen leaving it right before the dead body is found) but Rusk doesn't know that good ol' Dicko has been there at all, or that he'll come back to the office so he can be implicated. If it wasn't for Blaney's visit, there really wouldn't be any link at all since he hadn't seen her in over a year. I suppose Rusk could assume that he'd been to see her, but as I said, he doesn't know and doesn't take any effort to find out.
Luckily for Blaney, random coincidence ends up working in his favor by the end, since the investigating officer on the case magically decides that Rusk is the murderer, apparently changing his mind because of the rock-solid evidence that 1) Blaney named Rusk and 2) the officer's wife said that it didn't make much sense for a man to kill a woman he'd been married to for ten years. Even though Rusk and Blaney are intelligent men, they suffer from a fatal lack of common sense -- Rusk has evidently set up Blaney to take the fall, but continues to murder after Blaney's been sent to jail (since he's a serial killer with a signature way of killing, we'd think that the continuation of murders after the murderer has been locked up would prove that the actual murderer was still out there) and it never occurs to Blaney, even after someone has killed his ex-wife and his girlfriend in the course of two days, that it seems like someone is trying to set him up. Blaney manages to break out of prison by falling down twelve stairs and getting a nasty looking cut (it's probably, i don't know, deeper than a paper cut, at least!) on his head even though he didn't hit his head on the way down, and is rushed to the minimum-security hospital which is inhabited by very stupid guards and very helpful inmates who are about as injured or ill as Blaney (not at all). And then to make the audience feel really stupid, the investigating officer tells his partner just exactly why Blaney threw himself down the stairs, as if we couldn't figure it out that he did it to escape, since 1) we knew he wanted revenge and 2) he wound up escaping.
Some of the movie is quite good, though; there are several scenes that work, even though the movie as a whole doesn't. In fact, most of the scenes alone are just fine, but when you string them together, you get some sad, gaping holes. It's pretty funny in some parts ("I can't be the necktie strangler. For a start, I only own two" and "Not in the cupid room!") and tries to be in others. The potato sack scene would have been funnier if I didn't keep thinking about exactly who that was in the sack. Poor Babs isn't mourned for after she dies (except for a "poor kid") and then is used as a morbid joke. It would have worked much better if the body in the sack had been an anonymous woman, I think. It might just be me, I know a lot of people thought this was pretty funny. I don't really think that a serial killer is a very light topic, and this film took it rather lightly, displaying some ridiculously unsound psychology about the nature of serial killers (by this, I mean a conversation two men have in a pub at the beginning...it hurts to listen to it) and completely forgetting or not caring about the women that he's killed. The two that relate directly to Blaney are the only ones really mentioned; when Blaney is arrested, he is accused of the murders of Barbara, Brenda, "and others." I'd like to know more about the others, and how exactly Blaney can be blamed for them, it's quite possible that he would have an alibi for some. But the murders end up being the Macguffin, which in my opinion, just doesn't work. If the murders and Blaney's apparent involvement in them isn't the point of the movie, then what is?
In spite of it all, it was a decent movie. Just don't *think* too hard about it once it's done.
The Crush (1993)
Hilarious
I love bad movies on tv. Currently playing on my TV is "The Crush" starring Cary Elwes and Alicia Silverstone. She's a psychotic 14 year old stalker, he's the attractive guy made to look dopey with big dumb glasses and bad hair who is renting the summer house behind her parent's place. Silverstone plays Darian "Adrian," who is one of those villains who manages to know and see everything and be everywhere at exactly the right time. For example, Nick's (Elwes) girlfriend walks in the woods to find sticks and Adrian is there. I wonder how long she had been there, hoping to find her and frighten her with her terrifying knowledge of wasps?
And Nick is the kind of "hero" who does what the plot demands so that Adrian can trap him before the end. At one point, I gave up on him entirely as a hopeless dork who deserved what Adrian put him through. He actually goes into her home when it is empty to look for a photo he thinks she has taken. He then walks into her bedroom -- will it be empty for long? Is he the dumbest man to walk the earth? Maybe. After all, he has new locks installed, determines to move out, then has sex with his girlfriend in the summer house where he KNOWS Adrian can get to him, and leaves the door unlocked. Yeah. I can't help watching these wretched movies. Loved it.
Beware the wasps...they attack in groups....