Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 23

Disney(ish) reviews with the Unscrupulous Mouse: Artemis Fowl

“So I said to him: “Sir, if your attempts at neo-realism were any more bourgeois, they would have political rights in the Ancien Regime!””

 

“Very droll.”

 

“Yes. Quite.”

 

“Sick burn, Salman.”

 

“So Mouse, before we invite you to join our exclusive club for novelists, what were you doing before you took up the quill?”

 

“Oh, you know. One blogs a little. Film reviews. Cultural critiques. All very serious and highbrow. No talking maps.”

 

“Talking…well, very good. Very good. I’m delighted to welcome you..”

“MWA HA HA HA! Nobody move!”

 

“Dude, not cool! I’m with people who matter!”

 

“Mouse! Who is this rakish, uncouth rodent?!”

 

“Sigh. This is my evil twin brother the Unscrupulous Mouse. He’s a supervillain”

 

“I think you should leave.”

“Yeah, no shit, Salman. Okay, asshole what are you doing here?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?! Disney release a movie set in Ireland and it’s the worst thing ever and you don’t review it?! That’s three of your wheelhouses right there!”

“I reviewed Darby O’Gill, it was fine!”

“Not that one, fool! Artemis Fowl! The new Cromwell!”

“Look, I don’t have time to drop everything every time Disney goes plop plop. I’m a busy writer now, and quite frankly too good for that sort of thing.”

“FINE! I’LL DO IT MYSELF!”

I loved the Artemis Fowl books. Growing up as an evil mouse in Ireland I didn’t have many role models. Sure, there were a few villains I aspired to. The cartoon villains that were beaten by the heroes every Saturday morning or the Irish politicians using their power for personal gain. But there wasn’t a kid villain that I could root for! I wanted someone that outsmarted the good guys! Someone who’s plans weren’t foiled every week. Then Artemis Fowl entered my life. Not only was he a smart villain, he was Irish too! Then after a few books into the series, I heard the news! They were making an Artemis Fowl movie! Holy crap! young me squeaked! I’ll finally see my hero villain on the big screen!

Originally intended to be launched as a franchise by Miramax way back in 2001, the film languished in development hell until Disney acquired the rights in 2013. And I hate them for what they have done.

“Excellent. I feed on your hate.”

Okay, let’s get this over with.

The movie starts with reporters waiting outside Fowl Manor. Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad) is moved from one police car to another just so we can get a look at him. He then is brought from Ireland to M16’s secret water base for questioning about his connection to Artemis Fowl and multiple stolen artifacts. Surely Irish authorities would have liked to speak with him first? No? Okay. 

“What, the British government recklessly disregarding Irish sovereignty?! What kind of mad fantasy is this?!”

 

“Is that a Brexit joke?”

 

“More like a “Pick Literally Any Moment in Our Shared History” joke.

A webcam threatens him with PERMANENT IMPRISONMENT if he doesn’t tell them what he was doing at Fowl Manor. Mulch tells them that he is just a pawn and the real mastermind is the person who stole the Aculos. What is the Aculos you ask? It really doesn’t matter. It’s the biggest Mcguffin I have ever seen in a movie since the Mighty Mcguffos attacked Tokyo and had to be defeated by Godzilla.

Mulch then gives us the shocking twist that MI6 are looking for the wrong person. Because Artemis Fowl isn’t the brains of the operation, it’s actually Artemis Fowl…junior!

With lines that would make the Irish tourism board cringe we get a voice over of Mulch explaining that Ireland is the most magical place in the world and we see Artemis Fowl Jr surfing on the beautiful Irish coast. 

Later we see Artemis Fowl (Ferdia Shaw) show off his super intelligence when he absolutely dunks on the school’s therapist by proving that the chair he’s sitting on is actually not a famous chair. The therapist then brings up his mother’s death, so you can tell Artemis struck a nerve. 

Okay not even 10 minutes into the movie and we have jumped from the source material. Artemis’ mother is still alive in the books. She actually plays a really important part, so killing her off before we begin is a little strange. Secondly, Artemis is not cool. Artemis is a pale nerd who does not do any cool sports, especially not surfing, the 3rd coolest sport. 

Artemis storms out of the therapy session and heads home and OH COME ON!

A one wheeled skateboard. The douche’s chariot.

Artemis goes home where his father Artemis Senior (Colin Farrell) is waiting for him. We are told from the Mulch voiceover that Artemis Senior knows more about Irish fairy tales than anyone else and that is just ridiculous. Surely the person who knows the most about Irish folklore would appear on an Irish morning tv show telling the country about Irish halloween traditions when he was only 22 years old and I wish I could find a clip of that so I could show your readers Mouse, but I can’t.

“Man, I forgot all about that. Everyone in RTE was so high.”

Artemis Senior has to go away on a business trip, but leaves him with their bodyguard Butler (Nonso Anozie). Domovoi Butler, just called Butler in the books but changed here so that they can say “Don’t call him The Butler even though that’s his name, isn’t that funny”. Artemis wakes up the next day with the news that his father has disappeared and is wanted for the theft of a bunch of famous artifacts. Artemis gets a phone call from a mysterious shadowy figure who says they have kidnapped his father and says he has three days to return the Aculos. When asked what the Aculos is, the kidnapper just tells him that Artemis is a smart boy and he’ll figure it out.

What? Do you want this Mcguffin or not?! At least tell him what it looks like, it might be sitting on the mantelpiece. He might have walked by it every day for the last year thinking it was an avant garde art piece. Give him something to work with!

“Hey! Get me a schmooky schmook!”

 

“I don’t know what that is.”

 

“Well I guess that makes you an IDIOT!”

Butler shows Artemis the secret room in the basement where his father was doing his research into fairies, as well as all the stuff he stole. Yeah the movie frames it like, he did it to keep it safe and to stop it falling into the wrong hands (namely any hands that weren’t at the end of his wrists) but it’s still stealin’. Anyway they find Artemis Senior’s journal which says he hid the Aculos from the fairies and that Artemis Junior has to start believing in fairies, he does he does.

Cut to Haven City, the fairy city in the middle of Earth.

If your subterranean city does not have Lawrence Fishbourne yelling “MACHINES!” it can go straight to Hell.

This is now a couple of minutes of movie that I enjoyed. We see a futuristic magical city full of different types of fairies. We meet our other main character, Holly Short (Lara McDonnell), an Elf Lower-Elements Police Officer. She walks through the city and we get a Diagon Alley meets Star Wars cantina vibe. She sees Mulch Diggums who we learn is a Dwarf, but a very large Dwarf (read Human sized) and is a bit of an outcast because of it. He’s on his way to Howlers Peak, a fairy prison. She and Mulch have a friendly relationship but she doesn’t even say goodbye as he is shipped off for a 400 year sentence for breaking and entering. Still less time than MI6 are going to give him. 

Holly heads to the Police station where they are on high alert looking for the Aculos. Commander Root (Judi Dench), sorry wait a minute, let me re-phrase that: COMMANDER ROOT PLAYED BY DAME JUDI DENCH WHAT THE FUCKING SCHMOOKING SCHMOOK! HOW? WHY? HOW? WHY!?

“I’m afraid the producers have compromising footage of me. You see, I’m a life long furry and they threatened to release the tapes…”

 

“My God! Is that how they got you for CATS?”

 

“For what now?”

Root tells the cops that it is vital they find it before it’s too late. If the Aculos is not found it could bring doom upon the whole fairy race. Somehow. I dunno.

Quick moan here, Commander Root is male in the books. Why is this important? Because in the books Holly Short is supposed to be the first female Captain. Root is extra tough on her in the first book because he knows that she will be the poster child for all the women police captains to come so he wants her to be the best. Root is constantly pushing her, and when we learn the reason why it makes the character that was infuriating more like a father figure for Holly. An overbearing parent, but still a parent. Does the change mean the relationship doesn’t work anymore? No, not at all. Well it shouldn’t have any way. I don’t know if Academy Award Winner Dame Judith Olivia Dench CH DBE FRSA is a bad actor. I didn’t think she was. I was almost sure she was pretty good actually. What is she doing in this film? I feel like I’ve taken Crazy Pills!

“THEY RELEASED IT?! WORLDWIDE?! THEY PUT JAMES BLOODY CORDEN IN IT?!”

Holly speaks with Root about following a lead on her father at the Hill of Tara, who tells her no and that she is too invested in this case. The case of her father’s death. That no one else seems to be working on. Holly somehow doesn’t say “Of fucking course I’m invested in my father’s murder” and let’s it drop.

We go back to Artemis and Butler who are looking for fairies. Butler thinks Artemis needs some more help so he calls in Juliet Butler.

In the books, Juliet is Butler’s 16 year old sister who is almost as much of an ass-kicking machine as Butler is. In this she is Butler’s 12 year old niece (Tamara Smart), who’s sole contribution to the film is she brings Artemis a sandwich. 

It was at this point that I realised that the movie hated me and was actively wishing me harm.

Back in Haven City, the tech officer centaur Foaley (Nikesh Patel) tells Commander Root that there is a fairy on the surface. Because Holly is the only officer available, (I’m not being flippant they actually say that is the reason), she is chosen to go up and monitor who this rogue fairy is. 

She is launched up to Martina, Italy via magma shoot and she flies over a wedding where a Troll is about to chow down on some Italian…s. Holly distracts the Troll long enough for the rest of the fairies to arrange a Time Stop. The whole area is locked in time and the wedding guests have their memories wiped. The scene works and we actually get a fun action sequence of Holly flying around trying to stop as much devastation. After everything is back to normal and the troll is brought back below ground, Holly sneaks off to the Hill of Tara to find clues about her father’s death. Butler and Artemis are waiting for her and knock her out with a tranquiliser gun. 

She wakes up in Fowl Manor and tries to use her mind-control powers to get her capturers to let her go, but Artemis has everyone wearing reflective sunglasses so the magic doesn’t work. The Lower-Elements Police start trying to get Holly back by setting up a Time Bubble around Fowl Manor. 

For some reason the fairies set up the bubble so that Fowl Manor’s time runs normally but everything else around it freezes. We don’t see how far this goes, maybe the whole world which seems a bit excessive but I’m sure they know their business. A whole army of fairies land around the Manor and then Commander Root gets out of her ship and says:

This movie is a goddamn hate crime.

An elite retrieval team storms the grounds and Artemis and Butler come out to meet them armed with Holly’s fairy shape changing gun/sword/shield. The fairies are not trying to kill Artemis and Butler, but they don’t know that! They could have been taken out by Fairy sniper rifles as soon as they left the house.

Butler and Artemis take out the team without breaking a sweat. They also damage the time dome so the freeze in time won’t last much longer. 

“How do you DO this? How do you put yourself through this?”

“I TRIED TO STOP! YOU DRAGGED ME BACK INTO THIS!”

We get a scene of the kidnapper, Opal Koboi, oh I’m sorry did I spoil the surprise, speaking to Artemis Senior. She explains the reason she’s doing this is that humans not only kicked fairies out from the surface but then turned them into bedtime stories. And she’s going to use the power of the Aculos to take over the surface and wipe out humans. Then they ham-fist in the line “Fairies and Humans are incapable of friendship.” God damn it. She’s actually a really cool villain in the book, I swear guys.

Root goes into Fowl Manor to negotiate Holly’s release. Artemis says that he will expose the existence of Fairies if they don’t give him the Oculus Rift. And due to fairy rules, they aren’t allowed to enter the house “while I’m alive” (vampires, fairies, it’s all grist to the Disney company’s grinding cultural millstone). Root somehow thinks that because he didn’t specify every type of fairy in this statement that means she’s allowed to bring in a Dwarf. She pulls some strings to get Mulch Diggums brought out of prison to assist in the rescue. 

Then we get the most maddening scene in the whole movie. Artemis visits Holly in her cell and gloats. This is the dialogue:

Holly: You think this is a game!

Artemis: Game? My father is kidnapped.

Holly: My father is dead.

Artemis: … Can I trust you?

Holly: You’ll have to. You have no choice.

Artemis then takes off his sunglasses.

Artemis: How did he die?

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK! How is this a real movie? How did someone get paid to write this? He’s kidnapped her! It’s been like 2 hours tops! They can’t bond this fast. They can’t be friends while one of them is still locked up! Holly Short is a police officer who has been captured. Her captive has made it so she can now hypnotize him, to MAKE HIM OPEN HER CELL AND LET HER FREE! She can now wipe his memory, but instead she tells him how her father got killed trying to get the Nintendo DS out of New Haven. Artemis realises that Holly’s father is the one who gave his father the Playstation Portable. Holly’s father is considered a criminal now because of his actions. Just like Artemis’ father. But really they are both noble heroes trying to keep these dangerous artifacts safe! God! Moving on! This scene cost me years of my life.

“I’M A MOUSE. I GET, LIKE, THREE.”

Mulch is brought up to the surface, fitted with an iris camera and sent to tunnels into the Manor. Dwarfs in Artemis Fowl have the ability to unhinge their jaws and inhale earth and…release it the other side. I wish I could blame the movie but this happens in the books too. I don’t know, it’s less weird in print I guess when you don’t actually see the Dwarf shitting out vast amounts of Earth. He ends up in the portrait gallery and coincidentally right beside the safe that holds the Nintendo Switch. Mulch cracks the safe with his magic beard. Artemis releases Holly and they both meet up with Mulch and take the Gameboy Advance. 

Artemis, Butler, Holly and Mulch are a team now. This happens without anyone explaining why, but it happens. 

Outside, Cudgeon, a LEP Captain that is loyal to Opal Koboi stages a coup of sorts and takes over the operation from Commander Root. He brings the Troll from earlier and sends it at the house. We get four minutes of rampage where our heroes have to survive the attack. The troll falls from the chandelier but Butler pushes Artemis out of the way and gets crushed instead. Holly and Artemis bring him to a chair and he dies. His niece isn’t here. Seems like they weren’t close.

Anyway before the tears start coming Holly uses her fairy magic to bring him back to life. Oh thank God for that. Outside the Time Dome fails and all the fairies are sucked back under ground, Mulch included. Holly is able to dodge the time stuff and stays to help Artemis use the Wii U.

They open a portal just as Opal is going to kill Artemis Senior and they are able to grab him and bring him back. Also the spell they use to make the portal is the same Incantation that they use in the book but it’s for something completely different and that’s not fan service that’s just pissing fans off. Father and son hug and Artemis Senior thanks Holly for the help and confirms that yes, Holly’s father was trying to protect the Playstation Vita so that’s why he gave it to an infamous art thief. He also gives her a list of names who may have been the person who killed him. That he had on his person. In case he ran into her. God!

Holly goes back to New Haven with the…damn I’ve run out of handheld consoles, wait the Oculus Rift isn’t even handheld, why did I start this? Root gives her control of her own task force to investigate each name on the list.

Artemis Senior and Junior talk about what they will do now and Artemis called Opal to tell her to get her affairs in order. Because he’s Artemis Fowl.

“Please, I could pull a better evil plot out from under my tail.”

The movie ends with Artemis breaking out Mulch from M16 and flying away with the promise of sequel after sequel, from now until the end of time please god no.

***

 

This is a baaaaaaaad movie. As a fan of the books I hated this, but if you have never heard of Artemis Fowl before you will hate it just the same. The fact that Covid-19 stopped this from coming to cinemas means that from now on I have to say, “Well, Coronavirus wasn’t all bad.”

“Lord, what a trainwreck. Who wrote this effluent? What clueless Hollywood dreck-shitter inflicted this on…”

Whaaaaaaaat?!

“CONOR MCPHERSON!?!”

“Who?”

“Conor McPherson?! Conor “Legit Claim to being the Greatest Living Irish Playwright” McPherson?!”

“Yes Mouse! I thought I was too good for theatre! Gaze upon me and learn from my mistake!”

“OH GOD! I SWEAR I WILL NEVER FORGET MY ROOTS AND KEEP CHRISTMAS IN MY HEART PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE!”

“Job done. Now, on to the scoring.”

Scoring

Adaptation: 06/25

It’s not the worst book adaptation (Probably World War Z). But it gets everything important wrong, including it’s main character.

Our Heroic Heroes: 10/25

There are two people called Artemis Fowl in the movie and neither of them are like the book character. We get some points here because Lara McDonnell is actually a passable Holly. I’ll even go as far and say she’s probably the strongest part of the movie.

Our Nefarious Villain: 03/25

This is where Artemis should be! Instead we have the charisma-less, faceless Opal Koboi.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 08/25

Mulch, Root, Butler, Foley and Julliet. Josh Gad is fine I guess. But only because I can’t not like Josh Gad. Root and Butler are so disappointing. And Foley and Julliet are invisible.

Final Score: 27%.

Read the books instead. Please. I can’t believe I watched this again to do the review. 

Huge thanks to Eamonn Sharpson for filling in this week.  

Cover Reveal!

Howdy all, know what today is?

It’s Cover Reveal For The US Edition of Mouse’s Book Day! (and has been since the introduction of the Julian Calendar in 709).

HERE IT IS!

Ain’t it pretty?

Bat versus Bolts: The 2010s

Question: is the Dark Universe dead?

You remember the Dark Universe, surely? Universal’s attempt to create a shared cinematic universe with rebooted versions of their classic monsters? Is that still a thing? Because it seemed to be DOA with the failure of The Mummy. But then The Invisible Man came out this year and did really well and apparently is supposed to be part of the Dark Universe except the director says it isn’t and Universal are apparently refusing to admit its dead despite the fact that all of its upcoming movies appear to be either cancelled or delayed indefinitely and now the whole project seems (appropriately enough) neither alive nor dead.

And that kinda sucks. Not because I was particularly psyched for any of these proposed films but it’s gotta be galling for Universal to keep getting portrayed as failed Marvel wannabes considering they invented the whole concept of a shared cinematic universe all the way back in 1943. I mean obviously they wouldn’t be doing this if the MCU hadn’t made enough money to air condition Hell, but I personally feel that if any movie studio has a right to rip off Marvel, it’s Universal.

Turnabout, after all, is fair play.

In fact, I think you’d be hard pressed to find two non-comics characters who’ve had a bigger influence on comics as a whole than the Universal versions of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. For starters, as public domain characters, both DC and Marvel have incorporated their own versions of these characters into their respective universes. Marvel, in particular, made fantastic use of Dracula in their series Tomb of Dracula, which lasted a whopping 70 issues. And that’s not even counting the dozens (hundreds?) of characters in both of the Big Two publishers that take influence both subtle and overt from these two monsters. You can see Dracula’s lineage in Batman, Doctor Doom, Morbius and Count Nefaria whereas pretty much every hulking, misunderstood monster has a bit of Adam in him, whether we’re talking about the Thing, Bizarro, Solomon Grundy or the Incredible Hulk. So if Universal want to start turning their properties into ersatz superheroes to compete with Marvel, I say it’s less a case of stealing from your competitors than breaking into your neighbour’s house in the dead of night to take back the lawnmower that he “borrowed” from you eighty years ago and never bothered returning. And, like in that analogy, while it may be satisfying and even morally justified, it’s probably not a good idea.

I’ve spent this entire intro talking about Universal, but truth be told only one of today’s movies, 2014’s Dracula Untold, is from that studio. I would have preferred to pit two modern Universal monster movies against each other but according to the Dark Universe wiki (which is a thing that exists) the Dark Universe Frankenstein is just putting the finishing touches on.

Suuuuuuuuure it is.

so today Team Bolts is represented by I Frankenstein, a 2014 movie from Lionsgate that’s also trying to do the “shove a public domain monster into a superhero cape and see if he flies” thing. And guys, I swear to God, I’m not setting Team Bolts up to fail deliberately. After the last installment, I really didn’t want to see another curb stomp. But there’s no getting around it, I, Frankenstein is a staggeringly bad film, and leagues worse than Dracula Untold. Cunning and savvy reader that you are, you will notice that is not the same thing as saying that Dracula Untold is good.

The Adaptations

Fair is fair. Dracula Untold has a real, humdinger, “why didn’t I think of that?” killer high concept: what if the historical Dracula, Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes, had the powers of his fictional literary counterpart?

In the 15th Century, Prince Vlad (Luke Evans) of Transylvania and Wallachia is forced to defend his homeland from the invading forces of Sultan Mehmed II (played by Dominic Cooper. In brownface. In the year of Our Lord 2014). Vlad encounters a mysterious Vampire (Charles Dance) who offers to let him drink some of his blood, thereby gaining the powers of a vampire for three days. But if Vlad succumbs to temptation and drinks human blood, he will become a vampire permanently. Given that this is a movie with the name “Dracula” in the title, you can probably guess where that little subplot goes.

If, however, you can guess where I, Frankenstein is heading I will pay you serious money and also you probably should seek psychiatric help. We start conventionally enough with Victor Frankenstein dying in the Arctic after the events of the novel. The creature (Aaron Eckhart) returns to…generic…Europe…land to bury his father’s body. Then, he’s attacked by a group of demons and rescued by a group of gargoyles disguised as humans because apparently gargoyles aren’t actually statues but have been waging a secret war against demons since the dawn of time to protect humanity…

…and they take him to meet their Queen Leonore (Miranda Otto) who names the creature Adam and tries to recruit him into their war against the demons. Adam is obviously a gravelly voiced loner who plays by his own rules and instead spends the next few hundred years bumming around generic Europe Land until he gets caught in the war between gargoyles and demons again when the demon prince Naberious (Bill Nighy) tries to use Frankenstein’s research to create an army of reanimated corpses to serve as vessels for all the demons in Hell so that they can take over the world. Now, for all you purists out there popping your monocles and harrumphing that this is a complete bastardization of Mary Shelley’s work, yes, obviously, obviously it is that. The only thing this has in common with Mary Shelley is that I could believe whoever wrote this was doing serious drugs with Lord Byron. But I wish it was as entertaining a trash fire as I make it sound. Sad fact is, I, Frankenstein is just a boring, ugly, dour slog of a film with leaden portentous dialogue and CGI that would have looked bad for 2004, let alone 2014. Hell, 1994 might have wrinkled its nose at it. A lot of the people behind this also made Underworld in 2003, and it really does feel like a throwback to the early aughties; the God awful nu-metal soundtrack, the clear influence of The Matrix, and that very special kind of joyless suck that characterised so many bad movies from that decade. I got serious Van Helsing flashbacks, guys.

You weren’t there man.
You weren’t there.

Dracula Untold, conversely, is a strikingly handsome film. It makes good use of its Northern Irish location, the sets and costumes are all very well designed and there’s some very nice use of lighting and shadow. It’s a good looking film, but unfortunately, like many good looking people, it tries to coast without having an ounce of personality. This is what’s really infuriating about Dracula Untold, all the elements are there for a for a film that I would absolutely love. I like the actors, I think the premise is gold and the technical side is clearly staffed by people who know what they’re doing. The problem is really the script. It’s like the writers came up with this awesome premise and didn’t realise that that’s just the beginning of a good story, not the finished product. I have seen plenty of movies that had difficulty choosing a tone. This may be the first movie I’ve ever seen that doesn’t have a tone. It’s an atonal movie. The script doesn’t seem to be aiming for anything, whether it’s horror, comedy or tragedy. It’s just…there. It’s the narrative equivalent of a wikipedia page. That said, I do occasionally read Wikipedia for fun.

WINNER: Bats

The Monsters

Luke Evans has made a lucrative career for himself as the one good thing in movies I otherwise really didn’t like and I think he has the makings of a great Dracula.

One day I hope to see him play the character.

The script positions Dracula as a good, noble man who foreswears a life of violence to live in peace with his family. But when the Turks return like an old army mentor who needs you to come back for one last mission, Vlad has to risk his immortal soul to selflessly protect his land and people. And apart from the name and the vampire powers there is not a single, solitary point of similarity between this character and literally any version of Dracula I’ve seen or read. Oldman’s version also played up the Vlad the Impaler connection, but at least that movie had the good sense to establish that he was a bloody psycho killer even before he became a vampire. And near the end of the movie, after Dracula has sacrificed his humanity to save his son, the movie skips forward a few hundred years and we see Dracula in the present day, just chillin’ and stalking his reincarnated wife but in a cute romantic way. So…was this Dracula ever really a monster? Did he prey on Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray? Did he imprison Johnathan Harker and feed babies to his three vampire hoochie-mommas? There’s zero indication that he did. So in what sense is this even Dracula?

I had more or less the same feeling about Aaron Eckhart’s monster. “Pshaw!” I cried, “this isn’t Mary Shelley’s monster! This is just a mopey asshole who spends his time wandering aimlessly and bitching about how he doesn’t have a soul and humanity will never accept him and he really wants to get with his bland love interest but wouldn’t you know it…”

And then I thought…wait a minute, that is EXACTLY Mary Shelley’s monster. I mean, the movie is still dumber than shit but we gotta give them kudos for literary accuracy.

WINNER: Bolts

The Scientists Morally Dubious Mentor Figures

Dracula Untold has Charles Dance as a vampire.

“You haff sunk my battlesheep!”

If Luke Evans tends to be the one thing I like in movies I otherwise hate, then Charles Dance is that on steroids. Charles Dance has appeared in some appalling dogshit over the years, and he seems to take perverse joy in giving performances so much better than those movies deserve that it makes everything else look worse by comparison. He is masterful in Ali G Indahouse,  a tour de force in Space Truckers, pitch-perfect in Last Action Hero and his performance as Lord Vetinari in Going Postal will forever be the definitive take on that character. He is always the lone nugget of gold in the prospector’s shit.  And true to form, he finds the perfect wavelength of dark humour that the rest of the movie really needed to be operating on. And, again, no disrespect to Evans, but it’s really hard to enjoy a Dracula movie that also has Charles Dance in it. Because then you can’t stop thinking things like: “Why didn’t they just get Charles Dance to play Dracula? Shit, has Charles Dance ever played Dracula? Charles Dance should ABSOLUTELY play Dracula. Fuck, I need to make Charles Dance play Dracula. Could I kidnap Charles Dance and force him to play Dracula?” And so on.

By contrast, I, Frankenstein has Miranda Otto as Queen Leonore, head of the Gargoyle order.

Miranda Otto, seeing the script for the first time.

This is a character that I’m convinced came about when the script was incorrectly formatted, turning all the descriptive passages into dialogue. This is an actual line that Miranda Otto, a professional actor, was forced to say:

“The Gargoyle Order was commanded into being by the Archangel Michael. It is our sacred duty to wage war against the demon horde, the 666 legions of hell-born creatures unleashed by Satan after his fall from heaven. Humans think of us as mere decoration. They do not know, nor can they conceive, the brutal unseen war being fought around them every day. A war that may one day determine the fate of all mankind.”

There must be justice. Restitution must be made, and the writers should be put in a museum where their crimes can be re-contextualised. Justice for Miranda Otto.

WINNER: Bats

The Villains who are the real monsters, when you think about it: 

Friends, if even Bill Nighy doesn’t look he’s having a good time…well. Well.

“A bored, checked out Bill Nighy”. It just looks wrong to see it written down. It’s some weird gibberish.

Nighy plays Naberious, a name taken from a demon described by real life occultist Johann Weyer. Does knowing this little historical factoid make it any less ridiculous when otherwise very serious actors are forced to say things like “We have to stop Prince Naberious”?

Actually, yes, it does.

On the other hand…who thought Mr Epic Tanning Bed Disaster here was a good idea?

Performance wise he’s…fine? Does the trick? I dunno, like so much of this movie he’s just there. Gonna have to give this one to Bats though. Cooper doesn’t actually give the impression that he hates me for watching the movie, and honestly, I’m getting that vibe from Nighy.

“Fuck you, you bastard, I hope you die!”

“Jesus! It’s like being shivved by Santa Claus!”

Winner: Bats

The Perpetually Imperilled Ladies Bland Blondes

So by a weird coincidence both Dracula and the monster have love interests, they’re both blonde and they’re both so boring and underwritten my brain started hallucinating like I was in a sensory deprivation tank.

Sarah Gadon plays Mirena, Vlad’s wife.

While Yvonne Strahovski plays Terra, a scientist who starts out working for Naberious who turns good.

Shit, I just realised I put those pictures in the wrong order. Ah well. Of the two characters, Terra has the more interesting arc on paper as she starts out as a villain before changing sides and learning to love the monster despite his grotesque, abominable appearance…

Sarah Gadon does more with less. It’s a completely stock “worried wife” part but she plays the part with a winning tenderness.

Also, I have gone two Dracula movies now without sexy vampire ladies and that is rank bullshit.

Winner: Bats.

Are either of these movies actually, y’know, scary?

I’ve dug scarier things out from under my fingernails.

WINNER: TIE.

Best Dialogue:

Ooof. Real “Thinnest Kid at Fat Camp” contest here. I do like “What kind of man crawls into his own grave in search of hope?” from Dracula Untold. 

I, Frankenstein’s best line is “You’re only a monster if you behave like one” because it rises to the giddy heights of not being actively awful.

Winner: Bats.

FINAL SCORE: Bats 5, Bolts 1

NEXT UPDATE: 08 October 2020

NEXT TIME: Next month sees the triumphant return of Shortstember!

*Checks calendar*

Next month sees the triumphant launch of the very first ShortsTOBER!

To celebrate my first month as a full time writer, I’ve dedicating the whole month to mini-reviews of one of my favourite animated series of all time.

Bats Versus Bolts: The Silent Era

Okay, paws in the air, I kinda goofed with this one.

My whole concept (nay, vision!) for Bats versus Bolts is taking a Frankenstein movie and a Dracula movie that are contemporaneous and comparing them side to side to see whatever random insights on movie-making or film history or social trends or whatever crap shakes loose basically. The point is, they’re supposed to be films from the same era. Frankenstein and Dracula  were both released in 1931. Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula were a year apart. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein followed two years after Bram Stoker’s Dracula. 

Conversely, while the better known of today’s movies, Nosferatu, came out in 1922, our representative for Team Bolts was released a full dozen years previously. Frankenstein was released in 1910, and the more I’ve come to work on this post the more I’ve realised that comparing these two movies is kind of farcical. Firstly, while both movies do belong to “the silent era”, that’s a definition so broad as to be almost useless. The silent era lasted over forty years, and went through multiple evolutions and revolutions in style, technology and presentation. Secondly, while all of the other matchups in this series were made in the same country (America, the UK and America again), here we’re comparing a very primitive silent American short from 1910 and one of the greatest examples of German expressionism in all of film from over a decade later. Is that in any way a fair or meaningful comparison to make?

Is it bollocks. But here we are.

Anyway, let’s talk about the amoral scientist and the bloodsucking monster. Let’s talk about Thomas Edison.

“Ha! Good one!”

“Nikola Tesla? I thought you were dead!”

“Oh you are adorable.”

I have way too many immortal, dark haired, mustachioed men in my life. Far too many.

Anyway, age before beauty, so let’s talk about Frankenstein first. The movie was the product of Edison Studios, who produced and screened the first commercial motion pictures in the United States using the kinetoscope, drooling neanderthal ancestor of the modern movie projector which Edison may even have invented because fuck it, anything’s possible in this crazy world of ours. Now, although Edison’s name is all over this movie he actually had next to nothing to do with its creation (I know, shocking). Being on the ground floor of the new medium, the Edison company could claim many firsts such as the first romance, the first boxing film and the first Western filmed in America The Great Train Robbery (hilariously, the very first Western, Kidnapped by Indians, was filmed in Lancashire four years previously). While they may have done it first, Edison rarely did it best and the studio’s output is not very highly regarded amongst silent era fans, although more recent re-discoveries have helped rehabilitate their reputation somewhat.

Rather charmingly, Frankenstein was a movie that was thought dead and then brought back to life. The film was thought irretrievably lost like around 75% of all silent films made in America, due to being filmed on nitrate which had the durability and flammability of a rummy’s fart. Thankfully, a copy of the film was discovered in the seventies, somewhat the worse for wear but still viewable. And by viewable, I mean “you can watch it right now” as it’s only 12 minutes long and the copyright on it has expired and it’s not like Thomas Edison is going to rise from the grave demanding it be taken down from YouTube.

“…right?”

“Oh no. He’s definitely dead. Heh heh heh.”

“Not gonna ask.”

Anyway, enough talking about the production of Frankenstein because we need to talk about the production of Nosferatu like right now. One of the greatest horror films of all time. Terrifying even to this day. What kind of production company could create such a thing?

If told you that it was a production company created by a mysterious German occultist to produce supernatural themed films which then folded suddenly after creating this one, terrifying masterpiece would you, as I did, punch the air and say “Oh fuck yes“? Because that’s what we’ve got here, people. That’s what happened. Fuck yes.

Now, granted, the reason why occultist Albin Grau’s Prana Films folded does not include mysterious drained corpses showing up every which way, and more’s the pity. It actually had to do with Bram Stoker’s widow suing his Teutonic testes for filming an unauthorised version of her husband’s novel.

Do not come between an Irishwoman and her royalties. She will cut you down.

Anyway, despite the film-makers hunnish perfidy, what they created still stands almost a century later as the greatest vampire film of all time. And yes, it’s also public domain so you can watch that too.

The adaptations

Frankenstein really is a film from a time before anyone knew what the fuck they were doing in terms of pacing and staging.

Scene 1: Frankenstein goes to college and says goodbye to his fiancée and father.

Scene 2: Frankenstein discovers the secret to LIFE ITSELF.

And, from a modern understanding of cinematic language, both of these scenes are treated with equal importance. The story is extremely faithful to Shelley’s novel with a few minor changes like the monster no longer being created from body parts, the monster no longer pursuing Frankenstein across Europe, the monster now being a manifestation of Frankenstein’s dirty thoughts who vanishes once Frankenstein’s love for his bride reaches “full strength and freedom from impurity” like some kind of isotope, the monster apparently being jealously in love (?) with Frankenstein and the story ending with the monster vanishing and Frankenstein happily married. But other than that, y’know. Pretty much a page for page retelling.

Alright, it’s easy to scoff, but remember. This was a time when people couldn’t see a train coming towards them onscreen without running screaming from the theatre. A jig-sawed together shambling corpse man might have led to a fatal epidemic of the vapours.

In Germany in the 1920s, of course, they were made of sterner stuff. Young German lawyer Jonathan Harker Thomas Hutter travels to Transylvania at the behest of his employer Mister Renfield Herr Knock to sell a house to the mysterious Count Dracula Orlock. Upon suspecting that his host is a vampire and a threat to English virtue pure Aryan womanhood*, he escapes the castle and returns home to save his wife Mina Ellen from Draculock with the help of Abraham Van Helsing Professor Bulwer.

“See ALL you motherfuckers in court.”

WINNER: BATS

The Monsters

Edison Studios specifically set out to make a tamer, uncontroversial version of Mary Shelley’s story, which is why, instead of sewing his monster together out of cadavers, this Frankenstein makes his monster like he’s microwaving some popcorn or something. This scene, incidentally, was described by Edison’s own publicity as “the most weird, mystifying and fascinating scene ever shown on a film” which is probably true considering that the medium was so young that people would pay to watch a dude sneezing. But fair is fair, the creation scene where the monsters flesh slowly forms on a dancing skeleton is genuinely creepy. Actually, the silent era may have been a perfect time for horror films. The jerky unreality of the motion, the complete absence of any human voice, it all combines to give the queasy sense of watching a nightmare unfold.

As I mentioned, the monster (played by Charles Stanton Ogle) is not a reanimated assemblage of dead body parts, but a manifestation (I guess) of the evil in Frankenstein’s soul that he has to purge, adding in a bit of Jekyll and Hyde to the story. It’s not a great film, but it’s honestly a pretty great monster.

But. Y’know. Let’s not kid ourselves.

He may not be the most layered Dracula. He may not be the most compelling Dracula. He may not be the most faithful Dracula. He may not, strictly speaking, be a Dracula.

He is by far the most terrifying Dracula.

Nearly a century later, no director, no actor, no special effects maestro has come close to creating the pure, skin-crawling wrongness of Max Schreck’s Orlock. If Lugosi’s Dracula is still the default for this character in the collective consciousness, it’s because Lugosi is safe. Cuddly, goofy, easily imitated. Schreck, I think, never had the permanent residence in all our minds that Lugosi does because we fundamentally do not want him there.

WINNER: BATS

The Scientists

Augustus Phillips’ performance as Victor Frankenstein is…well, it’s a silent movie performance from 1910. Big expressions, big gestures, not exactly bringing forth the subtle and nuanced layers of the character, you feel me? This is definitely the most innocent Frankenstein we’ve seen so far. For all that the film makes his inner evil the source of the monster, we see absolutely nothing of that in his interactions with the other characters. He seems driven a by a pure, childlike urge to discover. He doesn’t even engage in grave robbing! Frankly, I don’t see this Frankenstein fitting in very well with the rest of the gang.

“….”

“He hasn’t said anything in FIVE HOURS!”

“Possibly a mute. A vivisection of his throat might yield the answers we seek.”

“Oh! We could replace his tongue with an eel! And then use amniotic fluid…”

“And who, pray tell, let you out of your box?”

Our Van Helsing analogue, Bulwer, doesn’t really do much besides hanging outside Ellen’s bedroom looking worried so we’re going to give Team Bolts the win here just to prevent this from being a total blow-out.

WINNER: BOLTS

The Dashing Young Men

Okay. Straight face. So.

*giggle*

Sorry, sorry. Serious now. So. Thomas Hutter is played by GUSTAV VON WANGENHEIM.

That was his name and it is perfect.

“Why is this funny, please?”

“Oh nothing, nothing you gorgeous teutonic slab, you.”

Anyway, Nosferatu skillfully avoids the Too Many Dudes problem by just…not having the extra dudes. I mean c’mon. It’s 1922.

“You expect Quincey Morris? In this economy?!”

Hutter is basically German Johnathan Harker, and so is more efficient and hard working and is basically a more traditional hero than most Harkers in that he retains the main narrative focus for most of the film. Like most silent movie stars Wangenheim seems to have got the job for his ability to look VERY HAPPY or VERY SCARED as the scene requires but hey, that was what the medium needed.

Frankenstein doesn’t really have a male lead outside of Frankenstein himself, so Bats gets this by default.

Winner: Bats

The Perpetually Imperilled Ladies

I wish there was more I could say about Mary Fuller’s Elizabeth Frankenstein but…it’s kind hard to judge this performance because a) she’s hardly in it b) the picture quality is terrible and c) every scene she’s in is just terribly, terribly framed.

“What a perfectly staged shot” said someone in 1910.

I went down a bit of a wiki wormhole with Mary Fuller, honestly, and this film really doesn’t do her justice.

She was one of the biggest movie stars in the world for a few years in the late teens as well as being a successful screenwriter. But after a few flops she suddenly became persona non grata in Hollywood. She tried to re-start her career in the twenties to no avail and suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of her mother and spent the last 26 years of her life in a mental institution. It’s heartbreaking.

In Nosferatu, Greta Schroder plays Ellen, our Mina who is quite a fascinating character, honestly. On the one hand she is portrayed as a demure, wilting virgin who doesn’t even like to see flowers killed. But by the end, she’s actually one of the more pro-active and heroic Minas. Entirely on her own bat (heh) she researches vampires and then sacrifices her own life to lure Orlock so that he can be destroyed by the dawn’s sunlight (an invention of Murnau, vampires had never been depicted as being harmed by daylight prior to this). Couple that with quite a lot of screentime, and you could argue she’s actually the movie’s principal hero.

No vampire ladies unfortunately because it was the twenties and feeding on the blood of the living was considered unladylike.

Winner: BATS

Are either of these movies actually, y’know, scary?

Frankenstein is a little creepy which is far more than I expected from a 110 year old film.

But Nosferatu…shit. Did you hear that? Sounds like someone’s coming up the stairs…

Winner: BATS

Best Dialogue:

Real close contest here. I do love the line “……………” from Frankenstein but Nosferatu has the absolutely iconic “……………..” (even though it’s been ruined by being quoted so often).

WINNER: TIE

FINAL SCORE: Bats 5,Bolts 1

NEXT UPDATE: September 24th 2020

NEXT TIME: Bats versus Bolts month continues and it’s time for us to jump to the other end of movie history. It’s the 2010s. Which means it’s time for sexy superhero monsters who FUCK.

* Okay, because nothing originating in Weimar Germany can be discussed without bringing the fucking Nazis into it let’s get this out of the way. The movie has been accused of perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes with Orlock and Herr Knock. It’s not entirely invalid reading but honestly I think it’s people reading things into the movie with the benefit of hindsight rather than anything consciously placed there by the film-makers. Murnau emigrated to the States long before the Nazis came to power and as a gay man who worked with many Jewish collaborators, I doubt he was a fan.

Night of the Hunter (1955)

How quickly things change.

Not so long ago my awareness of Night of the Hunter boiled down, essentially, to this:

The preacher with the tattooed fingers. I knew it was an old movie from the fifties, I vaguely knew it was a serial killer drama and that it was considered to be a real good ‘un. But that was about where my knowledge of the film began and ended.

And now? Guys, I am a full on stan. With the insufferable zeal of the newly converted I will talk your ear off about this film. I will bore you to tears describing individual scenes. Every night I shake my fist at the heavens because I now know I live in the world where Charles Laughton only got to direct one film AND IT’S NOT RIGHT IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY THIS WORLD IS A SICK JOKE.

Guys, this movie is an absolute work of art. It is beautiful to the point of transcendence. It is an aesthetic and stylistic triumph. It is quite good.

” Gasp!”

“Right?”

The story is one of the great Hard Luck tales in Hollywood’s long, glorious history of giving talented people the shaft. Legendary English actor Charles Laughton made his directorial debut with The Night of the Hunter, now regarded as one of the greatest first films ever made. Critics panned it, audiences stayed away in droves and Laughton tearfully shelved all plans to be a director and returned to the gentle bosom of the theatre where talent is always justly rewarded (pause for hollow, bitter laugh). Actually, I’m not entirely sure that first parts totally true. The few contemporaneous reviews from the time I’ve seen are by no means pans. In fact, they’re often quite effusive in their praise of the film and its director. They’re more just…confused. Like they don’t quite know what to make of this thing. And honestly, that’s fair. It certainly doesn’t fit into any tidy little box.

It’s a horror film, and an often extremely dark one, but from the perspective of a child and with the bulk of the film being carried by two child actors. It’s also a fairy tale, dreamlike and quite surreal in its tone. And lastly it’s an intensely Christian movie which nonetheless acts as an ascerbic and harsh critique of American Christianity. So it’s not exactly like you can do a “If you liked X, you’ll love The Night of the Hunter!“. So it’s understandable, if not not forgivable, that audiences slept on this when it first came out. Also, the poster is kind of terrible and makes it look like it’s a Lifetime drama about a man who desperately needs a dictionary.

“I don’t know what words mean!”

The movie opens with Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) reading a Bible story to her adopted children. She reads them Matthew 7:15, where Christ warns his followers of false prophets who use the trappings of faith to mask their evil.

Yes, yes, you don’t like it when I get political, I don’t like it when my faith is used as a prop by a fascist Orangutan. Things are tough all over.

We’re now introduced to our villain, Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), driving along the Ohio river and having a friendly, one to one chat with God about all the women that he’s killed. He attends a striptease show where we watch him quietly seething in the audience with barely contained, murderous rage.

Sidebar: this movie made me realise that colour film was a terrible, terrible idea.

Before he can act on his impulses, he’s arrested for driving a stolen car and sentenced to thirty days in jail.

Meanwhile, in their garden, little John Harper (Billy Chapin) and his younger sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) are playing when their father Ben suddenly arrives home in a mad panic and covered in blood. He hides a wad of bills in Pearl’s doll and swears the children to secrecy. Suddenly the police arrive and handcuff him on the ground while the children watch in horror.

Ben Harper is arrested for armed robbery and murder and sentenced to be hanged. He has the misfortune to share a cell with Harry Powell, who is able to piece together enough clues find Ben’s home town after he’s released.

In the town, Ben’s widow Willa is struggling to raise two children alone and has been largely ostracised by the community. Her only remaining friends are Walt and Icey Spoon, an older couple who’ve run the local general store ever since they escaped from a Grant Wood painting.

With a name like “Icey” I guess she should be glad she turned down that marriage proposal from Gustav Wiener.

Powell slithers into town and quickly suckers in all the townspeople. He explains his tattoos (“love” on one hand, “hate” on the other) as a teaching tool, demonstrating the eternal battle between good and evil by…pretending his two hands are fighting, and the locals just eat it up.

Look, it was before YouTube, entertainment was hard to come by in these small, rural towns.

John is getting serious stranger-danger from Harry but Willa is charmed by him and even Pearl seems willing to accept him as her new step-father. Harry and Willa are soon married and the townfolk are shocked when Harry tells them that Willa has dun runn oft, leaving him to mind her two children. We the audience, of course, know that she is in fact at the bottom of the lake, which Laughton reveals in one of the most eerily beautiful shots I have ever seen.

This was his first movie, people. His first.

Cinematographer Stanley Cortez would later say that of all the directors he worked with, Laughton was one of only two who truly understood light (the other being Orson Welles).

The scene where Powell tells the Spoons that Willa has dun runn oft is the best showpiece for why this is one of the all time great movie villain performances in movie history and the absolute tight rope walk that Mithcum is pulling off here. Mitchum finds the same sweet spot that Anthony Hopkins did with Silence of the Lambs. On one level he’s absolutely hilarious, hammy and even (dare I say it?) a little bit goofy. There’s something of the Devil in an old mediaeval morality play about Harry Powell, like he’s a hair’s breath away from turning to the audience, waggling his eyebrows and saying “I know you’re too smart to fall for this, but can you believe these rubes are buying it?”.

The ease with which any transparent charlatan with an effective sales patter and a few mangled Bible verses can win the complete trust of these people is entirely the point, of course. There’s a hilarious exchange between Harry and Icey:

: What could have possessed that girl?

: Satan.

: Ah.

And the way she says “Ah” is like “Oh, that prick”.

It’s great. But the wonderful thing is, this wonderfully funny, hammy performance does not undercut Powell’s menace at all because the movie makes clear that it’s all just an act. Every so often the veneer falls and we see the real Harry Powell.

Harry threatens the children at knifepoint until they reveal that the money is hidden in Pearl’s doll. They manage to trap him in the basement and steal a rowboat and sail down the river. Harry chases them and wades out into the water, waving his knife over his head. They barely escape, and as he watches them drift away his face crumbles and he gives this…not even a scream, but a soulless, animal howl.

It’s utterly terrifying and helped in no small part by Walter Schuman’s score, the scariest movie theme I’ve heard since John Williams had to fill in for a faulty animatronic shark.

The kids float down the river while Harry pursues them on horseback, a relentless, tireless silhouette against the sky. While sleeping in a barn John wakes to hear Harry singing softly in the distance and murmurs, less with fear than weary resignation “Don’t he ever sleep?”

Billy Chapin, who plays John, is honestly fantastic in this. He was only eleven at the time but he’d already won a New York Drama Critic’s Award and was one of the most accomplished child actors of his day. And in answer to your questions “drugs or alcohol?” the answer is “both” but he left acting, did a stint in the marines and then got married and had three children so, y’know, could have been a lot worse.

The two children continue on their journey through a Depression blighted countryside. They finally wash up at the farm of Rachel Cooper, played by Lillian Gish. Gish was an icon of the Silent Era until the pictures got small (and has a good claim to be being the first American movie star, period), but by 1955 she was semi-retired. What I find wonderful about that is that the movie draws so much of its magic from the fact that Lillian Gish, queen of the Silent Era, has a wonderful voice.

When this movie first came out it was lambasted by many religious groups such as the Legion of Decency and the Protestant Motion Picture Council. I consider that a spectacular own goal because, for my money, it’s one of the greatest Christian films ever made, right up there with Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Saint Matthew and Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. And that’s down to Rachel Cooper, the most positive depiction of an explicitly Christian heroine I can ever recall seeing. The movie places Cooper as the light to Powell’s darkness, the truth to his lies. Where he is all charm and smoothness she is brusque and prickly. But she is also tirelessly kind, loving, forgiving and utterly fearless in the face of great evil.

Ever since losing her own son, Rachel has taken in every orphan she can find, and gives John and Pearl a place to stay. John doesn’t trust her at first, but finally begins to let his guard down. When Harry shows up at the farmhouse she’s instantly suspicious. Powell tells Rachel that he’s the children’s father and Rachel calls Pearl and John. John tells her that Harry isn’t their father and Rachel snaps “No, and he ain’t no preacher neither!” and politely asks Harry to leave.

Night falls.

Harry Powell waits outside the house while the children sleep.

Rachel Cooper, gun in hand, stands watch over her charges.

“And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.”

Want to see what a perfect scene looks like?

Powell sings the hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, (“Leaning, leaning”)  and Rachel responds with the alternate version (“Lean on Jesus, Lean on Jesus”) a name which Powell, for all his pretence at being a preacher, never once speaks. The scene transcends the simple set-up of a homesteader protecting her house against an intruder and becomes something quite mythic. You feel like they’ve always been there, these two, and always will be. Singing to each other across the darkness with weary familiarity. The false preacher and the true believer. The darkness and the light. The hunter, and the guardian.

One of the girls in Rachel’s care comes by with a candle which causes Harry to become invisible through the blinds which is the only opportunity he needs. He breaks into the house but is shot by Rachel and retreats, howling, into the barn. The next morning she calls the state troopers who arrive to arrest Harry.

If I had to find a single flaw in this thing (and I reckon that’s kinda me job) the movie has one of the state troopers ask Rachel why she didn’t call them sooner she jokes “didn’t want you trackin’ dirt over my clean floors” which is an example of a screenwriter spotting a plothole without knowing how to fix it*.

The troopers arrest Harry and handcuff him on the ground in a way that perfectly mirrors the arrest of John’s father. John breaks down in tears and starts beating Harry with Pearl’s doll until the money is raining down over them, all the while weeping “Here! Here! Just take it!”

At Harry’s trial, John can’t bring himself to identify Powell as his mother’s killer. Regardless, the Reverend is sentenced to death for *checks notes* TWENTY FIVE MURDERS MY GOD and the Spoons and the rest of the town who were eating out of his hand are there baying and howling for his blood. While the rest of the townsfolk form a lynch mob, Rachel Cooper gathers up her charges and quietly takes them home.

The movie ends with John and Pearl spending their first Christmas with Rachel and their new foster siblings. The world outside is a flurry of brilliant white snow in a movie that has been, until now, draped in inky shadow.  Rachel watches her children playing happily and murmurs:  “Lord save little children. The wind blows, and the rains are cold. Yet they abide. They abide, and they endure.”

***

Guys, I don’t know what else I can say. A masterpiece, and one of my new favourite films.

NEXT UPDATE: 10 September 2020

NEXT TIME: September sees the return of Bats versus Bolts! And for our next installment we are going old school. Really old school.

 

* The solution is to establish that Rachel either doesn’t have a phone or have Harry cut the phone line. Then, once he’s cornered in the barn, have Rachel send one of the older children running to town to get the police.