Reeling Backward: "The Legend of Hell House" (1973)

In 1973, horror was transitioning into its modern form. Prior to that it had always been a marginalized, rather sedate genre -- closer to fantasy than sheer terror. Killer blobs, killer birds, Byron-esque vampires. Horror movies often seemed to feature an erudite male authority figure trying to explain all the weird phenomena away, at least until he gets his comeuppance.

Roger Corman, Hammer Films and a few others were decidedly different with a gleeful, schlocky approach, though they rarely punctuated the upper levels of mainstream cinematic consciousness. Horror was seen as kiddie movies, and were pitched as such: scary, but not too scary.

George Romero changed things with 1968's "Night of the Living Dead," which actually tickled the primeval fear centers of the brain, not to mention featuring some rather gory violence. But Romero's next few films were fairly forgettable until the "Dead" sequel came a decade later.

Things really got kicked into high gear with the December 1973 release of "The Exorcist," followed by "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" the following year, and "The Shining" the year after that. Six months before "Exorcist" came "The Legend of Hell House," which in many ways stands as the dividing line between new and old horror.

The film, directed by John Hough from a screenplay by Richard Matheson, based on his own book, can be seen today as the wellspring of the "haunted house" subgenre, in which all the action (or nearly so) takes place in a single supernatural location. We can see a lot of its features in subsequent films, from "Poltergeist" on up.

The setup is straightforward: four people spend a week in the Belasco House, the "Mount Everest of haunted houses," at the behest of a decrepit old tycoon (Roland Culver). Each of three experts is to be paid £100,000 -- almost $1.5 million in today's dollars -- to discover if "survival after death" is factually possible. The lineup:

• Dr. Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill), a renowned physicist specializing in the study of the occult. He plays the role of the rational doubter, always tut-tutting others' fears.
• Ann Barrett (Gayle Hunnicutt), Dr. Barrett's wife and extraordinarily unwise +1. 
• Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), a young medium and spirtualist who is the most attuned to the house's evil emanations.
• Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowell), another medium and the only survivor -- of sound mind and body, anyway -- from the last attempt to penetrate the mysteries of Belasco House 20 years ago, when he was just a teenager.

The one thing I couldn't help noticing about the story is that the investigators fulfill their contractual obligations within the first day or two, as objects start flying and voices begin moaning. Barrett is using cameras, microphones and more sophisticated equipment to record it all. So they could all have decamped by Tuesday supper, collected their fees and lived happily ever after.

Instead, they determine to solve the puzzle of "Roaring Giant" Emeric Belasco, the debauched millionaire who built the house decades earlier and disappeared after his family was massacred. For some reason this involves spending nights at the house, where they're more vulnerable to the nefarious energies that swirl about there, particularly of the erotic kind. 

Both Hunnicutt and Franklin have nude scenes -- rather chaste by today's standards, as the film did carry a PG rating from the then-new MPAA -- and experience invasions by spirits that compel them to engage in sexual endeavors. 

Ann, rebuffed by her unaffectionate husband, throws herself at Ben, not once but twice, including a memorable suggestion that the four visitors engage in an orgy. Florence, convinced that the primary presence in the house is Daniel Belasco, the lord's tortured son, agrees to let him have ghost-sex with her if it'll calm his restless spirit.

(Spoiler: it doesn't. Whether corporeal or not, men will say anything to a woman to get laid.)

Interestingly, the events take place in the days leading up to Christmas, though the significance of that is never commented upon. The days of the week would put the story as set in 1971 rather than '72.

It's an interesting movie, though not a particularly scary one by modern standards or even, I should think, those of its day. It's a whole lot of talking, questioning, arguing, with a few interruptions by doors that open and close themselves, falling chandeliers, that sort of thing. There's never any sort of physical manifestations of the Belasco spirits. 

The performances are enervating, especially Franklin as a nascent goth girl type of figure, dressing in witch-y clothing. As Ben, McDowell seems largely constipated during most of the film, concentrating his energies internally rather than outward in a protective stance. Given he barely survived his last encounter with the house, we're never provided a compelling reason why he would return.

Much is made in the story about the difference between Ben and Florence's abilities, with the former being a physical medium and the latter a mental medium. These terms are banded about nonchalantly, as if the audience should understand the difference -- or even what a medium is, for that matter. The distinction also grows increasingly meaningless as the movie goes on, with Florence manifesting physical effects of her communion with lost souls, and Ben engaging directly with the spirit of Belasco in the final confrontation.

Speaking of which, the final battle and outcome is rather disappointing. It seems the great mystery of Belasco (spoiler ahead) is that he was actually short, rather than the 6-foot-5 behemoth he purported to be. Ben taunts him as a sawed-off runt he doubts was five feet tall. Belasco even took the dire measure of amputating his own legs so longer prosthetic ones could be installed. 

Talk about the mother of all Napoleon complexes. But I have to say, "He killed because he was wee" does not exactly make for a compelling keystone for a vortex of supernatural evil.

Barrett's plan is to use his big whirring machine as a "reverser" to drain the house of the electromagnetic energy that has built up there over the years. It's totally gobbledygook, but it works, or at least mostly but not entirely, for reasons we shall see.

"The Legend of Hell House" is an interesting film, though not an especially good one. It's more notable for its place in the history of horror than any substantial terror generated. Brasher, wetter fare was still just around the corner.

Reeling Backward: "The Omega Man" (1971)

I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories, and "The Omega Man" is something of a lodestone for fans of this genre. It's based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel "I Am Legend," which also was the basis for a 1964 Italian cheapie, "The Last Man on Earth," starring Vincent Price. And, of course, there was the underwhelming 2007 Will Smith adaptation.

(At night, when I'm plagued by dreams of crappy movies, I hear Smith in my head: "Get offa my caaaaaaaaaaarrrrr!!")

George Romero has cited the book as his main inspiration for 1968's "Night of the Living Dead," which more or less launched zombie movies and sparked the modern rise of horror films.

There's the bones of a great, great story in there, but none of the films have really done it justice. In some ways they've all been a captive of their era. If the 2007 movie relied too much on CGI boogums and Smith's by-then wearisome star persona, then "The Omega Man" represents the pinnacle of '70s cheese.

Everything from the clothes to the rock 'n' roll-ish soundtrack to the jive-talkin' black girl serve to anchor the movie firmly in its time, post-Woodstock but pre-Watergate. It was a moment of both hope and disillusionment, when many people were questioning not only our government but the entire American way of life.

But people were not yet jaded and cynical, and there's an almost naive note of hopefulness to the film. It's the sort of flick that can end with the hero dying, but he's set mankind up for salvation before expiring.

I'll say this for "The Omega Man": it certainly stands out in the memory. The image of a track-suited Charlton Heston tooling around an empty Los Angeles downtown carrying a submachine gun stuck in my mind from childhood. It's the sort of movie I probably saw on television as a fairly young child, and took with me through my teen years. I probably didn't actually see it for a second time until I was in college.

But the main reasons the film has entered the pop culture subconscious are mainly relating to its innate hokiness. Chief among them are the plague-infested survivors of the germ warfare that killed most of humanity, who have albino skin, white hair and pupils, and tool around in dark robes and wear Ray-ban sunglasses.

The effect is supposed to be unnerving, but their silly appearance coupled with their penchant for religious-intoned chanting make them seem like Disco Monks.

They call themselves The Family; their nemesis Robert Neville, a former Army colonel and scientist, refers to them as plague victims. They're definitely not undead, and indeed during the course of the story Neville discovers that he can turn someone in the end stages of transformation back to normal.

In the book, Matheson referred to them as vampires, since they were light-sensitive and drank blood.

Metaphysically speaking, a few questions are left unanswered. Will those infected with the plague die if left untreated, or do they simply transform into Disco Monks and continue that way the rest of their lives? If so, the exact nature of the conflict between Neville and the family is unclear.

Their cult-like leader, Matthias -- a former TV newscaster before the world blew up  -- sees Neville as the final representative of the old world order. Once he's gone, Matthias will be free to remake the planet as he sees fit. Of course, he could go ahead and do that right now, except for the daytime when their eyes cannot stand the sun.

Neville's motivations are even more unclear. Heston plays up his character's intense loneliness -- talking to the bust of Caesar with whom he plays chess, etc. If the plague victims are destined to die out, then why does he feel compelled to hasten their progress, and put himself at risk? And if he can't or won't cure them, why not just avoid them? Could it be that his antagonism with Matthias & Co. is the only human-like interaction he has left?

The film is set in 1977, two years after the supposed end came. The detritus of mankind is holding up pretty well, considering. Neville has several cars in his garage, and an apparently inexhaustible supply of gasoline to run them, and the generators that power his compound. (Never mind that gas starts to go bad after just a few weeks. By 1977, all he'd left would essentially be varnish.)

The Family has been moving through the city every night, burning every last vestige of technology they can get their hands on, yet Neville is able to pop into pretty much any store and find perfectly preserved goods, a little bit dusty, ready to take off the shelf. Also, when he's driving around the empty streets of L.A., you can see the traffic lights are still working. (This is probably a continuity error rather than something the filmmakers intended.)

"The Omega Man" is also notable for its interracial love affair between Heston and Rosalind Cash, playing the leader of a small group of survivors, mostly children. Whoopi Goldbert has said that their passionate kiss was one of the first onscreen couplings between a white man and a black woman in popular culture. (It would take a little while longer for the reverse-gender scenario.)

That's fine and good, but Cash's character, Lisa, is a walking gumbo of Black Power cliches, wearing brightly-colored African outfits (not so good for hiding out from psychopathic killers), an Afro three times the size of her skull and a mouthful of ridiculously over-the-top dialogue. She transitions from keeping a gun on Neville to sleeping with him so quickly it's positively dizzying.

I keep expecting her to call him a "honky," which is one of the few low spots "The Omega Man" manages to miss.

1.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Somewhere in Time" (1980)

Time-travel stories journey through the years themselves, waxing and waning in popularity through different eras. During the 1970s and into the '80s, movies of this ilk were exceedingly popular -- "Time After Time," "Back to the Future," "Time Travelers," etc.

"Somewhere in Time" from 1980 is something different from these other pictures, which play up the science fiction element. Here, the journey back through time is decidedly metaphysical, with Christopher Reeve playing a man who wakes up in 1912 simply because he has willed himself to do so. And he's not tripping through the decades for adventure or scientific conquest, but for Love.

"Somewhere in Time" did not make much of a splash during its initial release, but it's become something of a cult favorite in the intervening years -- even spurring fan clubs, a book and special screenings. It doesn't take much guessing based on the gauzy cinematography, syrupy strings-heavy score by John Barry and starched period costumes to realize that this time-hopping tale is aimed more at the readers of Harlequin Romances than H.G. Wells novels.

I have to confess that I put this flick into my Netflix queue thinking it was actually "Time After Time," a sort of multi-dimensional murder/mystery where Jack the Ripper gets transported to the modern world to ply his gruesome trade. I'm not quite sure if I ever had seen the Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymour romance before, though it's probably not the sort of thing I would have sought out as a preadolescent. If I did watch it, it certainly didn't make a lasting impression.

Watching it recently, I can see why. It's a stiff, stolid affair, with the star-crossed couple existing more as romantic ideals than flesh-and-blood characters. It isn't helped by that tried-and-true cinematic folly, the proposition that two people can fall instantly and irrecoverably in love over the course of a 24-hour period.

The problem with this narrative assertion is that because it's impossible show two individuals intertwining themselves over a period of time, so such a depiction is by definition of telling us that they've found True Love. One of the first rules of writing is to show rather than tell your audience what happens; make them feel it rather than just understand what transpires.

The film is based on a book by Richard Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay, and whose writings often formed the basis for movies: "Real Steel," "The Omega Man," "I Am Legend." I would guess the romantic element was already there, since the whole premise is about a Chicago playwright named Richard Collier who becomes obsessed with the photograph of a stage actress, Elise McKenna. With the aid of an old philosophy professor, Richard resolves that if he dresses himself in period clothing and removes any sign of modernity, he can self-hypnotize himself into slipping backward 68 years.

There's something of a hole in the plot. The story begins in 1972, when a college-age Richard is confronted by an old woman at the premier of his play. She places a beautiful pocket watch in his hands and begs, "Come back to me!" Of course, it is Elise, now ancient and regretful for her long-lost love. Years later, while tooling around the country in the midst of a bout of writer's block, he stumbles upon the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan, sees the photograph and becomes obsessed.

Here's the thing: After he does go back in time and spends that magical day (actually, part of two days) falling in love with Elise, at no point does he ever reveal that he's from the future. Other than taking the easy way out of some potentially complicating matters applying to their courtship, it also means that she had no way of knowing what happened when Richard suddenly disappeared. How did she know to seek out Richard's younger self 68 years later?

That's a paradox, wasted.

The method by which Richard is forcibly returned to 1980 is also rather contrived. While emptying the pockets of his suit, he comes across a penny dated 1979. Confronted by physical evidence of his temporal incongruity, he falls down a dark tunnel of perception and wakes up in modern times.

I realize the exact mechanics of time travel aren't the priority for this movie, but this is just ridiculous. Richard would never be able to completely banish from his mind the knowledge that he's from the future. Just because he encounters a token proving what he already knew shouldn't have any effect on his ability to stay where he is.

Also, if he hypnotized himself into the past once, why couldn't he do it again? After a few hours of failed attempts, Richard instead goes into a state of comatose shock and starves himself to death -- where, of course, he is reunited with his beloved Elise. This strengthens the notion that the entire experience was merely a figment of his imagination.

Christopher Plummer has an interesting role as William Robinson, Elise's over-protective and possibly psychotic manager. He hangs around her Svengali-like, whispering instructions in her ear and putting off an and all interference from outsiders.

In the story, Robinson has warned Elise that a man would someday arrive who would change her life forever -- an indication that he somehow had foreknowledge of Richard's time travel. My understanding is in the book the arrival is presaged by a pair of psychics, but it's left up in the air for the movie. I thought it would have been novel if the filmmakers had suggested that Robinson was another time traveler, himself.

Director Jeannot Szwarc, who's still active today, started out and ended up in television, but not before making some truly awful movies: "Jaws II," "Supergirl," "Santa Claus: The Movie." I regret to say I've seen all of those duds, and wish I could go back in time to get that time back.

1.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Real Steel"

Every year spawns a few movies that fall into the "love-it-or-hate-it" category, or in the case of "Real Steel," the "like-it-or-hate-it" flick of 2011. Several of my local film critic colleagues have even seen fit to toss it onto their "Worst of the Year" list.

Though hardly a cinematic knockout, I found it to be an amusing, if admittedly overly sappy father/son redemption story with impressively cool robots -- "The Champ" with Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

Actually, since the movie came I finally figured out why the boxing robots in the movie are so evocative: they bear a startling resemblance to the iron football goon used in promotional bits for NFL games on Fox. People who might abhor the visceral thrill of boxing and other human blood sport can safely revel in watching two automatons turn each other into scrap metal.

Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a former contender in the ring who became a manager of robots when human boxing was outlawed. (The story is set in the near future.) Through a series of unlikely circumstances, Charlie is forced to take Max (Dakota Goya), the son he never met, on the road with him, where they bond through a sequence of misadventures.

Their fortunes take a turn for the better when they uncover a mysterious robot fighter buried in a junkyard, dub him Atom, and before long they're headed to the championship bout.

The CGI battles hit that sweet spot where the robots are just humanistic enough that the audience feels like it has a stake in the outcome, but can safely cheer on the mayhem. We certainly feel more for Atom than we did any of the Transformers in their movies.

"Real Steel" may be overly maudlin, but as lightweight entertainment with a little heart, it's the real deal.

Extras for DVD are fairly OK: a blooper reel, two making-of featurettes, and audio commentary by director Shawn Levy.

The blu-ray edition includes a few upgrades, the centerpiece of which is an interactive "second screen" with videos and behind-the-scenes tidbits. Plus deleted and extended scenes and two more featurettes, including one about Sugar Ray Leonard, who served as boxing consultant on the production.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Real Steel"

With "Real Steel," I was expecting a slick and soulless bit of computer-generated mayhem. The story is set about a decade or so in the future, where regular human boxing has been outlawed and the only kind allowed is between 2,000-pound robots.

In other words, "Rocky" meets "Transformers."

What I got instead was a tender and treacly tale about a no-account father bonding with his long-lost (well, abandoned) son. If anything, the movie went too far in the other direction from my expectations . Instead of being overly reliant on special effects for cheap action thrills, it's really a somewhat maudlin story with an excess of gooey emotions.

So, "Transformers" meets "The Champ."

Hugh Jackman plays the dad, Charlie Kenton, a former fighter who always went for the knockout -- and got it a lot, but also ended up on the mat a lot. He's much the same as a robot owner/manager, always seeking the big payoff in the big fight when what he really needs is a few sure things under his belt.

Dakota Goyo plays Max, the son he's barely even met. When his mother dies, it's up to the courts to decide if Max goes with Charlie or with his rich aunt (Hope Davis). Charlie extorts 50 grand out of his sister-in-law's husband to give up custody, but not until the end of summer so they can enjoy a swanky European vacation.

It's all just an excuse to get Charlie on the road with Max, hustling fights and trying to keep their last aging robot on its feet. Charlie uses the extortion money to buy a fancy, famous robot named Noisy Boy, but doesn't even bother to learn the functions of the gizmo's voice command system before pitting him against an opponent against which he's clearly overmatched.

Soon Charlie and Max are out of robots, with a killer cowboy named Ricky on their tail for the money he's owed. Ricky is played by Kevin Durand, who can just look into the camera for three seconds and be scary.

Then Max stumbles upon an old rust-bucket robot buried in a junkyard, names him Atom and proceeds to train him with his dad's reluctant help, putting them on an unlikely path to the championship fight.

The best thing about "Real Steel" are the robots, which seem to convincingly occupy the same space as the humans. Using a combination of CGI and animatronics, they're hefty, clanky behemoths that not coincidentally resemble giant versions of the old Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

Robot boxing is perhaps the logical evolution of cinematic boxing. People have often complained that more punches are landed in a single round of a movie bout than a dozen real ones -- no human can take such punishment. With mammoth metal automatons, it stands to reason they can take a licking.

Especially Atom. One of the curious things about the story (screenplay by John Gatins, based on a sci-fi story from the 1950s by Richard Matheson) is that Atom's origins remain stubbornly mysterious. He's an older-generation robot, but boasts a few cutting-edge tricks like a "shadow function" that allows him to mimic Charlie's boxing moves. Built as a sparring robot, Atom can take a ton of hits, but is relatively small and weak on offense.

The top champ is a fearsome robot named Zeus, who not only has never lost a fight, but never had an opponent last beyond the first round. Yet Zeus' Russian oligarch owner, Farra Lemcova (Olga Fonda), and Japanese programmer, Tak Mashido (Karl Yune), exchange troubled looks when they lay eyes on Atom, as if a mechanical ghost had just lumbered across their grave.

Director Shawn Levy is a certified lightweight ("Night at the Museum") who always goes for the easiest emotional payoff. But Jackman's lovable as a loser, Goyo has spunk and charm, and the robot battles are genuinely thrilling.

3 stars out of four