The Double Feature: What the Hell is a Homonym?

Aahhhh…The Double Feature…

It all started with The Creature Double Feature on channel 56…

 I’d hear what I now know is the song “Toccata” by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and I knew what was going to happen…

Four hours of mega monster mash-up mayhem.

The next evolution of the double feature came when I was going to see a movie at the Loews Copley Place Theatre…

There were long snaking hallways with doors leading to the various theaters on the left and the right…

Pulling off the Movie Hopping Double Feature was a breeze.

 Finally, it has evolved into sitting on the couch on a Friday or a Saturday with my best friend…

And watching two movies back-to-back, from our favorite genre…

Horror.

 I want to honor the tradition that began with the movie monster mash-ups, and give you two great tastes that taste great together…

This time around, it’s…

What the Hell is a Homonym?

No…

That’s a homophobe.

Good try, though…

 

No…A homonym is a word that has the same spelling, but a different meaning…

 

And here we have two films, whose titles are spelled the same, but the films are very different, indeed.

 

 

Creep (2004) – This is the first film from director Christopher Smith, the man who brought us…Severance…Black Death…And…Triangle…I loved all three of these films…And you know what…I loved this one too…He created an unlikeable main character, and thrust her into a situation of her own making…And with each twist and turn, comes an opportunity for Kate, played by Franka Potente, to appeal to her better angels…And each time she doesn’t, karma serves her another serving of comeuppance…It is a claustrophobic slasher film, with fragrant notes of a monster movie…And I dug it.

Here’s the Creep in this one…

 

 

Creep (2014) – This is a film that got under my skin and took up residence there…It was directed by Patrick Brice, who co-wrote the script with Mark Duplass, and then they cast themselves in the two roles…Brice plays Aaron, a videographer for hire who travels to a remote mountain home to film a terminally-ill man for the day, named Josef, played by Duplass. Known for writing and creating films like Cyrus, and Jeff, Who Lives at Home, with his brother Jay Duplass, and for his comedic roles in HBO’s recently cancelled Togetherness, and the indie sci-fi/dark comedy, Safety Not Guaranteed…But in this one, Duplass takes it to the dark side…And by the end, you’ll know him as what he portrays in this film…A Creep.

And here’s the Creep in this one…

So there’s no doubt…

Even at first glance…

That the creep in the first film, played by the ever-menacing, super-intense, Sean Harris…Is a total creep.

His is the kind of creep you’d find along side other movie monsters that prey on people…

You’ve got Jason Voorhees…

You’ve got Freddy Krueger…

You’ve got Michael Myers…

Now a lot of us grew up thinking this is what a creep looked like…

These were our boogey men…

But the creep in the second film played in an eerily natural and understated way by Mark Duplass is actually a more realistic depiction of what a creep is…

His is the kind of creep you’d find along side other real-life monsters that prey on people…

You’ve got Ted Bundy…

You’ve got David Berkowitz…

You’ve got Jeffrey Dahmer…

This is what a creep looks like now…

These are our boogey men…

They look like us…

The monsters are hidden underneath the normal and friendly looking meat-suit that they wear…

And what makes this kind of creep the scarier of the two, is that by the time we discover what they really are…

It’s too late.

 

The Double Feature: Evil Twinning

Aahhhh…The Double Feature…

It all started with The Creature Double Feature on channel 56…

 I’d hear what I now know is the song “Toccata” by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and I knew what was going to happen…

Four hours of mega monster mash-up mayhem.

The next evolution of the double feature came when I was going to see a movie at the Loews Copley Place Theatre…

There were long snaking hallways with doors leading to the various theaters on the left and the right…

Pulling off the Movie Hopping Double Feature was a breeze.

 Finally, it has evolved into sitting on the couch on a Friday or a Saturday with my best friend…

And watching two movies back-to-back, from our favorite genre…

Horror.

 I want to honor the tradition that began with the movie monster mash-ups, and give you two great tastes that taste great together…

This time around, it’s…

Evil Twinning.

The Other (1972) – This movie that aired on network TV, all the time in the late 70’s, was directed by Robert Mulligan (To Kill A Mockingbird)…It disturbed me…A lot…I spent the remainder of my childhood afraid of twin boys…I was completely convinced that this film illustrated what must be a universal formula where twins are concerned…The twins here are Niles and Holland, and they are the Yin and Yang kind of twins, one good…And one not so much…It is a spooky flick that keeps the tension up, as the not so good deeds of one of the twins continue to escalate…It is a slice of gothic Americana that colorfully subdues the audience at times…You get swept up in the innocence of rural America in the 30’s…Until that last act…That’s when the serious pants-shitting happens…As the viewer unravels the fact that one of the twins is actually dead, but to the other twin is a living breathing part of his life still…That’s when we start to question not only the sanity of the child, but what he might actually be capable of. 

 

Goodnight Mommy (2014) – This Austrian film came into my life after I had about four decades to recover from my traumatic twin experience with The Other…Let me tell you folks…I found out the hard way, that it wasn’t nearly enough time…The twins here are Elias and Lukas, and they are kind of Yin and Yang at first, but as the darker forces of Lukas begin to have a greater influence on Elias…It’s all Yin and Yin from there on…As with The Other, One of these twins is no longer with us…Well, most of us…For Elias, his twin brother Lukas never went anywhere…And once again, once the audience realizes this fact, our trust in the sanity or actions of Elias come into question…The tension ratchets up notch by notch in this one, too…But the claustrophobic confinement that not only the country home, but the twins themselves create causes that tension to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck…I found myself wanting to know the truth…And then immediately regretting that foolish fact-finding mission…And ultimately I spent the final act…Just wanting it all to stop.

 

Both of these films contain a similar theme of one good twin, one bad twin…

 

Both of these films contain a similar theme of one living twin, one dead twin…

 

Both of these films contain a similar theme of a family torn apart by tragic loss…

 

Both of these films contain a similar theme of that tragic loss being so devastating to the surviving twin, that they become forever changed by it…

 

Both of these films contain a similar theme of a twin, who once forever changed, begins to destroy the world around him…

 

Both of these films contain a similar theme of royally fucking me up…

 

So badly that, in the case of The Other where it took me almost forty years to be okay again…

 

It will take forty more to heal the re-opened wounds caused by Goodnight Mommy…

 

And yes…I am officially scared shitless of young twin boys again.

 

The Double Feature: Let’s Do The Time Warp Again.

Aahhhh…The Double Feature…

It all started with The Creature Double Feature on channel 56…

 I’d hear what I now know is the song “Toccata” by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and I knew what was going to happen…

Four hours of mega monster mash-up mayhem.

The next evolution of the double feature came when I was going to see a movie at the Loews Copley Place Theatre…

There were long snaking hallways with doors leading to the various theaters on the left and the right…

Pulling off the Movie Hopping Double Feature was a breeze.

Finally, it has evolved into sitting on the couch on a Friday or a Saturday with my best friend…

And watching two movies back-to-back, from our favorite genre…

Horror.

 I want to honor the tradition that began with the movie monster mash-ups, and give you two great tastes that taste great together…

This time around, it’s…

Let’s Do The Time Warp Again.

Triangle (2009) – Christopher Smith, the director who delighted me with the movie Severance…Followed it up with this deeply layered look into the heart of a causal loop…Each event that we witness has either propagated the next event, or been propagated by the previous one…Confused yet? Tough shit…I don’t want to hear that tired excuse…Sure mindfuck movies can make your head spin, but Smith handled the many tendrilled tale with the tact and intellect of a down to earth physics professor…You will find that this director will guide you through what could be a far too heady story with the grace and gentle touch of an axe-wielding maniac…It’s a fresh idea that is well-crafted, and avoids becoming pretentious by using sheer unbridled brutality.

 

Blood Punch (2013) – The entire cast and crew of this film have a connection…And, I don’t want it to sway you from watching it…In fact it should compel you…I know it did me…The connection? Every single one of them worked together on a television show…

Power Rangers: RPM.

I know, seems a little crazy, doesn’t it? The final incarnation of this children’s show is the origin that brings together a writer, a director, and a handful of actors to create an independent horror comedy about meth, murder and causality…Milo Cawthorne, or the Green Shark Ranger plays Milton, a meth cooking guru who gets into a love triangle with meth lab recruiter Skyler, played by Olivia Tennet, or Doctor K the woman who gave the rangers their powers…In the third and final corner of the triangle is Russell, Skyler’s unstable boyfriend played by Ari Boyland, or the Blue Lion Ranger…The film does the causal loop idea justice, and even adds some new supernatural and spiritual twists to the concept…I was pleased that this wasn’t a hack re-hashing of the bloody ground broken by Triangle…It was in the same vein…And that’s just fine.

So…Here’s where we stand…

Both films manage to tackle tricky subject matter that could be both confusing and boring to an audience, unless the last book they read was A Brief History of Time…

Both films manage to pull it off…Making the stories compelling, interesting, and somehow easy to follow…

Both films have at least one character that begins to peel back the onion of time just enough to make themselves cry…

Both films have a pile-up of dead bodies…

Or is it body?

Oh well…Either way.

Upon your completion of this Double Feature, our friends at Trump University will be mailing you your honorary Physics degree.

 

The Double Feature: It’s Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature

Aahhhh…The Double Feature…

It all started with The Creature Double Feature on channel 56…

 I’d hear what I now know is the song “Toccata” by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and I knew what was going to happen…

Four hours of mega monster mash-up mayhem.

 

The next evolution of the double feature came when I was going to see a movie at the Loews Copley Place Theatre…

There were long snaking hallways with doors leading to the various theaters on the left and the right…

Pulling off the Movie Hopping Double Feature was a breeze.

 

 Finally, it has evolved into sitting on the couch on a Friday or a Saturday with my best friend…

And watching two movies back-to-back, from our favorite genre…

Horror.

 

 I want to honor the tradition that began with the movie monster mash-ups, and give you two great tastes that taste great together…

This time around, it’s…

It’s Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature.

 

The Woods (2006) – The follow-up to director Lucky McKee’s May, was a much-anticipated release…And although this film is more understated than his last, it did not deserve the much-maligned reception that sometimes comes on the heels of a successful first effort. May was a runaway train of a horror film whose intensity almost rattled it right off the tracks…But, The Woods, is a restrained carriage ride through the countryside, where the driver keeps pausing to let you gaze into the darkened forest…That being said, this is the story of Heather, a troubled teen who is dumped off by her parents at a strange little all-girls private school in rural New England…Pretty quickly, the audience can smell that something went funky in the fridge…The staff are mysterious and menacing…The students are dominating and disappearing…And both of these facts have a lot to do with the history of the forbidden woods adjacent to the school grounds…

My boy Bruce Campbell has a small but crucial role as Heather’s father…

Here he is dealing with an evil twig.

 

 

The Hallow (2015) – Surprisingly enough, this film was originally titled The Woods…Yet another distinction that ties these two films together…This is the debut film of Corin Hardy, a filmmaker who got in the horror game early on doing monster make-up and special effects…He crafted a dark, and unsettling film about the unearthed mysteries of this world that have taken refuge in a copse of trees in the Irish countryside. Despite warnings of supernatural and deadly goings-on in these woods, Adam decides to hike all up in them…With his baby in a backpack…That’s right…Our resident science guy thinks bringing his toiny wee lad into the cursed forest is a wicked awesome idea…Guess what…It’s not…The baby’s presence in this tale adds an element of unnerving suspense that once it grabs you, never lets go.

Bojana Novakovic (Devil, Shameless, Drag Me To Hell) stars as the baby mama…

Here she is dealing with an evil twig.

 

Both films have Mother Nature as the Big Bad…

Both films have parents that put their child in serious jeopardy…

Both films have a tone that’s brooding and omenous…

Both films have strong female leads that stand up against seemingly insurmountable odds…

And both films make you fear the dark of the woods…And crave the bright lights of the big city.

The Double Feature: The Ward and The Harvest

It’s almost becoming a tradition…

The Saturday Night Double Feature.

Sometimes you nail it…And it’s two great movies.

Sometimes you almost nail it…And one of the movies is great.

Sometimes you don’t nail it at all…And you’ve lost four hours of your life.

 

The Ward (2010) – As a self proclaimed John Carpenter super-fan, there is no excuse for why I waited so long to see this movie…Perhaps I was waiting because after a hiatus that has lasted six years and counting, I was afraid this might have been his last effort…If this sadly is the final entry into the epic Carpenter Canon…Well then, at least it was another worthwhile addition to the list. Amber Heard (All The Boys Love Mandy Lane), plays Kristen, a girl whose mysterious past slowly unfolds while institutionalized in a place that holds unfolding mysteries of it’s own. In this psychiatric hospital, both the natural and the supernatural forces at work will fill the viewer with a palpable tension and a potent sense of dread. Top-notch performances from not only Kristen’s fellow patients, but the menacing Cuckoo’s Nest style staff as well. Carpenter’s visuals are here in full effect…But I must admit…I missed him as the composer…Nothing really wrong with the score here, just that it wasn’t Carpenter.

I dig this movie…I just really dig where it took me, you know?

 

The Harvest (2013) – Let’s start with the cast on this one…Michael Shannon (Take Shelter, Man of Steel, Boardwalk Empire, etc.), and Samantha Morton (Minority Report, Cosmopolis, etc.) play the parents of a boy who is suffering…Both the viewer, and the boy’s new friend are skeptical in regards to what exactly he’s suffering from…Natasha Calis, who was amazing in The Possession, plays Maryann, the only friend this frail and sickly boy has ever had. She drives this story with her Scully-like skepticism, and her fearless tenacity. This movie is a straight-up slow burn…Now, don’t misunderstand me, this film was by no means slow…What I mean is that it took the necessary time it needed to slowly draw the blinds…Let us peek in, just a little…Revealing the story to us in an incredibly compelling fashion.

 

Both films were well-crafted, had strong, female leads driving their interesting and compelling stories into places that are no longer unknown to me…

 

Final Score…

 

Nailed it.