Friday, April 26, 2013

Nancy Drew

"Nancy Drew" (2007) is a mystery / thriller that brings back everyone's favorite teenage sleuth, Nancy Drew.  It stars:  and Josh Flitter.

Nancy Drew is known by all in her small hometown of River Heights for her ability to solve mysteries.  When her father, Carson Drew has a three month long business trip in L.A., Nancy picks the house they will stay in, a house that belonged to a Hollywood starlet from the past named Dehlia Draycott.   Carson makes Nancy promise that while in Los Angeles, she will refrain from sleuthing as it keeps getting her into dangerous situations.  Being that she had already picked the house that has a mystery behind the actress' disappearance, that promise will be hard to keep.

Nancy is a smart and intelligent sixteen year old who would rather read books and solve mysteries instead of the things the kids in L.A. want to do.  Wearing her old fashioned clothing also makes her stick out from the crowd and she has a hard time fitting in at her new school.  She gets the attention of a precocious 12 year old named Corky who becomes her new best friend and helps her with the mystery.  When her "boyfriend" Ned comes to join them, he is annoyed by Corky's attentions toward Nancy.

While trying to fit in with her classmates, she gains unwelcome attention from some thugs that don't want her to discover the truth behind the disappearance of Dehlia Draycott and they will do anything to keep her from finding Dehlia's long lost daughter and the original will.

This is a great family movie with an intelligent and fun girl as its main character.  She does her own thing and doesn't care much what others think of her.  Nancy pieces together a long forgotten mystery and does good for others as her father always taught her.  If you loved Nancy Drew stories when you were a kid, you'll love this modern rendition of the character.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

The Cat Creature

"The Cat Creature"is a TV movie that aired in 1972 as an ABC Movie of the Week, starring: , and and directed by .  An ancient Egyptian cat creature is let loose on LA.

An ancient gold amulet is stolen off an Egyptian mummy's neck in a dead California collector's house.  The man who is making an inventory of the house if found dead with scratch marks all over him.  This starts the police investigation who seeks out college professor Roger Edmonds (Hedison) to help them find out more about the Egyptian amulet.

The investigation takes them to the curious local shop called The Sorcerer's Shop run by Hester Black (Sondergaard).  She admits the thief tried to sell her the amulet but she passed on it because she suspected it must be stolen.

Meanwhile, Hester's shopkeeper is followed home by a cat which turns out to be the cat creature and which hypnotizes her into jumping out her apartment window.

A couple days later, Rena Carter (Baxter) drops in the shop to fill in the newly open shopkeeper position.  As the investigation continues, the professor gets to know Rena more and in his research discovers exactly why that amulet should have stayed around the mummy's neck.

This is another great example of the type of TV movie from the 70s that I love.  There's an interesting story.  Great atmosphere and the use of shadows to show the cat before you actually see the creature adds to the suspense and eeriness.  The acting is even top notch for made for TV fare and Gale Sondergaard shines as the mysterious Hester Black.  Catch this movie for a great chiller from the past!

Friday, April 12, 2013

Moon of the Wolf





Monday, April 8, 2013

Room 237

"Room 237" (2012) is a documentary exploring the hidden subtexts, meanings and conspiracies within Stanley Kubrick's horror movie "The Shining".

Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980) is a visual masterpiece.  The hotel's interior is filled with different patterns and puzzles in which many an obsessive fan has looked for meaning.  This documentary, showing scenes from the movie and from other movies while off screen fans talk about the hidden meanings within the movie. For those of you that don't remember, room 237 refers to the room in the film's Overlook Hotel that had the naked corpse woman in the bathtub that attacked Danny and tried to seduce Jack.

These fans and conspiracy theorists see vastly different things in Stanley Kubrick's film.  One sees the director commenting on the white man's genocide and displacement of Native Americans as proven by the fact that the hotel is supposed to be built on Indian burial grounds and because of the prominent placement of cans of baking soda that have an Indian's head on them.  There's also the theory that Kubrick was commenting on the Holocaust and genocide of the Jews.  One theorist believes Kubrick has left clues that he was involved in the US Government's conspiracy to fake the moon landing in 1969 and that the filmmaker filmed the moon landing footage on a movie stage.

Watching this documentary and listening to the people that have invested so much time into the study of this film you are bound to be interested in what they are thinking and some of the hidden "clues" do seem to make sense in the context of what they believe but they could also mean many other things or be nothing more than something the set designer had available and placed on set.  Who knew there was so much thought put into the hidden meanings of the film?  It's too bad the director is no longer with us to confirm or deny these hidden meanings but I guess that would take all the excitement out of solving the unsolvable.


The Shining




