Dir - Philip Leacock
Overall: MEH
An effective if frustrating made-for-television thriller from screenwriter Richard Matheson, Dying Room Only is at least better than its groany pun of a title would imply. Matheson adapts his own 1953 short story of the same name which has an excellent premise of someone disappearing within a minute in a remote diner that only has three other people there. For almost the entire duration, the audience is meant to feel Cloris Leachman's increasing aggravation and terror as she is belittled and toyed with by the local yokels. The performances are strong, with a perfectly cast Ned Beatty in particular making an intimidating presence that matches Leachman's hapless woman without a safety net who is at the mercy of those who wish to do her harm in the middle of nowhere. Once the sheriff shows up, things become more difficult to buy into as the viewer is fully aware who the culprits are and it then becomes an elongated waiting game for the details of their scheme to get delivered. The plot points are more predictable than not, but director Philip Leacock throws in a good amount of tense set pieces until it all mercifully wraps itself up.
(1975)
Dir - George A. Romero
Overall: GOOD
The long-lost The Amusement Park was a director-for-hire job form George A. Romero which was shot in 1973 over the course of three days in between Season of the Witch and The Crazies. Given a theatrical premier at the 1975 American Film Festival in New York, it was commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania on a budget of thirty-seven thousand dollars as an education film about elderly abuse, though the results are far from traditional. Romero takes such an opportunity to construct a series of bizarre vignettes set in the West View Park where old people are persistently ridiculed, neglected, and terrorized. Besides Lincoln Maazel in the lead whom Romero would work with again in 1978's Martin, the cast are all non-actors and Romero himself plays an asshole that yells at a sixty-eight year old woman for hitting his bumper car, which is easily his least sympathetic cameo in one of his own works. As far as social commentary goes, this is as on-the-nose as anything from the filmmaker and it pulls no punches with its surreal examination of senior citizen mistreatment. It is a rare art film that showcases a previously unseen side of Romero's ambitions while still adhering to a disturbing and sinister tone.
(1979)
Dir - John Ballard
Overall: WOOF
Director/co-writer John Ballard's only film credit of any kind, The Orphan, (Friday the 13th: The Orphan), is a baffling mess of a psychological horror movie, (or something). A rich kid's parents die, his uppity religious Aunt comes to live with him, she is a bitch, and a whole lot of stuff happens that may not be happening. It is difficult to decipher what Ballard was going for here since his approach suffers from a steady combination of aggressive incoherence and clumsy ineptitude. The editing and sound design are both nauseating in their intensity, with scenes being cut to smithereens and overlapping ADRed dialog, sound effects, and music creating a cacophony of cinematic noise. This is doubly odd since the plot is straightforward, (kid misses his mom and dad and then goes crazy), but so many head-scratching choices are made along the way. Damn wiener kid Mark Owens, (who never appeared on screen before or since), delivers a performance that is often times grating, but it is hardly his fault since even the most accomplished of child thespians would embarrass themselves with such dribble. Maybe this was simply an attempt to represent the troubled mind of a troubled youth, but it is poorly realized to the point of being unwatchable.
No comments:
Post a Comment