Tag Archives: Geraldine Fitzgerald

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

Posted on October 7, 2023 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Family gets terrorized again.

The Freeling family (Craig T. Nelson, Jobeth Williams, Heather O’Rourke, Oliver Robins) has abandoned their old neighborhood in Cuesta Vista where they were traumatized by ghosts and into the house of Diane’s elderly mother Jess (Geraldine Fitzgerald). They hope here their lives will return to normal, but at the site of where their old house once stood a ground crew digs up a cave filled with the skeletal remains of people that were lead by the Reverend Henry Kane (Julian Beck) an insane man who lead his followers to death many years prior because he proclaimed the world was going to end. His spirit though remains restless and he appears in human form to go after Carol Ann by calling her through her toy telephone. The Freeling parents realize they are no match for him, so Taylor (Will Sampson) an Indian shaman is brought in to protect their daughter as well as giving the father tips on how to fight-off the evil spirit.

As sequels go this one isn’t too bad. The script still has enough interesting twists to keep it intriguing and the special effects are greatly improved. I also liked here that we get to see the other world where the spirits live something that was woefully missing in the first. One of my favorite moments is when Steve swallows some Tequila that has a worm in it that is possessed by the spirit of the evil Kane. The worm then grows inside Steve’s body until he has to vomit it out where it continues to grow into large proportions, which is a genuinely freaky moment. Some other good scenes are when Diane gets swallowed up into the ground by skeletons reaching up from the dirt and pulling her in and watching Robbie, the son, get tied up by the metal of his braces is really cool too. It’s unlikely there would be enough metal from his braces to cover his whole body like it does here, but the segment still gets points for its creativity.

The characters though aren’t quite as interesting. The women had stood out in the first installment, but that all gets lost here. Jobeth Williams, who played this groovy, adult flower child who was open to new things and experimenting around, is much more of a subdued mom here behaving like a typical suburbanite mother would, which is boring. O’Rorke is still good and so is Rubenstein though her role is greatly diminished and I wasn’t sure why the Indian character needed to be brought in at all as I would’ve thought Zelda could’ve handled those duties. Sampson’s performance is good, but his role just seemed unnecessary. Domonique Dunne, who played the older daughter in the first one is nowhere to be seen due to her having died in real-life at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, but I still thought they should’ve mentioned something even if it was just in passing like she was away in college to help explain her absence.

On the male end Nelson’s part is much more colorful as in the first one he was rather transparent, but he gets some good lines and manages to completely take over the proceedings though I wished it had been a little more balanced between him and Williams. Julian Beck though who plays the evil preacher stands-out the most. He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and ended up dying before the production had wrapped, but the illness did help give him a gaunt appearance, which helped accentuate his creepiness.

Logic wise there were a few holes. Having the insurance company completely unaware that Freelings house had essentially gotten eaten-up by the spirits didn’t make sense. I know the idea was that they didn’t want any publicity, but their other neighbors had witnessed the house disappearing too and there’s just no way that someone wouldn’t have leaked that to the press and it becoming a major news story as houses evaporating into thin air in front of many witnesses just doesn’t happen everyday.

Having the boy and girl continue to sleep in the same bedroom looked very off. In the first one they also shared a room, but they were much younger and here the boy already has braces making it look like he’s ready to enter adolescents and he for sure then should be in his own room. The death of the grandmother gets handled in an equally awkward way as the kid wakes up and has no idea what the parents are crying about, but the old woman died in the house he was sleeping in and therefore he should’ve been awakened by the ambulance that came to take her away. In fact we never see the body being removed making it seem that they might’ve just left her there in her bed for all we know and a scene showing the family mourning at her gravesite would’ve been a far more seamless way to have explained (shown) her passing.

Spoiler Alert!

The wrap-up is a bit too lighthearted as it shows Will Sampson driving off with the family’s beaten up car and Nelson chasing after him as they have no other way to get home. The segment though is too comedic and a good horror film should still leave the viewer with a certain bit of unsettling mystery. After all this family had gone through a lot and what’s to say that things were finally really over. The family acts too relaxed when in reality all of them should be going through some form of post traumatic stress. The fact that they act so at ease didn’t ring true as most anyone else would be in a perpetual paranoid state looking over their shoulders every second for fear that the ghosts might have remanifested. A more somber image of them quietly walking away from the sight formerly known as their home with the sound of a wind howling would’ve been more appropriate for this type of story.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 23, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Brian Gibson

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Ghost Story, Horror, Sequels

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Diary of the Dead (1976)

Posted on October 11, 2021 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Two dead old ladies.

Stan (Hector Elizondo) is married to Vera (Salome Jens) while living in a house that’s owned by Vera’s mother Maud (Geraldine Fitzgerald). Maud and Stan do not get along and she uses the fact that Stan can’t find regular employment as a means to belittle him.  She also tries to convince Vera to leave him. Stan is aware of this, but can’t seem to do much about it. Then one day Maud’s friend Ethel (Kate Wilkinson) comes for a visit. She arrives while Maud is upstairs taking a nap, and is greeted by Stan, but since she had to walk all the way from the bus station to the house and suffers from high blood pressure, she promptly collapses once she gets inside. Stand decides to use this as an opportunity to get rid of Maud by claiming to the attending physician (Austin Pendleton) that the dead body is his mother-in-law, so when Ethel is taken away for cremation everyone thinks it’s Maud instead. Stan then buries Maud’s body, who he has killed on his own, in his backyard, but this catches the eye of his nosy neighbor Walter (Joseph Maher) who had always gotten along well with Maud and feels Stan’s explanation of what happened doesn’t add-up.

The story is based on the 1971 novel ‘One Across, Two Down’ by Ruth Rendell and while the plot has a sufficient amount of twists the direction, by first timer Arvin Brown, is lacking. It’s not liked it’s bad direction, but it has no finesse and seems meant of TV.  It’s no surprise that Brown ended up doing projects exclusively for TV after this one as nothing here is cinematic and approached in such a sterile way visually that it actually detracts from the proceedings.

Elizondo gives a feisty performance that perfectly captures a bitter man going through life with a chip-on-his-shoulder. His arguments and confrontations with Maud lend for some colorful dialogue, but a meddling, cantankerous mother-in-law is nothing new and if anything seems cliched making the material come-off as second-rate and formulaic.

The crime itself isn’t elaborate. In the ‘Columbo’ TV mysteries we’d see the bad-guy pull-off the murder in a way that was carefully thought-out, so the viewer becomes intrigued trying to figure out what flaw the killer overlooked that Columbo will jump on, but here it works in reverse. The crime is spur-of-the moment with a bunch of things that could easily go wrong that will instantly get Stan caught, which isn’t as interesting. Stan is also not a pleasant person, so the viewer is not emotionally invested in him escaping the clutches of the authorities,  If anything you remain ambivalent to what happens, which are ingredients that don’t make the movie interesting.

The film does feature a twist ending, but it’s not something one couldn’t have seen coming as it goes overboard telegraphing it. As an episode of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ it would’ve worked better, but it gets stretched too thin for feature length. The should also not be confused with the George A. Romero film of the same name that came out 30 yeas later.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: July 20, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Arvin Brown

Studio: B.S. Moss Enterprises

Available: None

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Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Last American Hero (1973)

Posted on August 2, 2021 | 1 comment

lasthero

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: He follows his dream.

Junior Jackson (Jeff Bridges) works in his family’s moonshine business as a driver who transports the liquor and uses his superior driving skills especially his patented ‘bootlegger-turn’ in which to avoid capture he gets the vehicle to make a 180-degree turn by using the emergency brake, which then allows his car to go speeding off in the opposite direction. However, the authorities are able to catch-up with his father (Art Lund) and they throw him in jail for 11-months. With no moonshine business Junior is forced to find other means for an income, so he decides to try and turn his driving skills into a profit venture by entering into a demolition derby run by Hackel (Ned Beatty). He does well in this and eventually moves up to the higher levels and makes enough money for him to decide on turning it into his career, but his family does not approve as they feel it’s too dangerous. Junior is also forced to buy his own race car and pay for his own pit crew, which causes him to go back into the bootlegging business as a runner all to the disapproval of his father who feels it will just lead Junior into the same prison that he was in.

Overall this is one of the best bio’s out there and impeccably filmed and edited by actor-turned-director Lamont Johnson, who appears briefly as a hotel clerk. Johnson’s directing career was a bit spotty, he also did notorious clunkers like Lipstick and Somebody Killer Her Husband, but this one is virtually flawless and there’s very little to be critical about on the technical end. The racing footage is both intense and exciting and one of the few racing movies where I was able to follow the race as a whole and not just be bombarded with a lot of jump cuts. I also appreciated how it captures the pit stops and the different conversations that the driver has with his crew during these moments and how sometimes this can be just as intense in its own way. The on-locations shooting done in and around Hickory, North Carolina as well as some of the neighboring race tracks during the fall of 1972 helps bring home both the ambiance and beauty of the region.

For me though what really stood out was Junior’s relationship with his family and how they were not supportive, at least initially, to his dreams as a racer and forcing him to have to pursue it on his own. Many times people who have ambitious goals don’t always have their friends and family on the same page with it and the road to success can definitely have its share of loneliness while also testing one’s own inner fortitude. One of my favorite scenes, that goes along with this theme, is when Junior is inside a K-mart and comes upon a recording booth that allows him to make a voice tape message that can be sent via the mail to one’s family or friends. Junior conveys into the microphone what he wants to say to his family, but ultimately seems to be talking more to himself than them, as a kind of self therapy to release the inner tensions that he’s been feeling, and subsequently never actually sends it out.

The acting is top-notch particularly by Bridges. Normally he’s good at playing mellow, level-headed characters, but here does well as someone who at times is quite volatile and caustic. There’s great support by Beatty as an unscrupulous race track owner, Ed Lauter as a highly competitive owner of a competing racing teams as well as Valerie Perrine as a woman who enjoys bed-hopping between different men, sometimes with those who are friends with each other, and yet completely oblivious with the drama and tensions that this creates. William Smith is good as a competing racer and while his part is small the scene where he walks in on Junior sleeping with his girl (Perrine) and the response that he gives is great. I thought Geraldine Fitzgerald, who plays Junior’s mother, was excellent and her Irish accent somehow effectively made to sound southern, but she should’ve been given more screen time.

The story is based on an Esquire article written by Tom Wolfe that was entitled ‘The Last American Hero was Junior Jackson. Yes!’, which in turn was based on NASCAR racing champion Junior Jackson (1931-2019) who also served as the film’s technical advisor. The movies pretty much stays with the actual account, but does change one pivotal point in that it has the father going to jail when in reality it was Junior who was sentenced to 11-months in 1956. Why this was changed I don’t know, but it usually helps the viewer become more emotionally connected to the protagonist when they see them going through the hardship versus someone else, so having Bridges spend time in the slammer would’ve made more sense. The film is also famous for its theme song ‘I Got a Name’ sung by Jim Croce, but this song has been played so much on oldies radio that one no longer connects it with the film and in fact when it does get played it takes you out of the movie because it reminds you of somewhere else where you’ve first heard it, which most likely wasn’t this movie.

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My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: July 27, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Lamont Johnson

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies that take place in the South, Sports Movies

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