Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
WARNER
MOVIE A-
SPECIAL FEATURES F
DVD GEEK FACTOR 8
(OUT OF 10)
This might have been the first horror film I watched from start to
finish. Back in the day when you only had a few channels on your TV
set, stuff like this (horror films produced for television) would air
late at night. I was at my grandma’s house sleeping over, and she
didn’t care what I watched or how late I stayed up—so there you
have it. I saw this movie and was freaked out beyond reason.
It stars Kim Darby as Sally, a woman who has moved into a relative’s
old house; she intends to renovate and start life anew. She discovers a
sealed-up fireplace in a damp back room and decides to fix it up. The
cranky handyman (William Demarest, Uncle Charley from My Three
Sons) tells her to stay the hell away and leave it alone. But she
doesn’t listen.
As it turns out, the fireplace is a portal to some strange
underworld where demons live, and they are hungry for Sally’s soul.
They have tiny, hairy bodies and shriveled-up prune faces. They are
also sensitive to light, and when they start trying to attack Sally,
simply switching on the lights or lighting a candle causes them to
repel. Of course, nobody, including her hubby (Jim Hutton, father of
Timothy), believes her stories of monsters trying to get her, and
things end rather badly for Ms. Sally.
I don’t know what freaks me out more about this film: the wrinkly
faces, or the garbled way the little bastards talk to each other. It
sounds like they are gargling acid! I thought that maybe the reason
this film disturbed me was my young age, but watching it now, decades
later, it still scars me in an unholy way.
This flick is being remade, with Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes
starring. Good luck trying to capture this classic’s creep factor.
SPECIAL FEATURES: The DVD has no special features. It’s part
of the new Warner Archive collection, and you can only really order it
at WarnerArchive.com. You might
find a copy of it on Amazon.com, but
you will pay heartily for it. Because this film hasn’t been available
for such a long time, and because I’m just so happy to own it, I’m
still giving it a decent Geek Factor rating, even though it has no
supplements.
Creepshow (Blu-Ray)
WARNER
MOVIE A-
SPECIAL FEATURES F
DVD GEEK FACTOR 5
(OUT OF 10)
There was a time in the ’80s when George Romero and Stephen King
ruled the world of horror. This homage to creepy comic books from the
’50s counts as one of Romero’s very best works—thanks to the help
of King’s screenplay. King himself starred in one of the five segments
as a country bumpkin who discovers a meteor and is overcome by space
weeds.
The best of the segments would be “The Crate,” where an old,
chained-up wooden crate is discovered in a university lab, and it
doesn’t contain National Geographic issues. Also of note is
funnyman Leslie Nielsen, playing a decidedly unfunny jealous husband
who buries Ted Danson up to his neck on a beach, where the tide is
coming in. E.G. Marshall is an obscene hoot as a rich recluse with a
major bug problem at his apartment, and you can spy a young Ed Harris
as one of the victims of a zombie who wants his cake on Father’s
Day.
This one is either being remade or continued (there have been two
other, far inferior Creepshow films). A director has yet to be
announced, so I say they should give Romero another crack at it.
SPECIAL FEATURES: Nothing, and that’s a shame. I would’ve
loved a King/Romero commentary, or a look back with Ted Danson.
Gladiator: Sapphire Series (Blu-Ray)
PARAMOUNT
MOVIE B+
SPECIAL FEATURES A-
DVD GEEK FACTOR 7
(OUT OF 10)I was not too fond of this film on the big screen. I
found some of the computer effects distracting, and it looked like a
cartoon in some instances. Truth is, the story of Maximus (Russell
Crowe), a Roman general turned slave and eventual gladiator star, works
better on home screens. The bad visual moments are reduced in size,
causing less distraction. This allows the viewer to focus more on the
decent story.
Crowe (who won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance) is decent,
but it’s Joaquin Phoenix who steals the show as the evil emperor. There
have been very few women as beautiful as Connie Nielsen is in this
movie. Meanwhile, Oliver Reed had a strange thing happen during
production: He died, and his face was digitally pasted onto another
actor’s body to complete his part.
SPECIAL FEATURES: This package is full of great stuff,
including the ability to leave the film and watch production diaries
and historical shorts. Director Ridley Scott and Crowe provide a
commentary; there are also a bunch of deleted scenes and documentaries
on the film’s creation.
This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2009.