AGFA Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare: Film #1
Starting with the title, there's nothing at all relating to demonic possession, the producers are clearly just cashing in on The Exorcist craze to put a few more butts in seats. What we get is a pretty conventional mad scientist set-up, the main difference being the presence of a normal, well balanced spouse who I recognize from somewhere but has no recognizable screen or TV credits. Maybe she was one of those bottom of…
Whenever I go long periods without seeing this I forget that there's no mummy in the film after the opening sequence. I happened to be prepared this time 'round. It really loses momentum in scenes without Karloff, and my affection for the movie amounts to a handful of shots with Karloff looking sinister. Karl Freund does okay as director but I didn't find anything exceptional about it.
Oscar Isaac's performance was compelling, but in the context of the script the character was played with a little too much icy reserve for me to buy into believing this guy could ever care much about anyone or anything. The rest of the cast was serviceable, Tiffany Haddish worked well with upbeat material but fell flat when asked to play scenes with any dramatic weight.
This was an odd bit of a spin on Hard Eight, and it felt a…
Fassbinder and company defy convention in adapting a stage play to the screen by sticking to the spacial confines of the source material and focusing on working it rather than gratuitously inserting outdoor establishing shots and such to open the film up. Schygulla really stands out here in the way her warm facial expressions are a facade that rarely reflect the harsh, hurtful behavior she inflicts on her patron. It adds so much more dimension to the film, lesser actresses would have gone all Joan Crawford with this.
