Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

Blow Out, 1981

Jack (John Travolta) is a sound expert working on a slasher film who, out capturing sound samples one night, records audio of a car crash that kills a man. Jack is able to rescue a woman who was in the car, sex worker Sally (Nancy Allen), and the two are further thrown together when Jack realizes that his audio recording implies that the car crash was no accident. Coming up against a political conspiracy and the ruthless fixer (John Lithgow) employed to see it through, Jack and Sally find themselves in danger at every turn.

Intriguing in the way that it seems almost at war with itself, this is a compelling if problematic conspiracy thriller.

It feels very strange to feel torn on a movie where I have so many positive, borderline-fawning things to say about it. I think there’s no better place to begin than with Travolta’s central performance as Jack. I’m someone who grew up being aware of Travolta as a person who people thought was amazing and sexy, but my reaction to most of what I saw him in was, “Um . . . okay, sure.” But watching this movie, you know, I get it. There is a forceful yet effortless charisma and appeal to Travolta in this film that is undeniable. And as the tangled web begins closing tighter and tighter around his character, there’s a sense of destruction as that easy coolness slides into panic, paranoia, and despair. It’s a really lovely synthesis of an actor and the role they are playing, and it’s miles ahead of the way I’ve felt about any other performance I’ve seen of his.

Equally compelling is Nancy Allen’s turn as Sally, though she is given far less to do and a far less coherent character. In Allen’s case, you aren’t watching synthesis so much as you are watching someone elevate a character almost through sheer force of will. From the very get-go we are aware that Sally’s presence in the car accident has put her in the crosshairs, and Allen is so incredibly likable in the role that you immediately develop a protective anxiety toward her. By the very nature of his job---watcher, listener---you sense that Jack will survive. But Allen’s fate seems far more precarious and that adds a heavy dose of suspense to every new threat that comes her way.

There’s also a ton going on from a technical perspective. I don’t always pick up consciously on elements like score, color scheme, etc, but a lot of the brilliance here is so in your face that even a viewer like me can’t miss it. Whether it’s the famous shot of Travolta in the background while an owl’s face fills the foreground, or the sequence where Jack matches his audio recording to a video tape, craft is at the forefront. (I learned a new term while reading about this movie, which is “split diopter”, a technique that allows two objects at different distances from the lens to both be in focus).

There’s also something very satisfying about the structure of the conspiracy that Jack stumbles into. You might expect everything to be shadowy efficiency, but one of the first glimpses we get of the powers-that-be is a frustrated phone call between Lithgow’s character, Burke, and the man who hired him in which we learn that Burke has already gone off-script. There’s this, for lack of a better word, almost mundane aspect to it that’s particularly upsetting. Killing people, intimidating people, blackmailing people, deceiving people . . . it’s all relatively casual for these people.

There’s also no denying that, whatever you think about it once you unpack the content, the last 10 minutes are shocking and provocative.

But that final act, once the immediacy of your emotional reaction passes, ends up being an unsatisfying final stop for a running theme in the film about violence towards women. We begin the movie as Jack and an agitated director watch an extended clip from a slasher, the camera leering at half a dozen semi-nude actresses before deciding that the murder victim’s scream is wrong. As part of his long game, Burke begins a series of brutal, garish murders and the media laps it all up, lovingly dubbing him the “Liberty Bell Killer”. All through the film the lives and bodies of women are exploited and mutilated so that men might achieve their aims, be they large or small.

It’s frustrating because the subplot about Burke feigning a serial killer spree directly acknowledges the way that people absolutely lap up gruesome details about the murders of women . . . and yet we sure do watch a lot of gruesome details of the murders of women in this film. And the movie could maybe get away with that if it did a better job with the women it portrays, but it really falls down on this front. Yes, we get the old sassy prostitute trope, but the time we spend with Allen’s Sally really drives this home. We are at once expected to believe that she’s cynical and worldly enough to participate in entrapment-style blackmail schemes, and yet also so nice and trusting and, frankly, naive as to put herself in multiple situations that would raise huge red flags for any woman, much less one who knows herself to be in danger. And the final moment of this film serves as kind of a middle finger on this front, creating a sense of manufacture that undercuts the emotional impact of it all.

It’s almost dizzying to come up against a movie that is so effective on an immediate emotional level, only to find it shallow and underwhelming the minute you start to unpack what all that emotion is in service of. I think that this film suffers for me in comparison to The Conversation where all that paranoia and conspiracy and lack of trust becomes about the internal journey of the main character.

This is an undeniably engaging, suspenseful thriller, and I know many consider it to be de Palma’s best. There’s an attraction in all the bombast and overt artistry, and it really hits you on a base emotional level, daring you to walk right up to the edge of melodrama in its explosive finale. But there’s something hollow in the way that it uses anonymous sex workers as proxies for Sally’s vulnerability, and then ultimately Sally as a proxy for Jack’s vulnerability. This is a film that wants us to reflect soberly on the pain of a man forced to witness violence, while winking as it wraps a wire around a woman’s throat.

Targets, 1968

Byron Orlock (Boris Karloff) is an actor who made his name in the gothic horror boom of the 40s and 50s. Preparing for the debut of his latest, and last, horror film, Byron feels unsettled by the evolution of horror and the sense that he is being left behind. Meanwhile, clean-cut Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly) wakes up and, for no apparent reason, embarks on a spree of violence that draws him closer and closer to the drive-in theater where Byron will premiere his new film.

This is a stunning directorial debut that shocks with scenarios and images that are hauntingly relevant nearly 50 years later.

As has become a morbid ritual at the start of every new school year, last week I crouched in the darkness of my classroom with 21 children as we simulated the steps we would take in case of a lockdown. While we waited for the front office to call the all clear, I let my students ask questions. What if someone tries to shoot out our window? What if someone tries to break down the door? What if we run outside, but someone’s waiting outside? But after those questions, which were relatively easy to answer, the last question asked was a little girl who said, “But what I don’t understand is why does someone do that kind of thing?”.

I did not have a good answer for that question, and it’s not a question that this film tries to answer either. What exactly is wrong with Bobby that compels him to pick up a gun and kill people close to him before swiftly moving on to targeting total strangers is unknown, and is the horror at the heart of the movie. There is obviously something nightmarish about the idea that someone you love might one day, seemingly out of nowhere, harm you. But even more nightmarish is the idea that you might just be in your car, on the way to who knows where, when someone you’ve never met in your life decides to take a shot at you.

Contrasted against Bobby’s cold, ruthless stab through the city is Byron’s dismay and increasing disillusionment with his place in Hollywood. Karloff is absolutely fantastic in his lead role, bringing a gravitas and mitigated sorrow to his portrayal. Byron isn’t just a cranky old guy who is disgruntled by decreasing relevance. He is a man who can sense the passing of an era, and the certainty that, at his age, it is nearly impossible to become important in a new one. O’Kelly’s performance is a wonderful foil to Karloff’s. Where a warmth and a sense of life underpins even Byron’s shakiest moments, O’Kelly captures the aloof distance of a man who has, perhaps by choice, severed his connections with the rest of humanity.

The style of the film invites us into both perspectives, and the contrast is eerie. From Bobby’s point of view, we watch at a distance as his bullets find their targets on a highway, sending cars careening off of the road. Indistinct figures collapse, or emerge frantic from the vehicles. Later, however, we are taken right up close to a sobbing family, and in one of the most ominous and disturbing moments of the film, as the camera pans away the distinct sound of a child weeping is cut short.

This is a movie that definitely has something to say about the kind of people who commit such violent acts, and there is something really refreshing about the overt, blunt contempt for those who would so casually dehumanize others. The horror caused by such people is so devastatingly large, and yet their reasons, their notions of being powerful are so pathetically small.

Everything in this film, from the performances to the color scheme to the stunner of a climax, just absolutely clicks into place. If you have access to the Criterion Channel, I highly, HIGHLY recommend listening to Bogdanovich’s stellar commentary.

Night Games, 1966

Jan (Keve Hjelm, played as a child by Jorgen Lindstrom) is engaged to the lovely Mariana (Lena Brundlin), but he cannot shake the memories of his chaotic childhood spent with his mother, Irene (Ingrid Thulin). Blending the present and memories, especially once Jan and Mariana arrive at his childhood home, Jan relives the unhealthy, overly intimate relationship with his self-obsessed mother.

Amazing imagery, costuming, and camerawork are undercut by exploitative elements and a lack of overall direction.

From a visual standpoint, this film is absolutely stunning. It’s the kind of crisp, sumptuous black-and-white photography that is almost unreal. And the black-and-white is further enhanced by the use of gorgeous costumes in those same colors, including a lace catsuit(!) or a cavernous black skirt. There’s a standout sequence that’s both funny and erotic in which a group is watching a pornographic film and a woman stands up in front of the projector and lifts her dress so that the film is playing on her body, specifically on her underwear.

The setting is also a standout, a sprawling mansion full of marble and twisting, sweeping staircases. Capable of housing hordes of Irene’s friends and associates, the immense size of it serves to enhance the emptiness of their pursuits. The stone structure is cold and hollow, just like the people inside it. The vast home allows for really lovely transitions throughout the film, as Jan passes from one room to another, from his present self back to his boyhood.

Finally, the acting is very strong. Thulin is glamorous and beautiful, but alternately aloof and overly emotional. Her portrayal of a narcissist, concerned with her son only in the sense that she can impose her own experiences onto him, is riveting and maddening. Lindstrom, as her son, portrays the baffled vulnerability of someone who has only ever known a distorted version of childhood, and yet still falls victim to his mother’s affection bombing and, inevitably, her humiliation or discarding of him. Adding a delightful grounded-yet-kooky energy to the film is Naima Wifstrand as Jan’s aunt (or great-aunt?) Astrid. Astrid is absurd in her own way---going to the trouble of painting and costuming eggs as people so that she and Jan can enjoy cracking their skulls apart---but it creates an interesting contrast with Irene’s more damaging shenanigans.

There’s enough here to make me very interested in the director, but it all ground to a halt for me a bit in the second half.

Movies are movies, of course, but they use real people and real bodies to tell their stories. What gets shown and how it is filmed, what it’s “right” or “ethical” to show in a movie is a line that many viewers will draw in a different place. For me this film crossed a line. Not just a line of taste, but a line of ethics.

I have watched movies that feature children’s nude bodies, movies like Pixote, for example. But I think that what’s already a questionable artistic decision takes on another level of potential exploitation when the context of the nudity in question is sexualized. There is an extended sequence in this film featuring full nudity from the child actor (aged 14 at the time, though the character is meant to be 12 years old). I just, me, personally, don’t think it’s okay to film an adult touching a child sexually, and especially not a naked child. There are multiple moments of his genitals being touched---through a towel, then through a bedsheet---and it broke me completely out of the film. I’m aware of an interview in which the actor says it was not a big deal to him, but that doesn’t do much to mitigate my feelings about it. I think that you can imply the nature of inappropriate contact between Irene and her son without actually having an adult grope a minor. Do I think this is child pornography? No, not intentionally, at least. And obviously, your mileage may vary on this point. For me there was too much reality in a moment meant to capture inappropriate touching and indecent intimacy between an adult and child.

And this ethical issue for me bleeds into a lesser issue, which is that the film doesn’t seem to extend itself beyond what we get in the first five minutes or so. Irene and her friends? They are terrible. They are the worst kind of rich people. They are indulgent and they think they’re edgy and amazing. In a delirious and disturbing sequence, Irene prepares to give birth in front of all of her friends, only for the anticlimactic result of a stillborn baby. But once we’ve established that this crowd is shallow and awful, the movie doesn’t venture from there. We get some painful moments of Jan trying to be closer to his mother, to get her to shine some of her light on him. In one scene, he puts on her makeup and jewelry, creating for himself a proxy of her presence. But as the film goes on, it doesn’t seem to develop a deeper point of view on this upbringing. The imagery, setting, and performances certainly hold your interest, but there’s a building awareness that the movie has less on its mind than you might hope.

Lots of strengths, but the child sexual exploitation makes it a film I’d never be comfortable recommending without a huge caveat.

Our Father, the Devil, 2021

Marie (Babetida Sadjo) is an immigrant from Guinea who works as a cook in a nursing home. Marie is respected by her boss and beloved by her clients, and she’s even being wooed by sexy bartender Arnaud (Franck Saurel). But Marie’s world is turned inside out when she recognizes a man from her past, Father Patrick (Souleymane Sy Savane). A panicked Marie must decide how to handle this sudden threat, while at the same time guarding her own memories of her time in Guinea.

This is a searing, nuanced take on a classic revenge thriller plot.

It’s so hard to talk about a film like this because every fifteen minutes or so the nature of it changes and evolves. To even say things that happen ten or twenty minutes into the movie feels like treading into spoiler territory.

That said, I am fully comfortable saying that this is a film that has more on its mind than your typical “stranger from the past” revenge thriller. Cinema is chock full of wronged women taking in a shuddering breath as they contemplate what to do about (or with, or to) the man who hurt them. And to be sure, Marie takes her pound of flesh from Father Patrick in sequences that are hard to watch not because of their graphic nature, but because of the emotional pain that bubbles over when Marie confronts her past.

But this isn’t some “you go girl!” tale of the hunted becoming the hunter. Marie has experienced violence in a way that has forever altered her, and what she does moving forward might further change her, might further forever change who she is and who she can be. I’ve often grappled with the quote that says something to the effect of “the violence we do to others we also do to ourselves,” but I think that this film brings me closer to understanding what it could mean. Causing harm to someone is not a neutral act, even if that person in some sense deserves that harm. The fact of harm being deserved does not neatly translate to the detachment of a person doling out that harm.

And the characters in the story are really wonderfully developed, on both sides of the conflict. Sadjo is absolutely riveting as Marie, going so much more beyond the empty stare of someone with a traumatic past. In Marie we do find some of what we expect: a woman who hides the details of her past from her friends. A woman who is angry and eaten up inside by what she’s been through. But where the film takes an unexpected turn is in our dawning realization that most of Marie’s anger and hatred is directed inwards. Marie hates herself not only for what she allowed to happen to her (and we the viewer know that “allowed” is not the right word), but also for what she did to survive. This is a woman who does not believe that she deserves happiness or love, and it’s a much more nuanced take on the price of surviving abuse and trauma.

Savane’s portrayal of Father Patrick is also very good, and the character much more complicated than one might anticipate. His plot arc has more developments, so I won’t say as much about him, but in him we see a different expression of how one might cope with a violent past. Marie’s fear alone tells us how afraid we should be of this man, but he never slides into being a one-dimensional villain.

I also really appreciated the subplot about Marie’s relationship with Arnaud, as it serves two very powerful purposes in the film. First, it’s through their interactions that we understand Marie’s discomfort with the idea of receiving very direct love and affection and intimacy. But second, it’s really lovely to see a film tackle the idea of seeking sexual intimacy coming from a history of trauma. When the two characters become sexually intimate (and big shout out to some front-closing bra representation!), there’s a masterful wordless give and take between the two characters. It’s refreshing and a little daring to plunk eroticism in the middle of such an intense exploration of violence and shame in a way that isn’t just intended as a showcase for how damaged someone is.

I honestly had no complaints about this film. I think it has a final scene that is bold and thought-provoking and exceptional. Highly recommended.

I really liked that one. The climax makes for such a great way to bring its ruminations on old vs. new together.

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IMDb
Letterboxd

Modern America needs more Karloffs running around .

Also, right after watching Targets I was driving with my window down and something went zzzzzzzzzt! right past me and hit the inside of the car and I was like "AHHHHH! OMGGGG!!!!! IT'S AN AMBUSH!!!!!!".

It was just a beetle that flew into the car.

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

The Dark Valley, 2014

A man named Greider (Sam Riley) arrives in a small Austrian village on a remote mountaintop, camera in tow. Ostensibly intending to document the villagers, Greider moves in with a widow and her teenage daughter, Luzi (Paula Beer). But soon the toxic dynamics of the village becomes clear, and Greider finds himself entangled with the powerful family who rule the village by fear.

This is a satisfying thriller that makes the most of its isolated, snowbound setting.

Thanks to a prologue sequence and, you know, a general sense of how movies like this work, there aren’t necessarily that many surprises to be had in this film. But even if most of the plot beats are somewhat predictable, the characters and the setting make for an enjoyable thriller.

The setting of the film, an isolated mountainside, does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of building atmosphere. Everything is blanketed in a punishing layer of snow. Not new fluffy snow, but the hard snow that you know has been sitting around for weeks. The isolation and the cold give everything an extra sense of threat. Not only is this a place where no one would find out what happened to you, but even being left alone outside for a few days could be enough to finish you off.

In terms of the characters, Riley plays things pretty close to the chest when it comes to the enigmatic Greider. As a viewer, we can tell he’s after something, but there’s a waiting period where he’s simply absorbing the dynamics of the village. Most of the emotional weight comes from Beer as the teenage Luzi. Luzi is in love with Lukas (Thomas Schubert), and the two very much want to be together. But in this village there is a price to be paid for marriage, and Luzi’s terror---along with Lukas’s own apprehension---drive a lot of the suspense of the story.

And Luzi’s terror is well-founded. What we see through the film is the way that a powerful family--The Brenners---have a total grip over the village. The men of the Brenner family, an elderly father and his bevy of sons, enjoy flexing their power just for the sake of it. As a survival mechanism, the villagers have learned to relent and comply. A few more powerful locals, such as the priest, have willingly become allies and propagandists for the family. A speech given by the priest in which he contorts Biblical stories into gross lessons about submitting to abuse stands out as an infuriating and upsetting moment.

In the second half of the film, things shift a bit more toward action. There are several satisfying sequences once Greider and the Brenners throw down, and the film wrangles a few memorable violent setpieces out of the snowy, creaking woods that surround the village.

The movie does end up being just a hair more muted than I would have liked. So much is obvious from the get-go, that it ends up being frustrating that the movie saves revealing them as “twists”. More time developing relationships between Greider and his host family would have been beneficial, especially as the film moves into the final act.

I watched The Dark Valley for the Westerns countdown and was pretty impressed with it. I should watch it again sometime.

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I've watched it in parts many, many times. It does have strong rewatch potential, and it's the kind of movie you can just start watching from wherever.

Watching it fully beginning to end is where I realized I wanted a bit more character development from the protagonist. I'm fully aware he's the "mysterious strong silent type" lead, but the secondary characters offered some great opportunities for building interesting relationships.

Still, I could easily see watching it again in a few months.

Hm. Intersting. I'll need to contemplate this further.
For starters, I agree with all of the positives you're talking about. I think it's DePalma's best film, Travolta's best performance, and probably Nancy Allen's best work as well. The design, the cinematography, the editing all jump off the screen at you but somehow in a non-distracting, extremely positive way that feels like art. And it's a dark and bleak movie that doesn't flinch at the end and remains dark and bleak til the credits roll. But maybe that's also the problem given the context you point out here.
My initial reaction is that the climax is in fact the ultimate reward because it is so much realer than what we'd want or like to think is going to happen and it is totally true to the movie. So, if anything, as much as it sucks the life out of you it is also the perfect climax/ending.
But you make some interesting points about how this feels in the context of other things about the movie and there's an even bigger point about what you watch in a movie. Like I have made the point for a long time that in many narratives, the main character or characters, male or female, is/are the only one that truly needs to be fully fleshed out (assuming even that is appropriate for the narrative in question); supporting characters are, by definition, supporting and their existence is there to support the narrative around the main character(s). And cherry-picking that reality to say that the (insert group here) characters aren't really developed or given enough to do makes no sense when their inherent function in the story is to flesh out the the main character's and the story's depth and arc is a bit of a ruse or at least misplaced. But you make the great point of how the movie uses the women to create the lurid tension but rewards none of them with a personality or a story or the agency to protect themselves from this situation. Which of course would undermine the narrative if they did but maybe that's a flaw in the narrative when you're ultimately just trotting out a stream of attractive victims and letting us all leer over their murders. I don't know. You've certainly made me think about it. I may have to re-watch this otherwise excellent movie and consider this message that's being inherently sent here and is it appropriate given the narrative or is it a sign of something worse and darker about our society and what "we" want to see.

Honestly, I'm still contemplating it, lol.

So to break down my feelings a little more, I actually don't mind


It's not even so much development, per se, as it is logic. Sally just gamely putting herself in danger didn't wash for me. (And something else that didn't work for me: )

A Prince, 2023

Pierre-Joseph (Antoine Pirotte) is a young man who takes an apprenticeship under master gardener Adrien (Pierre Barray), only to be immersed in a world of botany and the various sexual adventures of the older male gardeners.

Meditatively filmed, this is an intriguing, if muted, exploration of a man’s developing relationship with the world.

There can be something very powerful about a neutral gaze, and in this film the interested-yet-impassive gaze of the camera takes in a greenhouse threesome dalliance with the same neutral glance it gives a potted orchid.

There is something very sweet---and a little rebellious---about the way that the film doesn’t sensationalize the many sexual encounters between Pierre-Joseph and the various older men he sleeps with. The sexuality of older people is often treated as a joke or something meant to disgust, but there’s merely a soft acceptance in this film, which extends to the idea of a younger person being drawn to older men. In this film, sex is just part of the rhythm of the lives of these men, albeit one that is interwoven with their love of horticulture.

A recurring visual element of the film is that Adrien has created beautiful botanical illustrations layered on top of gay pornographic images. It’s a fun, cheeky subversion of the way the female body is often portrayed in terms of flowers/nature, but it’s also part of the way that the men in the film and their bodies are aligned with the natural world. At the same time, the fact that the sexual images must be hidden is also a nod to the degree to which male homosexuality often has to be hidden.

Something that’s a bit hard to grasp at times in the film is just how the men are seen by the people around them. The view we get of these people is very insular. At one point, one of the men invited Pierre-Joseph to come live in his home, then as an aside notes that his wife and child won’t mind. Is this a wife who knows her husband is queer and is accepting? Is she naive and doesn’t realize he’s gay? Does she know (and mind) but it’s his house so he just does what he wants?

The movie definitely picks up in the last act, and takes a nice step away from reality, as an older Pierre-Joseph (played by writer-director Pierre Creton) renews his acquaintance with a man named Kutta (Chiman Dangi), who was adopted from India and has been on a quest of self-discovery for years. Their interactions have a different energy to them---and a very shocking moment---that gives the last act a much needed jolt.

If you did slow, meditative movies, this is an easy recommendation.

Warrendale, 1967

This documentary follows the staff and clientele of an experimental home for children with emotional disabilities in Canada.

Equally evoking sympathy and frustration, this is an emotional look at children in crisis and the adults attempting to help them.

It is, of course, very easy to judge people attempting medical or mental health intervention when the best practices in those fields change so quickly. As Maya Angelou says, “When you know better, do better.” Unlike a film like The Titticut Follies, the authority figures in this documentary mostly seem to lack the malice that made that film so hard to watch. Instead, this movie seems more full of misguided good intentions.

It helps that the adults in this film, particularly resident “parents” Terry and Walter, seem genuinely interested in helping the children in it. But the main technique on display still produces a number of jaw-dropping, uncomfortable moments. Warrendale staff utilize the “holding” technique---physically restraining the children so that they can scream, kick, rage, and sob to release their negative emotions, essentially creating a safe, loving space to express themselves.

That’s the theory, at least.

What Alan King’s intrusive yet neutral camera captures are multiple sequences of adults pinning children down, sometimes having seemingly provoked the kids into heightened states. Frequent targets of these “sessions” are the teenage Carol and the adolescent Tony. Tony . . . is very familiar to me. I’ve had a few Tonys in my classroom. I had a very Tony Tony last year. And it is very hard watching a child---who, yes, is very impulsive and dysregulated---articulately express himself verbally and yet still be forced to submit to something that is supposedly loving yet feels more like physical domination.

Admittedly, the overlap between my own work and what is portrayed in the film put my focus much more on the content than on the style of the film. Every time I thought I’d seen what must be “the moment” of the film, something else would happen. Tony makes his way to the top of a very tall closet space . . . and Walter sprints up a ladder and grabs him. Two of the older boys steal a car (!!!!) and the adults stand around trying to decide who to call about it. (Stunningly, they decide not to notify the parents of the boys?).

This style of documentary seems to be intentionally geared toward a disorienting experience. There are no interviews, just footage of the subjects. Further, the only clues about why the children are in the home are gleaned through pieces of their conversations with the adults. We do not know why Carol, Irene, Tony, or any of the others have been sent here. Did they commit a certain act? Is this preventative therapy? Further, we know nothing about the adults like Terry and Walter. One scene where they talk with the home’s resident mental health doctor indicates that they are believers in the holding approach, but they also have different approaches to the strategy.

I found myself torn on this stylistic approach to documentary. It’s hard to understand the sequence of events that we see, or how much time is passing between them. Not knowing what safeguards (if any) were in place in terms of the treatment of the children by the adults was unnerving. In the very first scene in the movie, a teenage Carol is left in her bedroom alone with Walter, who is restraining her on her bed. Yes, there’s a cameraperson there, but that wouldn’t normally be the case. There’s a feeling of a lack of structure, but it’s hard to tell how much that reflects reality and how much that is down to editing.

This was a riveting, jaw-dropping look at an attempt at healing young people in distress. I hope that both the staff and the children were able to find peace after leaving the ill-fated Warrendale.

I agree that he's gone off the deep end a bit. But for me that doesn't at all explain that choice. It feels like a choice made purely for the emotional impact/shock.

The Strangler, 1964

Leo (Victor Buono) is an eccentric, resentful lab technician who compulsively attacks and murders women as an outlet for his dysfunctional relationship with his cruel mother (Ellen Corby). As a team of detectives starts to close in on Leo, he becomes determined to finally free himself of his mother’s grasp and find a woman to run away with.

Despite some redundant moments, this horror-thriller manages some chilling moments and surprisingly well-developed secondary characters.

A lot of horror movies live or die, so to speak, by their villains. And by that metric, this film is not all that fantastic. Leo is a character we’ve seen far too many times: a man whose life has been ruined by a domineering mother, unable to form normal friendships or romantic relationships, and only able to express himself through pervy peeping and violence. Heck, the film even gives him a doll fetish so that we can get creepy shots of female dolls bent out of shape and staring emptily from the floor after a murder.

So the killer is meh. Not only in terms of his mythology, but also in terms of what it’s like to spend time with him. Leo is incredibly smug, and there are far too many scenes of the police questioning him and Leo smarmily talking his way out of any traps they lay. These scenes go on too long and end up being a bit grating.

But where this film did really surprise and impress me was in the cast of secondary characters, and specifically the women who are Leo’s victims. Yes, the first victim is a classic case of the killer (and the camera) ogling at a lady undressing before she is cruelly dispatched by Leo. But from there forward, the women we meet are remarkable for being both likable and realistic.

First we meet Clara (Jeanne Bates), a nurse who is helping to care for Leo’s mother. Leo sees victimizing Clara as a way to hurt his mother, but there’s also clearly some resentment there for the way that his mother praises and depends on Clara. Clara is just . . . so normal. She’s a woman who is good at her job, empathetic, and friendly.

We also meet a woman named Barbara (Diane Sayer) who works at an amusement park that Leo frequents to buy his dolls. While Barbara at first seems a bit glib and sarcastic, she speaks kindly to Leo. When she unintentionally upsets him---by mimicking a doll voice---she misreads his distress and believes he’s sad because he messed up the game. She kindly offers him a doll prize to cheer him up.

Finally, we meet Tally (Davey Divison), another amusement park worker on whom Leo has a big crush. Like Barbara, Tally is friendly and conversational with Leo. She seems like a nice person, but she also sets a boundary when Leo is too forward with her. Leo tries every play from what we’d now call the Pick-Up Artist playbook (love bombing, guilt tripping, etc), and Tally holds her ground and deflects him. When the police want to use her as bait, she’s like . . . no. She apologizes for not being brave enough, but she just wants to get out of town. It’s very, very relatable.

I don’t know, something about this movie really grew on me, and I’m not sure it’s because of what the movie was actually trying to do. Something about how profoundly normal all these women were, and how they got hurt or tangled up in violence because this man had a messed up childhood that has zero to do with them. I liked all of these women, but they aren’t Mary Sues. It touches on the horror that you can be a normal person just trying to be nice and go about your business, and some guy who is mad at women can totally swoop in and mess you up.

Again: I don’t think that this was actually on purpose. The extended sequences of Leo cleverly dodging the police shows that the movie was trying to center him and his exploits. But what ends up happening is a sort of accidental portrait of the normally one-dimensional victims of your run of the mill “mommy never loved me” killer.

It's interesting, I wonder, and somebody here knows I'm sure, maybe you maybe somebody else, if Psycho is the cinematic progenitor of the killer-due-to-mother trope. I understand, I think, were it comes from in real life but, in cinema, was Psycho the one that started this whole thing. I wrote up a movie at some point called The Invisible Maniac, and his whole psychosis and killing almost exclusively of women is because of his horrible mother. Of course Don't Go In The House is one of these and you have things like Mother's Day and its remake, there's really a LOT of these movies but they all seem to be post-Psycho.
I apparently had a mis-read on Psycho because I always thought it was a really interesting movie because Marion Crane was not some helpless damsel, she's actually having an affair and embezzling (or stealing?) money from her employer when she stops at the wrong motel. I thought it made her a really interesting character that was unlike "female victims" up to that point and was a bit of a breakthrough, especially since she is dispatched so surprisingly. But apparently the "correct" read is that she was an immoral woman by society's standards and had to be punished. Maybe that's true but that read still doesn't sit right with me. To me it made her a real character, like the women you describe here. Which was actually one of the things I liked about The Prowler. I actually liked the victims, they had personality. Even the "bitchy" girl was fun and funny.
Anyway, I was just pontificating on the trope of the killer maligned by his mother when you mentioned it in your review,

I agree. Marion Crane is a really interesting character. Yes, she does wrong things, but we understand why she does them and spend enough time with her to come to bond with her a bit. Even if the intention is to show her being punished, that only goes so far.