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SPOILER WARNING: The title of this movie spoils the movie because at the end it turns out it’s about this school for girls that is run by Satan. 

But damn, do we take our sweet time about getting there. Martha Sayers is investigating the apparent suicide of her sister, who had been a student at the Salem Academy for Women. She enrolls as a student herself to try to find out what might have driven her sister to this tragic fate.

The Salem Academy for Women is a remote Gothic estate, quite pretty in the daytime but it gets creepy at night, especially when the power goes out in a thunderstorm. Naturally, this is also the time when Martha and her newly-made friend Roberta Lockhart decide is the best time to pursue their investigations, sometimes while clad in nightgowns, natch.

(Strangely, these scenes aren’t as sexed-up as you might expect. From the title and the fact that it was produced by Aaron Spelling, you might be thinking this would be “Jiggle TV”. But it’s not, although it was marketed that way.)

We meet two members of the faculty at Satan’s School for Girls Salem Academy: one is the popular, handsome art teacher, and the other is the weird, creepy psychology teacher. In a massive plot twist that only the most shrewd and careful of dogs could have anticipated, the handsome, popular guy turns out to be Satan. Or in league with Satan. Or something. All we really find out is he’s assembling some manner of coven at the school. It’s not clear what they do, other than murder would-be recruits who try to back out. Also, they wear white, even when you would think any decent devil-worshipping witch-cult would wear black. 

Anyway, it’s stupid and cheesy and a waste of time. Wikipedia claims it was one of the most memorable TV movies of the 1970s. Apparently, you could just broadcast anything in the 1970s and people would watch it. The Star Wars Holiday Special is evidence of this.

But after all, that was the 1970s and there were only three channels and the internet didn’t exist. I watched this in 2025. What’s my excuse?

Well, I’m just interested in all manner of supernatural horror stories. Even the bad ones have something to say. Especially if they have Kate Jackson in them.

Drink up, Kate. You’ll need it for this script.

In the end, this seems to have been part of the wave of what MAD Magazine called “Devil flicks” in the early ’70s, probably stemming from Rosemary’s Baby. But it’s not scary enough to be good horror, not funny enough to be camp, and is just generally baffling as to how anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place.

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It’s been a long time since I read an Agatha Christie book. I read a few Poirot stories as a teenager and liked them, though I found them distinctly inferior to Sherlock Holmes. But this is, as the title suggests, a Halloween story, and so of course I had to read it.

It starts out at an English country house, where Mrs. Rowena Drake is throwing a traditional children’s Halloween party, very much in line with those described in this handbook. Among the adult attendees is Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer and friend of the great Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

All is going well until one of the young attendees is found drowned in the tub used for apple-bobbing. Making this even more suspicious is the fact that earlier in the evening, the young girl had proclaimed to everyone at the party that she had once witnessed a murder, though she refused to disclose details.

Ms. Oliver at once contacts her mustachioed friend, and he sets to work on interviewing the attendees at the party. As he does so, more mysterious intrigues begin to emerge about life in the seemingly quiet little village—he dredges up past murders that might fit the bill for what the poor child might have witnessed, as well as a complicated scheme of apparent forgery committed by a now-missing au pair girl. (Yeah, I had to look it up, too.)

The middle of the story dragged a bit, as it seemed like it was just Poirot going around talking to one person after another who laments that crime is worse nowadays because the justice system is always making excuses for criminals, looking for reasons to let them go only to have them kill again. “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent, etc.” There really is nothing new under the sun. If there was one thing that surprised me about this book is how very modern it felt. I think of Agatha Christie as writing a more genteel sort of mystery, but parts of this were surprisingly direct. Strange that so dark a book could be dedicated to P.G. Wodehouse!

In the later stages, our elderly detective ties the threads together and works out who must be responsible for the crimes. Simultaneously, however, another murder is about to take place, under sinister, vaguely ritualistic circumstances, and it’s a frantic rush to stop the lethal hand in time.

Is it a great book? No, I don’t think so. Parts of it were a drag. On the other hand, other parts were quite interesting and, as I said, felt surprisingly relevant. They say the most enduring books are about human nature, which makes them timeless. That certainly would be the case here. If you want a good mystery to read at Halloween, about the darkness which lurks under the benign veneer of English country estates… well, read Hound of the Baskervilles. But if you want a second one to read after that, Hallowe’en Party is a good choice.

Now, I said above that the story is timeless, and so it could be adapted, like Shakespeare, into a different setting. And no doubt this is what the great Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh had in mind when he decided to adapt it to the setting of post-World War II Venice in his 2023 film, A Haunting in Venice, starring himself as Hercule Poirot and Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver.

I like Kenneth Branagh. He’s a great actor (who can forget his St. Crispin’s Day speech?) and he directed one of the few Marvel superhero movies that I have both seen and enjoyed. I also like Tina Fey. (“How could I not? I’m entranced by those mud-colored eyes… that splay-footed walk… and that whole situation right there…”) Seriously, though, I like both leads and of course the whole thing is set at Halloween. What could go wrong?

Well… a lot.

First of all, it’s not really accurate to say A Haunting in Venice is “based on” or “adapted from” Hallowe’en Party. You can’t even really say that Hallowe’en Party “inspired” A Haunting in Venice, even though the cover of my edition of the book does say that. I think it might be correct to say that A Haunting in Venice was “suggested by an incident in” Hallowe’en Party. Even better might be to do as W.S. Gilbert did with his play The Princess, which he called a “a respectful operatic perversion” of a poem by Tennyson. “A cinematic perversion of Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party” pretty much fits—no need, I think, for the “respectful.”

In the Branagh Version (not to be confused with The Browning Version) Poirot has retired to Venice, disillusioned with life, humanity, and God. Until one day Ariadne Oliver shows up and asks him to join her at a children’s Halloween Party being held at the palazzo of a wealthy diva whose daughter recently drowned by falling into the canal. But, to quote Richard and Linda Thompson, “did she jump or was she pushed“?

So, to cheer herself up, the grieving mother has decided to hold a party that features a shadow puppet show about the vengeful spirits of dead children as entertainment, followed by a séance to communicate with her dead daughter’s spirit. Make it make sense, I dare you.

Poirot quickly finds proof that the medium conducting the séance is a fraud. Even so, it does appear there is something ghostly and mysterious happening in the creepy palazzo. For example, the medium has Poirot put on her cloak and mask, after which he goes to bob for apples and has his head shoved under the water, but survives. The medium appears to be a slight, thin woman. How would her cloak even fit the portly Poirot? She may be a medium, but he’s definitely a large! Ba-dum tss. I’ll be here all week, folks.

But the medium won’t, because she gets mysteriously murdered while Poirot was being nearly drowned. This prompts Poirot to lock everyone in the palazzo, since they are all now suspects. Except not Ariadne, because she’s Poirot’s friend, so he enlists her help to solve the case. And they’ve got a tall task before them, because you see, it turns out that they are operating in a universe where nothing makes sense and normal rules of logic do not apply. It is the detective fiction equivalent of Calvinball.

In the end, Poirot figures out what really happened, which is more than I can say for myself. All I know is it’s a sordid tale of murder, revenge, betrayal, and ends up showing that you can never really trust anyone. Naturally, this helps Poirot rediscover his passion for work and apparently restores his faith in humanity???

And the stupidest part is, I sort of enjoyed it. The story may make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but the acting is good, and the aesthetics are absolutely top-notch. The vibe of being in a haunted palazzo during a storm on Halloween night is carried off beautifully, so much so that it takes a while before you notice how inane everything is. It’s like eating all your Halloween candy in one night: in the moment, it’s delicious, and it’s only afterward that you feel sick with the consequences. 

A Haunting in Venice is the epitome of style over substance. It looks amazing, and maybe if it were just a generic thriller, that would be enough to go on. But the whole appeal of detective fiction is the pleasure of seeing how all the pieces fit together in a logical chain. You can have a weird, supernatural story where tons of things are left unexplained. Some of my favorite stories are like that. Or you can have the denouement where the genius investigator explains how all the seemingly-unrelated events are actually part of a coherent whole. But ya can’t have both! 

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“If you loved The Wizard of Oz,” the back of the DVD case informs me, “you’ll love accompanying Dorothy on this second thrilling adventure.”

Well, I don’t love The Wizard of Oz. I saw it on TV as a kid, and it left me cold. Sure, the transition from sepia to color must have been amazing in the ’30s, and the “it was all a dream–or was it?” ending hadn’t become a trope yet, but like Citizen Kane, it’s one of those movies that’s remarkable for its time, but is actually not that impressive.

Luckily, however, the box for Return to Oz is straight-up lying. If you loved The Wizard of Oz, this thing will probably strike you as a bizarre perversion; a downright nightmare. But if you’re like me… well, you can at least approach it with an open mind.

And of course, Wizard of Oz is based on a series of books, and the translation from page to screen altered the story a good deal. Return to Oz aimed to be more faithful to the source material, while still incorporating a few elements from the first film.

We start off with Dorothy back in Kansas, telling her aunt and uncle about her adventures in Oz. They of course don’t believe a word of it, and are concerned by her obsession with her imaginary friends. So they do what any concerned guardians would do: take her to get electroshock therapy from a smooth-talking doctor and his sinister nurse assistant at a Gothic asylum in the middle of nowhere.

And so Dorothy finds herself alone in a room–little more than a cell, really–at night, during a thunderstorm, waiting for the doctors to begin the treatment. While she waits, a mysterious blonde girl appears, ghost-like, and gives her a jack-o’-lantern to keep her company, before vanishing again as suddenly as she came.

The first 20 minutes of this film are pretty much a horror movie, culminating in the scene were she’s wheeled on a gurney to the electro-therapy room, hearing muffled screams of other patients as she goes. But just before the treatment can begin, lightning flashes, the power goes out, and the blonde girl reappears and releases Dorothy. They both flee into the stormy night, pursued by the furious nurse, finally plunging into a raging river to escape. Dorothy’s new friend disappears beneath the water, and Dorothy clings to a floating box for safety before finally falling asleep.

She awakens again in the land of Oz, accompanied now by her pet chicken Billina, who, like all animals in Oz, can talk. But Oz is much changed from when she last visited–the yellow brick road is in ruins, the Emerald City looks like Thomas Cole’s Desolation, its inhabitants turned to stone, and its streets patrolled by monstrous creatures known as “Wheelers,” which cackle insanely and threaten Dorothy and Billina. With the help of a clockwork automaton named Tik-Tok, Dorothy escapes the Wheelers and gets them to take her to the ruling power in the Emerald City, Princess Mombi.

Mombi lives in an ornate tower of gold and mirrors. She is a very beautiful woman. Actually, she is dozens of beautiful women, because she is a witch who keeps a collection of heads in glass cases, swapping them out as her whim dictates, like a fashion plate would switch her hats.

The scene where Mombi leads Dorothy through the winding hall of disembodied heads, all awake and staring back at her, might be even more disturbing than the earlier asylum scenes. It’s hard to say.

I’ve only described about half the film so far, but I don’t want to give everything away. While this is still a family-friendly picture, the ending, like all the best horror, is ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations. See if you can figure out what I mean!

But I hope what I’ve described above is enough to convince you that this is not your typical Disney movie. It has dark fantasy elements that feel distinctly unlike the lighthearted fare we normally get from the Mickey Mouse studio.

At the same time, it is also not simply a lazy conversion of a children’s story into a schlocky slasher film. Nowadays, if you hear they’ve made a “darker” sequel to a beloved story, you probably shudder–and you are right to do so! Cinema today has none of the craft displayed in Return to Oz, which is why it’s worthwhile to take a little time to discuss who made it.

Walter Murch is perhaps one of the greatest film editors of all time. (The only competitor I can think of would be Anne V. Coates.) He worked on such films as THX 1138, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The English Patient. Return to Oz was his one and only directorial effort, and that’s a pity, because he clearly had a talent for filmmaking. In his short book, In The Blink of an Eye, he makes many noteworthy observations on the cinematic art, such as that seeing things in a discontinuous order, as opposed to one continuous “shot”, is a relatively new phenomenon for humans, who were used to seeing things strictly in order until the advent of film technology in the early 20th century.

And yet, our minds took to this new experience rather easily, Murch observes, probably because it is similar to the process of dreaming, which is the one other state apart from watching a film in which we see disconnected images presented one after another. Murch specifically likens the experience of viewing a film in the theater to that of dreaming, suggesting we must first enter the proper state in order to experience films properly.

Also interesting is Murch’s article, “A Digital Cinema of the Mind? Could Be”, included as a sort of appendix to In The Blink of an Eye. Written in 1999, it contains some very curious ideas:

So let’s suppose a technical apotheosis some time in the middle of the 21st century, when it somehow becomes possible for one person to make an entire feature film, with virtual actors. Would this be a good thing?

…Let’s go even further, and force the issue to its ultimate conclusion by supposing the diabolical invention of a black box that could directly convert a single person’s thoughts into a viewable cinematic reality. You would attach a series of electrodes to various points on your skull and simply think the film into existence.

Does this remind you of anything? Anything at all?

But, Murch optimistically predicts, cinema will never die off as an art form, because it is fundamentally a communal, collaborative experience:

The midcentury pessimism about the future of cinema, which foresaw a future ruled by television, overlooked the perennial human urge — at least as old as language itself — to leave the home and assemble in the fire-lit dark with like-minded strangers to listen to stories.

The cinematic experience is a recreation of this ancient practice of theatrical renewal and bonding in modern terms, except that the flames of the Stone Age campfire have been replaced by the shifting images that are telling the story itself. Flames that dance the same way every time the film is projected, but that kindle different dreams in the mind of each beholder, fuse the permanency of literature with the spontaneity of theater.

But I would like to emphasize the leaving of familiar surroundings. The theatrical-cinematic experience is really born the moment someone says, “Let’s go out.” Implicit in this phrase is a dissatisfaction with one’s familiar surroundings and the corresponding need to open oneself up in an uncontrolled way to something “other.” 

In his essays, we start to get an idea of why Murch’s Return to Oz works so well: it feels fundamentally like a dream. (Indeed, one possible interpretation is that the Oz parts are Dorothy’s dream.) And because Murch recognized that film is itself a kind of dreaming, he was able to wed his subject matter to his medium quite beautifully.

If you loved The Wizard of Oz, you may not like this darker, more eerie and ambiguous sequel. But if you enjoy an escape into the realm of dark fantasy, hearkening back to the days when fairy tales were anything but saccharine, you will find much to enjoy in Murch’s take on L. Frank Baum’s world.

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I’ve never been a huge fan of John Wayne. It always seemed to me he played the same character in every movie he was in. And yet, all the same, there’s no denying he was a symbol of an era

In The Shootist, he plays J.B. Books, an aging gunfighter who rides into Carson City, Nevada to see an old friend, a Dr. Hostetler, to get a second opinion on what another medical man has told him.

Hostetler confirms the bad news: Books has an inoperable cancer. There’s nothing the doctor can do except prescribe laudanum, and give Books a reference to a boarding house down the road, operated by a widow named Bond Rogers and her son, Gillom.

Books takes a room, hoping only to die in peace, but word of the famous gunman soon spreads around town, and everyone, from the sheriff to the local newspaperman, is looking to make hay off of the dying celebrity.

Meanwhile, Books finds himself in a tumultuous relationship with Mrs. Rogers. There is immediate chemistry between them, but Books’s rough, gruff personality clashes with her prim religiosity. Gillom, for his part, is delighted to have Books staying in their house, but starts to resent him when he sees the stress it puts on his mother.

After a few days, Books realizes he isn’t going to be allowed to die peacefully, despite what Doc Hostetler recommends.  Various low-lifes keep trying to make names for themselves by ambushing Books, and a number of local criminals express their interest in becoming “The Man to Kill J.B. Books” in no uncertain terms. And so, Books realizes that in the end, his best bet at finding dignity is to die as he lived.

What makes the movie particularly noteworthy is twofold: first of all are how many quiet, understated scenes there are, especially between Books and Mrs. Rogers. They can communicate whole conversations worth of information with just a look between them. As is so often the case, what makes the scenes powerful are the things they don’t say.

And second is that there’s a certain “meta” element to the movie. The Shootist was John Wayne’s last film, and he would die of cancer only a few years after it was filmed. But that’s only the beginning of the parallels between the film’s plot and its behind-the-scenes reality. It’s about the end of the era of the Wild West, with Books as its last representative. As the sheriff tells him:

“The old days are gone, and you don’t know it. We’ve got waterworks, telephones, lights. We’ll have our streetcar electrified next year, and we’ve started to pave the streets. We’ve still got some weeding to do, but once we’re rid of people like you, we’ll have a goddamn Garden of Eden here. To put it in a nutshell, you’ve plain, plumb outlived your time.”

And the film itself is likewise the end of an era for Hollywood. Besides Wayne, you’ve got Lauren Bacall and Jimmy Stewart playing Mrs. Rogers and Doc Hostetler, two more stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood who grew gray in its service. Everything about the movie really does convey that, as Jim Morrison would say, “this is The End, beautiful friend.”

It’s really this element that elevates the film from just another “aging cowboy comes back for one more fight” story into something more sweeping and powerful. Some of the lines about sorrow and death seem more powerful coming from an actor delivering his last performance, and an actress who witnessed her own husband succumb to cancer.

In other words, I recommend this movie, even if you don’t particularly like John Wayne’s brand of Western. It’s surprisingly subtle and it packs an emotional punch, especially in the raw and poignant final scene, in which nary a word is spoken, but the actors’ faces and movements convey their tremendous anguish and turmoil.

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Movie poster for 'Sweet Liberty' featuring Alan Alda in a historical outfit, playfully holding a hat, beside a motorcycle, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Caine's names also displayed.

Let me begin with one of my trademark non-sequitur intros: my mother recently complained to me that she made the mistake of clicking a news article on her MSN homepage about Meghan Markle. And as a result, she sees multiple articles every day about Meghan Markle, because the algorithm thinks she’s interested in the activities and opinions of the Duchess of Sussex, which is not the case. (Yes, I know I could tell her to clear the cache, but frankly it’s fun to hear her rant about it.)

I bring this up because here at Ruined Chapel, we follow the opposite logic of the internet algorithm. Here, we believe in delivering our readers the offbeat and the esoteric; things that they had not expressed an interest in, because they did not know they existed. So when I threw the floor open to my audience to ask whether I should review Sweet Liberty or another, more famous picture, and I received replies to the effect that no one had heard of this film, the choice was easy for me. 

Sweet Liberty is a comedy about a history professor named Michael Burgess (Alan Alda) who has written a book called… Sweet Liberty, set during the American Revolution. And he’s achieved what so many authors dream of: Hollywood is making a movie of it! Even more improbably, they’re making it in the town where he lives, so he gets a front row seat to watching his book evolve from page to screen.

Unfortunately, this evolution means it changes from the carefully-researched, historically-grounded story he wrote to a slapstick sex comedy set during the Revolutionary War. Being a good student of history, Burgess is appalled to see the liberties the film takes, including a thorough revision of the character of Banastre Tarleton, transforming “Bloody Ban” into a romantic rogue, played by a charming English actor, Elliott James. (Himself played by a charming English actor, Michael Caine.)

Meanwhile, Dr. Burgess’s personal life is also on the rocks. After an argument, he and his girlfriend (Lise Hilboldt) decide to “take a break” from one another, and his aging mother (Lillian Gish) keeps pestering him to reunite her with an old friend of hers, even though such a reunion is for, multiple reasons, quite problematic.

The one good thing to come out of it all is when Dr. Burgess meets the lead actress in the film, Faith Healy. (Michelle Pfeiffer) She is the very image of the heroine of his book, as if the woman he has carefully studied from the 18th-century has stepped into his world. Naturally, he is attracted to her—but is he attracted to the actress, or the character she is playing?

The movie juggles Burgess’s outrage at the historical inaccuracy, his relationship turmoil, and the antics of the film’s cast and crew—particularly Elliott, whom Caine plays with an infectiously devil-may-care attitude—with only moderate success. All of the story elements are funny, but none of them get enough screen time to fully develop. As it is, it feels more like a loose series of sketches built around a concept.

The most interesting part is the subplot with Burgess’s mother, which at first felt like it was part of a different movie altogether, but ultimately proves to contain the core theme of the film. Burgess is faced with a choice of whether to tell his ailing parent the truth, as is his natural inclination, or to tell her something that will make her happy, as his girlfriend urges.

Which is better: the hard reality, or a comforting fairy-tale? This is a choice everyone, but perhaps especially a historian such as Burgess, must grapple with. As the filming of his book carries on, Burgess becomes increasingly desperate to have something historically accurate happen, finally leading the re-enactors performing the Battle of Cowpens, and insisting that the battle be depicted in accordance with historical accounts in a climactic and fittingly rebellious act of defiance to the show-biz crowd. 

The film is funny, but could have been much funnier. It has an interesting theme, but it could have explored it better. It feels overall like a really good idea, with so-so execution.

Still, the cast seems like they’re having a good time. Michael Caine’s scenes in particular are an absolute hoot, even one involving a trip to an amusement park that has nothing to do with the plot, but which seems like an excuse to act silly, which Caine does with relish. Also, it’s a rare thing to hear anybody reference Banastre Tarleton nowadays, so I applaud the movie for making him the focus of Burgess’s book, instead of the low-hanging fruit like Washington or somebody.

It’s a fun, feel-good movie, and anyone who loves history, particularly the American Revolution, is likely to enjoy it. I certainly know what it’s like to watch a historical movie and find myself slack-jawed with horror at the inaccuracies, so I could relate to Burgess on that level. It would be a good movie to watch while cooking the hot dogs and waiting for the fireworks to begin.

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Okay, imagine if George Lucas directed a rock-and-roll opera reboot of The Searchers. If that sounds insane, you’re right, but it’s how I’d describe this movie. Of course, Lucas didn’t actually direct this–Walter Hill did–but it shares GL’s fondness for ’50s diners, sports cars, and underworld bars.

The movie begins with rock singer Ellen Aim getting kidnapped by a motorcycle gang, and the strong, silent Tom Cody, her ex-boyfriend, being recruited to rescue her. He’s joined by the streetwise mercenary McCoy and Aim’s manager, an arrogant, snobbish type who acts above it all.

Between them, Cody and McCoy are able to rescue Ellen, but that’s just the start of the drama. Cody has made an enemy of the gang’s leader, Raven, who views to get revenge. Besides that, seeing Ellen again stokes the fires of old emotions, even if Cody’s stoic personality refuses to let him acknowledge them.

It’s not a complicated story. On the contrary, it’s simple, straightforward, and raw. What makes it work well are the aesthetics; a pitch-perfect blend of ’80s punk with ’50s rock-n’-roll. It’s unique, compelling, and effective. Rich, without being overwrought. Bold, without being pretentious.

Amy Madigan almost steals the show as McCoy. The character could so easily be a walking cliché, but Madigan manages to make her feel genuine. She has a very expressive face that communicates toughness but with a hint of deep emotion behind it. And we don’t need to know her whole backstory; the play of feelings in her eyes tells us all we need to know. She’s scrappy and hard-nosed, but in a way that seems earned, and not like she’s just there to be the perfunctory Strong Woman™.

Now, that is not to say this is a great movie. It’s not a great movie, and it wasn’t trying to be. And therein lies its strength: it has no grand ambitions; it’s just trying to tell a good story in an interesting way. A mood piece.

The only major problem I had with this movie was that it uses a common trope that I hate: which is the idea that you punch somebody’s lights out and they will be unconscious for a bit, but otherwise fine. This happens all the time in fiction, and it’s stupid. A fist to the head is not a precision instrument, and it can do serious damage.

But, since the ethos of this film is that of a comic book—back before “comic book movie” became shorthand for a CGI-heavy installment in an interminable franchise of capes and spandex—I guess a bit of unreality is allowable. I dunno.

Apart from that, it’s a pretty enjoyable flick. I’m not sure how I never heard of it until recently. Apparently, it was a box office failure. Which, ironically, is probably a good thing, because if it had been a success, it would have spawned a Tom Cody Cinematic Universe, which would inevitably have become stupid. They actually did make a spiritual sequel, Road to Hell, but despite the fact that I enjoyed Streets of Fire, my interest in seeing it is exactly zero. 🎶 “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away…”🎶

Like empires, movie franchises are doomed to become victims of their own success sooner or later. Better to make a one-off that fails with the moviegoing public but finds a second life as a cult hit.

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Book: Candy Coated Murder by Kathleen Suzette is a cozy mystery set in the town of Pumpkin Hollow. When local busybody Hazel Martin is murdered, Mia Jordan tries to solve the mystery while also preventing the town’s corrupt mayor from cancelling the Halloween season.

Like many another cozy mystery, I think it’s best not to take it too seriously. The way the town politics are depicted is not exactly realistic, and the mystery isn’t really solved so much as the killer just eventually reveals themselves. Chuck Litka could have a field day reviewing this.

Having said that, I liked it well enough. It’s campy and quick and it’s about a town that’s obsessed with Halloween. We need to encourage that sort of thing.

Movie: The Uninvited (1944) Richard Pastore recommended this movie to me. It’s about a brother and sister who buy an old house on the coast of Cornwall. They soon learn the house is haunted. More than that, the house haunts the mind of a young girl in the nearby village, whose mother died there when she was very young.

The dynamic between the main characters is excellent, and the movie does a great job of balancing creepy supernatural scenes with light banter and comic relief. The acting is strong and the ghost effects are quite good for the time.

Last year I recommended The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and if you liked that film, I would recommend this as well.

Book: The Horror of Mistvale Hall by William Jeffrey Rankin. This is a creepy tale very much in the tradition of M.R. James. At least, it is for the first two-thirds or so. The last act is more of an action-horror story in the vein of Lovecraft, or even of games like Doom or Quake. This may seem incongruous, with James’s brand of horror being rather Victorian, but I actually liked the dissonance. Part of what made James’s stories effective was the sudden, jarring intrusion of terrifying abominations into a comedy of manners. A good mix of old and new styles of horror.

Book: Haunted Halloween by Gwen Taylor and Jen Booker. This is a cozy cruise ship mystery, although most of it does not actually take place on the ship, but in a haunted Irish castle. When a storm strands the tour group inside the castle overnight, the assistant director of the cruise (who is also named Mia, just like the protagonist of the other cozy mystery above) ends up having to solve a fifty year old murder to put a ghost to rest. The mystery was predictable, but the setting was pretty good. It also reminded me of…

Movie: High Spirits (1988) This is a horror comedy set in an Irish castle whose owner opens it to tourists to raise money, trying to play up the ghostly attractions of the place. However, it then turns out to actually be haunted.

Parts of it are quite good, especially the scenes with the late, great Peter O’Toole. (In his younger days, he’d have made a damn good Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, BTW) Other parts are stupid, or in some cases downright unsettling and more than a little bizarre. The film is extremely uneven, but probably worth seeing just for O’Toole’s performance.

And now it’s your turn, dear reader. Have you any good Halloween-related media to recommend? We have less than a week to go, and I’m still trying to find just the right thing!

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First of all, this should not be confused with the 2000 Disney animated movie, The Emperor’s New Groove. That is a great movie in its own right, but it’s about an Incan emperor who is forced to grow and mature after being turned into a llama. Whereas this movie is about… wait for it… now, this will really surprise you…

Napoleon!

Yes, I know; you may be saying, as Louis Castaigne exasperatedly does to his cousin Hildred in The Repairer of Reputations: “Napoleon, Napoleon, Napoleon! …For heaven sake, have you nothing but Napoleons there?”

But let me reassure you that I am every bit as sane and well-adjusted as Hildred Castaigne, if not more so! You have no need to fear on that account. 🙂

Besides, I needed something to wash away the bitter taste of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. Whatever you think of the guy, he deserved a better movie than that.

The Emperor’s New Clothes begins with a teaser: we see a young boy looking at an illustrated biography of Napoleon on a magic lantern. As he gets to the final image, showing a picture of the emperor on his deathbed, a shadowy figure enters the room and says, “No… that’s not how it ended.” He steps in front of the screen and says to the boy, “Let me tell you what really happened…”

Flashback to St. Helena, where Napoleon and his aides have hatched a daring plan to retake the throne: Bonaparte will switch places with a lowly seaman named Eugene Lenormand, a deck-hand on a ship bound for France. From there, he will meet with a Bonapartist officer, who will convey him to Paris. Meanwhile, Lenormand will pretend to be Napoleon to fool the British authorities, until the emperor is in Paris and the switch can be revealed.

It’s a clever scheme, but it quickly goes wrong when the ship changes course and instead lands in Belgium, forcing Napoleon to improvise a new route to Paris, which takes him through Waterloo among other places, before he finally meets a Sergeant Justin Bommel, formerly of the Imperial Guard, who helps him make his way to French soil, and tells him to find a Bonapartist officer named Truchaut in Paris.

Napoleon finds Truchaut—in a coffin. The emperor’s best hope of retaking his throne has died, leaving behind a widow nicknamed “Pumpkin”, an adopted son, and a struggling fruit business.

Meanwhile, on St. Helena, the faux-Napoleon is coming to enjoy his life of luxury, gorging himself on the emperor’s food, taking long baths, and dictating a risqué memoir, all while the impatient officers wait for the deception to be revealed. Eventually, one of them tries to force the imposter to confess, but he simply tells the British guards that the man has gone mad.

Back in Paris, having been injured in a fall, and not having a clear idea how to salvage his plan, the real Napoleon devotes his brilliant strategic mind to rescuing the widow Pumpkin’s fruit-selling business. Armed with maps of the city, and his legendary talent for planning and organization, Napoleon provides the fruit vendors with a detailed plan of battle and heroic words to motivate them: “Remember,” he says, “we conquer or perish!”

This scene was when I knew this movie was something special. Much more than in the Ridley Scott film, more even than the 1970 Waterloo film, this scene captured why Napoleon was a great general. I think Scott’s film just took it for granted that because we have all heard about the formidable strategist’s powers, we would automatically believe it. Not this movie, and certainly not Ian Holm, who conveys it perfectly.

Soon, the fruit business is booming, and Pumpkin is finding herself drawn to the charismatic stranger lodging in her home, as he is to her. This is much to the dismay of Pumpkin’s friend, Dr. Lambert, who suspects the new arrival is hiding something.

On St. Helena, the Bonaparte doppelgänger dies suddenly, and the French and British officers both agree never to reveal the deception. When word of “Napoleon’s” death reaches Paris, the real emperor decides it is time to take back his rightful place… only he quickly realizes he has difficulty persuading anyone of his true identity, while Pumpkin is devastated that her beloved Eugene now suddenly seems to believe he is the Emperor of the French. As she tearfully says, “I hate Napoleon! He’s filled France with widows and orphans. He took my husband. I won’t let him take you too.”

When you read enough history of the period, you see there are basically two schools of thought re. old Boney: the Bonapartist view, that he was a Great Man who, through the sheer force of his will, brought the values of modernity forward, sweeping away the stale old monarchies and overseeing tremendous advances in science, letters, law, and the arts across Europe and elsewhere, all through his supreme gifts for military conquest.

And there is the Bourbon/British view: that he was a “Corsican ogre”; a weird little guy who stumbled into ruling a Revolution-devastated France and, thanks to his own neurotic insecurities, tyrannized the continent for 15 years before cooler heads finally brought him to heel. (This is basically the position Scott’s film took.)

The Emperor’s New Clothes takes a different view: that Napoleon was a Great Man, possessing great talents, but that he misused his gifts. That he was led astray by the siren song of ambition to a mirage of empire; believing that he should be a Caesar or an Alexander. And what did all this conquering get him in the end? Dying of stomach cancer on a wretched little island, away from his wife and children and family.

What if he had used all his tremendous talents for something else? What if he’d realized that being happy consists not in ruling over a massive empire, but in coming home at night to a loving family, sitting around the fireplace together?

This film gives Napoleon, as Paul Simon might say, “a shot at redemption” so he doesn’t “end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”

(Incidentally, in a way, this is also exactly the theme of the aforementioned Emperor’s New Groove movie. I find this rather cool.)

If you can’t tell by now, I’ll just straight-up say it: I love this movie. Ian Holm gives the best portrayal of Napoleon I’ve ever seen, capturing both his greatness and his flaws, not to mention also playing an amusing caricature of him as the impostor. And beyond the depiction of the upstart Corsican himself, the film felt authentic to the whole period. The early scenes of Napoleon wandering Belgium are especially gorgeous, and the film is great at showing us these little slices of life from the era, be it fruit-sellers, soldiers, deck-hands, carriage drivers, and even, in one memorable case, the inmates of an insane asylum.

If you’re into Napoleonic history, it’s a must-watch. If you’re not, well, it’s still worth checking out just for its beautiful scenes, its sweet story, and its inspiring message.

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People sometimes ask me, “Berthold, why do you do it? Why do you insist on reading obscure books, watching movies no one has ever heard of, etc.?”

On the face of it, it does seem a bit weird, I admit. And quite often, it turns out that something is unheard of because it wasn’t worth telling anyone about it.  To quote from Noah Goats’ wonderful Unpublishables (a book every indie author should read at least once) “one of the worst things about this planet is that the naysayers are almost always right.”

You know, the reviews of mine that do the best numbers are the ones about recent, big-name Hollywood movies. I’m still getting daily page views on the Napoleon review. This one will probably only get the die-hards who read every one of my posts. You people are built different, and I love you for it.

But, I digress! The question, why do I do it? Why am I reviewing things like… well, like some random movie from 1969 that is loosely based on a novel unfinished by Jack London in the 1910s and then completed by another author in the early ’60s?

The answer is that lesser-known media is blissfully free from all the corporate hype and criticism and commentary and meta-commentary and critical consensus and (shudder) discourse around something new and popular, and you are left with only art in its pure state, as something to be understood on its own terms. It’s like being in the gallery after hours, when the lights are out and the noisy tourists have all gone home and now it’s just you and the pieces on display. No docent will tell you what to think, or what the history was. It’s all up to you.

And sometimes, the most amazing thing happens: a story starts being told, and it pulls you right into it, and before you know what hit you, you’re meeting new characters, and getting interested in seeing what happens to them.

Well, I suppose I’ve wasted enough time on preamble; time to get on with the review proper! Only, there’s one thing you need to know first: while this movie is generally released under the title above, the full title in the UK is the much funnier The Assassination Bureau, Limited. (or Ltd.)

The story begins with a freelance journalist, Miss Sonya Winter, who is investigating a string of assassinations in fin de siècle Europe. She has discovered that there is a disciplined organization behind these murders, and she is hired by newspaper owner Lord Bostwick to investigate the bureau.

She does this in a rather bold way: by engaging the bureau’s services to assassinate its own chairman, Ivan Dragomiloff. Dragomiloff is rather excited at the challenge posed by Miss Winter’s request. He feels it will test the bureau’s abilities, and provide them with a much-needed exercise of their wits. Therefore, he cheerfully accepts the contract on his own life.

However, there is more here than meets the eye. Other members of the bureau’s board of directors have their eyes on using Dragomiloff’s death to gain full control, in order to use the bureau to foment a great war in Europe. And so begins a game of cat-and-mouse, with Dragomiloff racing across Europe and falling into the clutches of various members of the bureau; with Miss Winter following him all the way in pursuit of what promises to be the story of the century.

The film is fast-paced, quick-witted, and funny. It has this wonderful Edwardian aesthetic that, combined with the many  intricate and lethal gadgets the assassins employ, gives it a quasi-steampunk feel. It’s not a revolutionary story by any means, but it’s told so well that it doesn’t matter; it’s a fun ride from the first stop to the last.

It’s kind of like if they made a James Bond film set right before World War I. Except it’s better than almost every James Bond film I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, while also not turning into a farcical self-parody. It knows that its situations are at some level completely absurd, while at the same time taking the trouble to make the characters realistic enough that we care about them.

Now, of course, the film was made in the ’60s, so there are some things that haven’t aged well, and the special effects in the climactic scene are rather weak, even by the standards of the time. I’m not saying it’s a perfect movie, but it still makes for a fun way to kill 90 minutes, and it even manages to work in some philosophical thoughts on the morality of violence. Each of three main characters embodies a specific view on the subject, from Miss Winter’s pacifism to Dragomiloff’s chivalric code of killing to Lord Bostwick’s, shall we say, more pragmatic approach.

Anyhow, it’s a good movie and I recommend it to fans of thrillers and comedies alike. Don’t let it get too popular, though, or next thing you know, they’ll remake and reboot and franchise it until all the joy gets sucked out of the whole enterprise. The great thing about movies no one has heard of is that the studios haven’t thought to ruin them yet.

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How out of ideas is the modern movie industry? It’s to the point that they are rehashing ideas from HBO movies of nearly 30 years ago. And not even popular ones. Hardly anybody ever talks about this film. Well, after all, it is a product of the ’90s. Perhaps it is irrelevant to our own era. But all the same, it’s always interesting to see how the zeitgeist evolves.

The Second Civil War is a dark satirical comedy, centered around a fictional cable news network, News Net. When the film begins, the network is covering the arrival of refugees from Pakistan, fleeing a nuclear war, and admitted into the state of Idaho.

Idaho governor James Farley, who is seeking re-election, decides to close the state border, claiming they are already flooded with immigrants. Although publicly he poses as a hardline anti-immigration conservative, in his private life the governor actually enjoys many pleasures from outside of the U.S., most strongly evidenced by the fact he is cheating on his wife with a Mexican-American News Net reporter.

The President, acting on the recommendation of his advisor, Mr. Buchan, issues an ultimatum by which Gov. Farley must open the border. In a bit of a humorous twist, they move the deadline so as not to interfere with the finale of a TV soap opera, showing that their decisions are driven as much by a desire for ratings as anything else.

Meanwhile, News Net continues to cover the evolving situation with increasing fervor, and both the president and the governor–or at least, the governor’s hapless advisor–watch the television coverage closely, their actions driven in response to what is said about them on the news.

Gradually, other states begin to join in on the side of Idaho, pledging their own National Guard units to come to the embattled state’s aid. Soon, it becomes a political football to be kicked around in the increasingly Balkanized U.S. Congress. As one News Net report (played by James Earl Jones) describes the legislature, it’s become a “political bazaar” where different factions brazenly feud with one another.

(I am reminded of a line from another late ’90s movie: “The Republic is not what it once was… there is no interest in the common good.“)

Or, as the News Net reporter muses when talking with a militant Congressman: “I rode the buses back in the ’60s to bring people together. Seems pretty unfashionable nowadays.”

The situation continues to escalate, exposing all the various fault lines of division that exist across the country. Meanwhile, the reporters of News Net continue to both watch and make the news, selling each new flashpoint in the conflict with a gee-whiz graphic and punchy headline.

There are also all sorts of minor characters who add flavor to the story: from the tough-talking Army general and his old rival who leads the militia, to the cynical on-the-ground reporters who constantly threaten to quit only to be dragged back in, to the social activist who quickly brands anyone and everyone who disagrees with her as a fascist.

Maybe the best performance of all is Joanna Cassidy as Helena Newman, the co-anchor for the News Net coverage. She doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but her reaction as matters come to an increasingly serious crisis is one of the most memorable scenes in the whole film.

Ultimately, like most wars, once everything has built to a certain point, a simple accident is enough to light the fuse and create a violent reaction. We don’t see much of this, but we see enough. The film ends with James Earl Jones’s character giving one more melancholy reflection, and then a final, darkly ironic line plays as the end credits roll.

The cast in this is incredibly good: besides Jones and Cassidy, you have Beau Bridges in an Emmy-winning performance as Gov. Farley, the late, great Phil Hartman as the President, and James Coburn as his cynical advisor. Each character adds something; even those with relatively little screen time.

I have two minor criticisms. First, there’s a ridiculous amount of swearing in the dialogue. Now, I’m certainly not averse to profanity when the situation calls for it, and the nation plunging into civil war does call for it, but there is just so much that it feels gratuitous. It should have been reduced by about 30%, so that when people do curse, it carries real impact. But, this was the ’90s, and I think it might have seemed edgy at the time.

The second criticism is that one of the characters gets a basic fact about the first U.S. Civil War wrong. It almost makes me wonder if it’s a deliberate error, but somehow I don’t think so from the context. I can’t say exactly what it is, but let’s just say it’s rather jarring.

Other than these two minor points, I have to say this film holds up remarkably well as a satirical look at U.S. institutions and culture, all while giving us plausible, well-rounded characters, as opposed to mere puppets representing various ideologies. The characters feel real, which makes watching the disaster play out all the more poignant.

Of course, back in 1997, this must have all felt so far-fetched and extreme as to be almost absurd. Hence, why the film was presented as a comedy, albeit a very bleak one that loses any semblance of humor in the final few minutes.

But that was then, and this, moreover, is now. Have things changed? Oh, certainly they have changed! Have they changed in a way that makes this movie feel dated? Do the issues it raises now seem like the provincial ideas of a bygone era? Can we, the citizens of 2024, look back on this and laugh at it as an overwrought fever-dream that even in its time was unduly cynical and paranoid?

Or…?

Well, it would be pointless to suggest various other reactions one might have. You can watch the film yourself, and make up your own mind, if you so choose. I’m just reviewing it so you know it exists; what you do about it is up to you. To paraphrase something another cable news channel (not unlike News Net) used to say: “I report, you decide.”