Talk About Vampires

Watch out for vampire vixens prowling your local watering hole, like Cynthia Bond in 1990's Def by Temptation. Written by, directed by, and starring James Bond III, this plucky little film, featuring an early performance by Samuel L. Jackson, really had me rooting for it until it stole its best effects scene from Videodrome.

Bond III plays a religious lad, training for the ministry, named Joel. He goes to New York City to visit his brother, K (Kadeem Hardison), who's a famous actor.

The chemistry between Hardison and every other actor he's paired with, in any scene, is terrific and the best part of the movie. I really felt the affection and mild rivalry between the brothers. Later, K teams up with Dougy (Bill Nunn), the cop trying to stop the vampiress who's been seducing and killing men. Hardison has great chemistry with Nunn and Cynthia Bond. The scene where he figures out she's a vampire because she has no reflection in the mirror is great.

That wall art is a nice, subtle touch.

The editing is really odd and it feels like a lot of scenes end too soon. Some sequences of shots feel crammed together. The film's at its best when it just stays on pairs of actors talking.

Then K encounters a haunted television that starts sucking him in.

And I thought, "Oh, it's a homage to Videodrome." But it kept going, not just taking the initial head-in-the-TV shot but also entrails bursting out of the TV and a face trying to escape the TV.

Videodrome was not well known in the mainstream so this just feels like theft, especially since it didn't tie in very well to the vampire storyline.

Still, it's a pleasure watching these actors work. Samuel L. Jackson's part is too small but it's nice seeing him.

Def by Temptation is available on The Criterion Channel.

Piper Laurie

Her presence onscreen was beauty and magnetism, her experimental performances were mischief and insight. Piper Laurie died at the age of 91 on Saturday. I'd recently watched her in The Faculty, a 1998 Robert Rodriguez movie in which she plays a modest high school teacher who becomes a sinister, vivacious alien. She was brilliant as both.

In the role I know her best for, as Catherine Martell on my favourite TV show, Twin Peaks, she also had the opportunity to play two roles and it can be fairly said she disappeared into one of them.

I can't find any of her best, non-spoilery, scenes from Twin Peaks on YouTube. I'd upload one myself but, with my lousy internet, it would take all day and I wouldn't be able to do anything else online. I'm particularly fond of the bedroom scene between her and Richard Beymer in the second episode. But here she is with Jack Nance, playing her husband, Pete.

He's so weird and twitchy and she's always razor sharp. You get the impression of two kinds of intellect crashing against each other.

Laurie started her career as the beautiful alcoholic girl opposite Paul Newman in The Hustler (1961), a completely different performance. She certainly had range but she was consistently captivating.

Twitter Sonnet #1749

A simple gate can ferry dogs to Hell.
Confusing closets carry guns and hearts.
And something else that rings a silver bell.
The haunted crystals fill the shopping carts.
Of quiet names, the sparrow speaks to cool.
Resulting waves were tamped to placid glass.
For where the keel could cut's a standing pool.
In dreams, parades of pandas duly pass.
A touch of glacier tied the hill to land.
When stealing stones, observe the swaying grass.
As roots entwine the softest bed of sand.
A parcel waits to sate the anxious lass.
The sound of sawing wood's an eerie song.
Chameleon beauties stretch the hours long.

The Loki Party Keeps Going

Loki season two, episode two: what a pleasant evening of television. Sure, it has its flaws but I was completely absorbed in the story. After a long day's work, I made dinner and sat in front of the computer and was transported to the world of the TVA and Loki and Mobius. There are many ways movies or TV shows can be great, and this is certainly one of them.

I really feel like the makers of the show this season looked at season one, saw what was working and what wasn't, and correctly adjusted the recipe for season two. Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson and their chemistry were the best parts of season one and now we're getting a whole lot of the two playing off each other. It was lame Loki couldn't be villainous or mischievous in season one, and here we got him being mischievous and kind of villainous.

He's actually using his powers, which were never firmly established in the films. I don't know how well delineated they are in the comics. But as a Norse god, he's got to have something. And here he's got that something and swagger, too.

Hiddleston is a delight to watch, especially when he was tormenting the captive Brad. Those expressive eyebrows of his are dynamite. And Owen Wilson continues to be the perfect foil or complement.

The best way I can tell the show's working is that its flaws absolutely don't matter to me. Sylvie instantly pulling info from Brad's brain when Loki had to go through interrogating him? The show doesn't need to handwave it, I'll do it for the show. I'm sure there's an explanation, mumble mumble, Dark Side. Whatever. I'm even liking Sylvie this season and how she just wants to hide from her destiny, working at McDonalds in the '80s. It kind of says something about nostalgia, doesn't it?

Loki is available on Disney+.

Our Luckiest Day

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone, and a Friday the 13th in October, no less! Though, of course, I got here quicker than most of you, for whom to-day is still likely Thursday. Friday the 13th is a western superstition but people do know about it here in Japan. A few teachers I've brought it up to immediately refer to its origin being Christian, having to do with the Last Supper and the crucifixion. When I say they that's only one possible explanation, and that the origin of the superstition isn't actually known, I usually get a quiet, indulgent nod, like I don't know what I'm talking about. To be fair, most of the foreigners who come to teach English here are really ignorant so I'm not surprised many of the teachers I work with are accustomed to knowing more about America and English grammar than the Americans they meet.

One teacher even remembered Jason's birthday from the Friday the 13th franchise and she seemed satisfied to have beaten me at movie trivia. I have only very dim memories of the Friday the 13th movies, which I saw when I was a child. I don't even remember which ones I've seen. I suppose this would be a good time to watch one or two of them again. I really don't want to, though.

One Can be Too Good a Host

There are dangers to being too polite, as John Hurt discovers when he allows Alan Bates to invite himself into his home in 1978's The Shout. Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, much of this film is effectively unsettling. Some of it is a little silly.

A framing story introduces us to Crossley (Bates) at a cricket match on the grounds of an asylum. A young man (Tim Curry) has come to talk to him and Crossley recalls his experiences with one of the cricket players, Anthony (John Hurt).

We go back some time to find Anthony is a musician. He plays the church organ for a living and creates experimental music in his spare time. He finds Crossley outside his home one day, claiming not to have eaten in days and telling Anthony he ought to invite him to dinner.

A situation rapidly devolves from Anthony and his wife, Rachel (Susannah York), feeling forced to accommodate Crossley for the sake of courtesy to somehow Crossley magically seducing Rachel. Some of it is a bit hard to swallow. Some people can be pretty spineless but it's hard to imagine a couple allowing a guy like Alan Bates walk all over them. There is magic involved but Bates' performance, maybe, lacks something to impress me with the gravity of his magic.

John Hurt and Susannah York are both really good, though, and there are times when the film's blurring between reality and dream is really effective.

The Shout is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1748

On ticket scrawls, the rusty car abode.
Incentive changed the oil years in drive.
A flower crown on goblin she bestowed.
We saw the pair were glad to be alive.
In tranquil fields, the cricket goes apace.
When wanting wobbly tarps, ignite the wind.
For capes and cloaks, we covet colder space.
So chilly thoughts to home do kindly send.
An absent gong requires human shouts.
Divesting masks reveals the largest mouth.
Electric fighters meet for power bouts.
Another name has changed, arriving south.
Revealing walking feet, the hem was touched.
A demon says the clouds aren't glowing much.

The Wick Stays Lit

John Wick keeps beating people up in John Wick: Chapter 3--Parabellum. As the series gradually sheds the thin pretense of a story from the first film, it becomes more and more the vicarious video game experience everyone loves.

This time, everyone's trying to kill John (Keanu Reeves), like, everyone in the world or something, but he's killing them every time they try. He's in New York, he's in North Africa, he's some other places with rain slicked streets and neon lights. There's a bald guy who speaks Japanese (Mark Dacascos).

Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne return and they're joined by Anjelica Huston and Halle Berry. Berry, who I don't recall especially liking in any film before this, is just fine as a woman who beats up and kills people.

Where the first film involved Russian mafia, this third one focuses entirely on the society of assassins who cool their heels at special, ritzy hotels. No-one ever even mentions the cops in this movie. During one scene where Wick is dispatching a couple of guys with knives in a groovy glass room, I got to thinking about what a normal job might have been for Wick before all this happened, before all the drama became about assassins killing assassins over rules at the Continental. Who did John kill professionally? Leaders of state? Businessmen? The movie keeps it's head well above any potential moral complexity. It's hilarious the Wikipedia entry calls this a "neo-noir". Might as well call Seinfeld a neo-noir.

But, wow, that fight choreography. And it just keeps going and going.

John Wick: Chapter 3--Parabellum is available on Netflix.

The Punishing Punisher

The last mile is the hardest mile, they say. After watching through three seasons of Daredevil, three of Jessica Jones, two of Luke Cage and Iron Fist, and the Defenders miniseries, my greatest challenge seems to be Punisher season 2. And that's surprising because I actually really liked season 1. I'd say season one of Punisher is among the very best of Marvel television. But season two is like . . . the whole staff was lobotomised and their brains replaced with hamsters.

It's the same writing staff, mostly. Supposedly the same people who came up with the compelling story of Frank's bitter fight with former friend and marine, Billy, and the really effective tale of the intelligence expert forced into hiding, watching the wife and children who think he's dead like a stalker. These same people supposedly wrote this story about Frank with a pretty teenage sidekick who teaches him Three Card Monte, this story in which the FBI agent, Mardani, springs Frank from jail with helicopters so he can come back to New York to help her track down Billy Russo, only for her to get fed up with him living in her apartment and order him to leave the city because she's . . . annoyed.

It started out decently enough, with the locale moved to some midwestern town where Frank hooks up with a bartender. A mysterious bunch of oddly co-ed generic thugs show up trying to kill a girl hanging around the bar and Frank's forced to protect her, drawing him into a whole lot of trouble.

That was okay. But meanwhile, back in New York, Billy Russo is coming to and wearing a bizarre mask with no explanation. Later we're told it's a therapy tool and he drew designs on it to express himself or something. That's a pretty lame explanation but I guess it's something. It still doesn't explain how no-one notices him escaping the hospital wearing that thing.

And then we finally see his face, now reborn as the comic villain Jigsaw and it's . . .

Oh, come on. Frank was supposed to have messed up Billy's face so bad he had brain damage. He clearly broke his nose. These scars are the best they could do?

The episode I watched last night, the sixth episode, somehow went to new lows. Frank and the girl have found a new hideout in a motor home.

Whose motor home? Did Frank buy it? Did he steal it? Who decorated it? Where is it parked? None of these questions are answered! We don't even get an exterior shot and it seems to exist in a void. It's dreamlike. Is this a dream?

The episode begins with Frank and the girl shaking down a paedophile for information. This guy who apparently has a professional studio he exclusively rents out to paedophiles. He's like someone from a bad '50s exploitation film, like a guy who does lame made up crimes because the filmmakers or studio baulked at confronting a real issue. Ironically, I think the goal was just to get footage of the girl in a romper.

I will get through this. I will finish the Marvel Netflix shows. I've come this far. I will succeed.

The Punisher is available on Disney+.

Sport Pumpkin

Happy Sports Day, everyone. Yes, sports are so important in Japan there's in fact a holiday for them. Sports really are like a religion in Japan, as you can see from the tradition for Japanese baseball players to shave their heads (though that particular tradition is in decline). I suspect it's partly related to the fact that western style sports were only introduced to Japan at the end of the 19th century. Before that, there were only martial arts, which tend to have religious or at least ritualistic connotations. So it makes sense playing baseball would be like becoming a monk.

Last week, the schools had their sports festivals in which an entire day was given over for students to compete in relay races, tugs of war, and obstacle courses. It happened to be my last day at one particular school. The school's brass band, whom I often visited after school, gave me these flowers and they all sang for me the theme from Space Battleship Yamato.

I was overwhelmed, to say the least. It's truly an honour to work with such lovely students.

To-day, of course, I haven't been playing sports. I have been making pumpkin muffins:

Pumpkin muffin recipes I found online called for pumpkin puree but I decided to mince it instead.

I used a quarter of a green Japanese pumpkin for a batch of six muffins, chopping that quarter into four parts. Three parts I chop into tiny pieces to mix into the batter and the fourth part I chop into large chunks to sprinkle on the tops.

Normally in Japan, pumpkin is eaten, with the rind, boiled in soups or fried as tempura. So I thought, why not bake it? The muffins are pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. I used cinnamon and brown sugar.

Halloween in Japan is kind of seen as an adult holiday due to the wild Halloween parties held in Shibuya every year. But a lot of people, especially people selling sweets, are trying to make Halloween happen for kids. I'm trying to do my part. Here's a worksheet I made recently to teach relative pronouns:

By the way, my preferred relative pronouns are that, who, and whom.

X Sonnet #1747

The living truth was far behind the tube.
A trusting god would eat the breakfast cake.
So place the proper squares around the cube.
You're gonna buy another bridge to stake.
The lengthy lizard bugs devour guts.
Remember looking lost the Nazis skins.
Exploding heads compete with rifle butts.
An angry sky attests the end begins.
Descending guests concealed their eyes from view.
The mountainside was shaken past resolve.
The atmosphere was orange and liquid blue.
A thousand grains do morbid plans involve.
Approaching pumpkin moons survey the ground.
The nights absorb a shaky screaming sound.

We've Secretly Replaced the Monsters with Folgers Crystals

So you want to tell a story about LGBTQ+ struggles but you don't want to write nuanced characters or situations. How do you lend your story the veneer of intelligence to garner, if not popularity, then at least shallow respect? Try using a secret code, something just hard enough that critics easily impressed by their own intelligence can decipher it. For your model, I suggest 1990's Nightbreed in which a race of demons are hunted and driven underground by redneck caricatures.

David Cronenberg did not write or direct this but he tried his hand (unsuccessfully) at acting, playing a psychotherapist, Dr. Decker, who's secretly a serial killer.

He convinces his patient, the film's hero, Boone (Craig Sheffer), that he's guilty of crimes Decker's actually guilty of, an unsubtle comment on how psychotherapists stay in business. Eventually Boone is forced to run off and join the Nightbreed, who draw the ire of cartoonish southern police.

The film was written and directed by Clive Barker. It has some impressive makeup and prosthetic effects for the Nightbreed but as Boone's girlfriend, Lori (Anne Bobby), wanders into the den of demons in search of her beau, it becomes quickly apparent Barker is not up to the task he sets himself. Danny Elfman's score suggests we're meant to be following Lori's point of view as she's overwhelmed by a fantastic labyrinth of magic and monsters. But the cheap lighting and boring camera work makes it feel more like a low budget TV show.

If you're a liberal who likes your opinions echoed back at you with all the subtlety of a mack truck, this movie may be for you.

Nightbreed is available on Cinemax and Shout! Factory.

On Loki Time

Hooray, a Disney+ show that doesn't suck. Not so far anyway. The first episode of Loki season 2 is not only better than the recent Marvel and Star Wars content, it's better than Loki season 1.

Hitting the ground running, the premiere episode starts with the previous finale's multiversal peril cliffhanger and immediately starts piling on time travel and bureaucratic shenanigans.

Owen Wilson proves once again he's a perfect calm foil for this kind of plot and his chemistry with Tom Hiddleston continues to be very charming.

This episode adds Ke Huy Quan to the cast as a maintenance guy at the Time Variance Authority and he rounds out the entertaining trio with an unflappable demeanour of casual urgency.

As in the last season, I dislike how Loki isn't especially Loki-ish. You could really swap him out for any generic guy in this episode, there's nothing about what he's doing that makes him the god of mischief. But from what I've heard about the writing in the rest of this season, there was a deliberate effort to make him more of an anti-hero this time. Hopefully they managed to pull it off.

Loki is available on Disney+.

Reading About Watching

Usually I prefer reading fiction but, being between fiction novels now, I've gone back to the books of movie criticism I got earlier this year. I finished Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation and have continued reading Pauline Kael's I Lost It at the Movies. Tarantino's book was a great companion to the movies he talked about, a charmingly personal tour of '70s cinema. I certainly didn't always agree with him. I can't share his love for Paradise Alley and I was a little surprised he considered Sylvester Stallone's inspiration for the film to be entirely The Dead End Kids. I thought it was at least partially inspired by Night and the City. But his views on Steve McQueen films and on Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse really enhanced my appreciation for them.

Kael's book, largely written in the '50s, is less interesting to me for the insights Kael has into the films she's talking about and more as a specimen of opinion pieces from the era. Of all the books I've read from the '50s, hers is the most directly expressive of conservative opinions and it gives me a clearer impression of how politics were polarised at that time than I've ever had before. This is from her chapter on New Wave British films:

The semidocumentary surface of these films is linked to an ideology which is in its way peculiar to English film critics--the ideology of commitment. If you read Sight and Sound, in which so many films are appraised for the director's degree of commitment to a social point of view (good if left wing, bad if not), you will discover that in this ideology, location shooting, particularly around working-class locations, is, in itself, almost a proof of commitment. In judging works from other countries, the English will overestimate a film like Marty, and they'll suggest that a film that is stylized or that deals with upper-class characters is somehow "evasive"--that it doesn't want to come to terms with the material. This attitude gives the critics an extraordinarily high moral tone.

Imagine what she'd have thought of Jeanne Dielmann getting voted number one on Sight and Sound's greatest films list.

The British films she talks about in the cited chapter include some I admired myself--Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Room at the Top, and Look Back in Anger--and Kael is not entirely negative about them. She seems to have liked Room at the Top best of all. But she makes a good point that realism or focus on working-class characters does not, by themselves, make movies great.

X Sonnet #1746

The mad and restless horses prowl the heath.
The whites of violent eyes demand a light.
Obtrusive fog descends like monster teeth.
Pervasive chill compels the blood to fight.
A giant toe could span a couple trains.
Surrounding forests dropped their leaves of cash.
Cavorting ghosts convened for growing pains.
When life arose, 'twas over barley mash.
Where falling trees arrive at leaves it's late.
The autumn weather's nice for cleaning floors.
But faeries giving birth'll make you wait.
Despite the fact you never cared for bores.
A fleet of ties eclipsed the collar sun.
Across the leggy plain the trousers run.

A Sucking Tunnel

I was amused and even a little surprised by the heights of stupidity achieved by last night's finale of Ahsoka. The cream of the jest would be if Disney now follows through with giving Dave Filoni an actual Star Wars movie to write and/or direct. I mean, it could work. With maybe the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffing on the thing (preferably Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Trace Beaulieu).

I did kind of like the scene where Ezra built his new lightsaber. Even though I never liked Kanan, it was a cool conversation between David Tennant as the droid and Eman Esfandi as Ezra. But it was all downhill for the rest of the episode.

Ahsoka's ship is for some reason hovering slowly over the snail people and on top of Ahsoka's ship is Ahsoka herself meditating and Sabine hanging out. We get a few more pieces of the maddening, time killing dialogue Filoni likes to give his female characters. SABINE: "So you know" AHSOKA: "I do." We finally learn the bone of contention between Ahsoka and Sabine was that Ahsoka feared Sabine would seek vengeance for the Empire's attack on Mandalore. The character motivation we should have had from the beginning. But I doubt Filoni had thought of it until the last episode since the beef between the two was originally implied to be a clash of personalities.

Is it wise to be sitting on top of the ship when they know TIE Fighters can swoop in at any time? I suppose they figure they can get back inside fast enough for the shields to go up or for Huyang to execute evasive manoeuvres . . .

Oh, yeah, no-one moves fast on this show.

Well, Diana Lee Inosanto was kind of quick in her duel with Rosario Dawson. I was reminded of how George Sanders, who considered himself a terrible sword fighter, said Tyrone Power could make him look quick when Power played the hero to Sanders' villain in The Black Swan. Only here the roles are reversed as it's our heroine who lumbers about with her lightsabers like an average schlub who just got out of bed. With Ahsoka's makeup and prosthetics, it should've been easy to use a body double who could actually fight. My guess is Disney was just too cheap. Yet they throw money at Dave Filoni.

Not too much money since they evidently didn't have a Star Destroyer bridge set. So Thrawn had to do all his strategising in the witch's tower and when he finally leaves in the climax he does so aboard the trans-galactic ring ship. I don't see why they don't just keep a Star Destroyer bridge set on standby. Why not just reuse the one used on Andor? Might as well ask why Sabine doesn't have her jetpack.

The answer, of course, is so we could have the scene of her and Ezra Force jumping into the Star Destroyer hanger. Ezra makes it and takes down two stormtroopers so he can stand up with his back to the hanger and yell at Sabine, apparently unconcerned about the possibility of any number of Imperials getting the drop on him. Even though a zombie stormtrooper had gotten the drop on him just minutes earlier.

Filoni piles layers of weak logic from here on in. Ezra overhears the dead stormtrooper's comm, a communication about reinforcements coming to the location. Why would they be sending reinforcements to the location if they didn't know Ezra was there? How would they know Ezra was there if they can't see him next to unconscious stormtrooper they're trying to talk to? Given it's a whole huge hanger that should be loaded with personnel, despite the fact that Ezra refuses even to glance around, someone should see him.

This whole sequence of idiocy ends with Ezra landing an Imperial shuttle in a New Republic cruiser's hanger. He exits the ship wearing a full suit of stormtrooper armour, including the helmet, while everyone trains weapons on him. Maybe his comms were knocked out and the New Republic ship just let him come aboard on faith (we know they're that dumb) so they didn't know who was aboard. He still could've removed his helmet before exiting the ship. God, it's so stupid I'm going to need a helmet for banging my head against the wall just thinking about it.

So it seems like the rumours about the show being a setup for a Heir to the Empire film or series might be true. All I can say is they better let Timothy Zahn do the writing. He's at least better than Filoni though why the hell they would bank on even Zahn is a mystery considering his trilogy of books really only achieved the success they did because it was the first real Star Wars content in a long time after Return of the Jedi. The plot hinges on the ysalamiri and just look at all the Star Wars content that featured the ysalamiri after that. Yeah, basically none.

Anyway, that's another kettle of fish.

Ahsoka is available on Disney+. Though I'm wondering if they won't try to make everyone forget this one like they did the Willow series.

Only Mothers in the Building

The final episode of Only Murders in the Building season three aired last night, a solid finale with good moments, though I found myself more intrigued by the setup for season four.

Last night's episode was directed by veteran TV director Jamie Babbit (she also directed several episodes of the first two seasons) and was well constructed. Oliver rushing off stage and declaring he felt like he was 58 again was nicely treated as an aside while focus remained on Mabel exploring her doubt about the killer's identity.

It turns out the season had an overarching theme about self-sacrificing motherhood, mirrored by the Death Rattle Dazzle musical. It made the actual killer's identity the more obvious when Oliver, Charles, and Mabel confronted their prime suspect. The theme gave several actresses moments to shine this season, particularly Meryl Streep.

There were hints she might appear in season four and so might Tobart, Mabel's boyfriend. I'm still not too keen on the latter. But I haven't really liked any of Mabel's love interests. Somehow, they all seem very cold. Meanwhile, Oliver and Loretta suffer from being a little too comfortable. But it is a delight seeing Martin Short and Meryl Streep together.

Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ in most countries (Japan, for example).

The Doctor was X

If you should find a cannibal is running loose among the staff of your mad scientist college, it's best to conduct an investigation yourself in your enormous emerald mansion. 1932's Doctor X presents just such an administrative problem and solution. The result is a truly fantastic early Technicolor horror film.

Dr. Xavier (Lionel Atwell) presides over the college and his daughter, Joanne, is played by the beautiful Fay Wray.

It's times like this I'm reminded Wray was not just some lucky girl who happened to be picked up by the right giant gorilla at the right time. Her expressions imply a perceptive and sensual nature. She seems innocently indignant and then just turned on by the goofy newsman who functions as the film's hero, Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy).

He's a practical joker and there are multiple scenes featuring his hand buzzer. It kind of works, though, and in fact leads to one of the best scenes in the film which begins with a shot of surprisingly effective horror and ends with a surprisingly effective payoff for Lee's penchant for practical jokes.

The film was shot in two colour Technicolor, which means everything's shades of green or red. The film has been restored thanks to the George Lucas foundation (nice to see how those Star Wars billions are being spent) and that limited colour palette looks stunning, particularly the greens.

Doctor X is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet #1745

Her castle wall was lined with secret glass.
With ev'ry step a trap, her hem was scratched.
Through darkened halls, she'd see a figure pass.
Her old and tattered drapes were crudely patched.
Explaining dolls to castle guards, she rushed.
Her words became a soup before she ate.
But soupy meals could never sate a lush.
You see, her pulpy shelves had fed her pate.
The em'rald curtains wreathed her stealthy trip.
The danger built on stones beneath her feet.
She poised the lemon rind across her lip.
The hobbled guest prefers her trick to treat.
She found a horse behind the wall at ten.
A royal crown was left where last she'd been.

What Every Child Needs

When pursuing a perpetrator, every cop worth his salt knows you gotta stop the bastard from transferring his soul into a nearby doll. Chris Sarandon makes a rookie mistake and fails to stop Brad Dourif from doing this in 1988's Child's Play. This movie is a lot more fun than I was expecting and its effects work holds up really well, looking even better than recent entries in the evil doll genre, such as M3GAN.

The campy humour is top notch, too. I love when Catherine Hicks comes home to find her best friend's been killed and all she wants to do is get the cops out of her hair so she can have a moment's peace.

Every emotional reaction just feels slightly off. Chris Sarandon, as the lead investigator, is ruffled and frustrated with the woman hampering his investigation. None of the cops have a drop of sympathy for the fact that her best friend was just thrown out of a sixth storey window and Hicks' character doesn't seem to need any.

Her little boy, Andy (Alex Vincent), gets Chucky for a birthday present. Before long, Chucky's asking Andy to take him to slums so he can murder a former accomplice. But everyone's resistance to the evidence that something strange is going on is turned on its head when Hicks, now a believer, doesn't understand why the cops won't believe that her son's doll is a serial killer.

The animatronics work on that doll is really good. The transitions between puppets and small actors in suits are pretty seamless, too. I especially liked the burnt and melted Chucky face at the end.

Child's Play is available on Cinemax and Max, which is a separate service belonging to HBO.