The Stuff of My Little Sister's Nightmares: Squirm

Great poster or greatest poster?

There was a time, not so long ago, that my family was sitting around the dinner table having a nice conversation when it came out that my little sister has an irrational fear of worms. Much gentle prodding and needling of this revelation commenced and while the rest of us were having a grand old time, my sister was getting increasingly anxious and unhappy. This wasn't like the time we found out she didn't like the sound of coughing and everyone (including my young niece) started consciously coughing. No. That ended up in laughter. The worm fun ended with me joking about what would happen if I went out into the yard and dug up some worms and brought them inside. My sister, clearly nervous and touchy, proclaimed in all earnestness that she would leave immediately and get a hotel for the night. It would have been funny if she wasn't so adamant (OK, it's still funny because she's afraid of worms!).

I was really hoping I'd be able to sit her down to watch Squirm (or at least try to trick her into watching it) had it been a good movie, but it's just not. I admire the filmmakers for trying a slow burn approach and letting the characters and town establish themselves. The pacing reminded me a lot of Tremors, actually, just without the charismatic performances. Weird stuff is happening, people are discovered missing, the odd worm pops up now an then and does something unusual like biting an arm. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Ron Underwood and his Tremor team used this film a bit for inspiration.

There's a giant red flag that writer/director Jeff Lieberman isn't very confident in his threat and that is the presence of a human danger. Clearly Lieberman doesn't trust that the audience will be sufficiently creeped out by the crawling menace so he added something that can deliver faster, more "exciting" scares. The threat's presence doesn't really make sense, either. Did the worms take him over? Why didn't they eat him like the rest? In the end, it's exactly the type of movie that makes a better trailer than a film. At least I won't have to sit my sister down for an hour and a half to terrify her.

This Sugar Hill Gang Is Made Up of Zombies

I don't have a ton of experience with the Blaxploitation genre. A Rudy Ray Moore movie here, Pam Grier movies there, and Superfly. I'm slowly trying to remedy this, but it takes time and other movies keep taking precedence. Perhaps most surprising is that I haven't even seen Blacula! I love horror, so even though I'm not well versed in Blaxploitation, I should have at least seen that, right? In time, friends. In time.

So it was by divine willing that the theater in which I work was screening a pristine (seriously, it looked amazing) 35mm print of Sugar Hill, a film of which I'd never heard but sounded amazing. Sugar Hill (Marki Bey) takes revenge against a group of toughs and their employer for killing her man. But it's not ordinary revenge. It's voodoo style. The dead are risen and sent to do her dirty work.



Sadly, the film is rated PG so the kills are all pretty tame and the zombies aren't the "hungry-for-flesh" kind, so there wasn't much need for the kills to be that visceral. Still, it's hard not to be disappointed when confronted with those realisations during the movie. Even though there's only four men responsible for killing Sugar's man, she decides to off a few more henchmen which is a few too many. The set pieces all have the same structure and without any fun or interesting gore, it feels redundant.

Sugar Hill is still pretty fun, though. I amused myself wondering how her hair got so different from day to night. Sugar has a killing costume complete with afro that there is no possibility her daytime hair could achieve. It got to the point where I suspected that maybe these killings were all in her head or just a dream fantasy she was having believing she was some kind of superhero. Then I started wondering if it was a wig or if they shot all of her 'fro scenes first then cut it. Don't mistake these thoughts for boredom. I just found it amusing. It's also funny that Sugar becomes pretty witty once she decides on vengeance. It's like everyone needs a zinger if they're going to kill.

Then there is Sir Laughs-a-Lot, Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley) who, you guessed it, laughs. A lot. And smiles big, toothy, gold smiles. He's amusing to watch, but upon his first entrance, I wished Isaac Hayes had been cast instead and the feeling never left. It's not that Colley is bad. Just that Hayes could have been epic.

I would be remiss if I didn't bring up Robert Quarry, as this is an American International picture (who also did Madhouse, which also features Quarry) and is Quarry's last film with the company. He is a great bad guy, but mostly the way he treats his "girlfriend." He shows her no respect at all while becoming infatuated with Sugar. His girlfriend is nothing to him and even though I should probably feel bad about the way he treats her, I can't help but laugh (and neither could the audience). It's just a great way to make your villain that much more heinous (even though his girlfriend is a full-blooded racist thus making it OK for the viewer to laugh at her treatment [right?]).

Sugar Hill isn't a great movie and it's got some pacing issues, but it's pretty fun over all. I really like the idea of someone controlling a heard of the undead to do their bidding and the zombies are simple, but highly effective.

Theater to Die for: Murders in the Rue Morgue ('71)

Whenever I watch movies based on classic literature or short stories, I always feel a little bad having not read the source material. Inevitably, I end up wondering how the movie differs from the book. I could read the book after watching the movie, but I'm generally reading something else. Time passes and I forget/stop caring. But for right now, I really wish I'd read Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue before seeing the movie. From what I understand, they differ quite substantially and the 1971 film seems to borrow just as much from Phantom of the Opera as it does from Poe's tale.



Old members of Cesar Charron's (Jason Robards) theater troupe are getting systematically killed off. Much like in Frenzy, the viewer knows who the killer is very early in the story. This knowledge isn't played for much suspense due to the suddenness of most of his attacks with the exception of a few scenes, but only because we haven't learned what his motivation is yet. Amidst these killings, Charron's wife Madeleine (Christine Kaufmann) is having nightmares. She even falls asleep (or passes out, whatever the case may be) on stage during performances.

It turns out these nightmares are a combination of a forgotten past and an inevitable future and are probably the most impressive aspect of Murders in the Rue Morgue. Director Gordon Hessler shoots them in slow motion and they almost feel like we're floating through the dreams. There's some nifty surrealism (not too crazy, though) with people appearing and disappearing at will and things are just generally askew. While the rest of the film isn't shot poorly by any means, it feels like Hessler had the most control and enthusiasm in his vision for these scenes.

One reason I wish I'd read the source is I'd love to know what the deal with the ape is. It's a man in a costume, but from what I read (briefly) on Wikipedia, the book features a real orangutan. They certainly get a lot of mileage out of the man in the costume, especially when he's running through a carnival pursued by cops, but I can't help but wonder about the orangutan.

The scene through the carnival and the following scene in the Rue Morgue are great set pieces and Hessler does a good job of exploiting those locations. It feels like the material needed to open up to give the movie some life. And maybe that makes sense since a fair amount of action takes places on the confines of the stage.

There's a surprising amount of death in Murders in the Rue Morgue but they don't really mean much to the viewer because the stakes aren't revealed until much later in the film. In fact, there seems to be a bit of confusion as to who the protagonist is which makes things a bit disjointed. Not to mention the fact that there seems to be no way of people establishing if someone is dead or not given how many people seem to be killed only to return moments later. But perhaps the strangest thing is seeing Herbert Lom not hamming it up as Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (though with a career as long as his, I'm not sure he'd be proud of me saying that):