THIS PAGE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY PICPAL.COM THE PICTURE PALACE
|
|
|||
| Home | Viate | Books | Review |
Dead and Buried is about the strange goings-on in Potters Bluff, a New England beach town where James Farentino is the sherriff. People disappear under the oddest circumstances. Co-writer Dan O'Bannon was also responsible for Alien. This film mixes in more dark humor with the scares, and director James Sherman provides a really creepy, fog-shrouded atmosphere.
In Afraid of the Dark, Lucas (Ben Keyworth) is a young boy in a tidy little British suburb. Someone there is attacking blind women. Lucas's own mother (Fanny Ardant) is blind and he himself views the world through Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. Does that explain his voyeuristic obsessions? The action sometimes seems confusing and senseless, but all is explained in the last scenes. Writer/director Mark Peploe also wrote The Sheltering Sky and Little Buddha.
Children are also the focus of P.I.N., specifically Leon and Ursula, a brother and sister who are played by several young actors. Their father, Dr. Linden (Terry O'Quinn, in a role reminiscent of The Stepfather) is a strict disciplinarian who affects them in ways he cannot imagine. The title refers to a transparent educational dummy in dad's office. The film is really about the changes of childhood and adolescence, and all of the scares are delivered through the characters.
God Told Me To could be accused of ripping off The X-Files, but it was made 20 years before the series began. It's about a New York cop (Tony LoBianco) who's investigating apparently unrelated killings. He arrives at a bizarrely religious conclusion that defies any description. This is an inspired little B-movie from Larry Cohen (It's Alive, Q: the Winged Serpent). I discovered it at a drive-in way back when. It's just as much fun on video.
Finally, Sole Survivor is about Denise Watson (Anita Skinner), a young woman who walks away from an airplane crash that Karla Davis (Caren Larkey), an unstable psychic actress has predicted. She cannot explain Denise's visions, though. It takes the rest of the movie to do that.
As those brief synopses suggest, all of these movies come out of left field and attempt to be different and surprising. To my mind, they succeed and so they are much more entertaining than most of the star vehicles that show up at the multiplex each week. Give 'em a look.