Resurrection (2015) – A freshly ordained priest in the 1870s travels to Buenos Aires to help with a yellow fever outbreak and makes a slight detour to drop by the family manor… to find his older brother on death’s door from the plague, his sister-in-law and niece barricaded in the family chapel, and only one old servant with a love-hate relationship with the family for three generations still sticking it out instead of absconding with the candlesticks. When the priest also comes down with fever, he spends several days with a weaker and weaker confidence in reality — especially when the niece, whom the servant informs him has also succumbed, starts showing up in odd corners and pleading for his help.
It’s a confident, understated movie; after the first twenty minutes, I even stopped noticing the young priest’s unfortunate resemblance to Adam Sandler.
Evil Roy Slade (1972) – Despite the good review of it I saw ages ago on Unknown Movies, I let my DVD of this old TV-movie languish for several years before watching it. I shouldn’t have. Watching the immortal John Astin as the evillest desperado in the west trying clumsily to go straight for the love of a good woman is just fun. There are sight gags and one-liners, and Astin demonstrates the perfect timing that transforms funny into hilarious. It bogs down at bit after the halfway mark, when Roy tries to reform and become a Boston shoe salesman, but then it sets things right when the legendary Musical Marshal (Dick Shawn) comes out of retirement to hunt down the relapsed and re-Evil Roy. Highly recommended for those with a refined taste for corn and cheese.
Bog (1979) – Yet another of the godawful regional monster flicks that sprouted up like amateurish mushrooms during the ’70s. Oddly enough, this one is headlined by pedigreed professionals: Perennial musical film second banana and then ubiquitous TV guest star Gloria DeHaven and B-movie stalwart Marshall Thompson (both 54 years old at the time) play an epidemiologist and the town doctor, respectively, falling in love while they’re also investigating a series of strange killings around Bog Lake. (Aldo Ray is also along — as the sheriff, naturally.) But competent performers can’t compete with a thudding script and uninspired direction, both from first-timers. Oddly enough, whenever a creature attack is shown from the creature’s POV (to keep the costume off-screen as long as possible), it’s shown to be a lightning-fast approach, giving the victim time to do nothing but scream… but when the creature is revealed it all of its fish-headed glory, it moves exactly like you’d expect a man-in-suit monster to move — plodding steps and general arm-waving.