Lazy Sunday CLI: More Movies, Part XV: Movie Reviews, Part XV

After three poetical Sundays (here, here, and here), it’s time to get back to the schlock and sleaze you’ve come to expect from yours portly.  That means more movie reviews!

These three flicks date from late October and early November, the beating heart of the so-called “spooky season.”  As such, these films fall nicely into the spooky category.  Two of them are masterpieces, while another is a dud.

Well, per Meat Loaf, “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad“:

  • Monday Morning Movie Review: Dracula (1931)” – The local library showed a bunch of the classic Universal Monster Movies in October, and I managed to make it out to 1931’s Dracula.  What a great movie!  It’s easy to see why it was and remains an instant classic.  Highly recommended.
  • Monday Morning Movie Review: Halloween Kills (2021)” – Alternatively, some classics are meant to die young, even if their villains never do.  2021’s Halloween Kills is a lackluster sequel to the 2018 Halloween reboot/sequel/soft reboot/reimagining/etc.  That was a good movie; Halloween Kills was tedious and grating (how many times can random characters shout “Evil Dies Tonight”? before it gets annoying; it might make a good drinking game for those so inclined).  There’s a ham-fisted attempt to work in a message about the violence of mobs, but the movie is ultimately just dull.
  • Monday Morning Movie Review: Wait Until Dark (1967)” – So it’s back to the 1960s, a time when concerns about youthful street hooligans and declining civic virtues (hmm, sounds familiar) wound up on the silver screen.  1967’s Wait Until Dark, starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman living with her photographer husband in a basement apartment in New York City, is actually a good movie, and a tense, Hitchcockian thriller.  A couple of thugs and an intimidating Mod harass the poor blind woman, attempting to gaslight her into revealing the location of an antique doll full of drugs.  The setup is a bit ridiculous, but the story itself is taut.  Also highly recommended.

There you have it!  Back to the movies this Lazy Sunday.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments: