Jay's Movie of the Week #13: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are as comforting a team as Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, or Steve and Edie. Hammer films, be they horror or a mystery-thriller like this, are as comforting as house slippers. Mannered, stage-bound, and always hinting at much darker thrills than they show, this studio produced gem after gem. All together, it's a match-up equal to chocolate and peanut butter.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is perhaps the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and this is one of many versions of the film. Cushing as Holmes and Andre Morell as Watson, however, have a take on the characters that seems somewhat... breezy. Cushing's Holmes is more a sharp and insightful showoff than someone truly driven by their genius intellect and preternatural powers of observation. Just the smartest man in a roomful of dim bulbs.

He's also a fairly emotional Holmes who makes some rash mistakes and assumptions, which is a dimension you don't see enough in this character. Invited to investigate the death of the lord of Baskerville Hall, where the prologue showed us a murder committed by the debauchery-minded Sir Hugo, who was then himself killed by "something."

Sherlock Holmes, never one to suffer fools gladly in any incarnation, agrees to investigate the death and descends upon Sir Henry (Christopher Lee). The son of the deceased Sir Charles, he's the new lord of Baskerville Hall, and a bit of a jerk. (Okay, he's a big jerk.) Sir Charles dropped dead, perhaps running from the mythical hell hound that curses the family. It's equally possible, though, an escaped murderer named Selden might have had a hand in the proceedings. So is the threat something supernatural, or just a prosaic murderer? Worse, will the family heart condition knock off Sir Henry before anything else gets a chance?

One A Week Movies #1: Curse of the Crimson Altar (the Crimson Cult)

Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele, and Michael Gough? Yes, please!

The Curse of the Crimson Altar, known as The Crimson Cult in the US, is an old-school Sixties horror flick that must've felt racy at the time (Nudity! Psychedelia!) and remains charming today.

"...and drugs of this group can produce the most complex hallucinations, and under their influence it is possible by hypnosis to induce the subject to perform actions he would not normally commit. (Extract from a Medical Journal)"

Any movie that opens with that quote then fades to a green-painted Barbara Steele in a golden ram's headdress presiding over a topless woman in black leather pasties whipping another woman as part of a ritual to get a man to sign his soul away... you know is a treat.

When Robert Manning (Mark Eden) realizes his brother Peter, the man in the ceremony, has been missing for ten days, he heads off to find him. Craxton Lodge in Graymarsh, however, is the center of a Witches night celebration, which involves men in sportscars trying to run down women in body stockings. It also requires young adults holding the kind of seemingly-racy-but-actually-rather-innocent orgiastic party people only have in movies... unless I'm running with entirely the wrong crowd. The party's host, Mr. Morley, is a delightfully dry and withdrawn Christopher Lee. He, along with vixen niece Eve (Virginia Wetherell) and creepy butler Michael Gough, quickly seduce Robert into staying at their large manor home.

(Delicious camp and a green chick ripe for Captain Kirk's plucking... after the break!)

One A Week Reviews #18: The Resident

No wonder I don't live in New York. In The Resident, Hilary Swank is renting a gorgeous apartment at $3800 a month and that price is represented as a steal. I live in Ohio. I can't wrap my brain around that.

The landlord is dreamy, the rent is (supposedly) great, and there's even a kindly-but-dotty old Christoper Lee downstairs. This apartment is so fine, so much like home, it even brings out the exhibitionist in Swank, who lets the camera zoom a little too close into her sheer panties. (I guess that's part of play the subject of a voyeur's gaze is great and all, but, honey, you got Oscars. Plural. I don't need to see your landing strip.)

The Resident is getting press for being the new film from Hammer studios, and it got lavished with production dollars. Sadly, it went straight to DVD because, even with a guaranteed "opener" like Swank, we live in a world where Christopher Lee isn't recognized as one of the biggest box office stars of the 2000s (by virtue of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movies. He's a bigger action villain than anyone else over the last decade). This, however, is a decent weeknight-in thriller that I think both male and female audiences would enjoy.

Swank is a young, single doctor who winds up in a mostly empty apartment building with a few creepy neighbors and a few creepier events. "Dreamy Landlord" (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) starts out "meeting cute" and being charming, and winds up being creepy-dreamy. Her ex, Jack (Lee Pace) straddles "creepy-dreamy" as well. Meanwhile, she engages in all the "quirky movie girl" habits like drinking wine from balloon glasses that make you look more waifish. She also has the unusually quirky trait of sleeping deeply, allowing for the cheesiest "man lurking over sleeping woman" scenes in history. One with sucked fingers.

Much like Audition, what starts as almost a cute, Meg Ryan-worthy dating story resets into something more. At the half-hour mark, the film rolls back to the beginning and fills in the gaps that make the men in Juliet's life so creepy-dreamy... and we find out why her apartment has been so cheap: It's an aquarium.

This hearkens back more to the crime shockers and slasher thrillers Hammer put out than their more famous supernatural monsters. Hidden dangers of the male kind surround our damsel in distress as she falls into the grasp of a family with a dangerous dynamic. For starters, they might use your toothbrush... eww.

There's a lot technically perfect about it, though that sheen is also a shell to keep us from getting too invested in The Resident. It's a little bit of The Collector, and a little Single White Female; a cat and mouse game with a dark walnut lacquer.You admire The Resident more than you enjoy it, because it's a cool, distant. The slow but creepy middle leads to an exciting third act, especially because Swank can act. The scenes of her "putting it together" and last moment "hammering" are worth investing your time here. Not too shabby by far.