Shameless Self Expression

Set in the late 70s where children are being snatched by a masked killer nicknamed The Grabber (Ethan Hawke). Mason Thames and his sister Madeleine McGraw’s lives are affected by The Grabber. The former ending up being snatched by him, the latter having psychic visions via a dream about one of the kidnappings. Jeremy Davies plays their unstable father.   I don’t know how faithful this 2022 film is to the short story by Joe Hill, but if it is indeed representative, one suggests Mr. Hill needs to find influences beyond his father Stephen King in future. Directed by Scott Derrickson ( “Hellraiser Inferno” , “Deliver Us From Evil” , “Sinister” ) and adapted by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill ( “Sinister” , “Doctor Strange” ), the film initially looked quite promising to me and the reviews have certainly been good. The cinematography by Brett Jutkiewicz ( “Ready or Not” ) is stunning from the outset, and early on the story intrigued me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long before I ...

Richard Carlson is a jazz pianist named Tom, whose wandering eye is about to bite him in the butt. About to marry the lovely Meg (Lugene Sanders), his mistress Vi (Juli Reding) threatens to expose their affair when Tom wants to break it off. A lighthouse accident and refusal of rescue later, and Tom finds himself tormented by the ghostly presence of Vi. Joe Turkel plays the ferryman who brings Vi to Tom at the outset, and subsequently blackmails him. Susan Gordon plays Meg’s young sister Sandy, who might just know more about what has been going on than anyone else realises.   The films of director/producer Bert I. Gordon are somewhat infamous but generally not very well-regarded C-and-D-grade cheapies generally in the monster movie/creature feature realm ( “The Amazing Colossal Man” , “Empire of the Ants” , “Food of the Gods” etc.) According to my IMDb stats, this 1960 film is my first excursion into the world of Mr. Gordon. Despite not having the best reputation amongst the f...