Tag Archives: Conspiracy

Weird Woman Review

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It’s time for a fun retro film with Lon Chaney. I have to admit that he is to the 40’s-50’s what Tom Cruise is to the 2000s. He’s easily the best retro actors and his films have definitely been pretty fun. This one is no exception and while everything about the film from the posters to the premise is misleading, it makes for a nice ride. The film is only about an hour so it has to make haste, but it develops soundly. There is time for some nice monologues and nothing ever feels too rushed.

Norman is a respected professor who’s been doing rather well for himself. He visits a tribe in order to gather some intel for his book about Facts vs Myths and Superstition. There he meets a girl named Paula who knows English because her father was a professor. Norman is a little too eager to finally meet someone who can understand him and goes past the sacred line of no return. Paula saves him along with her guardian with the voodoo practices. The two heroes head home and are immediately married, much to the scorn of Ilona. She had previously been with Norman and wasn’t really given a heads up on this. Norman lets her know that they never loved each other though so that makes it okay. She decides to get revenge by getting everyone to dislike Norman so they can all murder each other, but this may not be as easy as it sounds. Paula has a lot of protective magics from her tribe to block all such attempts, but Norman destroys them so that she can put the superstitions away. Has he just doomed them all?

It’s a pretty fun film from start to finish. Norman does a lot of inner monologue about what is happening. While he may over analyze everything and ultimately confuse himself, it’s fun to see the step by step logic to what he is doing. Eventually, he begins to think so much that he starts to lose confidence in facts and believes in myths a little more. This begins to be his undoing, but Norman won’t lose so easily. He’s a solid main character and he even takes care of the gun wielding student who ambushes him at the gym. His one character flaw is from the intro of the film and it’ll depend on how you interpret it. Based on how Ilona was talking to him, it sounded like they were still together when he returned before letting them all know that he was actually married. If so, then that does make Norman pretty inconsiderate, but there is the chance that they had already broken up and Ilona was just making life hard on him. It’s hard to say one way or the other since Ilona is pretty desperate and crazy by the end.

Paula is a nice enough person. She never actively curses people and just puts in clauses. If someone tries to hurt Norman, then the person will die, but she sets it up in a way where the mystical trap won’t activate unless someone does act with malicious intent. That’s awfully considerate of her right? Lying to Norman about this was a little iffy though. She does begin to crack once she loses her protective armaments though. I would have liked for her to have been a little more confident and aggressive. Perhaps that will be the case if the film ever got a remake or a reboot.

Ilona is the main villain and at the very least, you have to admit that she planned things out rather well. She blackmails one of the professors, encourages a young student to work for Norman so her boyfriend would get jealous, eggs on that very student, spreads a lot of rumors about Norman, and finally terrorizes Paula by playing a death chant over the phone. Ilona really covers all of the bases and because she very subtlety eggs everyone on, nobody ever thinks to blame her. Only one of the Deans seems to know that something is going on, but she can’t even begin to suspect the complete depth of the plan. It’s simply too ingenious and radical for someone to guess at a moment’s notice. Ilona’s motives may have been rather petty, but she was a nice villain.

The supporting characters were a little less charismatic. The female student (Who seems just like Simmons from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to the point where I think the latter got inspiration) is pretty over dramatic and too extreme about trying to get Norman to betray his wife. Her boyfriend was just as drastic as he quickly grabs his gun (Doesn’t everyone have one?) and immediately goes to destroy Norman. This doesn’t go too well though since Norman is surprisingly tough. You rarely get to see him fight so that was certainly pretty fun. There’s also the wife of the professor who was being black mailed and she certainly gets pretty heated about the whole thing. Her rage is probably the most justified even if it is reaching a little to blame Norman for what happened. Even with the false intel that was being supplied to her, you can’t really blame someone else when the guy just decided to take the easy way out. You can’t just give up on life and leave everyone else to pick up the pieces.

The misleading part is really about how the Weird Woman was portrayed as some very powerful mystical person with malicious intent. Sure, Paula may have had some special powers, but she was never mysterious in the slightest apart from the very beginning of the film. The film actually had a large chunk of time where Paula didn’t even appear. There’s not a lot of suspense and danger like you would assume from the poster although there is a decent level of tension. While there aren’t many supernatural elements here, the stakes are still real since the body count starts to rise. I’ll take this over a classic horror film any day.

The final plan that the heroes put into place is thought out reasonably well although it does ride on the assumption that someone would take the threat seriously. I think most villains wouldn’t take a threat too seriously after they’ve been the ones dishing it out and Ilona just seemed to be too confident to actually buy into any of this. At least she didn’t escape though and attempted to make a break for it in the end. I won’t say how it goes, but you do have to admire her can do attitude and refusal to give up.

Overall, Weird Woman was a fun film. As someone noted, the tribal dance and chant even seemed to be inspired from the Mothra films. The main characters are all either likable or make for good villains. The cast can easily hold this film up and keep it interesting. The writing is very solid and there’s really no big negatives to speak of. The short length helps to keep it from getting a really high score like an 8, but considering this isn’t an action film, a 7 is certainly solid. It’s just a fun way to pass the time by and ultimately you just want a film to be fun. It’s hard to say if this one beats Calling Doctor Death since they are really close, but I might give this one the slight edge. It also certainly beats the Frozen Ghost even if there wasn’t a Dog here. That film was a lot more emotional. This one never tried to be too sad and it’s just popcorn fun. It also reminds you to choose your friends carefully as just about everyone in this film is (not so) secretly a gossip so word travels fast. Norman’s good reputation did help him out quite a lot in the end though as it bought him some time to get to the truth. I definitely recommend it so you can see how well written films like this one are just a lot of fun. I wish we still got films like this, but unfortunately, they are all but extinct from Hollywood now.

Overall 7/10

The Frozen Ghost Review

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It’s time to look at a retro Lon Chaney film. I’ve seen quite a few of his films and still have a bunch of others to see someday. This one is a classic tale of hypnosis and whether it is real or not. There are certainly quite a few antagonists in this film and their plans are so risky that they can even prove fatal. It’s a pretty interesting film, even if it can get a tad convoluted at times.

Alex is a skilled master of mental abilities and has been working in this trade for a long time. One day a drunk individual shows up declaring that Alex is a fraud. Alex decides to prove him wrong by hypnotizing the guy, but then he also ends up wishing that the drunk would die. The drunk does abruptly die and Alex is thrown into a state of shock. It can’t be proven that he did it of course and everyone tells him that it was a coincidence, but Alex doesn’t think so. He moves into a wax museum to try and get past this and even breaks up with his fiancee Maura. Unfortunately, he has just entered the Lion’s Den as George, Rudi, and Valerie all want him dead. Nina is the only person in the Wax Museum who doesn’t have any ill will towards him, but it’s rather easy to be fooled when everyone around you is giving you false intel. How will Alex get out of this situation without using his mental abilities to fatally end this?

Alex is a good character as always although he can maybe be a little too low in confidence. He immediately blames himself quite a bit and goes into mourning so fiercely that he just tries to make life as tough for himself as possible. It’s not really necessary and pushing Maura away was also a little too extreme. Dishing out his own punishments was definitely not a great call on his part. Alex did have a good plan at the end though and at least he didn’t totally lose himself in what was happening. Maura was a good heroine and she never stopped trying to help Alex. She was able to persevere and was definitely a trust worthy ally that Alex could depend on. He was lucky to have her around.

Nina was rather naive and didn’t handle any situation too well, but it can’t all be blamed on her. As I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to really get what is happening when there is nobody around to give you even a semi-accurate account of what has transpired. She wasn’t a villain at least so that was someone else that Alex could trust or at least not fear. George and the other villains were rather petty and did all they could to smear Alex’s name and erase whatever confidence he had left. They were decent in their roles, but not nearly as interesting as Ilona from another film that I have a review coming out for soon and other such antagonists.

I did like Inspector Brant and while he kept on doubting Alex and not believing in mind powers, I can’t really blame him for that. At least he was doing his job well and quickly hustled to take down the villains. He even swallowed his pride and asked Alex for help at the end with a particularly difficult case. In a rare moment of selfishness, Alex declined as he claimed that he didn’t have any powers just to mess with Brant. I thought that was a little mean of Alex and his decision could have some real consequences. He could have saved a person or even many depending on what kind of crime he may have been able to stop. The fact of the matter is that he let his personal grudge with Brant interfere with his job to help society. Even if it wasn’t a grudge and Alex just wanted to have some fun, it was certainly at the wrong time and I can only hope that Brant was able to solve the case by himself.

You can draw a lot of similarities between this film and Calling Doctor Death. There was a lot of betrayal and hypnosis going around between the main cast. The climaxes may have been a little different, but overall it felt like two alternate routes to what was essentially the same main plot. This film had less monologue from Alex though. Both films were solid, but I might have to give the ever so slight edge to Calling Doctor Death. Regardless, both are rather short films and you can even see them back to back since they’re both pretty fun and fast paced.

You may just lose track of some of the characters after a while. It’s not so much that the cast is big, but everyone has quite a few motives and since Alex is oblivious to everything around him, it’s sometimes hard to tell exactly what is happening. I still say that the villain’s plans also were a little iffy and they definitely wouldn’t work too well against a different main character. There were a lot of gambles here, but most of them paid off I suppose. Without Maura, the villains probably would have had the last laugh here.

Overall, this is definitely another fun film to add to your collection. It doesn’t take itself too seriously aside from Alex since Chaney always takes himself very seriously and always makes sure to be an upstanding guy. Seriously, it feels like people try to tempt Alex to the dark side in every film or give him chances for revenge, but Alex never cracks. He always stays as an upstanding hero and makes all of the right calls. The plot is pretty good and will keep you guessing the whole way. One villain’s fate is rather sad since the plan backfired a little, but that’s why you shouldn’t lock yourself away in a freezer. I forget if that was purely part of the plan or not, but even if it was an improvisation, it’s a sad way to go out. You’ll probably sympathize with Alex as the film goes on and his strong conscience just makes it all the worse for him. I definitely recommend checking this film out and then you can make your own guesses as to whether or not his powers were actually real. For the record, I’d definitely say that they are based on the very first circumstance. I don’t buy into coincidences and it just makes sense. It’d be cool to see how this version of Chaney would stack up against the Werewolf. I may have to actually give this one the edge although the Man-Made Monster, electric version of himself is probably the most lethal. It’s cool to see how many different monsters he’s become over the years.

Overall 7/10

The Forgotten Review

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TheForgotten2004
The Forgotten is a film that I had not heard of before, but the poster is pretty cool. This was in 2004 so it was ever so slightly before the time where I got into films. Because of that, I tend to be unaware of films that came out before 2010 except for big classics. (Ghostbusters, Mario Film, Jaws, Alien, etc) This is a pretty solid film and while there are some twists where I would have chosen a different path as the director…it was better than I had expected.

The plot involves a woman named Telly. She is still in mourning over the passing of her son Sam, who died in a plane crash. Dr. Munce is trying to help her move on from Sam, but he goes too far when he tells her that she should forget about him. Telly won’t have any of that and she heads home. Unfortunately, she discovers that her husband (Jim) has erased her video tapes of Sam and also used photoshop to alter their pictures so that Sam is now Jim or he’s not in the picture at all. Telly questions others about Sam’s existence and none of them remember. It’s as if Sam has been wiped from existence. Telly must now find out what has happened to her son and who could have enough connections to bribe everyone into pretending that he doesn’t exist! (The alternative is that she’s crazy or this is all just a big dream so we can’t take that out of consideration)

Telly is a good lead for the most part and it’s nice to see some determination from her. We rarely get that in our movie protagonists as they conform to the higher ups or just do what they want. Telly is doing everything that she can to find Sam, but it’s a tough battle. The problems that I have with Telly involve an unnecessary scene that I’ll mention later and the fact that she practically starts flirting with Ash at one point even though she is a married woman. It’s not as if it has been years since she was just at home with Jim and there’s no reason for this. Aside from this, she is a decent character and while she never got to grab a gun or a sword to defend herself; she still talks tough until the end. (Letting her guard down as they was playing tag towards the climax was pretty bad though)

Ash is one of the main characters in the film and he showed some moments of brilliance, but many of his scenes were still pretty sad. He definitely doesn’t have as much willpower as Telly and he forgot that he even had a child. That’s pretty…disappointing to say the least. He has a tendency to drink a lot, which likely didn’t help. It’s good that he finally decided to stop drinking later on, but it took him a little too long to make that decision considering how high the stakes were. He had a good fight with two members of National Security and he put his hockey skills to good use. That was definitely his best scene in the film and he did a lot of the physical work for the heroes. Ash definitely got better as the film went on although he never became as cool as Ash Ketchum and I can’t say that I like him as a character.

Jim is Telly’s husband and he was decently likable for a while. He can’t really take a joke and telling the cops that Telly was crazy seemed a little sad. Perhaps she was or perhaps not, but he seemed pretty exasperated at the time. His role is pretty small and he still seems like a decently good guy, but it’s a good thing that Telly managed to escape. He would have impeded her investigation.

Dr. Munce is the psychiatrist who is helping Telly and at first I was surprised that he was actually serious. Typically psychiatrists are always evil or inept in films and Munce seemed to avoid this. Seemed is the key word here. Once the first twist occurs I quickly became suspicious of his motives and hopefully everyone else had that thought. Then he began to get a little pushy in his search to find Telly and I knew that things were about to get dicey. I don’t like him as a character because he lacks the will to stand up against injustice. Lacking bravery is never a great thing and you need to stand up to fight for what’s right when the chips are down.

There is one Detective who appears to be on the heroes’ side. She doesn’t like the National Security members and she believes that Telly may be on the right track. She has a gun, but that may not be not be enough to save the day. After all, is Sam a real person anyway? There is also a strange person that is following the main characters. There is something off putting about him….hopefully the heroes stay out of his way!

The big Unnecessary scene that I really disliked involved…you guessed it..Fanservice! I’m not sure if people use that term for live action, but we may as well since it’s the same thing. At one point, Telly and Ash are at a motel and she decides to strip down so that she could go to sleep. The stakes are already super high and Ash is basically still a stranger at this point. Is now the best time to be worried about how many layers you’re wearing while asleep? It’s not exactly hot out since everyone has jackets so she could have just gone to sleep with all of her clothes on. Ash has the generic moment where he stares at her for a second before tearing himself away, but that whole situation should not have happened. it was forced and I doubt that it attracted any new viewers since nobody would know about such a short scene. (Unless it’s in the trailer, but I skipped it this time) They also flirt a little in the next hotel as they sleep way too close to each other, which was also terrible. It’s what drags Ash and Telly down as characters. How could I like them as much after that?

Once the big twists come in; then the film loses a little bit of the suspense. I agree with the twist on who is behind Sam’s disappearence. The government, Telly’s mind, or something else! What I didn’t care for is the fact that the heroes really don’t stand a chance. It’s always good to keep the heroes in the mix because there’s no danger if they’re too powerful or too weak. (It’s why I cringed when Kid Buu went up against Krillin!) They should have closed the gap in power, but I can’t say much more without spoilers. That’s just my take on the matter.

Typically, this is around the time where I would mention the soundtrack, but there isn’t really one to speak of. I’m sure that it technically has one, but in a film like this you don’t remember any of them. It probably had some generic dramatic themes or a good one for the hero moments but I can’t recall any of them. That’s never a great sign, but it’s to be expected for a live action movie.

Overall, this was a pretty fun mystery film. It’ll definitely have you hooked as the film goes by and the stakes continue to be raised higher and higher. We actually get a gunfight, but I will admit that it was pretty unimpressive. The best part of the film was the fight with Ash and the two National Security members since it was a fight and it also brought the suspense that the film needed. This proved that something needed to be done and things got a lot more interesting. I definitely enjoy films like these and I’d recommend it to mystery/suspense fans. It’s very suspenseful and intense until the interrogation scene comes to an abrupt end. (Well, the actual interrogation scene wasn’t really good because the heroes have to become the villains and that sort of thing. They didn’t really go too far, but Ash may have crossed the line eventually. I just don’t like interrogation scenes unless it’s done in a peaceful way in a peaceful setting) That’s when things got a little out of hand, but you’ve still got a big chunk to look forward too. (Also, there were more scenes at the end that were cool, but that part took away a potential route that would have been more fun) Also, how can you pass up on the film with such a cool title!

Overall 6/10