Author: Seth Harris

An immigrant from the U.S. trying to make sense of an increasingly saddening world.

Movie Review – Krampus

Krampus (2015, dir. Michael Dougherty)

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In the last few years, the Krampus has become quite a popular internet meme. The Germanic creature pre-dates Christianity but was adopted into Christmas traditions as a shadow to Santa Claus. Where Santa brings good girls and boys presents, Krampus would bring a rod to beat the bad kiddies. The character has popped up in The Venture Brothers, Scooby-Doo and even been the focus of some holiday themed films, the best of which is Rare Exports. It was only a matter of time until Hollywood decided to give the monster an American feature, this one at the hands of Michael Dougherty, best known for Trick R Treat.

Max is a kid nearer the end of that period of childhood where a belief in Santa is socially acceptable. He’s penned a letter with his numerous Christmas wishes for his family and visiting relatives, but his twin cousins decide to snatch the letter and openly mock him at the dinner table. Max responds by shredding the letter and silently wishing horrible things upon them all while tossing the letter to the snowy winds. Overnight a dark storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the neighborhood freezes over. One by one the family members are taken out by deadly gingerbread men, malevolent toys, and other assorted holiday-themed horrors before Krampus himself shows up.

Krampus is a hell of a lot of fun. It hearkens back to 1980s dark classics, Gremlins chief among them. The killer gingerbread men have a laugh reminiscent of those title villains. There is also a lot of heart in this film, about family and the holidays, but never overly sentimental. People die and get wounded. There is some blood but not an overabundance of gore. I would never say the film was scary, but it was exciting, and the design of the monsters was excellent. There is a jack in the box that is one of the best holiday horrors I’ve ever seen.

The adult cast is composed of some solid actors with strong resumes: Adam Scott, Toni Collette, Allison Tolman, and David Koechner. They play the parents perfectly, digging their heels in at the start focused only on rational explanation and finally cracking with the chaos breaches the walls of their home and cannot be ignored any longer. Tolman especially plays a character with a lot of underlying complexity. She and Koechner work as almost a counterpoint to Cousin Eddie and Catherine from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. In that film the conservative, rural ideology of the characters is played for some incredibly strong laughs. Here we see the characters are not simpletons but working from a different paradigm. One of that works well and other times results in impulsive failure. Tolman has a number of scenes where her character proves her mettle and shows up her husband, who spends more of the film talking up his macho superiority than fulfilling those words.

Dougherty’s work in film has been a mixed bag. He was a co-writer on multiple Bryan Singer projects and some studio films. Trick R Treat was a breakthrough and Krampus is an awesome follow-up. He was ten years old when Gremlins was released so the perfect age to remember the feelings evoked by that film and others of its kind. Dougherty manages to do what Abrams accomplished so beautifully with The Force Awakens, the evocation of the sense of nostalgia without pandering. Krampus feels like the sort of film that would be in the cineplex alongside The Goonies and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. But it also tells a fleshed out story that completes the arc of Max’s character and ends just the way a good horror film should.

Movie Review – I Killed My Mother

I Killed My Mother (2009, dir. Xavier Dolan)

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If you look up the many articles and interviews about Xavier Dolan, you will likely get a picture of an arrogant young artist. These would not be wrong, but I would challenge that this portrayal is negative particularly in cinema. Dolan represents a strong, re-interpretive Millennial energy that was inevitable in film. In the same way, the French New Wave and the iconoclastic American 1970s filmmakers made their mark in the form; Dolan is doing that same type of work. Does he indulge? Damn straight he does. But I challenge anyone to find a single auteur who doesn’t indulge constantly.

Dolan’s first feature, I Killed My Mother is the story of Hubert Minel (played by Dolan), a 16-year-old gay man, still closeted to his mother and who engages in the most vicious arguments and conflicts with this central caretaker. Dad stepped out when Hubert was seven and left Chantale, the mother (Anne Dorval) to raise the boy on her own. Hubert is two months into a relationship with a classmate and looking towards a career in the arts, encouraged by a supportive teacher (Suzanne Clément).

Dolan is a filmmaker influenced by the medium. No moment in I Killed My Mother is simply a moment; they are accented by flourishes of style from Goddard-like framing (off center and with both conversants in the frame), slow motion almost from a perfume ad, black and white confessional close-ups, and myriad of other touches that add emotion to a relatively typical story of parent-child conflict. He also knows the importance of establishing character through setting, as seen in the very opening close-ups of his mother’s tchotchke-filled home. We also learn volumes about her through her hairstyle, clothing, even the manner in which she eats breakfast. And all this if before she even has a modicum of dialogue.

While Dolan is the composer and conductor, Anne Dorval as Chantale is the star player. It would have been very easy for Chantale to slip in caricature, but Dorval does gritty work to keep the character faceted and obscured. In moments of high tension, she will begin to follow the same type of script I imagine all of us remember from our adolescence, which is underscored by Hubert calling her out on this same repetition. She shuts him down in the same manner that frustrated us all and drove many teenagers to those primal, guttural ARGHs! There is a moment near the end of the film where her role as a single mother is blamed as the reason why Hubert is struggling academically and exhibits such rebellious behavior. This is the moment where Dorval lets Chantale crack through the thickly layered makeup and sequined floral outfits. Chantale’s love for her son is beyond the question of outsiders, and she makes that known.

Dolan made I Killed My Mother at the age of 20 and has not tried to hide the fact that it is heavily biographical. He has stated that this is a film he couldn’t have waited decades to make, that it needed the raw emotion of being only steps away from adolescence. And he is completely right. A forty-something making the film in deep retrospect would have let nostalgia slip in between the cracks. There is no wistful memory manifesting falsified beauty here. Through the ugliness of this relationship, we see Beauty and Love. We don’t fight and scream with this level of fervor at people we hate, the type of anger glimpsed in the film born out of intense love and need. It is the attempt to communicate love but failing to do so because the language does not possess the vocabulary to do so.

Hubert states in one of his bathroom confessionals on camera that he doesn’t love his mother like a mother, but he loves her nonetheless. During a late night conversation, Hubert fueled by ecstasy and barging home full of elation to speak to Chantale; he states, “I love you. I am telling you this so that you won’t forget.” This is the moment where the nature of the relationship changes, not profoundly, but both characters redefine the bond. Hubert is no longer the dependent glimpsed in the Super 8 home movies at the old house by the lake. He is an individual coming into his own, intellect, a sexual being, a partner in a relationship, developing complex ideas and emotions. Chantale is reticent to accept that, but by the end of the film, they come to an unspoken understanding. Their relationship will never be what they both remember and wish it could be, something new will form and in that they will find a place for their love.

Pop Cult Book Club Announcement #6

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The book for December 2016 will be The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud.

After a bar fight, a man discovers a cell phone left behind. He decides to hold onto the phone until the owner contacts him. And then he begins receiving messages. The book is a nice short novella for the busy holiday season clocking in at 68 pages.

“This isn’t the type of horror you can easily categorize, put inside a box and say, ‘THIS. This is what makes this story scary.’ The Visible Filth is deeply unnerving and you’re not sure why. It has all the requisite thrills and chills, but it’s what’s under the surface that will be your undoing.” Joshua Chaplinsky, LitReactor.com

Pop Cult Book Club Review #5 – Swift to Chase

Swift to Chase: A Collection of Stories by Laird Barron (JournalStone)

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Laird Barron’s latest work is everything I ever wanted out of American Horror Story but never got. It is the best season of a horror series you could ever pick up. I admit this was not the book I expected to get. Last year I worked my way through Barron’s three previous collections, saving his novels and novellas so I didn’t lose all his literature in one all you can eat buffet. His work touched on the same themes of cosmic existential horror developed by Lovecraft and Barron was placed in the same cluster of authors working in “weird horror.” His collection Occultation is one of my favorite works of horror literature with “Mysterium Tremendum” and “The Broadsword” being stories that profoundly affected me after years of consuming horror media.

Swift to Chase represents a significant sea change in the mythos that Barron will be exploring for the foreseeable future. The distant tentacled cosmic gods and Carcosa are gone. Barron never really did a Lovecraft pastiche, but there were cultists and cold alien presences that worked to undermine humanity. In this collection, we’re introduced to a brand new mythology that does touch on Lovecraft but brings in 1980s slasher tropes, MKULTRA like conspiracy theories, and a plethora of new concepts. Each story was published at different times in various publications before being collected here, but you would never know because they complement and flow into each other with such precision.

Told in non-chronological order, the stories all revolve around a small town in Alaska that seems to be the focal point of some evil presence. A house party held in 1979 acts as the hub where many of the stories return to, a night when a masked killer rampaged through the house and the survivors are cursed into the rest of their lives. The standard narrative conceits you come to genre lit with are tossed out the window and instead Barron gives us a very postmodern, deconstructed horror novel. It might seem like hyperbole, but I kept thinking back to James Joyce as I read the collection. There is such a mastery of language and particular character voice that reading the collection is less about finding plot threads but discovering the rhythm of the writing and letting its flow carry you through.

Barron refuses to present us with one type of protagonist, a la Lovecraft and makes certain stories are told from multiple perspectives and diverse voices. “Ardor” features a gay man hired to hunt down a missing horror film actor believed to have fled to the Alaskan wilderness. “(Little Miss) Queen of Darkness” features the story of a gay teenager involved in the occult club that the evil spawns out of in Alaska. Barron never plays these characters as “fey” or “limp-wristed.” Their sexuality is just one of many aspects of their character, and it’s not shied away from in the same way a straight character’s sexuality can play a role in their narrative.

The focus of the first third of the collection is Jessica Mace, the survivor of a brutal attack that left her neck with a signature scar. Her voice is that of a hardass, calloused by her experiences back in Alaska and now on the run from an evil that pursues her across the continental United States. Her story is finally told in the mind-blowing fragmented narrative of “Termination Dust.” There’s Julie Vellum, the captain of the cheerleading squad surrounded by hangers-on who ends up having an up close encounter with evil after trying to hire faux lounge singer Tony Clifton to meet her fan father in “Andy Kaufman Creeping Through the Trees.”

Upon finishing the collection, my first thought was “I want to read that again,” something I rarely think even when I have loved the book. I usually find myself ready to pick up the next text but this one has such a strong gravity, and it is pulling me back in. I highly recommend Swift to Chase as a magnificent piece of literature. I was reminded of the weight and horror I’ve read in Cormac McCarthy and the language complexity of Faulkner and Joyce. If you look around the internet, you’ll see many similar gushing reviews. These are not hyperbole, and I cannot wait to return to this world and explore the mythology again.

Movie Review -Funny About Love

Funny About Love (1990, dir. Leonard Nimoy)

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There was a kind of movie made in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s that grates on me. These films were usually set in New York City and focused on a wealthy white person experiencing some mid-life crisis or first world problem. The soundtracks were bouncy and goofy in the beginning and then when some maudlin moment occurred, they would switch to a mournful and grating harmonica to underscore the wistful turmoil. Of course, the films would ensure a happy ending for their already entitled protagonist leaving the audience with little to nothing to think about. These films have evolved over the years now star actors fishing for dollars apparently. They are films made by directors like Nancy Meyers (It’s Complicated) or Charles Shyer (Father of the Bride). They are not intentionally offensive movies, but their whitewashed landscapes and conflict based on economic lives that are living at the peak of Maslow’s Hierarchy ring incredibly false. Funny About Love is one of those films.

I can’t say what possessed Wilder to take this role. He has chemistry with Christine Lahti, but the material he is given to work with is horrendous. In comedy, it is important to establish the tone you are going for early on. Audiences want to know if this will be a light comedy, cerebral, dark, etc. Funny About Love veers back and forth through its interminable one hour and forty-seven minutes. There is the soft, playful banter between our co-stars which signals a light, romantic tone. Twenty minutes later a character is crushed by a falling stove, and this is played for laughs? The film is based on an article from Esquire titled “Convention for the Love Goddesses” where writer Bob Green gives a speech at a sorority convention. That does happen in the film, the third act for about 15 minutes. I strongly suspect we are dealing with a script that was butchered, reshaped, and revised by studio executives. The impetus of the plot revolves around having children and with the style of the film’s poster I suspect Look Who’s Talking had an influence on the film’s direction. While we remember Leonard Nimoy’s passing as the man who played Spock, we must also acknowledge the incredibly terrible films he made outside of the Star Trek franchise, this being chief among them.

There is no reason to dwell on this particular film; it does not merit much study or discussion. However, due to it being the second to last Wilder feature film, we can use it as a point of meditation. How did Gene Wilder go from being in the golden era of Mel Brooks and commanding a very charismatic leading man performance in films like Silver Streak to a procession of milquetoast WASP-y duds? There was a moment in the late 1970s/early 1980s where his career took this turn. Post-Silver Streak, his films had middling success, Stir Crazy was the one box office success in a sea of bombs. I suppose it could just be an instance where an artistic eye and mind change over time, influenced by the movie business, encouraged to make decisions because of the prodding of others.

Wilder’s final theatrical film, Another You which I reviewed here, is such a horrible period on the sentence of Wilder’s career. It was likely a good thing he began to fade from the spotlight at this time. He’d do a single-season run of an NBC sitcom in the 90s, Something Wilder, which I nostalgically remember with positive vibes but suspect I’d hate if revisited. When he passed, Wilder was talked about in the context of Willy Wonka and Young Frankenstein. We have a remarkable penchant to cling to the positive images of those film faces from our past. And that’s a good thing. The worst of Wilder’s career has been forgotten, the only drug out occasionally by people like me, but then to quickly fade from memory again. It is better that we hold with fondness our memories of Wonka and Dr. Frankenstein because that is the Gene we love.

Movie Review – Haunted Honeymoon

Haunted Honeymoon (1986, dir. Gene Wilder)

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Larry Abbot (Wilder) is a famous radio actor and heads to his family’s palatial estate in upstate New York for his wedding to Vicki (Gilda Radner). Larry has been plagued by strange speech problems and goes into fugue states upon hearing certain words. His Uncle Paul has an idea for radical therapy where he will scare Larry into being cured. However, there is a werewolf stalking the property and a murderous conspiracy afoot.

Haunted Honeymoon starts with quite a bit of potential. The tone set by the music and the introduction to the mansion is very reminiscent of Young Frankenstein. We’re teased with some interesting horror and mystery, but then the plot kicks in. The story of Haunted Honeymoon is so overly convoluted and unfunny that the film falls apart within moments. There is the plot thread of Larry’s psychological ailments, a conspiracy to get control of the matriarch’s will, a werewolf stalking the grounds, a mesmerizing magician, Larry’s ex-girlfriend showing up as his cousin’s new girlfriend, the impending wedding of Larry and Pearl and those are just a few. At one point, as members of the family begin arriving there is little to no formal introduction to who these people are and how they are connected so the narrative crumbles. It gets even more confusing when Larry’s therapy begins, and it’s not made clear what’s the therapy and what is part of the murderous conspiracy.

Wilder and Radner’s personal love story seems to be the engine for the film, but it is just not enough to make the movie entertaining. In retrospect, the film is quite sad because the chemistry between the two is apparent. Jonathan Pryce stars as the cousin and does a fine job; he’s one of those actors that always seems to do well. The standout of the cast is Bryan Pringle as the family’s drunk butler. His interactions with Wilder are the closest the film gets to actual comedy. The film has an overall feel of a movie out of the 1940s and attempts that style of comedy but it never quite hits. The only moment that captures the clever physical comedy of the era involves Wilder pretending to own the legs of a person he has knocked unconscious, very apparently inspired by Charlie Chaplin.

The film also highlights a major problem Wilder has in the majority of the films he writes and directs (his work as the writer of Young Frankenstein not included), a lack of firm conclusions. Haunted Honeymoon, much like The Woman in Red, just sort of ends. But even worse than The Woman in Red’s utterly disrespectfully unfunny ending, Haunted Honeymoon doesn’t know how to end itself, so it pulls a “Gotcha! We were just joking”. Then the finale is topped off with a final scene that leaves the audience scratching its head and wondering what the hell the point of all this was.

Gilda would pass away two years later. Wilder’s life during this time was focused solely on her care, and there were no films made until 1989’s See No Evil, Hear No Evil. It began to feel like Wilder just didn’t have many films left in him. Between Gilda’s death and poor reception of his films, he was becoming more and more disenfranchised with the industry. He would make two more movies, never directing another: Funny About Love and Another You. Next time, we’ll look at Funny About Love.

TV Review – Channel Zero: Candle Cove

Channel Zero: Candle Cove (Syfy, 2016)

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I don’t remember where I first discovered Creepypasta or which one was my first. What I remember is that fearful exhilaration recalled from my childhood cracking open Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Short, sweet bursts of dread and horror. Horror cinema has attempted to capture that sense of growing unease with mixed returns and recently mainstream horror films have found themselves in a conceptual rut, churning out the same staccatoed jump scares over and over again. Creepypasta (or NoSleep) are not a new invention, but a remixing of the stories told around the campfire. At their best, they incorporate aspects of modern life into their horrors. With Candle Cove, the horror is that of nostalgia.

Mike Painter is a renowned child psychologist who has a deep trauma in his past. His hometown of Iron Hill was the sight of gruesome child murders in 1988, with one victim being Mike’s twin brother Eddie. As an adult, Mike is suffering from a mental breakdown and believe that returning to Iron Hill and confronting his past will help heal the wounds. Instead, he is welcomed back by something long forgotten: Candle Cove, a cheaply produced pirate-themed puppet show for kids. Mike and his now-grown childhood friends all remember these strange broadcasts that popped up and then faded away that bloody summer of 1988. A connection begins to form between this ominous show and the unsolved killings that bring Mike face to face with disturbing and mind-shattering horrors.

Candle Cove was directed by Craig William Macneill who made The Boy, an atmospheric and subtle horror film I previously reviewed. One of the strongest aspects of Candle Cove is slow, paced cinematography. I can’t recall any jump scares, and Macneil prefers the dread and tension built by a slow pan to reveal. Landscapes are broken down and large rural industrial spaces, signs of life that aren’t there any longer. The camera begins distant in many scenes and slowly zooms and pans to reveal small figures moving across grassy fields near the edges of woods. The camera peers around corners of quiet living rooms, children sitting in the blue glow of staticky televisions.

The acting in Candle Cove is restrained, not quite to the point of the stoic absurdity of Wes Anderson but not too far. Character react in stunned silence; no one breaks down in hysteric screams or tears. This one little touch adds to the eeriness and terror of the story. It also feels more real, how people, when confronted with unimaginable horror, can do nothing but stand in silence in awe of it.

The horror of Candle Cove is the horror of nostalgia and remembrance. Mike Painter is the most haunted character in the story because he remembers what happened while the other citizens of Iron Hill have chosen to forget. When Candle Cove is discussed, it sparks memories in his friends, but it remains a pale and fragmented ghost. For Mike, Candle Cove revisits him as vivid, realistic nightmares. In his dreams, the monsters can hurt him and so memories are dangerous. It is only by confronting the nostalgia, seeing through how he remembers it to the ugliness that lives underneath the skin can he find peace.

The series goes far beyond the original short story. The first episode encapsulates the entirety of the Creepypasta, so the rest of the series is developing a larger mythology and giving just enough explanation to the mystery of Candle Cove. By the end of these six episodes you will know what Candle Cove is and where it comes from, but through that revelation lies more unanswered questions. We’re left with that beautiful ambiguity that makes horror such an enthralling genre. Channel Zero’s next outing starts in January and will adapt the series of stories called No-End House. I am excited to see how stylistically different each iteration of Channel Zero will be as it plays with the horror genre.

TV Review – American Horror Story: Roanoke

American Horror Story Season 6: Roanoke (FX, 2016)

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After five seasons, I found myself getting burn out with American Horror Story. It’s such a strange duck, always reinventing itself, yet finding threads to connect its various incarnations. There is no television show quite like it, but I was still finding myself growing tired with portions of the formula. From the promos for Season 6 to the first episode, it became apparent creator Ryan Murphy was trying out something new. The season was shorter, making episodes tighter and more focused leading to what is arguably the best of ending of any season.

The framework at the start of the season is a reality television series covering the real life horror of an unsuspecting couple who moved into a mansion in the middle of the North Carolina wilderness. They quickly learn the land and house are haunted by the spirits of a succession of people who were murdered there going all the way back to the lost Roanoke colony. The series cuts back and forth between the re-enactments and the confessional interviews. And then at the halfway point the season becomes something entirely different.

Not everything in Roanoke works. There were some severe pacing issues I had, where events whizzed by at breakneck speed to hit certain plot points. This is not atypical of the series but this season’s particular framing highlighted how dizzying the show could be. Lots of plot was stuffed into these ten episodes, and not everything wraps up neatly. The horror surrounding the property gets explained a little but still we’re left wondering about things that seemed important (Stefani Germanotta’s role as the witch of the woods stands out as an unexplored mystery).

I have to admit; I fell for the novelty of the season’s framing. From the first episode, I started thinking about the fact we were seeing two of the main characters, one set as the “real life” victims of the horror telling their story and the re-enactors revisiting those horrors in a safe, facsimile. When the show begins to play with the role of media, it gets pretty interesting as re-enactors take on an entirely new role in the story. While not as garish and over the top as AHS can be, I was often reminded of A Head Full of Ghosts and House of Leaves this season, the former for its integration of reality television into a family’s personal horror and latter for its use of framing as an element of horror.

What was the horror of Season 6? It’s easy to peg The Media, and the show does often paint its metaphors with the broadest of strokes. But after the closing moments of the finale, I looked back at recurring themes in the story. Matt and Shelby Miller, the couple whom the season begins around, come to the house in North Carolina after a vicious hate crime. They are an interracial couple and were assaulted on the street due to the nature of their relationship. Shelby loses their unborn child as a result. Shortly, we’re introduced to Lee, Matt’s sister, who is in the midst of a custody battle with her ex. Lee is a former police officer that got addicted to pills and alcohol. Even the de facto leader of the evil spirits around the house has issues with her son. There’s a ghost girl, apparently an orphan, isolated and alone on the property. And then the Polk family…well, they have plenty of issues with their children. I believe this season had the horror of parenthood at its heart. Now, AHS is not an eloquent enough show to say anything truly meaningful about the topic, but it does bring up some interesting questions and ideas.

Ryan Murphy has promised that seasons 7 and 8 will be about exploring the connections between seasons and bringing together elements of the AHS universe. I have no idea where the show will go next and, despite its glaringly ugly flaws, that is what makes watching it so much damn fun.

Movie Review – The Woman in Red

The Woman in Red (1984, dir. Gene Wilder)

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Teddy Pierce (Gene Wilder) begins the film standing on a ledge, just outside a window. Through voiceover, he takes us back to his fateful meeting with the Woman in Red (Kelly LeBrock) and how it led him to this place. He was a faithful husband and a doting father, comfortable in his job as an advertising executive. At first, Teddy’s gestures towards The Woman are scrambled around, and co-worker believes they are aimed at her (Gilda Radner). When the relationship finally does get off the ground, it becomes a series of lies and comically awkward scenarios where Teddy tries to dodge and mislead his wife (Judith Ivey).

One of the biggest wrinkles for me as I watched this film was the way Teddy’s infidelity was played for laughs. I can’t imagine this film being made today without some genuine pathos being written in for Teddy’s wife. There is a single moment in the third act that seems slapped in to handle any dislike the audience had for our protagonist, but it didn’t make me feel that he was justified in any way. I kept thinking about the culture Mad Men depicted and how this felt like the last vestiges of that, crumbling away in the early 1980s. Teddy has a cohort of buddies (Charles Grodin, Joseph Bologna, and Michael Huddleston) he pals around with and engages in raucous pranks on unsuspecting people. It appears that the intent was to make us think this was cute. Instead, it comes across as obnoxious and beneath characters that are supposed to be grown, professional men.

Despite the odd dismissiveness of the wife’s feelings, there are some moments of real consequence for side characters. Joseph Bologna’s character is notorious for his infidelities and early on in the film his wife leaves him. It feels like this will be handled seriously, as a counterpoint to what Teddy is contemplating. But then the film undercuts this plot halfway through, and it leaves Bologna’s character as having learned nothing from the ordeal. These are not “manly-men” per se though; they are a type of “fraternity of men” in their dynamic. So it shocked me that around the halfway mark it is very subtly and very honestly revealed that Charles Grodin’s character is gay. The words “gay” or “homosexual” are never spoken, the rest of the guys never rib him about it and the fact is just something they all knew and accepted. Grodin’s partner learns he’s been cheating on him and leaves their home. Grodin has a very real, emotional moment contemplating how his philandering has affected his life. For 1984, I was honestly shocked that a gay relationship was shown with such acceptance.

Wilder adapted the film from a French picture titled Pardon Man Affaire but infuses it with the Wilder tropes (red-faced hysterics, sad puppy-faced mugging, bawdy nebbish-ness). It just doesn’t work in the end. Reflecting on the films Wilder directed (Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, The World’s Greatest Lover, and this) it becomes a parade of diminishing returns. His work has moments of brilliance, but as a whole, they are muddled, confusing, and rarely funny. It’s clear to me Wilder has a very distinct point of view throughout his work, it is just messy and meandering. The one bright spot in The Woman in Red is Gilda Radner in a nearly wordless performance as a co-worker who mistakenly believes Teddy is after an affair with her. Where in Hanky Panky she is cast as “generic female supporting character” here she is allowed to flex her comedy and acting chops, proving what a great talent she was just with her face.

At this point in his career, Wilder has settled into the role of the WASP-y milquetoast, and it is clear that his greatest performances were behind him. He would direct one more film, though, Haunted Honeymoon, which is what I’ll be reviewing next time.