GHOST IN THE MACHINE

GHOST IN THE MACHINE (1993). Director: Rachel Talaley. 

Karl Hoffman (Ted Marcoux), who works in a computer store, is actually a deadly serial killer known as the "Address Book Killer" because he goes after all the people in an individual's address book. His latest would-be victim is Terry Monroe (Karen Allen), who has a young son named Josh (Wil Horneff) and who inadvertently leaves her address book at the aforementioned computer store. An added complication is that Hoffman is in a car accident, and while he is getting an MRI an electrical surge pulls his brain patterns, or soul, into the computer and electrical systems. Hoffman's body may be dead, but his malevolent mind is still very active and as sadistic as ever. Before long Terry's friends and associates are being killed via electronics, with microwaves, dishwashers, and the like going berserk and causing death and destruction. Terry and Josh team up with infamous hacker Bram Walker (Chris Mulkey) to figure out a way to permanently dissipate this frightening and powerful entity. 

Ghost in the Machine is somewhat similar to Wes Craven's Shocker, but it is a better picture. There is an interesting use of graphics such as when the killer invades a virtual reality game being played by Josh and his buddy. The scenes with the electronic death traps are generally well-handled and suspenseful. A standout sequence occurs when Josh is nearly drowned when Hoffman operates the cover over the pool and the boy desperately tries to get out before it completely entraps him. I wish the climax had been a bit more exciting, however, and the score does absolutely nothing for the movie. 

Verdict: Well-acted, interesting, absorbing horror flick. ***. 

THE BEAUTY Season One

Ashton Kutchner

THE BEAUTY (2026 TV series). Season One. Co-produced by Ryan Murphy.  

FBI agents Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall), who claim they are just "casually" involved with each other, stumble across an incredible conspiracy engineered by billionaire Byron Forst (Vincent D'Onofrio, then Ashton Kutchner). A scientist in the sociopathic Forst's employ has come up with "the Beauty," an all-purpose, essentially instant chemical injection that can turn a person younger and more attractive once they emerge from a kind of plastic cocoon. Unfortunately, after three years or so those who take the Beauty may literally explode, as happens to several crazed fashion models. The Beauty is essentially a plague, and can be sexually transmitted, bypassing the injection, although the results in that case are even more uncertain. Jordan, who has sex with a hot guy who took the treatment, becomes younger and sexier (turning into Jess Alexander), Cooper undergoes a startling transformation, and one poor teenage girl ... Millions of people would hock their souls to get the treatment, but is the cost too high, and what about the horrific side effects undergone by some patients?

Isabella Rossellini

Based on a graphic novel, The Beauty, which has quite a few satiric targets, can be dumb, but it is also fascinating, suspenseful, odd, very gross at times, and I must admit highly enjoyable, a sort of guilty pleasure. Kutchner gives a ferociously mesmerizing performance as the utterly self-centered and evil younger version of Forst, and the other players -- including Anthony Ramos as a hit man employed and then betrayed by Forst -- are on the money. Isabella Rossellini is Forst's sarcastic and uncompromising wife, who seems to completely detest him, and Ben Platt is perhaps overly campy as a guy who gets infected when a model bursts into pieces at a public function. Viewers might see some similarities to The Substance, but the Beauty graphic novel was published several years before the Demi Moore movie.

Verdict: Compelling and slick horror series. Let's hope there's a season two. ***. 

BEASTS

BEASTS. Liam Sykes. Echo Horror. 

Erica Rogers is disturbed by the fact that her horses are acting strangely and can't figure out why. There is also bizarre, inexplicable behavior among the horses in Nevada where a young man named Rory makes his home. Eventually wild mustangs and other horses band together to literally wipe Rory's town off the map in an exciting chapter entitled "Stampede." As for Erica, one of her horses kills a little girl, as well as her mother, while the rest of her formerly docile mounts attack her, her mother, and her cousin. The horses even develop a taste for human flesh! There are more bloody encounters at county fairs and race tracks even as Erica tries to track down the people responsible for this equine outrage. 

This book is a reissue of a vintage "killer animal" paperback from the eighties and it is a lot of fun. Horses may seem unlikely antagonists, but the beasts in this book have been transformed and are extremely nasty and dangerous, and even undergo some physical changes. The author can't quite seem to make up his mind if it's a chemical, a plague, or supernatural influences that are responsible for the attacks -- or all three -- but it doesn't really matter. The paperback is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble and the ebook is on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and others. 

Verdict: Be careful whom you give a sugar cube to! ***

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH

A T Rex on the attack!

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH (2025). Director: Gareth Edwards. 

A new expedition goes to the island where the genetically-engineered dinosaurs roam, as blood samples are needed for a drug to prevent heart disease. Naturally millions of dollars are at stake, and some would love to get these samples for major financial gain. Meanwhile, the people in the party -- played by Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, etc. -- have to dodge attacks by various gigantic predators. Complicating matters is a family that has ventured too close to the island and winds up stranded there.  

One big effin fish!

JWR is a perfectly acceptable dino movie with the usual stunning FX work and exciting scenes. The highlights include the attack on the boat by a huge aquatic creature, a scene when a T-Rex goes after the aforementioned family, and a rampage by a huge, flying Quetzelcoatus in a mountain cave. If there's any problem with the movie is that it's too long, with the somewhat annoying family padding out the running time. 

Verdict: One more Jurassic go-round. **3/4. 

MYSTERY STREET

Ricardo Montalban

MYSTERY STREET (1950). Director: John Sturges. 

A blackmailer named Vivian (Jan Sterling), who lives in a shady boarding house, winds up on the wrong end of a bullet. Some time later Lt. Morales (Ricardo Montalban) of the Barnstable, Cape Cod police force is called in when a skeleton is found on a beach. With the help of forensics and some dogged police work, as well as interviews with those who knew Vivian, Morales is able to zero in on the killer. Morales' chief suspect is Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson of Cult of the Cobra), a married man who made the drunken mistake of driving off with Vivian that night, while Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester), the landlady of the boarding house, is playing a dangerous game of blackmail that could make her the next victim. 

Elsa Lanchester and Edmon Ryan

Mystery Street deals with forensic science much, more more than the average murder mystery of the period, which is one of its strengths. There are also some fine performances from Montalban, Lanchester, Thompson, Sterling, Bruce Bennett as a Harvard professor that Morales consults with, and Sally Forrest as Thompson's wife. Forrest has a particularly good scene talking obliquely about the death of her child in the hospital. There is also nice work from Betsy Blair as a woman who lived in the same boarding house as the victim, and Edmon Ryan as a ship builder who is another suspect. Walter Burke and King Donovan have smaller roles and are fine.

Sally Forrest and Marshall Thompson

Mystery Street has some flaws, however. There is not nearly enough music, which would have strengthened key sequences. Certain actions of the main suspect should have strongly intimated that he wasn't the murderer if Lt. Morales, who seems quite smart, was using his head. And the scene when Morales walks in on Shanway just a second after the latter happens to see the victim's photo in the newspaper is coincidence carried a bit too far. John Alton's moody photography is an asset, though. Leading man Montalban always played with a borderline cocky assurance that gives his thesping a certain flavorful aspect -- this film is no exception in that regard.

Verdict: Good crime thriller with some very good performances. ***. 

DARK PHOENIX

Sophie Turner as Jean Grey

DARK PHOENIX (2019). Written and directed by Simon Kinberg. 

Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) sends a team of X-Men out into space on a rescue mission, and telepathic Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) is irradiated by what everyone thinks is a solar flare but is actually a powerful energy source. While this energy affects Jean's mind, some hostile shape-shifting aliens led by one Vuk (Jessica Chastain) come to earth to take this power away from Jean and use it for their own evil purposes. Angered that Prof X has kept secrets from her -- she thinks both of her parents were killed in a car accident but her father, who blames her, is still alive --  Jean lashes out and accidentally kills one of her colleagues, leading Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to declare war on her. But the aliens may prove a bigger threat and the mutants may find themselves in an alliance ...

James McAvoy as Professor X

Dark Phoenix was apparently excoriated by fans and critics alike, even though it is by no means a terrible movie. Unlike other recent X-sagas, Dark Phoenix at least has some well-choreographed battle scenes, and there's an eye-popping sequence on a train that is vivid and exciting. McAvoy and Fassbender offer the most memorable performances, and Turner is professional enough. Nicholas Hoult also makes an impression as the hairy Hank McCoy (better known as the Beast). Jessica Chastain really only has to show up and affect an attitude but she's still a striking presence in the movie. 

Jean Grey turning into "dark phoenix" was one of the best and most beloved storylines in the X-Men comic books, and this is the second time it has been sort of adapted -- and very much changed -- as a movie. (The first was in X-Men: The Last Stand.) In the original stories, Jean is manipulated by a bunch of evil characters called the Hellfire Club. She becomes so drunk with power that she wipes out an entire solar system of living beings, and then is taken to task by extraterrestrials and dies during battle via suicide. (It later developed that the Phoenix was a separate being from Jean, and she returned intact, more or less, in the comic books.) Many X-fans wondered why Fox bothered to do another version of this story if they weren't going to use more elements from the original tales?  

Michael Fassbender as Magneto

Dark Phoenix also creates some continuity problems if you are to take the X-films as being part of the same series of stories, which they obviously can't be. The events in this movie reignite anti-mutant feelings in society, bringing us full circle to the very first X-Men movie, but Jean Grey is very much alive in that film whereas in this she sort of goes off into the ether at the end. In any case, I found Dark Phoenix to be entertaining and better than the last couple of X-Movies, if not as good as the best films in the series. 

Verdict: Colorful X-fun if not all it could have been. ***. 

MATANGO / ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE

A tense moment in Matango

ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (aka Matango/1963). Director: Ishiro Honda. In Tohoscope. 

A businessman, Kasai (Yoshio Tsuchiya), sets sail on his yacht with his skipper Sakuta (Hiroshi Koizumi) and five friends, including the self-absorbed entertainer Mani (Kumi Mizuno) and the sweet and shy Akiko (Miki Ashiro). The others include the writer Yoshida (Hiroshi Tachikawa), the sailor Koyana (Kenji Sahara), and Professor Murai (Akira Kubo). The yacht nearly goes down during a very bad and frightening storm, but the group in the crippled ship mercifully sights land not too much later. On this deserted island they find a derelict research ship on the beach, which they make their home as they repair the yacht, which, unfortunately, drifts off to sea. Everything in the derelict is covered with fungi, and they decide it might be better not to eat the mushrooms that grow everywhere on the island. But some of them succumb ... 

Mami and Akiko

The interesting thing about Matango is how effective it is for much of its length. Well-photographed and directed, with an evocative score, it has a great deal of creepy atmosphere and suspense as we watch this assortment of characters, faced with starvation or a lifetime of isolation, start to unbend, each reacting differently to the crisis they find themselves in. It develops that the island is a ship's graveyard, adding to the ominous quality of the picture, as does the fact that experiments of an unknown nature were being conducted on the derelict ship. 

Where the picture falls down is in its monsters, people who have been turned into mostly mindless mushroom creatures that resemble something you might have seen on sillier episodes of the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV show. The mushrooms also cause hallucinations and flashbacks, so things become a little strange in the final quarter of the film. The English dubbing of this Japanese film is excellent, however, and the performances of both the original actors and the dubbing cast all seem to be quite good.  One comical moment occurs when the group try the radio to see if anyone knows of their disappearance, and the very second they turn on the set their names are mentioned! Some people feel this is an uncredited version of "The Voice in the Night" by horror author William Hope Hodgson. Honda also directed the classic original Gojira (Godzilla).

Verdict: Oddly, this is an absorbing and ultimately depressing horror flick. ***. 

HORROR HOUSE

Pitiful victim of Horror House

HORROR HOUSE (aka Haunted House of Horror/1969). Written and directed by Michael Armstrong.

Although Chris (Frankie Avalon) generally gives swingin' parties in London, everyone is bored at his latest soiree, until somebody gets the idea of the group going to investigate a haunted house. One of the group, Sylvia (Gina Warwick), is followed by her married lover, a creepy guy named Bob (George Sewell), who is stalking her. At the house one of the young men is attacked and slashed to death. Chris gets the not-very-bright idea of hiding the body and covering up the crime so that none of them will be forever branded a psychopath, even though one of them is undoubtedly guilty of the murder. But things will eventually come out as more murders occur ...

Frankie Avalon and Julian Barnes

Horror House holds the attention, but for most of its length it's completely devoid of any style or real excitement. The film is nearly half over before the first murder occurs. (This consists of quick shots of a slashing knife, a screaming man, and lots of fake blood thrown about.) But the final quarter is altogether different, almost as if it were directed by another person. There's an excellent and very suspenseful climax when two men are confronting each other, and a knife -- clearly being held by one of the men -- is seen between the two of them, only you can't tell which man is holding the knife as their hands are out of frame. 

Jill Haworth and Frankie Avalon

Beach Party movie alumnus Avalon is okay in the film, but two other actors make more of an impression: Julian Barnes as a haunted young man who had a bad experience in his youth; and Mark Wynter, who was introduced in the film (although he had at least one previous starring role), and seems to have the biggest part in this as a ladies man until he's suddenly sliced and diced.  Jill Haworth [Horror on Snape Island] plays Avalon's girlfriend, Sheila, as a tough, rather unlikable wench who is easily bored. Dennis Price [The Horror of It All] has little to do as a police inspector. Reg Tilsley's score can best be described as uneven, although when it's good it's quite effective. Michael Armstrong also directed Mark of the Devil. 

Verdict: Half-baked horror flick that has some rewards it you sit through it all. **1/2. 

UNCLE: THE SORT-OF-DO-IT-YOURSELF-DREADFUL AFFAIR

Model A-77 (Willi Koopman) goes on the rampage 

THE SORT-OF-DO-IT-YOURSELF-DREADFUL AFFAIR (1966). The Man from Uncle; season three; episode two. Teleplay by Harlan Ellison. Director: E. Darrell. Hallenbeck. 

Trying to get at some files from the evil organization Thrush, UNCLE agent Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) encounters a strange guardian of the files: a beautiful woman who is impervious to bullets and seems super-strong. She turns out to be a cyborg, mostly artificial but with some human parts. The cyborg's face is modeled on a young lady who was the roommate of "Andy" Francis (Jeannine Riley), who gets involved with Solo and Illya (David McCallum) on their investigation. 

David McCallum and Robert Vaughn

Thrush, which is already a very wealthy organization, wants a billion dollar loan and Napoleon poses as a representative of the bank. Thrush's goal is to build a great many of these cyborgs "to help mankind," although their true purpose will be to act as unexpected soldiers. The scientist behind this is the unwitting Dr. Pertwee (Woodrow Parfrey), while his Thrush liaison is the sensual Margo Hayward (Pamela Curran). Eventually our heroes, along with Andy, manage to get into Thrush's New York headquarters, where they find themselves up against not only the forces of Thrush, but a whole bevy of beautiful and deadly killer cyborgs. 

She-Cyborgs on the loose! 

By the third season of the show, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. had become increasingly absurd and campy, trying too hard to imitate Batman or Get Smart. Nevertheless, some of the third season episodes at least had some amusing entertainment value. While one could argue that "The Sort-of-Do-It-Yourself-Dreadful Affair" is an example of why TV was called the "boob tube," the episode still has several points of interest. It is one of only a couple of episodes scripted by speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison, for one thing. Underneath the bizarre aspects, there is something unsettling about the premise, as well as the fate of the innocent woman whose face and fabric is stolen after her accidental death. 

Pamela Curran

Both Vaughn [Solo] and McCallum hold on to their dignity despite the far-out quality of the story, and with her mature sex kitten and sinister persona Pamela Curran makes her mark as Margo. Veteran actor Fritz Feld [The Catman of Paris] is a delight as a representative of the bank, who is nearly apoplectic at all the goings-on, and Naomi Stevens has a funny bit as a phony fortune teller with a bad case of heartburn. The music when the cyborgs go on the rampage is wild. The A-77 cyborgs are played by Willi Koopman (whose first name is misspelled "Willy" in the closing credits), a very attractive actress who had only a few credits, mostly in decorative roles. This episode may well have been inspired by Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, which came out the previous year, and its 1966 follow-up, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, both of which were much, much worse than "Do-It-Yourself Dreadful." 

Verdict: Frankly there have been much better episodes of this series, but this one is oddly engaging. ***.

LOVE'S DEADLY TRIANGLE: THE TEXAS CADET MURDER

Holly Marie Combs and David Lipper

LOVE'S DEADLY TRIANGLE: THE TEXAS CADET MURDER (aka Swearing Allegiance/1997 telefilm). Director: Richard A. Colla. 

In the late nineties in Texas, two young sociopaths -- Diane Zamora (Holly Marie Combs) and David Graham (David Lipper), high school students with plans for the military and marriage -- decide to do away with another young lady, Adrianne Jones (Cassidy Rae), in order to wash out the sin of her sleeping with David, an event that may never have even occurred. Love's Deadly Triangle is a telefilm that was rushed out even before Zamora and Graham were put on trial (both received life sentences.)

David Lipper as Cadet David 

Frankly, Love's Deadly Triangle, although absorbing enough, is another example of a true crime movie that is sort of pasted together in a hurry and lacks any kind of depth of characterization or much else. True, there isn't much to Zamora or Graham aside from severe pathology. In spite of this Combs gives a good performance as the jealous Diane, while Lipper is effective, although a cut or two below his co-star in acting ability. Dee Wallace is fine as Adrianne's heartbroken mother. True crime shows, such as American Justice, that have focused on this tragic case and present the real participants are generally more interesting than this TV movie. Graham at first denied that he murdered Jones, then later not only admitted that he had killed her but that he and Adrienne had never even slept together. Zamora had a brief jailhouse marriage to another man that ended in divorce, and essentially failed a lie detector test on Dateline. Apparently both of these creeps are right where they belong. 

Verdict: Sad case, interesting story, so-so telefilm. **1/2.