161) NEW HORROR RELEASES - Heir of the Witch (2023)

"My curse is too heavy, and no one can cure it for me."

Director

Victoria Bell

Cast

Victoria Bell - Anna

Deanna Rashell - Chloe

Lorayn DeLuca - Anna's grandmother, the Witch

Ben Holtzmuller - Nicholas

Julian Brittano - Martin

Norwood Ezzell - Dustin

Vanessa Neff- Aunt Rosie

It seems to me that when it comes to new horror releases, originality is too often scarce. A lot of them seem repetitive and relying heavily on jump scares and grotesqueries. Easy scares, if they work. Nor do many new horror movies strike me as projects of dedication. There have been a fair number of successful and decent movies in the last few years. But I have the impression that horror movies in general are judged pretty hard by audiences. 

The upcoming independent horror film, "Heir of the Witch," is unique in that it's not only based on a real event, but the movie is written and directed by the person directly affected by this terrifying familial scenario. 

Victoria Bell, a native of Moldova, wrote, directed and stars in her first feature film, "Heir of the Witch." It's based on, as stated on the movie's website, www.heirofthewitch.com/, her "fears, anxieties, and individual experiences." 

Her paternal grandmother was a witch whom Bell was told had sold her soul to the devil.

Her family believes her grandmother's soul couldn't die until the "spirit of darkness" released her ghost after she passed her "gift" to another member of the family. 

In an interview I had with Bell, which I'll post soon, she said no one in the family knows whom their grandmother passed this "gift" onto as they don't associate with that paternal side for fear of condemnation. And that takes us to "Heir of the Witch."

In this movie, Bell plays a seamstress named Anna, an autobiographical character. Prior to the story immigrated from Moldova when she was a child. She came to the U.S. with her Aunt Rosie (Vanessa Neff) to seek a brighter future away from the dark history of their family. 

The film starts as Anna works as a seamstress still haunted by the death of her mother at the hands of her abusive alcoholic father.

Anna is also plagued by the soul of her grandmother, a practicing witch in her lifetime, who torments her long after her death, day and night.

When Anna was a young girl, her grandmother (Lorayn DeLuca) would perform sadistic rituals on Anna while binding her to a chair and keeping her in a dark room. 

Anna had killed her grandmother by stabbing her to death with a pair of scissors from a sewing kit. She tempts Anna almost constantly to use powers she cursed her with in order to continue on the dark path she ventured on in her lifetime.

Anna works on a dress for a wealthy and beautiful client, Chloe Hunt (Deanna Rashell). Chloe tries to manipulate Anna into becoming her personal assistant to do her shopping and clean her house. She also invites Anna to a party at her house where she meets Chloe's husband, Nicholas (Ben Holtzmuller). 

He and Anna start having an affair, which leads to Anna's pregnancy. 

During this time, Nicholas keeps promising to leave Chloe for Anna. Once the town finds out about Anna and Nicholas, he starts distancing himself from her and their unborn baby. 

Meanwhile, the spirit of Anna's grandmother continues tormenting her and killing those who attempt to get close to Anna. 

Victoria Bell as 'Anna' in 'Heir of the Witch.'

Her grandmother becomes more and more present around Anna, trying to manipulate and control her until Anna can't tell reality from delusion. 

For her first feature film, Bell proves she has the talent to tell a daunting horror story that hits the thriller-loving spots. 

There is a sad element to the story that while evil can be defeated, it unfortunately has a way of carrying on, doing whatever terrible things it can to torment souls. 

It took Bell three and a half years of love, dedication, and hard work, to film and release her movie. 

If I have to nit-pick this film, perhaps some of the dialogue could use some polishing. I also have to admit that the story initially felt disjointed and predictable. However, the ending corrected this initial impression. It truly took me by surprise. I didn't see it coming. And it makes up for anything that might be lacking. 

For her first feature film, "Heir of the Witch" is a small but gleaming gem within the horror genre. If this indicates anything about Bell's talent and passion, it's that she has nowhere to go but up. Her love for the art of film making and for the horror genre shines clear in this initial film. Bell conveys her character's anguish from such a dark past, and unthinkably heavy burdens that resulted, amazingly well. 

Bell brings a lot of energy and convincing emotion to the story making Anna an intriguing and sympathetic to the audience. She is a compelling character. Bell's performance gives the movie a distinct sympathetic tone alongside the horror. It's not all about scaring the audience, although there's a decent amount of that.

The story itself leaves a fog of trepidation especially when considering that such a thing actually happened. And if there's one compliment I could give the movie, it's that the story is thankfully unpredictable. 

Family turning on family in such an evil way is disturbing and horrific beyond description.

I look forward to seeing some of her future projects in the genre, including a psychological thriller she's planning called "5."

Bell's first independent horror movie is a quiver fest that doesn't have any dull moments.

"Heir of the Witch" starts streaming everywhere August 4.

I'm including horror movie trivia into my posts now! That's fun, right? Either way, there it is. The answer will be in my next post...


*Answer to the question from my last post, "Renfield" = Joe Hill.

160) NEW HORROR RELEASES - Renfield (2023)

"I don't ask for much, Renfield. Just the blood of a few dozen innocent people." 

Director

Chris McKay

Cast

Nicholas Hoult - R.M. Renfield

Nicholas Cage - Count Dracula

Awkwafina - Rebecca

Ben Schwartz - Ted Lobo
Shohreh Aghdashloo - Bellafrancesca Lobo
Brandon Scott Jones - Mark, the support group leader

I can't recall any other year in which new horror movie releases have piqued my interest more. A large number of horror flicks have come out this year that I'd like to see, including "Renfield" starring America's favorite lunatic actor, Nicholas Cage, as Dracula. Normally, it takes a lot for a new horror flick to grab my interest. Too many of them end up as big let downs. 

My love for the Universal Monster movies is what drew me to "Renfield." I was sold on the idea of a vampire movie centering on Count Dracula's fanatically loyal servant R.M. Renfield. That's just how he's portrayed in Tod Browning's 1931 horror classic "Dracula" with Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula and Dwight Frye as Renfield. So, that's what I was expecting here. But "Renfield" didn't really go in the direction I expected.

I started to find myself entertained by Cage beginning with the 2022 movie "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent." Before, I never took any liking to him. Now, I admit he's grown on me. But I can't get myself to say I'm a Nicholas Cage fan. I just can't. Not yet anyways. Maybe I'll just say I don't dislike him as much as I used to and leave it with that.

"Renfield" starts with some backstory beginning with the titular character (Nicholas Hoult) and Dracula first meeting. It's a full-on nod to their introduction as seen in Browning's classic. It's the same black and white scene, but with Cage and Hoult in the roles of Lugosi and Frye. 

After ninety years, Renfield still serves as Dracula's slave, or familiar, as he brings him fresh victims to feast on. In return, Dracula gives Renfield immortality and the ability to gain superhuman strength by snacking on live insects. 

After all this time, Renfield is tired of doing Dracula's bidding all while taking verbal abuse from the prince of darkness.

He and Dracula nearly escape a close call by some vampire hunters who attempt to kill Dracula. So, the two decide to move from Transylvania to New Orleans to escape any more vampire hunters. They take up residency in the abandoned and dilapidated Charity Hospital.

Meanwhile, a traffic cop named Rebecca (Awkwafina), who's a second-generation police officer, has a run-in with Tedward Lobo (Ben Schwartz), the son of crime boss Bellafrancesca Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo)- head of the Lobo crime family- during a police sobriety checkpoint. 

She arrests Ted after he plows through her check point and throws bricks of cocaine at her. 

Nicholas Cage and Nicholas Hoult in "Renfield."

However, he's released almost immediately which makes the corruption within her department completely obvious. So, she goes to her sister Kate (Camille Chen), who's an FBI agent, for help and support. 

Renfield, meanwhile, decides to enter a support group for people wanting to leave abusive relationships so he can be independent from the shadow of Dracula's domination. Of course, he keeps the gory details behind this relationship to himself.

He later befriends Rebecca after saving her life from an attack at a restaurant led by Ted, who is pressured by his mother to do whatever it takes to make the Lobo family number one in the city.

After Renfield kills several of the Lobos family henchmen during the attack, the Lobo matriarch puts a price on his head. 

Renfield also takes the advice of the support group leader, Mark (Brandon Scott Jones), and begins to live his own life away from Dracula. He gets his own apartment and turns over a new leaf that doesn't involve dragging innocent people to his old "master." 

In attempting to find and kill Renfield, Ted discovers Dracula in the abandoned hospital. Instead of killing Ted, Dracula makes an agreement with him, and then pays Renfield a visit at his new apartment. 

He decides to make Renfield's life a hell and attacks the self-help group while Renfield is helpless to intervene. 

The Lobos family, along with the army of corrupt officers they've paid off, attack Renfield and Rebecca again at his apartment.

As the attack ends with the death of practically all the henchmen and rotten cops, Ted, Bellafrancesca and Dracula kidnapped Rebecca's sister in an attempt to lure in Renfield and Rebecca. 

Both sides square off in a final standoff of good versus evil. 

While I appreciate the comedic premise of Renfield wanting to be his own individual person, the movie is frustrating. 

It's perfectly well known that among the standard Dracula tropes, he cowers at the sight of crucifixes and other holy or blessed objects.

But the movie takes a conceited and misguided turn against religion (Catholicism specifically) - the very entity that brings Dracula to his knees- and replaces it with an empty platitude of inner-strength and power, blah blah blah, as a means to take down the prince of darkness. It's a plot point that comes across as arrogant and stupid. 

This puts goodness as the evil, and the evil as good. One of the vampire hunters in the beginning of the film is a Catholic bishop. He's portrayed as weak and uncertain. Dracula takes him down by literally blowing him up. In a deleted scene, this bishop attempts And that the real goodness comes from our own inner-strength, or some such empty nonsense. 

But all the other typical vampire tropes are there. So, which is it? 

Vampires cannot enter someone's domain unless they're invited in. One joke that had me laughing sees Dracula walk on in to Renfield's apartment. It takes Renfield a moment to wonder how Dracula was able to enter his pad without his verbal invitation, and then sees his welcome mat on the front step that says "Come on in." 

Awkwafina's performance is like that of a freshman who just joined their high school drama club. It's rigid and bland. And she delivers her dialogue like she's trying her hardest to remember her script. 

I was bit smitten a bit at the opening use of Browning's 1931 film at the beginning.

Cage's performance is quite the opposite, and the best thing the movie has going for it. His eccentric personality and style is perfect for such an eccentric character. At times, I didn't see Cage at all. I saw conniving and twisted Count Dracula.

Also, William Ragsdale, who plays vampire hunter Charley Brewster in the classic vampire movie "Fright Night" makes a cameo in "Renfield." Nice!

This is director Chris McKay's third movie following a meager handful of films he also directed which have garnered a lot of attention - namely "The Lego Batman Movie," and "The Tomorrow War." He's also a story writer for the 2023 movie "Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves."

Unfortunately, "Renfield" is a bloody mess of CGI gore, empty ideas, over the top nonsense that fails to wow the audience, and a disdain for what puts evil in its place. It's too tainted with a tiresome politically correct message, wafting throughout like stinky gas which spoils the overall horror story. It makes enough to make one repel in disgust like Dracula in the presence of garlic or wolfsbane. 

I will say that if a biopic depicting Lugosi's role in the original Dracula is ever produced, Cage would be an ideal actor to play that part.

I'm including horror movie trivia into my posts now! That's fun, right? Either way, there it is. The answer will be in my next post...

Horror writer Stephen King's son, Joseph King, is also a horror writer. What is his pen name?

*Answer to the question from my last post, "The Attic" = Lankester.

159) The Attic (1980)

"I've been drowning most of my life. I keep asking myself how many times how many times do I have to go under before somebody will throw me a line. The truth is nobody ever throws you one. You save yourself."

Director

George Edwards

Cast

Carrie Snodgress - Louise Elmore

Ray Milland - Wendell

Ruth Cox - Emily

Frances Bay - Librarian 

I mentioned the 1980 psychological horror drama "The Attic" in my commentary on the 1986 horror movie "Crawlspace." Both films were packaged together on DVD distributed from MGM titled "Midnight Movies Double Feature." 

The titles of these movies initially caught my attention. With "The Attic" I anticipated something cringy, dark, dusty and dank. That's generally how attics are. They're generally a go-to spot for ghosts. Attics always seem to have their customary ghost for some reason. I don't know what's up there in the attic that ghosts love so much. Maybe ghosts in the attic are a metaphor for our own personal forgotten history that somehow still survives up there in our attics? Otherwise, it sounds like an insanely boring afterlife if some of us are doomed to hang out in someone's attic for decades or, maybe, centuries. I wonder if any souls spend their afterlife on the sidelines of NFL games, or at Disneyland? 

Anyways, attics are spaces where people often keep old mementos of their past that age with intensity and fall apart just like we do. 

As for the movie, the attic doesn't play any significant part in the story until the final act. It's barely even alluded to in the story. 

In this movie, Carrie Snodgress plays a lonely, single and deeply depressed librarian named Louise. She lives with her verbally abusive, self-centered, wheelchair bound wealthy father, Wendell (Ray Milland) somewhere out in Wichita. 

After 19 years, she remains hopeful that her fiancé, Robert, will return as he left her standing at the altar on their wedding day. Regardless, her true emotions start the story off as we see her attempting suicide by slitting her wrists while watching old films of herself and Robert at the start of the movie.

Louise has been working as a librarian for several years, and one day suffers a nervous breakdown. During this breakdown, she starts a fire inside the library. Fortunately, the damage is minimal.

Afterwards, Louise decides it's best to resign from her job. She agrees to train her replacement, Emily (Ruth Cox) before officially leaving. 

She and Emily become friends, especially as Emily feels much sympathy for Louise's difficulties with her father. Emily has her own issues with her domineering mother.

Meanwhile, Louise has fantasies of her father falling over and dying. 

One evening, she goes to see a movie by herself. While there, a sailor named Richard hits on her, and then takes her back to his hotel room. Of course, Wendell is upset Louise has been gone all night. Regardless, the day after her one-night stand, she and Emily go out shopping.  

During their outing, they walk past a pet shop where Louise takes a liking to a chimpanzee that's for sale. 

Emily decides to purchase the chimp later on and present it to Louise as a gift. 

Louise is thrilled with her new pet, which she names Dickie. 

Carrie Snodgress and Ray Milland in "The Attic."

Wendell, however, is disgusted by the animal and demands it be taken out of the house. Louise doesn't listen to him and keeps the chimp upstairs in her bedroom. Wendell, by the way, hasn't been able to go upstairs in years and stays on the ground floor of the house. That's what he leads Louise to believe, anyways. 

As the two ladies spend time together, Emily confides that she has a boyfriend who moved out to California. She doesn't want to move out of Kansas to be with him as he is trying to get her to out there, and hopefully marry her.

So, she invites Louise to her parents' house for dinner to meet her mom, who constantly nags Emily's little brother. During and after the meal, Louise gets an idea of how domineering Emily's mother is. So, for Emily's sake, Louise decides to make an impression on her mom. 

The following day, the library staff hold a party for Louise's last day. She grateful, and just before she leaves, she advises Emily not to let once in a lifetime opportunities pass her by. 

When Louise returns home, Dickie is missing. Her dad claims he ran away. Louise becomes frantic as Dickie is nowhere to be found. 

The next day, she buys Emily a plane ticket to California as a gift and mails it to her at the library, 

Emily jumps at the opportunity and heads to the West Coast right away. She calls Louise from the airport to thank her. Now, Louise is alone with her father. There's no job to escape to each day, nor friend to confide in.

Later, Louise takes her father on their regular walk at the park. 

When his wheelchair accidentally tips over, Wendall stands up revealing he never needed a wheelchair. This appalling revelation leads to other secrets surfacing, leading Louise to see what her father has hidden in their attic. 

The attic doesn't play any role in the story until the very end. Only the attic key is show once without explanation, but that's it. Louise, though, never ventures up there until the very end. She barely even manifests any curiosity about the attic.

This movie is labeled as a psychological horror movie. You might be asking yourself while reading this synopsis, "where's the horror?" The psychological part is definitely there but the horror is extremely subtle. The audience really has to consider what takes place inside Louise to see any semblance of horror. 

It's frightening to consider ourselves in Louise's position. Otherwise, "The Attic" is much more of a psychological drama than an actual horror movie. I'm really stretching the definition of a horror movie here, which is a film intended to arouse fear, dread, shock - call it what you will - in an audience.

The story opens with cries of despair, heartache and slit wrists.

So, this movie does have some dark elements, but dark doesn't necessarily mean horror. A depressing heart wrenching scene can be dark. Disney's 1985 film "Return to Oz" is dark and has some freaky imagery. It's certainly not horror. I think "The Attic" wants to be more traumatic than fright inducing but ends up a depressing drama. In that regard, it's a decent enough story.  

Dickie, the goofy chimpanzee along with the soft songs playing throughout the film take away any trepidation the story might be trying to convey. The soundtrack, with music sung by Kelly Garrett, is completely unnecessary, distracting, and confusing. Again, is this a drama or a horror flick? I don't need Garrett's songs to know how the protagonist is feeling, nor to tell me how I'm supposed to feel.

This movie has all the makings of a Friday night made-for-TV horror that's just too timid and holds back a lot. 

Garrett, by the way, can also be heard on the soundtrack to the 1973 horror film "House of Terror."

I did become invested a bit in Louise's situations. Snodgress does portray a tragic character impressively well. The sadness comes through her mannerisms and temperament. On top of that, her unsympathetic father wants her to wait on him while constantly berating her. Louise's outlet is her new friend, Emily, and a chimp. I think as Louise grows older since being dumped at the altar 19 years ago, her mind begins to snap as she finally, though unwillingly, realizes her old fiancé is never coming back. Old age is approaching, and her loneliness is clearly going nowhere. Once Emily takes off for California, and becomes engaged, it's just Louise and her demeaning father. It tears her down more and more as the story progresses. It's a depressing story with no happy ending. 

In the end, she's trapped (literally) in the dusty confines of her own sad reality mixed with bitter memories. 

Some of the dialogue is entertaining.

In one scene when Emily and Louise are talking about their respective parents, Louise says, "I guess emasculation is some mothers' instinct. And some fathers too."

"You can't fight it," Emily says.

"Oh. the hell you can't."  

Snodgress may be best remembered for the 1970 comedic drama "Diary of a Mad Housewife" for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress.

In that film, she plays the wife to an emotionally abusive and controlling husband. 

The similar premise plays out here, where Snodgress lives with her emotionally abusive and controlling father. 

Marjorie Eaton, who plays Mrs. Fowler, also stars in "The Empire Strikes Back" which was also released in 1980. Whom did she play, you must be wondering. Get this! She plays the Emperor, who's voiced by Clive Revill. 

And actress Frances Bay, who has a small role in the movie, has been seen in many well-known movies such as "The Karate Kid," and "Happy Gilmore," as well as a ton of television shows. She's also in some noteworthy horror flicks such as "Arachnophobia," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "Single White Female," and my personal favorite, "In the Mouth of Madness." 

Ray Milland is a veteran actor, whose performance here is enough to make the audience dislike his character Wendell without overdoing it. 

There's a theme of living the looming shadow of over-dominating parents who are difficult to please or impress. In that case, "The Attic" accomplishes what it sets out to do, with much less horror than it lets on. The film is definitely a psychological story that passes thanks to Snodgress and Milland's performances. I think the horror aspects in the movie flew past me. 

I'm including horror movie trivia into my posts now! That's fun, right? Either way, there it is. The answer will be in my next post...

In "The Exorcist" (1973) what is Max Von Sydow's character Fr. Merrin's first name? 

*Answer to the question from my last post, "Cocaine Bear" = Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton