It'll Change Your Life

The Substance
Working Title Films (2024)

This movie has been highly recommended to me by several people on the lot over the past few weeks.  My local Regal isn't showing it, but thankfully the RC Theater in Wilkes-Barre is, and it was definitely worth the drive.

The Substance is not a movie that I'd recommend to everyone, but there's a certain subset of people who are going to absolutely love it and I am a part of that subset.  The first half of the film presents a fascinating concept that had me pleading out loud with Demi Moore's character to make better choices (it's alright... I was the only person in the theater).  It then evolves into a body horror that makes David Cronenberg seem almost tame in comparison.

I'm not a fan of the term "elevated horror", but this is a film that goes beyond shock and entertainment.  It has a message and it's a message that's worth hearing if you have the stomach for it.

I Have To Return Some Videotapes

American Psycho
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Last night, the Mahoning kicked off their new Modern Marvels series.  The fact that American Psycho is nearly a quarter century old and is being considered modern should give you an idea of what this film series is all about.  With each passing year, we get further away from the release dates of films that we might not consider all that old.  Every movie will be considered retro eventually, and the Modern Marvels series feels like a way to capture that moment when a movie crosses over into retro film territory.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

I haven't watched American Psycho since I brought it home as a rental from the new release wall at Hollywood Video.  It didn't leave much of an impression on me the first time, and if I'm being completely honest, it didn't really click with me last night either.  It's not that I didn't enjoy watching it.  The performances are all great and the soundtrack is incredible, but while I found the story to be engaging, it didn't connect with me in any real way, and I can't say that this second screening inspired me to think of this movie as a modern classic.  I think it's a pretty good satire of 80's yuppie culture; an above average film, but not something I'd call outstanding or thought-provoking.

Incidentally, I'm in the camp of folks who believe that Patrick Bateman is imagining most of the events that take place in this film and that he's never actually killed anyone.  The way that he looks at his gun when a few shots somehow manage to blow up three police cars, and the ATM asking him to feed it a stray cat are dead giveaways.  He's crazy, but it's all in his head.  It's the only explanation in which this story makes any sense at all.

The Night He Came Home To Lehighton

Halloween-A-Thon II
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA

Poster design by Justin Miller
Last year, the Mahoning Drive-In Theater hosted Halloween-A-Thon in which the first seven Halloween films were screened over three days.  I thought at the time that this was going to be a one-time deal, but with so many horror films set in and around the spooky holiday, it turned out to be just the first in what has become an annual event.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Like the previous event, Halloween-A-Thon II leans pretty heavily on its namesake franchise, but the lineup has added Night Of The Demons and Trick 'R Treat into the mix.  Although the banner states that the latter was a digital presentation, we actually got to see it projected from what is possibly the only 35mm print of the film in existence.

The snack bar was all decked out for Halloween.  If you didn't make it out to the lot this weekend, I'm pretty sure that they'll keep them up throughout the rest of the season.

 

Mama Beth brought back The Haddonfield Horseshoe as the special concession food of the weekend.  It's an open-face cheeseburger served on garlic toast with a topping of french fries, nacho cheese, and a dash of hot sauce.  You'll want to grab a fork and some extra napkins for this one, but it's definitely worth the effort.

Sam's Candy Corn Drink was the special beverage for the weekend.  It's very sweet, but the Halloween candy flavor was a perfect accompaniment to the night.

There were a lot of folks in costume on the lot over the weekend, including Cy as Sam from Trick 'R Treat, Tom and Jen in Silver Shamrock masks, and Louie as Michael Myers.

Night One - Friday, October 11

Halloween III: Season Of The Witch / Night Of The Demons / Trick 'r Treat

The first movie of Friday night was the third movie of the Halloween franchise and the one that people tend to either love or hate, Halloween III: Season Of The Witch.  This is the one that has nothing to do with Michael Myers.  The movie does technically include the character for a couple of seconds, but it's on a television screen in which the first Halloween film is playing.

With the exception of the original film, Halloween III is my favorite movie in the series and the one that I was looking forward to seeing the most this weekend.  This was my second time seeing it at the Mahoning since it was screened at last year's Halloween-A-Thon, but because the films were played in chronological order, Halloween III ended up being the third movie on Friday night.  I wake up for work at 5:00 am on Friday morning, so I usually end up dozing off during the final film of a Friday night triple feature, and that's exactly what happened to me last year.  I was very glad to have a second chance to see it on 35mm on the big screen while I was still fresh and awake enough to fully appreciate the experience.

 

The second movie of the night is another film that I'm thankful for having a second opportunity to see at the Mahoning, but for a completely different reason.  Night Of The Demons was the first movie that was played on Saturday night of Joe Bob's Drive-In Jamboree back in the summer of 2021.  It was a hell of a lot of fun seeing it that night, but the presentation was handled like an episode of The Last Drive-In, with the movie being interrupted every 15-20 minutes by Joe Bob Briggs, Darcy, and their guests.

As much as I enjoyed the Joe Bob treatment of the film, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see this cheesy horror classic uninterrupted on 35mm on the Mahoning screen.

The second intermission featured a 35mm screening of the 1961 Tom & Jerry cartoon Switchin' Kitten.  It's about a mad scientist who switches a dog and cat brain, and the confusion that this causes Tom when he finds an orange cat that wants no part in chasing Jerry.  I don't remember ever seeing this one at the drive-in before this weekend.

The last film of Friday night was the 2007 movie Trick 'R Treat.  We saw it at the Mahoning once before two years ago when it was screened from the digital projection booth as the first half of a double feature with the 1986 film Trick Or Treat.  This time around, they were able to borrow the only 35mm print of Trick 'R Treat that is known to exist.  The movie was screened at various film festivals for a few years after it was first screened in 2007.  Warner Bros purchased it in 2009 and they released it direct-to-DVD, so it never had a theatrical run.  I can't be sure, but there's a pretty good chance that this weekend's screening is the only time that this film has ever been shown on 35mm at a drive-in.

This movie really didn't land with me the first time that I saw it, but I really enjoyed it this time.  I went in completely cold for that first screening and didn't realize that it was an anthology film, so I think that I got myself frustrated trying to keep up with things while my brain tried to frame this as something other than an anthology.  This time around, the confusion about its structure wasn't an issue and I had a hell of a good time watching it.

Night Two - Saturday, October 12

Halloween / Halloween II / Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers

Saturday night kicked off with Halloween and Halloween II.  I'm grouping them together here for two reasons.  First, watching these two movies back to back feel very much like you're watching a single three hour long film.  The sequel picks up right where the first film leaves off, so it's just a continuation of the story of "the night he came home".  Secondly, I've already written about both of these movies several times, and I'm frankly not sure what else I could say.  This story is a horror masterpiece.  This was my third time seeing each of them at the Mahoning, and I'll come back to see it as many times as they decide to screen it.  Judging by the attendance, I am not alone in that feeling.

The third movie of Saturday night was Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.  This movie was screened on the second night of Halloween-A-Thon last year along with parts 5 and 6, but we missed it because we blew a tire coming home the night before, and by the time we got everything sorted out, we were pretty tired and didn't want to leave the house.  In hindsight, I wish we would have gone anyway, but it was the right decision at the time.

Halloween 4 continues the story of Michael Myers, but it takes place in 1988, which is ten years after the night that is depicted in the first two films.  It's the start of the Jamie Lloyd arc in the franchise, and while there's no debate that it's a pretty big step down from the first three films, it's still a hell of a lot of fun.  There was a secret feature on each night as well.  It won't take a lot of hard work to figure out what they were, but I'm not going to write about them here other than to say that I enjoyed both of them.

And that's a wrap on Halloween-A-Thon II.

Folie à Dud

Joker: Folie à Deux
Warner Bros (2024)
The 2019 film Joker was absolutely brilliant, so I was looking forward to seeing the continuation of the story.  Sadly, we didn't get too much in the way of a story with Joker: Folie à Deux; a sequel that is every bit as pretentious as the title suggests.

The film begins with an animated short called Me And My Shadow, which I found to be the most creative and entertaining part of Joker: Folie à Deux.  It felt like an homage to the outstanding Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond cartoons that aired throughout the 90's and early 2000's, and it set up what I hoped would be a surreal psychological thriller in which the filmmakers dive deeper into the Arthur Fleck character.

It wouldn't be fair to say this is a bad movie, but it's extremely disappointing.  The art of leaving the audience wanting more is a balancing act.  If done right, you end up with a fanbase that's chomping at the bit to see the next story that you have to tell.  If done wrong, it leaves the audience feeling cheated and bored.  Unfortunately, this was a case of the latter, or at least it was for me.

Joker: Folie à Deux felt like a screenplay for a half hour episode for a courtroom/prison drama television series.  That screenplay was padded out with musical numbers that seemed to serve no purpose whatsoever other than to justify the casting of Lady Gaga as Harleen Quinzel and to pad out the runtime to 138 minutes.

I'm not completely opposed to the idea of making the sequel to Joker a musical, but the way in which it was done was flat out boring.  The musical scenes didn't really add much of anything to the story, and rather than use original songs or established songs that were interesting, we got high school glee club material of songs like When The Saints Go Marching In, I’ve Got The World On A String, and When You're Smiling.  It felt to me like the director was a big fan of the Singin' In The Rain scene from A Clockwork Orange and thought "let's do that, but we'll keep doing it over and over again".  I'm guessing that they thought they were achieving an eerie vibe, or to evoke the feelings of a dark and psychotic romance, but the end result just felt dull.  By the halfway point of the film when it became obvious that another song was coming, all I could think was "oh god, she's going to sing again", and whatever small momentum they managed to build up in the preceding minutes grinded to a halt.

I'm sure there will be folks out there who will enjoy this.  If that's you, hey... more power to you.  I won't ever try to convince someone that they're wrong for finding joy in something that didn't speak to me.  However, this is a film that I really wouldn't recommend to anybody.  It's not good enough to be interesting.  It's not bad enough to be worth watching just to see how bad it can be.  It's just boring, and that's the last thing I wanted or expected a sequel to the phenomenal 2019 film to be.

Northern Lights At Thursday Thread-Up

Frailty
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The second to last Thursday Thread-Up screening of the season was a Bill Paxton and Matthew McConaughey film from 2001 that I have never heard of before, but that I had been looking forward to since it was announced.  Virgil spoke very highly of it and mentioned that this was the main film that he recommended to customers when he worked at a video rental shop when he was in high school.  He and I don't have exactly the same tastes, but I trust the dude's judgment on things like this.  Besides, I haven't missed a Thursday Thread-Up screening yet, and I wasn't going to start with this one.

The universe gave us a pre-show that we'll never forget after the sun went down.  I've seen a lot of pretty cool things in the night sky at the Mahoning, but the aurora borealis last night has them all beat.

Seriously, how freakin' cool is that!

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

I love seeing movies for the first time at the Mahoning, especially when I'm going into the screening completely cold.  That was what happened here.  Frailty was not on my radar at all.  I didn't hear about it when it first came out in 2001.  I never saw the trailer, or read the back of the box.  I never saw a review of the film.  I didn't even know what genre you'd classify it under, let alone anything about the plot.  I went in with no expectations, and I was rewarded with one of the best psychological horror/thriller flicks that I've seen in a very long time.  I'll write more about it later when I have more time, but if you're like me and you've never heard of this movie before, it gets a strong recommendation from me.

Dead October

I was surprised when the Diamondbacks came from behind to defeat the Phillies last year in the NLCS.  I am not at all surprised to see the Mets take them out one series earlier in 2024.  The Phillies were dominant for the first half of the season, but they've been pretty mediocre for most of August and September.  This was not a team that was firing on all cylinders.  It was a team with an exhausted bullpen, a complacent lineup without a leader to hold anyone accountable since the departure of Rhys Hoskins, and a manager who has been exposed as in over his head.

The Phillies starting rotation held up their end of the bargain, but the Mets outclassed the Phillies in every other aspect of the game.  They were better at the plate, in the field, and on the basepaths.  Their bullpen was much better, and their manager was unquestionably superior to ours in using their bullpen.  This wasn't even close.  The Mets were clearly the better team.  They deserved to win.

The question this winter is whether John Middleton and Dave Dombrowski are going to be satisfied to run the same complacent group of millionaires out in 2025.  They've been a good enough team to get to the post-season every year since 2022, but not good enough to bring home the trophy, with an earlier exist from the playoffs every season in this window.

I don't think this team is one or two key moves away from going all the way.  This collection of talent is exactly what they've shown us to be for the past three years: perennial contenders, but not champions.  It would not make me sad in the slightest to see a rebuild with any position player not named Bryce Harper available in a trade for blue chip prospects.  Realmuto, Bohm, Marsh, Turner, Schwarber, and Castellanos have value and could bring back a solid return this winter, but their value as trade chips won't last forever.  Ask Ruben Amaro who waited too long to move Rollins, Utley, and Hamels.  Even if they have to eat some salary to get the pieces they want in return, the time has come to break up this group of talent.

As for myself, I'm thankful that the disappointment came early enough to enjoy the last three weeks of the drive-in season without constantly checking the phone to see this team roll over and die in late October for the third consecutive year.

On Wednesdays We Eat Pink

Barbie Strawberry Marshmallow and Frosted Cupcake ice cream
Turkey Hill (2024)
Get your mind out of the gutter, you filthy animals.  I'm talking about ice cream here!

Barbie Strawberry Marshmallow is one of the best ice cream flavors that I've ever had.  It's smooth and creamy, and the mix of the strawberry ice cream and the marshmallow swirl tasted like Mexican Strawberry Nesquik.  By the way, yes, there is a huge difference between Nesquik from Mexico compared to the United States.  You can find it at some Wal-Mart stores that have a decent stock of Latino foods.  Get it when you see it, and you can thank me later.

As good as the Strawberry Marshmallow flavor was, the Frosted Cupcake ice cream was even better.  It was like someone turned the icing from the best birthday cake I've ever had in my life into an ice cream.  I'm not joking at all when I say that if I had to choose one flavor of ice cream to be the only one that I'd ever be able to eat for the rest of my life, it would be this one.  It's that good!

I'm not fully lactose intolerant.  I can eat a decent amount of cheese without ever feeling any negative effects, but milk and ice cream really do a number on me.  It's probably my body going into self-preservation mode, because if I didn't suffer any discomfort from eating ice cream, I'd fill a freezer with these and eat myself into a career as a sumo wrestler.

A Kitty Running Down The Highway

Hello Kitty Cafe Truck
I-80 West

This truck is traveling around the country selling macarons, cookies, and Hello Kitty merchandise across the United States.  I'm not sure where they're setting up around here, but we passed them on the way to the Bloomsburg Fair a few weeks ago.

Pull over you dastardly cat!  This is a cookie emergency!

Vincent Price Twice... Thrice

Vincent Price Twice III

Dr. Phibes Rises Again / Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The only bright side to the sun setting so early in October is that they can book a Sunday night double feature and I can still get home in plenty of time to get a good night's sleep before work on Monday morning.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Beth hit it out of the park with the special concession food.  Vincent Price and his wife Mary published a cookbook in 1965 called A Treasury Of Great Recipes.  One of the recipes in this book is Dutch Meatballs, so she cooked up a batch inspired by The Merchant of Menace himself.

Here is the recipe if you want to cook some up for yourself.

 

The first movie of the night was the 1972 horror comedy Dr. Phibes Rises Again.  This film was the sequel to the 1971 film The Abominable Dr. Phibes, which I know I have seen, but I can't say that I remember anything about it and I didn't know that it had a sequel before this double feature was announced.

This was my first time seeing Dr. Phibes Rises Again, and to say that it wasn't my kind of movie would be an understatement.  Some of the visuals were pretty cool, and the print that they got was gorgeous, but the movie itself made me feel like I was watching a bad soap opera.  I'm not going to say anything else out of respect for one of my favorite actors, but this film is going to be a one-and-done for me.

Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is not at all the kind of film that I ever have in mind when I think of Vincent Price.  It's a slapstick spy comedy from 1965 that reminded me a little bit of Get Smart, but with a heavier emphasis on physical gags and chase scenes.  Price plays Dr. Goldfoot, who has created an army of female robots that seem to have been the inspiration behind Dr. Evil's fembots from the Austin Powers movies that hit theaters three decades later.  These robots are bulletproof and have been programmed with knowledge which helps them to find and marry rich men so that they can steal their assets and bring them back to the evil doctor.

The two protagonists in this film are played by singer Frankie Avalon and actor Dwayne Hickman, who is best known for his role as Dobie Gillis, and the theme song at the start of the film was performed by The Supremes.  I'm not sure how well it would play in front of a modern audience, but I thought it was pretty funny.  This film also spawned a sequel the following year which was directed by Mario Bava of all people.  I cannot confirm nor deny that this was played as a secret feature at the end of the night because I had to get home and get a good night's sleep for work.

At the risk of sounding negative, I prefer the movies that were screened last October for Vincent Price Twice II.  The Masque Of The Red Death and Theater Of Blood were two of the best movies that I ever saw for the first time on the lot.  This year's double feature started off with a clunker and ended with a comedy that was very funny, but not really what I look forward to for this event in particular.  I'm still glad to have had the opportunity to see them both on the big screen, especially with such pristine 35mm prints as the ones that were shown, but I'm hoping next year's double feature is a little closer to what we got to see in 2023.