LOST TIME (aka BODY SNATCHERS)

 

My official DVD of Lost Time (© Christian Sesma/Spotlight Pictures/Ace Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 7 September 2024 was the 10-year-old straight-to-DVD sci fi/horror movie Lost Time (aka Body Snatchers), and I now understand why I was able to buy its DVD recently at a car boot sale for the princely sum of 10p…

Directed and co-written by Christian Sesma, produced by Spotlight Pictures, and released in 2014 by Ace Entertainment, Lost Time stars Luke Goss, an erstwhile late 1980s/early 1990s British teeny-bop pop star who performed with his twin brother Matt in the UK boy band Bros before reinventing himself a decade later as a successful actor in the USA (including major roles in the likes of Blade II, Hellboy II, Princess of Persia, and Tekken). Here, he plays an American cop named Carter, and the movie itself opens with his girlfriend, a young woman called Valerie Dreyfuss (Rochelle Vallese, who also co-wrote this movie's screenplay as well as its soundtrack's title track), suffering from terminal cancer, and whose sister Melissa (Jenni Blong) is devotedly caring for her.

But returning home from hospital one evening, their car suddenly cuts out, a blinding light encompasses them, and Valerie passes out. When she regains consciousness hours later, however, she is horrified to discover that Melissa has vanished. Nor is she all that has vanished – so too has Valerie's cancer. For, inexplicably, she is now totally cured.

So Valerie utilizes her new-found good health by devoting every waking moment of the next four months trying to find her sister, but when not awake she experiences hideous nightmares of alien entities operating upon her. Yes indeed, we're into alien abduction territory here, explaining the movie's title, which alludes to the frequently reported loss of time experienced by alleged abductees.

A mysterious author, Dr Xavier Reed (Robert Davi), who has written a book with that selfsame title and which deals with people's experiences that are similar to Valerie's, duly attracts her attention, and after meeting him she accepts an invitation to visit his sanctuary – a retreat where such people go to find answers. So she goes, but finds a lot more there than answers – namely, the terrifying realisation that her nightmares were not dreams, but were instead visions of what will happen to her there.

Reed and his staff are all aliens in assumed human form, and are hell-bent on harvesting human DNA in search of the so-called god gene with which to save their own species from impending extinction. Trapped inside the sanctuary, Valerie faces being experimented upon by them and her DNA stolen, not to mention having via an excruciatingly painful operation a centipede-like creature inserted into the base of her spinal cord to control her mind, but boyfriend Carter is hot on her trail after she goes missing.

Will he save her, will they find her sister, will any semblance of a coherent, cohesive plot emerge, will the constant soundtrack oscillations from much-too-quiet dialogue to far-too-loud music and ear-splitting, blood-curdling shrieks at all-too-frequent intervals ever stop, and will the cameramen locate some colour film and lighting equipment after shooting most of the movie in virtual b/w and in the dark?

Luke does his best to hold together and bring some much-needed level-headedness to this rambling, shambling, flight-of-fancy folderol. But when every time that some crucial plot-explanatory dialogue is spoken it is simultaneously drowned out by a cacophonous sound effect or some equally noisy blasts of 'music' (I use that term very loosely here!), you just know that he is doomed to failure.

Worth noting, incidentally, is that the movie tantalizingly ends with a startling twist occurring in its final moments (even more startling, in fact, than the veritable angel entity who makes a highly unexpected, unheralded appearance a short time earlier in finest deus ex machina mode), intimating that a possible sequel might have been under consideration at that time, but nothing has emerged to date.

That may be for the best, however, because at least as far as I'm concerned, the only Lost Time that I experienced here was the 90 minutes or so that elapsed while I was watching this flimsiest of flicks.

Nevertheless, if for some strange reason you'd actually like to watch an official trailer for Lost Time, please click here to view one on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

SMOOTH TALK - MY TRIBUTE TO TREAT WILLIAMS (1951-2023)

 

Front cover of my official UK cardboard-slipcase VHS video of Smooth Talk (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm/Nepenthe Productions/Palace Virgin Gold – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 13 June 2023, I was very shocked and greatly saddened to discover that on the previous day one of my favourite movie stars, American actor Treat Williams, had been killed when according to the Vermont State Police an SUV turned into his path while he was riding his motorbike along a state highway near Dorset, a Bennington County town in Vermont, USA. He was 71. (Ironically, another of my favourite actors, James Dean, had suffered the same tragic fate on 30 September 1955, when a truck pulling out of a side road didn't see him driving along the main highway towards Salinas, Calofirnia, in his lightweight silver Porsche Spyder racing car and ploughed directly into it, killing Dean instantly – click here for my Shuker In MovieLand review of his life and career.)

Down through the years, I've watched a very diverse selection of Treat Williams's movies, and have greatly enjoyed all of them, including the likes of Prince of the City, Hair, Flashpoint, The Phantom, Deep Rising, the 2-part TV mini-series Journey to the Centre of the Earth – and the movie that I am reviewing here at Shuker In MovieLand today. This was the first of his films that I ever saw, more than 30 years ago now. Yet for many years afterwards, it mystifying fixed itself implacably within my memory while more recently-viewed movies swiftly faded, until not so long ago, that is, when I finally discovered the highly unexpected but deeply unsettling reason why – a reason, I hasten to add, whose disturbing nature is due in no negative way to Mr Williams. On the contrary, because this movie theme's tenacious presence within my memory provides emphatic evidence of the exceedingly fine actor that he was. All will now be explained, for the movie whose following review by me is my personal tribute to the late, truly great Treat Williams is Smooth Talk.

Directed by Joyce Chopra, and released in 1985 by International Spectrafilm, Smooth Talk originally came to my attention sometimes during the late 1980s/early 1990s via a cut-price UK videocassette release by Nepenthe Productions in which the cassette was contained within a cardboard slipcase of the kind more commonly used in the States (far less often here in the UK, which preferred to house its videos in sturdy hard plastic box-format cases), thereby making it visually distinctive. I'd never actually heard of Treat Williams back then, but reading the movie blurb on the slipcase's reverse (more about which shortly) I was sufficiently intrigued to buy it, and I watched it for the first time not long afterwards.

For almost the first hour of this movie's 90-minute running time, however, very little of note actually happens. Its plot focuses upon 15-year-old high school student Connie Wyatt (an early role for Laura Dern), teetering upon the brink of transforming from a teenage ingénue who frequents shopping malls near her northern California home with her school friends, and laughs with them as they ogle and flirt with the boys there, into a confident young woman with all the passions and other emotional charges and changes that this major new phase in her life will bring.

Then one evening, Connie is leaving a local hamburger joint when she is spoken to by a handsome smiling stranger (Treat Williams), who dresses in youthful clothes that make him look like James Dean but is clearly in his early 30s. He tells her playfully that he's watching her – and although Connie hasn't realised it, he really has been, all night long at the joint, but without previously making his presence there known to her.

Startled, Connie turns away and returns home. After an argument with her mother Katherine (Mary Kay Place), however, she declines to go off with her family to a barbecue the following afternoon staying at home instead, alone in their out of town farmhouse. And this is when, at long last, the teenage bubblegum movie turns into an edgy grown-up thriller.

For not long after Connie's family are gone, a 1960s open-top convertible with 'Arnold Friend' painted on the driver's door in the form of a signature motors up to the farmhouse. Inside are two men. One of them, the passenger, is a 'local yokel' type named Ellie Oscar (Geoff Hoyle), but the driver is none other than the stranger who spoke to Connie at the hamburger joint last night. When Connie walks out of the farmhouse towards them to find out who they are and why they are here, the stranger introduces himself to her as Arnold Friend (hence his car's distinctive décor), and soon demonstrates just how much he has been watching her, by revealing various personal details about her, even knowing that the rest of her family have gone to the barbecue and won't be back for hours.

 

Connie (Laura Dern) and Arnold Friend (Treat Williams) resting against his eponymously-signed car (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Then, for virtually the whole remainder of the movie, and while his buddy Ellie Oscar stays in the car and listens to his radio pressed steadfastly against his ear, Friend proceeds to turn on the charm with Connie via a dazzling, megawatt-powered display of ingratiating grins and incessant glib lines, coaxing, cajoling, and coercing, wheedling, pleading, and wheeling around a confused and somewhat bewildered but unequivocally attracted Connie to come out for a drive with him into the surrounding countryside. His verbal powers of manipulation, suggestion, and allure soon threaten to break down the unworldly teenager's instinctive defences, and disarm her intuition's warnings – but rather than attempting to adequately convey the insidious guile of Friend's beseechings myself, why not read what is undoubtedly the best description of his dark, mesmerising word-magic and mind-games that I have encountered?

All too often, blurbs or plot summaries included on the reverse of movie video and DVD cases are master classes in hyperbole rather than valid descriptions of the films in question, but in stark contrast, whoever wrote the blurb on the reverse of my Smooth Talk video's slipcase produced an excellent, thoroughly accurate portrayal of Friend's silky yet truly sinister and soon to become decidedly unfriendly smooth talk. So here it is:

NO PHYSICAL FORCE... WORDS WERE HIS WEAPON.

He was a slick, silver-tongued seducer. He had all the right words, all the right moves. He knew just how far to go, when to hold back, when to push over the edge. He knew how to menace without violence — and love without pity. And Connie was easy meat to him; poor, pretty Connie with her head full of trashy daydreams, a blue-eyed blonde who just couldn't wait to grow up. He needed no threats, no physical force: words were his weapons and he could hypnotise and seduce with deadly accuracy. He wanted Connie under his thumb — and into his bed. She was prey ripe for the taking — and he knew it.

Yes he did, no doubt about that whatsoever.

Presently, therefore, it is beginning to look ever more likely that psychological predator Friend will indeed have his wicked way with her, and very shortly too. But then, like all the hammiest actors, he pushes his cod, insincere performance just a little too far, igniting a flame of fear that suddenly flickers inside Connie's mind and momentarily breaks his hypnotic spell over her – in turn spurring her to get back inside her home and bolt the door.

So how could Friend have failed in his seemingly-irresistible, saccharine-sweet seduction? By actually revealing to Connie – and the viewers – his true nature, while seemingly remaining entirely oblivious himself to having done so, that's how. Let me explain.

 

Treat Williams as the flirtatious Mr Friend (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

From what you've read here so far, the image of Friend seems to be that of a suave, worldly, intelligent, confident, highly manipulative egotist, demonstrating a definite way with words and the strength of suggestion – but what he appears entirely unaware of, thereby underlining just how dangerous and deranged he truly is, is that he is also displaying a scarcely in-check, under-control level of explosive violence liable to break forth at the slightest provocation. Exposing this Mr Hyde side to Friend's evidently schizoid personality is the sole but crucially significant purpose of a hitherto barely-mentioned character in this movie – Friend's buddy, Ellie Oscar.

For he soon becomes bored witless by Friend's wooing and whining around Connie, and says so on more than one occasion – only for Friend to erupt in hysterical shrieking fury each time, his eyes bulging with unrestrained ferocity as he screams repeatedly at his buddy to keep quiet and stop ruining everything. Each time this happens, Friend's mask of fake benevolence and playfulness falls further, the outward quasi-Jekyll further overshadowed by the unhinged savagery of Hyde lurking within.

Nevertheless, Friend is nothing if not persistent, and even finds a way inside Connie's home where he continues his increasingly creepy, psychological courtship of her – until finally Hyde gains triumphant ascendancy. Friend is friendly no longer, informing her that if she doesn't come out for a drive with him, he'll burn the farmhouse down!

And so, with the game well and truly over, Connie gets into his car and drives off with him, leaving Ellie Oscar at the farmhouse to await their return. Time goes by, but later that same afternoon they do return. Friend is grinning from ear to ear like the veritable cat from Cheshire, a smile on his face like the tiger from Riga, his bonhomie fully restored. Connie, conversely, looks lost, distracted, her clothes noticeably rumpled, dishevelled.

There seems little doubt that they have had sex while away, but what does remain in doubt for the rest of the movie is whether it was consensual, or whether we should add rape alongside under-age sex to Friend's catalogue of crimes? Connie shouts at Friend that she never wants to see him again as he and Ellie Oscar get back in the car, he shouts back that nothing happened, and drives away. So in view of that decidedly ambiguous interchange, who can say for certain what did, or didn't, take place during her time alone with him?

Perhaps the most tantalising aspect of all with regard to this issue is a brief scene inside Connie's bedroom that reveals the presence on her wall of a large James Dean poster, with Dean wearing very similar attire to that worn by Friend during their fateful afternoon – a pale shirt and tight dusty denim jeans. This has led some viewers and reviewers to speculate whether Connie's encounter with Friend that afternoon ever actually happened, or whether that entire scene was merely a febrile figment of her hormonally-driven adolescent imagination!

 

He's behind you – or is he?? (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The movie ends with a short scene in which Connie and her mother make up following her family's return from the barbecue, after which she dances with her sister June (Elizabeth Berridge) to James Taylor's recording of the song 'Handy Man' (James Taylor also happens to be this film's music director, but I still prefer Del Shannon's version personally, though that's neither here nor there!). However, she tells none of them about what happened while they were away – but might that be because nothing actually did? Make what you will of this movie's ultimately inconclusive conclusion.

Needless to say, Smooth Talk was not the first film I'd ever seen that featured a smiling, ostensibly affable monster in human form, nor would it be the last. So why did this particular one get under my skin to such an extent that I couldn't shake free of it? Time and again, flashes of scenes featuring Friend plying his tawdry trade of phoney amiability and affection toward Connie would abruptly surface, often at the most unexpected times, and seemingly devoid of any discernable trigger. Friend was a bad 'un, no question about that, but all my instincts kept telling me that there was something more here, much more, a sizeable missing piece of the complex jigsaw puzzle that this strange movie constituted.

Back in the data-deficient times of the 1980s (at least in comparison to today's instantly-accessible information super-highway of facts, and more facts, and still more facts, all just a fingertip away), researching anything took time, including frequent visits to libraries, archives, etc, if the details required were more than could be readily found in a decent encyclopedia (remember those?) devoted to the basic subject in hand. Smooth Talk was not a major movie by any standards, and rarely received more than the most perfunctory entry in film books. Consequently, like so many others that periodically jostled for attention in my mind but were not of any direct importance to me or my life in general, the mystery behind why I found this movie so intrinsically disturbing, yet infernally difficult to forget, remained unexplained.

Years went by, and I watched Smooth Talk a second time, and again the character of Friend troubled me – there was something so not right about him, but was that simply the way that Williams had chosen and/or had been instructed by the film's director to portray him? Yet if so, why? If it was to elicit a sense of unease in viewers, this aim had certainly succeeded with me, that's for sure! I did think about investigating whether the plot was an original story written for the film, or whether it was based upon some pre-existing novel, or a play perhaps, but as so often happens, other more pressing events arose to push such thoughts to the sidelines and subsequently the dusty attics of my mind and memory.

Just over a year ago, however, while reorganising my somewhat expanded collection of movie DVDs and videos (the outcome of finding ways and means to while away long periods of enforced indoor confinement during the covid lockdowns), I noticed my Smooth Talk video, and watched it a third time. Same result, same eerie feeling that Friend was a fiend in more ways than I was aware of. But this time there was also a major difference – I now had the internet to search for answers. So I did – and it didn't take long to find them either, but boy, I certainly wasn't expecting what I found!

It turns out that Smooth Talk, with a screenplay by Tom Cole, is based upon a much darker short story by American writer Joyce Carol Oates, which had been published in 1966 and was entitled "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (the quotation marks/inverted commas, incidentally, are part of its title, as it's actually a biblical quote, from the Old Testament book of Judges). One of its plot's most significant difference from that of the movie is that Oates's story ends when Connie comes out of the house, having reluctantly agreed to go for a drive with Friend, plus his buddy alongside them. But even though the reader never finds out what happens next, the strong inherent implication is that the two men are going to take her to some far-flung location to sexually assault and possibly even murder her (and also, in an unexpected supernatural twist linked in part to an enigmatic 6-digit numerical code painted on his car, that in reality Friend is none other than the devil!).

 

Treat Williams as Arnold Friend – or Fiend? (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

This short story had in turn been inspired by the real-life activities of a certain Charles Howard Schmid – the perpetrator of the infamous Tucson murders during the early 1960s. Schmid was a serial killer living in Tucson, Arizona, who killed at least three teenage girls and possibly one teenage boy too while still only in his 20s. He was nicknamed The Pied Piper because of how charismatic he was, which, combined with his good looks, readily enabled him to persuade others, especially young women, to do whatever he asked them to.

After being arrested during the mid-1960s and put on trial for the three girls' murders, Schmid was found guilty and initially sentenced to death, though this was subsequently commuted to 50 years imprisonment. He and another murderer briefly escaped from prison together in November 1972 and they held some hostages captive, but were soon recaptured and re-incarcerated. On 20 March 1975, Schmid was fatally stabbed by two other prisoners, dying from his injuries 10 days later.

No wonder I'd felt so uneasy about the character Friend in Smooth Talk! Yet I'd felt that way without having any knowledge of his deadly real-life inspiration. All of this, therefore, is a stirring testament to the profound acting skills and talent of Treat Williams, who had succeeded in imbuing Friend with an underlying evil so subtle that it was not even visible to viewers, but lurked and lingered all about this malign character like a preternatural aura, detectable only by our own innermost, most secret sixth sense – the primal sense of survival that refuses to be silenced when it detects something potentially dangerous or threatening to our existence. Animal instinct, we call it when referring to non-human species – but don't forget that, zoologically-speaking, Homo sapiens is an animal too.

Also well deserving of mention here is that in 1986 Smooth Talk won the Grand Jury Award at fellow actor Robert Redford's prestigious, longstanding Sundance Film Festival. This yields further proof of the extremely high standard of acting contained in it, and not only by Treat Williams either, but also by Laura Dern, aged only 18 at the time, as Friend's over-sexed yet under-experienced, tragically gauche victim, which she plays to perfection. In short, despite being only a relatively minor movie, Smooth Talk induced performances of such potency from both of its lead stars that it served as a significant stepping stone for the acting careers of both Williams and Dern, and rightly so.

 

Official poster for Smooth Talk publicising its Grand Jury Award win at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But now, 38 years later yet still far too soon, farewell and godspeed to Treat Williams – a very fine, exceedingly skilful movie actor, whose untimely death has robbed the world of who knows how many more notable on-screen performances, not to mention a much-loved family member and a friend to so many. RIP Sir.

If you would like to watch a couple of official Smooth Talk trailers on YouTube, be sure to click here and here, or click here if you'd like to view the complete 22-minute seduction scene from Smooth Talk between Arnold Friend and Connie that takes place at the farmhouse while her family is away at the barbecue.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Publicity poster for Smooth Talk (© Joyce Chopra/American Playhouse/Goldcrest Films/International Spectrafilm – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

PIN

 

Publicity poster for Pin (aka PIN) (© Sandor Stern/Image Organization/Lance Entertainment/Malofilm/Telefilm Canada/New World Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Many films feature a character who has an imaginary friend, but whereas such friends are usually invisible to everyone else, in the Canadian psychological thriller/horror movie to be reviewed here the imaginary friend is visible – only too visible, and audible, in fact!

For me, the most effective horror movies are not the ones awash with blood and gore, but rather those that get inside your head, insidiously penetrating your mind, infiltrating and then tenaciously taking residence within your thoughts, your dreams, and sometimes your nightmares too. Last night, I watched one such movie – Pin.

Directed and written by Sandor Stern, based upon Andrew Neiderman's eponymous 1981 novel, and released by New World Pictures in 1988, Pin (or PIN, as given in some sources, despite this name not being an acronym) takes to a whole new level of creepiness the perennially popular horror theme of an inanimate human simulacrum ostensibly taking on a life of its own, and a malign, controlling one at that, whether it be a ventriloquist's dummy (as in Magic, 1978, for instance), a life-sized doll (as more recently in The Boy, 2016), or something else.

In the case of Pin, the 'something else' is a life-sized anatomically-precise adult male wood/plastic medical dummy named Pin (short for Pinocchio, a name given to it by the then-young daughter of physician Dr Frank Linden (played by Terry O'Quinn), sitting in a wheelchair.

SPOILER ALERT!! I do not normally present the entire storyline of a movie when reviewing it, but in this instance I feel it necessary to do so – so if you don't want to know the plot and in particular its final, devastating  twist, read no further!!

In a very strange, unconventional family set-up, both Dr Linden and his wife Mrs Linden (Bronwen Mantel) are very cold and distant to their two children, Ursula (Cynthia Preston when Ursula reaches her teens) and her slightly older brother Leon (David Hewlett when Leon reaches his teens). Mrs Linden, moreover, is driven to manic levels by cleaning OCD, to such an extent that she refuses to allow the children to bring any potential school friends home in case they make the house dirty. So away from school Leon and Ursula remain isolated from children their own age, relying very much on each other for friendship, but in the case of Leon, he has one very special additional friend too…

Dr Linden uses Pin not only to demonstrate biology to adult patients and as a demonstration aid at medical conventions but also as a means of relaxing young patients, by using his considerable ventriloquism skills in order to enable Pin to 'talk' to them, explaining their ailments in a child-friendly manner. He even uses Pin as a surrogate to talk to Ursula and Leon when they are small (communicating with them via the dummy in a playful way that he is emotionally incapable of doing directly, as their father). Yet whereas as they grow older Ursula realizes that Pin's talking is merely ventriloquism, performed by their father, Leon continues to believe that Pin is genuinely talking to him – a first indication that Leon may have issues…

And indeed, as the years go by from childhood into adolescence Leon turns ever more to Pin, treating him as a fully-fledged friend, mastering ventriloquism until he is as adept at this cryptic art as his father is, and using it to have long conversations with Pin whenever he finds himself alone with the dummy in his father's surgery. Disturbingly, however, Leon still believes that Pin is talking to him, seemingly unaware that it is he himself, via ventriloquism, who is providing Pin with its voice (a somewhat eerie voice, incidentally, supplied by Wiseguy actor Jonathan Banks).

By the time that Leon and Ursula have reached their teens, Leon's mind has to all intents and purposes split into two autonomous portions, each with its own personality. One portion is Leon, the other portion is Pin, but no-one in his family is aware of his psychosis, until Ursula, now aged 15 and sexually promiscuous, discovers that she is pregnant. Petrified about telling her father, she confesses all to Leon, asking his advice. In reply, and to her bewilderment, Leon proposes that they go and ask Pin, and when he takes her to the dummy she watches incredulously as Leon and Pin have a conversation about her situation. She can see straight away that Leon is using ventriloquism to yield Pin's voice, just like her father did when they were children, but she can also see that Leon is not aware of what he is doing, that instead he truly believes Pin is talking to him. Traumatised, she flees the room.

Ursula has no option but to confess her pregnancy to their father, who decides to carry out the required abortion himself, and even encourages Leon to watch, for educational purposes! Speaking of which: years earlier when explaining the facts of life to Ursula and Leon after their mother had caught them giggling over a pornographic magazine, instead of telling them directly he had yet again used Pin to do so, even allowing them to check out Pin's private parts. I told you that they were a strange family! It's little wonder that Leon went off the rails, but it took their father a long time to realize just how far off the rails Leon had travelled.

One evening, however, after returning unexpectedly to his surgery to pick up some papers that he'd forgotten for a lecture that he is due to give shortly at a medical society and is already running late for, Linden is greatly shocked to discover a now late-teenage Leon there, having one of his ventriloquistic conversations with Pin. Linden realizes for the very first time that his son is mentally ill, and that his own ventriloquistic use of Pin with Leon and Ursula as children is at the core of his illness.

 

A gif showing the moment when his father catches Leon in the act of talking with Pin at the surgery (© Sandor Stern/Image Organization/Lance Entertainment/Malofilm/Telefilm Canada/New World Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Deciding not to confront Leon about this for the time being, yet determined to sever the unhealthy link between Leon and Pin with all speed, Linden simply tells him to go home, but not to let his mother sitting in their car outside see him. Then as soon as Leon is gone, Linden carries Pin to the car, where he tells his wife that he will be permanently leaving the dummy at the medical society for use in teaching purposes. However, he doesn't realize that Leon has been hiding nearby, has seen and heard everything, and is totally distraught at the thought of losing Pin, his only friend other than Ursula.

Driving erratically at high speed in an attempt to make up time and not to be too late for the faculty meeting, Linden loses control of the car when Pin in the back seat topples forward onto him, causing the car to crash. Linden and his wife are both killed, but when the police inform Leon and Ursula, Leon retrieves Pin from the wrecked car and brings the dummy back home.

Leon and Ursula now have their grand family house entirely to themselves, and can live how they choose – except, that is, for a brief period when their bossy Aunt Dorothy (Patricia Collins) arrives to take charge of them and the house, which she has always coveted. Like I say, however, Dorothy's stay is brief, thanks to Leon using Pin to quite literally frighten her to death one evening, after having drugged an unsuspecting Ursula to ensure that she sleeps through it all.

Taking a local job as a librarian to get away from the claustrophobic and downright deranged atmosphere with Leon at home, who has now taken to dressing Pin in their late father's clothes, applying latex to his plastic face to make him look more human, and even insisting that he join them at the table for meals, Ursula gains a boyfriend in the shape of college athlete Stan Fraker (John Pyper-Ferguson). Jealous, Leon tries to have relationships with women, who are sexually attracted to him because of his slim handsome looks, but he has no sexual interest in them whatsoever, and even uses Pin to scare away one persistent would-be lover, Marcia. The only woman of his own age whom he considers to be beautiful is Ursula – uh-oh…

Both Ursula's job and (especially) her boyfriend anger Leon, who feels that Ursula, who has always looked up to him, is beginning to slip out of his grasp. So. as always, Leon confides his fears to Pin, who agrees with him, which only increases his paranoia, in every sense. Consequently, being well aware of Leon's antagonism towards her job and boyfriend, one day Ursula invites Stan back to the house for a meal and for him to become better acquainted with Leon, in the hope that Leon will come to like him – but as soon as Stan arrives, holding a box of chocolates for Ursula, Leon takes the chocolates from him, telling him that Pin loves chocolates, and insists upon introducing him to Pin. To Leon's surprise and displeasure, however, Stan seems unfazed by the dummy, even talking to it (because Ursula had forewarned Stan about the Leon/Pin situation). During the evening, Leon becomes increasingly distraught and distracted by how close Ursula and Stan clearly are, but when they ask him to read some of his poetry to them, writing poetry having long been his greatest intellectual passion, Leon begins to unwind, especially when Stan appears to like it.

 

Ursula and Leon (Cyndy Preston and David Hewlett) (© Sandor Stern/Image Organization/Lance Entertainment/Malofilm/Telefilm Canada/New World Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Delighted by this unexpected turn of events, Leon goes joyfully upstairs to tell Pin, but Pin warns him not to be fooled. Sure enough, when Leon comes back down he overhears Stan and Ursula talking animatedly, with Ursula stating that she is only too well aware of Leon's mental state, having read every book on paranoid schizophrenia and suchlike in the library, but she will not allow him to be incarcerated in a mental asylum. In response, Stan retorts that even Leon's poetry is sick – and indeed, in the poem that he had read to them a little earlier that evening, its protagonist was seeking to rape his own sister. There had been indications of incestuous thoughts on Leon's part all through the movie but this is the first time that they are made readily apparent.

Leon does not betray that he knows what Ursula and Stan have said, but, goaded on by Pin, he swiftly plans his revenge, luring Stan shortly afterwards to visit him at the house while Ursula is at work in the library, on the pretext of needing Stan's help in arranging a surprise birthday party for her. After drugging Stan's drink when he arrives to render him sleepy, Leon savagely beats Stan about the head with a heavy ornament, then places his body inside a transparent zip-up suit bag before hiding it in the woodpile outside, beneath a big pile of logs. He then tries to scrub the blood off the floor inside the house where Stan had fallen – all the while following Pin's specific instructions.

When Ursula returns home that evening, however, it is clear from Leon's flustered attitude and inability to eat that all is not well, and she too is worried, not having received a call from Stan about their planned night out together. Leon tries to cover by claiming that Stan had called him instead, asking him to tell Ursula that he had to visit a sick relative, but Ursula is clearly not convinced. Suddenly, she hears a very familiar, characteristic chiming – the chime that is emitted on the hour every hour by the watch that she had recently given Stan as a birthday present.

At first, Ursula thinks that Stan is playing a joke on her, that he is hiding here inside the house. Then she finds his watch on the floor, and spots a wet patch of blood on the carpet close by. When she confronts Leon, he breaks down, falling to the ground alongside Pin sitting in its wheelchair, and putting the blame on Pin, claiming that it was all the dummy's fault. Hysterical with rage, Ursula races outside, grabs a heavy double-axe from the woodpile, races back inside, swings it over her head, then brings it crashing down as a terrified Leon screams out – and then...

The next thing that we see on screen is the police outside the Linden house, with Ursula held inside one of their cars, and a couple of police officers removing logs from the woodpile, watched by other officers and a crowd of curious onlookers. Suddenly, one of the two officers at the woodpile spots the bag containing Stan's body and then, as he begins to haul it out, he gasps in amazement – Stan is still alive!

 

Leon with Pin in its original unclothed, non-latexed state (© Sandor Stern/Image Organization/Lance Entertainment/Malofilm/Telefilm Canada/New World Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Only one final, but unforgettable scene is left to play. At some undetermined time following the above-described climax, Ursula and a now fully-recovered Stan have driven back to the Linden family house. Leaving Stan outside in the car, Ursula goes inside, meets briefly with a nurse (who refers to her as Mrs Fraker, so she and Stan are clearly married now), then walks inside one of the upstairs rooms. A figure is sitting motionless in a wheelchair at the far end of the room, staring out of a window with their back towards her.

"Hello Pin," Ursula says, but receives no response from the figure. She then states that she and Stan are going away on vacation to Cape Cod for a week, and she wonders if there is anything that Pin would like. In its unmistakable voice, Pin tells her to wind up a musical ballerina figurine, which when she was a child had been given to her by her father as a gift from Pin. It now stands next to a framed photo-portrait of Leon on a table next to where she is standing inside the room, so she winds it up and watches it as it slowly rotates on its base while the tinkling music plays. "Have you heard from Leon?" asks Pin. Striving to hold back tears and remain composed, Ursula replies that she hasn't. "I miss him a great deal," responds Pin. This time, it takes longer for Ursula to compose herself, before finally replying: "So do I".

By now, I'd seriously begun to wonder whether this riveting if decidedly weird movie had cleverly thrown me a curved ball from the word go, i.e. that Pin had genuinely been talking all along, and that every assumption I'd made about what had been happening in the story had therefore been wrong, its plot having presented a masterly performance in misdirection, in fact – but then…

Throughout their brief conversation, the camera has remained focused entirely upon Ursula, mostly upon her face. Abruptly, however, the camera now switches instantaneously from Ursula's face to that of Pin – except, of course, it isn't Pin's face or, indeed, Pin. It is Leon – totally immobile, with his face as expressionless as Pin's had always been, but it is Leon's, and Leon, nonetheless. After several seconds, his face fades to black, and the end credits start to roll.

From this dramatic closing shot, it is now evident what had happened earlier after an enraged Ursula had brought down the axe. She hadn't attacked Leon with it (she'd be in prison if she had done, not going on holiday with Stan!). Instead, she had smashed up Pin, whom she blamed for Leon's madness and all the unhappiness that had stemmed from that for both of them. But seeing his friend destroyed had been too much for Leon's already fragile grasp on reality to withstand. Incapable of bearing the loss of Pin, Leon had become Pin. The Leon portion of his mind had been absorbed entirely by the Pin portion. Only the outer physical shell of Leon remained, his mind now was Pin, which is why Ursula had addressed him as Pin. No doubt she had been advised by Leon's medical team that this is the only way that she would elicit any response from an otherwise catatonic Leon. (Incidentally, this closing scene explains the otherwise oblique opening one that I deliberately haven't mentioned here, bringing this movie's plot full circle, but I'll leave you to watch the full film in order to understand that!)

Many movies of this nature would have taken the clichéd cop-out route when bringing it to a shocking close – revealing that Pin was alive after all, that he really had been some supernatural or possessed entity. So it was a pleasant surprise that this time the movie-makers had stuck to their guns and remained faithful to everything that they had set up along the way. In particular, when he is first seen making Pin talk, close-ups of Dr Linden's face plainly show the slight movements of his lips and throat, leaving the viewer in no doubt that ventriloquism is at work. The same ploy is used when Leon is talking to Pin about Ursula's pregnancy while she is present – she even looks directly at Leon's lips and throat, and later asks him when he had learnt to do that (to which Leon denies that he'd done anything, claiming that Pin had truly spoken to them – tragic testimony to the split-personality status that his mind had assumed by now).

But the fact that Pin is not supernatural does not make his story any less terrifying – if anything, it becomes even more so, when the full extent of Leon's psychosis becomes apparent. And here I have to give great praise to the two leads, whose acting skills achieve so much in maintaining both the interest and the believability of this often macabre but thoroughly spellbinding film that in lesser hands could so easily have been trite and tasteless. Moreover, even its musical score (by Peter Manning Robinson) is both despairingly sad and captivatingly creepy! But back to the leads:

David Hewlett is mesmerizingly chilling, creating in the superficially charming but socially awkward and increasingly unhinged Leon a serious rival to Anthony Perkins's duplicitously deadly, thoroughly insane Norman Bates in Psycho, no less. And yet, having seen the emotional torments inflicted upon him throughout his childhood and adolescence by his own unequivocally odd, unfeeling parents and cruel, uncaring schoolmates, one cannot help but feel sorry for Leon, and even a degree of compassion and comprehension too when in desperate need for a friend and confidante he turns from outward influences to inward ones instead, his troubled mind focusing upon Pin and insidiously transforming him into the perfect friend. Meanwhile, almost as if she is the obverse side of the same coin as Leon (which I suppose in many ways is indeed true), Cyndy Preston's Ursula is so outward going that by adolescence she has become sexually promiscuous. Nevertheless, she is also winsomely and winningly beautiful, both physically and personally, remaining believably steadfast to her disturbed brother throughout the movie, even to – especially to – the very end, despite her terrible realization quite early on that his mind is seriously damaged.

Pin was released at a time when the horror movie fad was for supernatural shocks and scares, all garnished with lashings of gore and gallons of blood, so this sophisticated horror movie of the mind pretty much lost its way, receiving praise from those few who actually noticed it, but overlooked by the vast majority of viewers and reviewers. This is a great tragedy, because it deserved, and still deserves, far more recognition. Today, like so many other distinctive films that suffered similarly unjust fates when originally released, Pin has become something of a cult movie, and rightly so. Alfred Hitchcock, who directed the afore-mentioned Psycho, was a great believer in less is more when producing a successful thriller film, and in leaving its most shocking content to the human imagination, so I strongly suspect that he would have enjoyed Pin, which follows his example to the letter.

I freely confess that despite being a lover of strange, little-known movies, I was entirely unaware of Pin until I chanced upon a DVD of it for 50p on a market stall just over a week ago, but it was 50p very well spent, that's for sure! Moreover, you can enjoy Pin for even less than that, because if you click here, you can currently watch this entire movie free of charge, on YouTube (or here, if you want to watch a hilariously OTT trailer for it!). You can thank me later!

Finally: To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

The full cover of the official UK Cinema Club sell-thru VHS video of Pin (© Sandor Stern/Image Organization/Lance Entertainment/Malofilm/Telefilm Canada/New World Pictures/Cinema Club – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

THE PRESTIGE

 

Publicity poster for The Prestige (© Christopher Nolan/Touchstone Pictures/Warner Bros Pictures/Newmarket Films/Syncopy/Buena Vista Pictures Distribution – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 13 April 2022 was the fascinating sci fi/fantasy thriller The Prestige, one of the best films that I have viewed in a very long time, and truly magical in every sense of the word.

Directed, co-produced, and its screenplay co-written by Christopher Nolan, released internationally by Warner Bros in 2006, and based upon the 1995 titular Christopher Priest novel, The Prestige pits two early 20th-Century London-based stage magicians, Robert Angier (played by Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), against one another in an intense rivalry based upon increasingly obsessive one-upmanship, each desperate to outdo the other, whatever the cost.

Angier and Borden begin their careers as friends, working together in the same act, until Angier's wife Julia drowns on stage inside a water tank after being unable to untie the problematic type of knot that Borden has obstinately used on her, despite having been warned against it by their very experienced mentor John Cutter (Michael Caine). Angier blames Borden, and they become implacable enemies thereafter. Establishing their own separate, rival acts (Angier as The Great Danton, still working with Cutter; Borden as The Professor, working with the mysterious Bernard Falon), they ruthlessly sabotage and out-compete each other's tricks at every available opportunity, as a result of which Angier is partially crippled and Borden has a finger blown off.

Their deadly confrontations culminate (and fulminate!) with a visually sensational trick devised by Borden and called by him 'The Transported Man', in which he enters one wardrobe and then almost instantaneously steps out from inside another one placed at some distance away from the first. Angier is desperate to discover the secret to this extraordinary illusion, but Borden skillfully fools him into setting forth on a wild transatlantic goose chase to America, in order to visit none other than the contentious Serbo-American scientist Nikola Tesla (and played by none other than David Bowie, employing an intriguing Scottish accent!) at his laboratory in Colorado Springs. Here he is aided in his highly controversial, explosive experiments in electricity and magnetism by his loyal assistant Mr Alley (Andy Serkis).

However, Borden's cruel scheme unexpectedly backfires when Tesla creates for Angier a machine that will duplicate Borden's trick, and in an even more spectacular manner – but at a terrible cost, yet one that Angier is willing to pay in order to surpass Borden's act.

As a movie whose theme is sleight-of-hand stage magic, do not be surprised to learn that nothing in The Prestige is what it seems to be, most especially the true explanations for the two magicians' respective versions of 'The Transported Man'. Borden's involves a traditional but ingeniously-executed deception, whereas Angier's is something else entirely, as you'd expect from anything created by Tesla. Having said that, I've actually included a subtle clue as to the latter's incredible modus operandi here in this mini-review – did you spot it? And, if you need a clue for Borden's, thinking about anagrams is the name of the game…or the game of the name!

The Prestige is a superb, wonderfully entertaining movie, which kept me totally captivated throughout its 2-hr 10-minute running time. It includes excellent performances by all four of its leading cast members (Scarlett Johansson being the fourth, appearing as Olivia, a double-agent love interest between the two magicians), as well as some exciting special effects, especially within Tesla's classic 'mad scientist' laboratory, whose evocative design incorporates some dramatic steampunk visuals.

Josh Hartnett was apparently considered for the role of Angier, but Jackman's powerful rendition of this embittered character, driven half-crazy by his wife's needless death at the hands of Borden and hell-bent upon avenging her, is absolutely perfect, as poignant as it is chilling, especially when the twin voices of conscience and reason beseeching him inside his head become increasingly stilled as his mania escalates swiftly and surely towards its inevitable, catastrophic conclusion.

Adhering to the sacred traditions of stage magic, I'll say no more, but the closing scenes, when all is finally revealed, are as visually breathtaking as they are shocking – their stark, unforgettable images exposing the horrific depths to which the rivals have sunk in order to achieve each other's total destruction, yet little realising how this will impact upon their own survival. Or, to put it another way: what goes around, comes around.

Last but certainly not least: if you don't already know what a prestige is in the particular context of prestidigitation ('prestige' deriving from 'praestigium', the Latin word for 'trick'), you need to watch this movie – all will be revealed, or will it? But if you can't wait that long, here is Cutter's own explanation of it:

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".

If you'd like to conjure forth a tantalizing glimpse of the spellbinding sights and incongruous illusions that await you in The Prestige, be sure to click here to view an official trailer for this dark, twisted, yet mesmerizingly macabre, magical film on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.