COLOR OUT OF SPACE (2019) Movie Review

Color Out of Space (2019) d. Richard Stanley (USA) (111 min)

Living with his family on their small and isolated farm, Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage) enjoys a laid-back existence, eking out a meager existence milking alpacas and cultivating tomatoes while his online stock-trader wife Theresa (Joley Richardson) does daily battle with their sketchy internet bringing home the proverbial bacon. Their kids are a relatively well-adjusted if offbeat brood, with older brother Benny (Brendan Meyer) holding down the level-headed fort between bong hits, aspiring spiritualist Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) trading time between healing spells to repress her mom’s cancer and complaining about living out in the boonies, and young dreamer Jack (Julian Hilliard) drawing and tinkering his home-schooled days away. Of course, all that changes one night when a strange purple glowing meteorite crashes down in their front yard and proceeds to slowly influence everyone and everything around it.

THE RESURRECTED (1991) Blu-ray review

The Resurrected (1991) d. Dan O'Bannon (USA)

Private investigator John March (John Terry) is hired by the mysterious and beautiful Claire (Jane Sibbert) to uncover what her wealthy scientist husband (Chris Sarandon) is up to with his strange experiments concerning reanimation and immortality. Widely acknowledged as one of the more faithful H.P. Lovecraft adaptations, this retelling of “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (also the source material for the Vincent Price vehicle The Haunted Palace) balances an urbane “modern noir” sensibility, slippery and slimy practical effects that recall Empire-era Charles Band, and the author’s famous sense of the uncanny with predictably uneven results.

FEED THE LIGHT (2014) Blu-ray review

Feed the Light (2014) d. Möller, Fredrik (Sweden) (1st viewing) 81 min

After losing custody of her daughter, Sara (Lina Sunden) learns that her ex-husband (Patrik Karlson) has disappeared with the child into some strange religious underground (both literally and figuratively) compound. She infiltrates the sect by getting hired as part of the cleaning crew, a plot device that would seem flimsy if not for the fact that it quickly becomes clear that no normal person would want this job: not only is she required to yield her cell phone (and any other means of contact) to the buttoned-down boss (Jenny Lampa), the interview takes place in a room with a naked dog-man (Morgan Schagerberg) crouched in the corner, and her job duties include sweeping up invisible sparkling dust that gathers under the various light sources.

DIE, MONSTER, DIE! (1965) Blu-ray Review

Die Monster Die! (1965) d. Daniel Haller (UK/USA)

Having wrapped up their extremely successful run of Roger Corman-directed Edgar Allan Poe adaptations – fondly referred to as the “AIPoes” – American International Pictures set their sights on another highly influential horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. (In actuality, they’d already adopted his “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” in 1963 and turned it into Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace, but I digress.) Corman’s able art director Daniel Haller took the helm for screenwriter Jerry’s Sohl’s reworking of “The Colour Out of Space,” whose drive-in ready retitling of Die, Monster, Die! was only the first of its many woes.