Something in my gut tells me that the Academy will present the award to The Artist, but Hugo really deserves the statuette, and not just because I think it’s probably the best-made film among the nominees, but because it’s also a wonderful lesson in film history.

Scorsese’s long been a passionate advocate for film preservation, so it’s no surprise that he would take this subject to make his first “family” movie. It’s beautifully acted and wonderfully designed, and here the veteran director shows everyone how to make a 3D movie. I felt like I was inside a snow globe while I was watching it—just wonderful.

Asa Butterfield is Hugo, an orphan who lives secretly in the walls of a Paris train station and keeps all the clocks running (a job his uncle, who’d mysteriously disappeared, used to perform). He steals what he needs from the various shops in the place, and runs afoul of one of the vendors (Ben Kingsley), an elderly man who sells clockwork toys. He needs parts from the toys to finish rebuilding an automaton that his clockmaker father had been working on when he died in a tragic lab explosion.

The shopkeeper accuses Hugo of stealing and takes away his notebook filled with sketches and schematics for the automaton. He seems to recognize it and demands to know where the boy got it. Hugo refuses to say, so he tells him he’s going to burn it as punishment. In his efforts to retrieve the book, he becomes acquainted with the man’s granddaughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), an orphan herself, and their adventure begins.

What begins as a mystery about a lonely little boy and an automaton becomes a film about the love for film, a project ideally suited for Scorsese. Of course, the shopkeeper is Georges Méliés, father of special-effects movies, now forgotten and down on his luck. Kingsley is wonderful as Méliés, as is the rest of the cast. Butterfield is ideal as Hugo, and Moretz, who won me over as the vampire in Let Me In, is perfectly charming here. Helen McCrory is moving as Jeanne, Méliés’ devoted wife and former star. Even Sacha Baron Cohen is less annoying than usual.

In various smaller parts are Jude Law (as Hugo’s father), The History Boys‘ Richard Griffiths and Frances De La Tour, the great Christopher Lee, Emily Mortimer and Ray Winstone.

It’s not surprising that Scorsese would hit a home run with this film. He’s broken genre boundaries before. In 1974, he made a “woman’s film” that everyone could enjoy—Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, which earned Ellen Burstyn the Academy Award for Best Actress. And The Last Waltz, about the Band’s final concert, is considered to be right up there with Woodstock as one of the best music documentaries ever made.

Still, coming from a director whose characters usually end up ventilated instead of fulfilled, it’s amazing how well he handles this material. Kudos too go to John Logan’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s book and Howard Shore’s lush score. And the 3D recreations of Méliés’ films are just astounding.

I know The Departed wasn’t that long ago, but I can’t think of a film more deserving than Hugo for the Best Picture trophy this year. I mean—Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? War Horse? Yeesh. I also hope that Brad Pitt derails the Clooney bandwagon and wins for Moneyball. I mean, I like Clooney and The Descendants was a perfectly serviceable TV movie with a standard-issue Clooney performance, but Pitt was terrific and muti-dimensional as Billy Beane in a film that could have been stultifying but was wildly entertaining instead.

I’d also like to see Christopher Plummer win for Beginners. I didn’t see any of the pictures with Best Actress nominations, but it’d be nice to see Viola Davis or Michelle Williams take the trophy instead of Streep’s cartoony-looking performance. I don’t feel strongly about any of the Supporting Actress nominees except that I’ll give a head-slap and side-eye if Melissa McCarthy wins for her scenery-chewing performance in the flatulent Bridesmaids.

The esteemed actor Ralph Fiennes makes his directorial debut with Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare’s least-performed plays. He also stars as the title character, General Caius Martius, a bloodthirsty brute in charge of defending Rome against its Volscian enemies, commanded by the equally vicious Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler).

Martius leads a successful charge against the Volscian city of Corioles and returns home victorious, but war has created a complete meltdown of Roman society, and the people suffering in the streets are loathe to see him as a hero. There are also conspirators in the senate who are anxious to see his downfall.

He is given the honorarium Coriolanus (after the city he’d conquered) and his manipulative mother, Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave), presses him to secure a place in the Roman consul. However, his lack of compassion for the common man and inability to play the political game inspires contempt in those who so recently revered him, and he is banished, driven by vengeance to conspire with his former enemies to launch an attack on Rome.

Fiennes places this centuries-old play in contemporary settings to give it contemporary relevance, and mostly succeeds. Although the drama takes place in war rooms and bunkers and crumbling streets, the language is all Shakespeare, which may frustrate some audiences with its almost musical cadences and lack of directness. Still, Fiennes and screenwriter John Logan have pared the play down to its essentials and used such modern trappings as cutaways to news reports on HDTVs to keep the action moving.

And Fiennes is certainly a sight to behold as Coriolanus—his bright blue eyes burning under a fierce brow, face covered with battle scars, lip curled with rage—it’s hard to believe this is the same actor who almost twenty years ago was the rather effete leading man in The English Patient.

Butler plays Aufidius with an appealingly muscular brogue; indeed, the scenes featuring the two of them locked in battle ring with a kind of sadistic homoeroticism. The always great Brian Cox portrays the well-intentioned adviser Menenius, whose devotion to Coriolanus proves fatal. Jessica Chastain is appealing in her brief scenes as his wife, but there’s one actor besides Fiennes who makes the most of her role—and that’s Vanessa Redgrave.

The legendary actress gives a career-defining performance as Volumnia. As ferocious as her son, she’s a stage mother so ambitious that she thrills to his new battle scars and snarls “Anger is my meat!”

She even throws his wife aside to tend to his wounds herself in a scene that’s intentionally—and uncomfortably—incestuous. As terrific as Fiennes is (and as well-done this film is), I’m grateful to him for giving the last original member of one of the storied English acting families the opportunity to deliver a truly great performance.

Red Tails, an action film about the real-life Tuskegee Airmen, a squadron of heroic African-American pilots who served in World War II, earned a pathetic 36% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I have to say that’s pretty damn harsh.

I went into the screening expecting exciting air battles and a cheesy story, but that’s not quite how it worked out. Certainly the screenplay is lighter than air, but the actors are enthusiastic and all the required dramatic points are covered. And it’s fun to watch!

The story in short: at a time when black men in America were considered subservient and unable to withstand combat, a valiant group of pilots sought to prove them wrong. Certainly many of the characters are stereotypes (particularly a nyah-ha-ha German pilot), but it’s fun and fast-paced and does a fine job bringing these brave airmen to life, rather than burying them in moribund earnestness. It’s more of a flashback to the films that were actually made during the war and intended to boost the morale of audiences at home.

Terrence Howard is fine as the tough-as-nails Colonel Bullard who fights the military machine to get his men better planes and better assignments, but Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., alternates between bad and funny as Major Stance, the leader of the squadron. It might be the fault of the editor, but he’s putting his pipe in his mouth at the beginning of every scene he’s in like some 1950s sitcom dad. What isn’t the editor’s fault is his mawkish delivery of some of his lines.

The actors portraying the pilots all seem to be having a good time, even when they’re delivering some of the screenplay’s hoariest dialogue, but the film chronicles the racism of the time, delivering the emotional satisfaction of seeing the pilots overcome adversity and earn acceptance into the formerly whites-only Officers’ Club.

I was surprised to see that Aaron MacGruder, creator of the radical “Boondocks” comic strip, was given co-story credit, but he explained in press materials that this film was designed to have a comic strip flavor…and that it certainly does.

The action’s the thing here, and it’s exciting and wonderfully rendered (except for the opening sequence, which looks too much like a video game). Evidently, live aerial footage was mixed with CG to achieve a more realistic look—and it works. International effects company Pixomondo, which also did effects for the superb Hugo, created many of the aerial stuff, working with Lucas’ own ILM.

My final judgment: several dramas and documentaries have already been made about this noble squadron, so what’s the problem with making an exciting actioner that highlights their exploits and emphasizes their heroic stature—a black Top Gun?

It’s been reported that Levi Thornhill, one of the original Tuskegee airmen, attended a Los Angeles screening and thought it was terrific. And Warren Dart, the son of squadron member Clarence Dart, pointed out that he wasn’t even taught about the Airmen in high school, so he appreciated seeing a lively film like Red Tails.

So what’s so wrong with that?

Here, in no particular order, is a short list of some scores that I think transcend the ordinary, approaching sublimity and forever providing a sonic shorthand for the films they represent.

1. Rosemary’s Baby and Dance of the Vampires. The worlds of music and cinema were unnecessarily robbed in 1969 when Polish jazz musician and composer Krzysztof Komeda died of a brain haematoma that is said to have been improperly treated. A favorite of Roman Polanski, he provided the scores for two of the director’s biggest films.

I have the score of 1968′s Rosemary’s Baby on vinyl and it’s wonderful. Among the highlights: the stuttering trumpet during “Panic,” when Rosemary is trying to escape the clutches of the coven; the sudden rising of the weird recorder music and chanting when Rosemary and Guy are messing around on the floor of their new apartment at the Bramford; and Mia Farrow’s deceptively sunny lullaby that opens and closes this marvelous film.

Komeda is completely up to the task, weaving menace through Manhattan with a score that sounds simultaneously otherworldly and hip.

1967′s Dance of the Vampires (aka The Fearless Vampire Killers) is a different challenge—a period piece and a comedy to boot. Either Komeda was coached by Polanski or was able to synch into his mind via ESP, because he understood that the slapstick humor was merely a cover for something much darker—a story about a vampire dictator lording it over not only his converted disciples but also the terrorized townspeople. It’s not an accident that Polanski prominently features a Jew converted to vampirism as one of his major characters.

Again, Komeda rises wonderfully to the occasion. His score is chillingly beautiful, as befits the freezing climate in the film. Even during Dance‘s lighter moments, when he brings in a chorus to accompany the musicians, the singers sound….well, dead.

2. Suspiria (1977). My God, talk about an epoch-making score. I was 17 years old when I saw Argento’s masterpiece at the State-Lake Theater in Chicago and became aware of surround sound in film for the first time, although I’m sure I’d heard it before. But Suspiria was so loud…and the sound of breathing was all around me. Even though it was the Fox International Classics edited-down-for-an-R release (which they’re still running on Fox Movie Channel), I was blown away by the violence…and Goblin’s awesome music.

Suspiria had such a profound effect on me that I programmed it when I was running my college’s 16mm film shows back in the day. The film rental company didn’t send me the correct scope lens, however, so I was forced to screen it squished—and everyone in the audience was so riveted they stayed for the whole thing, even though everyone on the screen had severe anorexia. When I moved to California, I found a brand new vinyl of the soundtrack on Venice Beach for $5.00 in 1981 and it’s still one of my most prized possessions. Witch!

3. Carrie (1976). I love the scores of Pino Donaggio. His career highlights include music for The Howling, Piranha, Dressed to Kill and Don’t Look Now, but I still have to give the career achievement award to his magnum opus—Carrie. It’s lush and string-driven, giving the necessary emotional weight to the spectacular performances by Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie.

Since religious fanaticism is a major theme in the film, Donaggio’s music is very liturgical, although he does create some light stuff for those unfortunate “mod” scenes De Palma threw in.

Co-star Amy Irving’s sister Katie provided vocals for two of the prom songs, but strangely she doesn’t seem to have done much of anything else. I still have the original score on vinyl that I bought when I was 16…and it still sounds great.

4. The Omen (1976). Jerry Goldsmith won the Academy Award for his ferocious score accompanying Richard Donner’s film about the arrival of the Antichrist on earth. Now when I watch the film, Gregory Peck and Lee Remick remind me uncomfortably of Ron and Nancy, but Goldsmith’s music is still majestic as ever, taking religious themes and turning them into something far more sinister.

Goldsmith’s celebrated career contained a number of horror highlights—Alien, Poltergeist, Planet of the Apes and Gremlins, to name just a few. Not a horror film, but one of his best is his jazzy score for Polanski’s 1974 classic Chinatown.

5. Creepshow (1982). John Harrison’s synthesizer score for George Romero’s anthology film is great fun, particularly the main theme with its chanting and sighing singers. Based on stories by Stephen King, it features a screenplay by the author and he even shows up in a story. What a hambone.

But Harrison hits all the right notes (ha!) with his playfully creepy music that fits the film’s comic book images perfectly. And Viveca Lindfors is so hilarious as crazy Aunt Bedelia in “Father’s Day.”

Harrison also did the music for Romero’s company’s syndicated series, Tales from the Darkside and the feature Day of the Dead before moving into directing himself.

6. Psycho (1960). Certainly endless pages have been written about Bernard Herrmann’s score for Hitchcock’s shock masterpiece, but it belongs here, too.

Herrmann made the daring choice of using strings only for Psycho. In an interview given in 1971, the composer explained that he did so because he felt that he could complement the black-and-white photography of the film by creating a black-and-white sound. And the shrieking, stabbing music accompanying the shower scene almost didn’t happen, because Hitch didn’t want music. However, he was unhappy with the finished product, and Herrmann talked him into providing his famous cue.

I don’t have the soundtrack album, which wasn’t released in its complete form until 1996, when it was performed by the Scottish National Orchestra, but I do have a cover of the theme song by the Fibonaccis, a Los Angeles art punk band from the early ’80s.

7. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Not a horror film in the strictest sense but an extremely dark fantasy, Guillermo Del Toro’s masterwork is graced with a hauntingly beautiful score by Javier Navarrete, who also scored Del Toro’s 2001 The Devil’s Backbone.

It features a profoundly moving lullaby that recurs throughout the film and is poignantly reprised during the film’s tragic final moments. Working with a large orchestra, Navarrete weaves a dense tapestry that requires music for two stories—the real horrors of war in Franco’s Spain and the fantasy world that young Ofelia retreats into. A chorus of male voices adds appropriate menace to the darker passages and exhilarating, soaring strings accompany the brighter fantasy aspects (and there are a few).

I still can’t get over this classic losing the 2007 Best Foreign Film Oscar to the ultra-boring The Lives of Others. I mean, I’ve probably seen Labyrinth ten times, and Lives…once.

8. Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). Yes, I know this notorious flop is a hilarious mess, but Ennio Morricone’s insane score makes for fun listening on its own. Clearly as confused as the film’s director, John Boorman, Morricone runs the gamut from the ethereal (“Regan’s Theme”) to completely wacky (“Magic and Ecstasy”). In fact, “Magic” is practically a dance number, with hard-driving drums and a chorus of Eurogirls singing “Dah…dah…dahhhhh…” while a whip cracks in the background.

Just listening to it brings back perplexing memories—Richard Burton’s sweaty performance, Linda Blair tap-dancing merrily away with no bra on—and, of course, the normally dignified James Earl Jones forced to wear a really goofy bee costume.

What are some of your favorites? Please feel free to leave a comment!

1. Isle of the Damned (2008). Parody is tough, especially when it’s feature-length, but director Mark Colegrove and writer Mark Leake do an admirable job spoofing the Italian cannibal vomitoriums of the 1980s in this extremely low-budget but inspired sendup.

Of course, it has the classic cannibal movie plot—an American detective travels to the remote jungle with his impressionable young son to search for the lost treasure of Marco Polo, and they encounter flesh-eating cannibals along the way.

The cast is game, and everyone speaks in wildly out-of-synch English-language dubbing. There are hilarious inserts of unrelated wildlife footage and recreations of all the atrocities the discriminating viewer demands in this genre: consumption of flesh (and other things), castration, a body impaled on a pike, twisted sex…

The filmmakers made a smart decision in pulling no punches. The revolting scenes are delightfully full-blooded, and their cheapness only adds to the sleazy fun. The creators and actors all hide behind hilarious Italian pseudonyms during the opening credits and the Eurotrash drop-needle music by Paul Joyce is spot-on. And it was even banned in 482 countries (there are actually only 196).

Of course, it’s set up as a “found footage” movie like 1980′s Cannibal Holocaust (whose full-body piking is reenacted here), and the obviously fake wigs and facial hair are a scream. Most importantly, it does a pretty dang good job of keeping the laughs coming for 85 minutes. A must-see for lovers of the genre.

2. The Manson Family (2003). I’ve been a fan of cinematic madman Jim VanBebber since my mind was blown by 1994′s My Sweet Satan (click at your own risk). I’d been reading about his Manson movie for years, so I was stoked to see that Dark Sky Films had finally released it on DVD.

This is VanBebber’s epic (taking 15 long years to complete), chronicling the years Charlie assembled his family and turned them on to murder. Packed with sex and blood, it’s an extreme indictment of how Manson turned the “summer of love” into the “summer of shit.” Cutting frenetically between contemporary interviews with the Family (in 1996) and scratchy, super 8mm-looking footage from the late 1960s, its techniques compare favorably to the films of Kenneth Anger. VanBebber himself plays Bobby Beausoleil in the film, literally baring everything for the camera.

It’s gut-wrenching and polarizing, to be sure. Even Roger Ebert gave it his hesitant admiration. It’s available in a DVD box set with other VanBebber films from Dark Sky Films and comes with a lot of great extras, including his short films and music videos.

3. Andy Warhol’s Bad (1977). When I ran the film program in college, I booked a number of cult hits to attract the hip university crowd, including Argento’s Suspiria, Ralph Bakshi‘s Wizards and this slice of strangeness from the Warhol factory. Much more polished than Paul Morrissey‘s earlier films, Bad was directed by former editor Jed Johnson and boasts a professional cast that includes Carroll Baker, Perry King, Susan Tyrrell and Suspiria‘s own Stefania Casini.

Baker plays Hazel Aiken, a woman with two home businesses—electrolysis and murder-for-hire. Beginning her career as a “Hollywood blond,” working in big studio productions, Baker moved to Europe in the mid-sixties and started making sordid potboilers for Italian directors.

Bad was her first American film in years, and she’s hilarious as a combination of June Cleaver and Al Capone. The way she orders everyone in her life around with a pronounced lack of enthusiasm is a scream. Tyrrell plays her frumpy daughter-in-law, Mary, perpetually lugging an incredibly ugly baby around. Tyrrell is really a very striking woman—I met her when she was doing her “My Rotten Life” stage show in L.A.—so it’s hilarious to see her looking so awful.

Hazel’s gang of assassins is an all-woman crew, but when L.T. (King) comes to her in search of work, she reluctantly takes him on, but he’s hesitant to complete his first assignment—killing an autistic child.

Bad plays like a John Waters film but without Waters’ sunny disposition. Most all of these characters are cynical and hardened by life. Tyrrell’s Mary is probably the most innocent one in the bunch, but she’s also a self-pitying simpleton. It’s a very cynical portrait of urban life, but the dark humor still comes through thanks to some intentionally ridiculous deaths and jet-black dialogue, mostly delivered by Baker.

The scene the film is most famous for occurs when a young mother, trying to talk on the telephone while her baby screams in its crib, picks it up and hurls it out the window and it smashes on the street below, smashing passersby with blood. A mother hurrying by with her child says, “That’s what I’m going to do to you if you don’t shut up!”

Director Johnson was first hired to sweep the floors at Warhol’s Factory, but soon moved in with the artist and became his lover. Bad was the only film he directed. He died in the explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996.

4. Motorama (1991). It’s a rare occurrence when a film is made with an intentional camp/cult aspect built in that actually works (John Waters excepted, of course), but Motorama succeeds. It’s strange, hilarious and packed with guest appearances by a cavalcade of cult stars.

Gus (Jordan Christopher Michael) is a 10-year-old who is sick of his parents’ abuse, so he steals his father’s cherry-red Mustang and traverses the country playing a gas station card game called Motorama, trying to collect the pieces needed to spell out the name and win $500 million. On the way, he meets an assortment of strange people who for some reason treat him as if he’s an adult and treat him accordingly. He’s forcibly tattooed and one of his eyes is poked out, but nothing can stop him in his quest to collect all of the Motorama cards.

Michael plays Gus with a wise-beyond-his-years assurance, which might account for his treatment as an adult by those he meets, although he has to remind one of them, “I’m ten fucking years old!

This quirky film is virtually a Psychotronic encyclopedia of cult cameos—Susan Tyrrell, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, Meat Loaf, Mary (Eating Raoul) Woronov, Jack (Eraserhead) Nance, Garrett Morris, Corman fave Dick Miller…the list is pretty substantial. Drew Barrymore shows up as the “fantasy girl,” and the now-female Alexis Arquette worked as a storyboard artist!

Screenwriter Joseph Minion is no stranger to strange—he wrote the Nicholas Cage starrer Vampire’s Kiss and Martin Scorsese’s urban nightmare After Hours. Motorama is lighter and brighter…a 90-minute cinematic joyride.

Anyone who’s read the publicity knows that Kevin is a sociopath who goes on a murderous rampage at his high school, but the film is less about the plot than addressing this question: is evil a result of nature or bad parenting?

Tilda Swinton plays Eva Khatchadourian, an adventurer and author who gives up her freewheeling lifestyle for her husband, Franklin (John C. Reilly) and reluctantly becomes a mother. The child, Kevin, spends the first few months of his life screaming constantly, driving Eva so crazy that she takes his stroller to a construction site so that the sound of the jackhammers will drown out his cries for a brief, blissful moment. Franklin dismisses Eva’s complaints; when he takes Kevin in his arms, the boy is quiet. Eva’s distress turns into hostility, and and at one point she tells him, “You make Mommy wish she was in France!”

Franklin wants Kevin to have a yard to play in, so he moves them from Manhattan to a huge house in the suburbs, further increasing Eva’s feelings of isolation and resentment of her son. As he grows, it becomes clear that he detests her as much as she does him. He refuses to speak, play or even be potty-trained. She takes him to a pediatrician to find out if he’s autistic, but the doctor doesn’t find anything wrong with him. Her attempts to break through are met with steely-eyed silence and, when he gets older, hostile retorts, giving Eva feelings of guilt and anger in equal measure.

Kevin is a master manipulator, making the days hell for his mother but turning on the charm at night when Franklin returns home. He also obtains Eva’s conspiratorial silence when, after she angrily throws him against the wall and breaks his arm, he tells his father that he did it himself. Thereafter, whenever she wants to expose Kevin’s misdeeds, the boy merely rubs the scar on his arm and stares at her wordlessly.

The balance of power seems to tilt when Eva gives birth to a little girl they name Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich), who is everything Kevin isn’t—blond, playful and possessed of a naturally sunny disposition.

But it doesn’t last. For Kevin, Celia is just another person in the household he can be cruel to. He demeans her and plays cruel pranks. When Celia loses her left eye in a household “accident,” Franklin blames Eva for leaving out the bottle of drain cleaner that caused it.

Franklin is also inadvertently responsible for arming Kevin with his means of destruction—noting his son’s talent for archery, he buys him a top-of-the-line bow and arrow set for Christmas.

The events leading up to Kevin’s ultimate act of violence are laid out by Ramsay at first in a jumbled, dreamlike manner, the pieces gradually falling into place as the story reaches its climax.

There are some wonderful scenes: the film opens with images of writhing bodies, drenched in what looks like blood. At first it seems like a horrible massacre, but when we see an ecstatic Eva rolling in the red liquid, we realize that she’s participating in a folk ritual (specifically Spain’s La Tomatina tomato-throwing festival).

There’s another brilliant, surreal sequence in which an unnerved Eva, driving home at night, is confronted by a variety of ghostly spectres lurching out of the darkness, and it finally dawns on her that it’s Halloween. When she reaches her house, the trick-or-treaters surround it like the ghouls in The Last Man On Earth, pounding on the doors and throwing rotten vegetables through the windows. With literally nothing to give, she turns off the lights and slides to the floor, waiting for the onslaught to end.

While the film occasionally lurches a bit too far toward the melodramatic, Ramsay keeps it mostly under tight control, with Swinton’s performance serving as the anchor.

Swinton is nothing short of amazing as Eva. She’s actually playing two characters in this film: the shell-shocked mother and the post-massacre pariah who is reduced to taking a menial job and hiding from her neighbors.

All the boys playing the various ages of Kevin deliver remarkable, cold-eyed performances, with Ezra Miller as the teenaged version particularly chilling. When Eva asks him why he does such horrible things, he answers, “There’s no point…that’s the point.”

Reilly is good as her well-meaning but ineffectual husband, but he’s practically a send-up of the 1950s sitcom father: he goes to an unknown (but obviously well-paying) job during the day, expecting to come home to a happy and well-adjusted family at night.

Gerasimovich brings an affecting realism to her role. In an extraordinarily touching scene, when Eva is carefully applying medicine to Celia’s destroyed eye socket, the pain of the ordeal is made evident with a shot of the child’s tiny hand clutching a bedsheet, but when it’s over, she says, “Thank you, Mommy.”

It’ll be interesting to see if Swinton is nominated for an Oscar for this one. She certainly deserves to be, but dark, grim films like this are not usually something the Academy rewards.

As for the source of Kevin’s evil? It’s difficult to point to anything in particular…and that’s the point.

Vincent D’Onofrio (Law and Order: Criminal Intent) stepped behind the camera for Don’t Go in the Woods, a film about a rock band that heads into the sticks to write new music and, as IMDB says, finds itself “in the middle of a nightmare beyond comprehension.” It’s a cliched-sounding plot, but D’Onofrio is agreeably quirky and could possibly do a good spin on the retro story. He directed and co-wrote the screenplay for this horror musical backed by DeNiro’s Tribeca Film.

The curiosity factor on this one is actually relatively high—there’s just enough strangeness involved. Check out this NYT article for more proof. Made in 2010, it’s finally getting a limited release this month.

Another release with an old-school title is Cabin in the Woods with Chris Hemsworth (before Thor) and Bradley Whitford. It’s the old “kids stranded in a remote location where bad things happen to them” trope, and even though Joss Whedon is co-writer, it’s been sitting around since 2009. And if the comments on IMDB can be believed, the ending is really stoopid, which may have something to do with its release lag—although the filmmakers insist that upconversion to 3D and distributor MGM’s financial woes are to blame.

The third dimension is the order of the day for remakes of two authentic ’70s classics: Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (now known as Leatherface 3D). Patrick Lussier is directing Halloween, which piques my curiosity a bit. He did the fun 3D remake of My Bloody Valentine in 2009 (and Todd Farmer, that film’s scripter, is also on board), so he knows his way around the process. Rob Zombie is not involved this time. I’m tired of his grungy ’70s vibe. It works with some films like The Devil’s Rejects, but his sleazy “reimagining” of Halloween was just silly.

Texas Chain Saw is another matter. It has been sequelized and reinvented in every possible way. Hell, even the original director, Tobe Hooper, made a terrible sequel (Part II). Marcus Nispel’s 2003 remake was actually pretty good, so unless these filmmakers have something interesting to say, 3D isn’t going to be enough to bring in the punters.

The TV soap series Dark Shadows was a big deal back in the 60s and proved to be a sustainable cash cow for one of the earliest independent home video companies—MPI—that’s still going strong today.

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are collaborating on the new film adaptation, with a high-powered cast including Michelle Pfeiffer, Jonny Lee Miller and Chloe Grace Moretz, who played a vampire herself in Matt Reeves’ 2010 Let Me In.

Burton’s significant other, Helena Bonham Carter, plays Dr. Julia Hoffman, a role originated by the hilariously hammy Grayson Hall and reprised by Barbara Steele in the short-lived ’90s series. Jonathan Frid, the original Barnabas, will also be on board, as well as other original cast members David Selby and Kathryn Lee Scott.

I don’t think Burton is going to take the straight horror approach with this one. He even said “It’s a funny tone, and that’s part of what the vibe of the show is, and there’s something about it that we want to get.” The photo above sure looks like it’s going for Burton-style weirdness. And thankfully he insists that it won’t be in 3D.

Ridley Scott is going back to outer space for Prometheus, his first sci-fi film since Blade Runner, and fans are anxious to see if he can outdo 1979′s Alien. It has an impressive cast, including Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson and Michael Fassbender, but the trailer spells out the film’s title exactly as Alien‘s was spelt out in its opening credits.

And one of the screenwriters is the co-creator of the Lost TV series, so I wonder if it’s going to be an Alien wannabe or indigestible claptrap.

Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton are Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, a 3D comedy thriller directed by Norwegian Tommy Wirkola, his first since Dead Snow, a film with a great premise (Nazi zombies) that just didn’t follow through. Here, the now-grown-up siblings have become full-on bounty hunters intent on eliminating all witches from the world. Again, great premise…but how good will it be?

Yet another 3D oddity is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, based on the popular 2010 novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, whose earlier book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, started the mashup craze. It looks like this one will be of the dark-humored variety, especially with Tim Burton on board as co-producer. Dominic Cooper, Rufus Sewell and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are in the cast, as well as comedian Benjamin Walker as Lincoln. Here, our beloved president vows to rid the world of vampires after his own mother is killed by one of the bloodsuckers. Oh…and slaveowners are the vampires’ human assistants.

Danish filmmaker Ole Bornedal helms The Possession, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Losers) and Kyra Sedgwick. It’s the story of an ornate box, purchased at a yard sale, that makes life hell for an unsuspecting family. Once known as Dibbuk Box, named for the malevolent spirit of Jewish folklore which inhabits it, the film now has a more family-friendly title. I liked Bornedal’s Nightwatch very much (both the Danish and English-language versions), so I’m interested in this one.

Since the Saw series came to an end, it looks like the Paranormal Activity franchise has snatched up the Halloween releasing slot, and what a shame that is. I’ve said in these pages many times how ridiculously unscarily little-girl-screamily dumb these movies are, and I’m confident Part 4 will be more of the same. Many “found footage” movies can be good—I liked Quarantine and Cloverfield—but this series is just lame. And speaking of Saw, last year’s mashup of both franchises, Insipid…whoops, I mean Insidious…was just ridiculous.

Speaking of franchises that have certainly passed their sell-by date, Scary Movie 5 is also being released in 2012, for those who care. I think Anna Faris is a terrific comedy actor, but she needs to move on. She probably got a nice check, though. I can’t blame her.

Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio and James Ransone star in Sinister, another “found footage” film that sounds like it could go either way. Hawke’s most recent genre entry was the enjoyable Daybreakers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean this one will be good. Nevertheless, my curiosity is semi-piqued.

But we can’t let the year go by without zombies. The high-profile entry is the Brad Pitt-starrer World War Z, which is set to be the biggest-budget living-dead movie of all time, but the more conservative Warm Bodies also sounds intriguing. Based on Isaac Marion’s novel of the same name, it’s the romantic (?) tale of a zombie who falls for the girlfriend of one of his victims. Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: First Class) stars as said zombie, and John Malkovich and Rob Corddry are also along for the ride. Handled correctly, it could be bizarrely moving, like the ultra-low budget I, Zombie: The Chronicles of Pain, from 1999.

In summary: I’ll be there for The Possession and Abraham Lincoln. I also like the idea of Warm Bodies and World War Z. D’Onofrio’s film looks like it’ll be easy to catch (either On Demand or in Los Angeles limited release), but who knows? And if everyone gets carried away about Prometheus, I may be persuaded. I’m definitely passing on Paranormal, Scary Movie and the two ’70s 3D reboots. Well, maybe I’ll check out Halloween.

And Dark Shadows? To quote Mr. Moviefone: “I’m in!”

Here are some of them. Keep in mind, if you haven’t seen these, there may be spoilers…

THE BEST

1. Hugo. Somehow it’s fitting that this would be the last movie I saw this year—just this afternoon, as a matter of fact. It perfectly fits into the WMV milieu, and I’ll be discussing it in greater detail in a later post.

Martin Scorsese has taken a children’s tale and made it relevant for adults, weaving in some wonderful, magical movie history history and a plea for film preservation to boot.

As Hugo and his spirited sidekick, Isabelle, Asa Butterfield and Chloe Grace Moritz are terrific, and Sir Ben Kingsley plays Georges Melies with a tragic dignity. Once a pioneer in special effects films, he’s lost everything and now sells toys at the train station that Hugo—also a lost soul—inhabits. It’s utterly charming, and elder statesman Scorsese probably understands the power of 3D better than any filmmaker of any generation.

2. Moneyball. Man, I loved this movie. Not only was it a fascinating study of the inner workings of major league sports, it featured a major league performance by Brad Pitt as Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who has a unusual plan to take his team to the top. Jonah Hill is fine as his nerdy, numbers-driven assistant, and Philip Seymour Hoffman adds another character notch to his belt as team manager Art Howe. And it was funny, too!

3. Crazy, Stupid, Love. This smart and frequently hilarious film showed us that romcoms don’t always have to have “long distance relationship” or “meet cute” or “terminal illness” plot points (and you people know who you are) to carry them through. Just pair sad sack Steve Carrell with suave barfly Ryan Gosling doing his Pygmalion thing, throw in other dysfunctional characters, blend them all together and you’ve got comedy gold.

4. Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The little (well, not so little) movie that could. People scoffed at the idea of Fox rebooting its ancient series, especially as the films got more and more po’-faced and the TV series even worse, but most were blown away by a truly exciting prequel with lots of heart, seamless digital effects and another Academy-award worthy performance by Andy Serkis as Caesar. James Franco is believable as a research scientist (!) and John Lithgow gives the film its soul as Franco’s father, battling against the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

5. Drive. Here Gosling plays a completely different character, a morally ambiguous stunt driver who finally gains a soul when he is motivated to rescue his neighbor (Carey Mulligan) from vicious thugs. Of course, this rescue involves splattery killings, but it somehow all works in Nicolas Winding Refn‘s strange, dark film that challenges conventional techniques and characterizations.

6. Shame. Dark is certainly the operative word to describe Steve McQueen’s portrait of an emotionally blank sex addict named Brandon (Michael Fassbender) and his equally screwed-up sister with the quite literal name Sissy (Carey Mulligan).

Certainly not for all viewers, Shame features a fearless and literally stripped-down performance by Fassbender whose compulsions are never explained but are somehow linked to a horrendous childhood that Brandon and Sissy experienced.

7. The Devil’s Double. Breezing through theaters in limited release earlier this year, this story of Saddam Hussein’s son Uday and his body double Latif Yahia (both mesmerizingly played by Dominic Cooper) painted a violent portrait of the tumult in Iraq during the first Gulf War. Cooper provides two good performances as Uday, whose tastes for bloodshed and depravity are unchecked, and Latif, who finds himself at a moral crossroads.

Also worth mentioning is Fright Night, a decent remake of the 1985 original with Colin Farrell particularly striking as Jerry Dandridge. Instead of Chris Sarandon’s suave man-about-town portrayal, Farrell is much more…well, feral. X Men: First Class was an entertaining prequel, with James McAvoy and Fassbender lots of fun as the young versions of Dr. Xavier and Magneto.

Steven Soderbergh’s star-studded Contagion took what could have been a really clinical plot about a contagious disease exploding around the world and made it fast-moving and fascinating. Martha Marcy May Marlene featured an outstanding performance by Elizabeth Olson as a damaged young woman who escapes from a cult in a movie that really creeps up on you.

THE WORST

There were a few stinkers from filmmakers who should’ve known better—nevertheless, they made a boatload of money and critics even liked a couple of them.

1. The crowning achievement of crap surely must go to The Hangover Part II. It’s hard to believe that the creators of the original had anything to do with this, because it plays like it was done by opportunistic louts with no understanding of how the humor worked in Part I. It’s flat, repetitive and frankly pretty disgusting. I only need remind you of Ed Helms’ character and the “ladyboy” to help you understand. It’s amazing that this sequel didn’t derail the series, but I guess Part III is in the works.

2. Bridesmaids was a smash hit and earned many critical laurels, and I just don’t get it. To me, it was just as disgusting as Hangover Part II, alternating between ridiculous slapstick, nauseating body-function comedy and absurd “women’s drama.” What’s the sequel going to be called? Divorcees?

3. J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 was eagerly anticipated but fell flat on its ass. I wasn’t the only one who felt betrayed by this misfire. Half Spielberg-inspired memory piece, half Cloverfield-style monster scare film, it seriously failed to deliver on the latter part, devolving into a Michael Bay-style crash-and-smash fest with a stoopid monster that gave me a headache long before the end credits rolled.

4. Red Riding Hood. Dumb, dumb, dumb, this mess tries to add Twilight teen angst to a classic fairy tale, and it’s ridiculous. And what’s up with Amanda Seyfried? She seems to be in everything these days, but I find this googly-eyed blonde to be a particularly limited performer. As Dorothy Parker famously said about another actress, “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.” More tragic was the appearance of the elegant Julie Christie as her grandmother. My God, did she really need the money that badly?

Insidious had the creators of Saw team up with the creator of Paranormal Activity, but the result was more of the latter—a cliché-ridden, alleged “horror film” for people who are scared of horror films. And Anthony Hopkins, who was enjoyable in last year’s rather good remake, The Wolfman, was somehow talked into participating in The Rite, playing an exorcist who himself becomes possessed and babbles endless lines of pretentious dialogue until the demon is forced out—or the audience is forced to leave—whichever comes first.

2012 is already looking to be ruled by sequels and 3D spectacles. Tim Burton is expanding his 1984 short film Frankenweenie into a feature for Disney—ironically the company that fired him for making it in the first place. James Cameron is hauling his groaning 1997 epic Titanic out of drydock for another go-round in 3D. I’m interested in Mark Webb’s take on Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man franchise with the fresh-cast The Amazing Spider-Man. Wrath of the Titans is a sequel to the 3D remake Clash of the Titans—and it’s also getting an upconversion! Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is surely one of the most anticipated releases of the year, and Christian Bale is back as Batman in The Dark Night Rises.

Suckers will fork over their money for Paranormal Activity 4, a franchise I absolutely fail to see the appeal in. Kristen Stewart is giving up sparkly vampires to appear as the title character in Snow White and the Huntsman. And Brad Pitt takes on zombies in Marc Forster’s World War Z.

On the arthouse front, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, already in limited release, will be expanded in 2012. Actress Sarah Polley, whose 2006 Away from Her was terrific, has Take This Waltz. Tilda Swinton plays the mother of a teen who went on a high school killing spree in We Need to Talk About Kevin. And the Australian serial killer film Snowtown is coming early this year. Both of the latter are on my hot list and should be reviewed when available.

In the meantime, we here at Weird Movie Village wish you a happy and productive New Year!

There are horror films for almost every holiday—Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Halloween (of course)—even Independence Day (William Lustig’s Uncle Sam). With Christmas just around the corner, it got me thinking about Yuletide-themed movies, and I came to the conclusion that most of them are pretty lame. Here’s a select list…

1. Don’t Open Till Christmas (1984). Actor Edmund Purdom also took the directorial reins for this sleazy English slasher. Yeah, I know you’re saying “Edmund Purdom…who?” Well, he was in the original 1953 Titanic, some sword and sandal epics and sleaze like Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks and Pieces, so he knew his way around exploitation. Here he plays a police inspector on the hunt for a masked killer preying on men dressed as Santa Claus. You just know it’s going to turn out that he was traumatized by someone dressed as Saint Nick as a young boy.

Man, is it cheap. Some of the sets are so small it looks like the actors are crouching to fit into the frame. And despite its ’80s vintage, it has a distinctly sleazy ’70s vibe, especially in its depiction of the Piccadilly Circus/nightclub milieu. Even cult vixen Caroline (Maniac) Munro, no stranger to sleaze herself, shows up to chirp a Eurotrash disco song.

And instead of being horrified by the murders, the obviously underdirected extras react with expressions of nausea or vague disappointment. It’s probably the best of the bad Christmas horror films, because it delivers the gore with a thick slice of cheese.

Father Christmases are offed in a variety of amusing ways—burning, bludgeoning—even exsanguination via castration. Of course none of it is convincing, but that only adds to the fun. You have to wonder what Purdom was thinking as he was performing double duty here. “At last! An opportunity to stretch my talent” or “God, I need the money”? And the VHS sleeve (pictured here) was classic. How could you resist renting it with packaging like this?

2. The “And All Through the House” segment from Tales from the Crypt (1972). Joan Collins! Chloe Franks (Whoever Slew Auntie Roo, The House That Dripped Blood)! Sicko Santa! The first adaptation of the classic 1950s comic book series is by far the best. I remember seeing it at the State Theater in South Bend, Indiana, on a double bill with another Amicus anthology, From Beyond the Grave. I didn’t dig Grave so much (insert groan here) but Tales was great. It’s amazing that it got a PG rating back in the day, because it’s quite tense and bloody (even though the blood is pink).

Joan was in the horror/trash phase of her career at this point. She’d already done Inn of the Frightened People, and I Don’t Want to Be Born, in which she gives birth to a baby possessed by a circus dwarf—I’m not kidding—still lay ahead. Here, she plays a wife who decides to snuff her husband on Christmas Eve while her daughter is asleep upstairs. Bashing his brains in with a fireplace poker, she throws his body down the basement steps to make it look as if he’d fallen. Unfortunately, a news report interrupts the nonstop Christmas music on the wireless to warn citizens to be on the lookout for a deranged Santa who had just escaped from the mental hospital.

What follows is a lot of suspenseful fun as Joan runs around making sure all of the windows and doors are secure as the psycho Father Christmas peeps in. It’s all for naught, however—daughter is too excited to stay asleep and sneaks downstairs, announcing: “Santa’s here, Mummy! I let him in!”

Joan rushes to the fireplace, presumably to grab her old reliable poker, but Santa has his hands wrapped around her throat. Oliver MacGreevy, who plays the jolly old elf, should’ve won some sort of award for his performance. He effectively projected a perverted insanity that really creeped out my 13-year-old self and still does today. I mean, after he killed Mommy, what do you think he did with the kid?

The story was redone for the HBO series of the same name, and although it ups the ante in the gore department, the original is still tops in my book. You can see it here.

3. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). A triumph of marketing, this ultra-low-budget slasher was promoted with incredibly morbid television spots during the holiday season, causing parents’ groups to go ballistic and get it pulled from theaters. It delivers on the gore and there are lots of silly breast shots—the ever-topless Linnea (Return of the Living Dead) Quigley is on board, and a girl even opens her front door to let out her cat, dressed only in tiny shorts.

It spawned an outrageous number of direct-to-video sequels that diverted from the original story (psycho Santa, of course). Mickey Rooney showed up for number five as a looney toymaker named Joe Petto (insert second groan here), even though he’d written a letter to the producers of the original complaining about the film back in ’84! Guess he couldn’t resist that check for $2.95 the filmmakers were waving in front of his nose.

4. Christmas Evil (1980). John Waters is among the fans of this killer holiday flick, which stars Tony nominee Brandon Maggart as a schmuck who sees Santa performing an intimate act on his mother as a child. Instead of loathing the guy, he becomes his number one fan, keeping his apartment decorated year-round and sleeping in a Santa robe. But when too many people diss Christmas, he snaps and decides to become Kris Kringle himself—well, a murderous Kris Kringle.

All of this takes a lo-o-o-ong time. With apologies to Mr. Waters, I found this this to be a really boring movie. At 100 minutes, it moves at a snail’s pace and the killings don’t start until the final 40 minutes. And there’s weird, senseless stuff, too. He goes to the home of a bad boy who’d been looking at dirty magazines, but instead of killing him, he just covers his hands and face in mud and leaves impressions on the side of the house. Huh? And just when you think the killings are going to start in earnest (beginning with a pretty good eye impalement), the action stops dead again for an office party dance sequence.

5. Black Christmas (1974). Long before he made the perennial charmer, 1982′s A Christmas Story, director Bob Clark plumbed darker Yuletide depths with this Canadian-lensed stalker. A group of sorority girls staying at school over the holidays receive obscene phone calls at Christmastime. When one of them, Barb (Superman‘s Margot Kidder), provokes the caller, he threatens to kill her. He follows through with his threat, and soon most of the co-eds are snuffed and stashed in the attic or basement.

The cast is interesting. Along with the aforementioned Kidder, who’s fun as the drunk, chain-smoking Barb, there’s also Olivia Hussey (Romeo and Juliet), Keir Dullea (2001: A Space Odyssey) and Andrea Martin (SCTV). Although the killings aren’t really splattery, it does anticipate the slasher film boom of the 1980s, and the notion that the killer has been in the house the entire time dramatized a popular urban legend and gave birth to at least another film’s plot (When a Stranger Calls). It’s also very grim and nasty, with the killer’s phone calls being particularly graphic and obscenity-laden.

The film was remade in 2006. Of course, the sleaze and gore stakes were raised considerably, and Martin came back, this time playing the house mother rather than a student. Otherwise, it’s pretty routine.

6. Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974). This is one of those movies you just wish would be a lot better. Directed by Theodore (Sugar Cookies) Gershuny, it stars Mary Woronov, his spouse at the time, and horror vet John Carradine, with appearances by Warhol superstars Candy Darling and Ondine. With a cast like this, one really wishes it would have taken off into Morrissey/Warhol territory, but it’s awkward, dark and slow-moving. It has its enthusiastic adherents, but to me it just seems like a horror film made by experimental filmmakers with no affinity for the genre—and that’s why I especially wish they’d just gone ahead and made it really strange.

7. TV Christmas Episodes. Okay, they’re not horror films, but there are a few Christmas-themed TV episodes worth mentioning. Oftentimes, Christmas has to be shoehorned into the plot of shows that don’t naturally lend themselves to holiday whimsy. I’m reminded of the Yuletide-themed Dragnet in which Gannon and Friday work to find a Baby Jesus statue and return it to its creche in a Mexican-American church in time for Christmas mass. Wanted: Dead or Alive, starring Steve McQueen, had a cheesy episode in which a kid gives him eight cents to find Santa Claus.

Far more successful were the comedies. Who could forget the Mary Tyler Moore episode in which Mary is scheduled to work alone at the news desk on Christmas Eve, thinks there’s an intruder in the building, and is surprised by her coworkers with an impromptu party?

Married with Children did Christmas Bundy style with a plot that featured a skydiving Santa plummeting to his death in their backyard. Like Silent Night, Deadly Night, it caused parents’ groups to get carried away, banning the episode from syndicated reruns until a compromise was reached. Even today, it’s prefaced with a “this is a work of fiction and none of this really happened” blah blah blah card. Frankly, I think today’s kids are so tough and cynical that they’d look at it and say, “You mean there was a time when kids actually believed in Santa?” And they’ve already heard Justin Bieber’s duet with Mariah Carey on “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” so they’re scarred for life anyhow.

Well, as I said at the outset, most Christmas-themed horror films are pretty lousy, and that’s not even counting the biggest horror of them all, the 1978 Star Wars holiday special. I recommend the nonpareil 1951 version of A Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim, which is…after all…a horror story.

And to all a goodnight!

MARGARET FIELD. Perhaps most famous for being the mother of Sally Field, Margaret Field did lots of television work, appearing in all the important shows of the ’50s and ’60s, including The Twilight Zone, The Untouchables, Wagon Train, Perry Mason and Adam-12, to name a few.

Her film work was more limited, but her most notable role has to be Enid in Edgar G. Ulmer’s cult classic The Man from Planet X (1951). Shot in six days for $41,000, it nevertheless has its ardent admirers. One of the earliest, if not the earliest, alien invasion stories, the speed with which it was produced enabled it to beat Invaders from Mars, War of the Worlds and The Thing from Another World into theaters, though they all went into production at about the same time.

ANDREA TRUE. Children of the ’70s have the disco song “More, More, More” burned into their brains, but singing was only a part of True’s true talents. Born in Nashville, she moved to New York as a teen to break into mainstream films, but only found work in porn. While she was in Jamaica appearing in local real estate commercials, she recorded the song she’ll be remembered for—it even reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 list.

Sadly, her music career burned out pretty quickly, and a goiter on her vocal cords eliminated any chance of a comeback. And, at age 40, she was too old to get back into porn. She ended up doing psychic readings in Florida.

CHARLES NAPIER. The lantern-jawed tough guy was a favorite of Russ Meyer, appearing in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Supervixens and Harry, Cherry and Raquel, but he’s one of those ubiquitous actors that everyone recognizes from his many appearances. Like J.K. Simmons, he seemed to be in everything.

I always remember him as the cop guarding Hannibal Lecter in the makeshift cage set up in the gymnasium in Silence of the Lambs, and the way he screamed/snarled defiantly when the madman went in for the kill. But he also appeared in such first video generation favorites as Rambo: First Blood Part II, Something Wild, Maniac Cop 2—even Ruggero Deodato’s 1987 slasher Camping Del Terror!

ALAN SUES. I only knew this flamboyant comedian from his appearances on Laugh-In and the Twilight Zone episode “The Masks,”and I was surprised to see that he was 85 when he died. For some reason, I thought he was younger, but he served in Europe during World War II and used his veteran’s benefits to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He made his stage debut in “Tea and Sympathy”—duh—which is about an earnest teacher’s efforts to make a man out of an effeminate student.

He really didn’t work that much to earn such recognition, but what the heck. Like Paul Lynde, he was one of the pioneers of flamboyant characters in ’60s television, even though he never came out publicly.

KEN RUSSELL. There’s a whole post devoted to moviedom’s madman, but we couldn’t let the opportunity pass to acknowledge the loss of one of the world’s most controversial filmmakers. Love him or hate him (and many do), he made some true classics (The Devils, Women in Love, The Music Lovers) as well as some stinkers.

The stinkers always seemed to come about when he was being dictated to by a studio or other financers. After the success of Tommy, it’s clear that the studio wanted him to shape one of his musical biographies to fit then-hot Who frontman Roger Daltrey. The result was Lizstomania—and it’s a mess. And seven years after Crimes of Passion, Trimark—a low-budget film and video distribution company—financed Whore, a similarly-themed film starring Theresa Russell—and it’s dreadful.

My favorite Russell films are the aforementioned three as well as Tommy, Lair of the White Worm and Crimes of Passion. And I would rather watch a bad Ken Russell film than anything by Michael Bay.

HARRY MORGAN. With two big series to his name—Dragnet and M*A*S*H—I’m sure he was rolling in residuals, but he was also a Disney favorite and a television mainstay. It’s funny how the obituaries are omitting his arrest for wife-beating in 1996. That was so strange when that news broke. Harry Morgan? It’s like Pee Wee Herman being arrested for public indecency. Oh, wait a minute.

Morgan was part of the M*A*S*H cast that I liked best. McLean Stevenson’s dipshit Colonel Blake didn’t really do it for me, and I preferred Mike Farrell over Wayne Rogers, who always seemed like an unctuous used car salesman to me.

Morgan’s first name was originally Henry, but he changed it in deference to the comedian and perpetual game show guest who had the same name but nowhere near the legendary status this guy achieved.

And he was quite liberal. A lifelong Democrat, he fought McCarthy’s blacklist in the 1950s and appeared in plays for the Group Theatre, whose talents included Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan, Karl Malden and Lee J. Cobb.

BILL McKINNEY. This tough-guy character actor appeared in many famous films, including many for Clint Eastwood—”The Outlaw Josey Wales,” “The Gauntlet,” “Every Which Way but Loose,” “Bronco Billy” and “Any Which Way You Can,” but he will always be immortalized as the psycho hillbilly who sexually assaults Ned Beatty in Deliverance (“Squeal, piggy!”).

McKinney’s debut was David F. Friedman’s 1967 She Freak but otherwise his filmography is pretty straight—lots of villains and other character parts in westerns, crime dramas and tons of television.

When I was about 14, I was visiting my family in Texas (I lived with my father in Indiana) and we went to a second-run house to see a double bill of Deliverance and Jeremiah Johnson. It was a strange combination, but it satisfied the weird movie lover in me.

For the Thanksgiving holiday, we at Weird Movie Village decided to take a break and drive from our corporate headquarters up to Morro Bay, a beautiful little seaside community about 200 miles north of Los Angeles.

Just in case you don’t know, Morro Bay’s most distinguishing characteristic is a huge round rock jutting 576 feet out of the water just offshore. It’s one of the “nine sisters“: a series of rocks and/or hills that were formed by volcanic activity at least 20 million years ago, but the Bay’s rock is the only one that’s out in the ocean. It’s quite a striking sight. Morro Bay is also home to a small estuary where local species of fish and birds are able to thrive, and the rock is the protected home of the Peregrine Falcon. Quarrying gave it its distinctive round shape and the rocks were used to build the bay’s breakwater.

For Weird Movie Village, not only is Morro Bay a relatively close, relatively inexpensive getaway, it’s also home to one of the last single-screen, independently owned movie houses in California, the Bay. Sadly, it was closed for some minor refurbishments, but it was good to see that it’d be reopening in early December. The posters in the windows indicated that J. Edgar had been its last feature—or that it was coming up next. Can’t be sure, but I’m glad it’s still in business.

Anyhow, Thanksgiving Day in a small community can mean limited opportunities for entertainment. Once you’ve gone out to the rock, toured the Embarcadero, checked out the goofy aquarium (those Moray eels are scary!), jogged by the seashore and rented a bike for a sprint through town, you’re pretty much done.

Fortunately, we discovered an arthouse in nearby San Luis Obispo, the Palm Theatre. It was playing a film we’d wanted to see—Martha Marcy May Marlene, so off we went. On the way, and with time to kill, we were surprised and delighted to see a record store open on Morro Bay Boulevard, Vinyl Isle, so we stopped in for a browse.

Vinyl Isle is tiny but packed to the rafters with used and collectible records of all genres. We looked at the soundtracks and found a nice mono original of Mondo Cane and a stereo version of John Barry’s majestic score for The Lion In Winter. Another fun acquisition was Disneyland Records‘ 1964 Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House.

A quick 20 minute drive and we were in San Luis Obispo. The theater was easy to find, located in the city’s tiny Chinatown. Clean and small, it consisted of three little auditoriums with real film projection, not video. And in 2004, it was outfitted with solar panels and the electricity sold to Pacific Gas and Electric rather than being fed directly into the theater, which allows it to continue operating during the stormy seasons.

Martha Marcy May Marlene—so named for its lead character’s many personalities, is a complex film. At first blush, I thought it was rather dull with a few moments of interest, but it’s one of those movies that creeps up on you. I’ve found myself thinking about it for the last couple of days, recalling scenes that make me say, “Oh, yeah! That’s why that happened!”

Elizabeth Olsen is amazing as the title character(s), a mysterious young woman who’s just escaped from a cult led by the creepily charismatic Patrick (John Hawkes) and comes back to live with her estranged sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy). Ironically, life with her sibling is as difficult as the one she’d just left, and she has trouble coping with normalcy after the physical and emotional abuse she’d just experienced.

Her life has been split in two: pre- and post-cult, and it causes her to behave rather oddly. When Ted suggests they take a swim in the lake, she nonchalantly takes off all of her clothes to her sister’s horror. And when she hears the sound of them making love in their bedroom, she wanders in and lies down next to them as if drawing some sort of comfort from their activity.

The soundtrack is subtly sinister—windblown leaves, falling stones and footsteps all bring back memories to Martha (who’s been renamed Marcy May by Patrick), and we get enough glimpses of her life there to allow us to put together the puzzle that causes her strangeness and paranoia.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a deliberately paced film that you’ll think about for days afterward. It’s an assured feature debut from Sean Durkin, who won the Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival. Olsen, the younger sister of the “Full House” twins, is simply astonishing, and it’s unbelievable to realize that this is her first film role. Paulson’s character is frankly a bitch and she plays it that way. She’s an emotionless control freak, and it’s clear that she really doesn’t like her sister; she just feels that it is her duty to take care of her. A telling moment occurs when Martha learns that Lucy and Ted are trying to make a baby and she tells Lucy point-blank: “You’re going to be a terrible mother.” Dancy is wasted in a role that could have been played by anyone, which is a shame after his standout turn in Showtime’s “The Big C” this year.

Hawkes is good as Patrick, whose manipulation of his flock is quietly horrible, and Brady Corbet is also memorable as Watts, Patrick’s sadistic underling. What at first seems like a big open marriage, with all the female members available to the men for sex, abruptly takes on more sinister tones when the cult’s home invasion robberies escalate to murder, and we realize we’re seeing the beginnings of a Manson family.

And the final scene is absolutely chilling.

Durkin is definitely a talent to keep an eye on, and so is Olsen. Here’s hoping she continues to take the challenging roles and doesn’t end up a glassy-eyed fashion manque like her sisters, who ironically seem like cult members!