I join Nick and Roy as they make a pre-party paranormal pit stop after dark. They encounter two unexpected guests and a host of phantom facts from their crypts of curiosity. Go ahead, we dare you … Listen. Laugh & Learn with Nick & Roy.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Vampires… but were too scared to ask!
Folks have a fear and fascination with bloodsuckers like Count Dracula and Akasha, the ancient vampire Queen of the Damned and others, so, to celebrate Halloween I’m bringing in vampire expert Prof. Stanley Stepanic of The University of Virginia to, not exactly shed some light one the subject, because, according to lore, that might make the vampires burst into flames, but to give us a lively history of the undead.
To date he has published three textbooks that have been released in recent editions – these are “Dracula or the Timeless Path of the Vampire,” “Russian and East European Film”, and “Russian Folklore”. His latest book, a novella titled “A Vamp There Was,” is set in 1920s Virginia, and looks at the vamp archetype… that of a desirable woman who manipulates men. A young man from Virginia investigates the secrets of her past and the devastating effect on the men who fall for her.
Professor Stepanic teaches a popular class on Dracula at The University of Virginia which covers the history of the vampire from pre-Christian Slavic belief to the present and often appears on lists of students’ favorite University courses.
Then, at the end of the show I share a taste of an interview I did with director Matt Reeves. He’s directed movies like “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” “War for the Planet of the Apes” and “The Batman” with Robert Pattinson, but here we talk about his unique vampire film “Let Me In.” It’s a remake of a Swedish film, but unlike so many remakes, this story of a bullied young boy who befriends a young female vampire who lives in secrecy with her guardian, really works and is perfect Halloween viewing.
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Link coming soon)
Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
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SYNOPSIS: In “Hedda,” a melodramatic reimagination of Henrik Ibsen’s classic 1891 drama starring Tessa Thompson and now playing on Prime Video, a free-spirited woman plays the guests at a lavish party on a country estate as if they were pawns in her elaborate game of chess.
CAST: Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots, Tom Bateman, Nicholas Pinnock, Nina Hoss. Directed by Nia DaCosta.
REVIEW: An iconoclastic remake of Henrik Ibsen’s classic 1891 play “Hedda Gabler,” the action is transported from the original late 19th century Oslo setting to 1950s British high society.
The action in “Hedda” takes place during one eventful night at a lavish party thrown by Hedda (Tessa Thompson) and her new husband George Tesman (Tom Bateman) on their newly purchased country estate.
On the surface they appear to be a happy couple, but beneath the polished veneer of their relationship lies dissatisfaction, crippling debt and duplicity.
Drowning in debt after buying a house to impress Hedda, they invite Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch) to the bash in the hope he’ll give George a new, good paying academic gig.
As music blares and champagne bottles pop, the party spins out of control when the volatile Eileen Lövborg (Nina Hoss) shows up. Charismatic and brilliant, she is the author of a book exploring sexuality, up for the job George wants and, to complicate matters further, is Hedda’s ex-lover.
“A little chaos is good for the gathering,” says Hedda as the good times give way to desire, jealousy, and betrayal.
“Hedda” is a grand looking film, a document of one hedonistic night, fuelled by the title character’s manipulations. Director Nia DaCosta paints the screen with sumptuous set design and stylish period details that emphasize the decadent vibe of the evening. It’s a cliché, but the setting really is a character, silently creating a Dionysian atmosphere that goes a long way to enhance the storytelling.
This is not a period piece à la Merchant Ivory.
DaCosta, who also wrote the script, throws decorum out the window, portraying Hedda with a crueler edge than previously seen. The character has always orchestrated the lives of those around her, but a character who was once a tragic anti-heroine is now a ruthlessly aspirational, controlling character.
Thompson vividly captures Hedda’s need to “live on her own terms” with a volatile presence that expands the character with racial and queer aspects that add texture to the more than century old character. It’s lively, commanding work that stands out amid the film’s ornate style.
“Hedda” may not work for purists, but in its reinvention of the character for a new generation, it mines new aspects to a classic.
SYNOPSIS: In “Stitch Head,” a new kid-friendly animated monster movie now playing in theatres, a strange little creature made up of spare parts runs away to join the circus, leaving behind the only family he’s ever known.
“Stitch Head is not a horror film at all, but an adventure comedy that plays with the clichés of the horror genre.” Steve Hudson
CAST: Asa Butterfield, Joel Fry, Tia Bannon, Rob Brydon, Alison Steadman, Fern Brady, Jamali Maddix. Directed by Steve Hudson with Toby Genkel as co-director.
REVIEW: Adapted from the graphic novels by Guy Bass, “Stitch Head’s” story of a patchwork “freak” who discovers his otherness is actually a strength, breathes the same air as other family-friendly gateway horrors like “Para-Norman” and “The Boxtrolls.”
The story begins in the laboratory of Castle Grotteskew, homebase to the maddest of all mad professors (voiced by Rob Brydon). He creates monsters of various shapes and sizes, only to promptly forget about them as he moves on to the next. “To life! Almost to life! Now,” he says, “what’s next—fangs or feathers?”
Keeping order in the castle is Stitch Head (Asa Butterfield), the mad professor’s first creation. He’s a pint-sized caretaker, stitched together from mismatched body parts—think Frankenstein, only cute—who quietly keeps the discarded monsters from upsetting the residents of the village Grubbers Nubbin.
Stitch Head finds his way out of the shadows and into the spotlight when a carnival, run by Fulbert Freakfinder (Joel Fry), comes to the village. Sensing the appeal of young Stitch Head, Freakfinder offers him a job in his travelling circus. “You’re no freak, lad—you’re a star! Fame, fortune, and a spotlight brighter than a bolt of lightning!”
The heart of the spotlight soon cools as Stitch Head comes to fear that his real family, the monsters at the castle, without his guidance, are in danger of being misunderstood by the villagers of Grubbers Nubbin. “We’re not monsters,” he says, “we’re family. Stitched together, not torn apart!”
A mix of humor and heart, “Stitch Head” is a lively Tim Burton-lite movie about undead characters. Packed with imaginative characters, it’s an intermittently entertaining adventure that will appeal to kids, but should keep the whole family interested, even if the pacing is a bit uneven. It winds up pretty much how you imagine it will, so no big points for originality, but it makes up for its lapses with kid-friendly messages about embracing our differences, belonging and the courage to face fears.
SYNOPSIS: Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” is a vivid recreation of the events surrounding the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 feature debut “Breathless.” “S’ils veulent la Nouvelle Vague,” says Goddard (Guillaume Marbeck), “donnons-leur un raz-de-marée.” (“If they want the New Wave, let’s give them a tidal wave.”)
CAST: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin. Directed by Richard Linklater.
REVIEW: Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” is a love letter to Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave, but also to storytelling and imagination.
A recreation of the events surrounding the making of Godard’s feature debut “Breathless,” “Nouvelle Vague” is set at a creatively fertile time. It’s Paris, 1960. Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), a longtime critic at the influential “Cahiers du Cinéma” magazine, he was one of several young wannabe filmmakers, alongside François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy, determined to blow the cobwebs off conventional Hollywood style filmmaking by experimenting with narrative, unconventional use of jump cuts, sound, and camerawork.
Frustrated that several of his colleagues, notably Chabrol and Truffaut, made films before him, Godard poured himself into the subversive “Breathless.” The story of a small-time thief on the run from the police and his attempts to persuade a hip American journalism student to run away with him to Italy, it was called one of the most influential films ever made by legendary film critic Pauline Kael.
Using the techniques of the French New Wave, Linklater goes behind-the-scenes to stylishly capture the style and roguishness of the French New Wave, but more importantly, the spirit of change that fueled the movement that changed cinema.
He’s reverential in his treatment of the characters and history, but only to a point. For instance, none of the rough edges have been shaved off Godard, a man known for his ever-present sunglasses and cigarette, arrogance and grand pronouncement on art and life. But instead of being grating there is a lightness to Guillaume Marbeck terrific performance that elevates what could have been mimicry into a playful portrait of the man beneath the iconoclast.
Like an entertaining class at film school, “Nouvelle Vague” is a study of fascinating time in film history.
SYNOPSIS: In “Anniversary,” a new thriller now playing in theatres, Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler play Ellen and Paul, a liberal Georgetown University academic and chef celebrating twenty-five years of marriage. When Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), their son Josh’s (Dylan O’Brien) new girlfriend, writes a political screed titled “The Change: The New Social Contract,” its success sows the seeds of discontent within the family and the country.
CAST: Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Madeline Brewer, Zoey Deutch, Phoebe Dynevor, Mckenna Grace, Daryl McCormack, and Dylan O’Brien. Directed by Jan Komasa.
REVIEW: One of the least subtle films of the year, “Anniversary” dives headfirst into a maelstrom of ideological extremism, buried secrets and societal polarization.
Featuring a large ensemble cast of veterans and newcomers, “Anniversary” begins at a lavish 25th anniversary celebration for Ellen and Paul (Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler). Son Josh’s (Dylan O’Brien) date is Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), a former student of Ellen’s, kicked out of school after Ellen denounced her radical views. She’s now the author of “The Change: The New Social Contract,” a political diatribe supporting the implication of a “no-party” system that aims to “put the ‘united’ back in these states of America.”
As the book becomes a national best-seller Ellen can’t hide her disapproval with its ideas of a singular, unified national belief system. “The book is a weapon,” she says amid her growing concerns for the fate of democracy as a spawning movement known as The Change, endorse pledging an oath to an alternate American flag.
Liz’s newfound popularity during the rise of The Change—“The greatest movement in the history of this nation.”—reveals fractures in Ellen and Paul’s family and in the country. “Everything around us is changing,” says daughter Birdie (Mckenna Grace). “Fear went mainstream.
A study of radicalism, “Anniversary” delivers its message with the force of a knee to the groin. Director Jan Komasa, working from a screenplay by Lori Rosene-Gambino, keeps the telling of the cautionary tale taut, creating a pressure-cooker of tension and menace.
The ideological conflict between the family—the “Non-Changers”—and The Change escalates quickly, but Komasa smartly keeps the focus on the individuals and the radical transformations in their lives. “You have obliterated us,” Ellen says to Liz. “What more do you want?”
O’Brien is chilling as he navigates Josh’s transformation from failed writer to intimidating demagogue. A contentious scene between Josh and Paul allows O’Brien and Chandler to explore the boundaries of the polarization that has gripped the family in a powerful fashion.
That edgy conflict drips with ice, but it is the helplessness Ellen and Paul, once a couple living their best lives, feels as their existence is completely upended by The Change that resonates. “You need to decide,” a census taker tells them, “whether you’re with us for against us.”
“Anniversary” is a provocative, timely drama that swings for the fences, and while the portrait it paints of extremism is vivid, and in many ways uncompromising, it is the personal toll of the characters that unnerves.
SYNOPSIS: In “Lesbian Space Princess,” an irreverent animated sci-fi comedy musical for adults now playing in theatres, the introverted Princess Shaira (Shabana Azeez) leaves her sheltered life on planet Clitopolis behind to travel through space in search of her ex-girlfriend, Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel). After she is kidnapped by Straight White Maliens.
CAST: Shabana Azeez, Bernie Van Tiel, Gemma Chua-Tran, Richard Roxburgh, Kween Kong, and comedy troupe Aunty Donna, Mark Bonanno, Broden Kelly, and Zachary Ruane. Directed by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese.
REVIEW: A mix of raunchy humor and heartfelt moments, “Lesbian Space Princess” is a delightfully campy sci fi adventure.
At the film’s start Princess Shaira (Shabana Azeez), daughter of Planet Clitopolis’s two lesbian queens, is devastated. Kiki, her girlfriend of two weeks dumped her, and now, has been kidnapped by the villainous the Straight White Maliens. These rectangular-shaped alien incels took Kiki in hopes of luring Princess Shaira and her mystical double-sided axe, the labrys, which they plan on stealing to power their “chick magnet.”
As Shaira traverses the Gaylaxy in search of her ex, she encounters drag queen Blades (Kween Kong), saves former gay-pop idol Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran) from an abandoned moon crystal mine and learns to embrace self-love over the affections of others. “ I went through all this,” Shaira says, “and why? Cuz I wanted Kiki to love me? Now I see my biggest problem is that I didn’t even love myself. We deserve to love ourselves without a chick magnet.”
Like an extended episode of “South Park” “Lesbian Space Princess” is fast paced, vibrant and packed with madcap humor and situations, but after the laughs it’s the film’s surprisingly sweet edge that lingers.
We can all imagine the fear that comes along with being chased by a werewolf. Or waking up to find Dracula staring down at you. They are living, breathing (or in Drac’s case, dead and not so breathing, but you get the idea) embodiments of evil. But how about inanimate objects? Have you ever been terrified of a lamp? Or creeped out by a tire?
In this weekend’s The Possession, a Dybbuk Box purchased at a yard sale brings misfortune to everyone who comes in contact with it.
It’s not the first time that the movies have imbued an inert object with evil powers.
There have been loads of haunted houses in the movies. In most of them, however, the house is merely a vessel for a spirit or some unseen entity that makes its presence know by making the walls bleed or randomly slamming doors. Rarer is the house that is actually evil.
Stephen King wrote about a house that eats people in the third installment of his Dark Tower series. On screen Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg visualized the idea in the appropriately titled Monster House.
In this animated movie three teens figure out the house across the street is a man-eating monster.
By the time they got around to the fourth installment of the most famous haunted house series, the Amityville Horror, filmmakers had to figure out a new plotline apart from the tired “new owners move in to the house, get freaked out leave,” storyline. In The Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes, a cursed lamp causes all sorts of trouble when it is shipped from the evil Long Island house to a Californian mansion.
Much weirder is Rubber, the story of a killer tire — yes, you read that right — with psychokinetic powers — think Carrie with treads — who terrorizes the American southwest. It’s an absurdist tract on how and why we watch movies, what entertainment is and the movie business, among other things. But frankly, mostly it’s about a tire rolling around the desert and while there is something kind of hypnotic about watching the tire on its murderous journey — think Natural Born Killers but round and rubbery — that doesn’t mean Rubber is a good movie.
Finally, think bed bugs are bad? How about a hungry bed? The title of this one sums it up: Death Bed: The Bed that Eats.
Final Destination 5 is a chronicle of carnage in which a group of good looking young people die in the most terrible ways imaginable, usually preceded by the tell tale line, “Something’s wrong!”
For example, a gymnast earns a 9.5 from the Splatterville judge and star Jacqueline MacInnes Wood succumbs to laser surgery gone horribly wrong. It’s the kind of movie which makes audiences shout, “No, you didn’t!” and “Awwwwwwwwwwwww! I can never un-see that!” usually while laughing and having a gruesome good time.
This week I asked Wood why people would pay money to go see her movie.
“We’re all twisted,” she said. “That’s the answer.”
Others have different ideas. In his excellent book Shock Value author Jason Zinoman suggests that one of the pleasures of getting scared at the movies is “that it focuses the mind.” He uses the example of a baby being born. “Try to imagine the shock of one world running into another,” he writes. “Nothing is familiar and the slightest detail registers as shockingly new. Think of the futility of trying to process what is going on. No wonder they scream.
“Overwhelming terror,” he continues, “may be the closest we ever get to the feeling of being born.”
Whether it’s as deep seeded as that or not, there is no denying that terror is a primal feeling. Its part of our DNA but, counter intuitively, it isn’t horrible when experienced at the movies. As Eduardo Andrade and Joel B. Cohen said in a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, “the most pleasant moments of a particular event may also be the most fearful.”
A Saturday matinee screening of Paranormal Activity was the first and only time I ever heard anyone actually scream in a theatre. I don’t mean a quiet whimper followed by an embarrassed laugh or a frightened little squeal. No, I mean a full-on, open throated howl of terror. But the woman didn’t run from the theatre. She stayed and enjoyed the rest of the film, so she must have liked the cathartic release of tension the scream gave her.
Alfred Hitchcock, knew how to scare the wits out of people. The shower scene in Psycho, for example, is a benchmark in cinematic fear. If he had any doubts about the effectiveness of that sequence they must have been put to bed when he received an angry letter from a father whose daughter stopped bathing after seeing the bathtub murder scene in Les Diaboliques and then, more distressingly, refused to shower after seeing Psycho. Hitch’s response to the concerned dad? “Send her to the dry cleaners.”
The director was always quick with a line, but when it got down to the business of terrifying audiences he summed up the appeal of the scary movie in one brief sentence: “People like to be scared when they feel safe.”
