Boys From County Hell
I had a dream recently, of empty luxury condos filled with dandelions. Like, so choked with them that it looked like a pulsing white carpet. And you couldn’t really step anywhere without stirring up cascades of dandelion seeds, and even the slightest movement made you feel like Winona Ryder dancing in the ice-snow in Edward Scissorhands.
I’ve started going back to in-theater movies. I’m fully vaccinated, but still double-masked because so very many have made grand dramatic pronouncements of exactly who they are in ignoring mask mandates and CDC guidelines. I’m not ready for concessions yet, and my heart is with anyone who loves the movies but is still negotiating what’s safe. I’m happy to keep writing these collections of what all is available at home as long as people still want to read them. Long before the pandemic, I’d made a point of reviewing titles that weren’t going to get a high-profile crack at anything, and that hasn’t changed. Including today’s offerings, I’ve done 280 of these mini-reviews, and it brings me a great deal of joy to do so. See this week’s recommended titles below, and as always, look at past issues of the Scene for more suggestions: March 26, April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23, April 30, May 7, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25, July 2, July 9, July 16, July 23, July 30, Aug. 6, Aug. 13, Aug. 20, Aug. 27, Sept. 3, Sept. 10, Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1, Oct. 15, Oct. 29, Nov. 5, Nov. 11, Nov. 26, Dec. 3, Dec. 17, Jan. 6, Jan. 21, Jan. 28, Feb. 4, Feb. 11, Feb. 18, Feb. 25, March 11, March 18, March 25, April 1, April 8, April 15, April 22.
Breaking Glass
Breaking Glass via Video on Demand
You can see this 1980 British musical’s influence filtering down into films like Pink Floyd — The Wall, Liquid Sky, Tron and Starstruck, and it’s certainly something that any fan of punk or New Wave should check out. Singer-songwriter/actress Hazel O’Connor made her debut with Breaking Glass, a nervy, wild-hearted neon scream of a movie; she wrote and performed all the songs (with Bowie producer Tony Visconti behind the boards), and there’s never a moment when she doesn’t command the screen. She is Kate Crowley, struggling through the underbelly of London’s punk scene as it mutates into something new, besieged by fascist cops and brazen mobs of racists even as technology and drugs are fueling even wilder transformations. O’Connor is a captivating presence. Her bandmates and compatriots — particularly manager Danny (Phil Daniels) and junkie saxophonist Ken (Jonathan Pryce, absolutely magnetic and heartbreaking, think John C. Reilly in Georgia) — make the rougher music drama clichés (add drugs, subtract “integrity,” make problematic socially conscious anthem) go down more smoothly. But there are moments in this that you won’t forget, including a set piece that turns a festival event into a race riot, Altamont on an immediate and personal level. What I wouldn’t give to see the uncut version (the U.S. cut, released by Paramount, omits the last 10 minutes of the film) on as big a screen as possible. Writer-director Brian Gibson would go on to make Poltergeist II, What’s Love Got to Do With It and The Josephine Baker Story.
The Power
The Power (2021) on Shudder
In The Power, because of ongoing strikes, massive blackouts have been scheduled to keep power demands low. Across the board, the government has decided that rather than negotiate with coal miners unions, it’s better to shut down the power grid across England. (For much of 1973 and some of 1974, that actually happened.) It’s happening at the hospital where Val (Rose Williams) has just started work. The majority of patients and staff are being moved to another location, thankfully, but the intensive care and newborn wards can’t be. So there are generators and a skeleton crew who’ll be staying in an otherwise abandoned and pitch-black hospital. Because this is a scary movie (on multiple levels), Val ends up having to stay. In the night. In the dark. In this place where something unspeakable has happened. And continues to happen. The titular “power” can mean several things — and this moody fright of a film accomplishes a lot, though there will be some who complain about what it’s trying to uncover. Williams is absolutely exceptional, and I’m very interested in what writer-director Corinna Faith creates from this point on.
Boys From County Hell on Shudder
Live your life long enough and you might think you’ve seen every possible way to tell a vampire story. It’s a fount of a concept that has kept giving to the shadowy side of human imagination for centuries, and there’s no genre that hasn’t cross-pollinated with blood-drinking creatures of the night in some capacity. But Irish import Boys From County Hell — in addition to offering a new spin on the vampire myth that draws on folk horror and human habit — starts off with an opening sequence that will snatch your wig. It’s beautiful, hypnotic and upsetting, and it tickles the center of scientific curiosity, then hits you with a very specific horror that registers deep down in the ancient crannies of the brain. From there you get a solid scary movie, aiming for a more economically depressed Shaun of the Dead amble and more often than not sticking the landing — lads adrift in 21st-century freefall, at odds with family traditions and generational expectation. Six Mile High is a vaguely pleasant rural-ish village whose claim to fame is twofold — a cairn of rocks supposedly marking the tomb of Abhartach (the very first vampire mentioned in human record) and the pub where Bram Stoker stopped in and heard the legend before he went on to write Dracula in the late 19th century. The pub, now called The Stoker, is the enduring landmark in Six Mile High. But development looms large, threatening to tear through the land itself, and perhaps unleashing something upon the land even more voracious and bereft of reason or sense than real estate profiteers. An imaginative nightmare with a few good laughs, Boys From County Hell is one for the books because of its mercurial vision and innovation with the undying myths. And the subtle shocks that never fade.
