Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. You all doing okay this week? As for me, the water has currently been turned off in my apartment due to construction, a fact which is intermingling with the ongoing heat wave to astonishingly negative effect. But that aside, I’m still feeling hyped as hell about running my own D&D campaign, and have hammered out a whole introductory quest node for my beloved players. My current biggest issue is figuring out how to effectively crib from the various established modules – I don’t want to simply embrace standard WotC adventures, but the scale of invention required for a major D&D arc seems intimidating, to say the least. And of course, the house has still played host to all manner of film viewings, as we continue to extract vital nourishment from the fertile vine of cinematic history. I can sense myself getting weirdly florid with these descriptions, so let’s not waste any more time, and see what a fresh week of films has to offer!

This week’s first screening was Viy, a 1967 Soviet horror feature centered on a seminary student named Khomas. On his way home for vacation, Khomas takes refuge in the barn of an old woman, who soon reveals herself to be a witch. After bewitching Khomas and riding him like a horse through the night, Khomas recovers and savagely strikes her, only to find the crone has transformed into a beautiful young woman. Khomas swiftly flees the scene and returns to his seminary, where he learns he’s been requested to perform a three night vigil for the dead daughter of a local lord, and also that this daughter is actually the witch he killed.

Viy’s rambling narrative is held firmly together by Leonid Kuravlyov’s convincing performance as Khomas. Early on, his portrayal of a delinquent student feels universal enough to dispel any distance between audience and material; later, his slow dissolution in the face of repeated supernatural threats feels nearly as exhausting for us as for him. The film’s cinematography shares a great deal of credit for its success as well. The sequence of Khomas being ridden across the countryside still maintains an eerie sense of unreality, and the portrayal of both Khomas’ drunkenness and his mental deterioration embrace a vivid variety of visual tricks, ranging from disorienting screen transitions to angles that challenge our understanding of gravity.

Viy served as a vivid introduction to Soviet-era Russian film, but beyond its production novelty, the film’s also just an excellent entry in the folk horror canon. Strong performances, efficient storytelling, dynamic cinematography, memorable practical effects, and that gripping “survive three nights in the crypt” hook – Viy’s strengths are bountiful, and I’d recommend it to anyone with a fondness for folk horror.

Next up was True Romance, a ‘93 Tony Scott feature developed from a script by Quentin Tarantino. Featuring a whirlwind romance ornamented with bloody shootouts, the film is perhaps Tarantino’s most indulgently Tarantino script, centered on a Tarantino-alike who cannot contain his enthusiasm for Sonny Chiba movies, and peppered with the most slurs I believe I’ve ever heard in a film.

True Romance’s plot is mostly just a Bonnie and Clyde sort of deal centered on young lovers Clarence and Alabama (Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette). The dialogue is as snappy and idiosyncratic as you’d expect from a Tarantino joint, and Scott’s direction indulges in blurred colors and bleached California skies, reducing the quiet menace that Tarantino’s accompanying direction would likely have fostered. And beyond its key authorial voices, True Romance is further defined by its preposterously accomplished cast of bit characters, with the film also starring Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, James Gandolfini, and other top notch stars in miniscule roles.

Walken shows up for precisely one scene and kills it, Samuel L. Jackson plays “man who admits he eats pussy,” and Brad Pitt spends the second half of the film stoned on a couch in the background. It’s a ludicrously generous roster, and everyone seems to be having a great deal of fun leaning into the eccentricities of Tarantino’s various weirdos. More than any entry in his actual filmography, True Romance typifies the sorts of things people tend to dislike about Tarantino, while still affirming that his ear for dialogue is a unique gift to his cinematic era. I’m not sure who I’d recommend this film to, but it’s certainly an interesting mess.

We then checked out Pontypool, a Canadian horror film about a strange, zombie-like infection spreading in the titular town. Stephen McHattie stars as Grant Mazzie, a shock jock DJ whose antics apparently got him blacklisted from any major stations, resulting in his current appointment as Pontypool’s resident disc jockey. With a small cast and presumably smaller budget, basically the entirety of Pontypool takes place within the confines of the town’s broadcast station – but the film actually makes that work, steadily building tension across an increasingly disturbing series of breaking news fragments.

Pontypool’s two greatest assets are Stephen McHattie and the distinctive nature of its antagonist. The camera is pointed directly at McHattie’s face more often than not, and he effectively sells every twist and turn, steadily drifting from a warm camaraderie with his friends and listeners to a stark-eyed panic as the situation develops. He’s got a voice that’s made for radio and a face that’s made for movies, and he employs both to riveting effect as confusion shifts to terror, and onward to a desperate desire to survive this crisis.

Along with McHattie’s excellent performance, Pontypool also offers a twist on zombie infections that perfectly suits its radio play format. Rather than being transmitted through touch or bites, Pontypool’s threat is transmitted through language – specific charged words that carry the seed of infection. Those who are infected ramble around in search of conversation, latching onto stray phrases and repeating them without comprehension. The process of breaking down the nature of the infection gives the film a strong dose of thriller energy, and the protagonists’ efforts to avoid infection themselves are even more exciting. It’s an altogether tense and effective film, demonstrating that even the tightest production constraints can be overcome with strong performances and smart writing.

Our house then continued its journey through the cinematic Pandaverse, plowing through Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3 in quick succession. The second Kung Fu Panda was actually the best of all three, springboarding off the setup of the original in order to offer a generous buffet of martial arts action. Absent the need to spend any time building Jack Black’s character into an actual warrior, the sequel dazzles with impressively scaled action sequences and tapestry-evoking aesthetic flourishes, with Gary Oldman’s villainous peacock serving as the franchise’s most visually and choreographically inspired villain.

It seems the franchise sorta ran out of steam there though, as the third film largely retreads much of its predecessor’s thematic material, while also disappointing in terms of its martial arts choreography. Kung Fu Pandas 1 and 2 serve as both charming children’s movies and convincing introductions to martial arts cinema; the third isn’t exactly a bad film, but it’s altogether unremarkable.

Our last film of the week was another classic Hollywood adventure film, The African Queen. Set on the brink of the first World War, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as Charlie, the captain of the titular steamboat running packages in German East Africa. When conflict erupts, a local missionary is killed during the German advance, leaving his sister Rose (Katharine Hepburn) with only Charlie to turn to. Though Charlie would be happy to sit out the war in a local bungalow, Rose convinces him to embark on a daring journey downriver, wherein they’ll brave rapids, German snipers, and all manner of other obstacles on their route to destroy a German gunboat.

Much like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen is a full course meal of adventure spectacle, offering an array of setpieces ranging from evading the bullets of a German fortress, to braving rapids and waterfalls that dwarf the tiny Queen. And rather than overstuff its audience with rapid-fire calamities, each highlight is spaced out with languorous sequences of simply drifting on the river, enjoying the scenery and letting the two leads slowly fall for each other. Bogart won his only Oscar for his performance as Charlie, a role that exemplifies the pre-Brando majesty of larger-than-life leading men. But for all that, it’s Hepburn who commands both the narrative and the screen, attacking their infinite setbacks with hatchet-like efficiency and irrepressible charm. The African Queen is romantic, bombastic, and endlessly generous, a perfect example of the pre-blockbuster blockbuster in all of its glory.