Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. This week has seen my house complete another long-term viewing project, as we screened the last episode of Cloudward Ho!, the most recent adventure of Dimension 20’s main cast. This frankly leaves us in a somewhat worrying situation, as a major pillar of our broadcast schedule has now been fully consumed, but we at least still have Aura Battler Dunbine to console us. Tomino’s isekai adventure has been an expected delight so far, offering plentiful dramatic twists and brutal Tominoisms while also scratching my irrepressible high fantasy itch. And with our schedule relatively free, I’ve actually been considering a Katanagatari rewatch; it’s been too long since I spent time with my favorite sword and tactician, and have been meaning to introduce my housemates to the series anyway. In the meantime, the film screenings have continued as per usual, so let’s get this show on the road and break down some movies!

First up this week was Diablo, a recent action film starring Scott Adkins as the kidnapper (and secret actual father) of a cartel boss’s daughter, and Marko Zaror as “El Corvo,” the psychopathic professional killer hired to hunt them down. Directed by long-time Zaror collaborator Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, the film sees them cutting a bloody path across Columbia, two of modern martial arts’ greatest titans locked in bone-breaking mortal combat.

Diablo is essentially a no-frills showcase for its two leads, demonstrating both their distinctive styles of charisma, as well as their impressive, punishing physicality. Adkins often just plays “guy with a gun” (or in more intelligently casted roles “guy who kicks hard”), but there’s a warmth to his performances that lets him shine in a situation like this, where he can riff off his daughter and generally sell his role as an awkward but well-meaning parent. Meanwhile, Zaror possesses an intensity of presence that barely necessitates words; he plays El Corvo as something between the T1000 and Anton Chigurh, and lights up the screen with his every appearance. And as the two heaviest contenders in our current martial arts renaissance, their faceoffs are like hurricanes at war, each swing lent maximum impact by Espinoza’s capable camerawork. In every way, Diablo is precisely the film the phrase “Adkins versus Zaror” should conjure in the hearts of modern martial enthusiasts.

We then screened The Resurrected, a ‘91 adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Curious Case of Charles Dexter Ward. John Terry stars as a private detective hired by Claire Ward (Jane Sibbett) to look into the activities of her husband (Chris Sarandon), whose temperament changed dramatically upon receiving a collection of artifacts from an alleged ancestor. Along the way, Terry will encounter murders, mayhem, and secrets most foul, as he works to uncover a conspiracy hundreds of years in the making.

In contrast with the relatively straightforward Vincent Price-starring period adaptation, The Resurrected draws Lovecraft’s story into the modern era, finding a natural kinship in the marriage of Lovecraft’s proudly ornate prose and noir’s loquacious inner monologues. The combination is frankly brilliant, so obvious in retrospect I can’t believe it hasn’t been tried elsewhere, particularly since most of Lovecraft’s stories are basically framed as criminal investigations in the first place. And while the secondary cast is suspect, John Terry and Chris Sarandon do an excellent job of holding down the fort, with Terry selling the solidity of his workaday PI life as naturally as Sarandon embodies the excess of the demon-haunted Ward.

The film transitions naturally from noir to gothic horror over time, building up its mysteries and characters before rewarding our investment with a grotesque array of dripping practical effects. I always appreciate when a film holds such tactile excellence in reserve; when the world is initially presented as convincingly solid, the sudden appearance of aberrations like half-formed humanoids feels like a genuine sacrilege – not just a weightless flight of fancy, but a corruption of something that could once be trusted. Both one of the most inventive and most successful Lovecraft adaptations.

We then continued through the unexpectedly franchisable Hell House series, screening Hell House LLC 2 and 3 in quick succession. After the disastrous opening of the titular Halloween event in the first film claims fifteen lives, the second Hell House centers on one journalist’s attempt to uncover the truth of those events, combining tapes from various sources alongside a final in-person investigation of their own. Then the third jumps some years ahead, concerning an eccentric play-running millionaire’s efforts to put on a production of Faust within the same goddamn building.

The franchise definitely suffers significantly diminishing returns across these two entries, relying on the same collection of ominous clowns and robed cultists that escalated so well across the first film. The second one at least offers some fun structural innovations, effectively employing the framing device of a morning panel on the first film’s events, and smartly pacing out its scares through the inclusion of footage from other myth-busting idiots braving the house. There’s not really enough to this concept to support the extended mythology its creator intends (a fact that entirely dooms the full-retread third entry), but hey, points for trying to turn “there is a clown where there shouldn’t be” into a cinematic pantheon.

Last up for the week was the 1978 Lord of the Rings adaptation, directed by Ralph Bakshi, and realized through his signature combination of rotoscoping, traditional animation, painted backgrounds, and recolored film photography. The production covers the story from its beginning to somewhere around the end of The Two Towers, finishing the Helm’s Deep side of the narrative, but leaving the assault on Isengard for a sequel that never came. Along the way, Bakshi offers a surprisingly loyal adaptation of the book’s scenes and even dialogue, attempting to stretch his budget and aesthetic techniques to encompass a story too sprawling to capture.

Well, until Peter Jackson, that is. It’s clear that Jackson poached what works from this adaptation (the Ring Wraith designs, the deference to Tolkien’s dialogue, a few specific compositions) and jettisoned the rest, leaving Bakshi’s version as a messy hodgepodge of aesthetics that infrequently rises into sonorous glory. Of course, that’s basically true of all of Bakshi’s fantasy films, and there is absolutely something to be said for his ostentatious mixture of aesthetic traditions.

Creatures like the Ring Wraiths and orcs feel genuinely ominous, conveyed as man-shaped shadows or figures drenched in deep green light, with only the red glint of their eyes marking their faces. Aragorn and Boromir are given distinct yet compelling interpretations here, with Aragorn in particular evoking a sort of James Coburn-esque cowboy smolder. Most notably, I found Bakshi’s interpretation of Bilbo to be uniquely tragic; he’s defined as either bumbling or frightening by Jackson, but Bakshi finds him simply sad, defined by the lure of an addiction he cannot indulge, but which nonetheless sets him apart from the world of the living. Another evocative failure by the master of sympathetic overreach.