Best Pictures #112: 2024 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: The Substance

 by A.J.

Best Pictures #112: 2024 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

The Substance

“There’s been a slight misuse of the substance.”

The Substance is weird, wild stuff. It is not exactly scary but it is horrifying. This is not just a horror movie but specifically a body-horror movie with sights and sounds that rival or maybe even go beyond anything in David Cronenberg's The Fly or John Carpenter's The Thing. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat, who won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival, has created not merely a geek show but a darkly funny satire of the effects the male gaze on female body image anchored by an incredible Oscar nominated performance from Demi Moore.

Moore plays fitness star Elisabeth Sparkle who has just turned 50 and so is fired from her TV show. After a car accident she receives a mysterious note about "the substance", which promises to unlock a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself. Once she injects herself with the green liquid–guaranteed to remind horror fans of the re-agent from the cult classic Re-Animator–her back splits open along her spine and out is “birthed” a younger version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley. There are rules. Each version gets 7 days to be active while the other is in a comatose state and then they have to switch. There are no exceptions. The other self has to "stabilize" with an injection of body fluid from the original self everyday. There are no exceptions. Things go well at first, of course. The other self, Sue, is able to get the job hosting the new version of the exercise show, which is more focused on shaking butts than actual exercise. Then of course the rules are broken with increasingly bad results. Elisabeth and Sue come to resent and despise each other. They forget that they are one and any damage done cannot be undone.

As incredible as the special makeup effects are, The Substance just would not work without Demi Moore’s fearless performance. When I say that Moore's performance is fearless I don't mean her willingness to take a role so focused on her appearance or her willingness to do nude scenes. She is fearless in how she goes big and over the top, which is exactly what this movie requires. Her muttering to herself as she watches TV interviews of Sue while furiously cooking is hilarious. The contortions she puts her body through in the "birth" scene is another impressive moment. The scene that made me squirm and want to look away involved no gross effects at all. Elisabeth has finished her makeup and is ready for a date. Then she sees a billboard of Sue. She goes back to redo her makeup while the clock ticks in over her shoulder. Then, she sees the billboard again and goes back to the bathroom mirror again. It is an excruciating scene, but also brilliant cinema. Many of Moore's most effective moments are silent, whether she is slumped over at a bar with four empty martini glasses or reacting to a horrifying change in her body after Sue has taken extra time. This is why I believe that Moore is worthy of all the praise and awards she has received thus far and why I'll be happy if she wins the Best Actress Oscar. I only hope that her next role, no matter the genre, makes as full a use of her talents and skills as The Substance.

The makeup effects are impressive to say the least and obviously practical, to the delight of horror fanatics like myself. CGI gloop will never be as gross or effective as handmade gloop. The final act is a gross out extravaganza that may be over the line for a lot of people. You wonder where else can the film go but Fargeat’s screenplay finds a place and slithers there. The “birth” scene is the first real gross out moment, so if that is too much then you definitely won't like the rest of what happens. However an early clue about how gross the movie might become is an early scene of lunch with Elizabeth’s boss (Dennis Quaid playing a living cartoon) eating shrimp. Extreme closeups of his mouth munching shrimp, the dipping sauce, discarded food bits mixed with an extra loud sound design and Quaid’s frenetic dialogue are an assault on the senses, and this is for a scene of something normal. 

Even as The Substance did well at the box office and Moore kept winning awards, I thought: Demi may get a Best Actress nomination or even win, but the film will never get a Best Picture nomination; it'll be lucky if it even gets a much deserved makeup & hairstyling nomination. The Academy is just not that cool. But I was wrong. The Academy was cool enough to give The Substance nominations for Best Picture, Actress for Moore, Director and Original Screenplay for Fargeat, and that much deserved Makeup & Hairstyling nomination. Of course, whether this wins anything or not, The Substance has made its mark and will likely find a place in the modern horror canon.

Nominees: Coralie Fargeat and Tim Bevan & Eric Fellner, Producers

Director: Coralie Fargeat

Screenplay: Coralie Fargeat

Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid

Production Companies: Working Title Films, Blacksmith

Distributor: Mubi

Release Date: September 20th, 2024

Total Nominations: 5, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actress-Demi Moore; Director- Coralie Fargeat; Original Screenplay-Coralie Fargeat; Makeup & Hairstyling-Pierre Olivier Persin, Stéphanie Guillon, Marilyne Scarselli

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Haunted Palace

by A.J.

Night 9: Roger Corman Memorial Night/Vincent Price Night

“This isn’t a house. It’s a madman’s palace.”

The Haunted Palace

It’s not Shocktober without Vincent Price and here Price and legendary producer-director Roger Corman, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 98, take on the unfilmable eldritch horrors of H.P Lovecraft in The Haunted Palace. If you’re thinking that The Haunted Palace is an Edgar Allen Poe poem and not a Lovecraft story, you are correct. By 1963 Corman and Price had made several Poe adaptations, with varying degrees of success, including House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, three Poe stories in the anthology Tales of Terror, The Raven and Corman wanted to tackle new material. Corman’s investors were hesitant for him to stop making Poe adaptations, so the compromise was that he would adapt another American horror author, H.P. Lovecraft, but the title would be taken from an Edgar Allen Poe poem, which Price recites excerpts of to justify the title. So, the title was taken from Poe’s The Haunted Palace and the plot was taken from H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The result is a Roger Corman/Vincent Price movie that checks all the right boxes, yet in some ways is darker than their previous collaborations.

The story opens in colonial New England with villagers capturing and burning Joseph Curwen, a warlock attempting to summon dark, evil forces. Before Curwen is burned, he puts a curse on the village of Arkham (a frequent setting for Lovecraft). 110 years later, presumably some non-specific decade of the 19th century, Charles Dexter Ward, a descendant of Curwen, and his wife Ann arrive in Arkham after Charles inherits the old Curwen castle. They do not receive a warm welcome from the villagers and are told either to avoid the castle or leave Arkham altogether. Of course, the castle comes with a creepy caretaker (Lon Chaney, Jr), as spooky castles often do. Charles becomes possessed by the spirit of his evil ancestor and once in control of Charles’s body, Curwen returns to his work of using the Necronomicon to summon the dark Elder Gods.

Unlike in The Pit and the Pendulum there is no young hero to duel with Price. Instead, Price gets to duel with himself as Charles and Curwen fight for control of his body. Price goes from sinister to sympathetic easily and believably. When he’s Curwen his skin takes on a greenish-yellow hue that no one seems to notice, but even without the makeup it would be easy to tell when he is Charles and when he is Curwen. It is great to see Price play both the villain and the hero in the same role. Curwen is a dark and evil character with a horrendous plan—Price’s darkest role would  come a few years later as the real-life “witch hunter” Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General.

The setting may be Arkham and the source material may be Lovecraft but The Haunted Palace has all the hallmarks of a Corman-Poe adaptation: period setting, vibrant period costumes, low cut gowns for the women, foggy exteriors, lightening, characters with torches, and a spacious gothic location with secret chambers and passageways. The main difference with this movie is that it is more sinister than you might expect. The curse Curwen puts on the village manifests itself as deformities (like being born with no eyes) in the village children. Also, Curwen’s plan to summon the Elder Gods involves mating humans with the monstrous, otherworldly beings.

My friend and podcast co-host Bryan Connolly and I had an in-depth review and discussion of The Haunted Palace as part of our series on Francis Ford Coppola (episode 20, Coppola Cast #2), who at the time in 1963 was Roger Corman’s “ace assistant." Like all the better Corman-Price movies, this is a spooky but not scary movie that still has great entertainment value. Nearly everything looks fake and artificial but that is part of the charm and atmosphere of the movie. Corman is presenting a tale of the fantastic so any noticeable artifice, even stiff acting or over acting, only enhances its storybook/campfire tone. 

The Haunted Palace is streaming for free on Tubi.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Alien

by A.J.

Night 8: Sci-Fi Night/Creature Feature Night

In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

Alien

Supposedly, Alien was pitched as JAWS in space. It’s also been described as the ultimate haunted house movie because it answers the glaring question: why don’t they just leave? Here the answer is clear: they can’t leave because they are in a spaceship, but it is not a ghost or demon lurking around the corner, it is a terrifying alien creature. Alien has spawned numerous sequels, each moving further away from the original and containing less of what made it such a hit with audiences and even critics—it earned two “yes" votes from Siskel and Ebert, who were notoriously hard on the horror genre and Ebert later included it in his Great Movies essays. Alien is an intriguing science fiction picture and effective horror movie thanks to the skill of director Ridley Scott, the entire behind the scenes crew, the amazing cast, and the alien effects. It subtly introduces ideas that incite awe and dreadful wonder, but there is no time to contemplate this because a monster is hunting the crew of average working class people who are not explorers or soldiers or adventurers. Everything about Alien holds up: the suspense, the scares, and even the effects. 

It seems silly and unnecessary to describe the plot of Alien. This is one of those movies that nearly everyone has seen and even if they haven’t, they are familiar with its most famous scenes. The crew of the Nostromo, a commercial starship hauling mineral ore back to earth, is awoken from suspended animation to respond to a signal from a distant planet. They investigate an ancient cyclopean alien spacecraft and one of the crew is attacked by a strange crablike creature from an alien egg. Once on board the alien evolves and begins stalking the crew. 

Alien is one of those movies with a long, storied production history that somehow turned out a classic. The making-of featurettes on the DVD feel endless but they are also endlessly fascinating. Director Ridley Scott insisted that the cast had to be perfect because his primary focus would be the effects and production. Somehow, a perfect cast was assembled: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. The crew of the Nostromo are working class people who all feel familiar. Stanton and Koto complain about their pay and contracts; Ripley (Weaver) is annoyed that her authority is ignored; the captain, Dallas (Skerritt), just wants to get back to Earth to finish the job. Weaver as Ripley is undoubtedly the breakout performance and the character has become iconic.

The most memorable scene is undoubtedly the “chest burster” scene. According to legend the cast’s shocked and horrified reactions are real because they did not know what was going to happen or what the alien would look like. This is only partially true. Weaver and Cartwright had already seen the alien and Skerritt knew because he had been sneaking around the effects department. What the cast did not know is how much fake blood there would be or that it would be spurting everywhere. When a jet of fake blood hit Cartwright she was caught off guard, slipped, fell, and got back up into frame quickly; the look of shock on her face was from her fall. 

The alien creature and spacecraft were designed by the strange and visionary mind of H.R. Giger, who the production staff found so weird that they put his office on the far side of the building (though Scott and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon say they got along fine with Giger, who is not as weird as his work would suggest). In interviews Giger reveals that worms and snakes and tentacles terrify him and he squirms describing the things that make up his own work. Everything about the alien, the spacecraft, and the eggs looks like something from a nightmare; anything familiar looking about the alien only makes it look scarier. The design of the Nostromo by Ron Cobb makes the ship look and feel like a lived-in vehicle, not a flashy adventureship. Having everything about the alien and everything built by humans have two different designers was a stroke of genius because each feels so distinct and also incongruous with the other.

Alien moves slowly but it is well paced whether you’re watching the scenes of the crew members going about their routine or the horror scenes with the alien. Despite gross things like the “facehugger” alien and the “chestburster” scene, and even the alien itself, this movie mainly uses suspense to get at the audience, and uses it well. The scares, even if you know they are coming, still startle and scare and shock, and they’re still there waiting, lurking. 

13 Nights of Shocktober: Brotherhood of the Wolf

by A.J.

Night 7: Werewolf Party Night!

“Our people would not be afraid of a simple wolf. The beast is different.”

Brotherhood of the Wolf

The French film Brotherhood of the Wolf is not precisely a werewolf movie. It is a little bit of all kinds of different movies: period piece, mystery, romance, action, thriller, horror, political intrigue, and, of course, kung fu. Also, it is based on a true story. Sort of. For several years during the 1760’s the rural province of Gevaudan was plagued by frequent, vicious attacks by a creature that survivors described as being like a wolf, but not a wolf. The death toll rose so severely (between 60 to 100 victims depending on the source) that King Louis XV sent royal hunters to catch the Beast of Gevaudan. Brotherhood of the Wolf, directed by Christophe Gans, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Stéphane Cabel, dramatizes this event, with extremely broad dramatic license. The result is a movie that looks like a serious epic in terms of cinematography, costumes, and production design, but is actually a big budget B-picture. At times it is absurd, thrilling, and suspenseful; at other times it is downright silly. What I mean by that is, if you don’t take this movie seriously, it is quite fun and entertaining. 

The story is told in flashback as a French aristocrat awaiting his doom from The Terror of the French Revolution uses his final moments to tell the true story of the Beast of Gevaudan. Then we flashback to 1764 and see a woman killed by the offscreen “beast” in a scene that plays like an over-the-top version of the opening of JAWS. Instead of a royal hunter, here King Louis XV sends knight and naturalist (biologist) Grégoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), and his Iroquois companion, Mani (Mark Dacascos). Both are veterans of the Seven Years’ War (or French and Indian War as it was known in North America), which France and the Indians lost. After he finds a metal fang, Fronsac realizes that the beast is indeed no mere wolf but is something being controlled by someone. The conspiracy he uncovers involves a mysterious forest cult, suspicious nobles, an always suspicious Vincent Cassel, and, of course, the Vatican. It is all convoluted but the more outlandish this movie gets the more entertaining it gets. By the time a character reveals a monster-like arm, you’d be disappointed if they didn’t. 

Mani fits the cliché of the mostly silent, in tune with the spiritual and natural world Native American. It’s not the fullest portrayal of a Native American but in addition to great action scenes, Mani does have a backstory that fleshes out his character and his presence only enhances the movie. 

There is a camp value to certain things about Brotherhood of the Wolf that works in its favor. The hand-to-hand fight scenes are the most wildly anachronistic element of the whole movie, but they are very much in line with the martial arts inspired, highly choreographed style of a post-The Matrix action movie. Once revealed, the beast proves to be a decent monster, though the shots that use early 2000’s CGI look quite dated. However, even after the look of the beast is revealed the mystery deepens and continues to unfold. Whether it’s the over the top, out of place action scenes or the scenes of romance, intrigue, or horror, every scene works and somehow adds up to a coherent story and a very entertaining movie. 

Brotherhood of the Wolf is available to stream on Prime Video and Shudder and for free on Tubi, PlutoTV, and Kanopy.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Interview With the Vampire

 by A.J.

Night 6: Vampire Night

“I’m going to give you the choice I never had.”

Interview With the Vampire

There are only a handful of vampire movies that are so influential that they change the way people think about the undead creature and how they are portrayed in future movies. Among them are F.W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu, Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi, Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and the 1994 big screen adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel Interview With the Vampire.

Anne Rice’s novel, first published in 1975, not only had the vampire as the main character, but the vampire wasn’t a villain. These vampires have complex personalities: moody, brooding, and profoundly sad. The novel and movie are best described as drama rather than horror; the characters undergoing an existential crisis just happen to be vampires. 

As the title would suggest, the story is structured as an interview taking place in the present day (early 1990’s) between a radio journalist (Christian Slater) and a mysterious pale man who claims he is a vampire. Perhaps the journalist is putting together the most macabre episode of This American Life. The vampire is Louis (Brad Pitt) and he tells the story of his life as a vampire. This was a major role for Pitt that would help launch him to superstardom, but it is Tom Cruise as the charismatic, dastardly vampire Lestat who gives the standout performance. The casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat caused uproar and controversy at the time, which was quite a feat in the pre-internet era. His movie star persona seemed at odds with the character of Lestat who is more or less a villain in this story and anti-hero in later Rice novels. Rice was very publicly against the casting of Tom Cruise. She went as far as advocating for fans of the book to boycott the movie and saying that casting Cruise as Lestat was like casting Edward G. Robinson as Rhett Butler. However, after seeing the finished film she would publicly retract her protests and even took out a full page ad in the New York Times praising Cruise’s performance. In Cruise’s career, this performance really does stand out. It’s one of the few times he's played a villain and one of the few times he’s really gone broad with a performance, which is just what the movie needs. Lestat shows the appeal of being a vampire: he embraces having no remorse, overindulging in luxury and the superiority he feels as an immortal. Pitt’s Louis bears the weight of conscience and remorse and the disadvantages of immortality. Each character is overbearing in their own way, but since Lestat is the more lively of the pair his impatience with Louis feels surprisingly welcome, and adds some humor.

In a moment of weakness Louis attacks and feeds on a small girl and Lestat turns 12 year-old Claudia into a vampire child. Kirsten Dunst’s performance as Claudia is brilliant, proof of her innate abilities as an actress. They form a vampire family and these scenes are amusing in a dark comedy sort of way. These happy times are short lived and Louis and Claudia leave for Paris in search of other vampires and answers to their questions about their own existence.

There is a strong and blatant streak of homoeroticism throughout the film between Louis and Lestat and later between Louis and the old world vampire Armand (Antonio Banderas). A newer adaptation would explore this more, in fact, the recent TV series, very loosely based on the book, does just that. However, here the subtext is so loud that a more explicit or direct portrayal does not seem necessary. It’s obvious that Louis and Lestat are in a relationship, however toxic. When Lestat turns Claudia into a vampire it comes across like having a child to save a failing marriage; this turns out to be a mistake for both humans and vampires. 

There is a fair amount of violence and horror effects, but because of the overall tone of the movie they hit differently than in a straightforward horror movie. They are usually punctuated by humor or sadness. Only in the climax, which almost feels like an action scene, are the horror effects played for shock. Special effects master Stan Winston (whose other credits Terminator 2, The Monster Squad, Batman Returns, and Jurassic Park) created the vampire effects and makeup. When Claudia attempts to murder Lestat by poisoning him and slitting his throat, Winston and the effects team built an emaciated animatronic Tom Cruise that writhes dying on the ground. This effect remains impressive even today. 

This is a brilliant movie worthy of the lasting influence it has had on vampire stories and horror in general. You can watch it with a horror hesitant viewer since it is more of a drama than outright horror. Thanks to the well-played, deep emotions on display it has a great effect on a wide swath of people. No matter how many other versions or remakes, even if they are good, Interview With the Vampire will stand alone, unchanging and forever captivating.

Interview With the Vampire is available to stream on Max and free on Tubi.

13 Nights of Shocktober: John Carpenter's They Live

by A.J.

Night 4: John Carpenter Night

They live. We sleep.

John Carpenter’s They Live

John Carpenter’s They Live is a little bit of everything: science fiction, action, horror, comedy, even socio-political commentary. It vacillates from mystery to comedy to sci-fi weirdness to working class drama. Somehow, it does all of this very well. Carpenter fully meant They Live to be a satire of the consumerist culture of the 1980's and a reaction to the effects of the Reagan era on America as a whole. So much about the themes of They Live is relevant today that there’s no need for an updated version. Nearly every line of dialogue about class and economic inequalities and the elite upper class exploiting and benefiting off the work of the lower class feels relevant today. Yet, this is not merely a dressed up diatribe. Carpenter made a thoroughly entertaining and interesting sci-fi film with an important message that never loses its way. 

The plot is pretty simple but also pretty strange. A drifter arrives in Los Angeles looking for work and stumbles across an alien plot for world domination. That’s the simple part. The strange part is that the aliens are broadcasting oppressive subliminal messages through every form of media: TV, billboards, magazines, etc. There are also already numerous aliens living on earth in disguise. The only way to see the aliens or their messages is with special sunglasses that the drifter finds in an abandoned church. The glasses reveal a world in black and white where advertisements of any kind, even labels on food in a grocery store, are actually messages like: OBEY, MARRY AND REPRODUCE, SUBMIT, NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, STAY ASLEEP.

Carpenter named the drifter Nada to not so subtly emphasize that though he has skills and his own tools and is more than willing to work for his fair share, society at large sees him as nothing (nada). He looks at a wall of job postings at the unemployment office but when he finally meets with a case worker he’s told that there is nothing for him. Nada is played very well by wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper. Physically of course, Piper is more than up to the task of being an action movie star, but he does a very fine job with the dramatic side of this character too. He starts out as pretty much a blank with practically no backstory. He also has an innocent optimism about his situation, even though he is homeless. He tells his only friend, Frank, played by the great Keith David, “I just want the chance. It’ll come. I believe in America. I follow the rules.” Piper says these lines with a realistic sincerity that is hard to believably deliver. Piper’s time as a professional wrestler came in handy in perhaps unexpected ways, like having to deliver some pretty ridiculous dialogue. When Keith David asks where these creatures are from, Piper replies with “They ain’t from Cleveland.” His most famous line of dialogue in the movie, which he came up with, is without a doubt, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.” And he does this without making the movie silly; instead he makes it fun. 

Carpenter wrote the role of Frank for Keith David, which was something of a relief for David who had not had a film role since John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), his first film. If Piper plays the beat down but optimistic side of the American worker, David plays the beat down cynical, or pragmatic, side. His character says things like, “They put you at the starting line. The name of the game is ‘Make it Through Life’ only everyone’s out for themselves and looking to do you in at the same time.” Like his role in The Thing, he is the supporting character to a stand out leading man, but he is no less memorable. It certainly helps that his character’s comments about economic inequalities and social commentary are delivered in his memorable, authoritative, and booming voice. Arguably the most famous moment from They Live is the extended fight scene between Piper and David in an alley. You’ll hear that this scene has no purpose and that’s why it is memorable, aside from the stunt work and fight choreography. The counter argument is that it is meant to represent how difficult it is to get someone to change their mind, or even listen to a different opinion, since the fight starts when David refuses to put on the special sunglasses. Carpenter has said that the scene is an homage to the 9 minute fight scene in The Quiet Man between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen.

With They Live, John Carpenter both modernizes and pays tribute to science fiction films of the 1950’s. The look of the aliens, designed by Sandy King, Carpenter’s creative partner and later wife, is clearly evocative of sci-fi aliens of the 1950’s and even the EC horror comics that inspired Creepshow (1982) and the Tales From the Crypt HBO series. They might look cartoonish but they fit the heightened satirical tone. Due to the low budget, stunt coordinator Jeff Imada played nearly every alien with a different voice dubbed in afterwards. This explains why certain aliens might seem awkwardly tall compared to Roddy Piper since the short Imada was standing on a box or walking on crates. 

Nothing about They Live is subtle and that is by design. To quote Roger Ebert, “If you have to ask what something symbolizes, it doesn’t.” That the message and the action do not hinder each other but together create an entertaining movie is a testament to John Carpenter’s skill as a filmmaker. 

They Live airs on TCM on Friday, October 25th at 12:30AM CT. It is also available to stream for free on Tubi and Peacock (w/subscription).