Hey friends, I don’t usually post on Fridays, but I thought I’d squeeze in one more Oscar nominee review before Sunday’s awards – a double feature of Best Actress nominees. I’m rooting for Demi Moore to win for THE SUBSTANCE, but did you know that wasn’t her first body horror joint? Way back in 1982 she starred in Charle’s Band’s third film, PARASITE.

Supposedly it started as a remake (or rip off?) of THE TINGLER, and it’s about a scientist trying to get rid of a weird tingler type thing living inside his chest. But rather than doing the electrified seats gimmick they made it immersive by shooting it in 3D, with the help of Chris J. Condon, who also did JAWS 3D. It is available on a 3D blu-ray, but I don’t have the means to watch it that way, so I can only say that it looks like it has lots of good gimmick shots, like I enjoy.

(3D gimmicks: a snapping rattlesnake, a guy impaled on a pipe with blood pouring out of it, squirting a syringe, lots of guns coming at us, looking up at a creeper on the ceiling dripping slime and then falling at us, lots of sharp-toothed monsters gorily tearing out of people, etc.)

What makes it cool though is its post-apocalyptic setting. Dr. Paul Dean (Robert Glaudini, CHAMELEON) is the guy with the parasite, fleeing through scarcely populated towns, some terrorized by “sickies,” who in a DEATH WISH movie would be creeps, in DIRTY HARRY would be punks or in MAD MAX would just be some guys. Much like the United States soon there’s no government, just a corporation called Xyrex, whose executives are called Merchants. Paul created the parasite for them, but decided he didn’t want to be responsible for that shit and tried to destroy it, instead getting infected by it. Now he’s on the run in a stolen ambulance. Also I want to note that he is always sweaty. It’s unsettling.

Near the beginning he falls for almost the same trick that makes Mad Max say “That’s bait.” Two men have a lady (Rainbeaux Smith, CAGED HEAT) tied up in a cafeteria kitchen and seem to be assaulting her; when Paul rescues her with a laser gun she roars and attacks him. He prevails long enough to stop and have rare instant coffee with a nice local (James Cavan, “Fisherman,” THE WOMAN IN RED) but then the topless lady from earlier sneak attacks him and breaks his laser gun with a stick. Tough lady. Tough times.

There are somehow still businesses operating – he stops by a gas station, a motel and a bar. Some only accept silver (he has a little bit) or company cards, some barter. Maggie, a.k.a. Miss Elizabeth Daley (Vivian Blaine, STATE FAIR, GUYS AND DOLLS) runs a hotel where he rents a room and sets up a lab. She’s a nice lady but makes him uncomfortable by telling him he doesn’t have to lock his door and constantly poking her head in or looking through his things, discovering he has a copy of his own book The Pathology of Parasites, etc.

He stops by New York Bar, Grill & Barter, where “all we’ve got left these days pal is canned fruit, canned beer, and canned soup.” Also I noticed iodine tablets on the counter for $25. It looks like a real bar, though. I would go there. I remember how much I missed bars during lockdown.

The proprietor, Collins (Al Fann, COTTON COMES TO HARLEM), is a cool guy. Unfortunately he gets harassed by a gang of sickie youths led by Ricus (Luca Bercovici, SCANNER COP) and including Cherie Currie from The Runaways. They come in and cause trouble like drinking Paul’s soup and eating a lemon that girl-next-door type Patricia Welles (Moore) brings Collins from her tree.

Ricus steals the canister he sees Paul carrying around, and Paul fails to communicate that it contains a deadly creature that 1) he needs to study to cure himself and 2) willl jump out and attach to a motherfucker and kill them. Which is what it does (in 3D) when dumbass Zeke (Tom Villard, ONE CRAZY SUMMER, POPCORN) opens it and reaches his hand in.

Patricia rescues Paul from a beating, makes him tea and becomes his pal, helping him figure out how to kill the parasite. I guess her values to the plot are that she has a house and morals. The danger they face is not so much Ricus, and maybe not even the parasite, but instead a Merchant called Wolf (James Davidson, THE MECHANIC) who’s trying to recover the parasite for the company. He wears a suit and tie – can you imagine the kind of person who would wear a suit and tie in the post-apocalypse? – and drives a black Lamborghini. The weird cars that fascists drive were of a much higher quality in those days. He carries a laser pointer that can chop off limbs like a light saber, and he enjoys doing that.

Back to Ricus, though. He has a chip on his shoulder because as an orphan he was branded and shipped off to a Xymex work camp in the suburbs. So when he sees Wolf following Paul the gang surrounds and threatens him. Soon Rictus forms a truce with Paul and even Collins to deal with this Merchant and this parasite. I think this is genuinely cool – I can’t think of another example of this character type shifting to a good guy, so I definitely didn’t see it coming. And I like that it’s punks in a piece of shit car with completely exposed engine fighting a yuppie in a sleek Lamborghini. The little guy will prevail.

Stan Winston did some of the makeup FX, so obviously there’s some good shit in there when people get infected, especially Maggie, who turns into a zombie-like dummy and then the thing breaks out of her head with a mouth full of what looks like ground hamburger.

According to Wikipedia, Moore not so long ago named PARASITE the worst movie she’d ever been in. I don’t know man, I enjoyed it more than my recent rewatch of NOTHING BUT TROUBLE, despite its value as a movie featuring Digital Underground. And I’m sure that’s not her worst movie either. But her character here is very vanilla, plus she gets manhandled and slapped by Wolf in one scene, so I can see why it wouldn’t be a favorite role. Also I heard the parasite was a real pain in the ass Method type actor.

I believe Moore is the only PARASITE actor to later get an Oscar nomination, but the other leads have some pretty good achievements under the belts. Glaudini (who plays Paul) has been in such b-movies as WAVELENGTH and GRUNT! THE WRESTLING MOVIE, plus some later mainstream fare like MISSISSIPPI BURNING and BUGSY. In 2007 he wrote the hit off-Broadway play Jack Goes Boating (2007), starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Ortiz, and Daphne Rubin-Vega. In 2010 the same trio were in the movie version directed by Hoffman and also starring Amy Ryan.

Bercovici (who plays Ricus) had an even more impressive career. He was in FRIGHTMARE, SPACE RAIDERS, MISSION OF JUSTICE and Brady Corbet’s THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER, but more importantly he directed GHOULIES, ROCKULA and THE GRANNY. He came from a lineage of screenwriters – his father Eric Bercovici wrote HELL IN THE PACIFIC, THREE THE HARD WAY and the original Shogun mini-series; his grandfather Leonardo Bercovici wrote THE BISHOP’S WIFE and other films before being blacklisted thanks to Edward Dmytryk and Richard Collins. Merchant motherfuckers

I also watched BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE (2018), a sorta quirky ensemble crime thriller that’s the second movie written and directed by CABIN IN THE WOODS guy Drew Goddard (previously a writer for Buffy and Angel as well as CLOVERFIELD, WORLD WAR Z and THE MARTIAN).

I always meant to see this and actually one of the reasons was Cynthia Erivo, who I’d seen in WIDOWS and thought was a total badass. This role is more in keeping with our current understanding of her as a former stage musical performer nominated for Best Actress for WICKED PART ONE: ACT ONE: THE FIRST LITTLE PART OF WICKED. And also it’s just a good role for her talents: she plays a soul singer, and has to sing throughout the movie.

It’s got lots of cutesy business that I imagine would annoy some, but that I find mostly appealing. It’s set in 1969 at a cool-looking hotel called the El Royale that was once a Rat Pack hang out until they lost their gambling license. Now it’s basically empty with only one young guy named Miles (Lewis Pullman, THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT) running everything, and that’s only when not konked out from his heroin. Also for some reason the hotel is built over the California-Nevada border and has different themes and prices depending which state your room is in.

We happen to know from a prologue that ten years ago a bank robber (Nick Offerman, THE KINGS OF SUMMER) hid a bunch of money under the floorboards of one of the rooms, then got shot. So we can assume that one or more of the parties who have just shown up at the same time are looking for it. They are:

Darlene Sweet (Erivo), who’s on her way to perform in Reno

Father Daniel Flynn (TUCKER himself, Jeff Bridges), who meets Darlene in the parking lot and is very sweet but she tries not to get the room next to him

Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Sentinel Prime himself Jon Hamm), a loudmouth traveling vacuum salesman who asks Darlene if she’s a domestic

Emily Summerspring (MADAME WEB herself Dakota Johnson around the same time as SUSPIRIA), a take-no shit lady who writes her name as “FUCK YOU” in the ledger

Each of them have a secret thing going on that’s revealed as the story moves around novelistically, choosing a character to focus on and backing up to show how they get there. Darlene is the only one whose secret isn’t somewhat nefarious: she just wanted seclusion because she has to practice her songs and didn’t want to bother anyone. But Father Daniel likes hearing her sing anyway.

I wasn’t too surprised that the vacuum salesman wasn’t who he said he was. As soon as he’s in his room he starts unscrewing lightbulbs and examining wires. He calls home and while he’s saying good night to his daughter he’s also dismantling the phone and removing the wiretap. We will learn that he’s actually Special Agent Dwight Broadbeck, here to retrieve FBI surveillance equipment but accidentally stumbling onto a whole other operation involving a hidden corridor of two way mirrors looking into the rooms, which is how he sees Emily drag a girl (PRISCILLA herself Cailee Spaeny) out of her trunk and tie her to a chair. Broadbeck goes to the payphone in the parking lot to call in and ask what to do about this kidnapping and J. Edgar Hoover himself (voice of Stephen Stanton, also the voice of Fiyero’s Horse in WICKED) tells him not to get sidetracked from his mission.

Our mission as viewers is to accept the gimmick that this collection of unlikely, unrelated events – the search for the bank robbery loot, the discovery of an explosive blackmail film, and this lady who (we will learn) has kidnapped her younger sister to keep her away from a deadly cult – have all collided at this literal crossroads, as its participants experience a variety of crises of faith. It’s about halfway through the movie when we (and teen runaway Rose Summerspring) meet Billy Lee (BLACKHAT himself Chris Hemsworth) walking up to her on the beach, silhouetted in the sunset, looking like either the cover of a romance novel or a greeting card about Jesus, which actually kinda sums up his appeal to her. We see his insidious appeal in a scene where Emily visits their commune and watches him make a big charismatic speech and then gets little sis to viciously fight another girl for the right to sleep in his bed that night.

Obviously he’s kinda based on Charles Manson, but he seems like more of a traditional dreamboat, an adonis in fact, with his long blond hair and exposed abs. Manson by way of Patrick Swayze. When he comes looking for little Rose at the El Royale is when shit really hits the fan for everybody.

By the way, if you were wondering “is this the type of movie that Shea Whigham is in?” the answer is yes, he shows up briefly.

It’s normal for a crime story with some personality to mix together a seemingly random list of elements. Here we have nearly-abandoned retro hotel, ‘60s soul scene, post-bank-robbery intrigue, cointelpro type shit, dementia, and Manson-like cult. Only that last one felt a little forced to me, but it’s not like you could remove it without the whole thing falling apart, and it’s fun to see Hemsworth in what was then playing against type, now a step on the way to playing Dementus. The actual best thing about the movie is Erivo, playing the only real innocent around here, but just as tough as any of them. It’s a role that many great actresses could not have played because the singing is crucial. She sings “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)” and “Hold On, I’m Comin,” and a highlight is when she sings in front of the mirror to hide the Father lifting up the floorboards, timing her claps to mask his chiseling.

I don’t think this is one of the greats, but I do really appreciate a well produced mid-budget crime movie with a big, interesting cast and some ambition. Unfortunately it was considered a bomb, opening below VENOM, A STAR IS BORN, FIRST MAN, GOOSEBUMPS 2, SMALLFOOT and NIGHT SCHOOL. As of this writing, Goddard hasn’t directed another movie since (just episodes of The Good Place). But I would welcome him back.

For those who enjoy all the Oscar business, have fun Sunday. For those who don’t, be happy, I don’t have many nominees left to review and will get into more random stuff. Thanks for bearing with me.

p.s. 2025 Oscar nominees I’ve reviewed:

ANORA
THE BRUTALIST
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN
CONCLAVE
EMILIA PÉREZ
I’M STILL HERE
NICKEL BOYS
THE SUBSTANCE
WICKED

FLOW
THE WILD ROBOT
NOSFERATU
ALIEN: ROMULUS
BETTER MAN
KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES