Author: Joe Bendel

By Joe Bendel. When it was founded, Charleston, South Carolina was open to all Protestant denominations. It is also home to the oldest synagogue in the United States that is still in regular use. On the darker flip side, a shadowy satanic cult operated there not so very long ago. It was led by Maria and David Abascal’s late but not nearly deceased enough father Enos. Recently, she has had strange dreams and visions of the malevolent Enos Abascal. It is safe to say they had a complicated relationship, considering he encased a demon within her. Maria Abascal is mostly in control, but her relationship with the sulfurous Abigail is necessarily complex. Still, she does her best to keep Abigail and her more conventional inner demons at bay in South of Hell, which premieres binge-style with seven back-to-back episodes this Friday on WE tv.

Created by Eli Roth & Jason Blum and produced by Blumhouse Television, South is the show we never thought we would see on WE tv, but here it is. Of course, it has a woman protagonist—or rather two of them, played by Mena Suvari—which apparently counted for a lot. It also has Charleston, providing an unending supply of atmosphere.

Given the Jim Jones-ish notoriety of their father and the dangerous force sealed inside Maria, the Abascal siblings have led a rootless life on the margins of society. They mostly eke out a living as exorcists, but Maria is also a part-time fortune teller, while David is a full time junkie. Thanks to Abigail, they are quite effective when hired to expel evil spirits. Somehow, Abigail developed a taste for eating her own demonic kind. Maria is able to harness that power, but only just barely. Something sinister is afoot, but have perhaps found an unlikely ally in the Reverend Elijah Bledsoe.

One episode is hardly enough to support a conclusive judgement, but at least it leaves viewers wanting more. Logically, it is also helmed by Roth to hook in his fan base. He rather deftly plays up the sinister ambiance, suggesting much that will presumably followed-up on later. Suvari has had an up-and-down career, but she is really terrific as the disillusioned Abascal and the uber-vampy Abigail. She generates some major heat in her scenes with herself. Although, we only see him teasingly briefly, Bill “Old Hats” Irwin shows some serious villainous potential as old man Abascal. David Abascal and Rev. Bledsoe are yet to be fully developed, but Zachary Booth and Lamman Rucker seem well cast thus far.

If you live in Los Angeles, you can make this a demonic possession-themed Thanksgiving weekend by catching the ripping good Korean film The Priests at the CGV and binge watching South of Hell. Although it is too early to pass judgement on the entire series, the first episode is definitely grabby enough to make you want to see the second, which is a tad frustrating when it is all you have. Definitely worth trying (and hopefully worth finishing), all seven episodes of South of Hell premiere tomorrow (11/27) on WE tv.

Posted on November 27th, 2015 at 1:50pm.

By Joe Bendel. In the Orson Welles’ filmography, this 1943 espionage thriller always has an asterisk next to the title in fans’ minds. Throughout his life, Welles insisted it was directed by his friend Norman Foster, except when discussing the scenes he helmed. Thanks to the misadventure of It’s All True, much of the daily directorial work was indeed left to Foster (who would make a bit of a name for himself with some nifty little noirs), but the Eric Ambler adaptation definitely bears the Welles stamp. Its ragged narrative edges also reflect RKO’s desire to edit it down under seventy minutes. Oh, but there were longer versions screened for preview audiences and European markets. The intrepid Munich Filmmuseum tracked down the various cuts as well as the shooting script to reconstruct a more coherent and surprising funny 81 minute super-cut of Foster’s Journey Into Fear, which screened last night at MoMA as part of the 2015 To Save and Project International Festival of Preservation’s Unknown Welles sidebar.

It is the early “Phony War” days of WWII, when Britain still expected to forge an alliance with Turkey. It was therefore all fine and dandy that munitions expert Howard Graham was in Istanbul working to rearm the Turkish navy. Graham and his wife Stephanie are due to sail to Batumi (which really doesn’t make sense, since the USSR was allied with Hitler at this time, but so be it), but they will be waylaid by a convoluted conspiracy. Kopeikin, a corrupt representative of Graham’s company drags him to a nightclub, ostensibly to meet the alluring dancer Josette Martel. Through blind luck, Graham escapes an assassination attempt that claims the life of magician Oo Lang Sang instead.

For his own safety, mind you, Colonel Haki of Turkish intelligence has Graham whisked away on a dodgy tramp steamer, assuring the baffled American he will personally see to his wife’s safety. In fact, one of the rediscovered scenes suggests Haki does indeed give Ms. Graham some ambiguously special attention. (Let’s not forget, Welles was quite the ladies’ man, who was once married to Rita Hayworth. Plus, Haki’s fur hat looks smashing.) Meanwhile, Howard Graham is spending quite a bit of time with Martel on that dodgy steamer, because she is the only passenger he really doesn’t think is out to kill him.

Journey has always been an entertaining yarn, but the more complete version makes considerably more sense. Even though the Filmmuseum restoration team was again forced to resort to intertitles in places, the reconstructed preview cut gives us a fuller sense of the wit and irony of the script co-written by Welles and star Joseph Cotton. It is rather delightfully mordant.

As Graham, Cotton prefigures many of the classic everyman Hitchcokian protagonists as well as his turn as Holly Martins in the even more classic The Third Man. He credibly portrays Graham’s evolution from clueless passivity to resentful exasperation. While his screen time as Haki is limited, Welles made the most of it. He was also clearly feeling the power of the hat. Everett Sloane also adds some comedic noir flavor as the dubious Kopeikin, while Dolores del Rio’s Martel brings plenty of femme and a hint of fatale.

What RKO did to their Welles catalog makes you want to pull your hair out. A longer, smoother cut could have become an iconic film, much like Lady from Shanghai and The Third Man. Even with intertitles, the Filmmuseum version is the best way to see it, so hopefully it will be more widely screened in the future. Of course, it is a perfect selection for To Save and Project, which concluded its Unknown Welles sidebar last night at MoMA.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on November 23rd, 2015 at 11:57am.

By Joe Bendel. Hopefully Guy Maddin (who is scheduled to present a screening at MoMA this Tuesday) was in town last night and able to attend the final Unknown Welles screening, because it was the closest thing to seeing the sort of “ghost films” that have inspired so much of his recent work. You could even say the surviving stitched-together work prints had a spectral look not unlike Maddin’s films. Frustratingly, Orson Welles never finished his adaptation of Charles Williams’ Dead Reckoning (later filmed by Phillip Noyce as Dead Calm), but you could get a vivid sense of what it would have been like when the work print of Welles The Deep screened last night at MoMA as part of the 2015 To Save and Project International Festival of Preservation’s Unknown Welles sidebar.

No Welles fan will be surprised to learn the negative for The Deep is now lost, as are a few scenes here and there. As per his working method, most of the film audio was supposed to be dubbed in later, but Welles hit a snag when his star Laurence Harvey passed away. Repeatedly, Stefan Droessler of the Munich Filmmuseum stressed to the audience this was a work print, struck from the negative on the cheapest, crummiest film stock available. Its sole purpose was to serve as the vehicle for Welles’ editing mark-ups, which he did in a manner guaranteed to maximize confusion for future film restorers. You have to watch it with an eye for what could have been. Frankly, it is probably helpful to have seen the extended teaser trailer Welles cut together that screened with the fragments of The Dreamers to understand the intended look and flow.

Unlike Noyce’s Dead Calm, Welles is more faithful to Williams’ novel, maintaining the original five character cast. It starts in much the same fashion, with John and Rae Ingram becalmed in the middle of the ocean, but not particularly concerned about it. The Saracen still has auxiliary power, but being newlyweds they rather enjoy the time together in the middle of nowhere. Much to their surprise a dinghy approaches carrying the nearly dehydrated Hughie Warriner. He has come from the sinking yacht just now drifting into view.

After tending to the exhausted Warriner, Ingram rows over to the listing Orpheus to investigate inconsistencies in the shipwreck’s story. Unfortunately, once he reaches the sinking vessel, Warriner fires up the Saracen’s motor, abducting his wife and leaving him stranded, but he is not alone though. Warriner’s beleaguered wife Ruth and the Orpheus’s owner Russ Brewer were huddled below deck. Having faith in his wife’s survival instincts, Ingram does his best to make the Orpheus seaworthy. Although Brewer is not particularly helpful, he would also like to catch up with Warriner, who murdered his wife (under circumstances that remain rather murky).

Granted, Welles still had a lot of tightening up to do on the work print, but you can see the makings of a nifty thriller in there. It is obviously a crying shame The Deep was never completed and released, for a number of reasons. It probably would have been regarded as a rough equivalent of Touch of Evil. Clearly, it also would have made great strides in establishing Oja Kodar as a legitimate star in her own right, as Welles so desired. Today, only fans know her as Welles’ just-what-was-she-again, but The Deep would have been some sort of name for her. It is safe to say she is as good as Nicole Kidman in Dead Calm—and stills of her in her bikini and bright red sun hat would have been super publicity-friendly.

The Deep also would have burnished Harvey’s reputation. He was a big name in his day, but now he is largely remembered for The Manchurian Candidate, which had been largely withdrawn from public circulation until its 1988 re-release. Hughie Warriner easily would have been his second iconic role. Of course, Welles and Jeanne Moureau were no slouches either, as Brewer and Ruth Warriner, respectively. There is comparatively less audio of Moureau to extrapolate from, but Welles was deliciously caustic judging both from droll overdubs and his corresponding facial expressions.

The Deep is especially tantalizing because it is so close to being finished, yet so far. It really could have been a commercial hit for Welles. Maybe someday it still can. Regardless, it is a treat to see it, even in a form in which it was never meant to be seen. An absolutely fascinating viewing experience, The Deep was a fitting conclusion to this year’s To Save and Project at MoMA.

Posted on November 23rd, 2015 at 11:59am.