The House on Sorority Row (1983)

Film: The House on Sorority Row (1983)

Stars: Kathryn McNeil, Eileen Davidson, Janis Zido, Robin Maloy, Harley Kozak, Lois Kelso Hunt, Christopher Lawrence

Director: Mark Rosman

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

Elevated horror is something of a pejorative, given that every era has had good horror films, frequently great horror movies, and to claim that it was only prestigious in the past ten years or so feels like a bit of a mislead (and an insult to those that came before).  But it isn't entirely without merit when we think about horror with proper studio backing, and we can see that with The House on Sorority Row (and I mean that as a compliment).  The film, which was made in the mold of Friday the 13th and Halloween like many of the slashers of this era (where they were looking for an easy buck, and in this case they got it with a modest hit on a shoestring budget), isn't meant to be a particularly compelling film.  I doubt the director intended to make a movie that would be remembered over 40 years later, but it has been, and watching it, you understand where the film was trying to go (and how different a story like this would've been today).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a group of sorority sisters who are celebrating their graduation before they go out (nervously) into the world, and want to throw a party.  This is squashed by Mrs. Slater (Hunt), their house mother, who is very prim and enigmatic.  The girls try to throw a prank involving a fake gun wound, but in a moment that even Anton Chekhov might've described as too on the nose, Vicki (future Real Housewife Eileen Davidson), the snobby leader of the group, accidentally shoots Mrs. Slater, though we learn later she's not dead.  The girls throw her into the pool, and because this is a movie (and we need a longer plot), they still have their graduation party.  At the party, of course, it appears that Mrs. Slater has not died, and the girls start to die.  It turns out, in a late-act twist, that it's Mrs. Slater's son Eric who is actually the killer, a deformed monster who is that way because of illegal fertility treatments that Slater took to get pregnant with him.  Our final girl Katey (McNeil, personifying every final girl cliche by being scrappy, kind, AND brunette) thinks she's defeated Eric, but just before the credits roll, his eyes open from assumed death, indicating he's still going to get her.

The film breaks very little ground.  The plot is as predictable as you can muster-even the late act twists are telegraphed over the film's opening scenes, as if to say "don't forget about this when the pretty girls show up!"  And none of the acting in this is very good.  Davidson is an Emmy-winning actress in addition to her time on reality television, and she's maybe the best of the bunch, but this is not meant to be a film with fine acting.  Even the plum roles of Mrs. Slater and her sadistic doctor aren't given enough camp or villainy to feel like anything more than placeholders in the movie between the body count.

But that's where the fascinating aspects of it show up.  The movie feels like a template for future horror movies in the sense that we have specific things that would become common in future, bigger budget horror.  In a film today, Mrs. Slater would be played by someone like Octavia Spencer or Kathy Bates (the remake, made in 2009, starred the much bigger name Carrie Fisher)...definitely the role that would've gotten a random Oscar winner to add some prestige to the picture (I spent much of the movie longing for Shelley Winters to be in the role, as she'd have been perfect for it).  The sorority sisters are more distinct than you'd expect-you can practically hear the Buzzfeed quizzes asking which one you are, the characters not feeling entirely interchangeable.  And Eric & Katey both live through the film, setting up any sequel you might need with bigger gore and larger stars if that's what guaranteed box office allowed.  It's very much in the mold of the movies in the 1990's and 2000's that would come from beneath its shadow.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, An American Werewolf in London, The Changeling, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, Sleepaway Camp, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Film: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Stars: Felissa Rose, Jonathan Tiersten, Karen Fields, Christopher Collet, Mike Kellin, Katherine Kamhi

Director: Robert Hiltzik

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

There were a lot of imitators that came in the wake of the successes of Halloween and Friday the 13th, with serial killers popping up in every horror movie you could imagine, slashing everyone in sight in hopes of equalling the gargantuan box office receipts of those two pictures.  One film that tried this was Sleepaway Camp.  Though it was a hit (nowhere near as big as the other two, but it made 30x its budget...most companies would be happy with such things), the film's critical reputation has shifted quite a bit through the years.  At the time, it was dismissed by critics, but years later it has developed something of a cult following, the way these types of horror movies do (go on Letterboxd-there is no more ardently-devoted fanbase on the site than those who devote their cinephile existence to scary pictures).  I was curious, therefore, where I'd land-was this a jewel that was eventually saved by future generations, or were contemporary critics correct to toss it in the garbage?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with John and his boyfriend Lenny taking John's children Angela and Peter out on a lake.  A freak accident involving the single stupidest blonde woman in the history of cinema causes both John & Peter to die, and Angela (Rose) is forced to live with her Aunt Martha.  Martha sends both Angela and her son Ricky (Tiersten) to a sleepaway camp, where Ricky tries to protect Angela but she is still ostracized for being prudish.  The other girls, led by Judy (Fields) and Meg (Kamhi), want her to be more sexual and think she's not as grown-up as her, while the other boys mock her for not being as pretty as the girls like Judy & Meg.  The film continues with all of the people who have been mean to Angela being killed.  Initially Ricky is suspected, but in a big twist at the end, it turns out that the killer is Angela herself...except she isn't Angela at all.  A demented Aunt Martha has raised Peter to be Angela, not wanting another son, and so she is instead forced into a type of gender transition that she didn't seem to want.  The final scene is her, with a boy's severed head on the ground near her, fully naked (with a visible penis) screaming and growling at the other campers.

I want to say before I get into it that I understand why this has been rescued by certain film fans.  Despite an insanely small budget, there's something here.  The bullying as metaphor, the hyper-sexualization of teens (and in this case, most of the actors are cast age appropriate unlike, say, Neve Campbell at 23 playing a high schooler in Scream) is really disturbing, and feels sometimes like meta-commentary about how horror movies treat young people as disposable.  But with the ending, the movie feels so gross that I couldn't move past it.

Even in 1983, it's very clear that Angela is meant to be seen as a killer/monster for what she is, and while the phrase "transphobic" didn't exist in 1983, that doesn't mean that isn't what this movie is.  The film either needs to flesh out more what happened to Angela, driving her mad, because as it is it just makes it seem like the reason she's insane is because she was inevitably going to be that way given what happened to her, and it's really wrong.  Coupled with the homophobia of the beginning (looking at the way they try to hide her gay father as a secret shame), this was gross to me, and I don't know if any amount of skill with the crafting of the script can change my mind on that.

I also want to say-the beginning of this movie, even for a cheesy horror movie, is so poorly acted you'd think it was a middle school production.  If the blonde girl so much as touches the steering wheel given what's happening, she would've saved both the original Angela and her father's lives...she for almost 100 feet acts as if there's no way to save him, but given the size of the boat and the time elapsed, there's literally no excuse other than she's a homicidal monster (as is the guy she's in the boat with) that she lets these people die.  I honestly couldn't get over this the entire movie...all of this was not only preventable, but it was preventable by literally anyone who has so much as heard of a steering wheel.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, An American Werewolf in London, The Changeling, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

OVP: Absence of Malice (1981)

Film: Absence of Malice (1981)

Stars: Paul Newman, Sally Field, Bob Balaban, Melinda Dillon, Wilford Brimley

Director: Sydney Pollack

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actor-Paul Newman, Supporting Actress-Melinda Dillon, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Sally Field: click here to learn more about Ms. Field (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

During the early 1980's, Sally Field became what she'd clearly always dreamed of becoming: a serious actress.  We talked last week about Norma Rae, the movie that launched her onto this platform, and won her her first Oscar, against actresses like Jane Fonda & Jill Clayburgh who were taken more seriously than the former Flying Nun.  Field kept the pedal-to-the-medal on trying to change her image in the coming years, appearing in commercial fare (Hooper, Smokey and the Bandit II), movies that upended her cutesy image like the hard-swearing Black Roads with Tommy Lee Jones, and more dramatic roles.  She would win a second Academy Award for her work in Places in the Heart in 1984, when she'd infamously utter the lines "right now...you like me!"...lines that would come to haunt her & in many ways underline the spunky actress she was trying to shed.  During this time, one of the dramatic films that she made was Absence of Malice, a serious film starring one of the biggest names of the era, and a guy who (unlike Field) was still in the hunt for his first Oscar: Paul Newman.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows newspaper reporter Megan Carter (Field), who is given a tip from Rosen (Balaban), who works in the US Attorney's office that they are investigating liquor wholesaler Michael Gallagher (Newman) for the disappearance of labor leader Joey Diaz (never seen, but if you can't tell they're making him seem like a Jimmy Hoffa-type figure during this time frame, you need to study your history more).  Carter publishes this based on a file on Rosen's desk, which was clearly planted for her to publish, but it upends Gallagher's life.  They don't actually have any evidence of the connection, but with the paper now saying "he's connected," he can't get out of it.  Gallagher is the son of a former crime boss, but is generally living a clean life...until Carter forces him to act dirty.  This comes to a head when Teresa Perrone (Dillon) provides an alibi for him-that he was taking her to a doctor to have an abortion.  But Perrone is devoutly Catholic, and when Carter's bosses insist they have to publish her name & that she had an abortion, Perrone kills herself.  This sets off a chain-of-events where Gallagher shows he learned something from his father, using a romantic relationship with Carter and implicit bribery of a US Attorney to get off...and to get their careers fried in the process.

Absence of Malice sounds better than it actually is when I describe it above.  It reads like an ambitious, greedy reporter wanting to make a name for herself, who sacrifices her soul and in the process has a man who had lived an honorable life go back to his criminal roots to punish her and those around her who destroyed the life of Teresa, the only truly innocent person in the picture.  That's not what it is though.  The writers desperately want us to care about the romantic relationship between Field & Newman, but you don't...because you realize that Megan is not a good person, even if she's played as bubbly & sweet in Field's hands.  The film could've ended on Megan admitting she was involved with Gallagher but knew nothing about him, but instead ends on a conversation between the two, potentially setting up a reconciliation.  But why?  They should hate each other, particularly him hate her...what's there, given so much of what came before was fake?

This hurts the performances.  Field is badly miscast here .  Field was in that "I can do anything" part of her career in 1981, but she is not right for this-you need an actress who can play fragile-but-brittle, and she is not a brittle performer (you kind of think someone like Susan Sarandon might've been better off with this part).  Newman is better, but again-this is a great character until the writers come in the way (you see hints of what might've been decades later when Newman would play a similar character in Road to Perdition), and you feel like you only get half a performance.  Melinda Dillon got her second-and-final Oscar nomination for her work here, and she does create a shadow over the film (her confession scene, where she tries to convince Megan not to publish that she had an abortion, knowing that she'll end up killing herself if she does but not having the guts to say it, is really well-done); again, though, much of the work in the back-half of the film takes air out of her performance by cheapening it.  Wilford Brimley, honestly, is pretty good in his one extended scene, giving the film some life, but at that point, it's too late-the script has already wrecked the promising premise.

OVP: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Film: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Stars: David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne, John Woodvine

Director: John Landis

Oscar Nomination: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Makeup*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

While both 7 Faces of Dr. Lao and the original Planet of the Apes won special Academy Awards for Makeup, the category wasn't competitive until 1981.  This was the result of complaints that The Elephant Man (and the extensive work that the artists on it did to John Hurt's face) wasn't going to be honored, and so the category was formed in 1981, despite makeup being quintessential to filmmaking as far back as the Silent Era.  Horror films should be a mainstay for this category-when you think of horror movies, whether it's Boris Karloff's bolted face in Frankenstein or Robert Englund's burned visage in Nightmare on Elm Street, the most iconic movie makeup frequently comes from movies that go bump in the night.  But it's actually relatively rare to see horror movies nominated in this category, which is extra bizarre because the first year of the category, the shiny gold man went to a horror movie.  An American Werewolf in London won Rick Baker his first of seven Academy Awards for Makeup, and would become a groundbreaking film in terms of its makeup.  However, headed into the picture, I knew nothing about what I was getting into and honestly...left kind of surprised at the tone the film takes.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two graduate students David Kessler (Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Dunne) who are from New York but backpacking through northeastern England.  They come across a pub with some satanic signs on the walls, and are warned by the pubgoers to stick to the road if they leave.  Of course, because this is a horror movie, they do wander off of the road, and are attacked by a wolf of some sort...one that right before David blacks out, seems to have turned into a bloody, naked man.  When David awakens in a hospital, he is told that he was attacked by a rabid man, not a wolf or dog, and that Jack was killed.  He insists otherwise, but the hospital says this isn't true, and when he is visited by the ghost of his dead friend Jack, he is told that he is a werewolf.  He starts dating a nurse named Alex (Agutter), and tells her about the werewolf theory, but she thinks he's just delusional from the attack.  As the film goes on, of course, he is not, in fact, lying, and goes on a murderous rampage before ending up in the wolf cage at the London Zoo.  He is eventually shot by the police during a second rampage (unable to figure out how to kill himself in time), a tearful Alex seeing him revert to human form before the end credits.

Here's the deal with An American Werewolf in London.  What I just described is a pretty generic werewolf picture...you could put Lon Chaney's name on it, and you'd basically have the plot of any Universal werewolf picture from the 1930's or 40's.  But the difference is that the 1981 film is genuinely funny.  The movie is less scary than you'd think, and more about gallows humor.  There's a scene where a dead Jack, now a ghost of sorts, introduces David to the people he killed the previous night while they are at a pornographic movie theater, an adult film playing in the background.  This is the kind of juxtaposition that makes this movie stand out.  It's also weirdly progressive when it comes to nudity.  Horror films have a lot of misogyny when it comes to nudity (women are frequently running around topless while the men are fully-clothed), but that is not the case here.  You will see all of David Naughton in his splendor in this movie (there is full-frontal), and a realism given the character is supposed to be naked most of the movie (or in various states of undress).  Kudos to John Landis on that one.

The film's makeup & visual effects are extraordinary.  Much of the work here, and what won Baker the Oscar, is the result of the transformation scene, which honestly...I'm not entirely sure how he pulled it off without CGI.  There are scenes where his actual spinal column expands, cracking and curving.  It's gross, but totally realistic and ingenious.  The bigger question isn't why it won the Makeup Oscar, but why it didn't also get a citation for the Visual Effects Oscar, as they should've gone hand-in-hand.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, The Changeling, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

What the Left Gets Wrong About Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA)

It is sometimes hard to tell when you're online what is real-life hyperbole and what is just "this is only an online phenomona."  A 2021 Pew Research poll found that only 23% (just over one-in-five) Americans used Twitter, and while a significantly larger percentage used Facebook (a 2023 poll put it at 68%), only 30% claim to regularly get their news from the site.  When sharing opinions on social media, therefore, it's important to remember that it's not representative of most Americans, even if it can feel that way.

I say this because one of the most common election-themed issues on Twitter right now is around "far left" members of the platform actively hoping for either Donald Trump to win, or more to the point, for Kamala Harris to lose.  This has spilled to a degree into real-life.  The most prominent Democrat in the country to have actively refused to back Harris based on "progressive" politics (quotation marks are there for a reason that I'll get to if you finish this article) is Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who has refused to endorse Harris in the presidential campaign despite the primary being long over.  Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, has been trying hard to help Harris lose Michigan so that Trump can win it (Stein has no shot at it), and has been campaigning as such.  Stein's bona fides as a progressive are suspect (she shows up once every four years to run for president, but in the in-between time the only thing I know she does is have dinner with Vladimir Putin), but she is certainly claiming to be a progressive in the election.

This would mark the third election in a row where certain factions of the far left are claiming that the Democratic nominee is too moderate, and therefore they won't endorse them.  The most common rationale for this is that by causing Clinton/Biden/Harris to lose, they will be able to get a more progressive nominee the next time.  I think this is maybe one of the dumbest misconceptions in politics, but it's prevalent enough that I wanted to go on the record as to why this is a problem.

I want to start this by saying something that the left gets correct-primaries are not as "open" as politicians profess.  This isn't about fairness or claiming that the DNC is out to get a candidate like Bernie Sanders (Sanders lost, twice, when he had every opportunity to win, particularly in 2020).  But I'm not going to pretend that there aren't weights in competitive primaries for Congress and governor's elections.  Congressional leaders and high-ranking Democrats will tip the scales.  Just ask Dina Titus what she thinks of Harry Reid.  Or Jeff Jackson what he thinks of Chuck Schumer.  Or Levi Tillemann what he thinks of Steny Hoyer.  Congressional leaders in all of these cases supported another candidate & signaled that they would get their support (and those candidates ultimately took the primaries), even as other Democrats were trying to make a go of it.  It is possible to overcome those leaders (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a very famous example of this), but it's not easy.

Those leaders, it's worth noting, think very differently about losses, which brings us back to Kamala Harris, and a reminder of where she stands in the history of presidential candidates.  Because if you look at the history of the Democratic Party nominees for president, Harris is very liberal.  Harris, unlike Joe Biden, is on the record as supporting the Green New Deal, supports free college, wants strict AI regulation, and backs marijuana legalization.  Harris is, compared to the country the most progressive Democratic nominee since at least John Kerry.  Were she elected, she would become the most progressive presidential candidate relative to the country since Franklin Delano Roosevelt to win the White House.  That's a fact, and a nearly century-old one.

And while the Far Left is in denial about this, the powers-that-be are not.  They know that someone as progressive as Harris, quite frankly, would normally be a hard-sell for the White House in an open primary.  It's why her campaign went nowhere in 2020.  But given she had an unusual path to the White House through Biden dropping out, they went with her and are given the opportunity to elect someone that normally wouldn't have had a shot at the nomination.  If you're an actual progressive (which I am), this is a present you should be pushing hard for-Harris is an opportunity we get maybe once a century, and to turn her down would be insanity.

But that's the thing about Far Left figures like Stein and others who support her-they don't care about power or change.  What they care about is getting to claim to be right, even if it means that things stay bad.  It's why they quickly abandoned someone like Ocasio-Cortez, easily the most famous and successful figure of their movement, the second she had to have the practicality of governing (even if she's pushing hard for a lot of very liberal legislation, some of which, like the Green New Deal, could become law if the Democrats were to win a trifecta in November).  Being an adult means compromise, and that means that you comprehend, say, that electing a Democratic moderate like Colin Allred in Texas this year is super valuable if it gets rid of very conservative Ted Cruz, even if your politics are more aligned with Tlaib's or AOC's than Allred's.

I also think the Far Left's thinking that a "progressive will win the nomination next time" is stupid because it didn't happen in 2020.  In 2016, they tried this line on Hillary Clinton, delivering enough votes for Stein in the Blue Wall states to tank Clinton's candidacy.  Four years later, progressive icons like Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren ran for the White House...and lost to moderate Democrat Joe Biden.  They didn't lose because the DNC cheated-they lost because they couldn't run winning campaigns, and couldn't expand their viewpoint.  "Run a true progressive" in a red/purple district is a strategy that never works and a good example of that was down-ballot from Clinton, when Deborah Ross (NC), Katie McGinty (PA), & Russ Feingold (WI) were running.  All were to Clinton's left, all genuine progressives, and all to the left of their state's average politician; in Ross's case, she would've easily become the most progressive Democrat in the history of the US Senate from North Carolina.  All got strong financial backing and real campaigns...and the left couldn't deliver a win for any of them.  They were apparently too busy trying to punish Clinton for crimes to actually go out and prove that "running a true progressive" was a winning strategy...instead causing all of them to lose (two of which we have yet to win since), and in the process overturning Roe v. Wade.  That's again at stake in 2024, and that members of the Far Left are once again trying to sabotage the Democratic nominee to help Trump...I genuinely can't tell the difference between what they're doing and what MAGA is doing.  The movement is fond of quoting Orwell, so I'll close this article with the final passage from Animal Farm: "the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

The Changeling (1980)

Film: The Changeling (1980)

Stars: George C. Scott, Trish van Devere, Melvyn Douglas, John Colicos, Jean Marsh, Madeleine Sherwood

Director: Peter Medak

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-00's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

A trend started in the 1960's, and continued until the 1980's, where aging movie stars decided to give horror a shot.  This became known for a lot of women as "hagsploitation" or "grand guignol" where once glamorous actresses like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Olivia de Havilland were put in caked on pancake makeup & tortured by each other (and more so the director), but it continued for decades longer.  One example of this would be The Changeling from 1980, with an aging George C. Scott (and a nearly gone Melvyn Douglas, who would be dead less than two years after this film was released).  Neither actor is known for their work in horror, certainly not in their prime but given limited options, they both gave it a shot here, and ended up with something unexpected.  The Changeling, one of the most important Canadian horror films ever made, was a film I hadn't really heard of before this month (it was actually a movie I substituted last minute when I decided another one of our choices was going to be too hard to find in good condition), but it's well-done, especially some of the bits at the end of the film, and worth your time if you (like me) were unfamiliar with it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in two halves.  The first half follows famed conductor John Russell (Scott) in the wake of the deaths of his wife and daughter after a horrific car crash.  He rents a mansion from a historical society in Seattle, and lives there despite no one having resided in the house for 12 years.  It turns out that there's a reason for that, as the house appears to be haunted, unexplained phenomena getting to John, particularly surrounding water, as he starts to see visions of a drowned boy in a bathtub, and he begins to investigate who the boy is.  It turns out he's Joseph Carmichael...which is a problem because Joseph Carmichael is still alive, an aging US Senator (played by Douglas) whom we learn was switched with a crippled & sickly boy as a child so that the healthy (fake) Joseph could inherit the family estate.  In the process, the sickly boy is murdered, drowned in a bathtub, and for much of the last thirty minutes it is clear the boy wants recognition of what was done to him, in the process needing to use John to get his fake brother to return to the house...where the true Joseph can have his revenge.

The movie is fascinating for a variety of reasons, not least of which is because the beginning has very little to do with the plot of the film.  There is no ghostly apparitions of John's wife and daughter in the house, and so it puts a fascinating spin on the haunted house story, where he is haunted by a literal ghost but also figurative ones, trying to understand what to do with his life after the unspeakable has happened.  I think this is really clever, and honestly something I didn't expect going into the movie-this red herring that also plays a B plot to the movie is a solid touch.

The film's many twists also generally work.  If there's a fault, it might be that they work too well.  Melvyn Douglas's character probably needs 1-2 more scenes with George C. Scott to really sell this, as you don't get a great sense of what his opinions are about what's happening.  It's possible that he's also an innocent victim here, being thrown into this circumstance as just a boy...but the ending wants him to suffer for these crimes.  That ambiguity doesn't quite work because you need a clear indication of whether or not the ghost is malicious or righteous.  That is, however, the only thing that doesn't work here, as the rest of the movie is a "start at 11 PM, and you'll be staying up past midnight" style horror movie classic.

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, Phantom of the Paradise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Altered States, Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, The Fog, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Paranormal Activity, Scary Movie, Scream

The Nebraska Senate Race Takes Center Stage

Dan Osborn (I-NE)

If you look at the Senate polling averages right now, you’ll find that the closest Senate race in the country is not Michigan.  It’s not Nevada or Montana.  It’s not Florida or Texas.  It’s not even Ohio.  No, inexplicably, the closest election on the map right now is in, to quote The Fellowship of the Ring, “the most unlikely place imaginable.”  It’s in Nebraska.  In easily the most unexpected turn-of-events of the 2024 political calendar, the polls are indicating that our closest election is somehow in a state that virtually no one saw as competitive even a few months ago.

 

The reason for that is simple-Nebraska is historically a very red state, and Senator Deb Fischer (R) has been a solid incumbent if you look at her election returns.  Fischer won her initial election in 2012 against former Sen. Bob Kerrey in a landslide.  2012 was an impressive year for Democrats, and Kerrey is no slouch, and yet she crushed him…it’s hard to imagine a situation where she would eventually lose.  She also survived 2018, another really good year for the Democrats, and was headed into 2024 with no opposition.  In a way that is literal-the Democrats did not field a candidate in the Nebraska Senate race, and instead it’s an Independent candidate who is giving her trouble.

 

Dan Osborn is making his first run for political office this year.  He is a Navy veteran and former mechanic, a blue collar job that he’s made a point of highlighting in ads, proclaiming that it’s “time someone in the Senate had a real job.”  Osborn’s politics are definitely more moderate than Fischer’s (he supports abortion rights, a minimum wage increase, & legalizing medical marijuana), but he has made a point on the campaign trail of stating his independence, and that he would want to join an independent caucus.

 

I will be honest-I have been skeptical about his race since it emerged as theoretically competitive this summer, and even now, it does feel like the sort of Charlie Brown & the football scenario that comes up when independent candidates come across as more real than you’d expect.  In 2014, Greg Orman (I) looked like a serious threat to take out Sen. Pat Roberts…he lost.  In 2020, Al Gross, another independent, ran as the de facto Democrat in the Alaska Senate race…he also lost.  And in 2016, Evan McMullin seemed at one point like a real threat to take Utah’s electoral votes, which he made a serious play for; not only did he lose, he came in third behind both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  I have been burned by independents who basically provide no actual victories, just breathless press.

 

But it’s hard not to see the numbers and say, if Osborn were a Democrat, we’d all be on high alert right now.  Fischer is making miscalculations, which happens when you’re an entrenched longtime politician who is getting an attack you don’t know how to handle.  And Osborn’s running a focused, disciplined campaign.  So for a second, I think it’s worth asking the question-what would happen if he the polls were underestimating him just slightly and he won?

 

The big question comes down to two things.  First-and-foremost, who would have the advantage?  If every single leading candidate in the polls were to win (spoiler alert: they won’t), but Osborn pulled off a slight victory over Fischer (who still leads in the 538 average), this would leave us with 50 Republicans, 49 Democrats (and Angus King/Bernie Sanders, who caucus with the Democrats), and Osborn.  In this situation, Osborn’s stance as an independent would leave Republicans in the majority; the last time one party held a majority but did not have 51% or 50%+VP in their caucus was 1930.  But in that situation, there would be intense pressure on Osborn to caucus with the Democrats, even though he has promised he won’t.  In both 1954 and 2001, an Indpendent ultimately gave the Democrats the majority, which would be what would happen if Osborn were to caucus with the Democrats.  Chuck Schumer would surely afford him a LOT of leeway in that scenario, giving him literally any committee seat he wanted, affording him the ability to stay an independent, and exerting minimal pressure on him to support the Harris agenda (if Osborn wins, I suspect Harris did too).  There would be incentive for Osborn to do this.  Practically speaking, as someone who isn’t in a caucus (even a caucus of one), he wouldn’t get any committee seats, and with Kyrsten Sinema & Joe Manchin leaving the Senate, there’s no real audience for an “Independent Caucus” (don’t say Lisa Murkowski-if she was every going to switch parties she’d have done it already…or she’d just caucus with the Democrats).  Without committee seats, Osborn would have power, but not really…Republicans would likely just clog up most legislation (and all Harris appointees) in committee so that he didn’t get the chance to send ties to VP Walz.  Given that he was largely elected by Democrats & moderates, and that he would have virtually no power if he didn’t caucus with someone, in that scenario, if he’s practical he’d break for the Democrats.  It’s also possible if the Republicans got an outright majority (51 or better) he’d caucus with them too…it would certainly make for a longer career as Nebraska is too red for him to last longer than a term as an independent (honestly, I doubt he can make it longer than a term no matter what he does-this sort of thing is more of a fluke, one-term wonder situation…just ask someone like former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura or former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, both of whom were only able to secure one-term as independents).

 

This is honestly why people like Osborn don’t usually win-the voters get wise to how impractical this is (and that the independent is really just a moderate Democrat in this case), and revert to partisan form.  That that hasn’t happened in polls yet indicates how poorly Fischer is running her campaign, but I do ultimately think it will happen, even with just four weeks remaining.  Osborn has earned the clicks & headlines at this point-he’s run a race that deserves attention.  But I will not believe he can actually win until he does…and I do not think that he will.