The Crime of Doctor Crespi (John H. Auer, 1935)

The story of a surgeon driven to terrible things by ego, jealousy, and unrequited love, The Crime of Doctor Crespi turns its low budget, limited locations, and relatively simple plot into a dark, dryly funny, and visually compelling little movie with a take on the mad scientist that feels fresher and more modern than many of its '30s contemporaries. Erich von Stroheim deserves much of the credit for his performance in the title role, but director John H. Auer ain't chopped liver.

Dr. Andre Crespi (Stroheim) runs a hospital and is its chief surgeon. He's not an easy man to work for, and his mercurial temper can go from zero to one hundred in an instant, but he gets results. He's brilliant, though he seems to spend roughly 70% of his time in his office leisurely smoking cigarettes (at least fifteen minutes of this movie is Stroheim smoking; if  you're a Stroheim fan, you know that's a good thing), experimenting with mysterious liquids in tubes and beakers, gazing at or thumping the skull of the display skeleton of a baby, brooding, taking shots from the liquor bottle in his cabinet, and laughing to himself about a joke we're not in on. He seems weirdly pleased when he reads a newspaper account of a fellow doctor being seriously injured in a car accident.

The injured doctor, Stephen Ross (John Bohn), was a former surgeon at Crespi's hospital, and Crespi served as a mentor to the younger man. Ross married petroleum heiress Estelle (Harriet Russell) and moved on to bigger and better things in the world of medicine. Crespi was also in love with Estelle (though it's hard to imagine him loving anyone) and asked Ross to step aside. Ross clearly refused, so Crespi concocted a years-long revenge plan. This accident is just what he needs to put that plan in motion, and after a performative refusal to save Ross's life when Estelle calls to request him as surgeon, he eventually relents after she begs him in person. Will those strange liquids in the beakers and tubes have anything to do with the plan? Probably not. Just kidding. Spoiler alert: yes.

Things get wild and woolly, and Crespi's dark plot proceeds as planned. The only spanner in the works, as they say across the pond, is Dr. Thomas (Dwight Frye), a young surgeon at Crespi's hospital. Thomas has his suspicions about Crespi, and the recent vicious tongue lashing he received from the old doc for a minor infraction makes him even more determined to take that sucker down. This may be the only performance I've seen from Dwight Frye where he's not going apeshit the entire time. Frye was the go-to actor in '30s horror if the villain needed an insane sidekick or henchman or the town needed a lunatic, but he plays Thomas as the average Joe he is, though he does get to turn on a little of the amped Frye juice in the film's final stretch.

Erich von Stroheim is hilarious as Crespi. He plays him as a man who commits both evil deeds and complicated surgeries with a calm, quiet confidence and a tiny, mischievous spring in his step but who completely loses his shit when any of his employees exhibit even the smallest bit of unprofessional behavior or when a tiny hitch appears in his careful planning. He punctuates his statements and expresses his inner moods with the way he blows out his cigarette smoke, and he has a sadistic little gleam in his eye. Von Stroheim is probably most familiar to contemporary audiences for his role in Sunset Blvd. He was also one of the great directors of the silent and early sound era, and his complex and visually stunning films include Greed, Foolish Wives, The Merry Widow, and Queen Kelly.

Director John H. Auer is not the cinematic stylist or towering artist Stroheim was, but in his own rough and ready way, he packs a visual punch, from the kinetic opening driving scene to the unsettling shots of the hospital corridors to the powerful closeups to the oddball Andy Milligan-esque (years before Andy Milligan) organization of visual space to the weirdly jarring changes in composition from shot to reverse shot. Auer's camera movements are not that graceful, and many of the striking visual moments are preceded or followed by perfunctory ones, but he does a lot of compelling things within the frame. Auer, born in Budapest, was a child actor in Europe who became a businessman after aging out, but he missed the movies and moved to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a director. After a failed first attempt to land directing gigs in Hollywood, he worked in the Mexican film industry, and the successful movies he made there got him work at Republic back in Hollywood, where he cranked out musicals, crime thrillers, and war movies for the next two decades.

The Crime of Doctor Crespi has been criticized for being a little slow, but I didn't mind its relaxed pace and (until the final third) its relative lack of action. Stroheim is always compellingly watchable, and the supporting actors get nice little character moments or funny bits. Auer is also not afraid to get dark and weird, with oddly lyrical images jumping out between the sillier or more routine moments. I don't think this one's a big crowd-pleaser, but if you like Stroheim, tales of revenge and comeuppance, movies that claim to be adapted from Edgar Allan Poe stories but really aren't (I can't believe how often this happened, from the silent era all the way to the 1990s), and '30s B-movies, give it a whirl.

Child's Play 2 (John Lafia, 1990)

Possibly the least Chicago movie ever set in Chicago (other than a shot of a Windy City train track, the entire movie was filmed in southern California and mostly looks it), Child's Play 2 is otherwise a pretty solid sequel with a delightfully grisly final sequence and a character actor smorgasbord of a cast. Yeah, it's a little thin storywise compared to its predecessor, and the animatronic effects are cranked up to such an extent that Chucky gives off serious uncanny valley vibes, but Child's Play 2 retains the first film's sense of humor, unflagging pace, and fun.

Didn't Chucky get burned to a crisp at the end of the first movie, you ask (or were asking in 1990)? Why, yes, he did, but the charred corpse of the possessed Chucky doll is back in the hands of the Play Pals corporation, who decide to scrape all the burned gunk off and reassemble the doll by hand to show the nervous stockholders that it's just a freakin' doll and not some kind of supernatural killing machine, which, of course, unintentionally brings Chucky back to life since his soul is still trapped in the doll. Believe science, people. The Chicago Police Department has decided to stick with the regular doll story, too. The coverup makes Karen Barclay look crazy, so she's been institutionalized, and her son, Andy (Alex Vincent, reprising his role from the first movie), has been placed in foster care. Catherine Hicks, who played Karen, does not appear in this movie. We only learn about her fate through exposition delivered by the other characters. She was on set for most of the shoot, however. She fell in love with special effects man Kevin Yagher on the set of the first movie and was between projects while this one was being filmed, so she decided to hang out with her new husband and his effects crew while they worked. Hicks and Yagher are still married and have a daughter.

Going back to the coverup angle, I appreciate the movie beginning right from the jump with the idea that corporations and police departments are always going to cover their own asses instead of doing the right thing. Too many movies put forth the idea that once the truth comes out, people and institutions will respect that truth. Yeah, right.

Back to Andy. He's in a foster home run by Grace Poole (Grace Zabriskie) and is about to be fostered by a couple named Joanne and Phil Simpson, played by Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham. Damn, that is a lot of cult movie star power in one room. These might be the most square characters Zabriskie, Agutter, and Graham have ever played, but they do get to insert a few quirks, and I always enjoy watching all three of them. The Simpsons have taken in a lot of foster kids over the years, but Phil is hesitant about Andy's mental state, though Joanne immediately takes to him. The only other foster child currently staying at the Simpsons' comfortable but frighteningly pink and antique-filled home is tough teenage girl Kyle (Christine Elise), who is a bit standoffish at first but quickly bonds with Andy.

Meanwhile, the newly refurbished Chucky finds out where Andy's staying and tracks him down. He needs to get his soul in the kid's body so he's not trapped in a doll for the rest of whatever the natural lifespan of a deceased killer brought back to life through voodoo and stuck in a doll is (56 years? 20? 300?). I actually felt a little pity for Chucky this time (the voice of Brad Dourif). He's a terrible guy, but imagine being stuck in a doll's body. The franchise would use the human-soul-inside-a-doll story origins to explore gender fluidity and trans issues in later installments, but the queer text of Child's Play is still pretty hidden in the subtext in these first few movies.

Once Chucky makes it to Andy's foster parents' home, the movie turns into a cat-and-mouse chase for most of the second half, moving from the Simpson household back to Grace Poole's foster home to the streets of Chi-california-cago to the Play Pals factory assembly line as Andy and Kyle pummel and get pummeled by Chucky. Cat-and-mouse can be horrendously dull if done poorly, but things are kept brisk and wild and entertaining here. Our boy Chucky really goes through it in the finale, inspiring even more pity despite his murderous behavior. The practical effects work of Yagher and his team gets a nice showcase in this factory scene.

Vincent and Elise have good chemistry as foster kids, and, as an audience member, I really bought into their camaraderie and Kyle's growing affection and big-sister/mentor role toward Andy. I also thought the movie did a good job depicting Andy trying to adjust to a home environment he didn't grow up in and never getting the understanding he needed from Phil until it was too late. It never gets too heavy-handed, and there's a nicely understated naturalism to the performances that you may not expect from a killer doll movie.

Don Mancini, creator of the franchise, is back as screenwriter in part two. As I mentioned when reviewing Child's Play, Mancini has written or co-written every installment in the series and directed three of them, and he's the showrunner for the recent TV series. The only Child's Play release he wasn't involved with was the mediocre 2019 remake. John Lafia, co-writer of the first movie, takes over for Tom Holland as director. He's not quite as visually skilled as Holland, but he acquits himself nicely. Lafia is the guy who came up with the name Chucky when he and Holland revised Mancini's original script. Sadly, Lafia, who lived with depression for most of his life, committed suicide last year at the age of 63. A fascinating guy, Lafia was a part of the Los Angeles underground rock scene in the early and mid-'80s, releasing several albums on small indie labels, before his film career took off. In addition to his music and film work, Lafia was a poet, a director of live action video games, a proponent and creator of interactive VR technology, and a television director, and he'd returned to making music full-time in the last several years before his death.

Child's Play 3 followed just ten months later (it was rushed into production after this movie was a big hit) but is set eight years after Child's Play 2. Since 2 was set in the present, does this make Child's Play 3 a science fiction movie?

Color Me Blood Red (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1965)

Even though Herschell Gordon Lewis lived to be 90, he managed to pack about seven or eight more lives into his time on earth than should have been possible. Before making a single film, he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism in Illinois, was a professor of communications in Mississippi, managed a radio station in Wisconsin, worked as a studio director at a television station in Oklahoma, taught advertising at a night school in Illinois, and worked as an adman in Chicago. That latter job eventually led to him directing TV commercials and promotional films and producing an indie film, and as the '50s turned into the '60s, Lewis decided to direct full-time in the world of cheap, quick, and profitable exploitation film with his new associate, producer David F. Friedman. After making a few movies in Chicago, the pair relocated to Florida, where Lewis settled for the remainder of his life.

Life story over, right? No. Lewis and Friedman made several exploitation movies throughout the '60s and early '70s, but once their audience started to wane, Lewis quit filmmaking to work in marketing and copywriting. He also became a successful author, writing twenty-plus books about advertising and direct marketing, and he eventually founded his own direct marketing company. Oh yeah, he also spent three years in prison in the late '70s for fraud. And he directed three more exploitation movies near the end of his life, one of which was a sequel to his most famous movie, Blood Feast. When did this guy sleep?

As his CV above may suggest, Lewis wasn't in film for the art. He wanted to make money without spending much money, and he figured directing sensationalistic low-budget schlock was a great way to do that. Despite his motives, he was an accidental auteur. His films have a unique look, feel, and rhythm that only belong to him (though you can see some of Lewis' style in John Waters' blend of influences), his color palette is bright and lurid, and his dialogue is funny, ridiculous, and weird. Even if profit was the goal, Lewis' films give you the sense that he enjoyed making them. And I enjoy watching them.

Lewis and Friedman started their film career with the short-lived nudie-cuties genre, which were softcore non-pornographic movies with copious female nudity. Nudie-cutie was the name given to this style of film to differentiate it from nudist camp movies, sensationalist documentaries and pseudo-documentaries about nudist colonies that were popular on the exploitation circuit and filled a gap for people who wanted to gawk at naked women without the stigma of porn.

When the nudie-cutie market declined in 1963, Lewis and Friedman decided to push the gore envelope as the next frontier in you-gotta-see-this sensationalism. The first and best known of these was the aforementioned Blood Feast, a film credited with inventing the splatter subgenre of horror. For the next decade, gore films led the pack in the Lewis and Friedman filmography (Two Thousand Maniacs!, A Taste of Blood, The Gruesome Twosome, The Wizard of Gore, The Gore Gore Girls, the movie I'm about to review), but they also visited nearly every corner of exploitation genre, including the redneck moonshine movie (Moonshine Mountain, This Stuff'll Kill Ya!), juvenile delinquents run amok (Scum of the Earth, Just for the Hell of It), cheapo children's movies (Jimmy, the Boy Wonder, The Magic Land of Mother Goose), musicsploitation (Blast-Off Girls, about a female rock group exploited by a sleazy manager, The Year of the Yahoo!, about a country singer running for Senate), the biker gang movie (She-Devils on Wheels), the western (Linda and Abilene), sexploitation (The Girl the Body and the Pill, The Alley Tramp, Suburban Roulette, The Ecstasies of Women), a straight-up porn (Black Love, which he denied making), and general weirdness (nerdy-professor-builds-sex-robots movie How to Make a Doll, the indescribable Something Weird).

Background preamble over, it's time to dive into Lewis' third gore magnum opus, Color Me Blood Red, a classic tale of the eternal struggle between art and commerce and between the artist and himself. Unlike Lewis, protagonist Adam Sorg has no financial motive. He's an artist, damn it, and he's constantly bedeviled by the deadlines and requests of gallery owner Farnsworth, the stinging criticism of art critic Gregorovich, the expectations of buyers, the interruptions of his girlfriend, and the elusive muse itself. Sorg is an obsessive, eccentric, and unpleasant man, but he's the hottest painter going in the beach area of suburban mid-'60s Sarasota, Florida, and that's got to mean something. Farnsworth believes in his potential, but the beret-wearing, cigarette-holder-brandishing Gregorovich doesn't think Sorg's color palette is fully developed yet. This is driving Sorg crazy, until his girlfriend Gigi cuts her hand on a broken frame and her blood drips on the canvas. Eureka! That's exactly the color Sorg's paintings have been missing.

Sorg stays up all night covering an existing painting with the blood from Gigi's cut and self-administered lacerations on his own body, and he discovers that repeatedly cutting oneself and painting with the blood is pretty draining, pun intended. The solution: murder! You get all the blood you need that way, with no negative consequences. And since it's for art, Sorg is morally justified. Why live as a nobody when you can die for artistic immortality?

These blood paintings are a huge hit with Farnsworth and Gregorovich, who seem to think they will end up in the Louvre or MOMA or someplace like that and also in every art textbook in the world even though they don't look so hot to me, but Sorg won't sell them to what the film suggests is the area's only art buyer, the stylish Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter becomes obsessed with snagging one of Sorg's paintings when she is not busy soaking up the sun with her daughter April while April waits for her dorky boyfriend Rolf and their beatnik pals Sydney and Jack to pick her up and take her on one of their frequent beach excursions to the deserted part of the beach next to Sorg's beach house, possibly leading to a blood painting beach disaster.

Lewis gives us lots of bright-red blood that never turns brown as it dries, ridiculous paintings, artistic meltdowns, attractive women in bathing suits, leotards, and mid-'60s torpedo-shaped brassieres, murder, beach tomfoolery, a weenie roast, and dialogue like "holy bananas!" and "dig that crazy driftwood" and "she's not squaresville after all" and "I guess she digs the scene even if she doesn't make it." I think you already know if you're the kind of person who needs Color Me Blood Red in your life.