Reviewed by Jan Hardy, Library Specialist | Feature image Anthony Hopkins in "Silence of the Lambs"
‘Tis the season of ghoulish movies, of blood and guts and scary stuff, with many filmed-in-Pittsburgh choices for your Halloween viewing!
Most famous and mainstream-successful is "Silence of the Lambs" (DVD-2612), the only horror film to win 5 Oscars. Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall offers a Silence of the Lambs Night with a movie screening, a replica of Hannibal Lecter’s cage, vendors, re-enactors and more.
Mixing spine-tingling suspense with snark, Sharon Stone in "Diabolique" (BRD-304) wins my heart. Isabelle Adjani as damsel-in-distress, Chazz Palminteri as villain, and Kathy Bates as suspicious investigator round out the cast. Shirley Knight delivers the wonderful line, “Welcome to Pittsburgh and the entire Three Rivers area.” Indeed.
My favorite combination suspense-horror-disaster movie, "The Mothman Prophecies" (DVD-8111) has Richard Gere researching the West Virginia legend at our own Mellon Institute. Grief-stricken at the loss of his wife (Debra Messing), he tries to prevent the inevitable catastrophe foretold by a monster. The ending hits even harder after our own Fern Hollow Bridge collapse.
Of course, I have to include George Romero’s "Night of the Living Dead" (DVD-8408), which premiered 50 years ago on Oct. 1, 1968. It was followed by "Dawn of the Dead" (DVD-775), and "Day of the Dead" (BRD-350). Romero, a CMU grad, created and solidified our image of the slow-walking, flesh-eating, only-destroyed-by-head-shot zombies. I love the very beginnings of apocalyptic stories, and Night’s grainy, black-and-white images add a shadowy mystery to the unfolding doom. Dawn of the Dead, shot at Monroeville Mall, still works as a commentary on our consumer culture. With the downturn of mall shopping, a remake would have to feature zombies staring down at their phones, but that‘s hardly as frightening.
Romero also wrote and directed "Martin" (DVD-8102), starring John Amplas (my brother-in-law) as a young, innocent-looking vampire. He’s haunted by flashbacks to previous candlelit eras but denies that “magic” and the supernatural exist. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times says “Martin has plenty of graphic, though not lingering, gore and some humor, too, but pathos is the essential quality of this modern-day vampire tale.”
"Innocent Blood" (DVD-8410) startled me more with Marie (Anne Parillaud) wandering through her apartment in the nude than any of the vampire attacks. Lonely and hungry, she reads newspaper articles about Pittsburgh’s Mafia murders, and muses “What about Italian?” She seeks out gangsters, drinks their blood, then shoots them to look like mob hits. The police interrupt before she can finish off the mob boss, Sal (Robert Loggia). One of the cops, Joe (Anthony LaPaglia), chases her into a church and upstairs to the roof, where Marie heals from her gunshots and flies into the night. Meanwhile, Sal heals from his wounds and wakes up on the autopsy table as an infected vampire. He escapes the police and goes back to bite his gang into immortality. “Nobody can touch you. We’re going to take this town!”
It’s an interesting premise, if a bit uneven. There are lovely shots of Pittsburgh, and plenty of place names throughout, the most hilarious being Marie’s French-accented “How ze hell do I get to Shadyside?!” There are funny bits, like the music – Sinatra’s “I’ve got you under my skin” and the secret-agent, lounge-lizard music when the mobsters drive away. Loggia’s obviously having a blast playing Sal, with lines like “I’m going to grind you down to blood and screams,” and “People! They’re stupid liars. They’re like sheep with shoes!” Don Rickles, cast as an “innocent victim,” gets this from Sal: “He wasn’t so innocent. He was a lawyer.” And there are some surprising scenes between Marie and Joe, with a romantic finale where they walk into the sunrise on a Downtown street. As Marie says, “Why not?”