Day 350: It! and The Sublet

Blame this entry on Hush. I watched Hush in September but it was my first post of October. All of October was meant to be my Spooktoberfest movies (all 31 of them). So, I either stop my blog on November 1st or I double up the reviews one day. To make matters more confusing, this is for a day that hasn't happened yet (Monday the 16th). Just trust me.

It! is not a movie about a demonic clown in a small town in Maine but rather a 1966 movie starring Roddy McDowall as a man who figures out how to control a Golem. This is a weird little movie. In the opening scene, a warehouse is burnt down that belongs to a British museum and the only thing that survives is a Golem statue. Upon examining it, the curator of the museum dies mysteriously. Roddy McDowall is the assistant curator who finds the body and thinks one of the Golem's hands have moved. In a plot development completely unrelated to the Golem, we find out Roddy is pulling a Norman Bates and living with the corpse of his mother. He occasionally steals things from the museum for her to wear and then brings them back. He slowly figures out the Golem has been killing people (somehow) and tries to determine if he can use it to his advantage. Meanwhile, the girl he loves is falling for an American sent to analyze the Golem for authenticity. Lots of moving parts in this movie, for sure.

This movie was pretty par for the course except for the weird running subplot about Roddy McDowall living with his dead mom. There is a fantasy sequence half way through where he sees a naked girl on a couch. As he moves to seduce her, he finds it is just his mother's desiccated corpse. Womp Womp. It never amounts to much except to show that he was mentally unbalanced before gaining access to his own Golem. I like that they reference the German silent film The Golem in this one. It was a classy touch for a Psycho ripoff. Anyway, it all plays out in a way you wouldn't expect (hint: nuclear bombs are involved) so it kept me entertained.

The Sublet, on the other hand, plays out beat for beat like you would expect...for the most part. A young couple who just had a baby come to see about a sublet and find no one is home to great them. There is a note in the entryway saying if they like it, they can stay. So the couple stays and almost immediately things start going on. There are door knocks with no one there, a locked room that keeps unlocking itself and furniture that refuses to be rearranged for long. All pretty par for the course of haunted house/apartment movies. The woman's husband is neglecting her for his work and brings his ex-girlfriend home one night to "run lines." So, the woman is stuck at home with her baby all day and has nothing better to do than read an old journal she's found there.

The ending gets telegraphed way in advance. There are a couple of spooky moments, like the scene where the wife realizes she's slowly been poisoning her husband. This is not a ghost in search of revenge so much a ghost that wants its old life back. Most scenes seem to unfold with a dream logic, like when two cops come to tell the woman she is a missing person. Things move at a brisk pace and although nothing very new or original happens, it can still be entertaining. I would give this one a flat C.