Movieline Online

MANON: The name Henri-Georges Clouzot never jumps to the front of those "best director" lists favored by cineastes.  Probably because, as a French director, his work was overlooked and under praised in his own country by the likes of Cahiers du Cinema in favor of British and American genre filmmakers.  The international success of  Diabolique  and  The Wages of Fear  earned him the nickname of "the French Hitchcock," which only serves to somewhat dismiss his career as an imitator rather than an innovator.  But as his lesser-known masterpiece  Manon  (1949) proves, Clouzot was far more adept and adaptable than his reputation suggests. Based on the 18th century novel, Clouzot updates the story to post-WW2 Paris where resistance fighter Robert Desgrieux falls for the morally questionable Manon Lescaut.  A classic case of country mouse and city mouse, Manon's desperate need for money and excitement clashes with Robert's more delicate family-first sens

ONE MISSED CALL J-Horror had already peaked and waned by the time 2003's  One Missed Call  - directed by the infamous Takashi Miike - was released in its native country.  Hollywood had absorbed the techniques and spit them back out in a more conventional fashion.  But in Japan there was still room for more, capitalizing on the "ghost in the machine" urban legend of an angry spirit who leaves a voicemail predicting the victim's death.  Subsequent sequels modified the rules a bit, allowing the message to be forwarded and condemning the next poor sap that hears the fatal lullaby ringtone.     A rather on-the-nose mix of  The Ring  and  Final Destination , the trilogy of films never quite pulled it together until  One Missed Call 3: Final , which sticks to the teenage body count formula the series  should  have been in the beginning.  But Miike's first film sets the tone rather brilliantly at times, lingering on corners and cubbyholes that hint at the angry s

Much like  Star Wars  inspired a galaxy full of cheap sci-fi knock-offs and also-rans, the surprise success of  Porky's  produced a litter of T & A imitators, flocking to a formula that required little more than a cast of horny unknowns living it up on the beach, at a fancy prep school or on a wacky river rafting trip.  So let's give 1984's  Hot Dog...The Movie  some points for difficulty; it's cast of oversexed semi-adults not only stage elaborate wet T-shirt contests and hot tub hookups, but compete on the slopes of Squaw Valley for the world freestyle skiing championship! Harkin Banks (Patrick Houser) arrives at the resort with a ready-made love-interest already in tow:  Sunny (Tracy Smith), a cute hitchhiker who fights her instant attraction to this naive newbie.  But thanks to the quirky "Rat Pack" (led by Dr. Pepper pitchman and the  American Werewolf  himself David Naughton), Harkin is quickly initiated into the finer points of ski bum cultur

It would take a few more years for horror to become overtly self-aware (specifically with 1996's  Scream ), but 1990's  Deadly Manor  rather comically serves the same purpose.  Set on a backwoods estate where six paired twenty-somethings and a mysterious hitchhiker hide out from an impending rainstorm, director Jose Larraz serves up a feedback-loop of inane dialogue, endless corridors and jumbled backstories.  Genre fans will get a mellow buzz from all the expected clichés, but woe to the horror aficionado who tries to take this one seriously.   Deadly Manor  is as pre-fabricated for group mockery as anything that ever turned up on  MST3K .  While exploring the aforementioned mansion, our victims realize that a masked figure is slitting throats and leaving bodies in unexpected places; like the pair of vacant coffins in the cellar...or the crashed car staged like a monument in the backyard.  There seems to be a method to the killer's madness - saved for a convenient f