I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

HULU SNOOZE PART NEUF



Unholy (2007)

I took a break and looked over a couple of films on good ole' Netflix 'cause I miss being able to do other things while the movie is running without my system crashing, the close captioning, and the not-good-but-definitely-a-large-step-above movies offered. I'll be reviewing those a bit later, plus I decided to try Fandor since I heard it has a great assortment of cult horror as well as classic horror - we'll see. I DID watch Alice Sweet Alice (which has several other titles of course), Brooke Shield's first movie (and very brief role), as well as a musical called Jesus Christ Vampire Killer. No, that's not a typo. He's hip, he rides a Vespa, he knows kung fu, and I laughed myself sick.



But back to snoozing - I wouldn't have bothered with this one at all but Adrienne Barbeau is kind of a draw and I wondered how Nicholas Brendon (Xander to you Buffy fans) would do in a major movie role. Uh, well, neither had much to work with in this quasi-horror movie about the Nazi's experiments with the occult. No, unfortunately it's not a period piece, this happens in the present. And based (supposedly) on actual events. So it's pretty much doomed. I mean, they made a whole website trying to push this stuff on the public as a spooky and terrible thing but... bitch, please.

It starts with Martha (Adrienne Barbeau) as the mother of children in their 20's (Umm, okay), a boy and girl. The daughter begins the drama when, believing she is under the spell of a Necromancer (they kept dancing between the phrase 'witch' and 'necromancer') shoots herself. That brings her stoner brother home to take care of his fragile mother. And they start the 'conspiracy' part of the movie, making you wonder (I didn't - the movie just doesn't really cause you to care) who's part of the conspiracy and who's not. Easy to find out according to the movie. If anybody who is involved says a word, they blow their heads off. Simple. Was this a thing?



There are several documentaries that push that yes, Hitler was deeply involved in the occult and believed it to  be behind his rise in power and would keep him there forever. Whoops. This is what is said (not necessarily what actually WAS): Germany, pushing the who Nazi thing, used a swastika believed to be formed from a magical symbol. They of course were THE people on earth - everyone else was scum. So to further their cause, they decided to use the occult to make sure their will was done. Eh, okay some might be dipped in a bit of fact (Hitler WAS off his nut after all) but take it with a grain of salt and put it there somewhere a bit more believable than Bigfoot and less believable than Area 54.

The occult tradition was carried on in the Third Reich mainly by Hitler’s personal army, the SS. An occult research department was established in 1935 with SS Colonel Wolfram von Sievers at its head. With these powers in hand, Germany’s dominance would be indisputable. However, time ran out for the Nazi Party, and defeat at the hands of the allies was to have ended the research.

Or did it? That's what this movie is pushing - kind of a sleeper spy movie saying that the Nazis, before they totally disbanded managed to implant many of their comrades in the US to continue the experiments and eventually, I dunno, take over? They're really not clear on what the ultimate goal was.

So the mother and son try to find answers - but when Martha keeps finding herself waking up in the basement in a hidden room, strapped to a chair with a record running some mumbo jumbo I tossed my notes aside and just said with my arms crossed, waiting for the inevitable ending. I mean, she wakes up each time in this chair strapped down but can GET HERSELF FREE. Does that say something?



The movie waffles a lot over who the bad guys really are, I guess to keep the audience in suspense and make us believe this is a huge thing. Uh huh. So are Martha and her son in danger or ARE they the danger? Ya know, after a while, you really just hope they do the big expose' thing and end the movie. Well I'm gonna 'cause I can. Martha, meek put-upon mother of two is really a BIG Nazi spy whose brainwashed herself into believing that she's just a mother. Uh huh. And she IS the one who's been strapping herself into the chair. Uh huh. And others in the town are full supporters. Uh huh. Oh, and the ultimate goal is threefold: invisibility, time travel and mind control. Okay stop. Now I'm just freaking bored and this is freaking stupid.

Especially since it ends with Martha totally wiping her mommy persona, her son getting the 'invisibility' down and dying because of it (we assume) and her daughter comes from the past (time travel) to confront her brainwashed mom. She shoots Martha and we have the pleasure of the whole film running backwards and watching the beginning of the movie again. Oh please no. But then they cut away to Martha, quite dead and I am quite relieved 'cause this nightmare is over.