Actions Have Consequences

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

Sci-fi horror, thrills, and a comic book adaptation.

4D MAN (1959)

A year after making the classic sci-fi horror film The Blob, director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. and producer Jack H. Harris re-teamed for another sci-fi horror film, 4D Man – this one also written by Harris, and sporting a budget almost three times the size of The Blob’s ($300,000 vs. $110,000). It may have had more money behind it, but it’s not nearly as popular... and I could understand why while I was watching it. 4D Man is good, but it’s not nearly as interesting or entertaining as The Blob. 

James Congdon stars as Dr. Tony Nelson, who has created an electronic amplifier that’s meant to allow objects to achieve a fourth-dimensional state and pass through any other object like a ghost passing through a wall. After accidentally burning down his own lab while conducting an experiment, he seeks the help of his more responsible brother Dr. Scott Nelson (Robert Lansing), who’s working on an impenetrable material called Cargonite.

Scott has a beautiful co-worker, future Catwoman actress Lee Meriwether as Linda Davis, that he plans to marry, even though they’re not actually in a romantic relationship... but when Tony enters their lives, Linda quickly falls for him and pursues him, even though he’s hesitant to get involved with “his brother’s girl.” The loss of Linda’s heart is just one blow Scott is dealt, as he’s also unappreciated by his employer... so he borrows his brother’s amplifier and starts conducting experiments on himself, turning himself into the titular 4D man.

Scott enjoys passing through walls so he can commit crimes like bank robbery, but being the 4D man has a serious side effect: he starts aging at a rapid pace and can only rejuvenate himself by draining the lifeforces of other people. Scott causes more death and damage as the side effects get worse and worse – and it’s up to Tony and Linda to stop him.

It may not be The Blob, but 4D Man is a fine sci-fi horror film in its own right, with a fun, incongruous jazz score and a comforting old school vibe. This is exactly the sort of movie that’s the perfect match for a horror host show like Svengoolie – so I had what I consider to be the perfect first-time viewing experience of it, since I actually did see it on the Svengoolie show.

KLUTE (1971)

The 1971 psychological thriller Klute is a movie I would hear about here and there over the decades and I was always intrigued by it, mainly because it has such an odd title. What is Klute? What is it about? What does the title mean? Clearly I didn’t have an intense desire to find out the answers to my questions, because it took me many years to finally get around to watching the movie... But now I’ve seen it, and now I know.

Directed by Alan J. Pakula from a screenplay written by Andy Lewis and Dave Lewis, Klute stars Donald Sutherland – and he is Klute. The movie is named after his character, John Klute, a detective to goes to New York City in search of a missing family friend, chemical company executive Tom Gruneman. It’s kind of odd that the movie is named after him, because Klute is about as dull as cardboard. Sutherland has admitted that he didn’t get along with Pakula and that “the director had a specific idea, which I didn't particularly understand, nor was I particularly interested in,” and his lack of interest certainly comes through in the film.

One of the only leads Klute has to follow is the fact that an obscene letter to a call girl named Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) was found in Gruneman’s office. So Klute puts her under surveillance. Not only does he gradually get pulled into Bree’s life as he conducts his investigation, which unearths the idea that Gruneman’s disappearance might have something to do with a john that beat Bree up a couple of years earlier, but somehow he also gets Bree to fall for him – even though she’s reluctant to get into a relationship because she prefers the freedom of being a call girl.

This is a thriller that doesn’t have much in the way of thrills until toward the end, even when people connected to Bree start turning up dead. It’s mainly a character study of Bree, digging into her mind and her way of life... Which makes it even more strange that the movie is called Klute, because she overshadows him in a major way. The movie is a terrific showcase for Fonda, with maybe five minutes of thrills packed into its 114 minute running time.

I’m glad I finally checked Klute off my “to watch” list, but it didn’t leave me eager to have any further viewings.

THE HOUSEMAID (2025)

I love a good thriller with all the twists and turns and traditional trappings, and that’s exactly what director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine (working from a novel by Freida McFadden) have brought us with The Housemaid – a film that delivers that good old thriller vibe so well, moviegoers ate it up and drove the box office numbers past the $300 million mark.

Sydney Sweeney stars as Millie Calloway, a young woman who just been paroled after serving ten years of a fifteen-year prison sentence for manslaughter. Homeless, she’s desperately searching for a job and even applies to be a housemaid for the wealthy Winchester family, even though she knows she’s going to lose any hope of landing the gig as soon as they run a background check. But, to Millie’s surprise, Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) decides to not only hire her but also let her move into their mansion, giving her a room in the attic.

Millie will be cleaning the house and doing errands for Nina, her husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), and their young daughter Cece (Indiana Elle), while trying to avoid the creepy groundskeeper, Enzo (Michele Morrone). But things start to fall apart on the second day, when Nina, who had been quite friendly to her before, turns against her. The woman seems to hate Millie and is constantly playing mind games with her, having her run unnecessary errands, wasting her time, and even accusing her of stealing the car she let Millie borrow.

Nina is known to have serious psychiatric issues, which Millie sees her display on a regular basis... but Andrew is so charming and so endlessly patient with his wife, the new housemaid quickly develops a crush on him. Which, of course, is going to lead to nothing but trouble in the long run.

The actors all did solid work in their roles, with Sweeney’s Millie being the put-upon character we follow through, Sklenar being the suspiciously nice guy, Morrone lurking around with not much to do – and Seyfried stealing the show with a wonderfully high-strung performance.

The Housemaid has an intriguing set-up and the film plays out the mystery in an interesting way. Unfamiliar with the source material, blog contributor Priscilla and I were kept guessing throughout, trying to determine exactly which way the story was going to go. Clearly something was going to go terribly wrong in the Winchester house, but in what way? We had our theories, but none turned out to be entirely accurate. It made for a very fun and satisfying viewing experience.

WATCHMEN (2009)

I had high hopes for the film adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic twelve-issue comic book series Watchmen. Since the source material may be the all-time greatest comic book story, I figured a movie based on it could be one of the best movies ever made – or at least one of the best comic book movies ever made. After decades of trudging through development hell, the project looked like it had been made by a team – director Zack Snyder, screenwriters Alex Tse and David Hayter – that were taking the exact right approach, which was to stick as close to the comics as possible. For the most part, the movie is an accurate reflection of the book... but something got lost in translation. The positive review by Nick Dent of Time Out Sydney put it best: “As a comic book, Watchmen is an extraordinary thing. As a movie, it's just another movie.”

Watchmen takes place in a world that resembles our own, but with an alternate history that involves costumed superheroes. It started with street-level vigilantes known as the Minutemen, then came the accidental origin of Doctor Manhattan, a god-like being whose existence reshapes global politics. His intervention in the Vietnam War leads to an American victory, allowing Richard Nixon to repeal term limits and remain president into the ‘80s. Despite this, public opinion turns against superheroes, and they’re outlawed in 1977.

The story begins in October of 1985 with the murder of Edward Blake, who used to be the costumed vigilante the Comedian. He also worked for the government and carried out the assassination of JFK. The only still-active vigilante, Rorschach, investigates the murder of the Comedian. While doing so, he reconnects with former heroes including Doctor Manhattan; Adrian Veidt, known as Ozymandias, the smartest man in the world; Laurie Juspeczyk, who inherited the mantle of Silk Spectre from her mother; and Daniel Dreiberg, a wealthy man who asked the original Nite Owl if he could take over for him. He’s basically Batman without the childhood trauma. 

Tensions escalate. Manhattan retreats to Mars, Ozymandias survives an assassination attempt, Rorschach is imprisoned, and the world is on the edge of nuclear war. It’s not clear whether there’s simply a killer of vigilantes at work here, or if the Comedian’s death is part of a larger conspiracy.

The heroes are all flawed in some way. Rorschach is unhinged, the Comedian was a brutal monster, and Doctor Manhattan, despite his godhood, is emotionally distant, morally detached, and unsettling in his personal life. The character work involves sexual dysfunction and failed relationships. The human traits of the characters and the fact that this is all happening in a world that we recognize make it feel grounded and grimy, even when there are big superhero moments. Then, it all builds to a haunting moral dilemma. 

Watchmen is a genius work of art and should have been considered an untouchable, standalone masterpiece... So, of course, the film rights were snatched up in 1986, in the middle of the series’ run. The project passed through the hands of multiple writers (Sam Hamm, Charles McKeown, David Hayter, Alex Tse) on the way to the screen, and the same for directors (Terry Gilliam, Hayter, Darren Aronofsky, Paul Greengrass, and finally Zack Snyder). The idea had always been to stick reasonably close to what Moore had written, but Snyder chose to be incredibly faithful to the source material, essentially using the comics as storyboards. They couldn’t include every single moment from the comic, of course. There’s a motion comic that covers the whole run, and it’s about six hours long, even after cutting a lot of dialogue. But Snyder fit in as much as possible, and even planned to make a live-action adaptation of Tales of the Black Freighter on the side. That’s a pirate story that’s being read by a character in Watchmen, and excerpts are included in several issues. It would have cost 20 million dollars to film it, so it became an animated short directed by Daniel DelPurgatorio and Mike Smith.

A terrific cast was assembled for the film: Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, Billy Crudup as Doctor Manhattan, Malin Åkerman as Laurie Juspeczyk, with Carla Gugino as her mother. Matthew Goode plays Ozymandias, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the ill-fated Comedian. Stephen McHattie, Matt Frewer, and Danny Woodburn have notable supporting roles. In several cases, it’s difficult to imagine anyone else playing the characters. 

As you might expect, Snyder enhanced the violence, making some of the characters more brutal and deadly than they were on the page. That didn’t sit well with some fans, including myself. When I saw some of the violence being gleefully dealt out by characters who shouldn’t be killing people, that’s when the movie really started to lose me. And yes, Snyder presents some of the action in slow-motion, as he is known to do. 

Still, the movie stays true to the comic... Up to a point. Like all previous attempts at adaptation, Snyder’s movie has a different ending than the comic. And it’s easy to see why filmmakers were hesitant to put the book’s ending in a movie, as it’s too complicated and weird. Previous writers attempted an underwhelming work-around. Hayter got closer to cracking the issue. Tse found the most acceptable alternative, and it works just fine for the movie.

The theatrical cut had a running time of 162 minutes. On home video, a director’s cut boosted the runtime to 186 minutes... and if you want a more complete experience, there’s an ultimate cut that edits in the animated Tales of the Black Freighter, for a total running time of 215 minutes.

Watchmen was not the superhero movie the general audience was looking for in 2009, so its box office numbers barely surpassed its budget. Few, if any, felt that the greatest comic book story ever written had translated to the greatest comic book movie ever made, but Snyder’s dedication to the source material was respectable. The drama and the characters are just not as effective on the screen as they were on the page... But it was admirable attempt to do things right, and it looks pretty cool most of the time.