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.
Mythological adventure and some horror.
JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963)
Directed by Don Chaffey from a script written by Beverley Cross and Jan Read that was quite loosely based on the third century Greek poem The Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius, Jason and the Argonauts stars Todd Armstrong as the eponymous Jason (although his voice was dubbed over by Tim Turner) – and man who, despite being named in the title, is not a particularly interesting hero. He’s the song of King Aristo of Thessaly, who was murdered by a man named Pelias (Douglas Wilmer), who stole the throne twenty years ago. During his takeover, Pelias made the mistake of murdering one of Aristo’s daughters in the temple of the goddess Hera (Honor Blackman) – who was so upset that her temple was desecrated that she became Jason’s protector. Her fellow god Zeus (Niall MacGinnis) will allow her to help the adult Jason five times as he seeks a great tree at the end of the world that has a golden fleece hanging on its branches that has the power to heal and bring peace.
Jason plans to acquire the fleece and win Thessaly back from Pelias... but he doesn’t know that Pelias is aware of his plan. As Jason gets a ship built (the Argo) and recruits a crew (the Argonauts) that includes Nigel Green as legendary strongman Hercules, Pelias also makes sure his son Acastus (Gary Raymond) will be one of the crew members.
The set-up and the chatter between Zeus and Hera wasn’t very interesting to me – but thankfully, Jason and the Argonauts gets much more entertaining once the Argus sets sail. As Jason and his crew make their way to the end of the world, they encounter a gigantic, living bronze statue; they capture a bunch of flying Harpies; they get saved by the sea god Triton; Jason wins the heart of Medea (Nancy Kovack, dubbed by Eva Haddon), the high priestess of the goddess Hecate; and not only does Jason have to deal with the traitorous Acastus and the obstructive King Aeëtes (Jack Gwillim), but he also has to get pass the Hydra that guards the golden fleece.
Jason and the Argonauts was a box office disappointment when it was released in 1963, it didn’t make its $3 million budget back – but as years have gone by, it has gained a strong following and come to be seen as a classic. The main reason it’s appreciated is its special effects, which were provided by stop-motion animation visual effects artist Ray Harryhausen. The living statue, the Harpies, the Hydra, they were all brought to life on the screen through jaw-dropping stop-motion animation... and those aren’t even the most popular effects in the movie.
In the climactic sequence, Aeëtes conjures an army of skeleton warriors – and Jason and the Argonauts’ battle with those skeletons has become one of the most iconic sequences in cinema history. All thanks to the near-magical abilities of Harryhausen. Because of him, this box office disappointment will never be forgotten.
EVIL DEAD BURN (2026)
In the build-up to the release of Evil Dead Rise in 2023, Evil Dead franchise rights holders Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and Rob Tapert let it be known that they were already looking forward to producing more entries in the series, with Campbell revealing they were hoping to make a new sequel / spin-off every two or three years. Last year, they proved their commitment to this idea by hiring Sébastien Vaniček, who made his feature directorial debut on the French horror film Vermin, a.k.a. Infested, to write and direct a new installment in the franchise.
Raimi made his feature directorial debut with the original The Evil Dead, which introduced Campbell as iconic hero Ash Williams. Ash returned for Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, and the Ash vs. Evil Dead TV series, with Raimi directing the films and the first episode of the show. After seeing a short film directed by Fede Alvarez, the Evil Dead rights holders gave him the chance to make his feature directorial debut with the Ash-less 2013 Evil Dead. Then Lee Cronin was hired to make the Ash-less Evil Dead Rise based on the strength of his own feature debut, the 2019 film The Hole in the Ground. So Vaniček being hired to make the next Evil Dead movie right after entering the feature world with Vermin / Infested is very on brand for this franchise.
Vaniček has said that he had complete creative control on his Evil Dead movie, which he endeavored to give a French twist. That said, Campbell has said that he stepped away from the creative process on this after Vaniček “turned in a 10-page treatment to say, ‘Here’s my rough idea. Here’s what I’m thinking, A to Z’ and I think he got 20 pages of notes back. That’s when I said to myself, ‘You guys [Raimi and Tapert] got this. I think you guys got this.’ I got tired of arguing points with someone who’s 26 years old about story and structure, and all that sort of stuff, and what matters and what doesn’t matter.” So it’s not surprising to see that Evil Dead Burn does contain elements that feel like they might have been put in there at the encouragement of the rights holders.
Vaniček wrote the script with Florent Bernard, crafting a story that begins with a tie-in to the wrap-around segments of Evil Dead Rise. The possessed character Jessica (Greta Van Den Brink) returns just long enough to kill a couple of fishermen and cause a car wreck that kills William Price (George Pullar), the abusive husband of French transplant Alice (Souheila Yacoub)... but Jessica passes the evil on to Will as he dies. When his corpse is taken to a funeral home, Will passes the evil to his father Edgar (Erroll Shand) – and that kicks off the “Deadites terrorize an isolated group of people” portion of the film, as Edgar and the forces of evil proceed to torment a Price family gathering at the family’s crumbling old home in the woods.
Alice, Will’s mother Susan (Tandi Wright), his brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan), and grandmother Polly (Maude Davey) are being specifically targeted by the Deadites – and Joseph’s girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan) is caught up in the situation as well – because Will’s grandfather Dr. Benjamin Price was a professor of ancient history who was part of a group (or cult) of historians called the Circle of the Wise Men and became obsessed with the Book of the Dead, the Necronomicon. Grandpa Price had the Kandarian Dagger, which can destroy Deadites, hidden away in the old family house. Joseph has found it, and the Deadites are not pleased. That’s a lore-heavy set-up, complete with reference to Raymond Knowby, the archeologist who brought the Necronomicon to a cabin in the woods and kicked off the events of Raimi’s side of the franchise, which makes me wonder if a lot of this came from rights holder suggestions. Deadites wanting the Kandarian Dagger and a secret society called the Circle of the Wise Men doesn’t seem like something a filmmaker making a one-off contribution would think to bring to a franchise, but maybe I’m wrong.
Whatever the case, the set-up is so long that it takes more than 40 minutes to get to the “hell house” stretch of the film, which is part of the reason why Evil Dead Burn ends up with a running time of 109 minutes, which is a good 10 to 15 minutes longer than any of these movies really should be. It drags a bit, and those first 40 minutes are not something I’m going to want to revisit many times in the future.
Things get livelier in the remaining hour, with Vaniček and Bernard continuing to deal with dysfunctional family and bad relationship issues amidst the relentless Deadite attacks, while also dropping in the occasional (much appreciated) bit of humor. Evil Dead Burn may not have as much blood in it as some of the other Evil Dead movies do, but it’s a very physically brutal movie. The actors get thrown and slammed around so much, it’s enough to make you wonder if they had to do some professional wrestling training before they reported to set.
There are demonic assaults, cringe-inducing moments, dismemberments, and even a Deadite dog... but I still feel like there’s something off about the presentation of the Deadites in these movies that aren’t directed by Raimi. They aren’t as interesting, as entertaining, or even as scary – even if the Edgar Deadite is one of the most hateful looking characters I’ve ever seen. Evil Dead 2013 worked despite its underwhelming Deadites, but neither Evil Dead Rise nor Evil Dead Burn have managed to hold my complete attention throughout their entire Deadite assault sequences. The filmmakers are putting in the effort, but these movies just aren’t working for me anymore, and it’s not only because I miss seeing Bruce Campbell as Ash. The movies feel like they’re just going through the motions of bloodshed and brutality, and it’s not engaging.
At least I didn’t find Evil Dead Burn to be as irritating as I found Evil Dead Rise to be... although it does have one of the most mind-boggling end credit scenes I’ve ever seen, and I suspect that was another rights holder mandate.
BACKROOMS (2026)
While I cover horror movie news every weekday as part of my job, I have next-to-zero awareness of what’s going on in the online horror community. YouTube videos, viral memes, creepypasta stories, they all pass me by. So all this stuff about “liminal spaces” and people being creeped out by the sight of empty rooms, I don’t know what it’s all about or why some find it to be so fascinating. I do know that it’s so popular, A24, James Wan‘s Atomic Monster, filmmaker Osgood Perkins, the Stranger Things makers at 21 Laps, and Planet of the Apes producers Chernin Entertainment all joined forces to make the horror movie Backrooms, which marks the feature directorial debut of VFX artist Kane Parsons. Parsons is 21 now, but he was only a 17-year-old high school student when his movie deal came together.
Backrooms is based on a series of viral videos Parsons released through his YouTube channel Kane Pixels in the year building up to the movie deal coming together, building up more than 100 million views. None of those views came from me, and I still haven’t watched any of Parsons’ YouTube videos. But I have watched his movie.
Directed by Parsons from a script by Will Soodik, the movie is set in 1990, which was somehow 15 years before the director was even born. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as alcoholic furniture store owner Clark, who discovers a portal to an extradimensional space in one wall of his store’s basement. He becomes obsessed with exploring the seemingly endless maze of “backrooms,” even enlisting his assistant manager Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) to venture through the rooms with him, camera in hand.
The sight of the backrooms really did nothing for me in terms of horror creepiness, but I was impressed by the construction of them. The crew did a hell of a job putting these rooms together.
Eventually, Clark and his cohorts discover that there are people living in the backrooms – odd beings that I started calling “Potato Heads” after a certain bizarre scene. These beings can be dangerous... which Clark’s therapist Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) learns when she drops by the backrooms just in time for the climactic sequence.
Backrooms goes on a bit too long at 110 minutes and, for me, kind of sputtered out in the end, but I had a good time watching the movie for most of the running time, even if the backrooms themselves tend to be quite uneventful.
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