SO LONG, DAVID LYNCH

You held a style that was all your own, as Eraserhead proved in spades, and that uniqueness, that defiance of artistic conformity with all of its weird, Wizard of Oz trim, carried throughout your specialized career. 

The Elephant Man, which became an irrefutable classic, sealed your status, followed by the epic, Dune (one that's aged far better than some, including yourself, dared predict), Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire and My Son, My Son, What Have You Done? (a collaboration, no less, with contemporary visionary, Werner Herzog). These features, in turn, were accompanied by your sporadic shorts and serialized experiments: Dumbland, Rabbits and On the Air (ah, such rich, surreal stuff).  

Then there's Twin Peaks, the oddest of murder-mystery shows, which grew supernatural through its progression, only to deliver a science-fiction punch. Thereafter, its theatrical prequel, Fire Walk With Me, and Showtime's sequel series, The Return, drove home your saga's unconventional blend to brave, new, unexpected heights.  

You were an amazing, avant-garde painter, too, with the fruits of your labor spotlighted in David Lynch: The Art Life. (To hear you reflect and watch you create propels a sensation that can't be tapped anywhere else.) 

And as an actor, you went on to redefine your precious quirks, in particular as Twin Peaks' FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole, but also in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (as the legendary John Ford), Lucky (with Wild at Heart/Twin Peaks/The Straight Story's Harry Dean Stanton), Zelly and Me (with Blue Velvet/Wild at Heart's Isabella Rossellini), Lumiere and Company, My Beautiful Broken Brain, Girlfriend's Day, European Nights, Barracuda, Heart Beat, Nadja ... and A Fall From Grace. 

You were a quiet yet forceful man of discerning taste, who took to Pennsylvanian texture and grave, factory grime. In other words, you invested your heart and soul into all that you touched, with a body of work that no one can ever emulate or top: a vast, unorthodox assemblage that will only grow greater over time.  

WITH ETERNAL RESPECT AND GRATITUDE: MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY 2025 (1/20)

 

I SAW WOLF MAN 2025

It doesn't deliver a Lawrence Talbot or Waldemar Daninsky and surely not their 3D counterpart, Colin Glasgow (remember the 1979, drive-in revision?). However, (The) Wolf Man 2025 still adheres to a lineal, lycanthrope motif, as forged by director Leigh (Saw/The Invisible Man 2020) Wannell, who cowrote with his spouse, Corbett (Insidious) Tuck.

This Universal/Blumhouse chiller presents a neo-generational unfortunate, who's bitten by the breed of monster he's destined to become, but in this case, he and his family end up confined to an inherited farmhouse, where the gent licks his wounds as his inner, festering beast seeps through. This puts mother and daughter in a Cujo-like corner, fearing that their maddened loved one (their presumed protector) will soon tear them limb from limb. In other words, it's a warped, family drama, where the father doesn't wish to become the abusive man his father was, and in fighting this dreaded draw, becomes something way worse. Sam Jaeger and Zac Chandler establish the father/son clash in a nervous prologue. 

Christopher (Kraven the Hunter) Abbott plays Blake, the son, thirty years after the fact, with Julia (Ozark) Garner as his wife, Charlotte, and Matilia (Starve Acre) Firth as his daughter, Ginger (a nod to Ginger Snaps, perhaps?). They're uncertain, flawed people, but despite their drawbacks, pure in heart, which makes their plight all the more frightful, for we don't want them endangered, and yet if such weren't delivered, well, this wouldn't be a horror movie, let alone one that lives up to its baleful title. 

The setting is more sequestered than most werewolf tales, on a par with Amicus/Paul Annett's mystery yarn, The Beast Must Die/Black Werewolf and Charlie Steeds' inn-relegated A Werewolf in England. As such, its intensity presses more toward Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead, Never Let Go and The Shining. It's then a matter of how fast the mayhem will strike at its feverish hub (often mounted through psychedelic vantages), and of course, how soon we'll see Blake's full metamorphosis. 

In advance of the picture's release, the werewolf design (as adorned by its shared monsters) triggered controversy since it didn't match the iconic look of Jack Pierce and Lon Chaney Jr. (or for that matter, Rick Baker and Benicio del Toro's 2010 homage), let alone the subsequent, bone-stretching likes of The Howling, An American Werewolf in London and Silver Bullet. We're given instead a practical-effects, "hillbilly" variant of Josh Harnett's subtle Ethan (Lawrence Talbot) Chandler of Penny Dreadful; Henry Hull's Hyde-ish Dr. Wilfred Glendon of The Werewolf of London; Curt Lowens' broad-brow Director Swift of Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory; and Jack Nicholson's weathered, pack-leader Will Randall of Wolf. That means the look shows more human attributes than not, but there's no denying the evident, beastly trim and lustful hunger, which epitomizes this type of evolved, fairy tale.  

The result is superb, survivalist terror, which is well structured by the straightforward plot, strengthened all the further by its three, identifiable leads. In the end, Wolf Man may not be the Larry Talbot update that many wanted, but as a monster movie, it's solid and fierce, making it a sweat-beaded success, at least in my humble book.  

FOR THE FUN OF IT:

TERRIFIC TEAM-UP: MAN-BEAST VS MAN-MONSTER

 

PHOENIXVILLE PUNK ROCK FLEA MARKET: ROOT DOWN BREWING CO/PRE-VALENTINE'S (1/24)

FAREWELL, JEANNOT SZWARC

Your movies brightened our hearts and souls, and sometimes when need be, sent shivers down our spines. 

Some would say that the imagi-movie realm is where you rose highest, with Somewhere in Time, Supergirl, Santa Claus: The Movie, The Devil's Daughter, Murders in the Rue Morgue 1986, Bug 1975 and the summertime blockbuster, Jaws 2. 

You brought marked artistry as well to Enigma; Extreme Close-Up; Grand Larceny; La Vengeance d'une blonde; Honor Bound; Night of Terror; Hercule et Sherlock; Code Name: Diamond Head; You'll Never See Me Again; A Summer Without Boys; The Small Miracle; Mountain of Diamonds; Les soeurs Soliel; and Lisa, Bright and Dark.  

On television, you tackled Rod Serling's Night Gallery (nineteen installments), The Twilight Zone (1980s run), The Six Million Dollar Man, Smallville (fourteen episodes), Heroes, Fringe, Seven Days, Supernatural, Alias Smith and Jones, The Rockford Files, Columbo, Kojak, Castle, Baretta, Bones, Ironside, It Takes a Thief, Cold Case, The Practice (eighteen episodes), Private Practice, Grey's Anatomy, Boston Legal, JAG (nineteen episodes),  CSI: Miami, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, Without a Trace and much more. 

In my estimation (and I do know many others who feel as I do), you've held your own with the best of them. Your resume proclaims and confirms it, Mr. Szwarc, along with the infinite quality of your work.