Films that left Tubi

 

I believe there was a whole library of MGM titles that are leaving Tubi after June, including three I watched before they "expire": After Midnight (1989), Leviathan (1989), and The Rosary Murders (1987). All three have been reviewed on this blog in the past. The first two were films my daughter wanted to watch with me, so I took care of that. I didn't realize until today that The Rosary Murders was available on Tubi and I'm kicking myself. I guess Donald Sutherland as a very solemn, rather sad priest, seemingly quite lonely and sleepy-eyed. Now Sutherland's acting style is rarely every over the top or electric...he's always been more subdued and understated. But there is just something about how Sutherland's Priest matches the dreary, overcast, cold environs of industrial Detroit, the symbiosis of the two that coincides with the depressing story of a serial killer of priests and nuns that seems to tie in with the suicide of a teenage girl. Sutherland would seem to be a potential target unless he can draw out the killer or somehow stop him without breaking the sanctity of the confessional. I just kept saying every time I saw Belinda Bauer, "She's so pretty. She's so pretty." She is this rather melancholic news reporter wanting to make a big impression on the rosary murders story (each time a member of the Church is killed, a black rosary is left behind, wrapped in the hand of victims), failing to get that much needed surge in it, eventually finding her life changed through meeting and spending time with Sutherland. When the killer stops by Sutherland's confessional booth, telling him about his daughter's death and continuing to kill, the priest will have to become a sleuth, hoping to find out more about the reasoning behind the murders. The Detroit locations, the time of year the film is shot, Sutherland's very low-key, mature performance, and the eventual unsettling confession of the suicide victim's father all seem to work a spell over me. Bauer's relationship with Sutherland is handled with care and the Church clearly keeps them from ever going further than friends. Durning as the feisty, very stubborn priest, with a certain message he always relies on (even Sutherland knows by heart!) is as memorable as you might expect. The murders of so many people, with a revelation of incest, culminating in Josef Sommer telling Sutherland to get a good look at the bulletin boards of so many victims...the sanctity of the confessional and stopping a killer, all the emotional weight, with Sutherland scanning the pictures of kids at the end is quite a packed finale.

After Midnight has that Dead of Night homage at the end (without Redgrave or that Ventriloquist dummy) where the vicious neverending repeating nightmare Jillian McWhirter experiences over and over, which starts with a college class taught by a "professor on fear" (Ramy Zada), continuing through a stormy night of ghost stories shared by fellow students, with a member of the class wanting revenge on the teacher for scaring the literal piss out of him, until a house is burning and the narrator is moving through every tale shared in the film. I have always felt this anthology, sort of reiterating that the late 80s was just sliding into mediocrity before the 90s sort of dies for the horror genre until Scream (1996), was just okay. But it has always been an easy watch. And seeing Marg Helgenberger with her husband in the third tale was fun...especially since Alan Rosenberg plays against type as a psychopath. Helgenberger really was destined to be a star.

I was looking for a copy of Leviathan on DVD and was amazed at how difficult it was. You'd think this film would be easy to find, considering it is a MGM property. The 2014 Scream Factory Blu is out of print, and imports seem to be the only available editions. Leviathan was always available to rent in the past and always seemed to be on cable or premium channels. Anyway, it was about to leave Tubi so I definitely wanted to give it a viewing before it "expired" from the site. Those Stan Winston effects are wonderfully disgusting...how the cast are "absorbed" into this bigger "fish" monster. But come on, man...you couldn't let Ernie Hudson live?! The man made it all the way to the surface...why, just why?!

Speaking of Leviathan, that score, along with Winston's icky effects monster (the faces of the cast protruding from the creature just get under my skin), really stands out. That and Weller punching out Foster for delaying their rescue...sort of "comes out of left field". The Rosary Murders is a film that I think might make an interesting pairing with The Exorcist III: Legion. They both sort of have that feeling of increasing (and gripping) woe to them. Homicide detectives and priests caught up in crime scene after crime scene, with Detroit and Georgetown carrying this uneasiness and sense of penetrating ugh.