I’ve no idea how 1969’s DRACULA (the dirty old man) got on my list of movies as there’s absolutely no connection, unless somebody thought the protagonist tranforming into the lycanthrope “Jackalman” was “Jekyllman.” The film is an unfunny comedy in which the Jackalman gathers hot women for Dracula’s naked nonconsesual sex games; even the visual appeal didn’t make me want to keep watching. “It was a day like any other … which doesn’t say much.”
THE COMIC (1968) was Dick Van Dyke’s tribute to the silent film comics he loved. As Billy Bright, Van Dyke opens the movie narrating his funeral, then slipping into his flashback booth to remember his career as a silent star, his stubborn refusal to change his act for the talkies, his wife Michelle Lee and most importantly how all his adulteries, selfishness and career failures were the fault of other people. This will get an appendix entry for the Billy Bright short Dr. Jerk and Mr. Hyde in which Van Dyke does a hysterical job struggling to act like normal Dr. Jerk when he’s really Mr. Hyde (“The evil that was inside me is now all over my face.”). Otherwise, none too memorable though Van Dyke does a spectacular job. “I could be twice as big as Chaplin if I were shorter than him.”
THE PURGE (2013) definitely doesn’t qualify but as I mentioned a couple of months back, it does feel connected to Jekyll and Hyde. The premise is that in near-future America, the “New Founding Fathers” hold an annual 12-hour Purge in which everyone is free to commit crimes without penalty on the grounds the catharsis will reduce the aggression inside all of us — “the denial of our true selves is a problem.” Though it’s implied, and I believe later films make specific, this is more an excuse to channel violence against the poor and homeless.
In this, the first film in the series, Ethan Hawke has grown comfortably well-off by selling home security to his community, ensuring they can hunker down and survive the purge. He, spouse Leanne Headley and their kids will also be safe in their home … except that his daughter’s boyfriend, knowing Hawke doesn’t approve of him, has decided to whack him. Then nothing will keep him and his true love from their HEA, right? And Hawke’s son lets a homeless man hide in their house and now the gang hunting him have decided to break in and just kill everyone …
It’s a good, tense thriller but like Fred Clark at that link above, I find it unsettling that some people think it sounds cool, that for 12 hours they could do anything. The whole premise of the film is that it’s not cool, it’s terrifying; we’re seeing the Purge from the POV of people on the receiving end.
Another point is that the film goes with the classic set up of the family unit defending themselves against the terrifying outsiders. In reality, I’d think a lot of the horrors perpetrated during the purge would be coming from inside the house — parents abusing children, father’s molesting children, husbands murdering wives, wives getting rid of abusive spouses, confident they’d go unpunished (some wives are abusive and murderous but the bloodshed usually runs the other way). Or given how often that happens anyway, maybe it wouldn’t affect the rates for those crimes at all. In any case I don’t see myself watching more of the series at this point. “Blessed be our new Founding Fathers and America, a nation reborn.”
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