Double Feature: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)/Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986)

Posted on October 2, 2016 at 11:22 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Jason Lives

Only a year after the “final” installment in the Jason Voorhees saga, Paramount unleashed Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) – because there were bills to pay. The studio made a two-picture deal with director Danny Steinmann (Savage Streets), the other project being a never-made sequel to Last House on the Left. Steinmann proved a controversial choice, though before his death in 2012 he dismissed accusations that it was a troubled production. Regardless, one thing is certain: he was determined to amplify the sex and violence. The former hardcore porn director ensures that many of the women get naked; reportedly one actress was rejected for the role of Tina because her breasts weren’t large enough, with the perfectly named Debi Sue Voorhees (Avenging Angel), a Playboy Playmate, stepping into the role (memorably) instead. In a 2009 interview with Jeff Cramer, Steinmann said he was given “orders” as part of accepting the job. “I was to deliver a shock, scare, or kill every seven or eight minutes.” This certainly explains the messy structure of the film, which is constantly introducing new characters only to kill them a short while later. When making notes for these reviews, I try to keep track of character names. My notes here look like a roll call: Tommy Jarvis and Pat and Matthew and Ethel and Junior and Vic and Joey and Robin and Eddie and Tina and Lana and Billy and Roy and Jake and Pete and Reggie the Reckless…

Corey Feldman reprises his role as young Tommy Jarvis in the prologue.

Corey Feldman reprises his role as young Tommy Jarvis in the prologue.

Many Friday the 13th fans consider A New Beginning the worst in the series, though its reputation has improved somewhat in recent years. The film begins promisingly, with Corey Feldman returning to his Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) role of 12-year-old Tommy Jarvis, visiting the grave of Jason Voorhees on a stormy night. An earthworm-slathered Jason rises from the grave to kill, but it’s all just the nightmare of a much older Tommy, now played by John Shepherd. (Even though time has advanced significantly, it’s quite clearly 1985-ish.) Tommy, who still makes monster masks as a hobby, is being transported from a rigid mental institution to the more laid-back Pinehurst Youth Development Center, where troubled teenagers are rehabilitated in a forested setting. Here A New Beginning quickly settles into formula, with a large cast of broad stereotypes offed one by one by Jason. The two most egregious characters, Ethel (Carol Locatell, Coffy) and her Randy Quaid-like son Junior, are abrasive hillbillies who clash with Pinehurst because the teens are having sex in the woods near their property. “I want this loony bin closed down!” Ethel shrieks. The comedy could charitably be called high camp; or, uncharitably, just lousy. To its credit, the screenplay is self-aware, although with this being the fifth Friday the 13th film, it’s hard not to be: one doomed greaser says, “As far as I’m concerned, all those loonies can get killed off one by one.” (He’s right! They will be!) The comedy almost works better when it pushes itself into the realm of the bizarre, such as two weird moments that threaten to turn the film into a musical. One of the greasers improvises a hyper, coke-addled song while trying to start his car. Another guy has a duet with his girlfriend through the wall of an outhouse, both acting as though even they don’t know why this scene was written. But the most out-of-nowhere moment comes early on, when musclehead Vic (Mark Venturini) decides to take a break from chopping wood to bury his axe in the body of the chocolate-smeared token fat kid, Joey (Dominick Brascia, Evil Laugh), presumably because we all know Jason was going to kill him anyway, and director Steinmann had a kill rate to maintain. (When the paramedics arrived to cart Joey’s body away, my wife said, “Wait? That really happened?” She was waiting for it to be revealed as just another dream.) Turns out this crazed moment has a purpose for the plot – yes, there is one.

Joey (Dominick Brascia) is slaughtered, but not by Jason.

Joey (Dominick Brascia) is slaughtered, but not by Jason.

A spoiler warning, as though it really matters…although much of the film is a misdirect that “Jason” might actually be Tommy Jarvis in disguise, in fact the killer is Joey’s father Roy. When the two masks are both pulled off Scooby-Doo style to reveal the dead Roy, the audience will probably just say, “Wait, who?” A New Beginning has so many characters that we can barely keep them straight, and this guy had the least screen time of any of them. So – as with the first Friday film – Jason is not the true villain of the picture. Why this should outrage so many fans is a bit beyond me…not only does is its twist a nod to the first film (which also lacked a Jason), but who cares who’s been behind the mask? You still get a hockey mask-wearing killer stalking teenagers. Potato/potahto. The final reveal is both silly and atrocious, but it’s also inconsequential to how the film works (or doesn’t work) as a slasher movie. Steinmann’s other order from on high was to make sure that Tommy Jarvis complete a transformation into Jason, and this becomes the film’s coda, as Tommy, in a hospital, removes the Jason mask from his drawer and pulls a machete on Final Girl Pam (Melanie Kinnaman). To the film’s credit, it does continue Tommy’s story from Part IV in a somewhat logical way; as you’ll recall, that film ended with adolescent Tommy shaving his head and demonstrating the warning signs of a future sociopath as he stabbed Jason over and over. The film made money and was #1 in its opening weekend (for the record, this underage author was over in another theater watching the now-forgotten Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, because dinosaurs). Yet reviews were even terrible by Friday the 13th standards, and Steinmann was not invited back. If many fans have come around to the film over the years, it has a lot to do with the go-for-broke exploitation vibe. Steinmann shot a lowbrow movie ready-made for the grindhouse, not the multiplex.

In the prologue of "Jason Lives," Jason once again rises from the grave - but this time it's not a dream.

In the prologue of “Jason Lives,” Jason once again rises from the grave – but this time it’s not a dream.

A New Beginning performed well enough that Paramount didn’t hesitate to get another production in place for 1986. Tom McLoughlin (One Dark Night) wrote and directed Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI; the title made it perfectly clear to fans that this would be a return to form, with Jason back behind the mask. Tommy Jarvis also returns, but not only is he played by a different actor, the third to take the role (Thom Mathews, The Return of the Living Dead), but the events of Steinmann’s epilogue are completely ignored: Tommy hasn’t been possessed by Jason, he’s just determined to put a stop to him. The prologue here echoes that of A New Beginning, with Tommy visiting Jason’s grave on a stormy night, but Jason’s resurrection is not a dream. His rise has Frankenstein proportions, with lightning striking a metal post jammed in his chest. Later in the film a rock song will also reference Frankenstein, perhaps signaling that McLoughlin was more interested in making an old-fashioned monster movie than a slasher. McLoughlin’s film may not be particularly memorable, but it’s better than its predecessor, slicker, wittier, with better developed characters and a stronger, more elaborate climax. He also dials back on the elements which angered so many critics (notably Roger Ebert); his film is much less exploitative than its forebears, with just a little sex and no nudity. Even the sex scene has a sense of humor, with the girl insisting they keep going until the rock song is finished playing. “How much longer?” the boy asks. “It’s only ten more minutes,” she says, and he gives a look of mild alarm. McLoughlin even gives Jason his own James Bond-spoofing introduction, striding in front of the camera and throwing a knife at the audience to unleash the bloody opening titles. Granted, sometimes the humor can be a bit too self-conscious: a caretaker – there’s always one – fills Jason’s empty grave while grumbling, “Why’d they have to go dig up Jason?” before he looks directly into the camera and says, “Some folks got a strange idea of entertainment.” (Breaking the fourth wall is not the way to top Friday the 13th’s foray into 3-D.) But this movie contains the most sublime moment of the entire series. Jason enters a cabin filled with sleeping children. He hears a whimper, and sees that one little girl is awake. He leans over her, his mask almost up against her face, and she closes her eyes and prays. Then he hears car doors slamming outside – the police have arrived – and he’s gone when she opens her eyes. So she checks under the bed.

Jason stalks again in "Jason Lives."

Jason stalks again in “Jason Lives.”

Most importantly, McLoughlin stages suspense scenes, not just “kills.” Camp leaders Lizbeth (the director’s wife, Nancy McLoughlin) and Darren (Tony Goldwyn of Ghost), driving at night toward Crystal Lake (now renamed by the locals to Forest Green) encounter Jason on the road. They don’t get out of the car. Lizbeth says, “I’ve seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly.” But if they reverse, the car will get stuck. No decision – forward, reverse, or out the car doors – is a good one, and Jason waits to see what they’ll do, impassive as ever. In later sequences – Jason stalking teenagers driving at high speed in a trailer, a sheriff blasting Jason over and over with a shotgun to no avail, a final showdown on the lake – McLoughlin demonstrates an understanding of what makes a good Friday the 13th entry outside the sex-and-gore parameters. And it’s hard to dislike a film in which a small child is reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit. Apart from the apropos title, Sartre’s book demonstrated that hell is other people. That was true for Part V, but in Part VI McLoughlin wanted to provide better company. His Tommy Jarvis is much easier to spend time with, and his flirtatious team-up with the sheriff’s cute daughter, Megan (Jennifer Cooke, V), at least makes the film a more enjoyable watch. Is this the best Friday the 13th? Probably not, but in trying to distance itself from the silly, brain-dead excesses of A New Beginning, it manages to provide a welcome dose of thrills and imagination. Not that you’ll remember much of it a day later; such are the problems of going through these motions for the sixth time around.

Friday the 13th Part V and VI

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10 Rillington Place (1971)

Posted on September 24, 2016 at 10:42 am by Jeff Kuykendall

10 Rillington Place

What a fascinating career director Richard Fleischer had. From the nail-biting noir The Narrow Margin (1952) to such varied projects as The Vikings (1958), Doctor Doolittle (1967), Soylent Green (1973), Mandingo (1975), and even Conan the Destroyer (1984), the director was a chameleon, always serving the material at hand. One would be hard-pressed, for example, to guess that the man behind the family-favorite Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) would also orchestrate the almost nauseating tension of 10 Rillington Place (1971), nor that he would accept such a low-budget, small-profile project after the expensive Hollywood epic Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). But Fleischer, who had read the book 10 Rillington Place, eagerly accepted the offer. The true crime bestseller by Ludovic Kennedy was an account of the notorious London serial killer John Christie and his association with an innocent young couple, Timothy and Beryl Evans. In 1949 the couple were living at Christie’s squalid tenement in Notting Hill. Timothy later claimed that Christie offered to perform a cheap abortion for Beryl; the couple already had a one-year-old, Geraldine, and couldn’t afford another child. Under this guise of performing an operation, Christie raped and murdered her. Convinced by Christie that her death was accidental, Evans helped cover up the crime. Later, guilt-ridden, Evans turned himself into police, claiming he had killed his own wife, a misguided attempt to protect Christie and the illegal service he had offered to perform. He seemed to be unaware that his daughter Geraldine was also dead, still claiming she had been sent safely away, as Christie had told him would happen. Evans was convicted for murder and hanged. Christie went on to kill four more women, including his wife Ethel, before the bodies of his victims were uncovered inside 10 Rillington Place, and he was finally arrested and executed.

Beryl (Judy Geeson) goes to the pub with her husband Tim (John Hurt).

Beryl (Judy Geeson) goes to the pub with her husband Tim (John Hurt).

The hanging of the innocent Timothy Evans was one of the critical cases that led to the abolition of the death penalty for murder in England, Wales, and Scotland (the death penalty was suspended in 1965, then made permanent in 1969). As Richard Attenborough explained in an interview with John W. Henderson, “There was a Conservative MP…who was trying to introduce a private member’s bill into the House of Commons to reintroduce capital punishment, and we felt so passionately opposed to this that Leslie [Linder] first, and then Ludo Kennedy, got the idea of making 10 Rillington Place.” In 1971, when this film was released, the story would have been well known to the British public. This only accentuates the tension. Fleischer has crafted a resolutely non-exploitative, painstakingly detailed account of John Christie’s association with Timothy Evans and his wife Beryl, and by creeping steadily toward the inevitable, tabloid-ready outcome, the dread is almost unbearable. Yet Fleischer, who may have gotten the job because of his work on true-crime films The Boston Strangler (1968) and Compulsion (1959, about the Leopold & Loeb case), resorts to the technique of a horror film on only one brief occasion: a seconds-long extreme close-up of Christie’s sweaty face while he strangles Beryl. Only in this moment does Fleischer allow the audience to get swept up in the horror of the moment, seeing Christie from Beryl’s fast-fading POV. Everything else is matter-of-fact, staid, as subdued as Christie’s whispery voice. The film is unsettling, even ruthless in its depiction of the events, but it is also unusually restrained, particularly for a British film of this period. Hitchcock was about to begin work on the thematically similar (but fictional) Frenzy (1972), and to compare the two films at length would be fascinating. Both are deliberately drab, gritty, dreary to look at. The murders, alike in being rapes and strangulations, are shocking in part because of the contrast to working class London, where everyone is too preoccupied, eyes downcast, shuffling through the streets, to notice a killer at work until the bodies turn up. And like Hitchcock, Fleischer keeps his focus on the little details of how a crime unfolds, how it is almost undone in the act (an unexpected knock at the door as workers arrive for some remodeling; an impromptu visit from the victim’s friend, checking in), or how the killer struggles to cover up the crime (a dog digging in the yard where it shouldn’t, just as the police are searching the premises). But where Hitchcock heightens each moment – and even takes license of an R-rating to make rape more explicit – Fleischer holds back. His technique mimics Christie: quiet, unassuming, but nonetheless merciless.

Christie (Richard Attenborough) murders Beryl.

Christie (Richard Attenborough) murders Beryl.

Attenborough’s performance is a wonder. Christie claimed he couldn’t raise his voice due to a gas attack while he was serving in WWI. Kennedy wrote that Christie was accustomed to feigning illness to elicit sympathy. Christie, though a violent man, was also an introvert, living in his own little world. Attenborough incorporates these details into a complex portrait. At his home in 10 Rillington Place, he moves quietly about, maintaining the order with which he’s most comfortable. He whispers orders to his wife Ethel (Pat Heywood, Romeo and Juliet), getting her out of the house for the murder he’s plotting. He offers tea to his victims. He’s reassuringly reasonable as he slips a mask over the woman’s face – treatment for bronchitis, or, in Beryl’s case, anesthesia for the operation – while turning on the gas that will render her unconscious. His elaborate explanations to first Beryl, and then (after her murder) Tim, follow a train of logic too confidently delivered for the naïve pair to dispute. He doesn’t outright offer to perform an abortion, when he learns of Beryl’s desire to have one. He resists, suggesting his moral code is against such activities; reluctantly he says he could put in a word with some medical professionals willing to perform the operation, and it’s Beryl who says that would be much too expensive. He makes her believe that she has come up with the idea of submitting herself to Christie’s care, going alone with him into his room, removing her undergarments, lying on the floor while he slips the mask onto her face. And the superb screenplay by Clive Exton (Jeeves and Wooster) reaches its queasiest heights in the scene that follows, as Christie casually manipulates both his wife (Judy Geeson, To Sir, With Love) and the illiterate Tim – played unforgettably by John Hurt (Alien) – into thinking that disposing of Beryl’s body in secret is the only possible course of action. “You know that manhole cover by the front door?” Christie says to Tim. “I’ll lay her to rest there.” Of course the audience should be screaming at Tim to wise up, but by now enough evidence has been offered of Tim’s low intelligence and limited means. He has little money, and he doesn’t want any trouble with the law. Christie ties him into a knot with ease, never raising his voice. Christie promises to take care of little Geraldine, and we’re gutted as we realize that Christie will do just that.

Christie manipulates the distraught Tim.

Christie manipulates the distraught Tim.

Even when Tim finally turns himself into the police, he can’t think straight – Christie’s spell is still cast on him, which explains his multiple conflicting confessions. In watching Hurt’s helpless performance, I couldn’t help but think of Brendan Dassey of the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer (2015), who was similarly coerced to confess in a murder trial despite giving details that did not match up with the crime.* (Tim is convinced Beryl’s body is down the manhole. It isn’t.) Part of what makes 10 Rillington Place such a mesmerizing watch is knowing that Tim is doomed, but that he doesn’t have the faculties to properly defend himself – neither from Christie, nor the courts. Fleischer doesn’t spend a lot of time on the trial and execution of Timothy Evans, although he allows some breathing room for the audience’s outrage when Christie testifies against him. Tim is crushed by the system. His execution is filmed and edited as a conscious opposite of In Cold Blood (1967) – no lingering; Tim is done before he knows what hit him. And this, in a way, is just as powerful a condemnation of the death sentence, because we know it’s the wrong man who’s just been processed with such cold efficiency. Fleischer, again, makes his point with eloquent but devastating understatement.

* In August a judge overturned Brendan Dassey’s conviction based on the methods of obtaining his confession, though the Wisconsin attorney general has filed an appeal.

10 Rillington Place

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Things to Come (1936)

Posted on September 17, 2016 at 10:44 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Things to Come

By the 1930’s, H.G. Wells had become one of the most prominent political and sociological thinkers and futurists of his time, writing volume after volume speculating on where mankind was headed and where it ought to go, with technology and reason playing prominent roles. It wasn’t enough to write about the future. He was now taking ownership of it, offering what he hoped would be practical road maps toward a utopian tomorrow. Therefore when he initiated his major foray into feature films, Things to Come (1936), he was interested in a much more cerebral science fiction fable than the works that had brought him fame in the late 19th century: The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man. The story was based on his 1933 The Shape of Things to Come, a history book looking back from a century in the future; but it was also informed by his eat-your-vegetables nonfiction study The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1933). Eager to have the Wells name on a project, noted film director and producer Alexander Korda offered the author a contract to write a screenplay for Korda’s London Films. Wells made sure the contract stated that his screenplay could not be altered – though the film was ultimately shortened – and the result is an unusually didactic and inert science fiction film, in which the characters are not human beings but symbolic props. Distinguishing the film is its extraordinary design. Korda hired William Cameron Menzies, who had directed a number of films including the striking pulp Chandu the Magician (1932), but who was best known as the ingenious art director for films like The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Menzies had an eye for scale and arresting images, which made him ideal for filming the fantastic. The set designer was Alexander’s talented brother Vincent Korda (The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Third Man). Filling out this murderer’s row were cinematographer Georges Périnal (The Blood of a Poet, Le Million, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) and Bauhaus painter László Moholy-Nagy. Wells insisted that his son, Frank Wells, contribute to the art direction, though even with the stunning images that the film contained, the author was never satisfied with the look of Things to Come. He was a difficult man to please: the film looks fantastic.

Looking back on the architecture of 1936 from the perspective of 2036.

Looking back on the architecture of 1936 from the perspective of 2036.

Despite its dry-as-toast script (originally called Whither Mankind?), Things to Come is a milestone in science fiction cinema, perhaps by default. In those days of pulp SF magazines and SF movie serials best suited for children, serious SF was scarce. Fritz Lang’s landmark Metropolis (1927) was an exception to the rule, but Wells was not a fan. In a lengthy review for the New York Times, Wells called the film “silly” and focused upon its lack of originality (cribbing ideas from Mary Shelley and Karel Čapek, he notes), but mostly he disliked its unrealistic depiction of a futuristic society. “One is asked to believe that these machines are engaged quite furiously in the mass production of nothing that is ever used, and that Masterman grows richer and richer in the process,” he wrote. “This is the essential nonsense of it all. Unless the mass of the population has the spending power there is no possibility of wealth in a mechanical civilization.” He was also not persuaded by Lang’s vision of a vertically oriented and stratified urban society. “That vertical city of the future we know now is, to put it mildly, highly improbable. Even in New York and Chicago, where the pressure on the central sites is exceptionally great, it is only the central office and entertainment region that soars and excavates. And the same centripetal pressure that leads to the utmost exploitation of site values at the centre leads also to the driving out of industrialism and labour from the population center to cheaper areas, and of residential life to more open and airy surroundings…The British census returns of 1901 proved clearly that city populations were becoming centrifugal, and that every increase in horizontal traffic facilities produced a further distribution. This vertical social stratification is stale old stuff. So far from being ‘a hundred years hence,’ Metropolis, in its forms and shapes, is already, as a possibility, a third of a century out of date.” His Things to Come was going to serve as a corrective. His 100-years-hence city would not touch the sky, but be driven underground.

Wells' underground Everytown of 2036.

Wells’ underground Everytown of 2036.

That Wells was so disinterested in the drama or characters of Metropolis is telling as to the approach he would take with his film. As a futurist, he wanted the vision of the future to be as accurate as possible (from his view, anyway); he found lazy touches (“the motor cars are from 1926 or earlier”) too distracting to engage with the metaphor-driven allegory Lang presented. In this way, his commentary was a bit like Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweeting the scientific inaccuracies of movies like Gravity. Yet Wells was interested in political and sociological allegory. Novels like The Time Machine and In the Days of the Comet accomplished this quite well. Things to Come, however, reduces its characters to delivering topic sentences and concluding paragraphs. There is very little in the way of drama or action. The story is rigidly divided into three acts, all set in “Everytown,” England: Christmas 1940, a devastated post-war 1970, and a Utopia of 2036. Though all three have their compelling elements, it is only the second act which offers up some semblance of human drama, allowing the film to briefly flutter to life. World war – Wells’ eerie prediction of WWII – has raged for decades, and by 1967, half the human race has been exterminated by chemical warfare called “The Wandering Sickness.” The stricken are called “Wanderers,” and they’re shot down before they can infect anyone else – a brief and effective passage in the film anticipating George A. Romero. Three years later, in the ruins of oil-starved Everytown, a despot has come to rule (Ralph Richardson, who offers the only true performance in this film). His is one of many isolated city-states that have resorted to a primitive existence. Both Richardson and his mate, the frustrated-feminist Margaretta Scott, are bemused by the arrival of a man in a flying machine, John Cabal (Raymond Massey, The Old Dark House). Richardson thought the technology of flight to be lost, but now he dreams of building his own fleet of fighting aircraft, and raids the nearby “Hill People” to gain access to their coal and begin to manufacture fuel once again. Cabal, who has come from a technologically advanced society, “Wings Over the World,” based in Basra, Iraq (!), is imprisoned. Richardson’s only engineer, Richard Gordon (Derrick De Marney), looks up to Cabal and plots a revolt. This divide between the science-based society and the war-obsessed brutes is the same kind of allegorical structuring that Wells was using way back when he was writing about the Eloi and the Morlocks, although they were slightly different signifiers. But whatever brief drama unfolds in Act Two, it is dissipated as quickly as the “peace bombs” that Wings Over the World drop on the city, a sleep gas that pacifies, allowing a brighter future to commence. The conflict that develops in Act Three is unconvincingly developed, though one can at least sit back and enjoy the fabulous matte paintings and sets decorated with glass furniture. In 2036, the descendant of Cabal (Massey again) attempts to send bright young people to the Moon by firing them out of his Space Gun (a giant cannon). A mob of Luddites rise up against him, stirred up by Theotocopulos (Cedric Hardwicke, Suspicion), who distrusts the role science is playing in society.

The bombed-out Everytown of 1970.

The bombed-out Everytown of 1970.

Ultimately, Wells hoped to present an optimistic view of the future, to show that after enduring many trials, we could finally eradicate warfare and the petty concerns of modern politics, embracing mankind’s destiny of exploring the stars with science and reason as our tools. Some of his predictions were accurate: though his vision of the next World War was heavily informed by his experience with the First (gas attacks, biplanes), the scale and devastation of WWII – which would begin earlier than he guessed – would set the course for the rest of the twentieth century, albeit in different ways. Even the third act’s depiction of the hostility between men of science and “Luddites” is reflected in modern debates about global warming and the resentment toward scientists and universities from extreme Conservatives. He was correct that cities would continue to grow outward rather than upward, Dubai excepted; it remains to be seen if we will begin burrowing underground. We did get to the Moon, but much sooner than Wells guessed, and not via a cannon-sent projectile. Whatever its scientific accuracies, Things to Come works best not as an essay but as a visual experience. The high point is a montage depicting the advancement of technology into the twenty-first century, spinning whirling flashing bubbling sciencey things that do God knows what, leading to images of Everytown transformed and idealized. (And, because it is the future, everyone must wear togas with large shoulder pads.) But even in the first two acts, Menzies delivers one arresting sight after another, from the spectacular bombing of Everytown to its post-apocalyptic aftermath. In one haunting montage, a boy playing at being a drumming soldier is suddenly dwarfed by the silhouettes of men marching to war. Later, we see him dead beneath rubble. Another soldier is crucified on a wire fence. Though Menzies and Korda weren’t allowed to change a word of Wells’ script, it is in striking images like these that Things to Come truly finds its resonance.

Things to Come

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