What is it about my old pal Rebecca and Olde Scratch?
A film built around the earthly machinations of the Devil has but to waft north on the breeze and she takes to the skies in her vintage Sopwith Pup kayoodling like one of Wagner's valkyries and biding me to join her at the cinema.
So of course, being a gentleman I fire up my classic modified 1972 Ford Galaxie 500 (powered entirely by the slow radioactive decay of my hopes & dreams) and made for the worker's paradise, Salisbury Beach.
We thrilled to Nicholas Cage in "Season of the Witch" if for no other reason than to watch amazed as Ron Perlman never once condescended to unfurrow that prognathous brow of his.
But of course if I was a disaffected medieval knight and I had to transport a real witch to some monastery for exorcism I'd want Ron Perlman at my side as well, the man is a like a smirking redwood tree.
Besides it was just nice to see Ron in a role where he isn't covered with three inches of colored latex appliances.
As for Nicholas Cage what happened to him? He raked in 20 million from pay-or-play deal on an meshugginah unproduced Superman movie AND STILL he ends up making B-movies fighting CGI demons like he was Sarah Michelle Gellar or something.
Its an object lesson in making good investments in hard times lemme tellyuh.
And then there is Anthony Hopkins in "The Rite".
I like Anthony Hopkins he is a scary guy, scariest Welshmen to ever play Richard M. Nixon in the movies as a matter of fact.
He just knows where in the script to put on that reptilian "Dr. Hannibal Lector" voice and let the chills radiate out from the movies screen and across the audience.
So when it came time to find an actor to play the Vatican's best exorcist who ironically become demonically posessed, I mean who ya gonna call?
Burt Reynolds?
NO, Sir Anthony he is your man!
Pretender to the vacant throne of Cinema's Malefactor Maximus, Boris Karloff, because like all great golden age horror film actors, Anthony has one edge on the locale competition, he is a foreigner and therefore exotic by the standards of Peru Massachusetts and beyond.
No my problem with "The Rite" was simple, like Kevin Smith's love letter to the sheer mystic power of Canon Law "Dogma, this film depends on validating Catholic theology in order to deliver the chills.
And maybe just maybe the film's biggest shock is director Mikael Hafstrom's naive belief that moist pink eared Colin O'Donoghue could ever shout the devil out of Anthony Hopkins.
Well whatever, I had a grand time twice...although I'm beginning to suspect Ms. Rebecca Cathcart-Monet has a sort of love-hate relationship with The Prince of Darkness.
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