Movie Review: Malnazidos (2020)

Malnazidos (2020) directed by Alberto de Toro and Javier Ruiz Caldera

Set during the Spanish Civil War, Captain Jan (Miki Esparbe) fights for the Fascist side though he is a lawyer by trade and not a very good soldier. His uncle is a friend of Franco and gets him out of trouble (i.e., execution by firing squad) for the third time. To prove that he's a worthy and trustable soldier, Jan is given a secret letter to deliver to another unit, a unit far enough away that the mission is one he likely won't come back from. He takes the job rather than being summarily executed. He picks up a young private as a driver (Manel Llunell) and they head off through enemy territory. It's not long before they are captured by a bunch of Reds who are about to off them when they all discover that the dead are coming back to life. The dead don't care if people are fascist or communist, to them everyone is food. So an uneasy alliance is struck to get out of the titular Valley of the Dead (at least, that's the English version of the title, if not a translation). 

This is a fairly standard zombie movie. The historical setting is the only original bit of it. The rest of the film has all been made before--the rakish, authority-flaunting hero, the young, inexperienced sidekick (there's a running gag about the driver being a virgin), the hostile, competent female who winds up with the hero, the evil, scarred scientist who gets his comeuppance, etc. Even with the lack of originality, the movie is still entertaining in a "rainy Saturday afternoon" way. The gore is surprisingly mild for a zombie film, which I didn't mind. The actors do a good job with the semi-cliched roles they inhabit. I was entertained but not wowed by the film.

Mildly recommended, and not to be confused with the 1946 movie with the same English title.

Easton Maryland Ghost Tour

Last Thanksgiving (that's Thanksgiving 2025 for any of you reading this long after it was published) we went to Maryland's Eastern Shore for the extra-long weekend. We had booked a ghost tour for Friday night but the weather was awful and a couple of us were sick. The company was gracious enough to let us reschedule, so I picked a date at the end of the school year when the kids were supposed to have a half-day of school. That meant we could leave home early and be on time for our appointment. So we had a mini-vacation that featured the tour (finally).

Eerie Echoes of the Eastern Shore: Easton Ghost Tour starts at the Talbot County Free Library. When we arrived, we saw our guide coming toward us holding a lantern. The tour started by the library, which has a haunted item inside. Patty Cannon was an Eastern Shore resident in the late 1700s and early 1800s. She was also a serial killer. Her story was recorded, well, embellished in a book called The Entailed Hat, or Patty Cannon's Times. The library has copy 496 of the 500 printed in the initial run. The book is in an atmosphere-controlled room under glass. A librarian once touched the book and her fingernails blackened and fell off. Our tour guide had the opportunity to touch the book and was quite nervous about it. They didn't even offer her gloves! Her fingernails were okay, though.

Talbot County Free Library

Back to Cannon's story. She ran a kind of anti-Underground Railroad. She had a home where she hosted travelers. She had a freed black man as a compatriot who would encourage escaped slaves to seek shelter in her home. But then she would chain them and threatened to sell them down south. She did not restrict her crimes to black people. If rich people came, like slave traders, she would often poison them or have them shot and then steal their money. She buried a lot of people in her basement and some in the yard as well. Once, a man was traveling by and his horse got stuck in a hole outside her house. He started digging to get the horse out and discovered human bones. He got the sheriff who arrested Cannon. She wound up in jail for two weeks and then died from poisoning before going to trial. Did someone try to take a short cut to achieve justice? Did she off herself to avoid the coming ordeal? No one really knows.

Across the street from the library is the old prison. Easton was originally called Courthouse Town, because it had the only courthouse on the Eastern Shore. It was inconvenient to take criminals across the Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis or Baltimore, so this was a nice solution. The prison at one time housed Frederick Douglass, the famous freed slave who spoke about his experiences all over America and beyond. In the Easton jail, he was threatened with return to his owners. Slave traders would come and taunt him. The building was rebuilt in the late 1800s, including the installation of an elevator. The elevator is said to be haunted, traveling between floors on its own. A woman in a blue dress sometimes rides the elevator or walks the halls of the prison. The guide said it might be the wife of one of the jailers (who lived on the first floor of the jail), or it might be a prisoner.

The town's prison (at least it used to be)

Across the street is a fine restaurant that used to be a hotel. The hotel was on the carriage route and not far from the railroad that came later. With its proximity to the jail, a lot of disreputable types stayed there. Those were the men who taunted Douglass. The building has the usual haunting problem--upstairs lights, the sounds of people walking around when no one is there, the sounds of chains.

Can't stay here anymore

Further up the street is Tidewater Inn, a fine establishment that hosts events and has had many famous people stay there, including the likes of Elvis, Bing Crosby, and John F. Kennedy. The hotel, with so many patrons and such a long history, has its own ghosts. Staff don't linger long in the basement because they can often hear the sounds of a party--old-time jazz music and clinking glasses and the hubbub of the hoity-toity. They also have a haunted elevator, this one with a woman in a yellow dress who folds her hands in prayer and disappears when the elevator doors open.

Tidewater Inn

Across the way is the Avalon Theater. The theater served as a movie theater but is now a performance venue. It too has a haunted elevator. A young actress sometimes gets off and vanishes. An actress was murdered in the theater with her body discovered in the elevator. The building owner once spotted the ghost. Later, he saw a picture of a line of actresses and recognized one of them as the ghost he had seen. The upstairs bar has also had some odd activity with knives. A bartender once brought his young daughter to work and left her by the bar while he went on an errand. He came back to find her terrified and a large knife plunged into the bar. She was ten or twelve and would not have had the strength to impale it so deeply. Another worker was surprised when a knife flew behind her head while she was working alone at the bar. Our guide speculated it might be the ghost of the fellow who murdered the actress.

Avalon Theater

Our final stop was at Thompson Park. The guide told us about seven different fires that happened over the span of 150 years. Each fire burned down one or two blocks of the city with no fatalities. Another circumstance that holds the instances together is the presence of a woman in a red dress preceding each fire. In the 1900s, someone bought the property and happened to be walking along when a lady in red passed and said this would be a good area for a park. Not knowing the history of the fires, the owner considered the idea and went ahead with it. There have been no fires since.

The park in daylight the next day

The tour guide took our photo

So the moral of the story for this ghost tour is clear. Don't ride elevators in Easton and avoid women in anachronistic dresses, especially when they come out of an elevator (which you should have avoided in the first place).

Book Review: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl was a practicing psychotherapist who was sent to Auschwitz during World War II as a prisoner. He took a manuscript for a book which he tried to sneak it in but it was quickly discovered and taken away, presumably destroyed. His wife came in with him, they were separated, and he never saw her again. He became a number, a day laborer, in a system where the odds of survival were bleak. Prisoners were overworked, underfed, never given new clothes (they had to check over dead prisoners to see if they had better shoes or coats and do a quick swap). They were subject to the whims of the capos and SS running the camp. The life, if it could even be called such, was miserable and hopeless. Frankl, in the first part of this book, describes his experiences in excruciating detail. 

His time there had a tremendous impact on Frankl. The crucible of suffering showed how different men reacted in many different ways to the conditions. Out of this, Frankl developed a distinct field of psychotherapy that he calls "Logotherapy." In Logotherapy, the main motivation people have is to find meaning in their lives (as opposed to seeking pleasure or power). In the concentration camps, the only thing left was the hope for something external to oneself. For Frankl, it was preserving the book and the hope of seeing his wife again (though she died in the camps). He had something to live for, a reason to survive the horrible circumstances of his situation. For others, it was family or friends or goals unfulfilled. Happiness is not the object of pursuit, it is the by-product of finding something or someone you have valued, by having a purpose. Frankl quotes Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." Frankl developed his therapeutic practice from these insights.

Being able to reframe suffering from a "woe is me" attitude to a "what is my purpose in this situation" is not just a way to mental health, but to personal wholeness. Guiding people to that point is not easy. The second, smaller part of this book is a brief overview of Logotherapy. It describes various techniques used and provides examples of how they are applied in concrete situations, mostly taken from Frankl's own life and career (with names changed, of course). Therapy is future-focused, taking patients to the point where they can understand their problems better and have ways to minimize or eliminate them altogether.

This book is genuinely great and eye-opening.

Highly recommended.

Sample quote about life in the camps:

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life--daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. [p. 85]

TV Review: Spider-Noir (2026)

Spider-Noir (2026) created for television by Oren Uziel based on the Marvel Comics character

Ben Reilly (Nicholas Cage) is a private detective in 1930s New York City. He used to be The Spider, a super-hero who fought crime (organized and otherwise). That ended five years earlier when his wife died. Since then, crime is on the rise, especially due to the influence of Silverback (Brendan Gleeson), a crime boss who is on the lookout for new opportunities. One opportunity is the emergence of other superpowered people. Through subordinates, he hires Reilly to tail a guy who can cause fires (like the Fantastic Four's Human Torch). The guy sets fire to Siverback's mansion, so finding the flame guy is more important than ever. Reilly discovers another PI on the case, who winds up getting killed when the situation gets more complicated. Reilly is able to talk his way out of the situation, though he winds up being hired by lounge singer Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li), who is more or less owned by Silverback, to find her missing bodyguard who is also developing superpowers. As the situation gets harder and more complicated, will Reilly resume his alter-ego he had hoped to leave behind?

Obviously the answer is yes, though he goes through a lot of angst along the way. Reilly's motto is "With no power comes no responsibility," which he knows deep down is the wrong way to go about things but he's also so burned out and unhappy. Cage gives a good performance, with some of the over-the-top ticks and physicality that he is known for. The PI part of his character lets him bluff his way into and out of situations; the Spider part lets him physically imitate a spider or other insect. 

The show leans into the noir with the down and out detective going up against organized crime, which includes corrupt cops and politicians. The villains are scarred war vets (like Reilly) who have trouble fitting into society, only partly because of their new powers. Plenty of whiskey is drunk and plenty of cigarettes are smoked. The show is available in black and white or color. I watched the first episode in black and white then immediately afterward in color. I didn't think the color added much to the storytelling so I kept with the black and white. The show has dutch-angled shots almost all the time, another trademark of noir films though maybe not as much as here. I found the style enjoyable if occasionally over the top.

Marvel has generally been successful in doing the superheroes-in-a-given-genre treatment (Ant-man as a heist film, Captain America: Winter Soldier as 1970s paranoid political thriller. etc.). This is another example which I enjoyed.

Recommended.

As I publish this (June 2026), the show is only available streaming from Amazon Prime.

Book Reviews: Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign Vols. 3 & 4

Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign Volume 3 story by Takaya Kagami and art by Yamato Yamamoto

Having acquired Cursed Gear (the sort of weapon a human needs in order to kill a vampire in this mythology), Yuichiro is excited to leave school behind and start killing vampires. He's less excited about working in a squad, thinking he is better as a loner. The squad is even less appealing because his school rival, Kimizuki, is also a member. And he's not the leader of the squad, that's a more experience member of the Imperial Demon Army named Mitsuba. The squad travels to Shinjuku to investigate vampire activity. Little do they know that the rumors about an attack are true and they will get more action than they anticipated, even on the way.

I have mixed feelings about this volume. On the one hand, they moved away from the school drama that is prevalent in lots of other manga, so I was happy about that. But then they had an extended shower scene where Mitsuba (who is female) is thinking out loud about the situation. I've never run across more gratuitous fan service before. A combination of steam, body positioning, and dialogue bubbles keep her from being completely revealed. It was annoying and distasteful to me. She could have just as easily been enjoying a cup of tea or brushing her hair or walking out in nature. It's a short scene but it sticks out. The rest of the story is enjoyable, promising more proper drama and action.

Mildly recommended.

Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign Volume 4 story by Takaya Kagami and art by Yamato Yamamoto

The big battle plays out in Shinjuku as Yuichiro's team faces down a lot of vampires, including high-ranking Bathory and, most significantly, Yu's childhood best friend (and now vampire) Mika. The reunion is awkward and more than a little fraught with peril as the two former friends are forced to choose between each other and the factions to which they belong. Both Yu and Mika think the other group is evil and manipulative, so no easy answer is found yet.

The drama is handled really well. Some world-building works its way into the story, giving a bit of the larger context of what happened and how the humans are able to have a chance against the vampires. I enjoyed this volume and will keep going.

Recommended.

Movie Review: Them! (1954)

Them! (1954) directed by Gordon Douglas

This classic 1950s sci-fi film introduced the sub-genre of giant bugs, usually made big by atomic radiation. In this story, a child is found wandering in the desert of New Mexico. She's shellshocked and won't talk to Sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore), who leads the investigation. He and his partner find the RV camper where her parents were, but it's been ripped open from the outside. No valuables have been taken. Making the crime more intriguing, an odd footprint is discovered in the sand. Local forensics cannot identify it, so the cast is sent to Washington, D.C., for analysis. Cue the entry of Doctor Harold Medford (Edmund Gwynn) and his daughter Doctor Patricia Medford (Joan Weldon), both myrmecologists from the Department of Agriculture. They are experts who study ants. Sure enough, they discover an ant colony in the desert. The ants are huge, eight feet long at a minimum. The heroes gas the colony, go in and discover that two queen ants have already left, presumably making more colonies elsewhere. If they aren't found and stopped, it could mean the end of civilization. Well, at least human civilization.

The movie has a lot going for it. The pacing is very good, slowly revealing what's going on (though a glance at the poster gives away the main secret). The actors are all very good in their roles, taking it seriously and not providing any camp. There's a hint of romantic interest from Peterson for the younger Doctor Medford, but she is almost all business. She has some moments to scream, but those are hardly "damsel in distress" moment--any man, woman, or child would scream in the same circumstances. She insists on going into the nest to investigate the queen situation (her dad is too old to do it and the cops don't know what to look for), exhibiting the sort of courage not usually granted to female leads in these films. The creature effects are very good. They are certainly man-made but have plenty of detail and are photographed to give them maximum believability. The ending is another classic bit of 1950s paranoia about what we have wrought with the coming of the nuclear age.

Recommended, highly for sci-fi fans. 

TV Review: The Burroughs (2026)

The Buroughs (2026) created for television by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, executive produced by the Duffer Brothers

Recently widowed Sam (Alfred Molina) moves into The Buroughs, a retirement community chosen by his wife for their twilight years. All their money is sunk into it, so he can't refuse to stay though he is very unhappy there. He initially rebuffs his neighbors but is convinced to try being friendly rather than lonely. His cul-de-sac has a bunch of eccentrics that he meets at a barbecue hosted by his neighbor Jack (Bill Pullman). Sam starts to blend in but the situation gets worse when he goes to Jack's house one night and discovers a monster feeding on Jack. Sam manages to chase the monster away but Jack dies from the injury. Sam's first reaction is doubt, especially since he keeps having visions and nightmares of his deceased wife. Is he mentally unwell or are monsters really creeping around all over the place?

The show follows a familiar story arc for Sam as he tries to sort things out, both with the threat and with his new friends and with his supportive daughter Clair (Jena Malone). The stellar cast includes Alfre Woodard and Geena Davis as neighbors. They all do a great job. The creepy town has all the amenities you'd expect (like the Mexican restaurant, pickleball, and fancy golf carts to get around) and has that menacingly far-too-innocent vibe about it. Not much of it feels original but the blend is nice and Sam is a very sympathetic character played masterfully by Molina.

Mildly recommended--I enjoyed watching this but probably won't watch it again unless some friends or family want to watch it together.