Wicked Wicked/Review

Movie gimmicks have been used for the longest time in order to attract the viewers to experience the film in theaters. Nowadays, we have 4DX technology that utilizes shaking seats and all kinds of scents to make the audience immerse more into the film, but back then there are several gimmicks created specifically for each film. For instance, William Castle's The Tingler has few random shaking seats install in the theater, which cleverly links to the storyline in the film, or the U.S. release of “The Horrors of the Black Museum” has the 12-minute introduction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWgU1lJHB4k) by a psychologist who tells us about the hypnotising and how this film can hypnotize audience into feeling pain and fear through the "Hypnovista". In addition, there's another kind of gimmick that focuses more on the actual technology involving film screening, such as the anaglyph 3D technology (which never works for me), the extra widescreen Cinerama technology, the infamous Sensurround sound system that can literally damage the building, and, of course the Duo-Vision. What's the Duo-Vision, you may ask? Well, remember that scene in Brian DePalma's Sisters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28P_dZTdTpQ ) in which they split into two screens that show both a group of people that try to hide the body of the victim they just kill and the witness that tries to call the cops? Imagine if that's the whole movie....

Wicked, Wicked is the only film with Duo-Vision technology so far. For 6 years since I saw the trailer featured in an episode of The Cinema Snob (as a part of "42nd Street Forever" trailer compilation review), I always wanted to see how the film would look like. Plus, the trailer itself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfAsKZCJ7_g ) tries to claim that it's almost as important as the invention of talkie movies, color films, and widescreen! Moreover...

"Now, the most exciting storytelling technique in film history. Anamorphic Duo-Vision. A new film experience. You don't need glasses, but this spectacular does require special projection equipment, so we can't show you scenes in Duo-Vision. But you'll see twice the action! Twice the excitement!"

They are half-correct here. Duo-Vision is actually 35mm film that's projected in 2.65 : 1 ratio. Technically, they can "letterbox" it and show in 16:9 scale, but this is a campaign to create suspicion among moviegoers, but on the other hand, the fact that it has to be screened in widescreen prevented it from being shown on TV for many years and it slowly becomes obscure flick.

Years later, I almost forgot about the film itself, until recently when Quentin Tarantino shows this film as a part of his "programming that focuses on leading men of main character Rick Dalton’s era" to promote the new Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood flick. Luckily, I later find the chance to watch this film (not at QT's theater, unfortunately), so of course I expect a lot on how Duo-Vision actually works and how goofy it is.

This is a plain Murder/Mystery flick. There's a killer in the hotel who kills 3 guests who share some similar traits. Then, the hotel security man starts investigate on suspects and have to stop the killer to attack his ex-girlfriend. Sounds interesting, right? Well, the problem here is that the audience can easily guess who the killer is since there's a flashback showing his traumatic past during his FIRST screen appearance! Moreover, the film actually reveals who the killer is halfway through, so the rest of it is more about whether our hero will save the girl or not and seeing events on split-screen. It's quite a little bit tedious in the next-to-last part of the film, but the Duo-Vision actually saves the film from being a bland movie.

There are several sequences that show the intentional comedic tone of the movie. For example, there's a woman who, on one side of the screen, tells a story that she used to be a ballet dancer who danced in front of prestigious people and, years later, her husband passed away due to health problem, but on the other side of the screen it's revealed that her real occupation was a nude dancer and she actually murdered her husband to get an insurance fund! Another example is when our hero and his ex-girlfriend (who becomes a singer now) make love, it cuts to a quick montage of war sequences, gunfire, and it ends with a picture of nuclear explosion! It makes me laugh so hard and shows me the clever editing of this film. Combined with interesting characterization and fun-but-intense atmosphere, it's easy to attract the audience from beginning to end. And for those who worry whether it's confusing to watch the film in 2 screens or not, don't worry. The film usually has dialogue only on one side of the screen, while the other one is usually silent or inserting ambient noises while other characters are watching something or walking around.

As you may guess, this film has a lot of downsides in both good and bad terms. First, there's a mysterious woman in the hotel who plays organ and provides the soundtrack throughout the whole movie. Let's face it, how does she know when the killer will strike or when the romantic sequence is about to begin? She's almost as suspicious as the killer himself in my opinion. Next, the killer has motivation to kill every blonde woman in the hotel since they remind him of abusive stepmother. This makes sense until you realise that there's just 4-5 victims that he killed here. I mean, what happened when he stranded around before working here? How many blonde women does he have to kill around that time? And why does our hero's ex-girlfriend has to wear blonde wig in the first place? There are several things that don't seem right to me. Finally, the killer's death scene. It's perhaps one of, if not, the most over-the-top death scenes I've ever seen. In both screen, we see him slowly falls from the hotel in slow-motion while he opens his mouth. His pose and the bad special effects generate a lot of unintentional hilarity here.

In the end, Wicked, Wicked isn't as bad as what critics said. At least I consider it to be a fun ride and creates high rewatchability value since there might be few details that you miss on the first viewing. Guaranteed to be fun on this upcoming Halloween!