Michael Sullivan Movies

Set in a small Quebec town in the late '20s, this moving drama follows the life and exploits of Celeste Beaumont, a talented young pianist, who gains local celebrity at the town movie theater for her gifts as a silent film accompanist. As an added attraction, Celeste dons ornate gowns for each performance. Audiences are just as interested in her ever-changing apparel as they are in the film. Awkward Pierre Blaudell is her biggest fan and eventually convinces Celeste to be his wife. Shortly after she bears his son, Pierre joins the army. She insists on joining him at the base and his meddlesome, snooty parents insist she give them her son. After Pierre is killed in battle, Celeste flees to New York where she finds steady employment as a jazz pianist. She finds a life-long companion with a black musician and chronicles her experiences in a diary that she passes on to her son after he grows up. He becomes a painter and once his own son is grown, reads him the story of Celeste, the youth's grandmother. Intrigued, the young man heads to the Big Apple in hopes of finding her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Set at the North Sea Cottages, a wooded retreat for gifted children, the film begins with the campfire retelling of the legend of Madman Marz (Paul Ehlers), a mean, drunken farmer who went nuts one night and hacked up his entire family with an ax. Marz was lynched by ten locals and hung from a tree to die, but when they came back for the body in the morning, he had vanished. Now, the story has it, he roams the woods and will come and kill anyone who says his name above a whisper. Of course, a moronic teenaged counselor screams his name, and on the final night before Thanksgiving break, the crazed madman starts hanging and hacking the horny counselors one by one. This all might sound like it has potential to be a rousing gorefest along the lines of Friday the 13th or The Burning (both of which it slavishly imitates), but that would ignore the wretched songs, tedious pacing, bad acting, and ludicrous makeup. Leading man Tony Fish was never heard from again, and co-stars here with Harriet Bass, Seth Jones, and Jan Claire. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

The sophomore effort for director Joe Dante, a future protégé of Steven Spielberg, this low-budget, high-camp horror spoof of Jaws (1977) features several chiller stars of yesteryear. Insurance investigator Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is dispatched to find two missing teenage hikers near Lost River Lake. She hires surly backwoods drunkard Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) to serve as her guide. Searching the area, they find an abandoned military facility. The only resident is Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy), former head of a top-secret project to breed piranha for use in the Vietnam War. The project was closed down years ago, but Hoak has continued raising a deadly strain of the flesh-eating fish. When Hoak is knocked unconscious, Maggie and Paul accidentally release the piranha into a local river, which leads to the lake where a children's summer camp and a newly opened tourist resort will provide plenty of fish food for the hungry predators. Maggie and Paul race to warn the locals, but their pleas fall on skeptical ears, such as those of resort owner Buck Gardner (Dick Miller) -- until the piranha reach the swimmers. Piranha (1978) was co-written by John Sayles, making his motion picture debut. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

The final film released under the Andy Warhol moniker (which Warhol executive produced) is a much more polished affair than Flesh, Trash or Heat, but preserves the oddball wit and eccentric flair that made those films so memorable. Directed by Warhol film editor Jed Johnson, Andy Warhol's Bad focuses on Hazel Aiken, a New York housewife who has to support a houseful of relatives on her own. She pays the bills by operating an electrolysis service out of her home and also by running a murder-for-hire service staffed exclusively by women that specializes in unsavory jobs like killing children and house pets. As a result of her latter job, she has to deal with unwanted attention from Detective Hughes, a corrupt cop who wants her to surrender one of her employees so he can make an arrest. Hazel's complex life grows even more difficult with the arrival of her nephew J.T. (Perry King), a sleazy layabout who wants to join her hit squad. As the bodies pile up around her, Hazel discovers that her cold-blooded take on capitalism and family values comes with a price she didn't imagine. Andy Warhol's Bad differs from previous Warhol productions because of its higher production values and Hollywood-friendly casting, but retains its sense of underground credibility thanks to a wild story line that trashes every taboo in arm's reach to create a memorably bizarre satire. Some sources erroneously list the year of release in 1971; it was in fact produced in 1976 and issued to theaters by Roger Corman's New World Pictures in 1977. The MPAA classified that version of the film with an X. It was later reedited to receive an R, which is the version available on video. ~ Donald Guarisco, All Movie Guide

This satire follows the exploits of a young hippy who goes looking for Life's meaning in Central Park. There he is accosted by a corpulent black woman while he watches a young man moon an old woman while she curses at him. He then goes on to have more adventures that lead him to marry a kindred spirit, get a job, and begin raising a daughter. Things are fine until he loses his job, gets abandoned by his wife, and must raise his girl alone. He ends up back in the park pondering the meaning of it all. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide