"Bones," "Gothika," "Haunted Mansion" 'Tis the season when the early fright films that are on time and post-production start to crop in the theatres. The late horror films will show up in December and January, as they try and get their money back after they missed their October target dates).

'Tis the season when the early fright films that are on time and post-production start to crop in the theatres. The late horror films will show up in December and January, as they try and get their money back after they missed their October target dates).

The one that owns the season now is the youth-skewing 'Bones,' starring Rapper Snoop Dogg as a 1970s supernatural spirit come back to avenge his killing.

"BONES"

The spirit of the 70s is suffused in the film. Jimmy Bones, the processed neighborhood 'hood but in a kindly protective way, is shown with his car with its diamond in the back, sunroof top, while he's digging the scene with a gangster lean.

Pam Grier, the 1970s female Icon and the forerunner of female or Grrl Power, was the avenging 'Coffy' before Princess Leia ever fired a ray gun. She's Pearl, the old girlfriend of Jimmy Bone, and like many others who lived in the neighborhood at the time holds the secret which is like a deadly debt that is about to come due.

She plays a neighborhood neo Miss Cleo, as she draws her Africentric Tarot cards to tell her customer's fate. She had a similar role in the sequel 'Scream, Blacula Scream,' the first film in which she didn't bare her formidable breasts.

The entire film in fact has a hidden agenda as a 1970s reunion and celebration. Pam Grier's 'Gangstas' co-starred with fellow 70s Black film icons (I don't use the fuzzy term 'Blaxploitation,' and neither should you) Fred Williamson of 'Slaughter;' who co-starred with 'Three The Hard Way's' Jim Brown, 'Huggy Bear' Antonio Fargas and more, as the former teen gang bangers reunite to save their neighborhood from the modern day deadlier and drug dealing bangers in Gary, Indiana. Which could use some vigilantism. But I digress.

Of course, 70s period music had to be in the mix for 'Bones.' The Dells' 'The Love We Had (Stay on My Mind)' plays in the background as Pam Grier and Snoop Dogg share a kiss. 'Payback' appears, with the non-singing snoop Dogg trying --and failing badly-- to cover the James Brown hit that is a movie theme in itself.

'Bones' spent way too much time building up, but this was character development that is often lacking in most youth and horror films. For instance, can you remember anything about the hapless people who were in either of those 'Haunted House' films in the last two years? I rest my case.

Here, 'Bones' under Ernest Dickerson, onetime Spike Lee's cinematographer and set designer now director, takes on a class conscienceless tint, as some suburbanite Buppies decide to rehabilitate a run-down building that the locals cross the street to avoid.

Back in the late 1970s something bad happened there, and the very ground is cursed. The stone structure looks like a leering skull, with arches for eyes and blocks for menacing teeth.

'Bones' to its credit takes the time to address class income and responsibilities to those left behind in the nation's century-old cities. When pampered Patrick, his brother and sister buy the old building with plans to turn it into a nightclub and recording studio for their rap groups their father Jeremiah, played by Clifton Powell, hits the roof.

'I didn't work hard all my life to leave this place for you to move back into it! Look at this place -- nobody's going to come down here!

'Sell the building. The corporation will buy it from you,' he demands, then pleads to his son.

'I don't need a mule,' the Buppie dad tells his Buppie spawn when they bring up the topic of Reparations. 'I have a Lexus. And nobody gave it to me, I earned it. And you wouldn't know a mule if it came up and bit you on your ass.'

Earlier, Patrick to sell his siblings on the idea gives them the Gentrifiers pitch. 'I got a great deal on this building.'

'This neighborhood is coming back!' he tells them enthusiastically about the windowless but study wreck on the garbage strewn street.

'Yeah, but where in the hell has it been?,' quips one of the others. alluding to other classic horror movies. Maurice, one of his buds quips, 'and whoever is alive at the end of the week inherits all of Vincent Price's money, right?'

Snoop Dogg, or Calvin Broadus as his parents call him (and as the end credits state for legal purposes) does a pretty fair job acting in 'Bones.' Not exactly a neophyte, he's even in a small part opposite Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke in 'Training Day.' Snoop had a small role in the excellent 'Caught Up,' a film noir murder mystery with Bokeem Woodbine and Powell.

The movie has glaring plot holes and illogical occurrences but if you want to see Shakespeare, then watch PBS. 'Bones' is fun to watch, and it has the 'Jump Factor' covered, although some are telegraphed from far, far away. There are some scenes that will make you flinch, and others that will make you give up your popcorn. There's one scene in particular that will take your appetite away for anything white!

Film veteran Khalil Kain stars as Patrick, who is the film's hero because it sure as hell isn't the murderous Jimmy Bone, 'black as coal and hard as stone, with a diamond on his finger and one on his car...' as the children's rhyme went, just as in 'Candyman,' another of the Videoviews Halloween Picks On The Black Hand Side coming up next.

Cynthia is winningly played by the Bianca Lawson who earned her money in 'Bones.' She had to wallow around in a bloody bed and have maggots in her face, marking her as a real trooper.

Clifton Powell is a rising star who co-starred in several films in the last few years, such as the 1970s placed 'Dead Presidents,' also with Woodbine from 'Caught Up,'

Powell played the father in 'The Brothers.' who shared Gabrielle Union of 'Bring It On,' with 'Two Can Play That Game' and 'The Best Man's' Morris Chestnut.

One standout in 'Bonse' is Rick Harris as Eddie Mack, the local drug dealer. He plays the pockmarked-faced plastic bag-wearing, White girl loving, vicious processed hood so well and with such good dialog delivery that he probably has stage work in his background, as 'Sugar Hill's' Michael Wright, another classically trained scholar.

BONES directed by Ernest Dickerson and from New Line Cinema is rated R for gore, drug use, some language and fleeting nudity, which will be taken out for TV; and lots of gore with throat slashings; heart removals without the benefit of anesthesia; vicious dog gobblings; crooked officer killings and what have you. Not exactly Family Night at the movies.

GOTHIKA

Halle Berry extends herself into the horror genre in her latest film, a Gothic Horror Story as herself in the women in peril when her psychiatrist character finds herslef on the other side of the glass...

CINEMA VIEWS by Kevin j. Walker, Film Critic

HALLE BATTLES HORROR WRAITH IN CHILLING SIKE "GOTHIKA"

by Kevin J. Walker, film critic

"I'm not crazy. I'm possessed"

-- Dr. Miranda Grey, now on the other side of the glass in the supernatural horror flick "Gothika"

Halle Berry continues to push the edges in her acting career, and her undeniable zest may propel her latest film in the popular horror genre to some impressive receipts as well as gaining her even more admirers.

"Gothika" features Berry as a psychiatrist who ends up on the other side of the glass with her former patients in the asylum after she is the premiere suspect in her husband's brutal death. She doesn't know what the hell is goings on, but a strange apparition is trying to get in touch with her, but neither she nor we know if this will be to her benefit or doom.

Berry's character has to come to terms with her complicity in a murder when she receives flashes of remembrances. Now the rational doctor, the believer in Logic and Science has to come to terms with a new reality she didn't believe existed.

"Don't you preach that psychological shit to me, I know it like the back of my hand!" she tells Robert Downey Jr.'s Pete, who has been assigned to her case.

"I'm not crazy, I'm possessed" she says matter of factly to Pete without a hint of anything smacking of humour or irony. One of the chilling scenes in the movie, which has many, is when Miranda in her cell, spiritually beaten, scrunched over in the corner and out of options says out loud:

"I'm a rational person. I believe in Science. I don't believe in ghosts. But if you are the ghost of Rachael, can you help me escape from this cell?" the audience gasps when the cell door clicks open. There are no flashes, no special effects, just that soft click.

In fact, "Gothika" is a Special Effects Free Zone for the most part, except for some well-placed effects that serve to enhance the story. The pixilated walking that is seen by spirits in "The Ring" and "The Eye" are used here, and makes the spirits look weird indeed because that's not how people move. Nobody could blame Miranda for going the other way -- fast!-- rather than follow it once it freed her.

"Gothika" is a taut thriller that keeps the audience jumping. I am aware of some of the critics (whose opinions, as usual, I read only after I've seen a film because some of then reveal way too much and may affect my own writing), and their mixed-to-low opinion of the film.

Those detractors have it wrong, wrong, wrong and is one more reason I like to see movies with a regular audience, who react more genuinely to things they've paid for. Critics just don't get it, and this was driven home when I saw grown girly-men crying out like little scared bee-yatches during the film, which has plenty of frightful moments, and is pretty good as a scary movie.

Directed by Mathiu Kassowitz "Gothika" is sparingly but well made, with a small cast and action that takes place in and around a New England psychiatric hospital where the well off Dr. Miranda Grey and her husband Doug work. After driving home on a dark and stormy night she almost runs over a girl in the middle of the road. Afterwards she wakes up days later in one of the cells at the hospital she knows all too well, accused of her husband's murder.

Miranda loses all her education in a fight scene with the nurses which is so real in the dialogue and action, with her kicking and swinging and screaming and cursing like a Ghetto Homegirl, and is one of the reasons why the energetic Halle actually broke her arm during such a scene with Downey, and several nurses and orderlies.

But the inventive makers even found a way to incorporate the broken arm and its necessary cast into the film's plot with the spirit carving "NOT ALONE" onto Miranda's arm, which of course now has to be bandaged. Slick.

Halle is very physical in "Gothika" -- even more so than with her sex scenes in Billy Bob Thornton in "Monsters Ball" -- with scenes of her trying to escape the asylum, racing down the halls, and scaling chain link fences.

Sisterhood is a part of the movie as the Shero of the film is a woman, as many are in films these days, from Lara Croft in "Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life," Kaye Beckinsale in "Underworld," and Jessica Biel in the new "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." The young males who form a large part of the moviegoing audience are very accepting of females in action adventure roles, which is why the women in these roles are nice looking Eye Candy, and the camera is sure to give them their props as a payoff for their patronage.

Lovely Halle spends most of the time in "Gothika" looking like hell, sans makeup, hair mused, and all sweaty from fright or running. She's been this way before, after playing Crack Hoes in "Jungle Fever" and "Losing Isaiah." Hair askew, and lovely face all sweaty is not the glamour role the former Miss Ohio beauty queen and Broadway show dancer is known for, as in her cable film "Dorothy Dandridge," or "The Rich Man's Wife" where her husband played by Christopher McDonald from "Perfect storm" and "Thelma and Louise" also came to a bad end.

Even in her comical role in Robert Townsend's "BAPS" she was dressy, although Ghetto Glamourous as she and a girlfriend comforted a dying billionaire played by Martin Landau, because Halle resembled the daughter of a lost paramour in a scam to scramble the inheritance.

Still, Halle is Halle, and the plot and the camera was used to show off her finer points. Tight jeans and a clingy stretch top were worn during Miranda's escape attempt scene, where her ample apple bottom was shown bouncing about as she raced down the corridors, knocking down orderlies on their arses. However, the movie wimped out when it really counted, not showing Halle in a prison shower scene.

In John Travolta's "Swordfish" she showed "X Men" Wolverine Hugh Jackman a great deal more as she was trying to beguile him into using his hacker skills to help them break open a bank's coding. Of course, in "Monster's Ball" she bared it all, and gave it up hot to Billy Bob onscreen. Nobody can tell me that their scenes didn't have an impact on spouses Angelina Jolie and Eric Benet! Maybe those two should have made a similar movie themselves and called it all square and saved their marriages. But that's just my opinion.

As Jinx Berry made such an impression as a female covert ops agent in the last 007 film "Die Another Day" she's getting her own spinoff series. First though will come her "Catwoman," reprising a role made famous by Eartha Kitt, with whom Berry appeared in Eddie Murphy's "Boomerang." She died in only one film, "The Last Boy Scout" with Wayans and Bruce Willis.

Penelope Cruz plays Chloe, one of Miranda's patients who claims the Devil comes into her cell and rapes her. "You don't believe me because you don't believe in the Devil" Chloe challenges Dr. Grey.

"You have to trust me" Dr. Grey says soothingly.

"How can you trust someone who thinks yoou'rrre cracie?" Chloe says logically. Later she tells Miranda "he says you're next."

This reminded me of a film with Barbra Streisand, where she was an inmate in an asylum. In court at her hearing she was told that she should be more trusting.

"I'd have to be crazy to trust someone who has power over me" says Streisand. Well, is there anybody here she could trust? She's asked.

"Him" she indicates the laconic Black bailiff standing guard in the court. "He doesn't give a shit what happens to me. Him I can trust."

"Gothika" is a pleasantly done mindbender that appeals to thinking moviegoers as directed by Kassowitz, from the screenplay by Sebastian Gutierrez. It has a great deal of linkage to recent horror and psychological films such as "The Ring," and the subtitled Japanese film "The Eye" that unlike "The Ring," hasn't yet been remade for American tastes. Its about a formerly blind young woman who sees the future deaths of people after she undergoes a corneal transplant and gains the power of Second Sight along with regular eyesight. (Read more about these films in the associated cinema listings that follow this critique).

Cruz herself was in "Vanilla Sky" as well as its Spanish original, the plot of which involves a wealthy layabout played by her squeeze Tom Cruise who is having a mental breakdown, confusing his women, his friends, and reality.

"I don't believe in ghosts either, but they believe in me" Miranda says to Pete, whose own complicity is unclear to us as he has not been up-front with his new patient, and seems oh so helpful.

There is the chance that the Gothika" could evolve into a film series, sort of a Cold-Case Files of the Supernatural, with Halle Berry a "Ghost Detective" like the child Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense." This would be welcome if they were as well done and involving as this one was.

There are also links in "Gothika" to other avenging or unrestful spirits from the grave seen in movies such "What Lies Beneath," and "Stir of Echoes." The last was about a mildly retarded Chicago girl who speaks to Kevin Bacon from beyond. There are quite a few of these films building up, where young women are seeking vengeance or a final rest, such as "The Ring", "The Eye;" and the one about the death website that kills you by melting your brain three days later or so if you click past the warning.

A different sort of Technical Consultant was used by Halle in her part of the film. Her mother in Ohio was a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, and advised her daughter on a few matters that she incorporated into the film, such as what would be done in an institution and not. Her White mother was introduced when Halle accepted her Oscar for "Monster's Ball."

(The "India" she mentioned in her acceptance speech is the young daughter of her estranged husband, singer Eric Benet of Milwaukee, Wisconsin by a previous paramour, where Halle was a frequent visitor and often seen around town. Berry has formally adopted India, and the level of custody is likely to be an issue in their dissolving marriage. His philandering was supposed to be the crux, but I still wonder if this was before or was it after she made "Monster's Ball").

CAST OF GOTHIKA :

DR. MIRANDA GREY -- HALLE BERRY

DR. DOUGLAS GREY-- CHARLES DUTTON

DR. PARSONS -- BERNARD HILL

ATTY. TEDDY -- DORIAN HAREWOOD

PETE -- ROBERT DOWNEY, DR.

CHLOE -- PENELOPE CRUZ

SHERIFF -- JOHN CARROLL LYNCH

"Gothika" is from Warner Brothers and directed by Matthiu Kassowitz, from the screenplay by Sebastian Gutierrez, it is rated "R" for rough violence and language, and some fleeting female nudity in a shower scene where all the inmates can be clearly seen except Cruz and Berry.

Eddie Murphy has gone back to the family film genre that has served him well. "Haunted Mansion," his second such film after "Daddy Day Care" is sure to appeal to that lucrative market, but it's a fun movie for the adults who have to take the kids to the theatres as well...

CINEMA VIEWS by Kevin j. Walker, Film Critic

EDDIE MURPHY SCARES UP ANOTHER HIT IN DISNEY'S "HAUNTED MANSION"

by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic kevinwalker2005@lycos.com

"If you do kill me, on the Other Side I'll just be kicking yo' ass for all eternity" -- Eddie Murphy's Jim Ever to the head ghost in "The Haunted Mansion" Eddie Murphy is on a roll again, with back to back hits after "Daddy Day Care." Since his last attempts at adult comedy and action adventure have fallen a bit flat, going back to the well of pure family comedy that has provided so much was a wise choice.

His two "Nutty Professor" movies had boosted him to great heights and he coasted along for awhile, but they still didn't give him the oomph to propel the cop comedy buddy flick "Showtime" he made with Robert DeNiro to more than mediocre receipts; nor "Pluto Nash," where he portrayed a Rick-type Lunar bar owning GoodFella who runs afoul of some galactic gangsters.

"Haunted Mansion" sticks to the successful Disney formula which also has done them well, and like "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" is also made from a Disney theme park ride, since raiding video games, comic books and old 1960s sitcoms apparently hasn't been enough. Did you know that there is a "Starsky and Hutch" movie being made, with Snoop Dog as Huggy Bear?

Murphy and his wife are real estate agents in Louisiana, with their two kids whom the busy Jim Evers is always passing over in search of the bigger better deal. When he realizes he can make a killing selling the huge mansion in an area of wealthy denizens, there's no holding Jim back. His motto is "Because when we sell you a home we want you to be happy for Evers and Evers."

While on a family trip to Lake Ponchatrain and intending only a quick side trip to check it out, they end up spending the weekend in the haunted mansion, falling into the trap of the ghosts who have been waiting long for a release from their limbo. BOO!

The rough edges of Murphy's racial humour are burnished off, and theirs is a world where racial differences either don't exist, nobody notices, or nobody much remarks upon them. The Black family in the movie although not White bred, are essentially White Bread for the cross-cultural audience for which it is intended.

This being said, there is the element of Salt and Pepper racial romance when Murphy's wife Sarah becomes the target of Edward Gracey the don of a rambling mansion in the bayous of Louisiana. It apparently became haunted after the two engaged lovers committed suicide because of a failure to communicate.

His beloved Elizebeth became lost to Edward until a junk mail circular of the real estate couple is left outside the massive front gates. With the picture of Sarah Evers on it he feels he has found his long lost love at last, and finally can be freed form the purgatory prison in which he and his peoples are trapped.

Marsha Thomason as Sarah/Elizebeth is luminous, and her Non-Ethnic features are no doubt why she was chosen for the role.

Murphy gets plenty of opportunities during "Haunted Mansion" to engage in his repartee while playing the insufferably garrulous real estate agent Jim Evers. During a confrontation with the Bad Guy he tells him "You're trying to get jiggy with my wife, and the house isn't even on sale? Of course I'm mad!"

Thinking he's there to market a house he tells Ramsley the Butler played by Terence Stamp "Maybe it's not a good idea to put that in the sales brochure about the ghosts. Better to mention how many bathrooms there are; people like that stuff."

"Haunted Mansion" is rated "PG" for supernatural violence and a smidgen of language. There are some episodes of fright for the little ones where the ghouls are chasing the kids around, but they can handle it. There are lots of chasing around and action, but the horror bits are dumbed down for the kiddies who are the real target of the movie.

But since they don't go to the films by themselves there has to be something to keep the adults who brung 'em from squirming in their seats for even the short 90 minutes or so these kiddie movies last.

When Madame Leota, the talkative gypsy inside the green globe runs on and on while she's strapped in the backseat of their BMW, the daughter complains "Mom, Leota won't shut up!" as about a bratty little sister. When Jim uses the family car as a battering ram to gain reentry into the mansion from which he's been expunged by a vengeful ghost, he tells the head "hang on!!"

"With what?" Leota replies matter of factly, with the strap of the seatbelt across the crystal ball.

Little touches like this made the film enjoyable and raised chuckles because these nuggets were unexpected. Madame Leota the Gypsy is played by "Bride of Chucky" co-star Jennifer Tilly, whose film career has gone on much longer and farther than her art house sister Meg from "The Big Chill." Her role as the crystal ball prophesying gypsy is probably the first one in which her bodacious body is not used. This is like Pam Grier in 1975s "Scream Blackula, Scream!," where she played an island soothsayer, and about the first film in which her clothes stayed on.

"Find the black crypt that bears no name, or soon your fate will be the same…" Madame Leota tells the besieged family. When told her instruction for their salvation make no sense she snaps on them. "Hey: I don't make the rules, I only work here."

The children actors are some of the real gems in the film. The scary Michael and his spunky sister Megan have a good chunk of time in the film, and its well spent and allows us to have a break from Murphy because a little of him goes a long way.

While separated from their parents in the massive Gracie Mansion the dissimilar siblings explore behind hidden walls, attic lofts, and sequestered rooms. The charge-ahead Megan pushes aside dusty cobwebs while the not-havin' it Michael turns and starts to walk away. "Where's your sense of adventure?" Megan asks Michael.

Ever since "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Power Rangers" movie there has been a welcome trend of making Bi-Level movies, where there are things for the little ones, and some adult situations, references and humour that flies right over their little heads. Although from what I hear, "The Cat In The Hat" may have overdone things a little bit with juvenile humour, and references to bodily functions.

There is an homage (there are plenty in the film, including several I no doubt missed) to such as "Young Frankenstein" when at the tremendous front door Murphy's Jim remarks "Look at the size of those knockers!"

The great Horror Meister Vincent Price is shown twice, as a ghostly butler walking down the hallway and whose visage is one of the Barber Shoppe quartet of singing bust heads that will take whatever they hear and weave it into a song.

Those who grew up with movies of the "Abominable Mr. Phibes", "The Tingler," and the master of the original House of 1,000 Horrors and many others remember Price with fondness. Among those fans is Michael Jackson, who chose Price to narrate his song "Thriller." Price's last film role was as the creator of "Edward Scissorhands," starring Johnny Depp.

The solarium in the overgrown garden resembles the mansion of "The Addams Family." In one brief scene both Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" and "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" are referenced, rewarding those adults with a quick eye, as well as a classical education.

Eddie Murphy's long career since leaving Saturday Night Live" has some had some bumps along the way. Although I enjoyed his commitment-phobic, alcoholic San Francisco detective negotiator in "Metro," or the translation of a Good Fella gangster movie to the Science Fiction realm that was "Pluto Nash," the moviegoing public didn't share my enthusiasm.

My fleeting enjoyment was not ratified by popular acclaim of "Pluto Nash" that he made with New Film Flava Rosario Dawson ("25th Hour") and Tom Sizemore as his outdated but inventive bodyguard robot. The movie that cost $100 million or so gained less than $5M in box office, and had been shelved for some time before it was released. But kids would like it. Plus it had Pam Grier as the Lunar colony bar owning Murphy's tough ray-gun toting mother, an homage to her 1970s Black Film Era as "Foxy Brown" and "Coffy."

Murphy's work with children haven't gotten the recognition in the past. His "Golden Child" was an early effort that is still enjoyable almost 20 years later, and its hard to believe that this is the same actor whose mishaps with the blue screen for the special effects is the same who reacts so well with the SPFX technique in "Nutty Professor, where he plays and plays off, multiple characters who aren't even there.

"Haunted Mansion" was an enjoyable film, one that parents and guardians can safely take their charges to, and one that won't bore them while they're there.

CAST OF "HAUNTED MANSION": JIM EVERS -- EDDIE MURPHY SARAH EVERS -- MARSHA THOMASON EDWARD GRACEY -- RAMSLEY -- TERENCE STAMP MADAME LEOTA -- JENNIFER TILLY

"Haunted Mansion " is from Disney and directed by Rob Minkoff. It is rated "PG" for supernatural violence and a smidgen of language. There are some episodes of genuine fright for the little ones where the ghouls are chasing the kids around, but they can handle it. --kjw