'Identity' can shock your socks off
A week ago Saturday night, I saw "Identity" at one of the big Wichita cineplexes. It's a pretty good thriller, enough to scare you right out of your socks — sort of like "Psycho" or "The Sixth Sense," although not quite as good as either of those classics.
It's sort of "Ten Little Indians" crossed with "Psycho" and "Sixth Sense," with a touch of Bridey Murphy thrown in. Lots of scary stuff, blood and gore, cursing, all that modern stuff.
John Cusack is his usual, good self. Look for a real change of role for John McGinley, who plays the satirically cruel-but-funny 42-year-old doc on "Scrubs," an NBC sitcom. In this film, he's a timid, soft-spoken stepfather and second husband, under great stress, as are all the characters in this thriller about serial murder (or IS that what it's about?).
Amanda Peet is good as the heart-of-gold hooker who just wants to go home to Florida and raise oranges and limes.
Jake Busey, who is taller, but otherwise looks eerily like his dad, Gary, makes a good villain (or is he?).
You'll have to see it for yourself. Well, of course, you don't have to. But it's worth seeing. There is a surprise near the end nearly as jolting as those at the end of "Psycho" and "Sixth Sense."
This was the first movie I had gone to in over 15 months. The last one I paid money to see, "The Royal Tenenbaums," was awful, and made me so mad I didn't care for a long time if I did not go to a theater.
I grew up with, or on, movies. My dad ran some of the very first movie theaters in Western Kansas, at Ransom and Utica. When I was a youngster, I got in free, of course, and saw many films over and over — such as "House of Wax" with Vincent Price, which terrified me and my contemporaries.
I sold popcorn and candy at the Strand Theater's little concessions stand in Ransom. My mother or my dad sold tickets (50 cents for adults, 25 for children).
I remember how people packed the theater for "David Harum," starring Will Rogers, although it was 20-some years old when we showed it, about 1955, in re-release.
The old "Ma and Pa Kettle" pictures were popular, too, with Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride. Sort of an even-less sophisticated predecessor of "The Beverly Hillbillies."
What I really liked were The Three Stooges "short subjects," the Pete Smith humorous shorts, and, of course, the cartoons.
— JERRY BUXTON
