Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (2007)

JULY 31, 2008

GENRE: COMEDIC, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

I’ve been hearing about Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer for a while now, usually comparing it to Evil Dead, due to the blend of humor and horror, and the badass hero. But what the reviews don’t often mention is that the film is also a bit on the slow side, with the monster action mainly kept to the final 30 minutes. Still, it’s definitely worth a look, and I found myself unexpectedly identifying with Jack.

For starters, he’s got a bad temper. My favorite part of the movie has nothing to do with monsters; it’s simply Jack telling his shrink a story about how he got mad at his toaster and beat the holy bejesus out of it. As someone who has destroyed many an inanimate object for no real reason (I recall smashing a remote to pieces a few years ago for failing to pause the film when I hit the pause button), I definitely identified with this story. I only wish there was a scene of Jack playing Halo or something... his response to a total BS Spartan laser kill would be legendary.

Also, he’s a plumber, and when the movie (finally) has him spring into action, he uses his plumber tools instead of more traditional weapons. This reminded me of the character of Drapeman that I invented back when I hung drapes for a living. Drapeman used a curtain rod, a drill, and a spring-loaded device that would shoot drape pins at the enemy. I dressed as him for Halloween one year (best reaction: “Hey, that guy’s a curtain!”). Good times.

But enough TMI stories about me, let’s talk about the movie. Like I said, it takes a while to get to the monster stuff, which is a bit of a bummer. If folks are going to compare it to Evil Dead, then I’m going to expect a nonstop ride. No, the pace of this film is more like Slither, where there’s a long buildup and then a nonstop, ridiculous finale (the finale is actually very similar to Slither’s, as it features a giant blob, formerly one of the film’s characters, devouring people that are attached to its tendrils). And while I was relieved to see that Jack doesn’t spout off one-liners every other second, some of the attempts at comedy don’t quite work. One example is his girlfriend, played by the blonde from Birds of Prey (which just came out on DVD for some reason – that show was on like 5 years ago!). She’s whiny and needy, and basically annoying. Seeing Jack try to keep his cool around her isn’t quite as funny as it’s supposed to be – essentially, we’re laughing because he’s not smacking his girlfriend around? Haha? Plus her character is sort of tossed out of the movie unceremoniously (not even killed), which just makes her feel even more pointless.

Otherwise, this is solid stuff. The makeup effects are astounding for what is obviously a low budget film, and they are shown off quite nicely (as opposed to the sort of quick glimpse shit you get in some other indies). There are a variety of monsters, and while it’s not as gory as you might expect, everything looks top notch. That’s probably due to the fact that they didn’t use any goddamn CGI for the monsters. Every single one of them is a real world creation; be it animatronic, a guy in a rubber/foam suit, or puppet. Rock on!

The cast is also above average. With the exception of Robert Englund (having fun playing a goofy professor who becomes a slapstick-prone zombie thing), they’re all pretty much unknowns, but there isn’t a weak link among them. Trevor Matthews (who also produced) is quite good as the title character, and possesses that inherent charm that makes him fun to watch even when not much is really going on action-wise. You’ll wish the script allowed him to kick some ass earlier in the film. I should note that he and a couple of the other actors have Canadian accents that surface at random (“Get Oat!”), kind of funny.

Strangely, like yesterday’s movie, sodium figures into the plot. It’s introduced as a science experiment (“sodium will react violently to moisture”), which of course becomes important information later on in the plot. It’s a bit shoehorned, but at least it’s not like Horror At Party Beach, where they specifically say that sodium can kill the monsters and then don’t bother doing anything about it for another hour or so.

The DVD is pretty jam-packed, which is good as Anchor Bay has been rather skimpy lately with their smaller titles. There’s a commentary that’s the expected mixture of good natured ribbing among the participants and genuine info, but also a making of that’s damn near as long as the film itself. Plus, a pair of featurettes (one about the makeup/monster creation, another about the score) that are pretty great. There’s also a brief look at the filmmakers attending the screening at the Sitges film festival, some image galleries, and storyboard comparisons. 15 minutes’ worth of deleted scenes are also available, but I would suggest skipping them; they were obviously cut for pace but they all drag on even when watching them on their own. The last one (with Englund going to a bar) is kind of amusing though.

Despite the pacing issues, this one is definitely a winner. On the extras, they admit that the film is intended to be the first of a franchise, so one can’t help but suspect that a sequel will have more monsters, more action, and (hopefully) more laughs, now that we know who Jack is and what he can do. But we’ll only get a sequel should this one find an audience, so definitely get on the bandwagon now.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Lifeforce (1985)

JULY 30, 2008

GENRE: VAMPIRE, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

A while back, I pointed out that if I know a movie has been cut to shreds before seeing it, I will stubbornly wait until the full cut is released. But I was going to make an exception with Lifeforce, because I heard it was still pretty good. However, the cut on DVD IS in fact the longer cut (115 min), not the 101 theatrical version. I discovered after watching it that Tobe Hooper’s preferred cut is actually 126 minutes, but since the movie is overlong as it is, I’m gonna have to go ahead and declare this version fine as is. Sorry, Tobe.

(Unless the extra 11 minutes are simply more scenes of Mathilda May walking around fully nude. Nothing wrong with that subplot.)

It’s kind of an anomaly in Hooper’s career. Not that the guy has ever had a really consistent body of work (technically or creatively), but this one REALLY sticks out. It’s more like the 80s version of a Hammer film like Quatermass or something than anything you’d expect from the usually Ameri-centric Hooper. It’s also 2.35:1, and it was the last time he shot a film that way, best as I can tell. Hell, even the nudity isn’t really his bag; I can’t recall any real nudity in any of his other movies (save Eaten Alive), at least not as explicit as it is here.

There are some definite Hooper-isms though, such as low angle tracking shots and wooden performances. So there’s something. Still, I wish he had gotten more personally involved with his films (you almost never see his name in the writing or producing credits); one thing I noticed during the Carpenter fest is that even his more stand-alone films like Big Trouble In Little China or Christine feature his usual themes and motifs, something one would never really get from watching any number of Hooper’s films back to back. It’s even a bit ironic; he’s never really gone outside of the horror genre, and yet his movies have almost nothing in common, where Carpenter has done sci-fi, action, even comedy (Memoirs) and given each his trademark stamp.

Anyway, the movie’s pretty good. Like I said, it’s a bit too long, and has far too many stuffy British characters. It seems like a few could have been combined. It is based on a book called "The Space Vampires" (they changed it so that 20 years later no one would associate it with Dracula 3000), and I am willing to bet that rather than merge characters, they simply kept them all in and just reduced their roles. Which is why you get two scenes in a row of our hero (Steve Railsback) interrogating someone who has been infected with the alien/vampire/zombie thing (it never quite makes sense – they act like zombies but they are referred to as vampires by an incredibly hammy old Brit guy), characters we never saw before or see again.

One of those guys is none other than Patrick Stewart. There are two odd coincidences with his brief role. One is that he is put in a wheelchair for a good chunk of it. Two is that he is in the wheelchair in order to be interrogated with sodium pentothol (truth serum), the same thing Stewart himself did to Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, one of the 10 most underrated movies of all time. Also, at one point someone says “Houston, we have a problem”, which means Apollo 13 ripped it off (it’s even in the trailer!). Perhaps if I looked harder, I could find the source of every mid 90s movie in this goofy Cannon movie. Halley’s Comet also makes an appearance (the guy from Shinedown is nowhere to be seen, though we can assume he saw it waving and asking why he was always running in place*), shortly before turning our soda machines and lawnmowers into hunters of Emilio Estevez.

This is a Golan/Globus affair, making it my 2nd in the past 7 days (after Phantom). This was rather early on in their heyday, so they actually put some money into it. The space effects are a bit cheesy, but the makeups on the dead vampire things are fucking great. They explode into dust when they are killed (another thing ripped off – damn you Whedon!), which results in a great bit where one runs at a chainlink fence and explodes all over the people on the other side. Sweet! They also managed to get Henry Mancini, certainly no hack (though he simply used an unused score for a Hitchcock movie). The opening theme is incredibly rousing and totally distracts you away from the lame space effects.

There are a couple bits that are just nonsensical though. At one point a guy is watching his buddy talk to the evil vampire over a closed circuit monitor. It’s the only monitor, it’s not like he’s the security guard with 50 screens to watch, so you’re thinking he’s probably in the next room. But that is not the case; the vampire attacks his buddy, and he goes to save him. Unfortunately he is too late, because he has to run down like 5 corridors and through half a dozen rooms to get there. What’s the point of monitoring a situation if you’re too far to do anything about it? There’s also a very silly effect where blood flies from Stewart’s mouth and forms the hot vampire girl. That’s fine, except the fake Stewart head, which seems rather unnecessary to begin with (nothing happens to the head), looks like Steve Martin, not Picard. Of course, nowadays, there are at least three different widely available Stewart masks (for X-Men, Star Trek, and Masterminds) that they could have used instead. Oh well.

The DVD has no extras beyond the trailer (which features some of the full frontal nudity from the movie, surprisingly - the one below is edited). The main menu looks like it was designed by an Adobe Photoshop For Beginners tutorial, and it’s not anamorphic, but the sound mix is quite good for pre 5.1 film. Recommended if you find it cheap enough, though I would love a full blown special edition with Hooper’s commentary and/or a retrospective doc concerning the film’s troubled post production. I believe IMDb trivia is muscling in on DVD extras’ territory, and it’s time to take it back.

What say you?

*If you got that without Googling, congratulations! You obviously have heard the best album of the year!

PLEASE, GO ON...

Maniac Cop (1988)

JULY 29, 2008

GENRE: REVENGE, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

When DVDs first became available, there were an inordinate number of titles that went out of print within a few months of their release. I have no idea why for the most part, while some had legitimate reasons (like Little Shop Of Horrors, which was pulled due to Frank Oz being a big baby about the deleted ending being one of the extra features), others were just taken off the shelves for the hell of it. One such title was Maniac Cop, and thus when I found a copy on Ebay for pretty cheap (less than 20 bucks) I snapped it up. And now, 9 years later, I finally watched it!

As the movie began, I saw a possible reason why it was put on moratorium (it has since been re-released - the one in the Amazon link is the new edition, not the one I am reviewing): the transfer is fucking atrocious. I have seen better quality on VHS tapes. It looks like its streaming over Youtube or something. The credits are all blurry, nothing has any detail, the blacks are washed out... it’s just a really piss poor job. Granted, in the early days of DVD there was a lot of inconsistency, but I really cannot recall a transfer this bad (especially on a widescreen transfer, which means they were working off some sort of master, as opposed to an actual VHS tape like Chopping Mall).

Luckily the movie itself is pretty fun. It’s an odd blend of standard cop/revenge movie and slasher, but it more or less works. If the film has one real flaw, it’s the casting of genre greats Tom Atkins and Bruce Campbell, and not giving them any real scenes together. I think they share the screen for a total of three minutes, all of which is just dialogue and exposition. Campbell, in fact, spends most of his time in a jail cell or an interrogation room, and it isn’t until Atkins is removed from the movie (via being killed) that he gets to actually DO anything. Bummer.

Another thing that annoyed me was the use of freeze credits. This is when you watch 3-4 seconds of film footage, and then it freezes to provide a credit. Whoever invented this should be shot to death. Unless it’s a Bond film, there is never anything worth paying attention to in the opening credits of a movie; and thus we aren’t being distracted by anything. You don’t need to literally slow the movie down to guarantee the viewer knows who the production designer or casting person is.

Some highlights include: the score, particularly when the title character has a flashback to how he became a Maniac; the rather high body count (there are like 4 kills in the first 15 minutes!); Atkins’ usual gruff awesomeness, and of course, Robert Z’Dar (“Oh Z’no!”) as the cop. You only see his legendary face toward the end of the film, but it’s a great “reveal” nonetheless. Action fans know Z’Dar from his amazing work in Tango & Cash, where he played “Conan”, a guy who just kept popping up to piss off Stallone (it’s really pretty amazing how much the guy is in the movie when he’s essentially an anonymous bad guy – I think he has more screen time than Jack Palance).

I also love the ending, because if you think about it, its kind of a downer. Everyone thinks Campbell is the killer, but of course we know it’s Z’Dar. So there’s this big car chase, which results in the Maniac drowning in the river. His body is not recovered (sequel set up – we see him rising out of the water unnoticed), and everyone else that encountered him is dead, so I guess Campbell’s name isn’t cleared. I would imagine this is explored in the sequel, but I kind of like the idea of a big fuck you ending, even if not intentional.

There’s also a bit I really liked where Atkins goes to a bar (shock). Not that it’s a really great scene or anything, but the bar (exterior anyway) reminded me of a location from Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law, a fantastic movie that I haven’t seen since college. Thanks, random 80s B movie!

Bill Lustig rarely directs anymore, and that is a shame (his last film was Uncle Sam, in 1996). His movies are always fun (having a Larry Cohen script doesn’t hurt), and he’s just a great guy to listen to on the commentary track. What he is doing instead is just as important (if a great exploitation movie hits DVD in a giant special edition, chances are Bill is the guy who got the ball rolling on its creation), but I wish he could take time off to make a movie now and then. He’s always been under-appreciated outside of die hard horror nerds, and his sensibilities would definitely play well with today’s horror market.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Cold & Dark (2005)

JULY 28, 2008

GENRE: ALIEN, POSSESSION
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

It’s good to know British folks make really shitty cop horror/thriller movies too. Cold & Dark is a dull, badly shot, utterly baffling movie that took a lot of effort to get through. It goes without saying that I dozed off, but even my wife passed out about 20 minutes in, and she NEVER falls asleep at a movie.

That could actually be the whole review right there, but why end the fun there? I haven’t even mentioned Luke Goss.

Yes, Goss once again stars in a really bad HMAD movie. It’s not as abysmal as Unearthed, but it’s becoming hard to get excited about seeing this guy’s name in the credits for any horror movie (I’m also in the minority on Blade II – a movie that got boring really fast). He’s got some sort of charisma I guess, but he’s hardly a great actor, and this movie’s script/direction does him no favors (he’s quite good in Hellboy 2 though – I guess Guillermo Del Toro is just a better actor’s director than this guy, the sadly named Andy Goth). He also suffers the indignity of two of the most awkward stunts in movie history. Late in the film, he’s running on top of a large crate when he suddenly jumps to one a few feet away... only to jump right back to the one he was already on (it looks cool to do it once, but twice in one shot? Pointless, Goth). But that’s nothing compared to one in the film’s first big action scene (relatively speaking – this movie is pretty light on the thrill-attempting, even by DTV standards). For whatever reason, Goss needs to get to the other side of a wall (actually what looks like a large garage door). He jumps up and begins shimmying over toward the middle of the door, only to then jump down (maybe 10 feet) as a hook careens toward him for some reason. The hook makes a giant hole, but then Goss jumps back up and just gets over the wall right above the spot he jumped from in the first place, rendering the whole shimmy/hook portion of the scene entirely pointless (and since it’s pretty weak to begin with, one wonders why they didn’t just completely remove it).

But of course, removing it would result in the film having even less action. For a movie about a pair of cops, one of whom is becoming an alien (or something), not a lot happens that one would consider exciting. Most of the movie is just Goss narrating things in a muffled, hard to understand accent (the lack of English subs is pretty annoying), talking about some rather dull investigation that serves as the movie’s throughline (because, you know, an alien cop is simply not enough to hold viewer interest. You need a story about phony IDs and warehouse robberies), and other things of that boring nature. When the gore actually makes an appearance, it’s admittedly pretty cool (alien cop has a clawed hand – sweet!), but it’s far too little too late.

Confusion seems to be the order of the day. Goth seemingly loves pointless jump cuts and disjointed dialog (I often have no idea who is supposed to be talking), and also bewildering close-ups that I assume are supposed to look arty and cool but are just annoying and awkward. It’s one thing to use “bad” filmmaking to disorient the viewer, but not so much that they can’t even follow what is going on, and I can’t say for sure that was even the intent anyway. There are also story elements that never make any sense or are explained (like why a corpse bursts into flames, or who the fuck the guy is at the end who suddenly begins spouting off exposition as our hero just sort of walks away from a non-battle with the film’s villain), and part of the plot is ostensibly about a goddamn coat. And I’ve already mentioned the nearly unintelligible dialogue, but Christ, even the goddamn opening credits are needlessly confusing:

What the fuck does that even say?

I see absolutely no reason to watch this movie, other than to catch a few glimpses of sexy co-stars Cassandra Bell and Carly Turnbull. However, neither of them are in the movie enough to keep your interest and ignore the movie’s plethora of problems. Oh and the score is pretty good.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Exorcist III (1990)

JULY 27, 2008

GENRE: RELIGIOUS, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

After the stink of Exorcist II, I was hardly excited for another go round with Pazuzu, Karras, and Regan. But I knew about a certain top notch scare scene in Exorcist III, and most folks tell me it’s the only worthwhile sequel, so I went in with an open mind. And while it’s hardly as good as the original, it IS indeed a much more respectable followup, and its problems, for the most part, aren’t sequel-related.

The one exception is William Peter Blatty’s insistence on following plot points that are only present in his original book, instead of the movie. So it’s a bit puzzling to watch a movie called Exorcist III that hinges on something that never happened in the movie Exorcist I. Apparently, in that book, Karras and Kinderman were best friends, whereas in the movie they met once and sort of disliked each other. But now Karras is dead, and Kinderman (now played by George C Scott) is all torn up about it, going so far as to say that he loved him. So it kind of makes Kinderman look pathetic, like one of those folks you meet once through a mutual friend or something and suddenly they think they are your best pal and put you on their top 8 on Myspace. And since the movie deals with the death of Father Dyer, I wonder why he just couldn’t ignore Karras entirely and have Dyer’s death be what upsets him. At least that would sort of go in line with the alternate ending of the first film, and we actually see them as good friends in the early parts of this film anyway.

I have zero problems with it ignoring the second film, however. I’m sure Regan and co. are just fine elsewhere.

Otherwise, it is indeed a worthy continuation for the most part. The nice thing about the original is that it had a lot of characters left alive at the end, and all of them are worthy of their own movie (I’m actually kind of bummed that Dyer got offed so quickly, and also that Father O’Malley didn’t return to play the role – both of them deserve their own shot in the limelight). A detective mystery (of sorts) with the overtones of the Devil and all the themes of the first film is a damn good idea, if you ask me. And the aforementioned scare? Even though I knew it was coming (anyone who has seen the movie knows which one I mean) it still made me jump, and I can’t imagine how much of a jolt I would get had I been totally in the dark about it. There are some other freaky sequences as well, a nice improvement over the last film, which didn’t even seem to be attempting anything one would consider a “scare” scene.

Scott is pretty good as Kinderman. Like in The Changeling, his acting consists mainly of looking baffled or annoyed by everything around him, and saying things that don’t make a lot of sense (“I was signaling beings on Mars, sometime they answer.” – huh?), but he fills in for Lee Cobb quite nicely. He also gets angry at the drop of a hat; you never know when a seemingly innocuous line will be given a Patton-esque angry shout. And Brad Dourif is, as usual, a delight as a crazy killer guy. There’s also a great bit where he ends a scene by saying “Child’s play”, and then they cut to a little redhaired mop. I am sure it wasn’t intentional, but horror nerds like me love that type of shit.

Unfortunately, Dourif’s role is played by Jason Miller half the time. It’s a bit confusing, but I think it’s supposed to just be Kinderman’s imagination that he sees Karras instead of the Dourif character when the demon is pretending to be him? There are no extras to help explain this, but according to the IMDb, the movie was originally shot without Karras at all, and then Blatty went back and reshot part of Dourif’s role with Miller (as Karras). OK, Bill, whatever.

And that’s part of the main problem with the film – it’s just needlessly baffling a lot of the time. There are many dream sequences that are stuffed with symbolism that never really seems integral to anything, plus the schizo Dourif/Miller stuff, aforementioned odd dialogue from Scott, etc. The plot is compelling and fairly original, but they keep diffusing its strength with all this other nonsense that never really pays off. The book sounds like it makes a lot more sense (and also has other suspects for the Gemini Killer, something the movie barely even seems to care about after a while), so maybe I’ll check it out. I own it, might as well read it someday I guess.

One definite highlight of this film is all of the random bit roles and cameos. I don’t know how a movie that features Samuel L Jackson, Patrick Ewing, and fucking Fabio in a single scene can be altogether bad. Let’s Scare Jessica To Death’s Zohra Lampert also shows up as Kinderman’s wife (and is just as awkward as ever, though she’s largely absent for the bulk of the film). Kinderman’s partner is Grand L. Bush, who you all know as the non-Robert Davi Agent Johnson from Die Hard. And Kevin Corrigan plays the oldest altar boy in screen history, already displaying his traditional Italian “neighborhood guy” mannerisms. Scott Wilson also pops up, but his role is so damned inconsequential I can’t even begin to bother trying to describe his character.

Not a single person has ever told me anything good about part IV (either version), but I’m sure I’ll get to those eventually. But it’s kind of a shame, all the other major horror franchises has a sequel that truly lives up to the original. This one comes close at times, but in the end its merely decent, and I think if II never happened it would be considered a major letdown (rather than a “return to form” by default).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 (1987)

JULY 26, 2008

GENRE: POSSESSION, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

What is it about the Prom Night movies that results in me never watching them at home? The first one was watched at a friend’s house during Christmas vacation, and now Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II was watched in my hotel room during Comic Con. I suspect part III will be seen on a plane and IV maybe just on my Ipod. And like last time, the presentation wasn’t the best; my friend’s TV had a loose connection for the video wire, resulting in a fuzzy image on the original, and since I forgot to bring a remote for the DVD player, I watched II with the subtitles on the entire time.

Of course, that wasn’t too bad of a deal, the subs were pretty funny at times. Not only were they out of sync, but they also had a lot of misspelled words. My favorite was when a classroom erupts in laughter and subs inform us that the teacher is asking them to keep it to a “ball roar”. There’s another instance where the work “jerk” is given a capital letter, as if it was a proper noun. As someone who uses the term much more than the average man (talk to me for five minutes, I guarantee I’ll call someone or something a jerk), this amused me greatly. Also, whenever someone says “hmmm” the subs spell it “hum.” This must annoy the deaf viewers, because there are also instances of people legitimately humming. I hope they know the difference.

I actually like this one more than the original. Not hard, I don’t really like the original at all. But this one (which has nothing to do with the original) is more mean-spirited, a bit weird at times, and has a far more memorable antagonist. Oh and a better soundtrack. Apparently they spent all their money on licensing old 50s tunes (and Michael Ironside!), so while some stuff looks cheap, at least you get to hear genuine “oldies” during the flashback sequences (plus the title song plays throughout).

Of course, it suffers from some of the same problems as the original. It takes even LONGER to get to the goddamn prom, and there is very little suspense to any of the kill scenes. Also, I don’t care much when a sequel has zero connection to the original. Halloween III is valid because that was the intention (it doesn’t even take place in the same universe), but why not at least have a throwaway reference to the events of the first film? The only thing they do is give the school the same name (Hamilton High), but if it’s supposed to be the same one, they don’t mention it (you’d think someone would be like “We really should consider not having a prom here anymore”). And maybe then it was a new thing, but I am sick of movies with all of the characters named after horror directors. We have Carpenter, Craven, Browning, even Hennenlotter here, though the main guy’s name is Nordham, a name not a single person on the IMDb has. If your last name is Nordham and you have directed a horror movie, please let me know, otherwise I consider this a really lame error.

Otherwise, it’s a fun little movie. As I mentioned, it’s a bit weird. At one point, the possessed Vicki strips down (full frontal alert!) and begins fondling her also naked friend in the locker room. Then she makes out with her dad, who doesn’t seem to mind much (he also seemingly doesn’t care when she kills her mom – his wife! – a few minutes later). The weirdness extends to some of the setpieces as well. Early on, the heroine (before she is really full on possessed) is terrorized by her toy horse (which talks), and there’s a sort of exorcism scene where the priest says “the body of Christ compels you!” (being at Con, terrorized by “Sexy Jesus’” from Hamlet 2 on every corner, this bit really resonated).

There’s also one of the most baffling kills I’ve ever seen in a movie. Possessed Vicki grabs a large power cord in one room, which make a guy at a computer in a completely different room get electrocuted by those blue electric sparks that only appear in late 80s horror movies. How the hell did she manage that?

Also, she kills most of the movie’s sympathetic characters over the course of like 10-15 minutes, which is pretty awesome. And even though there is a bitchy rival character, she has the least malicious death scene. The movie even has a girl confess she is pregnant moments before being horribly killed! It’s not as excessive as say, Silent Night Deadly Night, but the movie’s mean streak is surprising and (obviously) appreciated.

Ironside is a bit dull here though, sadly. He’s playing the principal, and apart from yelling at his son a bit, he’s mostly playing a pretty meek dude. Why cast one of the most legendary hardasses of all time and then not give him anything to do? I’m all for casting against type, but for some actors it’s just not the right thing to do. I like my Ironside to be angry, lecherous, shooting 3 titted hookers in the back, etc. He’s not the only familiar face though; Saw IV and Dawn 04’s Justin Louis plays the male lead, and it’s kind of sad that he got big roles like this earlier in his career, whereas now his characters are often obvious fodder.

The DVD is pretty cheap, often less than 10 bucks. Unfortunately, it’s also featureless, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to watch this movie more than once or twice. But it’s certainly worth a look either way.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

X-Files: I Want To Believe (2008)

JULY 25, 2008

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I guess I have become incredibly skilled at Horror Movie A Day-ing; I was able to manage my time efficiently enough to go see a movie this year during Comic Con (despite more Bloody Disgusting responsibilities to boot). Last year, the three movies I watched were all taken in via 15-30 minute chunks (I think Penny Dreadful was watched over 5 different viewing sessions). I certainly never was able to watch one start to finish, let alone go off to a movie theater and see one (where I wasn't able to send texts, update my schedule, flip through the free crap I had amassed over the day, etc). But I was determined to see X-Files: I Want To Believe on its opening weekend, so I made sure to give myself a chunk of time "off" from my duties. Well played, BC.

See, the first movie was like a huge event for me. I remember driving to NY for the convention designed to promote it (even though there was one in Boston - Gillian Anderson was at the NY one so it was a better option IMO), and actually considering leaving my college orientation to see it at its first showing on Friday, June 19th, 1998 (yep, I remember the release date). I settled for a 7:30. But this one just hadn't excited me as much; I even passed up a press screening in favor of going to the New Bev. Still, I was more or less intrigued and hopeful that the new film would re-ignite my love for the series, which I used to watch 3-4 episodes at a time back when it first began being syndicated in the Fall of 1997.

I did not get my wish. And spoilers follow!!

Everyone (who cares) knows that this movie was not a "mythology" movie and would instead have a more "Monster of the Week" approach. Which was fine by me - the mythology had gotten so convoluted that half of the show's finale was devoted to poor Skinner (Shocker) explaining it all to the audience. But I didn't expect them to go SO far into "non-fans can get it" land. While Mulder's sister figures into the plot a little bit and Skinner is randomly inserted into the film about 10 minutes before it ends, it feels like Chris Carter and co. were using an unmade spec script from the show's second season as their template. William is mentioned once, almost off-hand; there is NO mention of Reyes, Doggett, or anyone else that isn't Skinner; and even the sister stuff is completely dropped after the first act.

Worse, the plot more or less hinges on Scully's non belief in supernatural events (it's really her movie, not Mulder's, perhaps to make up for the half-Scully-less first film). Which is kind of stupid, because she was pretty much a firm "believer" by the 7th or 8th season. It's one thing to still write off completely nonsensical things, but she is incredibly skeptical right off the bat of a mere psychic. And the movie eventually becomes a ripoff of Signs, as a seemingly throwaway line becomes the key element to resolving the plot.

Or lack thereof. Due to all the science vs. faith stuff, the actual horror/sci-fi elements are almost completely forgotten for large chunks of the running time. Also, anyone who sees the film will probably agree; the climax is one of the most half-assed in film history. It involves nothing more than Skinner holding a gun on some guys, and Scully hitting the bad guy in the head with a shovel. That's it. Even the TV show had impressive "battle" type scenes in the climax. The one here almost seems like an after thought.

All of this is even MORE of a shame when you consider that the first act is actually quite good. Like the show, we see a "happening" occur and then they work Scully and Mulder into the story. And since it's been 6 years (or 10 since the last movie), there's some catching up to do. These scenes are fun, because I've missed these two, and the little nods to the show (pencils in the ceiling, sunflower seeds, etc) made me smile. Also, the general idea (a psychic helping them find a serial killer) is perfectly acceptable; hell, it was the plot of quite a few episodes (including one called 'Beyond the Sea', which oddly aired later that night on TNT). I also loved the dark look and snowy locales, especially when the last four seasons were overall very warm and dry (due to the show leaving Vancouver for Los Angeles). But the movie reaches a turning point with the rather surprising death of one supporting character, and from there on it just feels rushed, half-assed, and just plain lazy.

I've already mentioned the climax, but the laziness isn't limited to there. Scully has a subplot about trying to cure a little kid of some obscure disease (call in House for this shit, and go fight monsters!). The parents say at one point that they want to stop the treatment and let God take control or whatever, but then the next time the story shifts to this dull subplot, Scully is still giving the kid the treatment. And the film's lone "monster", a two-headed dog, is never actually seen until it is dead, which is just plain silly.

Had this indeed been an episode of the show, it would merely be forgettable; a better one would be on the next week. But it's been six years, and the show is now defunct. The movies are the only new adventures we will get, and it's almost sort of a ripoff that no one (even Duchovny, who seems bored after about a half hour) really went to bat on this one. The dismal box office suggests this will be the last we see of the characters, which is just a tragedy. Even the series finale had some of the show's old spark and wit, not to mention a better use of its outstanding cast.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Phantom Of The Opera (1989)

JULY 24, 2008

GENRE: HERO KILLER, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I remember my mom renting Phantom of the Opera for me when I was like 10, telling me “It’s Freddy!”, which was good enough for me. I had no knowledge of the Gaston Leroux story, so for me it was like seeing Freddy kill some dudes in the 19th century, which was more than enough to entertain me. Now, having seen like 5 or 6 other versions of a story I simply don’t care for, it’s a completely different enjoyable experience. This version does away with all of the goth-y sympathy (Argento), the music numbers (Schumacher), and the mall (Friedman) and simply makes it into a slasher movie. It’s not particularly great or anything, but it’s a fun take on the over-exposed tale of Erik Destler. And according to Wiki, it's actually pretty faithful apart from the gore. Maybe I'll read the book.

Of course, the other fun aspect to seeing it now is recognizing some of the co-stars. Bill Nighy, long before subjecting himself to excessive makeup in Pirates and Underworld movies, plays one of the opera house owners, and Molly Shannon plays Christine’s friend, long before appearing on SNL. Also worth noting is that Christine is played by Jill Schoelen, in one of her last horror roles before disappearing from this mortal coil (by making Lifetime movies).

The elaborate death scenes are also pretty gory and fun. I bet Leroux is rolling in his grave for never writing a sequence where Erik is attacked by some dudes in an alley and proceeds to kill them (at least I don't think - I can't recall this scene in any other version), or having blood splatter all over his face as he guts a guy caught on one of those movie-only ropes that instantly wraps itself around a foot and proceeds to send him careening into the air. And there is NO chandelier scene, which is also great to me. It's like the usual centerpiece or whatever, so seeing them skip it entirely is definitely preferable than seeing it staged yet again.

Not as elaborate are the sets, which I kind of liked (this IS a Golan/Globus affair). Yeah, it’s nice to have a film that acts as a production designer’s demo reel, but when the opera house, backstage areas, sewer tunnels, etc are only as detailed and complex as necessary, it’s easier to focus on the story and performances. Plus, it's just kind of endearing when you see things like an "iron" gate made out of painted wood.

Unsurprisingly, Englund is pretty goddamn great as the Phantom. The movie was shot around the peak of Freddy’s popularity, and since that means he was cracking jokes and wearing Superman costumes, Englund is obviously happy to play a scary character again. He has a few Freddy-ish oneliners, and the burn/skinless makeup is pretty much a ripoff of Freddy’s (during the face ‘reconstruction’ sequence), the character is otherwise different enough for it to not feel like a cheap cashin, which is probably all it was designed to be in the first place. In other words, Englund elevates the film, and you will probably wish he had gotten a few other meatier villain roles in his prime (since nowadays he primarily plays smaller, quirkier roles). He’d probably be more well-known as an all purpose movie monster legend like Lon Chaney or Bela Lugosi, not simply “Freddy”.

Another thing that had no bearing on me as a kid was that this film was Dwight Little’s followup to Halloween 4, my introduction to Michael Myers (and in turn John Carpenter) and the film that remains the high standard for Halloween sequels. Along with his other movies (most of which are action films like Seagal’s Marked for Death), you can see that he’s not exactly an auteur, but he knows how to deliver the goods nonetheless. I’ve seen this story told too many times for it to have any real suspense, but that said, its still a pretty fast-paced and more or less effective version of it. And the stuff that this version adds (the modern time bookends, slasher sequences) are definitely the highlights. Maybe they should have had him do, I dunno, Phantom of the Haddonfield Actor's Playhouse.

I got this movie for 1.99. The DVD is devoid of extras, but it’s still a damn good value. I would have gladly paid, like, 2.99.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Dead 7 (2000)

JULY 23, 2008

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

Anyone who visits the Horror Movie A Day store (which lists all HMAD entries in reverse order, so that the most recent movie is on the top) will probably wonder why the Decrepit Crypt set is on the top spot when I haven’t watched a single movie from it since December. Well, there are two reasons. One, leaving a multi set in one spot is easier than looking around for it and ‘bumping’ it back up there every time I take in another of the 50 movies on the set; and two, I didn’t intend on going that long without dipping into the pack. But since all three previous movies, and now this one, Dead 7, had nudity and excessive gore, I couldn’t watch them at work like I do with the other budget packs. On the flipside, watching them at home is hardly enticing, as they are given lousy transfers that look worse on my HD set and also are simply not as appealing as my bigger budgeted, lavishly transferred Blockbuster/Netflixed discs, not to mention all the unwatched ones from my own collection.

However, today is the day I leave for Comic Con, and thus I needed a short movie so I could get it out of the way early before heading down to San Diego. So I grabbed the Decrepit set and looked for a movie under 80 minutes. Didn’t take long (the movies are 4 to a disc, on ONE side!), and in case you were wondering, I got down to San Diego right around when I wanted to. Hurrah!

Another sort of nice surprise was that Dead 7 was far more competent than the other movies I’ve watched so far from this pitiful set. It was still shot on ugly consumer video and starred non-actors, but that was a given. Unlike the others, I could tell that the director (in this case, one Garrett Clancy) knew what he was doing, and while he could use a better editor (than himself), the camerawork, blocking, etc were all fairly decent. You get the idea that with some money and a good crew backing him up, he could make an effective horror movie, a notion I never even dreamed about when viewing those other pieces of shit (all 3 previous Decrepit entries are among the absolute worst films I’ve watched yet for HMAD).

The acting is also superior to the others. None of them are particularly great, but they know their lines, put emotion into them, etc. Particularly delightful (respectively speaking anyway) is Joe Myles, as the main jerk (peculiarly named Brownley - first name) we are supposed to root for (our “heroes” are criminals, once again). He looks like a cross between Wil Arnett and Peter Stormare, and he seems to be enjoying himself. There’s a great random bit when he yells at his girlfriend for not respecting Steely Dan, and also demonstrates the proper way to handle a CD (something I wish the Blockbuster clerks would explain to their customers – the DVDs I rent from the store often look like they were molested by rabid bears), and stuff like that is enough to give the movie a (slight) pass. There is also a terrific severed head appliance that is superior to even some non-indie films, and the hottest female cast member (Janet Tracy Keijser) is the one that offers the standard DC nudity.

I did take issue with one bit though – someone says that he’s gonna “pull a Lizzie Borden” or something to that effect, but then only swings his axe three or four times. Uh, I do believe Ms. Borden gave her mother forty whacks and then 41 for her dad. Who did she kill with only four? That part wasn’t in the story OR the nursery rhyme. Was there a baby or maybe a family pet that got deleted from the final version of the tale?

Of course, the movie is hardly what anyone would consider good. The plot makes little sense at times, our main characters aren’t really sympathetic in the least, and even at 75 minutes or so, there’s some needless padding (like a hide and go seek game sequence). And the closest thing to a heroine the movie offers is absent for about half the movie, so when she finally comes back, it seems like an afterthought.

And I know they don’t have a lot of money, but fonts can be found free, so there’s no need for such lazy titles (and why is the last name a different font than the first?):

You gotta draw in the audience with exciting fonts! Throw some Blades or maybe even a Wingding in there! Also, the first scene in the film is some sort of narrator in the Cryptkeeper tradition, but instead of a funny animatronic ghoul, it’s just some douche who comes off like Azrael Abyss. Also, the plot he describes doesn’t seem to be the plot of the movie we see, as he talks about two women who are trapped in a hell on earth or something, but then the plot is about four lowlifes who are targeted by an unseen ghoul for knocking a retarded kid into a well. Luckily he doesn’t reappear at the end; you might actually forget about him by the time the movie is over (I in fact did, until I went back to screenshot the credit screen).

Still, the relative competency and clear evidence that the folks involved were putting some effort into their movie is appreciated, and even made me hopeful that there might actually be 2 or 3 movies on the Decrepit set that are worthwhile (not counting Scream Bloody Murder, which somehow got tossed in with all these DV quickies).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Werewolf Of London (1935)

JULY 22, 2008

GENRE: CLASSIC, WEREWOLF
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

One of my favorite minor characters on The Simpsons is the snooty clerk from Costingtons. He pretty much only says one thing: “Yyyyyeeeeeeessssssss!” (his odd speaking manner was explained away - he had a stroke). Well, most of the cast of Werewolf Of London talks exactly like that guy, so if you find him annoying, I urge you to steer clear of this film.

Another reason to steer clear is that you’ve probably already seen other werewolf movies, and thus this one doesn’t really offer anything new. Granted, it actually pre-dates The Wolf Man, and so respect must be paid, but that doesn’t mean it’s better. For starters, Larry Talbot is a far more interesting and sympathetic character than Dr. Glendon (Henry Hull), and the story is simply more engrossing in the later film. Here, the lycanthropy is tied to botany... hardly the stuff of excitement. Unless the plants are singing about eating Steve Martin or causing Jena Malone to strip off parts of her garments, I don’t want them in my horror movies.

Back to the characters though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a collection of more sarcastic and bitter people in a movie. A full minute of the film is given to one shrill woman mocking the dialogue of another, slightly less annoying woman. They are often drunk or drinking, everyone seems to pretty much hate each other... but yet it just doesn’t entertain me as much as it should. Hell, I call for a remake, cast with the Apatow crew. They can spend the whole movie just mocking each other and then Paul Rudd can be the werewolf when time allows.

This side of the disc also contains a brief “documentary” about the history of the Wolf Man on screen, hosted by John Landis. It’s a nice little look and contains some pretty interesting trivia, I just wish it was longer. Each film gets about 5-7 minutes, when in reality, despite the obvious lack of a lot of surviving participants (though screenwriter Curt Siodmak was still around when the piece was put together), they each deserve a good 20-25 (except for She-Wolf of London, which is skipped entirely anyway, and for good reason). It’s hilarious when Landis points out that after a while they don’t even bother to explain why the Wolf Man has been resurrected at the beginning of a film.

My generally blasé feeling toward werewolf movies aside, this one is simply the first of what would become a longtime “series” of films about a sympathetic man becoming a monster, and it shows. It’s nice to see how it all started, but I am glad that The Wolf Man came along to improve on the formula. To me, it’s kind of like looking at the animatics of big FX sequences on a DVD – interesting, but it’s merely the groundwork for a vastly more entertaining spectacle.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Asylum (2008)

JULY 21, 2008

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Not sure the logic behind releasing two “mental” horror movies on DVD in the same week, but whatever. I’m glad I went with Insanitarium first, because it was a lot of fun and thus it wasn’t too much of a bother than Asylum was pretty goddamn dull, as I had already had my fill of the white walled genre. But it’s also pretty derivative; not only is the killer’s modus operandi identical to Freddy Krueger’s, but even whole lines of dialogue are repeated from Nightmare 3, something I would have noticed even if I HADN’T just re-watched that movie a few days prior.

The main problem with Asylum, however, is the complete lack of tension, suspense, or even thrills. We have six kids, with the hero/heroine obvious right from the start, and absolutely no one else. Hell, even the two minor characters (a security guard and the RA for the dorm our principals live in) aren’t even used as fodder. 4 death scenes for a 95 minute horror movie that’s not very interesting to begin with is pretty weak, if you ask me.

Making matters worse, the film is directed by David R. Ellis, who was 3 for 3 in terms of delivering the goods in silly movies. Cellular is a blast, Snakes on a Plane is crowd-pleasing fun (once it gets going anyway), and Final Destination 2 is something of a minor classic. But there’s not a shred of those films’ energy to be found here; everyone looks bored, the killer is a generic cross between Jigsaw and whatever the fuck Jeff Combs is supposed to be in the Haunted Hill movies (and, again, Freddy), the death scenes are incredibly half-assed (it’s the old “using their fears against them” type shit, but they are all just afraid of their parents or ex-boyfriends, so Fauxddy settles for just stabbing or hanging them most of the time), etc.

But the generic shit doesn’t stop there. Our heroine sees one of her friends dead. So she gets the cops and other friends to come see the body. Guess what? It’s gone!!! Just like in every other goddamn horror movie ever made. Just once, just fucking ONCE, I want someone to get someone to show them a corpse and have the goddamn thing still be there. It’s one thing to bring out clichés that work (i.e. – the whole concept of the Final Girl), but one as trite and annoying as that really should be permanently retired. The movie also features the “creepy” character (a janitor here) that turns out to have all the answers and aid the heroes in the end.

And again, I’m not really against a complete lack of originality in a movie. Doomsday was a lot of fun, for example. But the difference is, everyone in that movie was having fun too. Not the case here; the only actor who seems to be enjoying himself is the annoying jock character, who’s too grating to matter. Everyone else, particularly the main girl (the broad from Disturbia) have two modes: sleepwalking, or serious ACTING! They all get their little moment where they talk about their deepest fears (which of course is just foreshadowing how they die), and it’s just laughable. The fact that they all occur back to back doesn’t help.

It’s also botched from a technical stance. It’s a college, but we never see a single other student after the first 10 minutes or so. Do these 6 kids have the entire dorm to themselves? Also, at the beginning, when they all meet, it’s presented as random: someone overhears two others talking and joins the conversation, the nice heroine reaches out to the loner kid standing off to the side, etc. Yet, wouldn’t you know it, they are destined to be roommates with one another (the RA guy says “You have been put in groups” – seems like they put themselves in one). What are the odds? There’s also a baffling bit later in the film when a scene switches from “Let’s go try to find a door (or whatever)” mode to a “go go run!” chase scene over the course of one second. Again, there’s no buildup or tension to the film, everything just happens because it happened in a better film that writer Ethan Lawrence obviously wanted to emulate. Even the “deep fears” stuff is badly done. After the first kid is killed, the others each talk about their problems one at a time, as if to tell the audience “Now that you know the gimmick, we’re gonna tell you right now how the rest of us will die.” Almost like they figured no one would like the movie, and thus decided it was only fair to the audience to essentially tell them everything that will happen at the halfway point, so folks could go home and beat traffic.

There were a couple things I liked. The school is Richard (Dick?) Miller University, and... well I wouldn’t say I LIKED it, but there’s a bit where the Final Girl looks up insanity on Wikipedia. I believe that’s the first time I have seen Wiki used in a movie (not just mentioned), so that’s... well, something. Hey, I’m trying.

Don’t bother with this nonsense. The DVD producers obviously phoned in their work as well; the thing doesn’t even have a trailer. It IS password protected for some reason; I had to watch it on a different player because I don’t know the code to my DVD player. ("12345" didn’t work so I gave up). Not sure what’s up with that – the parental lock on my player is turned off anyway? Maybe MGM/FOX were just trying to keep me from bothering.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Ted Bundy (2002)

JULY 20, 2008

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

A while back I watched Gacy, which was an interminably dull and largely inaccurate version of the John Gacy story. Needless to say, it didn’t inspire me to watch others in the loose “franchise”, but I must have queued Ted Bundy around the same time, and it finally came up on my list over the weekend. Luckily, it was better than Gacy, but it’s still a giant missed opportunity.

Giving credit where credit is due, they got a lot of the details right surrounding the murders (Bundy is one of the few killers I’ve actually read a book about, though I never read the final twenty pages because someone stole it from my desk. I assume... he dies in the chair). They also kept in some of the other, lesser known elements, such as his rampant kleptomania and sock fetishes. As director Matthew Bright points out in his commentary, it’s largely the media’s fault that Ted is often thought of as a charming, regular guy – he was actually an introvert with almost zero social skills.

But they got other shit wrong too. Like, you know, a goddamn techno song in 1974. I know it’s a low budget movie and they probably couldn’t afford Zep or even Jefferson Airplane, but for the love of Christ, techno? And it’s even sillier, because it’s in a scene with typical seventies dancing, so you get Ted doing the “grab his nose and go underwater” bit while we hear NTISS NTISS WOYOWOYOWOYOWOYOWOYO. Speaking of the music, the main theme in the film sounds stolen from Thin Red Line.

And it’s also largely lacking any suspense or even narrative drive. Ted kills someone, then he has a fight with his girlfriend Lee (a woman who should be committed herself for putting up with the shit Ted does to her in the film), then kills someone... etc. They don’t bother doing any of the sort of “WHY” bullshit you see in a lot of serial killer movies (fictional or not), but you start to wonder if maybe they should. After an hour or so, you still have no real grasp on Ted OR Lee, and they never bother to have the various victims do anything to stick out. The one exception is Tiffany Shepis. Obviously she sticks out because she’s not an unknown, but since she’s playing Carol DaRonch (one of the would-be victims who managed to escape Ted), her scene is a bit longer. Whether the real DaRonch was as stupid as she is portrayed here, I don’t know, but her reaction to Ted’s Volkswagen is worth the price of Netflixing the disc alone. And they have a funny fight when she tries to get away, it goes on for like two full minutes.

Ted is sentenced to Death Row with like 20 minutes to go, which led me to believe maybe they would work in some of the Green River Killer stuff that I actually find really interesting. But no, Bright makes the rather interesting choice of having a very long scene of Ted being prepped for the chair. First his head is shaved, and then his asshole is stuffed with cotton (I guess you shit yourself when you are shocked – good to know!). It’s a very cold and somewhat brutal sequence, and it’s like seeing Ted get payback for the shit he did to the poor girls before (and after) killing them. In fact, the actual execution is rather tame in comparison to the cotton up the ass stuff.

Unfortunately, there’s a big problem with this scene – no one has aged! It’s about 15 years after the beginning of the film, and Ted looks exactly the same, as does Leigh (another blunder of the film is never really putting Leigh in danger – even if you don’t know shit about Ted, you can probably assume that when he walks up to a random girl at the beach, she’s a goner. The girlfriend? Not so much.). That always bugs me in movies. Maybe because there’s no way in hell I look the same as I did 15 years ago so I’m just jealous.

As serial biopics go, you could do worse, but while they didn’t make much up, they also failed to really focus on the more compelling aspects of Bundy’s story. I was hoping the disc would have at least a small piece on the real Ted (even text based), but the only extra is Bright’s commentary, which is incredibly boring. He just sort of comments on the real Ted; “He really did drink.” “He really did work at a crisis center.”, never once explaining how he got involved with the film, what filming was like, etc. He never even introduces himself! Ebert’s commentaries for movies he simply happens to like are more engaging and informative than this. He also hilariously fucks up discussing poor Shepis: first he says her name wrong (Shepkist?) and then claims she is the wrestler Madison. Which she is not. He gets other stuff wrong too, so as a result, this may be the only commentary track ever recorded in which you will actually know LESS after listening to it. He also laughs and makes off-color jokes during some of the murders, so in short... the guy is kind of a tool.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Insanitarium (2008)

JULY 19, 2008

GENRE: CANNIBAL, MAD SCIENTIST, SPLATTER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

One perk of working for movie websites is the set visit, where you are usually flown to some exotic locale (Vancouver) and are given money to spend in addition to having meals, board, etc. all covered by the studio. It’s great. At least, so I understand. Since I have a real job, I never get to do those for Bloody Disgusting. The only time I DID was for Midnight Meat Train, which was shooting about 4 blocks from my apartment. No flights, no hotels, no meals (I did have a bottled water though), no nothing. And since my digital recorder was stolen before I could transcribe any of the interviews I did there, there’s really no proof I was there beyond a quick bit I transcribed that day, where MMT’s writer, Jeff Buhler, told me about a film he was doing called Insanitarium. I thought it was something he was developing, so I was pretty dang surprised to see it actually be released BEFORE Meat Train.

And even more surprised to see how fun it was, a sentiment shared by HMAD reader LordScrodin, who recommended it some time ago. It’s not a particularly original movie, and the 2nd act drags a bit, but it’s just a good ol’ fashioned splatter pic, and didn’t deserve to go direct to video. They could have at least given it a midnight run a la Feast, because it’s the type of movie that would definitely play well with a big crowd of drunken folks. Besides, any movie with the line: “Paranoid delusions? Someone tried to eat my FUCKING FACE!” has to be appreciated (a runner-up: “He ate my arm, you selfish prick!”).

The latter line is probably the highlight of Carla Gallo’s performance, as she is otherwise dull and sort of mis-cast. Everyone else seems to be having a ball, but she feels a bit too serious. She’s cute as hell, and it’s nice to see her play someone besides “Bad Date” in a Judd Apatow flashback sequence, but she’s a weak link. To be fair, she plays nearly all of her scenes with Peter Stormare, who can have fun with anything and thus pretty much obliterates everything else on screen. After his disappointing (and all too brief) non-villain role in Premonition, it’s nice to see him play the mad doctor, and he’s clearly having a grand old time. Jesse Metcalfe, usually pretty stiff, also fares quite well as the hero; getting to stab and shoot zombie-ish cannibals is probably just as fun as rolling around with Eva Longoria (well, maybe not), but he actually seems more comfortable doing it.

And the gore is great. Not Wrong Turn 2 great (the kills here are sort of standard), but there’s a quantity over quality sense to it. Arms torn off, knives through the mouth, lots and lots of blood... by the end of the film, both our heroes are covered in it, as are most of the walls and floors that surround them. Of course, the setting is the usual movie sanitarium, all white and sterile, and it’s a nice little treat to see it so mangled and gory by the end.

I mentioned the 2nd act being a bit slow, but part of the reason is that the first act is so fast. We have a Prison Break (also with Stormare!) scenario, with a guy getting himself locked up to save his sibling and break back out, and it’s remarkable how quick he gets himself in there. I think by the ten minute mark he’s already locked away, and 10-15 minutes later he’s already on the “something’s wrong!” phase of horror movie hero development. We even get a nice cannibal moment about a half hour in. But after that it sort of treads water into the blood soaked 3rd act, and I wish Buhler had found a way to pace the 1st and 2nd acts a bit better. It’s definitely a film that keeps building and building (as opposed to a movie with 4-5 big setpieces), but that pace is thrown off a bit in the middle.

I like that the experimental drug is called Orpheum. We need more movie drugs named after music clubs. I would like to see an action movie with Van Damme or Seagal going after the guys who are putting Paradise or CBGBs on the streets. Speaking of names, there’s a guy named Loomis (yay!) and for some reason, the opening credits throw an umlaut on Buhler’s name, even though A. it’s not like that in the end credits and 2. It’s not how he spells it anyway, far as I know.

The extras are pretty light, but watchable. Thankfully there’s no usual EPK shit; for example, Stormare (who pronounces his own name, so I’m gonna go with that pronunciation from now on, since I’ve always gone back and forth between “Storm-Air” and “Storm-Arr-Ay”; the former is correct) conducts his interview laying down on an exam table and pretending he is Dracula. There is also a collection of deleted scenes, all wisely excised.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Non Canon Review: Nightmare On Elm St 3: Dream Warriors

JULY 18, 2008

GENRE: SLASHER, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Freddy may be the most popular with general audiences (until Freddy vs Jason, the highest grossing film of any of the big 80s franchises was a Freddy film), but personally, he was always my least favorite of the “Big Three” (the others being Michael and Jason). There are more bad Freddy films than good ones, and since there’s seemingly no rules to his powers in the real world, it just didn’t have the same appeal as the more grounded Friday and Halloween films (other than the general supernatural element of the fact that they can’t be killed). However, Nightmare on Elm St 3: Dream Warriors has always held a special place in my horror heart, and dare I say it, I actually prefer it to the original.

While the original is great, it has a really odd structure, and since it’s more serious than any of the sequels, repeated viewings are not really recommended. But 3 was a great blend of the humor and scares, and the colorful cast adds immensely to the proceedings (another check against the original – even Johnny Depp is kind of dull). In other words, it’s the perfect type of movie to show at a revival theater, with a big crowd of people who love it while acknowledging how silly it is at the same time.

Back to the no rules thing, some of this stuff is just “huh?”. For example, Philip walks through a locked door. We can assume this is his dream, but he actually would have had to do that in the real world too for him to end up on the other end of the hospital. And during the climax, Freddy somehow attacks two non-sleeping characters (and leaves the “Dream world” in the process), a bit I never quite understood. And why does the ghost of Freddy’s mother age?

It’s hard to believe that the guy who went on to make Shawshank Redemption and The Mist is responsible for scenes like the one in Dream Warriors where a door appears in the middle of a room, and Patricia Arquette says “It’s a door!” as if it wasn’t clear to the other people in her group. But Frank Darabont (and Chuck Russell, who directed) also came up with some great lines, most of which are delivered by Kincaid (Ken Sagoes!) or the nerdy dude who becomes the “Wizard Master”. Oh, and if I may interject – you know how it’s kind of lame how Freddy kills him almost instantly? There was a big fight scripted, but cut for budget reasons. Hence the Dracula cape and seemingly pointless “electric hand power” he displays.

That tidbit was one of the many highlights during the post screening Q&A with Darabont and Russell (moderated by Diablo Cody). The two are old pals, and they, like the audience, clearly have a fondness for the film that doesn’t keep them from addressing its flaws. Darabont says it should be 20 minutes shorter (I disagree) and they have no idea why the door line is in there. I really hope someone filmed it and tosses it on Youtube, because it was a really informative and hilarious chat, and makes me bemoan the lack of a commentary track with the two on the DVD.

And need I say more?

Nightmare 3 was the very first movie I ever bought (a used VHS for I believe 2.99) and was also the first of the series I ever saw. Which may explain why I tend to like it more than the original, at least in the sense of “If I had a choice, I’d watch 3”. The original is certainly a “better” film in the traditional sense, but when you’re dealing with a guy who can go in your dreams and kill you, it’s best to just have some fun with it, which is clearly what 3 was going for. And then of course, the next couple sequels went too far in that direction. This is the last one where Freddy was genuinely scary and dark, and some of the series’ best kills are here (the puppet one remains my favorite). Plus, they don’t seem like they were developed by a bunch of guys sitting around thinking of ways for Freddy to kill people. And even if they WERE, they are well integrated into the story, so it doesn’t matter. Without this movie, it’s safe to say Freddy would be long forgotten. The goodwill earned from this film (and the financial success of the strangely daytime heavy part 4) led to three more films, none of which were a big success or very good (New Nightmare somewhat excepted – it’s a great idea but not executed as well as I’d have liked), and then of course, the abysmal Freddy vs Jason. So, in a way, fuck you, Darabont and Russell!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Invasion (2005)

JULY 18, 2008

GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

John Carpenter may have been the first director I ever took notice of and “followed”, but Albert Pyun was the first one I ever noticed was fucking terrible. I recall watching a film called Arcade and finding it incredibly bad. I looked at the credits and saw the name Albert Pyun, a name I recognized from the equally terrible Captain America movie (the one with the Italian Red Skull). “I should just avoid this guy from now on” I said, and I have mostly stuck to my guns on that matter (I watched something called Mean Guns that he did, because I didn’t know it was him)... until now.

Some time ago I heard about Invasion (aka Infection, which makes more sense. Way to go LG), that it was an “all one shot” film shot from a police car surveillance camera, and that it detailed some sort of alien or zombie outbreak. And it was directed by Albert Pyun. “Pyun making something interesting”, I pondered? Since his awful camerawork is a big part of why I hated his other movies, I figured one where the camera never moved had a chance to be OK, so I queued it up.

And it’s not all that bad. It’s just woefully half-assed. We are told right at the beginning that we are going to see 63 minutes of unbroken (pfft, right) video footage, but since the movie is 80 minutes long, that means there’s gonna be some other stuff. Well, yes and no. There is a wrap-around of sorts (possibly added later for padding) with a reporter trying to get to the bottom of everything (and failing to do so), and some onscreen text that gives some info about the outbreak, but as it turns out, the camera segment isn’t even the promised 63 minutes (it’s just shy of 60). So where’s the rest of the time?

End credits, that’s where. In what has to be a record, the end titles last 15 minutes. Consider that this movie is all “one shot”, features only a half dozen actors, and couldn’t possibly have things like a 2nd unit or multiple cameramen, it’s pretty amazing that they stretch the credits out for so long (you can watch them on fast forward and still easily read each name, with time to spare). Hell, even the ones in the LOTR movies weren’t this long.

As for the actual movie, it’s not that bad. The cheating running time actually sort of makes the final “scene” a bit of a jump, because you’re like “well there’s still 20 minutes to go, obviously our Final Girl isn’t in any real danger yet” and then BANG! So there’s something. And the score is quite good; very Carpenter inspired. There is also a surprisingly strong surround mix – you’ll hear woodland animals and footsteps coming from your rear speakers at unexpected times.

Plus, the techie/film geek in me loves the idea of a single shot movie. Whenever the story dragged (which was often), I was still having fun trying to spot the edits. There aren’t any in the first 10-15 min that I could see, but as the film goes on they become more frequent and even noticeable. Even if you never spotted the ones in the opening shot of Halloween, you’ll see at least two in this I think. Guess they just started getting lazy.

Unfortunately, it seems Pyun and co. just sort of figured that the gimmick was enough to sustain the movie. There are some taut sequences early on (particularly when the now zombied cop first approaches the two kids in their car), but after a while it runs out of ideas and it seems like they just started making it up on the spot. Our heroine suddenly sees ghosts of herself, she breaks down shrieking for minutes on end, a weird floating head makes a cameo... what the hell? [Rec] also had a similar “zombies in real time” concept, and it was a far better example of how to pace the film accordingly and yet keep it suspenseful and exciting at the same time. Pyun fails to do that here; and the randomness of the last 15 minutes (well, last 30 minutes, since 15 are credits) hurt the film more than help. Sure, a floating head might be interesting, but not when its clearly there just to add a few more precious seconds to the narrative so that it will count as a feature length film.

The reason behind keeping the girl inside the park is also incredibly weak, and botched to boot. Supposedly there’s only one road leading in and out of the park, fine. But she claims it’s being blocked, despite the fact that we clearly see the car “blocking” it being driven in reverse toward the exit/entrance (seems like he’s clearing a path for her more than anything else). Plus, she’s in a goddamn police car! Those things have those battering ram grill things that could easily take out a 1975 Chevy Pickup. Come on now. You can do better.

The DVD has a special features menu, but the only thing on it are the traditional LG trailers that you are forced to watch when you pop the disc in anyway. It IS anamorphic though, so take the good with the bad.

Not a bad film, just one that should have been great. The moral of the story – you can always count on Pyun to botch a perfectly good concept.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Eye 2 (2004)

JULY 17, 2008

GENRE: ASIAN, GHOST*
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I got about a half hour into The Eye 2 (aka Gin Gwai 2) and realized I was getting sleepy. It’s a common thing lately; I start to doze off like 2 hrs after I get out of bed (I only sleep like 5-6 hrs, so that may be a root cause). Not wanting to miss any of the movie, I decided to give myself a shot of adrenaline by playing some Halo 3. I figured either I would win and get pumped, or lose and get mad – no matter what, I’d be energized. So I turn it on and look at my stats, and notice I am 2 wins shy of getting a promotion (which means nothing, but looks cool). “Sweet!” I said, and proceeded to win a round. Then I was in one where they said the host quit and my team won, and then I won another right out. But no promotion. I looked, and my win count hadn’t changed. This presented a third, unpredicted scenario – I win AND get mad anyway. Stupid goddamn Halo.

But it worked, and I was able to watch the rest of the film sans “eye resting”. Which is a good thing, because this one is more about story and character than scares (or a body count – by my count, the film only has one death and it’s a suicide). Not the type of thing you can miss much of and expect to know what the hell is going on, and besides, it’s simply a good movie, which deserves your full(ish) attention.

It’s admirable that a sequel would go smaller. The cast is smaller, the scares are smaller, and again, there’s no real body count to provide cheap thrills. So while nothing may rival the elevator scene in the original, it’s a movie that works better as a whole, which is preferable.

Ironically, it’s more suited to Jessica Alba’s limited acting talents, though I am guessing that if there IS a Hollywood sequel to her version of The Eye, it won’t follow this plot and/or star her anyway. Instead of having to play blind, she would only have to play pregnant, something she actually is (or was, I don’t know/care when celebrities have their babies, especially when I’m not even the father). If the movie has one flaw, it’s that for a sequel, it doesn’t have much to do with the original – no characters return, and the concept of an “eye” isn’t even really involved. She "sees" ghosts, but Christ, so does every other person in Asia, it seems (why do these people get so freaked out when they start seeing ghosts? It seems like a pretty common problem over there. I’d feel sort of gypped if I DIDN’T see ghosts, at this point).

There are also a couple other minor quirks. The main ‘villain’ ghost is a bit inconsistent regarding when the ghost seeing heroine can see HER or not, and it only seems to be that way so that a few jump scares can occur. Also, there’s a scene where the girl is at some sort of “how to be a mother” class and drowns her fake baby. Everyone seems to think its funny, and they even play silly incidental music, but I don’t see the amusement. She does it because she zones out thinking about all the ghosts she keeps seeing, a problem that may still occur once she has the real kid. This is a major concern. They also attempt an elevator scare, which is kind of silly – you can’t top the one in the original, so don’t even try. It’s like the Chain Saw remake... they knew to avoid the dinner scene. I also didn’t care too much for the constant fades to black for a second and then back up to show a jump in the narrative. It’s an editing technique I like, but they overuse it, particularly in the final act (the movie is sort of broken into chapters as it is – this makes it feel like a collection of cutscenes in a game at times).

The story is pretty powerful and even melancholy. The incredible score (other than “ghosts”, this is about all the two films have in common; the original’s was great too) aids a lot of the more emotional scenes, particularly the big reveal which is when the movie turns from decent to simply GOOD. If anything, the movie becomes even SMALLER at this point, and it’s a gamble that pays off. There are still some horror elements (including the only real gore in the film), but it’s still completely focused on the character and story, not spectacle. Very admirable.

You also gotta love a movie in which our heroine reveals herself to be completely inept at suicide. She tries to kill herself like 4 or 5 times during the movie, and she keeps failing. Most impressive is when she jumps off a roof (of a short building, but still). Not only does she survive and then drag herself up the stairs to try again, but it’s also impressive from a filmmaking perspective. We see her jump off and land, and then MOVE, all in one shot. I’m pretty good at spotting hidden edits and fake CG people, and I didn’t catch either. Either way, the shot totally fucking SELLS.

Doesn’t matter if you saw or didn’t see the original, or even if you liked it. If you like ghost movies, this is definitely one of the more interesting and unique. It’s not a masterpiece or anything, but it’s really interesting how they were able to work in the standard Asian ghost movie clichés (even long black hair entering the frame first) and yet make the film as a whole feel very original.

What say you?

*I need more Asian films WITHOUT Ghosts - if you know of any please post in the recommendation thread. Gracias...

PLEASE, GO ON...

Candyman: Farewell To The Flesh (1995)

JULY 16, 2008

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

If memory serves, and it rarely does, I rented Candyman: Farewell To The Flesh when it hit VHS, fell asleep watching it, and didn’t bother to rewind when I woke up. There can’t be any other way to explain it, because the end seemed familiar, and obviously I had seen the beginning, but I didn’t even have the slightest bit of recognition or déjà vu as I watched the middle part of the film. Crazy ice cone salesmen, Timothy Carhart (a nice replacement for fellow “asshole actor” Xander Berkeley) being scared by a raven, some dudes outside, and his own girlfriend in a single sequence, Bill Nunn dressed as a priest, etc... none of this stuff rang even the tiniest bell.

Sadly, the “meh” feeling I recalled having then is the same one I have now. Having just watched the original a couple weeks or so ago (as opposed to about 3 years between them in the 90s), it’s easy to see what went wrong: namely, a complete lack of mysteriousness for Candyman. In the film’s very FIRST SCENE, we are given a lot of his backstory (courtesy of that one asshole professor from the original, the only non-Candyman person to return), which sort of ruins him for the rest of the movie. Then the final 15 minutes are almost entirely a flashback to his “origin”, something that should have been revealed a bit BEFORE the finale of a horror movie. Kind of hard to get scared or anything when the writers and director are more interested in what already happened than what is about to.

Plus, isn’t it a bit early for the "sympathetic" origin stuff? It took Freddy 3 movies to get some of that, and then 6 to get the rest. This one gives everything away. I haven’t seen 3, but I’m guessing any sort of revelations are either going to be completely unimportant (maybe Candyman had a fondness for apples) or revisionist. They also act like it’s a much later film in the series by not having a “2” in the title. Again, this is reserved for later sequels, so that unassuming folks won’t realize it’s actually the 8th part or whatever. If it’s only the second film, you’re just tricking people into thinking it’s the first one, which is kind of dumb. Especially when the film’s trailer has what has to be the most idiotic tagline of all time: “A motion picture that ends what the first one barely started”. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Barely started what? Sucking?

The lead actress is no help. Kelly Rowan is someone you’d expect to see in a Wes Craven Presents* film, because she is so bland and blonde. No match for Virginia Madsen at any rate. This is probably why Tony Todd got top billing, despite being in it I think even less than the original (he only appears once in the first 45 minutes), where he got the “And” credit. Thankfully, he talks a lot less here, until the finale anyway. And when he does, it’s not gothic poetry sounding, so there’s one of the few improvements.

One thing I’ll give credit to each of the Candyman films for is having a variety of locales that play a big factor in the film’s story. Cabrini Green in the original, New Orleans here, and from what I understand, the LA Day of the Dead festival in 3. Conventional wisdom would have new folks moving to Cabrini Green and having Candyman stalk them, but that’s not the case here. Had the series continued, it could be like horror’s own travelogue series. “Candyman visits picturesque and yet war torn Iraq.”

The movie also contains what I believe is the only non-sympathetic cancer sufferer in movie history (not counting dying mafia dons and the like). Veronica Cartwright plays Final Girl’s mom, and she’s a racist snob who is dying (and drinking, which probably doesn’t help). In between passive aggressive putdowns of people who aren’t white, she points out how she won’t live long enough to see her hair turn gray or how she can fit in her prom dress again. Yeah lady, I feel real bad for you. Go die.

Another hilarious “first” is a scene in which two characters drive up to a spooky house to investigate. Usually this will involve one of them pulling a gun out of the glove box, to the concern of the other one. But nope, this movie does the scene with a cell phone (1995, don’t forget). “What’s that for?!?!” she cries, as if he had pulled out, well, a gun. “Just in case,” he says. Just in case what? You want to text your buddy? Go get a goddamn gun like every other movie character that’s just gonna die anyway.

The film’s most annoying concept is a radio DJ who never shuts up. Like the one in End of Days, he’s sort of providing global exposition, reminding us when the festival occurs, what it means, etc. He is even shown at the festival, but according to the credits he’s played by a different guy than the one doing the voice. So they shelled out dough for two people to play one annoying and worthless character. He’s like what Candyman was in the first one – namely, someone who should never open his goddamn mouth.

Unlike the original’s DVD, this one is pretty light on extras. Namely, just a commentary with future Oscar winning director Bill Condon. He’s surprisingly pretty candid about the film’s faults, even admitting the first one is better. He also reveals some things he now regrets (like the DJ!) and other tidbits. He’s also strangely silent for minutes at a time, which makes me wonder if he went off even more and the studio had it edited out. Then again, I can’t imagine any studio would care – the film was originally Gramercy in theaters, Polygram for video, and now the DVD is MGM. For a sequel to a Sony film.

How’s part 3? Anyone see it? This one wasn’t BAD, it was just so goddamn bland, which is in some ways worse. No wonder I couldn’t remember any of it from 12 years ago, it’s only been 4 hours since I watched it again and I’m already pretty hazy on a lot of the details. Did the asshole cop ever die?

What say you?

*Such as Dracula 2000, which was also set in New Orleans, and made a big deal about the city’s history and such. And Hatchet also had Mardi Gras as a focal point. Which begs the question – does any horror movie take place in the non-historical, non-Mardi Gras parts of New Orleans? Is Mardi Gras a yearlong event? Is Bourbon Street the only street in town? One thing about Los Angeles, which I’ve mentioned before, is how there aren’t a lot of “traditional” shooting locales that you expect to see whenever a movie is set there. Read all about it in my new book: “Things That Bug Me That You Never Even Noticed And Certainly Don’t Give A Shit About To Boot”.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Bad Moon (1996)

JULY 15, 2008

GENRE: WEREWOLF
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Last night I went to Best Buy to buy The Ruins, which I really liked and wanted to see on Blu-Ray, as it was incredibly well shot and beautiful to look at. From there I drove to Blockbuster, and as I did, I questioned whether or not I should have bought it or simply rented it when I actually had time to watch it again (doing HMAD leaves little time for rewatching stuff I’ve already reviewed). I own too many DVDs as it is, so buying a horror movie that I probably won’t have time to watch again for months isn’t the best investment, especially when you consider I already own a lot I haven’t seen at all. Anyway, at Blockbuster, I rented Bad Moon, the 1996 werewolf movie that HMAD reader Kristian recommended some time ago. When the girl* asked if I wanted the receipt, I said yes. Not because I need to prove I rented Bad Moon, but because I like Eric Red a lot, and figured if it was good, I’d have the receipt to let me know how much it was to keep.

So when I got to my car and looked at the receipt, I was amazed to see it was $9.99 to own. Most horror movies more than a few years old (particularly ones that aren’t exactly big sellers) are like 4-6 bucks tops. “10 bucks?” I said to myself. “It’s probably not that much to buy it new!” And then, suddenly, a rush of memories flooded my brain. Like the one concerning the time a few months back when I bought a 4 movie pack of Warner horror movies... like Bad Moon.

Yes, moments after pondering whether I had just bought something I should have just rented, I rented a movie I had already fucking bought. Now, in my (small) defense, it’s not like I went out of my way to specifically buy Bad Moon, I had bought a cheap horror multipack and that film was on it. At least I was right though – I paid 7.99 for it brand new and got 3 other movies to boot.

And of course, as I watched the film I realized it WAS only worth a rental. It’s not horrible, but it’s incredibly lacking in suspense or scares. A big problem is the limited cast – we have the werewolf, the mom, her little kid, and Thor, the dog who is actually the main character. And that’s it. So it’s kind of hard to really fear for their safety, because a mom, the little kid, and the dog are the safest movie characters in movie history (unless the dog is the villain, see Cujo). And there are almost no other secondary characters, only a sheriff (who has one scene) and a con man that is obvious fodder. Maybe having a few “at risk” characters (a friend of the mother, a neighbor, a love interest... maybe a few bullies for the kid) would help things in this department. If we only really know two people, and they’re not in any danger – how are we supposed to really fear the werewolf?

Another issue is Michael Paré’s inconsistent character. In human form, he is sort of sympathetic – he is looking for a cure and he chains himself to a tree at night so he doesn’t hurt anyone. But at times he’s just the typical evil human who is seemingly embracing his lycanthropy. At one point he instigates the dog, resulting in it being taken off to the pound. He sneers as the dog is dragged off, and then urinates on the doghouse (this is payback for the dog peeing on his trailer – possibly the first urination-based cinematic payoff in history). But then later, when his sister discovers his secret, he acts like she should never have let the dog get taken away, and even sticks up for it (“he was trying to protect you!”). Huh? Also, at one point the dog is seemingly trying to prevent Paré from chaining himself up. Which makes the dog kind of an asshole.

Luckily it’s short enough (75 minutes or so) and doesn’t have any mystics or scientists rambling about cures and curses to slow things down or drown the film in exposition. It hurts the suspense factor, but it’s actually kind of nice to see such a straight forward werewolf film. There isn’t too much in the way of rewriting the rules (supposedly he turns every night, not just during the full moon, but then they show the moon and it’s full anyway, so I dunno), and the gore is surprisingly, well, gory. The transformation kind of sucks (thanks, morphing CG heavy 90s!) but that wasn’t really a surprise. The wolf itself looks cool (all man in suit stuff; the guy in the suit was actually the dude who stole Jason away from Kane Hodder) and the dog is awesome, so at least the action scenes have that going for them.

Nowadays the film would almost certainly go direct to video. But the completely horror-starved mid 90s allowed such things to hit theaters, which is nice. A stark contrast from today, where the market was glutted to the point of total burnout from the fans, resulting in great movies like The Ruins totally tanking. Hey, the review came full circle!

What say you?

*More depressing about the whole thing – I forgot my card, but the girl was like “Oh its OK, you’re in here a lot.” Since I belong to TWO online rental places, it’s sort of defeating the purpose if I am considered a regular at the actual store.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Brutal Massacre (2007)

JULY 14, 2008

GENRE: COMEDIC, MOCKUMENTARY
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Let me reveal right off the bat – Brutal Massacre is not a horror movie. It’s a comedy. BUT: A. I thought there was a slasher element in it (that the crew started getting picked off or something, plus the cover implies it’s a horror comedy), and B. The movie won’t be of much interest to anyone but horror fans, so I think it’s OK to count. However, from now on I will pay more attention to the goddamn synopsis – I spent the whole movie waiting for the crew to start getting killed. I could have sworn I saw a still of Brian O’Halloran’s character being dismembered, but I must have imagined it.

The film is written and directed by Stevan Mena, who made the above average independent slasher Malevolence, which has a sequel on the way (one that looks fucking great from the trailer). Several of the events seen in Massacre are in fact based on insane stuff that actually happened to him during the shooting of his earlier film (the most depressing/hilarious – he gave 200 bucks to a guy he thought was a PA in order to have him exchange it for two hundred dollar bills to be used onscreen, only to discover the guy was just some onlooker who unsurprisingly was never heard from again). These moments are also among the funniest, and helps offset the humor that DOESN’T work.

See, for every unique jokey bit like that, there is unfortunately some generic gag right on its heels. Every mockumentary about filmmaking has the same stock set of jokes, and this movie revels in them: the crew doesn’t get paid, the actors are convinced they are making high art, etc. Each and every joke built around these concepts is too clichéd to really amuse, and it’s a shame that Mena & co. fell back on them so often during the film. I wish that everyone had stuck with the more batshit ideas and setpieces (like when they are suddenly shot at during filming) than tired old “There’s no catering?!?!?” type stuff.

Another issue was the “documentary” presentation. Like Diary of the Dead, they really don’t do a very good job of selling the idea that everything we are seeing is from the eyes of a participant in the proceedings. Conversations are covered from opposite angles, but we never once see a cameraman on the other side. There’s a scene with Ken Foree giving a monologue about shitting his pants (there is a lot of poop humor in the film), and there are two angles on it, one of which would CERTAINLY catch the other camera had it been “live”. Since the “talking to camera” stuff and narration is mostly forgotten after the first 20 minutes, it’s a wonder they even bothered with the idea at all.

One final issue is the main character, Harry Penderecki (David Naughton!), and the fact that he is kind of an asshole. We want to root for him, and there’s a really sad scene where he goes to the video store and sees all of his movies in the dollar bin, but a lot of the time he’s not really sympathetic. It is frequently alluded to that he sleeps with his younger co-stars, he doesn’t care when one of his long time collaborators dies on the set (it’s an accident), etc. It’s clear that the movies of Christopher Guest were an inspiration, but the difference is that those characters are flawed, but still lovable. Harry’s flaws nearly result in him simply being unlikable.

That stuff aside, it’s definitely an amusing movie, and a real treat for horror nerds. Cameos by Gunnar Hansen, Mick Garris, and Tony Timpone (who can’t even play himself right – at no point does he offer a “Big Fango welcome” to anyone he is introducing to the stage) are highlights, and Ken Foree and Ellen Sandweiss play large roles. Sandweiss in particular is a delight, it’s the second of her movies I’ve watched in the past week (after Satan’s Playground) and she is clearly having a blast playing the harried producer, as opposed to doing almost nothing in Playground. And she should serve as an inspiration to every other actress – I won’t mention her age, but consider Evil Dead was almost 30 years ago, and look how good she still looks.

There are also a number of lines/bits that made me laugh out loud. There’s a running gag concerning a van full of kids who yell obscenities at the film crew and ruin their shots that killed me every time, and a hilarious metajoke about bad dubbing. Another highlight is a location scout early on – they are looking for the “perfect” killer’s house, and some of the choices include a gas station, a condo that’s only halfway built, and a mansion. Good stuff.

There’s also a great deal of eye candy. In addition to Sandweiss, Emily Brownell as the lead actress in the film within the film is highly smashable (and she is in Bruce Willis’ next movie, which automatically earns her my respect). And look at this handsome fellow seen in the film’s opening shot:

Why that’s my good pal Rob G! Rob also appears in the making of piece, which instead of being a making of the actual film, it’s a making of the documentary in the film? So everyone is in character (even Rob), and it just comes off as a collection of deleted scenes. This is odd, because there actually IS a collection of deleted scenes, almost all of which were rightfully left out. In addition to more “Wow, Harry sucks” type scenes, there are more of the non-documentary gaffes. For example, there’s a scene of Mick Garris behind the stage at the Fango con, and Harry enters. They talk for a bit and then Mick quietly asks who the guy is with Harry. Harry explains that it’s the documentarian and that he is doing a movie about him – but why didn’t Mick notice the camera guy filming him, even before Harry entered the room?

So basically, the extras are kind of worthless. Since the joke isn’t all that funny to begin with, I think they took it too far. I enjoy meta humor as much as the next guy, but I would have actually liked some real insight on the process of making the film, hiring unknown actors to play unknown actors, how Mena used his real life experiences in shaping the film, etc. At least we are spared a Harry Penderecki commentary track.

LA folks can check the movie out with the lovely Miss Sandweiss providing a Q&A afterwards, this Friday (the 18th) at the Sunset 5 (midnight screening!). Like I said, horror fans will definitely appreciate all the little injokes and cameos, and even though it’s uneven, I still appreciate the concept and had a good time watching it overall. Bring on Malevolence 2!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Slash (2002)

JULY 13, 2008

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

It really bums me out when I get a DVD that is so half-assed. Presentation is very important, and when your movie is as generic as Slash, it could use all the help it could get. But no, a full frame, badly washed out transfer (even my wife noticed that!) just makes its flaws all the more apparent. Adding insult to injury, the final scene of the film is presented in widescreen for some reason, as if only to make sure I knew it wasn’t a full frame movie to begin with or something. The sound levels also bounce around at random – you’ll either have to turn it up to hear the dialogue (should you choose to do so) or turn it down when the random songs begin blaring.

Like I said, even if the presentation was top notch, the movie itself just doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s technically OK enough for a low budget film, but the script almost dares you not to doze off (a dare I lost). The slasher sequences are few and far between, and hardly impressive anyway. It’s almost like they wanted to make a real character drama about a kid who has to choose between living his dream (of being the leader of a rock band called... wait for it... "Slash") or sticking by his family, which by now is just his dad (Steve Railsback!), and helping on the family farm (their last name is Macdonald too, in case you were wondering). Even the breakdown aspect seems legit – it’s not like the killer threw some spikes on the road or punctured their gas tank, I think the damn thing literally broke down (maybe this was explained in the 5-10 minutes I dozed off). Hell, the obligatory “the killer isn’t dead” scene is presented as such; director Neal Sundstrom seems more interested in showcasing the band playing their first big show.

There are also a lot of survivors; five I think (it has no real effect on the band's touring plans at any rate). One is the film’s best character, a seemingly simple handyman for the farm. At first you think he’s a redneck, but as he starts to reveal that he’s actually quite intelligent, and so THEN you probably start to think he’s probably the bad guy. But no, he’s just a really cool dude, and he joins the band, and seems pretty happy to do so. If you’re the type who likes to see a real character arc in a bad slasher movie, at least Slash totally offers that much.

But again, that sort of just goes along with the whole “let’s make this the least horror-y movie ever” feel of the film. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the horror elements were thrown in at the last minute before filming began. At one point they just cut away from one of the drama scenes to quickly show a guy being killed (no setup whatsoever) and cut right back to the drama as soon as possible. Maybe it was a budgetary thing, but since the horror backstory is so generic (yet another “sacrifice for the crops” type thing) it doesn’t seem likely. Hell, even Dark Harvest was at least proud of its horror roots.

The movie also features the least convincing car wreck in movie history. They don’t really show it hitting anything, which is fine. But right after, the girl in the car pretends to play dead, and the boyfriend is hardly concerned. I don’t care – when you get into an accident, or even a close call, you’re sort of fucked up for a few minutes. These assholes don’t even seem to mind that their car is probably wrecked.

I should note the rock music in the film. It’s not all that bad. Anyone who knows me knows my taste in music is a bit questionable (I’m looking forward to the new Hinder album, for example), but whatever – I liked it. Some of the stuff reminded me of a band called Jeremiah Freed that put out an album in 2002 and have never been heard from again (at least, not by me). I don’t think it was them though. It’s probably the only reason to keep watching the movie, provided you like that kind of stuff. Otherwise, it’s not good enough to recommend and not bad enough to laugh at, so it’s just sort of worthless to all but Steve Railsback completists.

The only extra feature is a trivia game. You’re either right or wrong, they don’t tell you what the answer is if you’re wrong, you get nothing for getting them all right. You can also watch the film’s opening scene without the credits, after the movie ends (another bonus – because of this, the movie is actually five minutes shorter than the time counter would have you believe). Great.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Satan's Little Helper (2004)

JULY 12, 2008

GENRE: COMEDIC, SLASHER, SUPERNATURAL (?)
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

There’s a scene about halfway through Satan’s Little Helper that delighted me more than any movie I’ve watched since Cathy’s Curse. The scene involves “Satan” (whether he actually IS or not is never explained) and his eponymous helper running people over with a shopping basket in a parking lot. The kid thinks it’s all a game, and gleefully yells “50 points! 100 points” as these poor people (including an old man, a baby, a pregnant woman) are mowed down. I don’t think any of them are actually killed, but it’s still a real treat for fans of ridiculous, mean-spirited horror.

If the entire movie had this sadistic sense of humor, I would be singing its praises to high heaven. But unfortunately, about an hour in, the kid’s father is gutted right before his eyes and the rest of the film is pretty much without humor. It also drags out incessantly (the sudden lack of humor making it even more noticeable); shaving 20 minutes off the running time would do everyone a world of good. Once little Dougie no longer thinks its all a game, it loses a lot of its odd charm. Plus, since he’s not the hero, he also sort of disappears from the movie at this point, adding to the disjointed feel of the final act.

And when he DOES appear, he acts borderline retarded. The premise is goofy, but they sell it well and you don’t really question the kid’s mental abilities at first. But after he discovers his friend really IS killing people, you’d think he’d be weary of a guy in a Jesus mask and a cop in a human mask (both the killer, again). But no, he quickly accepts these people at face value and puts his family in danger yet again. Stupid fucking kid.

Also, the “50 points!” stuff comes from a game he is playing on his fake PSP. It is, without a doubt, the worst fake video game I’ve ever seen in a movie. In addition to being a lousy game, it doesn’t look or play anything like one (it’s like a Flash cartoon). Obviously they had to pay someone to make a dummy game for the movie – why not just pay for the rights to use a crappy game no one remembers anyway that involves a devil looking guy killing people? There’s gotta be a few. Since the whole movie rests on the idea that this kid is so obsessed with the game that he thinks it has come to life, it’d work a lot better if the game looked worth playing at all, let alone consuming you.

There are also a few unexplained things. At some point in the movie, the town is overrun by a few looters. Why they are looting, who they are, etc is never explained. There’s even an entire scene of them beating the shit out of a vacuum cleaner for some goddamn reason. There is also a red herring that’s so badly implemented that it’s a wonder they even bothered. Especially since they never quite explain if “Satan” is indeed Satan or just some guy – just a few too many vague story elements for one movie.

And in my notes I have “doorbell”. This refers to the really annoying doorbell the main family has in the movie. It rings, I dunno, some 582 times during the 95 minute film, and if I ever hear it again I can’t say for certain that I won’t hunt down writer/director Jeff Lieberman and smack him for it.

Even more annoying is the way that the DVD is set up. You hit PLAY MOVIE and you are forced to watch a few trailers (even when you select the commentary track under extras). This is bullshit – put that shit BEFORE the main menu, like everyone else. The fact that all of the movies look fucking awful doesn’t help (though one trailer is for a movie I almost rented the other day – so I guess it’s a sign I should). Also, it appears that they got bootlegged copies of the green MPAA rating info screen:

What sort of crap is that? Where’s the “The following PREVIEW has been approved for ALL AUDIENCES....” stuff? Weird. Speaking of the commentary, it’s not really worth a listen; Lieberman is very monotone and just sort of talks about low budget filmmaking, which anyone who watches commentaries has already heard a million times by now (by livelier folks). There’s also a nice little behind the scenes bit which Lieberman narrates (and is seemingly more interested), showing the filming of two key moments. I wouldn’t have minded if it went on a bit longer, in fact.

Anyway, the movie is definitely worth checking out. It’s a shame it loses steam (remember – the ending of your movie is what often forms the overall opinion of it) because the first hour really is something unique and wonderfully insane. I haven’t even really talked about a lot of the nutty moments (for example, the kid wants to marry his sister, and the mom (Amanda Plummer!) doesn't really try to dissuade him), because they should be experienced first hand. Definitely check it out.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

One Missed Call (2003)

JULY 11, 2008

GENRE: ASIAN, SUPERNATURAL, TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

For like, 8 or 9 months, I’ve had the original One Missed Call (aka Chakushin Ari) on the top of my queue on Blockbuster online, only to continually face a “Very Long Wait” status. I had intended to see it before the remake, but no dice. So I had to let out a very loud “Oh for the love of Christ!” in the actual store the other day when I realized that they had the damn thing on the shelf. Considering their rather weak horror selection (new and old – I’m actually almost out of options there for HMAD entries), I don’t know why I never noticed it sitting there before, but oh well. Let movie-availability bygones be bygones I guess.

After watching the film I became even more annoyed that I saw the remake first, because the two films are practically identical. Almost nothing was changed, structure wise, and the only real difference is that the original version had character development. In particular, the main girl’s backstory about her abusive mother is an actual plot thread, not something quickly mentioned and forgotten about 5 minutes later as it was in the American version. If I had seen the superior original first, I probably would have liked it OK enough and enjoyed seeing the film unfold. But instead, I saw the weaker version first, so all the story surprises were already “spoiled” as I watched this one.

Pretty much every addition to the American version made the movie weaker. The candy here is introduced halfway through and only seen once or twice. In the American one, the candy laughably falls out of each character’s mouth as they die. The remake also added a death scene at the beginning, whereas in the original the first death is only mentioned. Subtle foreshadowing > distracting cameo from flavor of the month actresses (Meagan Good).

Also this version has good acting. Ed Burns can act when he wants to, but he clearly wasn’t in the mood in the remake. And I’ve never seen any evidence that Shannyn Sossamon can act at all. Plus she was too old – the theme (our over reliance on technology and all that) works better on an 18 or 19 year old who is constantly texting and talking than it does on a 30ish introvert who probably only uses the damn thing once a day.

There are, however, two exceptions. One is the actual ringtone. This one is annoying, but the one in the US one is actually kind of creepy (I actually keep looking to see if I can get it). The other is the location of the tape/camera that contains the crucial information as to why the ghost is so pissed off. In the remake, unless I’m remembering wrong, it was hidden inside the girl’s bear doll, which paid off why she always had it around. Here they find the camera just sitting there, barely hidden, but the tape is gone. And even though she has the bear, it doesn’t tie into anything. Someone later just says “we found the tape with her things” and that’s that.

Remake comparisons aside, it’s still one of the lesser efforts of the sort of “Asian ghosts possess our technology” movies that make up a hefty chunk of the Asian horror films that get nice releases in our country. The tension is severely lacking, even when the heroine gets her own call and has x amount of hours to solve the mystery (a gimmick way better implemented in The Ring, either version). Plus it’s just a lame backstory to begin with, and there have been just too many of these damn things. People bitch about the excess of “Torture Porn” here – there are probably more “Asian ghosts haunt peoples _____ device” movies. And then they all get remade so there are twice as many.

The DVD has a whole 2nd disc’s worth of extras. First is an hour long making of that I found pretty interesting. Other Asian horror movies with behind the scenes stuff usually reveal that filming is pretty technical and meticulous – it’s planned out to exact details and filmed accordingly. But a good chunk of this particular doc shows Takashi Miike exploring scenes with his actors and coming up with new ideas on the set. Interesting. There is also an alternate ending (which I think might be a joke) and some interviews, nothing particularly exciting. It’s worth noting that they seemingly take their DVD interviews very seriously – both Miike and the guy playing the lead are dressed in tuxedos for their interviews.

If you’ve already seen Pulse, Ring and/or Shutter, there’s really no reason to watch this. It offers nothing new, isn’t particularly exciting, and the pace is all over the place (two people die almost right after they are met, and then other scenes go on forever). It’s superior to the remake, but that’s about all that it’s got going for it. Had there been no remake, it would probably already be forgotten by all but Miike faithful.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Red (2008)

JULY 10, 2008

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

I had a sneaking suspicion that Red wouldn’t really count as a horror movie, which is why I watched Prophecy as a backup before I went to the screening. And it’s not, not really, but since I counted The Lost (also written by Jack Ketchum) I figured it “sort of” counts, and since I had to write a review anyway...

Red is much better than The Lost (or Girl Next Door for that matter) as we aren’t meant to side with people doing reprehensible things, nor are we required to suspend our disbelief so that poor casting decisions don’t prevent the film from making sense. It’s also a story that is much easier to identify with: that of a man looking to avenge the senseless death of his dog.

Killing a dog is sort of cinematic short of hand – no matter what you will instantly hate the killer of said dog. It’s an easy way to characterize a villain, and thus it is used often. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that is ABOUT the killing of a dog, and so I went in a bit unsure of how much I’d enjoy the film, as a dog lover who can’t even stand it when it occurs offscreen in a subplot (anyone ever see Dominic and Eugene? That one is just BRUTAL and it’s an accidental death). Luckily, they don’t give you much of a chance to sort of “fall in love” with Red, as he is killed pretty much in the 2nd scene of the film. If there was a half an hour of the dog playing with kids and doing cute shit, and THEN he got killed, I probably would have had to leave (like two folks did). But it’s gotten out of the way quickly, so that the film’s real story can come into focus.

See, it’s not about Cox turning vigilante and hunting down the kids who did it. The film is a parable about righting the wrongs, making up for one’s mistakes, etc. Around an hour or so into the film, Brian Cox delivers a backstory about his character’s family, and suddenly his reasons for trying to get the boys to pay for their actions (not in the Bronson way, but in the “tell the police what you did” way) make a lot more sense, and you realize that the film is more about HIS redemption than that of the kid who pulled the trigger.

It’s a far more human story from Jack Ketchum (adapted by Stephen Susco – another surprise as he is responsible for the character-lite Grudge films), erasing the idea that he was a one trick pony. After the other two films, I expected Red to go one of two ways – either we would follow the asshole who shot the dog around and try to make him into the sort of antihero, or Cox’s character would turn out to be a reprehensible asshole himself, and the movie would turn into Changing Lanes, where you can’t really root for either party after a while. But it’s light on violence and retribution, and throughout the film it’s all character. Scenes go by without a word, and even characters with small roles, such as Robert Englund as one of the boys’ fathers, manage to become three dimensional in only a few minutes of screen time.

The writers (I haven’t read the book so I don’t know who is responsible for what) also manage some great trick foreshadowing. There’s another one of those quiet scenes where Cox just simply leaves his bedroom, mourning the lack of his pal beside him. As he shuts the door we see several scratches, obviously made by the dog. So you’re thinking “Aw, he’s always going to have this reminder of how big of a role the dog played in his life”, and probably not much else. But later, during his revelation, we discover the true nature behind the scratches, and it not only makes you love the dog even more, but proves that the filmmakers were definitely not into doing anything for the sake of doing it; everything is there for a reason.

It’s even more impressive that the film came together so well when you consider the behind the scenes drama. Lucky McKee was the original director, and was “removed” halfway through production and replaced by Trygve Allister Diesen (Angela Bettis also was replaced by Kim Dickens – which I’m OK with, it seems a better fit for Dickens). The whole story has yet to become clear, but it’s obvious that the changes were not amicable. But it’s not a schizophrenic ordeal like The Invasion (also the victim of a different director for half the film), and honestly there is not a single thing in the film that feels rushed, incomplete, or just plain “off”. The only exception is a rather schmaltzy ending, but apparently the book ended the same way so that’s no one from the movie’s fault.

It’s not a horror film, but it definitely has appeal to fans. Apart from Englund, we are also treated to Ashley Laurence (still incredibly beautiful) in a small role, as well as some other familiar faces (Amanda Plummer, Richard Riehle, and of course the original Hannibal, Cox himself), and Tom Sizemore delivers his best performance in years as the asshole's even more asshole-ish father. Plus, if Ketchum has a niche, it is definitely the sort of “real horror” that is usually based on a true story (not sure if that is the case with Red), as opposed to monsters and masked killers and such. In the end, losing one of my pets in the manner shown here is more terrifying a thought than anything else I’ve watched recently. Highly recommended.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Prophecy (1979)

JULY 10, 2008

GENRE: PREDATOR/MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

The other day I mentioned how I had rented The Prophecy (the "Walken as angel" one), but as it turns out it was actually the lesser respected Prophecy (The "the"-less killer bear one). What confused me was the addition of a “The” to the title on Blockbuster’s envelope, and the fact that I DO have THE Prophecy queued up, as I want to watch the sequels and figured a non canon review of the original would be nice. My sincerest apologies for this boring error.

Boring is the order of the day with the movie, however. For a goddamn killer bear movie, there’s a distinct lack of killer bear scenes. Hell, it’s more of a killer raccoon movie for a while, as while the sole bear attack in the first hour is off-screen, we get to see a couple of raccoons viciously attack our heroes for no apparent reason. Finally, the bear kills a family, but again we are sort of ripped off – he only kills one on screen. Surprisingly, it is the youngest kid of the group who gets the bonus of an on screen kill, presented in still-o-vision:

He rises, laughably constricted in his bag.

The bear howls

He swats him

The kid (in the bag) goes flying...

...and turns into a sack of feathers?

Of course, I’m not too surprised that the film has an actual story, character development, blah blah, because it was directed by John Frankenheimer, a pretty classy guy (Manchurian Candidate, French Connection II, etc). But since even he isn’t good enough to make the killer bear scenes look anything less than ridiculous, I wish they had gotten someone who would truly embrace the concept and go all out, rather than someone who kept trying to make the thing legit. As a result it doesn’t really work either way – it’s too slow to be “awesome”, and the attack scenes are so goofy that they undermine the efforts seen in the serious scenes.

Frankenheimer also skimps on the death scenes. It’s forgivable to not deliver when a minor character is offed, but two of the main characters are killed in a very half-assed manner (one offscreen, AGAIN, and another just gets swiped by the bear and dies instantly, never mentioned again). Come on, man! You gave more of a death scene to that one guy in Reindeer Games who turned out to not really be dead (and was actually the villain)! You can at least show some of (eco-villain) Richard Dysart’s body being eaten by a half mutant bear at the end of the film!

There are also some rather silly plot devices. At one point they find shelter, only for one of the guys (Armand Assante I think) say that it won’t do any good. Why the hell not? Unless the bear is carrying out a Jaws: The Revenge style vendetta against you, I’m sure sitting inside a well built cabin and leaving him the fuck alone until help arrives would be a pretty safe plan of action. And Talia Shire goes to great lengths to keep a baby mutant raccoon (or badger or bear or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be) alive, rather than just put the poor thing out of its misery and cutting off a leg or whatever they need for a sample to prove the evil lumber company (does a movie ever feature a good, wholesome lumber company?) is poisoning the water with mercury.

Too bad Frankenheimer died before ever mounting a sequel, as there are two great possibilities. At the end of the film, what looks like a mutant eagle bear is seen RAWRing in the woods as our heroes fly away, which means that any feather-based children who wander into the woods are still unsafe. Also, Talia Shire is pregnant and she has eaten some possibly contaminated fish. So one movie would deal with eaglebear(pig), and then another one could detail what happens when Shire’s fishbaby grows up and goes apeshit somewhere in urban or suburban Maine. Maybe they could have him terrorize Old Orchard Beach and erase the stink of that Off Season movie. If only Frankenheimer had a son that was known for making high concept crap...

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Antibodies (2005)

JULY 9, 2008

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I really thought that Antibodies (aka Antikörper in its native German, which is a way more awesome title) was recommended by a HMAD reader. But I must have had it confused with Anatomie, which stars fellow German Franke Potente and was recommended by a HMAD reader named Gwen. Oh well. I’ll still keep an eye out for that one, and you, Gwen, should watch Antibodies to even it out.

For a serial killer movie that clocks in at 128 minutes, the body count is pretty low. Since most of it takes place after the killer is captured, this sort of makes sense, but it doesn’t make the film’s length any easier to digest. Not much happens, the plot is pretty thin (it’s more a character study than a typical serial killer flick), and the ending is a copout. At least if the ending was awesome it would be worth the wait, but that is not the case (spoilers follow!).

Not that it’s a bad ending, it’s actually a nice one and has a good message about family first and all that. BUT, this is a GERMAN film. No one watches German movies for the sunshine and rainbows, even ones that are about sunshine and rainbows. So when I watch a German serial killer movie in which the hero’s Jared Padalecki-ish son is made to look like the actual murderer of a particular victim attributed to the bad guy, I WANT him to be the damn killer! I don’t want this plot to be quickly and confusingly explained away by a notebook that was smuggled out by some lab technician or whatever. And even if the kid is innocent, they should have at least gone with the idea they were going with (think The Mist), which would be a shock and also retain the German standards of depression and morbidity.

Otherwise it’s a solid serial killer movie in the “cop gets TOO CLOSE” mold. Like many of his peers, the cop has to talk to the killer in order to extract information, at the expense of providing the killer personal details about his life. As usual, this results in the cop angrily fucking his wife (this traditional scene has a truly disturbing coda) and hurting himself to see... whatever it is cops on the edge see when they began blurring the lines between good and bad and all that stuff.

Unlike Hannibal or Horace Pinker, Gabriel (the killer – not the angel. Though coincidentally, the same day I rented this from the store, a copy of The Prophecy arrived at my house from Netflix) has no charm or endearing traits that make the audience side with him. He’s a horrible man, and they never stray from that. Which is good – we don’t need to see Gabriel Rising someday, explaining how he’s only a child raping murderer because some dudes burned down his cabin or whatever. Also, since he looks like T-Bag from Prison Break, he’s even easier to dislike.

The best setpiece in the movie is also the first. It’s the capture of Gabriel, which for some reason features a cameo by Norman Reedus (not a German, not a big enough name to warrant a cameo in anything). Gabriel spends the entire scene naked, even when he dives through windows and doors. Not only is it an exciting scene, but it also quickly demonstrates how insane he is: anyone who displays a lack of concern for his own cock is truly psychotic. It’s also a very dark (as in nighttime) scene, a stark contrast to the unusually bright 2 hrs that follow.

Another great thing about the prologue is that it helps delay the start of the opening credits until the 12 minute mark. I’m always tickled when credits come in really late, I have no idea why. The Fugitive was like this too, I think it’s about 20 minutes in by the time they end.

Unsurprisingly there isn’t a lot of levity in the film. The only bit of it stems from the cop’s partner, a guy who uses the term “jerk-off” with alarming frequency. His first line in the film is “I think this jerk-off is OUR jerk-off”, and he finds a way to use it roughly every 5 minutes thereafter (once even appropriately: the killer begins to pleasure himself and he yells “Are you jerking off?” Why he fails to refer to him as a “jerk-off” as well is a mystery – the version I rented has no extras). So again, coupled with the length and the lack of action, it’s not exactly a “drunk with buddies” movie, but it’s still pretty good and worth sticking with. Some of the subplots are never really explained (why is the cop furiously cleaning a piece of valuable evidence? Why does he type up his reports outside?) but the performances, truly sick killer, and above average direction by Christian Alvart more than make up for it. And at least it doesn’t have a scene where the cop is accused of “getting too close!”, so there’s something.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)

JULY 8, 2008

GENRE: BRITISH, HERO KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Not that I am any sort of scholar on the man, but for my money, Vincent Price’s shining moment was The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Since he’s so sinister, and yet so charming, what better role to give him than as a man who violently seeks revenge for the most noble of reasons: avenging his wife? It’s almost a shame it came about so late in his career, I’d love to see him play the character again and again, even if it made no sense anymore. Sadly, we only got one sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again (a third was written but never made), which lives up to the original’s high standards, despite a slight decrease in the novelty department.

Anyone who really likes the Saw films would be right at home with Phibes. He’s a dying man, like Jigsaw, and his victims aren’t exactly noble. He sets traps to kill them (no pussyfooting here – these folks aren’t given a chance to free themselves), and it’s all in the name of love. Of course, being the early 1970s, this means that the films aren’t excessively gory; if anything, the sequel is less violent (I saw the original a while ago, but if memory serves he killed 8-9 people, here the body count is only 6 and one is so offscreen that it’s difficult to tell what even happened). Indeed, the original has been re-rated PG-13 (from PG), but not the sequel.

That doesn’t make it any less fun or exciting though. For starters, the sequel retains the original’s surprising amount of humor, mostly of the dry British sort. The cops and assorted “good guys” all seem rather blasé about the proceedings, which results in moments like this, when a corpse is discovered:

Guy: Hackett! (the corpse’s name)
Guy 2: He has nothing to say.

Hahahahaha, awesome. And of course, Price is a complete delight. One of his character traits is that he is a musician of sorts, and the film serves up a number of scenes where he plays the organ along with a creepy/hilarious clockwork band that he designed. The band also figures into one of the film’s creepier moments, as he places one in the desert (the movie takes place in Egypt or some similar location) and it is discovered by an eventual victim. I dunno about you, but if I was in the desert and I came across a clockwork band member who looked like the killer from Tourist Trap, I’d freak out.

Unlike the first film, this one gives Phibes a sole antagonist, a man named Biederbeck who also seeks the same fountain of life that he is looking for (in order to return his wife to life). Biederbeck is kind of a complete ass, but his intentions are somewhat noble as well, like Phibes, he does what he does to be with the woman he loves (and does so without killing folks). They only share two scenes together, but Price and Robert Quarry (a real life rival of Price) have a nice repartee in these moments.

It’s also a fast paced film, and even though there aren’t as many of the death scenes (nor are they always as elaborate), it moves along almost breathlessly, especially for an older film. Of course, anything with Price is bound to be entertaining on some level, but even he wasn’t enough to save other AIP films (such as Tomb of Ligeia, a film so dull I couldn’t even be bothered to write up a review of it when I saw it a few months ago), and the fact that this came about only a year after the original makes it even more impressive. Apparently some of the film’s more elaborate sequences were cut due to budgetary reasons, but it doesn’t really show; the only evidence is Price’s voice, which has a different tone to it on occasion (he had to come in and explain stuff that was cut out – apparently they didn’t have the technology to filter his voice properly).

Both films are on one DVD, and it’s often available for under 10 bucks, making its purchase almost a requirement for any horror fan. I will write up a full review of the original someday, but don’t wait for that – these movies are too entertaining to miss. And I’m sure a remake is in the works (may I suggest Geoffrey Rush, who did an amazing job channeling Price in the otherwise worthless House on Haunted Hill remake), so if you want to be on the “this remake is gonna SUCK!” bandwagon, act fast!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Satan's Playground (2005)

JULY 7, 2007

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

A lot of the 70s movies we all love don’t really have complex stories. Halloween, Chain Saw, Hills Have Eyes... they are all essentially one line ideas, maximized to their full potential by the ingenuity of their creators. So when a film like Satan’s Playground attempts to recreate that feel, one can’t really fault it for being pretty thing in the story department. You CAN, however, fault it for being repetitive, padded, and eventually sort of pointless.

The repetition in this film is almost unparalleled. We have at least FOUR scenes of someone coming up to the obviously “bad” house in the middle of the woods and asking to use the phone, only to be attacked by one of the two crazy women who live there. Hilariously, at one point, a girl we’ve never seen before runs up and, of course, asks to use the phone, and Felissa Rose, the film’s Final Girl who actually answers the door, basically says “that’s what I’m here for!” The random girl then tells Rose that she “obviously has a lot of things to deal with” or something of that nature and takes off, never to be seen again.

That’s just one of many segments in the film that is simply there to pad the running time to a feature length. At one point, Edwin Neal, playing one of the crazy family members (way to stretch Ed), cuts Felissa Rose loose, only to tie her up again somewhere else. He then unties her AGAIN and lets her go AGAIN later on in the film. Why? Well, if he just killed her, like everyone else, the movie would be about 60 minutes long. We also have a cop showing up out of nowhere (4 minutes), another cop taking his sweet ass time looking around the house (4-5 minutes), a mute character coming up to the door, presumably to sign “Can I use the phone?” and just standing there looking off into space (3-4 minutes)... etc. Since there’s no actual story, all of these elements just stick out even more.

The film is also horribly cast. Not that the acting is bad (it ain’t Oscar-worthy either) but it’s rare I’ve seen a supposed family look so little alike. Felissa Rose and Ellen Sandweiss (who has barely aged since Evil Dead, if anything she’s even better looking) are supposed to be sisters, Rose has a son that looks about 2 years younger than her, and she’s married to a guy that looks old enough to be her dad, plus a few extra years for good measure. They also have zero chemistry with one another, which is kind of a problem when a good chunk of the movie revolves around one trying to save one of the others.

The Jersey Devil is given short thrift. We don’t really see it (which is fine) but it doesn’t really do anything either, it kills two non-main characters and is then forgotten. Coupled with the inherent scariness of the legendary New Jersey Pine Barrens (best Sopranos episode ever!), this would be more than enough backdrop to make a good breakdown/survival horror movie, but writer/director Dante Tomaselli also tosses in a cult and backwoods crazies.

At least, he sort of does. The Satanic/cult aspects of the movie are so limited and inconsequential that they feel like they are left in from another movie (hey, there’s an idea – maybe Tomaselli can make a film that revolves around the cult members and the random girl who shows up for a single scene). I still can’t even tell if the crazy people are with or against the red-robed cult folks (Neal sort of saves Rose from one the first time he unties her only to tie her up again). But does it matter?

Of course, if you are to believe the commentary track or the interview with Tomaselli on the disc, the film is supposed to have a dream-like quality, which, to be fair, could explain all the random elements that aren’t really explained. But it’s not implemented strongly enough – movies like Suspiria really sell this idea because they are so out there, but Playground is otherwise rooted firmly in reality, with only light “dream” elements. And since Tomaselli is certainly no Argento, it comes off as poor screenwriting more than anything else. Still, watching the film with that knowledge from the getgo might increase your enjoyment of it.

Also, since that’s about all the useful knowledge you’ll gain from the commentary and extras, you can skip them entirely if you know about its alleged “dream” status. Otherwise, Tomaselli just blandly rattles off pretentious babble (“The music here really captures the circular crescendo-like structure of the film.”) without any emotion, like he’s reading from cue cards. It’s like a commentary on a Criterion disc by some film scholar; from the detached way he talks, there’s absolutely no evidence he’s even involved with the film, let alone its creator. He also continuously mentions his other two films by name (descriptive name in fact, it’s not “Desecration”, it’s “my first film Desecration”), which gets incredibly annoying. I will give credit where credit is due though – he gladly points out the (superior) films where he got a lot of ideas from, everything from Mother’s Day to Halloween to, YES!, Tourist Trap are namechecked here. On the interview (which I watched first) he wears sunglasses even though they are indoors, which instantly made me think he was a douchebag, and other than his occasional honesty, the commentary didn’t really change my mind. There is also a pair of trailers – a teaser and an extended one. Apparently, an “actual trailer” was never cut, if so it’s not on here. Take your pick – do you want a trailer that doesn’t tell you the slightest thing about what the film is about, or one that spoils just about everything?

It’s technically well done (the Super 16mm film wasn’t given the best transfer to DVD, but still looks good and evokes the right feel) and the cast gives it their all, but as usual, it all comes down to the rather lousy script. And the almost laughable number of antagonists here (the cult, the crazy family, the Jersey Devil, the simple fact that they are lost in the woods, etc) makes it even more disappointing that it simply lacks suspense. There are good bits here and there, but it’s all so disjointed and random that it fails to ever be compelling or exciting, and there are far too many similar movies that are just plain better. For breakdown completists only.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Psycho III (1986)

JULY 6, 2008

GENRE: HERO KILLER, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

My memories of the one time I watched some of Psycho III were pretty vague. I remembered an odd scene with Jeff Fahey, a nun figuring into the plot, and something about money (the 5 dollar bill). Not really a lot to go on, and since that one time was on regular TV (and I don’t think I watched it start to finish to boot) it was sort of like watching it for the first time. But even so, it’s still pretty lame in the suspense department, though it still works as a sleazy, almost comedic, slasher movie.

And that’s pretty much the best way to describe this one. Long gone is Hitchcock’s idea of not showing any actual violence – the murders here are graphic and the violence is definitely on the screen (it also has the highest body count of any of the Psycho films). I guess it would be too much to ask for to have three films in a horror series that favor suspense over violence and gore (Halloween didn’t even get that far), so it’s not the end of the world, but still, it’s kind of a downer that they barely even try to provide tension.

The other entry on the “con” list is that the film pretty much negates itself AND Psycho II in the process. At the end of this film, Norman is in the institution again, and the big reveal at the end of II (that Mrs. Poole was actually Norman’s mother) is nullified by new information that reveals that Norman’s mother WAS Mrs. Bates all along. No wonder IV went the prequel route, there is literally nothing left to go on at the end of this film. Everyone’s dead, all storylines have been resolved, etc.

Another minor issue is the laziness. It’s supposedly only a month after II, but Norman’s hair is completely different and he looks much older (hell, he even looks older than the three years it was in real time in between II and III). Norma’s corpse also looks far more aged than it should be, and somehow the motel has become a deserted husk over the course of 3-4 weeks (look at the size of the tumbleweed!). It seems like the only reason to keep the timelines so close together is to keep the Mrs. Poole story going, but it’s largely forgotten anyway.

Otherwise, it’s a fun movie. Norman finally gets to be completely nutty, as we are treated to several scenes of him and mother talking (without shadow or voiceover obscuring the “truth” about any of it), and Jeff Fahey’s Duke is one of the best characters in his career. He’s completely despicable and sleazy, but endearing anyway. Apparently he was the killer originally, but this change was definitely for the better. He almost has as much screen time as Perkins, and once he exits, the loss is definitely noticeable. The rest of the cast is rather bland, and I wonder how much better the film might have been had it just been Perkins, Fahey, and Diana Scarwid (the nun!) in a sort of fucked up love triangle, rather than taking up a lot of screentime with the reporter nonsense that seems leftover from II.

Speaking of similar story elements, screenwriter Charles Pogue deserves a swift kick to the face for every line of dialogue from the original movie that he repeats here. It’s one thing to have one or two during the movie, but there are that many (or more) in single SCENES. We get it, dude, you know the original movie well. You don’t need to constantly remind us about it. And there are many similarities to the plot of II as well, but the rather mean-spirited feel of this film keeps it from being too noticeable.

I also dig the movie’s look. Anthony Perkins directed this one himself, and he’s an able director (too bad he never did another). Like the script, it’s a bit too “homage-heavy” at times, but it also definitely has its own look for the most part, particularly Fahey’s red-tinted motel room and the bulked up number of nighttime scenes (when I think of Psycho – I always think of daytime scenes). Why it always seems to rain only at night I don’t know, but nonetheless – a damn fine effort from Perkins, who also turns in a typically great performance (maybe even better than II, since he’s allowed to “go a little mad” in this one).

Had II not been so good, III’s faults probably would have been less of an issue with me. But knowing that a great sequel can be made to a REALLY great movie just sort of raises expectations, and no one here was up to the task. It certainly has its merits, but after two films, a Psycho movie should be great, not just entertaining. It’s better than other mid 80s slashers, but it shouldn’t be appropriate to compare it to one in the first place.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Non Canon Review: Jaws (1975)

JULY 5, 2008

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (BACKYARD SCREENING!)

“Martin hates water. I guess it's a childhood thing. It's a... there's a clinical name for it isn't there-"
“Drowning.”

That is just one of maybe 7 or 8 small moments in Jaws that stealthily elevate it above and beyond every other “Monster in the water” movie. Others include the argument over who should paint the beach closed signs, Mrs. Brody yelling at the kid to listen to his father after she sees the carnage in the shark book, Martin’s weak ass scar during the buildup to the Indianapolis speech, and of course, Harry’s bad hat. Sometimes I look forward to these bits more than the shark stuff, which has been ripped off so much over the years it’s almost hard to remember how effective the scares were the first time around. But I still laugh my ass off at these scenes every single time.

It was his first big movie, but Spielberg already had a lot of his themes (the Kinter boy apparently has no father) and traditions (people looking, overlapping dialogue) down to a science, and it remains one of his best films, if not THE best. The occasional bits of humor (that one scene, when Hooper comes over for dinner, is funnier than half of the alleged comedies I’ve ever seen) blend perfectly with the horror elements. One of the film’s best scares is when Martin is bitching about tossing the chum and suddenly the shark comes out of the water inches away from his hand. You’re laughing and then screaming without any pause in between. Perfection.

I read the book when I was like 14 or 15, and don’t recall much about what was different, except that Hooper died at the end too. I’m glad this was changed, as it makes Quint’s death more resonant, and also since both characters are awesome, I like to imagine they were good friends afterwards and probably had a lot of red or white wine together. I still think Jaws 2’s biggest flaw was the lack of anyone for Scheider to really play off of, and it’s a shame Dreyfuss couldn’t be persuaded to return (and yet, he came out of retirement to appear in Poseidon).

This movie has more documented behind the scenes drama than any other film in history (not counting anything involving Terry Gilliam). A full length documentary, a sizable portion of a documentary on the series as a whole, and at least one book are all dedicated to detailing what a giant pain in the ass the movie was to make. The shark didn’t work, the locals got angry, water-set scenes took forever to film, the script was being rewritten (with like 5 different people claiming authorship of Quint’s Indianapolis speech), etc. And none of it shows. The movie is technically flawless (apart from Spielberg’s traditional continuity errors – he’s one of the absolute worst in the world in that department) and the story is pretty seamless. One could argue that the boat stuff should come sooner, but I don’t mind (the most superfluous scene, when Brody and Hooper go to investigate Ben’s boat, also contains one of the film’s best scares). I don’t need to be rushed when everything is so good.

The screening was in the backyard of my buddy Mike’s, who was also kind enough to occasionally spray us with a garden hose during the attack scenes. We also played the horrible NES Jaws game before and after the film. I missed it, but apparently someone got Jaws down to zero health and it didn’t end, which led them to believe the game just went on forever, like Tetris or a Metal Gear Solid cutscene. But they are wrong, and since everyone reading this site better have seen the movie before, instead of the trailer I will provide a video of the game’s finale. Spoiler: Jaws is killed.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Dark Power (1985)

JULY 5, 2008

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I’m actually surprised I don’t see more movies like The Dark Power. You only need to watch a few select scenes to know how the movie came about: the writer/director watched The Evil Dead (or at least the trailer for it), found out how cheaply it was made, and decided to try his own comedic horror film involving an isolated house, resurrected demons, and lots of POV camerawork in the woods. But he added a crucial ingredient that Sam Raimi somehow neglected: horrible racism.

I don’t usually get offended by off color remarks in movies, but here it’s just simply gratuitous. One character randomly complains that he is being "worked like a (N word)", and another has what seems like a five minute rant about how she doesn’t “like to be associated with black people” (the N word comes up again here). The Confederate flag also pops up with alarming frequency. And while the characters are both killed off, it doesn’t seem like payback for their ignorance – it’s just that the movie needed a kill scene (their deaths aren’t much different than the deaths of the non-racist characters either). Since the movie doesn’t seem to be poking fun at stereotypical southerners (nor is the film's sole black character allowed to defend herself), it really detracts from my enjoying of the film. I tend to try to LIKE the people in my horror movies, but that’s kind of hard when they are presented as racists, and even harder when those folks don’t even get their just desserts.

Then again, there’s not much else to like about the movie anyway. No one can act, the story doesn’t really make any goddamn sense, there is almost nothing horror-y until the final 25 minutes, and our hero is an old guy with a whip. Lash LaRue is his (hopefully fake) name, and he plays the sheriff. Apparently he’s some master whipsman. Good for him – doesn’t mean someone has to write a movie that has no real purpose other than to give him plenty of opportunities to show off his whip skill. Early on he whips for a good 3 minutes in order to scare some dogs off, he takes the damn thing out in just about every scene he’s in, and finally in the big finale, he and one of the monsters stand there, completely still, and whip (miss) each other over and over for what seems like 10 minutes. Finally he says “What would you look like without a nose?” and whips the monster’s nose off. Hey asshole, if you’re that good with your whip, why the fuck don’t you just kill him right from the start?

Speaking of the monsters, they are unsurprisingly the best thing about the movie. There are four, and they all sort of look like that Big Daddy Mars dude from Ghosts of Mars. One spends 2-3 minutes rummaging about a kitchen, breaking everything he sees before finally grabbing a beer and sitting at the dining room table like he needs to get a load off. They aren’t the most graceful horror villains ever to grace the screen; at one point two of their victims are able to run right by three of them as they stumble about. But the makeup is pretty good, as are a few of the gore effects (a man’s head is torn apart – sweet!).

For no real reason I want to point out that James Horner seemingly stole his Perfect Storm score from this movie. I guess that’s better than stealing from himself, like he usually does.

The DVD surprisingly has some extras, such as a commentary track with some choice moments. “This actor is related to the film’s producer”, director Phil Smoot says, as if that was a coincidence and not the result of one of the producers saying “Put my grandson in this movie!” Later, the director points out that the guy playing one of the monsters also was the dolly grip for the movie, even though he had never been a dolly grip before (I guess he got on the project because he was a skilled veteran of playing clumsy zombie Indians?). Sadly, they are proud of the film and thus don’t bother pointing out its numerous flaws, or why we have to watch 30 seconds of a house before the actor finally enters the shot (note the timecode):

There is also a 15+ minute recollection of LaRue. More non-sexual whip action for you! Actually Smoot sort of trails off on LaRue and starts showing us photos of other folks who may or may not have worked on the film (also, an inordinate amount of people involved with this movie are now dead - it's kind of upsetting).

With most of the movie destined to be used as an example for padding, there’s almost nothing to recommend here. There is some of that “bad low budget 80s horror” feel to enjoy in the final half hour, but as usual, it’s too little too late. It’d be one thing if the zombie Indians came back to life and sort of stalked our group for a while, but they don’t come in until moments before they finally begin killing people, which means that the first 45-50 minutes could be mistaken for... well, anything but a horror movie. If someone on Youtube can cut together the occasional gore scenes, they would be doing the entire horror movie community a huge service.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Plague (2006)

JULY 4, 2008

GENRE: KILLER KID, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

My interest in seeing The Plague was piqued a week or so ago when an online article about Midnight Meat Train fans attempting to get the film a wider release caught the attention of the former film’s director, one Hal Masonberg. In a comment on the article, he related a story of how his film, which was also produced by Clive Barker, had a heated post production process and was ultimately dumped on DVD in a form he didn’t approve of, and thus he was mounting his own campaign to get his version of the film released. You can check out the info here if that sort of thing interests you. I am all for filmmakers getting their vision presented in the manner they intended, but his comments on the article seem a bit spiteful, so I have no opinion one way or the other as of this time (12:53 pm on a different day than the one this review is dated).

Whoever’s vision the released version of The Plague’s is, it’s a pretty good one for the first hour. We essentially have a sort of traditional zombie movie setup/execution, except the zombies are not actually undead. Ten years prior to the film’s events, every child under the age of 9 suddenly went into a comatose state. New children were stillborn, and the kids just old enough to avoid the plague have seemingly all become delinquents. Anyway, all of a sudden they wake up, and begin killing everyone, naturally.

None of this is ever explained (the deleted scenes are no help), but the pace and tension are above average for a horror movie starring a Dawson’s Creek cast member (the Beek himself, faring far better than in Final Draft). Like the best zombie movies, eventually we get all of our characters trapped in one location, and the movie truly shines here (though the slower stuff at the beginning is also pretty good – I always like the “hometown boy returns and everyone now hates him” scenario).

Unfortunately, almost the instant they leave the movie falls apart. The tension is gone, for starters – there are two people left with 20 minutes to go, so we know they’ll be OK for most of that time. Worse, the ending doesn’t make a goddamn lick of sense – it has something to do with Dawson being reincarnated, and his new body not only has his memories, but also his copy of "The Grapes of Wrath". Huh? Plus it comes out of nowhere, and since the plague itself is never explained, this is a bit problematic. Maybe the original cut explained this more, but if so, why not have that stuff in the deleted scenes? I don’t require explanations for these types of movies – none of Romero’s zombie films ever had a real explanation for it all, but at least provide an explanation for the film’s resolution, if nothing else.

The film was shot by Bill Butler, who also shot Jaws. Since I was going to see Jaws in a backyard screening the next day, I found this interesting. Maybe I should always string my movies together via a cast or crew member, like Quint does on his movie a day column (to sort of return the favor). Not surprisingly, it’s also a much better looking film than I expected (bonus points for almost tricking me into thinking Canada was New Hampshire, where the film is set). And I don’t know who is responsible for them, but there are two shots in particular that really impressed me. One is a shot of all the comatose kids (before they wake up and start killing everyone); we watch as they convulse (which they do every day at 10 am and 10 pm) while their attending nurses chat and laugh because they are so used to this disturbing event by now. The other was an insert shot of a sugar cube – the guy puts only one corner of the cube in his coffee, and the liquid sort of sponges itself over the rest of the un-submerged cube. I dunno why, but it’s fucking cool, and I’m totally doing that next time I have sugar cubes.

The aforementioned deleted scenes ARE actually worth a look, even if they don’t help clarify the film’s events. It’s mainly extensions of existing scenes; character touches that wouldn’t have hurt or slowed the film any (it’s pretty short anyway – 88 minutes. Surely another 3-4 of character stuff wouldn’t have been the end of the world). One of the few full blown DELETED scenes involves a priest who is the first to see Dawson when he comes back to the town, something that definitely should have been left in as his first appearance now is incredibly awkward, and also gives the priest more to do, as he is later killed without ever really being introduced. There’s also a fairly entertaining commentary track by two of the actors and the film’s editor, who briefly mention the film’s re-editing and such, but mainly ramble about other stuff (at one point, one of the actors tries to explain how hot Ivana Milicevic is without sounding like a creepy dude. Doesn’t quite pull it off.). Sadly, they don’t bother explaining the ending either. Oh well.

All in all, worth a look. I am very curious to see the director’s cut to see if these problems are corrected or simply made more glaring. I can definitely sense a completely solid (though not perfect) movie in there.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

A Night To Dismember (1983)

JULY 3, 2008

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SLASHER, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

It wasn’t long into A Night To Dismember that I realized I was in for something truly special... maybe 2 minutes tops in fact. As I watched a rapid fire collection of scenes with little cohesion speed by, endlessly narrated (by a guy that sounds like Charles B. Pierce) to hide the fact that there was no source audio, I decided that the film was simply divine. And it just got better as it went on, peaking at the halfway mark when the narrator describes a dream sequence thusly: “Vicky felt as though someone faceless was making love to her in bright flashing colors that were changing from one second to the next.” Of course, this is precisely what we are seeing, which leads me to believe that they stuck some guy in a booth and had him narrate whatever he felt like saying as this incoherent and mute film played before his hopefully astonished eyes.

And if you wonder how the narrator (a character in the film) could possibly know what she was dreaming, fear not – he even explains that. At the very end of the film, as a sort of cinematic P.S., he informs us that every single character in the film kept detailed diaries, which he presumably stole.

At first, I actually thought the film was some sort of joke by film students, where they just took assorted footage that they found and assembled a loose narrative from it, similar to what Joe Dante did with The Movie Orgy. But apparently, what really happened was, a fire at the film lab destroyed nearly half the footage, and director Doris Wishman couldn’t afford to reshoot all of it, so she made do with what was left. Apparently, incoherency and ineptitude was her style (I’ve never seen any of her other films – most of which seem to be pornos), so whether the fire story is true or not, I don’t know. It’s probably the only bit of actual trivia to be heard on the entire commentary track, most of which is simply Wishman yelling at her cameraman for ruining the movie and asking him if he likes whatever nonsense happens to be on screen. I can’t tell if she’s seriously under the impression that she’s made a good film, but she’s at least 80 at this point (she was born in 1918 and they reference South Park and Everybody Loves Raymond on the track – dating it late 90s, early 00s) so maybe she’s just senile.

I also love that a film without a single moment of source sound actually has a credited sound man (plus a boom operator!):

Was this before or after Civil War allegedly took his life?

As for the movie itself, you got me. It’s another one of those “evil family members plot to make another family member crazy” movies, in theory. Many scenes don’t quite fit into this plot, but whatever. After a while I stopped trying to understand what was going on and just focused on the movie’s real charms – hilariously dubbed dialogue (which is very rare anyway – most of it is narrated), cutaways to things unrelated to what is going on, frequent murder/nude scenes featuring the absolute worst fake violence ever (one scene involves a guy being lightly tapped with an axe – and then his head just falls off).

The music also deserves a mention. It seems to be all library music, and in several cases, I can only assume they didn’t even get the whole track. At one point, we hear the same 30 second loop 3-4 times over a single scene; it cuts off abruptly and starts over. And it’s not appropriate to the scene either. In fact, none of the music seems to fit with the onscreen action – we have goofy cartoon style music over dialogue scenes, “Sweeping shot of a vista” style stuff over the kill scenes, etc. Again, all part of the unparalleled charm of A Night to Dismember.

Like Cathy’s Curse and Scream Bloody Murder, this is one of those wretched movies that I love anyway, and rejuvenates my drive to do this whole Horror Movie A Day thing. There’s no way in hell I ever would have seen this were I not forcing myself to watch one every day. Bless my random whim!

I want to point that about half of the trailer isn't in the film, and seems to be advertising a movie with a different plot entirely to boot. Again, part of the charm.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Triloquist (2008)

JULY 2, 2008

GENRE: PUPPET, SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Is there a Sniglet for when you are walking around Blockbuster at the same pace as another customer? That happened last night, it was me and this lovely looking woman and her child, browsing from A-Z, constantly getting in each other’s way and saying “excuse me” every 12 seconds. And the woman was obviously a “good” mother, as her kid kept trying to get her to rent R rated films like The Orphanage, only to be shot down (the mother’s suggested alternative? Drillbit Taylor. Poor kid.). Since she clearly wasn’t down with the R rated stuff, she probably assumes I am some sort of sociopath for spying Triloquist on the shelf, laughing maniacally at the hilarious cover, and practically running up to the counter to rent it.

Sadly the cover I find online isn’t the same as the one in the store, so I had to take a picture of it with my cell phone to share with you:

Now, how can anyone see that (not to mention read “From the creator of Leprechaun!”) and NOT want to watch this movie? I dunno, but it has no rating on the IMDb as of yet, and I seemingly was the only one to rent a copy, as there were plenty on the shelves. Being a bare-bones release AND a Blockbuster exclusive (no Netflix!), there should be no reason that every copy wasn’t rented out and being enjoyed by like-minded jerks such as myself.

Surprisingly enough, the movie isn’t as goofy as you’d expect. Sure, it’s filled with lots of corny lines and sight gags, and it’s mostly played for laughs, but there's a melancholy thread that runs throughout the film. The puppet isn’t the only villain here; in fact, he’s almost a good guy compared to his owner, a super hot blond chick named Angelica who’s essentially a psychotic whore (think a late teens version of Baby from Devil’s Rejects and you’d get the idea). The movie is really about her sort of rise and fall, and the end of the film finds her homeless, addicted to heroin, and alone. Not QUITE as funny as the sight of a puppet biting a man’s dick off, is it? Strangely, it kind of works, and there are two reasons why.

One is the above average acting from the two leads, Paydin LoPachin as Angelica, and Rocky Marquette as her mute brother Norbert (who looks and acts like his own goddamn puppet). They are able to bring some sympathy and pathos to their roles, and while this is hardly a Shakespearean tragedy, I actually did feel sorry for them on more than one occasion (junkie mother, abused as kids, etc). The other thing is the soundtrack, which is pretty great for a DTV killer puppet movie. There are a few alt-country style songs and a pretty good score by Geoff Levin (including, yes, "Mockingbird", but actually used effectively!), and the songs are just as melancholy as the film is at times.

Of course, that’s not really the appeal of the movie. Rampant nudity, lots of ridiculous kills (my favorite – the puppet shoots a cop with a shotgun; the recoil sending him flying across the road), and corny jokes that eventually become amusing is what will entice folks to watch this movie, and while the gore/violence is surprisingly a bit tame (this is Dimension EXTREME!, no?), the sleaziness of the whole thing makes up for it. Angelica is constantly offering to fellate people, and there’s even suggested incest between her and her brother.

I also like how they don’t bother trying to present it as a mystery as to whether or not the puppet is alive. After She-Wolf of London, I don’t know if I could take a movie in which the titular killer was essentially a ruse by a very un-supernatural human, and Triloquist delivers on that front. He’s alive, and they run with it.

Now, I know I’ve spent a while praising the film, but that doesn’t mean it’s a masterpiece. The script is needlessly confusing at the end, with lots of things that don’t quite make sense and/or plot elements never clarified. It’s also a bit repetitious – I think there are like 4 different scenes where Angelica kills a good Samaritan and takes his car. And too many of the kills are offscreen – I’d rather they cut one of the car theft killings from the script and used the leftover money to improve the other kill scenes.

But hey, it’s a killer puppet movie, something far too rare these days. It should definitely appeal to those who thought Dead Silence was a ripoff (you fools!), and puts the similar Seed of Chucky to shame in the process.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Slaughter Party (2005)

JULY 1, 2008

GENRE: COMEDIC, MAD SCIENTIST, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

When you have a movie in which a midget (Mighty Mike Murga) is raped by a mountain man in the first 15 minutes, the last thing you should say about the film is that it’s dull. But that’s exactly how I would describe Slaughter Party, a Troma film that seems oddly held back on several occasions and manages to make even nonsense like Terror Firmer look like solid storytelling in comparison.

At no point in the film was there any evidence that I was watching a completed film. Characters come and go without any real rhyme or reason, subplots arise out of nowhere, leaving other plots abandoned as a result, etc. After the life-affirming rape scene, we cut to a nubile blonde going to meet an internet date – who turns out to be the midget we just saw get attacked. How long the two scenes are supposed to be apart is never made clear, but we just have to assume that the raping resulted in Murga turning psychotic and killing girls at random. Hilariously, shortly after this scene we are given a “Three Weeks Later” title to bridge two scenes that clearly take place quite some time apart anyway. Later in the film, we see the killer stalking a group of girls by the lake in the middle of nowhere, and then cut to him inside a suburban apartment, where he attempts to kill a girl who escapes and leads him to... the same damn lake he was inexplicably seen at 5 minutes before. Whatever.

But I usually don’t care about such things when I see a Troma film, because there’s usually a plethora of gore, nudity, bodily fluids, piñatas, etc. But that’s not the case here. The usual Troma lesbian action is limited to a single brief smooch between two of the random girls introduced halfway through the film. The gore is clearly just some fruit punch, and pretty minimal at that. And the star of the film, Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose, doesn’t seem to be aware she’s in a piece of crap, and actually tries to act and bring sympathy to her character. Not what we’re here for, ma’am, but thanks for trying!

She’s not the only one who keeps putting effort into the wrong areas of the movie. The director (who directed it I can’t tell, Lloyd says it’s a guy named Chris Watson, the IMDb says Fred Rosenberg, and the film itself says Buck Jones Jr. Take your pick, I guess) keeps tossing in insert shots of things like cigarettes hitting the ground or whatever – but can’t be bothered to actually show the goddamn killer in this scene:

That’s the most we ever see him during the attack.This film is shot on consumer digital video (hell, might even be analog), so there’s no excuse for shit like that. You’re able to instantly watch what you got and if something goes wrong, like, I dunno, you failed to get the goddamn subject of the scene in the goddamn frame, you should re-tape (not film, it’s tape!) the scene/shot and do it right. It’s one of the things that DV defenders will use to claim their format is superior to film – but this guy couldn’t be bothered.

Strangely, the most amusing thing about the movie is the commentary track. It’s done by actor Ford Austin, in character as the mad doctor (sort of like the track on Blood Simple, only with Troma flair). It’s filled with the sort of anti-PC irreverent humor the movie itself failed to deliver, and he also mocks the film’s meager production value (he points out a particularly overlong shot of 2 guys walking and wonders if it’s there to pad the film to feature length) and numerous plot holes. Hell, just watch the movie with the commentary on to begin with; it’s the only way to enjoy it IMO. There’s also a bizarre interview with one of the film’s other co-stars, some porn jackass who spends the entire time he’s on camera making cookies or muffins or something. There’s also an interview with Rose (pointless) and some other crap that just hawks Troma in general, which I skipped as I assume it’s the same stuff I’ve watched on other DVDs.

It’s actually pretty rare I watch Troma films (I believe this is the first for HMAD), so when I DO watch one, it’s because I am in the mood for their peculiar brand of comedy/horror/crap. Nice job on my part to rent one that even their die-hard aficionados were disappointed with. Oh well.

What say you?

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