Walled In (2009)

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

If Watchmen is a big hit, I bet we still start to see a lot more “outside of the box” comic adaptations being put into production, alongside the traditional Marvel and DC films. And that means we’ll probably get a lot of direct to video stuff like Walled In, which is based on a rather obscure French comic named "Les Emmurés" - something I wasn’t aware of until after I had watched the movie. It’s curious then, that Anchor Bay would splash “based on the best-selling graphic novel!” on the back of the DVD and not provide the title or author, especially for a US release. Why bother calling attention to it when the intended audience won't be familiar with it anyway?

I can only assume that the comic is more mysterious and exciting. It’s a decent enough thriller, but also sort of lackluster. The setup is pretty great - a demolitions expert arrives at a building due to be destroyed and uncovers its secrets thanks to (or in spite of) the efforts of a few remaining residents. And the cast is pretty interesting - Deborah Kara Unger is always a welcome presence (taking roles that Sharon Stone probably would have been offered 10 years ago), and it’s nice to see Cameron Bright a bit grown up and moving beyond “I am the key to mankind’s future” roles. I have never watched a single episode of The OC in my life, so I’m not familiar with Mischa Barton, but she seems OK enough, and her character is supposed to feel out of place (a female demolitions expert - why not?), so it works.

But it’s just not particularly exciting. There are a few decent scares (the opening sequence is terrific) and one character’s death is pretty awesome (great capper to it too), but at the end of the day, it’s about a building. Remember that scene in Big where he’s got the robot that turns into a skyscraper instead of a car or a gun or something, and he’s like “Who wants to play with a building?” Same deal here. And not only is it about a building, but Barton also narrates with passages from the “Dummies Guide to Demolition”. I’m sure there are some folks who are incredibly excited over the idea that there’s a wall 16 feet closer than the blueprints claim, but the title of the movie gives the reason why. She also rambles about how it’s all about weakening a few key points in the structure in order to completely destroy it. There are also at least two scenes in which folks read and discuss books about architecture. I can only hope that Michael Scofield has gotten a copy of this movie; he’ll love this shit.

One thing the movie does have going for it is its creepy French sensibilities. Bright’s character is in love with Barton (ten years his senior, at least), and the 3rd act of the movie has him place her in a pit so he can watch her dance and kiss a fellow prisoner. She then tries to trick him into letting her out by flashing him. There’s also a scene where she hurts her leg, and rather than just roll the leg up like a normal person, she takes off her pants and lets the kid tend to her wound (and then gets confused when a 15 year old boy gets excited over touching an older woman’s thigh). He also has a vaguely “too close” relationship with his mother.

Oh hey, I need some help here: was the “1, 2, Freddy’s coming for you!” from Nightmare on Elm St a wholly original nursery rhyme, or was it a rewritten version of a traditional (and presumably not as creepy) one? If it WAS entirely WesCraven’s song/idea, then he should sue these guys. Not only does it sound identical, it’s even about the movie’s killer.

The DVD has a bunch of trailers (AB has seemingly finally given Hatchet and Behind the Mask a rest), including one for the film itself. We also get a making of that isn’t too bad, focusing on - what else? - the building and production design type things.

Strangely, today I also watched Pineapple Express, which I missed in theaters. Among its many eventually-forgotten plot points (I was underwhelmed by the movie to say the least, though it does contain many solid laughs) is that the James Franco character is an architecture buff. Only I could manage to watch two completely different movies in a single day and yet find a common theme that is also an example of why the film failed to live up to its potential (in Pineapple’s case, the incredibly lazy plotting, though maybe that was just a meta-pothead joke).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Home Movie (2008)

FEBRUARY 27, 2009

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

While I usually bemoan the idea of casting known actors in “found footage” movies, it uniquely works to Home Movie’s advantage to cast Adrian Pasdar as the patriarch of the family that we spend 80 minutes (with one minor exception, the two parents and two kids are the only people we see in the entire film). Because Pasdar is usually a bad or at least morally gray guy, you will probably spend a lot of the movie wondering (ultimately off-track) when his character will go “dark”, an effect that would probably not work had it been someone unfamiliar in the role.

Of course, double edged swords and all, this means that you have to instantly buy Pasdar as the dorkiest movie dad since Clark Griswold. Not only does he film everything and do voices, but he also seemingly has a costume for every conceivable holiday (when he sits down to Thanksgiving dinner with a priest collar, I actually thought he was dressed as a pilgrim of some sort before I realized that his character was indeed a minister). So you get to see Jim Profit in a pink Easter Bunny suit, which is more unnerving than any of the killer kid stuff (well, almost all). I couldn’t help but wonder how different the experience of watching the film and trying to get ahead of its characters would be had they cast a guy like Daniel Stern or Vince Vaughn in the role.

But, as you can probably guess from the genre tags, the kids are the real antagonists, and unlike The Good Son or Godsend, these kids are fucking terrifying. The Poe family unfortunately seems to own every kind of house pet there is, and they are all offed in order of small (goldfish) to large (the dog). Of course, then they move on to humans, resulting in a surprisingly chilling denouement. Near the end of the movie, there’s a shot of the kids wearing paper bag masks and holding forks in the air which gave me legit chills.

As for what doesn’t work, mostly just the same problems as a lot of found footage movies, principally the betrayal of how “found” this is. Like in [Rec], we somehow watch footage being rewound and fast forwarded, which means we are seeing the camera, not what the camera sees. And there’s also occasional voice over, which suggests that the footage has been edited by a cinematically inclined mind. When Blair Witch came out, they had that whole “someone gave us the footage and we tried to piece it together to explain what happened” angle to explain such instances, but we are not given any sort of reason for it here. Also, the first half hour or so of the movie gets awful repetitive: Dad turns on the camera, acting all goofy and trying to make a nice family moment, and then discovers a dead animal. This process repeats 5 times, and you start to wonder when this guy will just give up and start smacking the kids around.

Another curious blunder is a really nonsensical scene where Pasdar teaches the kids to tie a rope and pick a lock. A. why would a father do this even under normal circumstances, and B. why would he do it when they’ve already displayed several signs of abnormal behavior? It comes at a point in the film where you’re starting to say “Why is he STILL filming this stuff?”, and it nearly breaks the tension and reality of the movie for good. It’s not long after that that the movie really takes off, but still, it teeters dangerously close to ridiculous for a 5-10 minute stretch.

Otherwise it’s a solid entry in the found footage subgenre, and one of the better killer kid movies I’ve seen in a while (I think Joshua would be the only other one of the past 10 years that’s worth a damn). The DVD only has a making of (zzzz) and the trailer, so don’t pay too much for it, but definitely check it out.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Last House On The Left (1972)

FEBRUARY 27, 2009

GENRE: RAPE-REVENGE
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

As I was due to cover the junket for the remake this weekend, I thought I would take another look at the original The Last House On The Left, which I hadn’t seen since I was 14 or 15. And it’s worth noting that at least in terms of story and plot points, I remembered it better than I do half of the movies I watched just last month. Whether you love or hate the movie, it definitely leaves an imprint that doesn’t fade away with time.

Being that it was Wes Craven’s first film and done on a budget around the same as Texas Chain Saw, I can forgive the jarring edits, muddled sound, and other technical snafus. In fact to some extent it’s even sort of the point - they wanted to give the film a documentary presentation, and in several instances they succeed. But not so easily digestable is the cartoonish writing that sounds like it was WRITTEN by someone that was the same age I was when I last watched it. Like when the news is reporting on Krug and his gang, and it’s like ‘They killed two priests and a nun!” Right, because simply killing three people just isn’t EVIL! enough. The scene between the mother and Weasel is another example. She’s not a particularly good actress anyway, but even Meryl Streep probably would have struggled with the “brilliant” plan to get the guy’s arms tied up so she could bite his dick off.

Now, one thing about the remake that purists are likely to bitch and moan about is the rather toned down depravity. No dick eating, no forced urination, etc. But I find that is precisely what makes the newer version (which I can now definitely say I prefer, a true rarity) work so much better. By more or less limiting Mari’s torture to the rape, it makes the scene so much more powerful, and makes you hate Krug all the more. In this film, by the time they rape her she’s practically catatonic. And then she is killed moments later, so the parents never even know about that part of her attack (to the best I can tell). I doubt Gaylord St. James (fakest fake name ever, Richard Towers!) could have possibly sold the “Dad just realizes his baby girl has been brutalized” moment as well as Tony Goldwyn, but the setup doesn’t even allow him to try.

The parents here are also strangely matter of fact about the whole thing. She goes off with Weasel while the dad carries out the first of what would be at least four sequences in a Wes Craven film in which the hero sets a bunch of traps for the antagonist(s) (did he write Home Alone?). I mean, it’s great that he has such a handle on his anger that he’s able to carefully pour water over a rug that is concealing a live wire, and also take the time to determine the absolute best weapon to use against her killers, but it still dampens the impact of the moment (the fact that everything occurs offscreen doesn’t help much either, though I will put that in the “no money so I can’t fault them” category). And it all happens so briefly, it doesn’t really allow for suspense. It’s to Dennis Illiadis’ credit (and Wes’, who produced the new version) that even knowing exactly how it would play out, the 2009 version is still incredibly suspenseful.

The music is also rather questionable. David Hess composed the songs, and they are all of the folky singer-songwriter variety. Some of them work in an ironic juxtaposition kind of way, many do not. The score is the real problem though. When Phyllis is getting stabbed it sounds like someone is playing a game of Simon next to the camera. It’s funny though - everyone is bitching about the folky "Sweet Child O’Mine" cover on the trailer for the remake, as if this style of music has no business in this particularly story. Plus, where the hell have these people been? Do trailer songs EVER appear in the movie? Quick, go cue up the scene where Blur’s "Song #2" plays over Starship Troopers. Oh right, IT DOESN’T. It just proves once again - the remake whiners are among the stupidest people on the entire planet (I won’t even get into the notion of complaining about a remake of a film that itself was a modernized version of a Swedish film that was based on a Scottish ballad).

The DVD has a nice collection of extras. Craven and Sean Cunningham provide a commentary, very jokey and apologetic in tone. They also admit to not having seen the film in a while, so prepare for a lot of gaps. There’s also a great 30 minute retrospective with a surprising number of participants (Martin Kove!), considering how many of the actors and actresses wanted nothing to do with the film then or now (Sandra Cassel is, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be found). Roy Frumkes also put together a compliation of outtakes, though they are presented without sound and aren’t particularly interesting. Then there’s an odd piece called “Forbidden Footage”, which doesn’t concern any MPAA excised stuff, which is what the title would suggest. Instead, it’s Craven and co. discussing three of the film’s more notorious scenes in detail. The film itself is the most complete cut ever officially released (per Craven’s introduction), however it should be noted that some scenes, such as the “forced lesbian” stuff, are nowhere to be found on the disc, or even mentioned as far as I can tell. Since Craven removed those himself, I don’t consider it particularly bothersome (if he didn’t want it in there, I don’t care to see it), but pervs may be disappointed.

But for all its faults, the movie packs a punch few other films have ever managed (I would put Cannibal Holocaust in its company). Part of why I haven’t watched it again is that I simply haven’t wanted to. It’s tough to watch, and the attempts at levity (i.e. the cops and their chicken truck adventures), while appreciated, simply don’t work. The reason I prefer the remake is simple: it’s simply a better (and vastly more suspenseful) execution of the story. Just about every problem with the original has been corrected, and anyone who bitches about changes (Mari surviving being the biggest one) is completely missing the point of the film. Not that I would expect any less from someone who bitches about a movie before they saw it, but - wait, Wes wants to remake Shocker now? What the fuck?!?!? WHY?!?!?!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Night Flier (1997)

FEBRUARY 26, 2009

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

You know what I don’t miss? Overproduced animated menus on DVDs. Having the main menu do something cool is one thing, but when you go to select a chapter on a late 90s release like The Night Flier, and it takes an additional 10-15 seconds because each page (4 chapters per page) has to whish and whoosh and “wow” us with its after effects glory, it gets pretty goddamn annoying. Nowadays, they don’t bother, and I thank them for it.

Anyway, the movie itself is pretty solid, though the fact that it went theatrical is more amazing than anything in the film itself. Granted, it was a limited release, but it shows you just how horror-starved movie theaters were in the mid 90s that a movie in which almost nothing happens, starring a guy known for bit roles, could play alongside whatever big blockbusters were out at the time.

Luckily - that guy is Miguel Ferrer, who is someone you can’t help but love. Like Jeremy Piven, he seemingly only has one acting persona (in Ferrer’s case - sarcastic hardass, as opposed to Piven's sarcastic just-plain-ass), but it’s a persona I always enjoy seeing, so to put him in the lead for a film is a stroke of awesomeness, and I laud director Mark Pavia for casting him. On the surface, he’s a pretty unlikable person, but Ferrer gives him just enough charm to keep you from wanting to simply see him dead.

And that’s good, because he’s pretty much the only guy in the movie. As it is based on a Stephen King short story (VERY short - I think it was like 20 pages), there’s hardly a lot of plot here. Pavia has added a rival reporter (the Phoebe Cates-ish Julie Entwisle) to pad things out a bit, but it’s not quite as successful as he probably intended, since her scenes stick out and never really amount to much - her character could be removed entirely and it wouldn’t make much of a difference. The ending wouldn’t have as much of a cynical coda, but that’s about it.

The rest of the movie is mainly Ferrer snapping photos, snarling at people, and looking puzzled as he scans the skies and rooftops for the title character. It gets kind of repetitive, as you can imagine. The lack of prominent other characters robs the film from more moments where Ferrer gets to butt heads, a fact that got more noticeable as it went on (there are like 6 scenes of him speaking to his recorder). Had this feature film not been made, the story would have been a great candidate for a Nightmares & Dreamscapes episode, but oh well.

One highlight is the gore. I was not expecting the movie to have as much splatter and dismemberment as it does. It won’t give Dead Alive a run for its money or anything, but for a low budget movie, I was happy to see so much on the screen. The KNB makeup effects are as amazing as ever, and the finale has Ferrer wielding an ax against a horde of zombies (it’s not a zombie film). This sequence is black and white, and I suspect that may have been a way around an NC-17 (the MPAA is strangely averse to the color of red, which is why the Evil Dead movies spray green stuff all around instead).

In the end, it’s a slight, but solid little movie. I wouldn’t go so far to say that the story demanded a feature film (a theatrical release at that), but it still turned out better than about half of the King adaptations, even ones based on full length novels, making it a perfect Sunday afternoon viewing on cable (the DVD isn’t worth picking up unless it’s dirt cheap - the only extras are some production notes and the trailer, and it’s probably not a movie you’d ever want to watch a 2nd time). Now, someone write a buddy movie for Ferrer and Piven!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Against The Dark (2009)

FEBRUARY 25, 2009

GENRE: VAMPIRE (?)
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Last summer, I read Vern’s hilarious book "Seagalogy", which tackled each of Steven Seagal’s films one by one and pointed out the various recurring themes (CIA shenanigans being the most prominent) and character traits that the otherwise unrelated films shared. As someone who gave up on Seagal right around Glimmer Man, I hadn’t seen a good number of the films, but Vern’s prose actually made me want to watch his direct to video efforts. But doing HMAD eats up as much “watching bad movies on DVD” time as I have, so I was happy to see that Seagal had finally “stooped” to doing horror movies with Against The Dark, as it would finally give me a good (for lack of a better word) reason to introduce myself to latter day Seagal.

Well, as DTV nonsense goes, I’ve seen worse (including movies Sony saw fit to advertise on the disc, such as Boogeyman 3). I mean, if it was any good, it would probably go theatrical, given the presence of a couple name actors (Seagal, Keith David, and... well, Linden Ashby) and a popular premise, i.e. modern day vampires that can easily be mistaken for zombies. I guess 28 Days Later is to blame for this new phenomenon, in which I honestly can’t tell what the fuck the monsters are supposed to be. The DVD box claims vampires, but nothing about them suggests anything but zombies - they have a sick green glow, they don’t talk, and they are caused by a virus. They don’t even have pointy teeth, but this pays off in the film’s most horrific scene, in which a newly made zompire sharpens her teeth into points. The sound, the visual, the IDEA... I’m sure it’s been done before, but it doesn’t make it any less unnerving.

As for Seagal, well... he is what he is these days (fat, kind of lazy). In his book, Vern alludes to several occasions in these DTV movies where Seagal is being doubled, and/or another guy is doing the lines for him, but I see none of that type of stuff here. There’s a pretty hilarious dub early on where he says the same thing twice, but at least it’s his voice. However, he’s not really the star of the movie, top billing aside. It’s not even until the halfway point that he meets the people who are our REAL main characters, a ragtag group of survivors endlessly making their way through a hospital.

And it’s hilarious, because at this point, the requisite little girl of the group asks him his name, and Seagal says “My name is Tao!” It’s funny because we’re almost an hour into the movie and I’m pretty sure it’s the first time his name was mentioned. The music goes into overdrive here too, suggesting we just learned that he is one of Seagal’s most famous characters or something. Like you’re watching a lame Seagal movie and all of a sudden you find out that his character is actually Casey Ryback or maybe even Nico Toscani. Nope, Tao. He then ducks out of the movie’s epilogue (we see a guy in a leather coat walking around in the background, I guess it’s him), so the last time he appears on screen is when he starts to run for the exit before the building gets blown up. Instead we just get a pretty clear shot of the film crew reflected on the SUV that will take out actual heroes to safety.

But even when he’s actually in a scene, he doesn’t say much, often just sort of glaring his way around the movie. I believe Arnold had more lines in the original Terminator than Seagal does here. He does offer this reminder though: “We’re not here to judge who’s right or wrong; we’re here to decide who lives or dies!” Problem is: he says it after saving a small child from being eaten by vampires. I guess in this world, that sort of action exists in a moral gray area.

The main problem with the movie is that it’s so isolated. The opening scenes, likely assembled from stock footage, tell us that the outbreak already happened, that most people are infected, blah blah. Most people know that the initial panic/outbreak is the most interesting part of a zombie film, so presenting it as a 30 second montage before spending 85 minutes in a badly lit hospital was an unwise decision.

But the action is solid. Sometimes it’s strangely sans gore (a head will go flying off courtesy of Seagal’s blade, but no blood), but there’s still plenty of splatter, dismemberment, etc. Seagal even takes out a zompire kid, so there’s something. And to break things up a bit, Keith David (who never shares a scene with his Marked for Death co-star) more or less reprises his Armageddon role as “Army guy who wants to blow up our heroes to hopefully save other lives”, with Linden Ashby in the Billy Bob role of trying to stop him. Their scenes come and go out of nowhere, and I have to wonder if they were part of the plan all along or actually added in at the end of production when they realized that the rest of the movie featured vague people and a fat guy walking around a hospital and nothing else.

The DVD’s only feature is a making of in which everyone talks about how great everyone else is while the editor attempts to make Seagal’s role look more prominent. Sony also throws in all of their recent trailers, and, again, the Blu-ray ad that talks about how great it looks and yet it looks just as good/bad as the rest of the standard def footage on the DVD... BECAUSE ITS IN STANDARD DEF. Morons!

What say you?

And now, Horror Movie A Day and Happy Hour Comics would like to present the 2nd in an ongoing series of HMAD-inspired comic strips. I hope you enjoy!! (Click to enlarge)

PLEASE, GO ON...

Red Sands (2009)

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

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

Back in 2005, I bought myself a festival pass for the Boston Film Festival. In retrospect I’m not sure why - I can honestly only remember three movies I saw there*, and none of them were movies I had heard about and wanted to see. Good ol disposable income, how I miss thee! Anyway, one of the movies was Dead Birds, which was a pretty solid ghost/supernatural film set during the Civil War, with a great cast and, rare at that time, genuine suspense and atmosphere. So I was pretty excited to see Red Sands, which reteams Birds’ director Alex Turner and writer Simon Barrett.

Sadly, it’s not as successful as Birds. As DTV horror movies go, it’s practically Oscar-worthy, but I felt their previous film showed more promise. Not that it’s a bad film by any means - there are a lot of great standalone scenes and moments, and Turner is clearly a director who can wring good performances out of his cast, but it just doesn’t add up to a total success.

For starters, the whole movie is spoiled in the first 5 minutes. Not only are we told what sort of horror we are dealing with (a Djinn) via an opening crawl, but then we are also told that Shane West’s character is the only survivor. So uh... why keep watching? Tom Sawyer and his fellow soldiers fight Wishmaster, and he survives. Done. The great thing about Dead Birds (which shares a fairly similar structure with this film, as well as the war setting, though in this case it's Iraq) was that it DIDN’T hold the audience’s hand and explain everything away. I’m kind of a smart guy, and I like when I see a horror movie that sort of rewards (or at least assumes) that intelligence. Needless to say, I wasn’t too surprised to learn (via the commentary track) that the opening scenes, and several other “yeah, DUH!” moments in the film were studio enforced reshoots/re-edits. I’m actually kind of surprised that a studio would give so much shit to a low budget film that they probably had no plans of theatrically releasing, but there you go.

Luckily, just enough of it works to qualify it as a success, minor as it may be. As I said, the performances are good (particularly Aldis Hodge, who already won me over with his supporting role on Friday Night Lights), and since the effects are pretty fucking terrible, it’s a good thing that most of the scares are of the atmospheric and subtle nature. There’s a scene in the film that I can’t possibly do justice via description, but it’s a terrific little “freaky” moment involving an underlit section of a room (if you watch the film, it occurs around the 45 minute mark). I love stuff like that, and the presence of such moments makes it easier to forgive things like this:

I guess Sony wanted to burn off unused PS1 FMVs?

Also, Shane West’s character is the one to stare longingly at a photo of his girl back home. Since we know his character survives, this makes Red Sands a truly rare film in that regard, since “soldier that has a picture of his girl” is pretty much THE defining trait of movie characters that are about to get shot or blown up.

Another actor who pops up is the great JK Simmons, who you may know as Jonah in the Spider-Man movies, or as the guy who delivers the best line in Burn After Reading (“Call me... I dunno. When it makes sense.”). His entire role consists of two scenes, one at the beginning and one at the end. It takes longer to read this paragraph about his role than it does to actually watch his scenes. Again, this is revealed to be a studio mandated sequence - Sony asked for another “name” and Turner called in a favor to Simmons, whom he had worked with on a short film. The moral of the story is: JK Simmons is now a “name”, and that’s awesome.

As you might have guessed, the commentary is hardly one of those “We shot this here and everyone was so great and I really like this scene” rambles. Turner and Barrett speak pretty freely, but not to the extent that you feel like they are whining about their misfortunes. They praise those who should be praised, talk about edits, explain why things look less than stellar, etc. If you hated the film, it won’t change your mind, but you can at least take comfort in knowing that the creators aren’t entirely happy with it either. There are also a handful of deleted/alternate scenes, all of which are from the first 20 minutes of the movie and thus don’t help explain any of the more puzzling developments from later in the movie. Barrett provides a 20 minute behind the scenes that’s kind of interesting (it’s just a nearly wordless collection of moments from the set, many of them charmingly mundane like recording room tone), and then another “home movies from set” video, this one by co-star Noel G., round things out.

If you like your horror movies to be fast paced and violent, then steer clear. If you enjoyed Dead Birds, and/or don’t mind being a bit patient, then you should enjoy this. It’s not great... but let’s put it this way: Sony has included the trailers for abysmal stuff like Anaconda 4, Vacancy 2, Screamers 2... etc. Considering the company it’s lumped with, it’s amazing that it’s even watchable, let alone decent.

What say you?

*One of those other movies was a half documentary/half comedy-drama called The Hole Story. It’s a great fucking movie and why it never found wider distribution is beyond me, but you can check it out HERE, and also rent it thru Netflix. Please do so.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Frightmare (1983)

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

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

As is the case with many horror movies from 1980 and beyond, Frightmare shares its title with an earlier film. So in case you missed the year on the title of this review, I want to reiterate that the following concerns the 1983 Frightmare that co-stars Jeffrey Combs, not the 1974 one with Rupert Davies.

Got that? Good.

Frightmare is a piece of shit. At first I was dismayed to discover that the DVD was distributed by Troma, as that meant it would be presented full frame and most likely be transferred from a VHS tape. And it was, but even a pristine Blu-ray wouldn’t have made this dud any more interesting or exciting. The plot is incomprehensible, the dialogue almost non-existent, the kills are repetitive... you name a problem with a horror movie, and this movie delivers it, and then some.

The repetitiveness is the biggest problem. Once it finally gets going around the 45 minute mark, all of the kills play out exactly the same: someone walks around a house, the coffin-bound bad guy makes a face (shown in closeup), and then he makes some object fly around and kill the person. Then someone goes looking for that person, and the whole process repeats. We watch this sequence 5 times in a row, and then the movie finally ends. Through all of these sequences is “music” that can best be described as a guy leaning on a keyboard for 20 straight minutes. Shit makes Brian Eno’s compositions sound as radio friendly as Nickelback.

The bad guy is an aging actor (the original title is simply Horror Star) who has planned his own death to go out with a bang, or something (couldn’t really understand his scheme - he fakes his death, then dies for real?). He’s a Christopher Lee/Vincent Price type, and he is referred to as the “last of the horror legends”. But earlier in the scene he talked about working with Laurence Olivier, so obviously he exists in the real world... where “horror legends” such as Christopher Lee and Vincent Price were still alive (actually, Lee STILL is). Whatever.

It’s also one of those movies in which any reasonable person would hate every one of the “good guys”. We don’t know much about them except that they love horror movies and the actor guy. In fact, they love him so much that they take his corpse from his grave, dress it up and sit it at the dinner table with them. Likeable? Fuck, these assholes are barely human. I would like to think that when one of my heroes passes on, my first thought isn’t “dress up time!”. And the lack of characterization is apparent right from the opening credits, which lists the actor AND the character name for just about every cast member, which is almost unheard of for an opening crawl (maybe one role, i.e. “Kane Hodder as Jason”, but ALL of em?)

And yes, Jeffrey Combs is in the movie. The funny thing is, he was allegedly cast because he had brown hair like the mannequin that they were going to use for a decapitation. Ignoring the fact that hair dye costs about 7 bucks, the hilarious capper to this bit of trivia is that the movie is so dark that you can’t see the goddamn hair color anyway (really, anything but bleached blonde would have worked) and the hair STYLE is nothing like Combs’. And he’s basically just anonymous filler (like everyone else in the movie besides the former title character) so I’d hardly consider it worth watching just for him.

Thankfully, Troma didn’t bother to include any extras for the film itself. No, all of the bonus features concern, well, Troma. Commercials for their DVDs and such make up the bulk of the content, but there’s also a heartbreaking ad for PETA (monkeys hugging each other!) and an odd little montage of public domain clips of Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi doing their thing.

Finally, there’s a piece called “Learn From Their Mis-Steaks”, in which Lloyd talks about doing a no-budget indie film as a favor and all of the mistakes the film crew made while he was there (lack of sound equipment or lights, not color timing the two cameras, using real animal blood/guts for props, etc). It’s a great idea and, while probably already embarrassing enough for the film crew, something that should be included on every single Troma release. Hell, put it on non-Troma movies too; the technical qualities we see in the clips from the film (titled Beef in Satan’s Freezer or something like that) are no worse than that of several Lionsgate releases I’ve endured.

In closing, I would like to say that I can only hope that the 1974 Frightmare is better.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Michael Lives: The Making Of Halloween (2008)

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

GENRE: DOCUMENTARY
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

The Oscars aren't the only overlong and filler-filled thing I watched today, as I decided to make Michael Lives: The Making Of Halloween my movie for the day. Clocking in at four hours and twenty minutes (longer than Che!), I realized that if not considered my movie for the day, I would never get around to watching it. But I have counted documentaries in the past, and there is certainly no interest in this movie beyond horror fans, so I feel its certainly a qualifiable entry.

You would think that at 4.5 hours, there would be absolutely no area of the film's production or history left untouched. It was seemingly edited together long after the film's release, once it had made its money back and the involved folks had some hindsight. Also, it's a remake of the most acclaimed slasher movie of all time, and thus in turn was met with the most scrutiny of any horror remake ever (more than even Psycho 1998, which at least had a more prestigious director and much less "internet presence" than Halloween 2007). And yet, the documentary addresses none of these things. If it wasn't for Adrienne Barbeau (whose role ended up on the cutting room floor) pointing out that she was once engaged to the "director of the original", John Carpenter wouldn't be mentioned at all. The only time Rob mentions the original is when the original Strode house is pointed out during location scouting (to which he quite ironically replies "I don't want this movie to have a bunch of cameos"). This also leaves some odd holes in the narrative (for lack of a better word); we see the casting details for several cast members, but not Danielle Harris, the only actor in the film with a previous relationship with the series.

But I can forgive that - they are, for all intents and purposes, making their own movie, and the documentary actually succeeds where the film failed in allowing the audience to forget all about the original film and focus on Rob's vision. Even when they are doing something again, like Lynda's death, the presence of Rob and the rest of the crew allows you to get lost in this version without constantly having the memory of the original intrude.

However, I cannot forgive making a documentary that runs more than twice the length of the film itself that never once includes any sort of reflection or insight. We see footage of the reshoots, but neither Rob or anyone else comments on why they are even being done, let alone whether they think they are for the better or not. The entire post production process is limited to about 30 seconds of Tyler Bates composing his score and ONE SHOT of editor Glenn Garland sitting at an Avid. Even if they wanted to avoid the possible negative connotations of discussing the studio-enforced reshoots, how do you make a movie about a film's production and skip over such a crucial element like editing?

The ultimate problem is the lack of honesty. If this movie is truly a full picture of the production (which its length would certainly suggest), was there never a single problem on set? The only time we are led to believe that the entire production didn't go as smoothly as possible is when we see a few birds squawking through a shot. Oh and (thank Christ I didn't watch this three weeks or more ago) a quick shot where Rob berates the DP for tweaking lights. Heh. "Fuckin' amateur!"

And that's what really bugged me. You watch these types of things for dirt, and the movie (directed by Rob himself) offers none. And without the presence of reflection, on ANYONE'S part, you could just add in people saying "it's a wrap!" and "I think it will be great!" type things, add in the final 5 seconds of the trailer, and end the thing at any point in the film. Half hour, two hours, or even a longer six hours, you'd be left with the exact same feeling.

And that's a shame, because not only is it a giant missed opportunity for Rob to speak his mind freely, but the length will keep people away. At an hour, maybe more folks would be inclined to watch the making of the film whether they liked it or not, and they would possibly learn some interesting things. For starters, Rob is a very hands on director. Many times during the movie we see him dressing props and such, or helping the crew to tear apart the basement to make it look more aged. He's also very good with talking to the actors and fleshing out certain scenes and even individual lines of dialogue. A lot of directors seem to be one or the other, but Rob seems to be the rare kind who is just as concerned with technical details as he is with performance. As I've said before, his writing, which is spotty at best, constantly betrays the fact that he really is a strong director, and I think that if he allowed someone else to write a script for once, we as fans would get something truly great.

Another thing that the movie does a good job of depicting is how much work goes into creating a seemingly simple shot. Michael crying outside of his house requires props to put together a bucket of candy, set designers to not only find leaves (in Pasadena) but age them and blow them across the scene in a realistic manner, lights that can light the actor without looking unnatural, a camera angle that can get what Rob wants but also hide all of the palm trees... On one of the Star Wars prequels, there is an extra feature about all of the work it takes to pull off a single shot, and it's far more successful, because it only takes a half hour to get that point across, not 4+. And again, without having any insight on the film as a whole, or the challenges of pulling off a remake of a revered film, the only thing one CAN really take from the film is "Making a movie is a lot of work".

There is one moment that can almost qualify as a comment on the film's final product, though I am sure it's not the intent at all. During a night shoot, we see the crew having some trouble with young actors portraying trick or treaters. The exact issue is unclear, but regardless, at one point Rob just says "Screw it, let's move on to Michael". Seeing as how one of the film's bigger problems was the lack of Halloween atmosphere in the modern day scenes, it's interesting to note that Rob at least intended to have more of it. It's just a shame we have no followup. Did he regret cutting the shot? Did it help things in the long run? We will probably never know.

Here's the thing: I like Rob. I interviewed him twice for the film back in 2007, once before, once after I saw it, and enjoyed both chats. He's a smart guy, he's funny as hell, and even though he tends to mislead or downright lie about certain things (he told me that Bob's death was reshot because the original was shot quickly and wasn't what he wanted, yet the documentary shows them working on the scene during the daylight hours and shooting it at night), he can also be refreshingly honest about how he feels about certain aspects of filmmaking and horror in general. He also hates us (horror journalists), so in a weird way I respect him taking the time to talk to us and generally being open and personable. And yes, I'm actually looking forward to H2 (Rejects is way better than Corpses, and this will be entirely his own creation in terms of storytelling), and even if it's terrible, I'll still be interested in what he does next. But in the end, I can't really recommend this documentary. There's some good stuff in there, but the length and lack of focus just keeps it from being worth your time. Even if you're a die hard fan of the film, do you really need to spend nearly five hours of your day watching repetitive footage of people making it? Will your life really not be complete without seeing no less than 20 minutes of Rob watching takes a monitor? Not to mention just watching the film clips again; a good hour of the film is just footage from the movie (sometimes even THAT'S repeated). The stuff that was already included on the original DVD release is a far better option. Otherwise, it's nothing more than the world's longest promotional EPK making of piece; only to be used as some sort of endurance test - can you watch it in one sitting? I did, save for a quick pause to prepare a Hungry Man.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Dark Harvest 3: Scarecrow (2004)

FEBRUARY 21, 2009

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

About 6 months of my rent. More than half the cost of a new sedan. The average credit card/loan debt of someone in their 20s or 30s. These are just a few of the things that 10,000 dollars can buy you, but Ben Dixon and his crew decided to spend it on their movie Dark Harvest 3: Scarecrow (actually Skarecrow, which was bought and retitled by - who else? - Lionsgate). With a current rating of 1.8 on the IMDb* and my personal opinion that it’s the least entertaining of the “series”, I ask you - what should they have spent the money on instead?

Once again, I find myself in the unenviable position of having to slam a “homemade” movie. But Jesus fucking Christ, if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times: GOOD SCRIPTS ARE JUST AS CHEAP TO WRITE AS BAD ONES! I could forgive the god awful acting, terrible consumer grade video imagery, and laughable effects (see below), but for the love of Xenu, I cannot forgive such a half-assed and pointless script.

Let’s see, for starters the movie is only 65 minutes long without credits, and still feels endless. Most of it consists of the six protagonists yelling at each other. And at one point, the lead punches his girlfriend in the face after she refuses to have sex next to a scarecrow. And, needless to say, Sean Penn and Kate Winslet (congrats!) couldn’t make any of these characters likable, so forget about giving a shit whether any of them live or die. All three women are shrill and annoying; all three men are profane hotheads who will punch one another at the drop of a hat. To its credit, Ben Dixon (and his wife, or sister, Amy) DOES kill every one of them in their script, but it’s not like there are amazing kills or effects to enjoy when they finally get offed.

The movie also doesn’t make a lick of sense. There’s a prologue with a guy getting killed by some rednecks who have stolen some land or something. But then he instantly is revived as a scarecrow and kills them all in turn. So he’s gotten his revenge, yet he comes back and stalks the six folks I mentioned earlier. What did they ever do to him? Plus, he’s revived when blood from the girl’s newly punched face is splashed on his coat, so if anything he owes them a solid. There’s some nonsense about a family curse and some creepy people living next door, but damned if it was coherent enough for my tastes.

Another thing that’s free is decent sound mixing. Since the movie is obviously edited on Final Cut Pro, I will explain to Dixon and his crew how to it for future reference. In your main project window, click on the effects tab. You will see a folder called “Audio Transitions” (it’s usually near the bottom). Collapse that, and you’ll find two filters: Crossfade (0 db) and Crossfade (3 db). Either one will do - simply drag it over onto the cut between two audio tracks. Then double click it on the timeline, and in the editor window, change the duration to about 4 frames (centered on the cut). This will reduce the jarring “sound” that occurs when a shot that was recorded with a lot of background noise cuts to one with no background noise. Also, when you insert a cutaway of something like a gearshift, you can use the audio from the previous shot to keep SOME semblance of audio continuity. The easiest way to do this is to unlink the audio and video by selecting the clip in the timeline and pressing Apple+L. Then delete the cutaway audio, and drag the audio clip from the previous shot underneath the cutaway video. Viola! Your movie sounds 2% more professional, and all it cost was taking 5 fucking seconds to have some pride in your work.

Another odd thing about the movie is that it’s inexplicably set in 1981. Needless to say, the period settings don’t quite work. People have modern clothes and sunglasses, Pepsi machines contain only the 20 oz plastic bottles that didn’t even exist until the 90s, etc. Since the 1981 setting has no point on anything, you gotta wonder why they bothered, as I’m sure at least SOMETHING was done to keep the idea in check (the van they are driving, for example, seems like a 70s model), which is time they could have spent, I dunno, fixing just about anything in this movie.

The ending is hilarious too. Our lead, who goes batshit insane for the last 15 minutes of the movie for some reason, is blamed for the murders and sent to a prison or mental hospital of some sort. It’s clearly just someone’s basement, with a few bars placed on a makeshift wall. A “doctor” then checks off a few things on a clipboard such as the guy’s named, and then writes, in perfect block letters “Increase medication”. Then the movie ends. Hey, I buy it.

The DVD contains a 40 minute making of that is pretty informative. You learn that the director actually wanted to cut down on the amount of profanity, the scarecrow is apparently played by a woman, and the lead guy went to prison in order to research his role for the sequel, which at this time seemingly does not exist (you’d assume that if you were to put yourself in prison for a movie, the movie would have a solid green light). It ends on a peculiar note; one of the actresses bitches about her fellow cast members, presented in a square “picture in picture” style window on the corner of the screen over footage of children playing. OK. At any rate, it’s a better use of your time than the film itself, though so is pretty much anything.

As franchises designed solely by home video poster artists go, the Dark Harvest series stands out for delivering THREE movies in which the only common trait is purely inept filmmaking by seemingly well-meaning folks. I dream of a day when all three directors are put on a panel at a horror (or corn) convention and talk about their magnum opuses. Maybe they can join forces on a fourth film that ties their films (which were all produced at the same time, apparently) together.

And before anyone complains about me mocking a low budget movie with the whole “let’s see YOU make a movie!” argument, I DID make one. Almost ten years ago, two friends and I went into the woods and did the whole Blair Witch parody thing. It’s almost an hour long, and if I was as careless and soulless as the editors of these movies, I could have made it 70 minutes or so too. And it has questionable audio, glaringly obvious continuity errors, and cheap FX and all the same things I blast this movie for. You know what the difference is? I show the thing to friends for laughs. I don’t shop it around to studios for distribution, because I have a soul and would be appalled at the idea of people spending money to see the damn thing. And I don’t care how nice and well-meaning Dixon and co. are, there’s no way in hell they watched this thing and said “Yes, we have made a movie worth paying for.” Apparently, though, I can go back and shoot a scene where we are menaced by a scarecrow and get the thing released as Dark Harvest 4 (or 5, if the idea from my previous paragraph comes together).

What say you?

*The IMDb plot summary simply reads: “A killer scarecrow kills some people”. I appreciate the lack of pretension.

And now, Horror Movie A Day and Happy Hour Comics would like to present the 1st in an ongoing series of HMAD-inspired comic strips. I hope you enjoy!! (Click to enlarge)

PLEASE, GO ON...

Crowley (2008)

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

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

I got very excited to see a movie called Crowley arrive from Anchor Bay. Even though I’m pretty sure I’d know before it hit DVD, I momentarily thought it was some sort of Hatchet sequel with an older Victor Crowley coming back for one last go around, a la Rambo. But it’s actually Chemical Wedding, the horror movie written by Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, under a new name. Oh well, Maiden rules, so this might be just as enticing, right?

Well, enticing maybe, but the finished product leaves much to be desired. Let’s start with the criminal lack of Maiden songs, despite promised on the box. "Can I Play With Madness?", for example, is limited to about 12 seconds’ worth of the song playing on someone’s kitchen radio. In fact, the 3 or 4 other Maiden songs (or Bruce solo efforts) are ALL played over the radio in brief snippets (not counting the end credits), which makes me wonder just how popular Maiden is in this movie’s town.

Instead, the titles of Maiden songs sort of figure into the plot. The whole movie’s about the rebirth of a "Moonchild", and of course, since it’s about Alestair Crowley, there’s some reference to "Six! SIX SIX! THE NUM-BER OF THE BEAST!" Yeah! Lyrics also pop in from time to time; a guy says “The evil that men do lives on and on”, for example. But unfortunately, the movie’s so slow at times, it’s just a reminder of the vastly more entertaining options you have at your disposal (indeed, shortly after watching the movie, I listened to "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" again).

Speaking of songs, the first scene has this wonderful little 1940s song about the Boogeyman (title is “Hush Hush Here Comes The Bogie Man”). Why it has never been used in a Halloween movie (makes a hell of a lot more sense than “Mr. Sandman”) is beyond me, but kudos to Dickinson and co. for putting it in instead of another Maiden song.

The movie itself is an occasionally incoherent (my first note simply reads “Huh?”) but almost always kind of repetitive account of Crowley’s attempts to be reborn via the sacrifice of a red haired woman. He does this by possessing a professor, randomly attacking homeless people and such, and proving his power by telling total strangers about their heritage. Those who oppose him include a guy who claims to be 50 but looks about 30, a pair of crusty old professors (one of whom speaks through a voicebox), and a girl from the school newspaper who seemingly needs to interview every person on campus for a single article. At just under 110 minutes, it eventually becomes one of those movies where you can remove a half hour chunk from the middle of the film and not lose a single plot point or disrupt the narrative flow in any meaningful way.

It also has a running gag about the Florida recount of 2000, which is mainly just there to set the date of the film and set up a “ooooh” moment at the end of the film, when one crusty old professor tells another that there are other universes that are worse than the ones they live in. Then they pan down to a newspaper that reads “Gore Wins Recount!” So in other words, these “worse alternative universes” include the one WE live in, where Bush won the election. Not that I will argue the point of the joke, but such half-assed political commentary in a movie really bugs me. They could have used anything to demonstrate the point, especially since the year 2000 isn’t a plot point. I would have gone with “Brokeback Mountain defeats Crash for Best Picture Award”, personally. Might even have made a stronger case for the “Our universe sucks” idea.

And that’s a shame, because it’s certainly an original take on the whole “ancient evil wants to be reborn” concept, and not without entertainment value. I mean, how often do you get to see an old man being whipped for his own pleasure? Furthermore, how often do you see the.... er, “results” of that pleasure splash on an ancient scroll? And furthermore...more, how often do you see someone print out a copy of that text and somehow get the “results” (OK, I mean jizz) all over their hands when they pick up the paper (and then smear it all over their shirt)?? That kind of stuff is gold!

I also like the idea of it being an old fart instead of some charismatic guy in his 30s (like the hero). You almost want to root for the guy, because he’s lovably old and bald. It’s like when my 80ish grandfather got unintentionally racist with a waiter at a Chinese restaurant (he complimented him on “doing alright for himself in this country” - the guy was probably born in New Hampshire): you can’t condone what he’s doing, but at the same time it’s kind of cute.

And the entertainment isn’t all based on old men acting in abhorrent manners. There’s a wonderfully dry sequence where the good guys are hypnotizing a witness, where the guy can only hear one of them and the hypnotist has to keep explaining to the other guy that the hypnotized guy can’t hear him. It’s funnier than it sounds. And I particularly like when the guy possessed by Crowley explains that December 25th has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus (who was born on January 6th - the discrepancy stems from using different calendars or something).

The commentary is much more entertaining than the film, and if the movie wasn’t so dialogue heavy, I would actually advise just listening to it right off the bat. Director Julian Pope, Producer Ben Timlett, and Dickinson talk nonstop, and not only delve into some of the literary and biblical references, but also explain quite a bit about the real Crowley. They even start knocking Lawnmower Man out of nowhere. And they do it all in the inimitable dryly hilarious British fashion. The making of isn’t as successful, and they allude to the campus where the film was shot as being haunted, but I can’t tell if they are joking or not. At any rate, the idea of Crowley’s ghost causing male students to kill themselves would make a pretty good movie too I think. There’s also damn near a half hour of deleted scenes, all presented without context, and some even include the slates (“action!”) at the beginning of the shot. Onscreen text explains why they were cut, which is always preferable than commentary, because then you have to sit through them twice. Some are OK, but since pace is the movie's biggest problem, at least I know they were trying to move things along.

I think as a sort of Pink Floyd The Wall style movie, with the music we know (in this case, Maiden songs) being used to tell the story instead of dialogue, would have worked much better. The movie’s kind of music video esque anyway (there are virtual reality suits, lots of scenes that seem to exist in a fever dream, etc.), and of course, more Maiden music certainly wouldn’t hurt. Indeed, the plot often seems like it was born out of an abandoned concept album. Instead we get this, which is about 20 minutes too long, and overly talky. There’s enough entertainment value contained within to warrant a rental, but not much else.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

DVD Review: My Bloody Valentine (1981)

FEBRUARY 19, 2009

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

If anyone needs proof that I have been extremely busy lately, I offer the date on this review as proof. Despite the fact that I have been demanding an uncut edition of My Bloody Valentine since I was 14 years old (I’m turning 29 next month, which means that’s more than half my life), I didn’t get around to watching the DVD - released over a month ago - until today. And that’s actually a lie; I didn’t even have time to watch the whole movie, just the deleted footage and the extras.

Luckily, Lionsgate saw fit to put all of the cut footage as a special feature (you can also, obviously, watch it cut back into the movie; the theatrical cut is also included for comparison’s sake I suppose). And each scene has an intro by one or two of a revolving group of folks, including director George Mihalka and special effects creators Thomas R. Burman and Ken Diaz. What’s interesting is that for years, it has been reported that nine minutes of footage had been cut from the film, but that doesn’t seem possible at all. Maybe nine minutes of scenes IN the movie had been affected, but otherwise, there’s just seemingly no way that there could be much more than the 2:30 worth of stuff that’s here. With the exception of the couple who got killed with the drill bit, every murder in the movie is seen here, and in some cases, even more excessive than I expected (the death of the bartender in particular goes on for like 30 seconds alone). So unless that drill scene, which apparently can not be found, was 7 minutes long, I think this represents a pretty damn near complete version of the film as originally intended.

The real shame is that the work here is among the most impressive of the era. The bartender and shower scenes rival anything from Friday the 13th or The Burning, and the others are above average as well. There’s also a sense of morbid humor that got removed along with the gore. Everyone knows about the water coming from the girl’s mouth in the shower impalement, but the old lady spinning around in the drier was an unexpected and hilarious surprise. There’s some unexpected harshness as well, when young Axel sees his dad being killed, we see the blood splash in his face. And then a few minutes later, we see exactly how he lost that arm in the finale. Awesome.

One bummer about this setup though - there is no play all function. It gets annoying to continually select each of the 10 scenes one by one, especially when each one ends with a little credits window. Plus, while it’s better than no context whatsoever, they replay way too much of the footage before (and sometimes after) the cut stuff. Do we really need to watch the entire 3 minutes of opening credits before the miner stabs that one broad in the heart? Wouldn’t 10 seconds be more than enough to place it?

LG could have just given us the footage and most folks would be happy (since, unlike say Friday the 13th, it has NEVER been seen, anywhere, and suffered far worse than Friday did, which only lost about 9 seconds), but there are a couple other extras as well. The better of the two is an “interactive timeline” of slasher movies. It’s just a bunch of text, but it’s written by “Going To Pieces” author Adam Rockoff, not some studio PR lackey. And within the text I discovered a Thanksgiving themed slasher movie (Home Sweet Home), which I instantly queued on Netflix. Eat it, Eli!

The other is a fascinatingly sloppy effort. It’s called “Bloodlust: My Bloody Valentine and The Rise Of The Slasher Film”, which would seemingly signal that it was a piece about MBV’s place in the pantheon of the slasher craze. But instead, it’s just a mishmash of like 9 different ideas. It starts off by taking us through slasher films, going back to Grand Guignol theater, but then it quickly just turns into a regular retrospective about MBV itself, with folks talking about where it was shot and how the mining equipment was real. Then without warning, it becomes an EPK for the remake! In the end, more than half of the 20 odd minute piece focuses on the new film, and within that, very little time is spent on even comparing it to the original. Instead, they talk about the 3D and Kerr Smith talks about how his character is cheating on his wife. But it gets odder. We then get the end credits for the featurette, BEFORE composer Paul Zaza talks about the theme song! It’s like a full 90 second section of the piece, so why it wasn’t edited in with the rest of the thing is beyond me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an unfocused and slapdash piece of its type on a DVD.

Mihalka and others were obviously on hand for the DVD’s creation, so I am curious why they did not offer any commentary track (especially when Lionsgate puts in the commentary disclaimer at the top of the disc). But what’s there, half-assedly presented as it may be, is all worth a look, and again, the footage alone is worth the cost. In a sea of “Unrated!” DVDs that usually offer a minute of character stuff (which the director wanted removed anyway), it’s nice to see one with what fans actually wanted to see.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Quarantine (2008)

FEBRUARY 19, 2009

GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY, ZOMBIE*
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Since I began Horror Movie A Day, I’ve made it a point to see every major horror movie in theaters, even on my own dime (for all of that crap about horror movies almost never being screened for ‘critics’ - seems to not really affect me all that much. Most of the ones I end up paying for had screenings I simply couldn’t make). But Quarantine was the exception; it came out during Screamfest, and by the time that was over I was too busy catching up on everything else that built up during the festival (work, life, my just-now-weaning addiction to Halo 3).

But in a way I didn’t mind, because it would put more distance between the film and [Rec], which I had seen in the early summer. By all accounts, Quarantine was an exact copy of that film, with almost nothing changed from the script. Another four months would make my [Rec] memories all the more hazy, which would allow me to enjoy the story again.

And it worked! While the overall structure remained in my mind, I forgot about certain plot points and jump scares, which allowed them to work again. For example, I had forgotten that the whole thing started from the little girl’s dog, and that she would conveniently wait until the truth was exposed to turn zombie and begin running around snarling and biting. I also forgot about the awesome “fireman plunge” that occurred early on, which is good because it’s pretty much the best scare in the movie (the end one was the best for [Rec], but it’s kind of hard to get scared at that moment now when it’s the fucking poster of the movie).

Unfortunately, there are two major flaws in Quarantine that kept me from enjoying it as much as I wanted, and it was something that would bug me even if I hadn’t seen the original. One is the cast. If you think about the alltime best “Found footage” movies, they all have one thing in common: unknown actors. Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity, even (Quarantine director) John Dowdle’s own Poughkeepsie Tapes all wisely kept familiar faces out of their films, which, even though I know they were ‘just movies’, still allowed me to buy into the reality of the situation. But Screen Gems just seemingly grabbed an actor from one of their previous hits for just about every single role in the film. Emily Rose’s Jennifer Carpenter, Hostel’s Jay Hernandez, Prom Night’s Johnathon Schaech, The Fog’s Rade Sherbedgia... even the smaller roles are filled with recognizable actors, such as Vacancy’s Andrew Fiscella. It’s nice that Screen Gems is trying to bring back the old “contract player” concept, but they could have done it in a more appropriate, traditional film.

The other, bigger problem is that it’s far too clean. If there’s one genre that SHOULD look like shit, it’s the verite horror subgenre, but yet not only is everything framed perfectly at all times (even when someone is running down a flight of stairs), but it’s not even that shaky. I swear the camera is on a tripod at times. While those who get motion sick may appreciate the gesture, it makes it damn near impossible to buy as a character’s POV during a traumatic event. It also doesn’t really look like the type of footage that would be used for a news event, but I guess that’s just the norm now, and at least they didn’t try to pass off the footage as being from a consumer camera like in Cloverfield.

It’s also tough to get into that whole “POV” mindset when you never get to really meet the guy filming everything. It was the same case in [Rec], but at least there it was never an issue because the camerawork was genuine. The actor appears in a couple of shots (such as after the film’s best moment, when he uses the camera to beat a zombie to a pulp), but he doesn’t really get to create a character. Most of these movies have two cameras to get around this hurdle, but unlike Cloverfield (also single camera), no one else ever films anything either.

Luckily, it works as a straight up realtime zombie movie. The great thing about the idea is that, for once, there are a finite number of zombies to deal with. There’s no giant swarm for the ending or deus ex machina scares - we know the exact number, who’s left, who’s infected, etc. It may sound like a detriment (“not enough zombies!”) but it actually works in the film’s favor by keeping it from getting too over the top or fantastical.

And credit to Dowdle and his crew - even knowing all of the beats, I tensed up a few times, and there are a few changes that were definitely for the better. In [Rec] they stop cold about halfway through to interview the tenants, and it’s sort of a breather. They did away with that here, leaving only the interview with the little girl (which contains a crucial plot point). And - thank CHRIST - they eschew the idiotic “rewinding” part of [Rec], a moment that completely betrayed the “live footage” concept. Think about it - if we are watching a tape rewind, that means our eyes are on the camera itself, not what the camer is seeing. They also skip over most of the explanation/exposition in the attic scene, which is fine by me since I hated the explanation in the original anyway. However, I should note that other things, such as the opening at the fire station, are dragged out too long; even with that one section cut completely out, the movie is still 15 minutes longer than [Rec] was, despite being the exact same thing.

The DVD has a few standard extras, nothing essential. Rob Hall’s excellent effects are showcased in one of the featurettes, and I was surprised to learn that it was actually Doug Jones (Silver Surfer, Abe Sapien) as the “Thin Man” at the end, wearing yet another full body prosthetic. That dude must have the patience of a hundred saints. Dowdle and his brother Drew provide a commentary, but not only do they skirt around the fact that their movie is a remake, they also just sit and watch the movie sometimes. I think from now on I will skip to the end credits and listen to see if the participants talk over them. I notice that the folks who say “OK, thanks for listening!” the instant the first end credit appears on screen tend to give boring commentaries (and thus duck out as soon as possible), whereas the guys who talk until the very end (Feast III is a recent example) are engaging and enjoyable. It might save me a heap of time.

And since Sony has decided to bury [Rec] so as not to give their precious Quarantine the stigma of being a remake, your options of seeing the original are hardly favorable. You can watch the whole thing on Youtube, and there are of course bootlegs floating around, but there are various subtitling issues that may hamper your enjoyment (as much enjoyment as one could possibly derive from watching a blurry AVI file on their computer anyway). The Youtube subs seem pretty good, but again, it’s a format best designed for 20 second clips of animals doing silly things, not an 80 minute film with frenetic camera and an impressive sound design. It’s a shame that the inferior version is the one that people can access with ease, but at least it’s a respectable version. If the Psycho or Eye remakes were the only ways to see THOSE films, you can be sure I’d be rampaging around with a shotgun. At least Quarantine is, if nothing else, a pretty good movie.

What say you?

*Fuck off, they're zombies.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Dark Night Of The Scarecrow (1981)

FEBRUARY 18, 2009

GENRE: REVENGE, TELEVISION
SOURCE: DOWNLOAD (AVI FILE)

I abhor downloading movies, for several reasons (poor quality, terrible presentation being foremost), but in the case of Dark Night Of The Scarecrow, I had to make an exception. See, I tried seeing the movie as a kid when it was on WNDS, a local NH station that aired tons of great horror movies, often with minimal (or no) editing. But the recording got interrupted or something, I can’t remember the exact reason, only that I woke up the next morning and found my tape still blank. Then I ordered a DVD copy of it last year from a “Vendio” seller, only to have her disappear off the face of the earth, to the extent that Paypal couldn’t even return my money. Quite frankly, I was sick of not being able to see the damn thing, so when I stumbled across a “public domain” site with allegedly legal downloads, I figured I had earned it.

Was it worth the wait? Sorta. I wish I had seen it as a kid, because it would probably have really creeped me out. Nowadays I don’t scare so easily (actually, even as a kid, movies that legitimately scared me were few and far between), and the scare factor is a big reason why the film is considered such a gem in the land of obscure horror movies. Whether it was a restriction for the TV station that produced it (CBS, if memory serves) or just a creative choice, I don’t know, but the cool thing about the movie is how they never actually show a killer. Throughout the film, we don’t know if these rednecks are being killed by the vengeful ghost (or zombie) of the retarded man that they needlessly killed, or are done in by basic karma. The final 5 minutes, of course, pretty much gives you the answer, but until then, it’s actually pretty admirable that they were able to preserve the mystery angle for so long.

For me, the creepiest moment was actually non-killer scarecrow related. During the tragic event that kicks the movie off (a girl is mauled by a dog, but everyone assumes that Larry “Bubba” Drake did it), director Frank De Felitta presents a series of shots of lawn gnomes while we listen to the girl’s screams and the dog’s growls and barks. Few objects are as inherently terrifying as lawn gnomes, so to see a whole bunch of them in a ten second span is pretty ghastly.

There’s a great moment near the end of the movie. Charles Durning whacks a guy on the head with a shovel, and as he pulls the shovel back toward his person, we see the victim’s hat stuck on the blade. It’s a wonderfully morbid sight gag, and I wish that the film had more of this sort of thing. Speaking of Durning, what a piece of work he is here. He’s a postal clerk who keeps a gun in a drawer by the teller window (in fact, it’s the ONLY thing in the drawer) and uses his mail truck to get around town in order to carry out his nefarious deeds. I’m sure the USPS is quite pleased about the depiction of their employees in this film. Did I mention Durning’s character is also alluded to be a pedophile?

One thing bugged me - after the trial and everything, the little girl goes to Bubba’s house and talks to the mother. Then she’s like “Where’s Bubba?” Now, I’m all for kids not understanding death*, but she just noticed now that he hadn’t been around? Unless the trial occurred the very next day, I call shenanigans.

Weird piece of trivia - when I looked to rent this movie from netflix a while back, my search turned up only Dark Harvest 3: Scarecrow, which I had already queued. Ten minutes after I began watching Dark Night of the Scarecrow, I got an email from Netflix telling me that DH3 was on its way. Creepy.

Anyway, it’s not the best movie ever made, but for a TV movie, it’s pretty damn good, and a sad indicator of how far the concept of “Movie of the Week” has fallen. When’s the last time you saw a genuine horror movie made for TV? They don’t even do Stephen King ones anymore.

What say you?

*Microsoft argued with my grammar for this phrase, and suggested “I do all for kids not understand” instead. I’ll stick with my version, thanks.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Feast III: The Happy Finish (2009)

FEBRUARY 17, 2009

GENRE: COMEDIC, MONSTER, SPLATTER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

It’s no secret that the 2nd of “back to back” movies tend to suck. Matrix Revolutions and Pirates 3 are pretty good examples of why a film should be made on its own (though if you ask me, none of the Matrix films are all that great, but at least the first two work on SOME level). So I was a bit worried that Feast III: The Happy Finish would be a big disappointment. We’re talking about a series that’s already rushed and compromised due to budget restraints (I would LOVE to read Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton’s original drafts for each of the three films), so to have one made under even harsher conditions (less time, tired cast/crew) might be disastrous. So I was happy to discover that while not as successful as the other two, Feast III is still entertaining enough to qualify as a minor success.

The only real problem, besides the insanely short length (70 minutes without credits/flashbacks), is that they don’t really pull any new tricks. By now we know how it goes - horrible people tend to live longer than “safe” folks, heroic alpha male types are instant goners, etc. The only real shocker in terms of the body count is the very first one. Not that I expected this character to survive the film, but he/she dies so suddenly (literally in the first second of the film after the recap from Feast II) that it’s almost a fineable offense. I assume that the decision was based more on actor availability than anything else, but it doesn’t make it any more of a problem. I really missed their presence during the film.

Otherwise, it’s more of the same, and I mean that in a good way. I have a morbid, mean-spirited sense of humor, and thus the Feast films are little slices of heaven for me. Nothing can top the baby-tossing from II, but there are still plenty of wonderfully sick highlights. My personal favorite involved the unfortunate results of where Clu Gulager’s Bartender received his medical training (it also leads to the film’s best line: “You only need legs to kick ass!”). And even though I knew he was a goner, HOW the film’s requisite would-be hero gets taken out was brilliant.

Also, for once, bad people get what’s coming for them. Greg Swank suffers greatly through the film, and Slasher’s comeuppance is probably the most grossout moment in the film (this movie is much less gooey than the previous one). The newer characters tend to get offed rather quickly, but they all seem like decent people for once. The biggest addition is Josh Blue (he’s the only worthwhile Last Comic Standing winner) as a “prophet” who is somehow able to keep the monsters at bay. How he does so isn’t exactly a big surprise, but it’s still a funny moment, and he adds some much-needed levity and lightness to the proceedings.

One good thing about the brevity is that you get to the final 5 minutes quicker. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say that even for a Feast movie, the ending defies any sort of narrative convention (and I mean that in the most positive way possible). And then we get a theme song, which, as I explained the other day, makes any movie better.

As for the technical stuff, it’s got the same issues that the other two had - occasionally incoherent editing (I don’t have the slightest idea of what is going on in the bus scene) and scenes that are too dark to follow. For example, there’s a lengthy scene in the sewer, lit by intermittent strobe lights. It’s a great idea, but it goes on far too long - after a minute or so, we want to see what’s happening, not just glimpses of it. There’s a genius gag involving Swank’s pipe-head in the middle of it, and I fear that some folks will miss it entirely because your mind needs to work overtime in order to fill in the parts that occur offscreen in blackness. I remain excited for the day when John Gulager has all of the money and time he needs to tell his stories - those little moments of unfiltered Gulagerity (a particular character’s death vision, in a swimming pool filled with sharks) are genius, and I always get the feeling if he had his way there would be more moments like that.

On the plus side though, the greenscreen is kept to a minimum (basically the first 5 minutes of the movie, until they get off the roof), and the footage, while still pretty obviously a composited shot, is much improved. The color timing is much closer (i.e. the background and the actors have the same bluish tint); one wishes they could go back and fix the footage in Feast II, where it was much more prominent.

The DVD has a hilarious commentary with Gulager, Dunstan, Melton, and producer Mike Leahy. As always, they talk about production issues, address the fact that those who are offended by certain things are watching the wrong movie, and how hard everyone worked to pull it off. One of them also points out how good The Biggest Loser is, so that’s cool (Hey! Watch NBC!). The only other extra is a wonderful and sweet little portrait of Gulager. The odd thing is, it’s very outdated. It should have been an extra on the first Feast - it doesn’t even mention the sequels at all (in fact it seems to exist at a time before the first one was even released). Dimension also provides a whole bunch of trailers, including one for the first Feast in which the onscreen text tells a story that has nothing to do with the final film (something about government tests).

If there was ever a sequel for fans only, it’s this one. I can’t imagine anyone who didn’t like the first two to enjoy it, or even bother watching it at all. It’s not exactly “necessary” by any means, but enjoyable nonetheless, thanks to the occasional great gags and the sheer simple joy of spending another hour or so with these wacky folks. It’s like when you go to Denny’s with a few folks after a party, as an extension of that party. It’s not quite as fun, but it’s better than wasting all the leftover things you wanted to talk about.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Nightwing (1979)

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: CABLE (FEARNET)

I, like just about everyone with good sense, am a fan of David Warner. He’s sort of like Malcolm McDowell, but with a seemingly better agent (example: Warner - Titanic, McDowell - Tank Girl). But even he can’t keep a mediocre effort like Nightwing afloat, and the fact that he doesn’t even appear until a half hour in doesn’t help much.

Killer bats don’t appear for a while either. Most of the movie is about a good Indian (Nick Mancuso, best known to horror fans as the voice of “Billy” in the original Black Christmas) arguing with a not-really-bad Indian (Stephen Macht) about some oil in the nearby mountains. Honestly I didn’t really see the problem. Macht wants to sell the oil, and use the money to help the reservation. What an asshole! Maybe that is why the movie eventually drops him altogether; he doesn’t factor into the 3rd act at all. You would think he’d get his “just desserts” via some bats, like Tim Curry in Congo or countless of other “human villains’ in these killer animal movies, but nope. His last “appearance” in the film is as a voice on the radio.

Dropped plot points are the order of the day, actually. At one point, Mancuso tells his girlfriend not to follow him into the bat cave. She does, and as a result... well, nothing. She follows him silently for a while, but when Warner gets in trouble, she makes her presence known and Mancuso has no reaction whatsoever. Then why have the whole “stay put!” scene? We are also told about nine other bat murders, but we only see one body. If anything could have saved this movie, it would have been more bat action, so TALKING about bat action that we don’t even see the aftermath of is double excruciating.

The one real attack scene is pretty great though. Not that the bat effects are particularly impressive (they’re actually pretty laughable - bat footage projected behind the actors, with bats all staying in place as the people run), but it’s just so damn harsh. There are five people in the scene, two guys, two older broads, and the hero’s girlfriend. You know she’ll be OK, so the others are fair game. Yet the two women get it worse than the guys. And it’s not enough for them to be bat-bitten to death, one of them is flailing about and she falls into the campfire, immolating herself. The other though, holy shit! She makes it to the car, where her boyfriend refuses to open the door to let her in (she’s already pretty bitten up, in his defense). Then bats swarm around her, and she falls down... under the car. So the boyfriend drives away and runs her over. Then the car flips over and kills the two guys (including Norris from The Thing). Jesus Christ!

Speaking of Jesus, I guess I owe Patrick Lussier an apology for Dracula 2000. I’ve always mocked that movie’s “Judas was Dracula” concept, but nightwing tops it by having Warner claim that Jesus invented bats and, in turn, vampires. So it all sort of ties together - Judas betrayed Jesus, and since he knew he was going to die, Jesus decided to finally be a bit of a dick in his life, and had one of his homemade bats bite Judas. Then he felt bad and blessed him with immortality, thus creating Dracula.

Also, I don’t know if this is a Fearnet thing or not (other movies seemed a bit dark, but not to this extreme), but it was often so dark I couldn’t quite understand what was happening. When the car flips over it literally looks like two flashlights being thrown across a dark room. Luckily, most of the movie is set during the day, allowing me full comprehension for all of the scenes of people talking about bats and oil and reservations.

The ending is pretty astonishing. Mancuso figures out that his shaman uncle is responsible for the bats, so he sets some rocks on fire, thus lighting “the eternal fire” and presumably killing all of the bats. Then we get a pretty random caption simply stating that “In recent years, a nest of vampire bats was located in Texas”. That’s it. It’s almost like director Arthur Hiller suspected the audience would start to get up from their seats bitching about the plausibility of the whole thing, so he tossed that in there to shut them up. It’s like calling someone a “smartass” in the most passive aggressive manner possible.

And yes, the director of this movie about a swarm of bloodsucking creatures is the same Arthur Hiller who ran the Oscars throughout the 90s. Take from that what you will.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

On Bloody Sunday (2007)

FEBRUARY 15, 2009

GENRE: CULT, RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I know I swore off this type of obscure nonsense, but I actually had a good(ish) reason to rent On Bloody Sunday, as the plot had a killer using Myspace to lure victims. I had an idea for a comedic horror film about a guy who was killing off everyone in someone’s Top 8, but it was really just an excuse to make fun of Myspace and the like for 90 minutes*. So I wanted to see how this one fared, and make sure they weren’t too similar before I bothered developing my idea any further (which, for me, means just sort of writing down the idea and adding in unhelpful notes like “sequel - 16”).

Luckily, none of their movie seemed like anything I would put into mine, because I wouldn’t intentionally develop a boring and poorly made movie. And Myspace barely even factors in, the girl figures out that the killer is posting events and killing whoever comes, but that concept is more or less dropped halfway through. It’s mainly about a girl from the school newspaper investigating the killer, who is killing those who he deems immoral. In the name of God, of course.

And before anyone says it, yes, the movie DOES address the whole “God wouldn’t want you to kill people either” problem. And by address, I mean a victim points that out to the killer, and he doesn’t answer. Good enough, I guess?

In actuality, it’s not even the worst idea ever (beats yet another "prank goes wrong and 10 years later the guy gets revenge" movie), and in the hands of a capable filmmaker, working from a good script, it would totally work. But writer/director/producer Christian Sesma is NOT a capable filmmaker, by any stretch of the imagination. We learn this early on, as a drunk kid is shown peeing on his own shoes. The problem is - he’s “peeing” on the tongue part, which means the dude would have to be pointing his penis TOWARD his own body (that or he has a vagina). Also, we cut away from the kid peeing to show some (non)ultimate fighting going on in a garage (with Danny Trejo as the ref - his only scene in the film). Three or four minutes later, Sesma cuts back to the kid, who is just now zipping up. It’s a common problem during the film; later on a girl is running toward a car from a shack, a distance of about twenty feet. Sesma cuts to a fight going on inside the shack, and then 30 seconds later, the girl is STILL running toward the car!

It’s also just terrible on a technical level too. Haphazard crosscut editing, blurry footage, nonsensical color filtering... it’s all here. Plus the audio is a mess - not only is the film much louder than average (I had to turn my receiver down about 20 notches), but dialogue comes in two varieties for the most part: muffled or badly ADRed. Even the soundtrack is all over the place, we go from folky stuff to rap to metal with nary a moment to breath.

The script is a wash too. None of our characters are even remotely interesting, and the killer is just a bland “cult” guy in a hood who rambles out Bible passages. There are actually a couple of killers, but only one of them is someone you actually know (an obvious “twist” anyway), which means the “reveal” of the other guys is about as anticlimactic as possible. And it’s repetitive as all hell; the heroine more or less figures out what’s going on pretty early on, leaving just a bunch of recycling scenes to fill up the movie until the finale. Sesma is seemingly obsessed with extreme sports and the like, so enjoy endless scenes of dirtbike racing, ultimate fighting, etc. Not to mention a rave sequence. Even though the movie’s only 80 minutes long, I felt like I was watching it for hours.

The commentary manages to make the movie even MORE boring. Sesma is the sole participant, and thus there are a lot of gaps. In the first four minutes, all he manages to say is his own name and the name of a few of the actors. Bizarrely, the movie itself is muted throughout the commentary, with the exception of one line just past the hour mark. It was actually the only scare the movie delivered; suddenly, without warning, I was listening to the shitty dialogue again. He also never once addresses any of the movie’s faults (like, “wow, it’s a shame this shot is so blurry”), which is annoying as well - at least explain why your movie looks so flat and ugly instead of sitting there in silence for minutes at a time. There is also a making of, which has a somewhat charming blue collar, laidback attitude, but also way too many film clips. And Sesma seems like a nice enough guy, but ultimately he, like so many other filmmakers I’ve “discovered” via HMAD, doesn’t have either the skill or the resources to deliver a film that can stick out in a world filled with (obviously) a glut of indie horror movies.

What say you?

*Oddly, Dimension announced a similar movie this week, in fact on the day that Blockbuster sent me this disc, which I had queued like months ago. Weird.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Coraline (2009)

FEBRUARY 14, 2009

GENRE: ANIMATED, HAUNTED HOUSE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (3D REGULAR SCREENING)

I've never quite decided if I love Nightmare Before Christmas or not. I love the animation, most of the songs... but I get bored with it after Jack returns from Christmas Town. From then on I find myself just looking at the various details and wondering how much of a pain it must have been to pull them off. Luckily, Coraline (which, for those who are still confused, is directed by Henry Selick, NOT Tim Burton who everyone thinks directed Nightmare when it was really Selick) improves in this department, and I have my shitty memory to thank.

See, I usually get disengaged when I see a movie based on a book that I have read. I know all the story beats, I know how it ends, and I'm also noticing all of the "missing" things. Which is why I am a supporter of seeing the movie first. In 99% of the cases, the book will be better, so you can see the movie, enjoy it, and then read the book and enjoy it more (as opposed to seeing the movie 2nd and complaining about all of those "missing" things). But I read Neil Gaiman's "Coraline" five years and probably a hundred books ago, so I couldn't really remember much about it beyond the basic plot: girl in a house, mirror reality, usual sort of "You already have everything you need and need some sort of crazy scary experience to make you realize it" message, etc. I didn't even remember anything about the buttons.

And that's what makes the movie such an enjoyable experience. I felt like I was experiencing the story for the first time, even when memories began to resurface. The 3D/animation is a big part of that - not only is it the best 3D design I've ever seen in a film (with only ONE goofy "comin AT YA!" moment), but the stop motion animation is exquisite, making Nightmare (and certainly something like Chicken Run) pale in comparison. At times I thought for sure I was watching CGI, but it's ALL hand-made stop motion (with CG enhancement for certain "effects" that can't be done with puppets and giant miniature sets). They've really outdone themselves here; even when the movie got slightly dull (at 1:40, it's the longest stop motion movie ever - some stuff could be tightened) I was always compelled and fascinated by the work on display.

One thing I really dug was the "vanishing" world idea. At one point Coraline runs away and the world sort of loops back on itself, as it only exists as far as the Other Mother designed it for Coraline's sake. It's a pretty abstract concept, but Selick and his crew pull it off beautifully - it didn't even need to be explained in dialogue.

The music is also wonderful, and sort of creepy. There are no songs (other than a They Might Be Giants tune), just a score with occasional chorus, and it fits the look of the film exceptionally well. Speaking of the creepiness, some of you might wonder if this is technically a horror movie. Rest assured, I polled readers via Facebook and Twitter and everyone that answered said yes. Plus the finale features a half spider half woman (voiced by Teri Hatcher, MILFiest MILF of all time) trying to kill a little girl and/or pluck her eyes out and replace them with buttons. That's scarier than anything in Friday the 13th. It's not as Gothic as Nightmare, but it's certainly in the same vein.

I also enjoyed the inspired choices for doing the voices. Dakota Fanning was sort of obvious, but John Hodgman as the dad is a stroke of brilliance. You know him as "PC" in those increasingly unfunny ads, but you SHOULD know him from his book "Areas Of My Expertise", which is a 'complete' compendium of world knowledge. The chapter where he goes to the Mall of America is worth the price alone (you can also get an audio version, which is actually longer). Selick also got Keith David, he of the commanding, gravelly, trailer-worthy voice, to play a cat. Awesome. Ian McShane is also on hand as Bobinsky, a circus ringleader guy of some sort. With Dreamworks (and even Pixar a bit) focusing on A-list names to do the voices for their films, it's nice to see one with actors who simply have great voices and can bring something to the character, rather than hire a Will Smith or Angelina Jolie and then design the character around them.

I hope you get to see it in 3D; it really immerses you into the film in a way I've never seen. It didn't feel like a gimmick at all, it really felt like it was part of the storytelling and design of the film as a whole, to the extent that I feel 2D would be sort of defeating the purpose of the film (as opposed to say, Beowulf, in which the 3D can be removed entirely and it wouldn't make a goddamn difference at all). For those wondering, it's most certainly NOT the red n blue migraine inducers, but the gray and grayer kind that is becoming increasingly common. With so many 3D films on the way (Monsters and Aliens, Up, Piranha), I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't start selling "designer" versions of the damn things. Either way, I hope more films take Coraline's approach and use the 3D to help tell the story, not just toss it in to entice folks to go to the theaters rather than download the movie.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Non Canon Review: Valentine (2001)

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

GENRE: HOLIDAY, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)
LAST SEEN: 2004

Post-Scream, there was a flurry of slasher films in theaters. Not as many as in the early 80s heyday, but still, from 1997-2000, we had the Scream sequels, Urban Legend 1 and 2, 2 I Know What You Did Last Summers, H20... probably a couple others I can’t remember. And the one thing they all had in common was a winking attitude. They were “hip” and aware (the I Knows toned it down a lot, but they are also the worst of the lot, ironically enough), which got annoying after awhile. So when Valentine came along in 2001, people were already sick of slashers again, and the movie tanked and was also pretty vilified (even director Jamie Blanks apologizes for it).

Me? I don’t see what the problem is. I like it a lot. It’s humorous, but other than a terrible joke about David Boreanaz not being an “Angel” (ugh), the humor is contained within the film. In a way, it tackles Valentine’s Day the same way Mike Dougherty tackled Halloween in Trick R’ Treat (to an admittedly better result), basing the horror around the traditions of the holiday. Even My Bloody Valentine, a superior film in just about every other way, didn’t really capture the holiday’s spirit as well as this film did. So amidst the usual slashings and red herrings, you get four women dealing with the bullshit of the day. Guys expecting them to throw themselves at them in the “spirit” of the day, blind dates, secret admirers, the feelings of desperation and loneliness, cheap candy... it’s all there. Of course, you have to buy into the idea that women as beautiful as Marley Shelton or Jessica Cauffiel would be having trouble finding a boyfriend, but come on. Suspension of disbelief is sort of required the moment you buy a ticket for any movie with a guy in a mask.

And what a mask. Cupid was one of the best looking slasher getups in ages (certainly better than the fucking fisherman or either version of the Urban Legend killer), and the design got the two issues of making a good slasher costume down perfectly. You can’t just have a guy who looks like he bought the mask at Wal-mart, but you can’t have anything too elaborate either. It got it just right, and it’s a shame that the movie tanked, because I would have loved to have seen the mask (complete with bloody nose - an overused gag) on the shelves at Halloween time.

Speaking of the bloody nose, I want to point something out. A lot of folks will claim that this particular plot point was “a ripoff” of Alone In The Dark. Well, geniuses, ever stop to think that maybe Blanks, like you, me, and a few others, really fucking likes that movie and wanted to pay homage to it? He even points it out himself on the commentary track. Jesus. It’s like saying that having a guy named Sam Loomis in Halloween is just a “ripoff” of Psycho.

Another thing I dug about the movie was the idea that all men are pretty fucking scummy. There is seriously not a single sympathetic male character in the entire movie, which is awesome. We get a womanizer, an “alpha male” who doesn’t pay for his date’s meal, not one but TWO douchebag artists, a scam artist, a drunk, a sleazy cop.... Even the minor male characters, like the father of the rich one who holds the climactic party, is portrayed as a rich prick who cares more about his 20 year old “mail order” wife than his own daughter. All of this in a movie directed by a man (the script is credited to four writers, two men and two women, based on a book by another guy). It’s like some sort of inverted apology/response to Slumber Party Massacre (written and directed by females).

Apart from the commentary (worth a listen - Blanks is an interesting and honest guy), the DVD has a making of that is worth a look because most of it centers around the filming of a scene that was cut from the film (why it doesn’t appear in full on the DVD, I do not know). It’s kind of funny hearing the actresses ramble about how the film is different because “You really get to know these women” and the example they are using is nowhere to be found. Still though, the characters ARE better drawn than usual - it’s just a shame so much time had to be spent on the Denise Richards character, the only weak link in the acting or the character department (she’s “sexy”.... and that’s about it). Jessica Cauffiel, on the other hand, isn’t given nearly enough to do, despite being the most engaging of all the performers. Oh well. The creepy teaser is included as well, though not the final trailer. And then something titled “Club Reel” which I skipped due to the fact that it’s titled “Club Reel” (according to the back of the DVD, it’s a sort of music video for a song from Orgy, but since it’s not their awesome “Blue Monday” cover I continue to not care).

So give it a chance. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s solid, and a refreshing change of pace from the other slasher films of the time. The stalk scenes work well (particularly the first one with Katherine Heigl, and a later one with a minor character that somehow manages to be the longest in the movie), and a couple of the attacks are pretty harsh (Richards in particular, though he finishes her off rather weakly). I plan to read the book someday (I understand it was almost completely different, but also that the way it was written wouldn’t work for a movie, for whatever reason), and I am sure it’s better, but that doesn’t mean the movie isn’t worth a look.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

With Friday the 13th remake hitting theaters today, I was in the mood for a summer camp slasher that actually took place at the summer camp (one of my gripes with the remake - not nearly enough of it takes place at the camp). So what better option than Sleepaway Camp, one of the more notorious ripoffs of the original Friday the 13th?

You might wonder why I’ve never seen it. Well, it’s just one of those movies that somehow escaped me during my slasher-obsessed youth, same as The Burning and (STILL) Night School. I started watching it at a friend’s in college, but we didn’t get too far before my friend felt compelled to fast forward to the film’s final three minutes. So I got a twist spoiled without having any of the context. Some friend!

Luckily I still enjoyed the hell out of it, though there were a couple of blemishes. The setup sort of cancels out any chance of really graphic kills - they all have to look like accidents, or the camp would close and the movie would be over. So instead of machetes and knives, people die via bee stings and drowning. We still get some nice makeup, but precious little in the way of actual blood until the “all hell breaks loose” final 10 minutes or so. Also - the killer could only be one of two people, and even if I hadn’t already seen the end it was kind of obvious who it was. Granted, the real twist is WHAT the killer was, but still, some element of mystery would have been nice.

Otherwise it’s a ball. For once, the killer has no qualms about killing other kids (probably because the killer is a kid herself), so that’s cool. In fact, I’m surprised how many of the older counselors are still standing at the end; I figured they would make up the bulk of the body count, but it’s actually pretty even with tykes and adults. And one is killed, according to Wikipedia, via a curling iron to the vagina, which is a pretty goddamn harsh thing to do even to an adult. However, the movie itself doesn’t make the iron’s destination clear, so maybe it’s just the rare case of misinformation on Wikipedia.

I also loved the rather confused sexual nature of the film. Our killer is a boy raised at a girl, but that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. His/her dad was having an affair with another man, and when her and her brother (or, I guess, him and his sister) see this, they retreat to their bedroom and touch each other. Hey-O! We also have a would-be child molester working at the camp, a girl who is inexplicably attracted to the 70ish old crank who runs the joint... and, assuming Wiki is right, a goddamn curling iron shoved into a 14 or 15 year old girl’s vagina! And you can’t forget the end, which features a naked Angela cradling a naked boy on “her” lap before standing up and delivering the most abrupt conclusion in film history.

Also: the wardrobe. Did ALL males in the early 80s wear the shortest shorts available? The only people in the movie wearing pants are female (or Angela). One guy even has a short shirt. And the main, overly sympathetic counselor guy, wears a shirt that’s so tight it makes him appear to have the largest breasts in the film. In short, I felt really dirty watching this movie.

The movie also begins with one of the strangest dedications ever: “In fond memory of Mom; a doer.” Putting a dedication at the top of a film aside, what the hell does this say about the guy’s mom? The only female parental figure is a batshit woman who raises a boy as a girl. Gee, thanks. Dedicating Psycho to one’s mom would be more appropriate.

The DVD (which apparently has some cuts, though nothing major since the movie isn’t particularly violent/gory by design anyway) has the trailer and a commentary with Felissa Rose, director Robert Hiltzik, and Sleepawaycampmovies.com founder Jeff Hayes. It’s largely “Oh do you remember when we shot this? It was so hot/cold/whatever” type comments, with Rose dominating the track. It’s hardly essential, but somewhat entertaining nonetheless. Apparently, there are no deleted scenes, and this being 1983, behind the scenes footage for the DVD wasn’t on anyone’s mind. So I guess there wouldn’t be much more; unless they could round up more of the cast/crew for a retrospective piece. There’s a boxed set with the first three films, as well as some footage from a never completed alternate fourth film, but now that Return to Sleepaway Camp has finally surfaced (5 years after it was shot!) I wouldn’t be surprised if a new set was released.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Lodger (2008)

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

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

I’m curious what you guys would prefer - a well made film with a lame script, or a great script undone by bad acting/production value? The Lodger is definitely a case of the former - it looks great, it’s got a terrific cast, but man oh man is it by the numbers. Granted, it’s a remake of one of Hitchcock’s earliest films, but I’ve never seen that one, and I’m guessing it doesn’t share a whole lot in common with it anyway (since the film is modern in every conceivable way possible, right down to having the cop use Google to uncover key evidence), so I shouldn't have seen just about every plot development/twist coming from miles away.

I want to talk about the Google scene real quick, because it’s fucking hilarious. Apparently Google has refined its “I feel lucky” option, because the guy Googles things like “Whitechapel” (a killer in Los Angeles is copying Jack the Ripper’s murders - so the movie's a remake of Jack’s Back too) and gets the exact right article he needs. He even manages to get a direct hit on an article about Callaghan the housekeeper when he searches for “lodger”. Conversely, when I Googled “The Lodger”, this movie was the 3rd hit.

Back to the point though - the script is just painfully generic. Red herrings are easy to spot, and the cops go through every cliché in the book. Over the course of the film, lead cop Alfred Molina gets and bickers with a new partner, butts heads with his superiors, falls under suspicion himself, gets thrown off the case, and inadvertently makes a loved one a target of the killer. Had the fake Jack killed his old partner at the beginning of the film, I’m pretty sure he’d win a set of steak knives for his efforts.

The script also has some doozies that had me rolling. The best is when the cops uncover a footprint at a crime scene. Hope Davis’ character suspects the lodger of the murder, so she takes his boot and sizes it against the full size photo of the footprint in the paper! It must be a really slow news day if the LA Times can put a 14 inch full scale photo (of a fucking footprint no less) on the front page. People also frequently act suspiciously for no reason, particularly Donal Logue’s character. Logue is an actor in particular whose presence confounds me - his entire role consists of walking into a scene with Davis, saying something dickish, reminding her to take her pills, and then leaving again.

The movie also tosses in a lame double twist at the end that again, renders other stuff completely pointless. Sure, people who aren’t paying any goddamn attention at all might get their mind blown, but what about those of us who ARE focused (ish) on the movie? Shouldn’t we get some respect too? And since when does it rain in LA for like 3 days straight? At least have someone point out how strange it is, especially since it’s only there to allow the director to indulge himself with one of those generic “crane shot of the rain pouring down on a city street” moments.

Oh yeah, David Ondaatje is one of those directors who feels compelled to put a “wow!” shot in the movie every 5 minutes. He cribs a number from Hitchcock, obviously, but has a bunch of his “own” as well. Look for the longest Snorri-cam shot in history, lots of nonsensical ramped up timelapse sequences, etc. Nothing like constantly making the audience aware that they are watching a movie, especially in a movie so by the numbers that their focus is likely to be waning anyway.

At least the cast keeps it afloat. Shane West does fine with what he’s given (the generic rookie who tries too hard, though at least they do give him a surprising character trait: he’s gay!), and Philip Baker Hall is always a pleasure. Simon Baker as the Lodger is an inspired choice, and even though (again) the script gives him little to work with, he’s a perfect blend of charming and shady. Rachael Leigh Cook even has a few scenes as Molina’s daughter. Also, François Chau pops up as the coroner. You know him as Marvin Candle, the Dharma Initiative video star.

The DVD has a collection of worthless deleted scenes (most of it just scene bridges - i.e. people getting into a car to go somewhere) and a bunch of trailers. The only thing worth a look is the making of, as it packs in a ton of filmmaking info in 15 or 16 minutes and has some interesting observations from the design folks.

As a thriller it’s not very thrilling at all. The initial twist is pretty decent, but it’s undone by a 2nd, stupid twist that makes most of the movie not make any sense. A good cast and above-average technical merits save it from total mediocrity, but when you have a movie like Zodiac around, there’s really no point to one like this.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

A Blade In The Dark (1983)

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

GENRE: GIALLO
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Man, I love these movies. They’re pretty much all the same (some sort of creative person getting involved in a series of murders), yet I never tire of them. You can add A Blade In The Dark (Italian: La Casa Con La Scala Nel Buio*) to the group that includes Deep Red, Bird With Crystal Plumage, Tenebrae... and I’m sure some others that weren’t even directed by Dario Argento.

This one is from Lamberto Bava, who followed it up with the inimitable Demons. Clearly he was on a roll, and I wish that he was still as active as Argento is. He may unfortunately live in the shadow of both Argento and his father (Mario), but one shouldn’t discount him as an also-ran - he’s clearly got his own talent, and it’s only the familiar patterns of these films that lead some people to suggest he’s a copycat. Like American slashers, these giallos have a formula and rhythm that can’t really be deviated from too much, lest they become something else entirely (see: Argento’s god awful Phantom of the Opera).

Of course, this means there isn’t a hell of a lot I can say about the movie without repeating myself. It’s got all the things you expect - nonsensical translation errors (“This is all the whiskey you possess?”), stylish set-pieces, people doing things that don’t entirely make any sense (why is his neighbor hanging out in his closet?), red herrings up the wazoo... it’s sort of like a greatest hits version of a Giallo.

Speaking of the translation... it seems everyone in the movie is speaking Italian anyway, so why Anchor Bay did not provide a dubbed track is a bit peculiar. In movies like Suspiria, everyone speaks their native language, so no matter what you are going to get dubbed voices mixed in with the originals. But to my ears, everyone here was dubbed, which means an Italian track would be preferable. I’d investigate, but I’m too damn backed up on Tivo right now to do much else.

The kill scenes are above average, in that they are pretty goddamn harsh. One in particular - he bags a woman’s head and stabs her and what not. And even after she is clearly dead, he slits her throat! This leads to a hilarious sight gag - the killer’s gloved hand grabbing tissue after tissue trying to clean up the blood. Of course, tissues suck all known ass, so with each sheet he’s mostly just smearing the stuff around, absorbing maybe .001% of the visible grue. Awesome. There’s also a kill scene that I am pretty sure Patrick Lussier and/or Todd Farmer saw prior to My Bloody Valentine 3D, it’s almost the exact same thing (killer stabbing through a bedspring).

One other thing I want to point out - whenever a character in a movie claims he is leaving town for whatever reason (in this case, he says he’s going to Kuwait!), he is probably the killer. Unless it’s a teen comedy and they are the parents, movie characters never really leave town. It’s no different here, and even with the above average number of red herrings, I never doubted the killer’s identity for a second.

The DVD’s only extra of note is a pretty entertaining interview with Bava and screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti. They talk mainly about the script development, and the most significant facts can be found on the IMDb trivia page for the film, but at 10 minutes it’s hardly a lengthy endeavor. Check it out, assuming you have time after the movie, which runs 5 minutes longer than the DVD claims. Jerks! Horror Movie A Daying is a time consuming process as it is, I don’t need you lying about the running time and making me late for work! Indeed, I’ve owned the DVD for well over a year, but had been putting it off due to the length (104 minutes according to the DVD, but actually 109). 90 minutes people!!!

What say you?

*Which translates to House of the Dark Stairway. Bava actually prefers the American title. As do I, though the Italian one suggests a lost Fulci film.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Vampire Hookers (1978)

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

GENRE: COMEDIC, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Some days just work out pretty goddamn great for me. I was running behind this morning, so I didn’t have time to watch a movie before work. As a result, I was going to have to skip on Grindhouse night at the New Bev, as neither of the scheduled films were horror, and thus going wouldn’t leave me any time for a movie. Plus, I’m fucking broke, so the extra travel, ticket, and beer (a necessity) were going to stretch my budget. But the 2nd film’s print broke, so they had put Vampire Hookers in its place. AND, I got home and discovered that for the first time since moving to LA, I didn’t owe money for taxes, and would actually be getting a sizable refund to boot.

(And my traditional drive home donut was quite delicious!)

The movie, of course, was hardly Oscar worthy. In fact, it (unsurprisingly) belongs to that vaunted group of films that can and should only be watched in a revival theater. There’s something about a guy inexplicably jumping into a coffin, sticking a tube in his mouth, and then coming down with a serious case of flatulence that demands 40 foot projection and no less than 40-50 other folks going “What in the FUCK is going on?”

That guy, by the way, is none other than Vic Diaz, who also appeared in Raw Force, the alpha and omega of this kind of wonderful/terrible movie. He’s sort of a Renfield character here. He really wants to be a vampire, and even practices doing things like holding his cape up in front of his face. He also jerks off to his own reflection, something that I assume would be a problem should he ever join the undead.

Also, the movie “stars” John Carradine as the lead vampire. Anyone familiar with their shitty 60s-70s horror knows precisely what that means - he pops up every now and then doing something hilarious (in this case, its claiming that both Shakespeare and Walt Whitman were vampires), and obviously shot all of his scenes in a day or two. Though his role is certainly larger than it was in say, Red Zone Cuba, he fails to sing the theme song, so it’s not a better deal.

The movie DOES have a theme song though, and I have posted it below in lieu of a trailer. I really don’t understand why more, or even all, movies don’t have their own theme songs. Look what it’s done for the Bond films. When I think about the songs that delight me the most (in an ironic way, obviously), a lot of them are themes from horror movies. "My Bloody Valentine", "Shocker" (or "Shockdance"), "He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask)", "Poultrygeist".... I can now add “Vampire Hookers” to that list - the song caps off what was already a wonderfully batshit movie in the best possible way.

This movie has a 10 minute orgy scene. I actually dozed off during it, woke up (someone punched me awake - thank you!) and it was still on. Of course, a lot of the footage was recycled, and was likely meant to pad out the running time. It certainly wasn’t very graphic (it’s mostly a lot of kissing and rolling around), I don’t even think I saw a pubic patch. I DID see tanlines on the vampires though (think about it), which just proves what kind of movie you’re dealing with here.

Another bit of delightfulness - the movie (sort of) revolves around a pair of guys looking to find their captain or corporal or whatever (they’re all sailors), who has disappeared after taking off with a hooker. The captain guy looks EXACTLY like Will Ferrell in his “Lovers” costume - you remember, the SNL sketch with him and Rachel Dratch talking about their public and often disturbing lovemaking habits. Since the movie has a great number of tranny hookers and sex in inappropriate locations (coffins), I found this quite fitting, and I wouldn’t even be completely surprised if Ferrell had seen the movie and subconsciously drew inspiration for the character from it (there’s no way in hell anyone, even someone as random as me, would intentionally reference Vampire Hookers).

Oh, and someone actually says “Follow that cab!”, which prompted me and several others to cheer. Cabs are the focal point of a running gag in the movie; they keep taking off after our characters ask them to wait. Since they never actually pay their fares, I am guessing that the Filipino taxi industry had a tough fiscal year when this movie took place.

As I write this review, I notice that it’s a lot easier to write when I am sober(ish) for the movie. Usually I drink during the first movie/intermission, so that by the time the 2nd one rolls around, I’m pretty out of it (or just stone cold asleep for half of it). But as I was stuck at work until 830 and thus missed all but the final two reels of Movie #1 (something called The Muthers, starring the beautiful Jayne Kennedy), I was pretty alert for Hookers. I’m not saying it’s preferable, just an observation. As always though, I will leave it to Tall F-in Joe to fill in some noteworthy details I may have missed.

I can’t say I would recommend the movie for home audiences - it’s slow, the comedy doesn’t work (not intentionally anyway), and there’s a severe lack of vampire action until the final 10 minutes. But if it, for whatever reason, plays at your local revival theater, by all means drop everything* and go at once.

What say you?

*Not if you’re holding a small child, however. Place him/her down gently, THEN run to the bijou.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Non Canon Review: Freddy Vs. Jason (2003)

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

GENRE: SLASHER, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)
LAST SEEN: 2004 (DVD)

The first time I actually felt old was during the opening weekend of Freddy Vs. Jason. First, none of my friends wanted to go. I remember pleading “Come on! We’ve been waiting for this since grade school!” But no dice; in the end it was just me and my girlfriend, who hadn’t even seen most of the movies. Also, during the opening scene when the girl showed her tits, the kid next to me began making comments and shouting at the screen, and I had to tell him to shut up. In retrospect, the inane shit he was saying was just as bad as the inane shit the people in the movie were saying, but still, it doesn’t change the fact that I had become the old man in the crowd.

The main problem I had then, and now, with FvJ is that it’s not an equal movie. It’s a Freddy movie that Jason appears in, and I say this even though Jason kills all but like two people in the movie. This was a movie that was promised IN a Jason movie (Goes To Hell), but yet at no time, even during the Jason-centric scenes (i.e. the opening, the rave), did I ever truly feel like I was watching a Friday the 13th movie.

Making matters worse, it actually would have made for a pretty decent Freddy sequel, had Jason’s role simply been some anonymous (non-supernatural) killer. The idea of Springwood “quarantining” Freddy by keeping everyone who remembered him in comas is pretty great, and I also like the idea of Freddy gaining power by getting credit for someone else’s kills. Had the filmmakers not been tied to the concept of Jason, they could have done more with this concept - I would have loved to have seen people coming up with different ideas of what this guy looked like in their nightmares (if no one remembered Freddy, how would they get the details of his appearance right?).

But even with that taken into consideration, it’s just a giant disappointment. The dialogue is beyond horrible (“Freddy died by fire Jason died by water, how can we use that?”), the kids aren’t compelling, and there are nonsensical plot developments that make even Jason Takes Manhattan look logic-proof in comparison (I love how the cop seeks out a few kids he doesn’t even know in order to help them find a serial killer). And like Jason X, they blow their wad on the first kill (the bed breaking) before settling for a bunch of lame ones that you’ll never remember.

The logic holes are just impossible to ignore though. Jason walks from CT (or NJ) to Ohio, a MINIMUM distance of 500 miles, seemingly in one night, and never kills anyone along the way. People fall asleep in the most unnatural situations possible, a lame cheat to get around the whole “we don’t know if they are asleep or awake” thing. And if Freddy is strong enough to resurrect Jason from Hell, why can’t he just do the same damn thing for himself?

The biggest problem, however, is the total lack of evidence that anyone had even SEEN one of the other Friday films. While Freddy gets some nice shoutouts (the house, Hypnocil*, some of Freddy’s more classic one-liners), it appears that the Jason motifs were learned from watching the trailers for a couple of them. He is from Crystal Lake, his mother is important... and that’s it. Nothing set up in JGTH comes into play, and you can forget about Tommy Jarvis or anyone showing up. Worse - they get so many things so damn WRONG. Since when is Jason afraid of water? And why would he chop off a guy’s head and then wait until his son wakes up to do him in as well? They don’t even get the ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma right (it sounds like chee-hahahahahaahah). The poster tells you all you need to know - Robert Englund’s name is there, but not Ken Kirzinger. Ultimately, since 90% of the movie takes place in Springwood and the plot is about Freddy’s rebirth, Jason is essentially a glorified Macguffin in the film until the final 10-15 minutes.

That finale, of course, is when the movie finally delivers on its titular promise. The battle is impressive, and for once in the movie, it doesn’t feel like one killer was favored over the other. Since Jason is stronger, Freddy has to use his environment, and it makes for a frenetic and exciting battle (THIS is how the finale of New Blood should have played out). And it’s also impressively splatter-y, particularly when they are more or less holding each other and gouging out eyes and cutting off fingers and such. And I LOVED that they are more or less “killed” by their own weapons - Jason using Freddy’s glove, Freddy wielding the machete. Obviously the whole movie couldn’t have just been the two of them whaling on each other (though that would be an interesting approach), but it’s a shame that they didn’t let them interact until the final act. There’s a great bit during the fight where Kelly Rowland’s character begins to trash talk Freddy, who lets her ramble before pointing out that she forgot about Jason standing nearby. More of the movie should have been their sort of “teamup”, but I don’t even think Jason is aware of Freddy’s existence until the final half hour.

On the plus side, it’s certainly the most stylish and interesting looking movie in the series (again though, that’s something that makes it feel like just a Freddy movie), and while replacing Kane Hodder is one of the lamest moves in horror movie history, Ken Kirzinger is a formidable Jason, questionable makeup decisions notwithstanding (what’s with the black head?). I also liked the idea that when Jason dreams, it’s of just doing the same shit he does when he’s awake (I also dig his sideways water hole of bodies).

However, it does have its fans, and they must be delighted with the DVD set - it’s easily the most jam-packed edition for films in either series. You get a commentary with director Ronny Yu, Robert Englund, and Kirzinger, and it’s a fun track, despite Englund’s traditionally lame puns and “humorous” comments. Englund is a movie/tv encyclopedia, so he’s constantly bringing up random movies and shows (“This shot reminds me of the TV movie Coma...”), which is pretty awesome because it’s the same type of nonsense I’d be saying. The DVD also offers a full-screen presentation for those fans who also happen to be idiots.

The 2nd disc has about three hours’ worth of content - including a very in depth look at the CGI shots in the movie, a handful of deleted scenes (with Yu commentary), and various other featurettes on production. Everyone obviously worked really hard and the various sets/design elements are indeed impressive, though a few of the comments are bit puzzling (like the guy who says that FvJ is the first horror movie he’s done, because he doesn’t count H20 and Final Destination as horror films?). Englund admits to using a double for some of the action during the look on the stunts, which I appreciated - beats a “I did all my own stunts” boast that everyone else will instantly refute. There’s also a fun look at the “summer camp” atmosphere created for the film’s premiere at the legendary Alamo Drafthouse in TX.

The most fascinating, however, is a look at the script’s development. There are two text articles (originally run in Fangoria) about the various unused concepts, and then a 10-15 minute piece with the eventual credited writers (Mark Swift and Damian Shannon**, who wrote the Dunes’ remake), the super hot New Line VP who greenlit the movie, Yu, and a few others. It’s a terrific piece, and far more interesting than anything that you’ll see in the final product. Also worth pointing out - a collection of trailers for (then) recent New Line movies, as well as Jason Goes to Hell and Freddy’s Dead. It’s interesting because it skips over New Nightmare and Jason X, likely due to the fact that they were box office duds.

I never really expected a great movie out of this concept, and like I said, as a Freddy movie it’s actually not all that bad. But the total unbalance in Freddy’s favor, and unforgivable rewriting of Jason’s character, make it hard to swallow for this Friday fan. I don’t even really count it as part of the franchise, but since it was the last time Jason appeared in a film until the remake, I thought I’d give it another look and include it in my marathon coverage. Rest assured, it will more than likely be the last time I touch the DVD.

What say you?

* It’s been 16 years and this shit STILL doesn’t have FDA approval?
** Rumblings during interviews for the remake, and also on the His Name Was Jason DVD, suggest that the pair are not entirely happy with the finished product on this movie either, and want to make clear that Jason was NOT afraid of water in their draft.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil (1992)

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

You gotta love a movie that proudly wears it’s half-assery on its sleeve. At one point during Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil, a character raises a glass of champagne and says “To Jamie Lee Curtis!” Thus, even though it’s technically a sequel to that movie (and the only true slasher followup), these characters exist in the same world we do, where Prom Night is just a movie. Nice work.

Like the other sequels, it actually improves on that underwhelming original, though not by much in this case. Once again we have far too few characters (four) and a laborious pace - our first slashing occurs at the hour mark. Also - there’s no prom! The kids pull up to the prom, give it a Clark Griswold style nod of approval, and then head off to the lodge in the middle of the woods where the whole movie takes place. There’s also a prom more or less in the background of the requisite “1957” flashback at the beginning - seemingly there just to have someone deliver the “It’s not who you come with...” line - but that doesn’t count. Speaking of which - why do they go back to 1957 and Hamilton High? Was this the same prom from Mary Lou’s entries? How tragic WAS this goddamn evening?

It makes up for its lapses with some surprisingly harsh kills. Our killer is a demonic priest (who looks a lot like The Love Guru when we first see him in the present day), and thus the killings are religious-tinged. He crucifies and immolates two of the kids, and then later tosses a cruchete into the chest of a guy who’s pretty much already dead. He also kills a kid that’s only about 15 from the looks of it, which is pretty awesome.

Speaking of this kid’s death, it’s a doozy. The kid is peeping on his older brother fucking his girlfriend (one of the worst actresses this side of Dana Kimmell, I might add), and he begins filming it. “I’m gonna make a fortune!” he says. Apparently, in this universe, clumsy sex filmed from outside a window (one with bars all over it to boot) and 50 feet away is a hot commodity. Why settle for close-ups (and audio) when you can have something one step removed from scrambled cable?

Also this movie was apparently a strong influence on Seth McFarlane. At one point the priest hitches a ride with a sleazy trucker. The guy says “I’m gonna get some pussy!” and then he follows up with a very Quagmire-esque “gitty-gitty-gitty” (close enough to giggity), complete with head bobbing. Weird.

Paul Zaza once again composes the score (he and actor Brock Simpson are the only series regulars), and it’s pretty cheesy. A lot of it sounds like Final Fantasy flashback music, and the horror stuff is borderline Manfredini-levels of generic. I also was hoping that this, the final of the Prom Night franchise, would have a MBV-style theme song (which Zaza wrote), but alas.

Man, what a strangely half-assed series. If there was a 5th film, I seriously doubt that a prom would even be mentioned, and I can almost guarantee it wouldn’t have anything to do with a demonic priest. I hope someday there is a nice boxed set with all four films, properly restored (all of the sequels are full-frame only, and part III is a goddamn TV cut) and with some no-holds-barred interviews with key personnel. Hell, I bet Brock Simpson would be up to provide commentaries for all four.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Leviathan (1989)

FEBRUARY 8, 2009

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

One of my all time favorite movies is The Abyss, which came out the same year as two other unwater monster/alien movies that I never got around to seeing. One is Deepstar Six, which was directed by Sean Cunningham. The other is Leviathan, which boasted a better cast (which is why I chose it over Deepstar, but I'll get to that one eventually). Anyway, I was surprised to see how similar it was to The Abyss (which came later in the year). Both involve a storm keeping an underwater “blue collar” team from going to the surface, both involve finding a new species, and both have human characters with ulterior evil villain motives. Hell, Abyss star Ed Harris even resembles Leviathan’s Peter Weller at times (and they’re both playing an almost identical character).

But while Abyss is great, Leviathan is a dull bore. for the most part It’s basically an Alien/Thing hybrid set in the water, but the water locale is never really used - no “we need to go outside and fix that thing” type sequences. Hell they don’t even have a nice window to look out and see some fish or whatever. The problem is, they copied Alien’s model of suspense over action, but failed to actually make it suspenseful. Nothing happens, and when it does it’s off-screen half the time (Christ, Daniel Stern’s character “dies” via a line of throwaway dialogue).

Plus, everyone dies in the exact order you think they will, which also kills suspense. It’s got a good cast (Hector Elizondo, Richard Crenna, Ernie Hudson!) but they do little to elevate their stereotypes, and it doesn’t help that the monster only appears when a character is about to die anyway. It’s almost like a slasher movie in that regard. Remember how shocked you were when Tom Skerritt got killed? None of that here. And why have Stan Winston design some cool-ass monsters and then never show them off? Even at the end they’re half obscured by something or seen in incredibly brief cuts.

I also never quite got the sense of claustrophobia that is essential to this kind of movie, and that’s mainly because I could never understand the layout of the ship. I could probably tell you how to get to the engine room from the galley of the Nostradamus, but no such luck here. We see a variety of rooms, but never how they relate to one another, and you sure as hell can’t tell from a goofy exterior model that’s onscreen for two seconds.

The final five minutes is pretty goddamn amazing though. The survivors make it to the surface, and the coast guard spots them. Then a few sharks happen by, before completely disappearing as the monster surfaces. The coast guard guy is pretty blasé about the whole thing (he seems more terrified about the sharks than a 40 foot monster) and then Weller blows the thing up (which is a plot hole - we are told that it will just regenerate from any one part, so now there’s probably a hundred of the damn things). Then he punches Meg Foster in the face, and not because he simply cares too much. If the whole movie had this sense of ridiculous fun, they would be on to something, but in trying (and failing) to make it a bit more “legit”, they ended up making something I won’t even remember in a few weeks.

And to its credit, Peoples and Jeb Stuart toss in a few nice character moments; most revolving around Weller. He’s been sort of thrown into an authority role, so we see him reading a self help book on how to manage people. There’s also a funny bit of how he manages to hide some vodka from the crew. My favorite involves a jigsaw puzzle. Hudson and another guy fight, and in the fracas, Hudson destroys the guy’s puzzle, which he had just completed. Hudson makes up with him later by offering to help him put it back together. As a jigsaw puzzle enthusiast, I appreciated this atypical moment, and felt kind of sad they never do get to put that puzzle back together, since the other guy dies like 5 seconds after Hudson leaves the room.

The DVD only has a single extra: the trailer, which makes it look a lot like that fun/action packed type of movie I was hoping for. The main menu also inexplicably has a little cartoon robot dancing around near the different options, a nice nonsensical touch. But Robocop smacking Evil-Lyn around and a peculiar DVD menu aren’t enough to warrant a recommendation. Stick with Deep Rising.

What say you?

NOTE - I'd usually put the trailer here, but the only one I could find on Youtube had embedding disabled. So thanks a lot, douchebag! (aka SteelEye009, who coincidentally just added the thing like 3 days ago).

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Evil Woods (2007)

FEBRUARY 7, 2009

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

After swearing off such films, I apparently forgot to take obscure no-name Lionsgate pickups like The Evil Woods off my Netflix queue. So I’ll do that later, while you get to enjoy one (hopefully) final HMAD review for a movie you’ve never heard of, will never watch, and won’t even remember the name of once tomorrow rolls around.

Here’s the thing: You can’t duplicate Halloween, ever. There is just a perfect storm of skill aligning to make that film as perfect as it is. Even though there is more talent in John Carpenter’s (and Dean Cundey’s) ass hair than a lot of these other slasher directors have their entire body, it’s not impossible to think that someone more talented and more skilled than Carpenter/Cundey will come along someday and make their own slasher movie. But will he/she “get” what makes Halloween so (nearly) flawless? Doubtful, because they will be under the assumption that it’s possible to pull the same tricks.

Evil Woods director Aaron Harvey and screenwriter Jason Melling certainly think they’re up to the task, because they copy a number of Halloween’s elements - the very basic, everyday locale (in this case, woods in an unnamed state), the motiveless killer, even the overall structure is similar, with nearly an hour before the killing begins. But they fail in every possible way to achieve what Halloween did so effortlessly. For them, since they are possibly the only ones reading this review, I will break it down step by step.

Let’s start with the locale - the woods. It’s identifiable - everyone’s gone camping, and everyone who ever lived in a suburban town probably has a forest-y type area where they went to party, or play guns, or whatever. But the problem is, the film never offers any geography that we can understand. How far are they from the town? How deep into the woods are they from their car? None of these things are ever clear, so the stakes simply don’t work. In Halloween, we know that people are out at various parties, and when Laurie seeks help from the one neighbor who is home, they are frightened by her screaming and silly way of saying “keys”, so they do not offer aid. It’s simple and effective; we know that no help is nearby, and her reasons for sticking around (the kids) are clear.

Now let’s move on to the killer. Michael Myers had no motive to target these specific three girls. A common argument is that if the killer has a motive, he’s not as scary, but if he DOESN’T, then the movie is pointless. So why does it work? Well for starters, his costume is creepy as hell: a pale human face (that the most underplayed of all the slashers would have the face of a legendary over-actor is particularly delightful). And because of the holiday’s inherent spookiness, his personification of “The Boogeyman” is all you need to know anyway. In short - it works because of all of the elements - setting, costume, general urban legend - coming together under the hand of a master craftsman. Your killer, on the other hand, is a guy in the woods wearing a winter coat. See the difference?

Of course, there is an attempt to give the killer SOME sort of history, so a red herring guy comes along and tells our heroes the story of Cropsy, er, The Deranger, who was killed when, well, the same thing that happened to Cropsy happened to him. But this doesn’t work, because we never know if the story is true or not, nor does the killer ever take off his stupid coat to allow us to see burns or something that would identify him as the guy from the story. Film is a visual medium - having someone simply tell a story doesn’t cut it. Would Halloween work as well if we didn’t have that opening sequence of young Michael Myers killing his sister, and instead we just had the obviously crazy Dr. Loomis TELLING us that he’s dangerous? Pretty doubtful.

Also, blood isn’t purple.

Finally, let’s address the structure. It’s admirable (in a way) that the film wasn’t a wall-to-wall killfest like some of the later Jason movies, but that only works when you genuinely like the characters you are following around. You like Annie, you like Laurie, hell you even like Bob. But your characters, and I can’t even recall any of their names a day later, are either whiny or abrasive. Even the Final Girl, the ONE character you should like just on principle if nothing else, is a bitchy sore-sport who complains about every single thing in the movie (sort of like me, in a meta way). She doesn’t want to camp, she doesn’t want to drink, she doesn’t want to smoke, she doesn’t like the other people... it’s just bitch bitch bitch nonstop. There’s a big difference between being wholesome and simply being a goddamn loser who should have been left at home. Even Laurie smokes a joint.

Then you have the main guy, who goes from annoying to kind of amusing to just plain annoying again. He’s the idiot’s idea of the “likable asshole”. You know the kind - he’s a dick and a moron, but in a charming way (for a great example, see Travis Van Winkle’s character in the new Friday the 13th). You need a capable actor to pull this off, and this guy is NOT a capable actor. He’s just a douchebag, and an unlikable one at that. I admit to chuckling after a while, such as when he refers to his friend as a “piece of shit” (every one of his lines contain one of Carlin’s 7 dirty words, if not all) and keeping his sunglasses on during sex, because I almost began to admire the idea of putting such a wretched character front and center. But then it began to wear thin again, especially since the script was clearly not long enough to make a feature length film, so he started just repeating lines of dialogue over and over.

Also - the movie simply lacks suspense. The killer only appears right before he strikes. If you take out the kill scenes, you wouldn’t even know you were watching a horror movie. If you’re not going to have a body count, you need to make sure the audience never forgets the imminent danger your characters are in, via POV shots and the like. We don’t want to watch a guy gathering wood - we want to watch THE KILLER watch a guy gathering wood.

I could address the movie’s other faults, such as the inexplicably dirty lens, nonsensical dream sequences (more padding), lack of an actual ending, and hilariously inept establishing shots that are clearly just photographs, but I think the point is clear by now. It’s fine to try to emulate Halloween - if you’re going to steal, steal from the best (it worked for Sean Cunningham) - but keep in mind that if you fail, your movie’s shortcomings will be all the more apparent and unforgiving.

Oh, and if you’re going to have a scene where the backwoods pervert (another red herring) jerks off to the sight of two of the girls sunbathing, you should have him do the same when he’s spying on the two guys of the group. Equal opportunity + weird homoerotica = movie being spared from the Crap bin.

(P.S. The DVD has a making of/outtake collection that proves that these guys are a bunch of glorified frat boys fucking around, so the idea that they were even trying to make something that would entertain anyone but themselves (if that), and my resulting review, is just my internal optimism taking control. My sincerest apologies to all.)

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Amusement (2007)

FEBRUARY 6, 2009

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, REVENGE
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

A number of my friends warned me not to bother watching Amusement, but I went ahead and rented it anyway. After all, I have a much higher tolerance for modern horror movies than a lot of my friends, and the same folks would probably tell me not to watch The Hitcher, Black Xmas, or numerous other guilty pleasure movies. And also, at Comic Con 2007, I got a picture taken inside the massive Amusement display, back when it was going to be a fall theatrical release, so I wanted to know why the hell I was asked to stand inside a big piece of stretched leather “skin” and put my face in a hole.

Well the answer was far less satisfying than what I had imagined, and the only “amusement” I got out of watching the damn movie was when I began puzzling over how in God’s name they ever considered releasing this thing theatrically. Boasting no stars, the dumbest script this side of Freddy vs Jason, and an inordinately low body count/gore amount, it didn’t even deserve a mention at Comic Con, let alone a big display (the likes of which keep the actual comic dealers pushed way into the back of the hall).

The biggest problem the movie, and there are many, is that the killer keeps changing his appearance, and for the first 45 minutes, we’re not supposed to know it’s the same guy. Maybe this would work on paper, or even with a really average and bland looking actor (like me!), but actor Keir O’Donnell has a very distinguished look. It’s so distinguished that it’s actually given away from his FIRST appearance in the movie! He is made up to look like a mild-mannered Ned Flanders type, but yet since you are familiar with the actor (he was the brother in Wedding Crashers, which is one of the highest grossing movies of all time), you know right off the bat that he’s up to no good because he’s clearly wearing a disguise. He pops up in the 2nd story as an FBI guy, and even though they hide his eyes, he’s still instantly recognizable. And once again in the 3rd story, as a would-be date for our heroine’s roommate (shown in profile). Maybe they think we’re stupid or blind? Or maybe the casting director knew how fucking retarded the rest of the movie was and didn’t bother trying? Whatever the case, it just makes the movie even more excruciating, because it’s all built around a “surprise” that never works for a second.

Another big blunder is how completely idiotic the opening story is. It’s thankfully the shortest too, but not short enough to avoid having some of the biggest plot holes I’ve ever seen in a movie. It’s the old “the guy you think is the villain is actually innocent, the real killer is the nice guy the hero befriends” scenario, set during a late night road trip. Our heroes are a pair of college kids, and they quickly suspect that the truck in their convoy, which also includes the aforementioned Flanders guy, is actually driven by a killer. In theory, fine, but why does the “not the villain” truck driver try to run our hero over? Why does he apparently have a place on the side of the highway when he’s clearly from (and going to) another state entirely? Well, because if he didn’t, the story wouldn’t “work” long enough for the necessary running time. We also have to buy into the idea that the real killer was able to not only keep up with our hero (or, more specifically, heroine, since it’s the girl he’s after) in traffic, but also subliminally convince the guy to join in a “convoy” with him.

Yes, apparently the hero guy is some sort of road trip guru, because he is able to spot and join convoys with ease, and even talks about how there’s “an art to a good convoy”. He proves his wisdom on the matter by explaining to the girl (the same broad from Hit and Run - girl needs to stay the fuck away from auto-based terror) how when a truck puts its signal on and then changes lanes, that means that there’s a slow driver in front of him. You can learn a lot of really obvious and pointless things from Jake Wade Wall’s script.

And yes, it’s the same Wall who wrote The Hitcher remake. He also wrote When A Stranger Calls (remake), which the 2nd part of this movie often resembles. It’s like he just combined leftover ideas/sequences from his other movies and added something resembling a storyline on the way to the pitch meeting. To be fair though, this second part is the only thing keeping this movie (barely) out of the Crap bin. Not only does it have Katheryn Winnick (the insanely cute blond from Satan’s Little Helper), it also has the only decent scene in the entire movie. Winnick is staying at her aunt’s, who inexplicably makes up the guest room with hundreds of clown dolls. One doll is life size, and since he’s on the cover of the DVD, you know it’s not really a doll. Director John Simpson does an admirable job of keeping the inevitable moment at bay, and my slight coulrophobia added a bit to the proceedings as well. It’s certainly better than anything in Final Draft. Of course, this one goes off the rails too, with a nonsensical conclusion involving a psychiatrist that gives us the first clue to the “twist” (well, 2nd after the opening credits, which gives away the fact that the girls all went to the same school and thus probably know each other).

The 3rd story is terrible too. While not as idiotic as the 1st (well, other than that it once again requires an inordinate amount of careful planning by the killer to ensure people go exactly where he needs them to go exactly when he needs them to go there), it’s twice as long, which evens it out in terms of shittiness. Wall doesn’t steal from himself here, instead he lifts scenarios out of Hostel, albeit poorly. After some boring shit that I’ve already forgotten (and, to be fair, the one good death in the entire movie), we are finally given the reasons for all this shit, and... it’s stolen from Valentine. Yep, the 3 girls made fun of the kid back in grade school, so now he’s a slasher. He offs two of them in his giant underground dungeon, the hot blond kills him, then delivers a monologue about how she will never forget this or whatever.

You may wonder why this review, unlike my usual reviews, has a lot of plot synopsis. Well, because I want you to know exactly what happens and why it’s terrible, so that you don’t bother renting it yourself. If I just say “the acting sucks, the writing sucks”, etc., there might be some lingering curiosity on your part. “What about the cool clown on the cover?” you might have asked. Well, he’s in the movie for 5 minutes and doesn’t kill anyone. I was hoping the killer would use the costume again, but no, it’s just one of the 8 or 9 “disguises” he dons during the film (the movie’s basically Valentine meets Fletch).

Oh and the stretched skin thing? He sews people in mattresses. Why he has so many corpses when we are led to believe he’s just after the three girls who wronged him, I don’t know. The DVD doesn’t have any extras whatsoever, so you’d have to ask Wall, who I’m sure is too busy writing something else that sucks (keep in mind, his Hitcher script was so close to the original that they gave Eric Red joint screenwriting credit with him, even though Red had zero to do the production).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Midnight Movie (2008)

FEBRUARY 5, 2009

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

One common thing horror writers/directors will say when defending the poorly drawn characters in their films is “We want you to be able to identify with one of them”. So if you’re a jock, you’ll identify with the jock, as long as they don’t give him too many details. Because if he’s the cornerback on the Vipers and has a busted knee and a steroid problem, and you’re the 2nd string QB for the Gators and you’re hooked on coke, then you lose that connective tissue, I guess. Anyway, it’s rare I see a horror movie where I can identify with anyone on that level - Randy in Scream is probably the closest thing I’ve ever seen. So I was really excited for Midnight Movie, which concerns folks that will go to a rundown theater to watch an old horror movie at midnight, much like I do on a weekly basis (speaking of which - tomorrow @ the Nuart: Ken Russell’s The Devils!).

Unfortunately, identifying with the folks can only buy a movie so much goodwill (which isn’t much - most of the characters don’t even really want to be there, and the “film geek” is of course presented as a bumbling loser). You gotta deliver on the other levels, and that is where Midnight Movie blunders. For starters, the killer makes things hard for himself. He can go in and out of the movie at will, which not only severely undercuts the suspense, but makes his actions nonsensical at times. Why does he bother stalking anyone when he can just appear behind them and kill them?

Also, the movie within the movie is so obviously brand new film made to look old, so it’s impossible to buy into it. Not to mention that the film is apparently making fun of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, hardly a worthy target for mockery. It’s interesting, at the same time I was watching this movie, my buddy Ryan from Shocktillyoudrop was watching Last Action Hero, and we were texting about that film’s problems, which kept it from being a classic. One was the fact that the “Jack Slater” movie, with its cartoon cats and farting mob men, was completely unbelievable as a legit action movie, which deflated a lot of the movie’s point. Same thing here - the movie centers around the “power” of this particular obscure horror movie, but its as generic as they come, and incredibly amateur to boot.

Another issue - the killer is somehow able to project live footage onto the screen (he films himself killing the moviegoers). I can just assume that one of his supernatural powers allows him to instantaneously splice a 40 year old movie with live footage, but why is it all scratched and in black and white? Is that another power of his? But again, if he’s so powerful, why does he need to pick the kids off one by one anyway? All of this stuff just kept me from ever really buying into the concept, which is a big problem for a “high concept” movie. Had it been a straight up “guy kills people in a movie theater”, it would be a lot easier to digest.

Director Jack Messitt also has an unfortunate hardon for Wes Craven, which also kept distracting me away from his movie. The movie as a whole is a mix between the opening of Scream 2 and New Nightmare, the killer drags his foot a la Horace Pinker, and even the damn score sounds just like Charles Bernstein's Nightmare on Elm St theme. I’m never one to bemoan a Shocker reference (this may actually be the first I’ve seen), but when added in with the other stuff it’s a bit of an overkill. At least he spreads the homage wealth a little bit - the killer bears more than a passing resemblance to Behind The Mask’s Leslie Vernon (itself a deconstructural slasher movie).

One final gripe - the ending sucks. The killer is chasing our Final Girl and her little brother through the movie world, and suddenly the girl sees “The End” in front of her (?). So she throws the kid, and he lands back in the real world (wouldn’t running while holding him take just as much strength/time?). Then in the real world, the cops are like “We’ll get to the bottom of this!” and then the movie ends. Huh? It’s even more annoying since the DVD promises an 82 minute running time and yet the movie is only 79.

It’s not a totally negative experience though. The kills are good, as is the killer’s weapon, this sort of corkscrew top-shaped thing, and he uses it in a variety of ways (including the best answer to a “You’ll have to go through me first!” threat I’ve ever seen). And while the characters are as generic as can be expected, the acting for the most part is good - impressive considering the roster of no-names on a low budget indie. The one exception is Brea Grant (the cute speedster chick from Heroes) as one of the theater employees, though strangely she is not listed in the opening credits or on the DVD box. You’d think they’d want to point out their one sort of known actor.

The DVD is also packed with above average extras. There are a few featurettes on the makeup/effects, cast, and overall making of, and they are long enough to be informative while short enough to keep you from getting bored. Messsitt even presents the deleted scenes and outtakes as featurettes, though they are a bit misleading - the “deleted scenes” are actually a few snippets that we saw, albeit with the original actor (he was forced to drop out so the role was recast), and the outtakes section concerns one shot, where the characters are banging against a supposedly locked door. In the first the door opens, which is kind of funny, but then in the 2nd the glass door smashes and two people are hurt. Uh, “haha”? Messitt and the cast also provide a lively commentary, though he doesn’t really address the story much.

It’s not a terrible movie, but again, I hate when I see a great concept executed poorly. Maybe it was a money issue or whatever, but at the end of the day, the final film doesn’t live up to the potential of its idea*. The supernatural stuff is never really explained, and it just feels like a throwaway excuse to mask any logic/plot holes. And since when does a rundown theater like this have three employees at once? Christ, at the Bev, Julia sells you your ticket and then runs over to serve you popcorn.

What say you?

*According to the opening credits, the original story was by Sean Hood, who co-wrote some of the absolute worst movies ever made (Crow 4, Halloween Resurrection, Cube 2 Hypercube). I wonder if the changes, credited to Messitt and Mark Garbett, were for better or worse. Anyone got the original draft?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Strange Behavior (1981)

FEBRUARY 4, 2009

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I forget where exactly, but I recently read a mini review of Strange Behavior (which was also recommended by HMAD reader Peter), which praised the film’s off-kilter feel, and also mentioned that it was sometimes known as Dead Kids. This reminded me of how I wanted to rent it (under the latter) title when I was like 7 or 8 and my mom refused based on the “ugly” title alone. She then rented one of the Friday the 13th movies and I forgot all about it until recently. I can’t help but wonder that if the original title had been used, she might have been more open to the idea of letting me watch it, instead of more child-appropriate viewings like the sight of three people being decapitated at once in F13 6.

But young me wouldn’t have enjoyed this movie the way I enjoy it today. I’m sure the scare scenes would have been entertaining, but lines like “You been doing experiments on fat girls?” wouldn’t have tickled my fancy back then, as I was not yet a fan of nonsensical dialogue (or of actor Michael Murphy, who effortlessly delivers the line). I probably also would have scoffed at, say, the interminable 10 minute dance sequence (set to Lou Christie’s “Lightning Strikes” - great tune), instead of marveling at its Raw Force-esque levels of “why in the hell is this party scene still on but oh God please never end”.

There are so many peculiar moments in the movie that I stopped writing them down in my notes. A would-be victim pausing to make shadow puppets on the wall; Murphy cutting his toenails at the dinner table; a guy driving a car that didn’t have a driver’s side door; a girl yelling “I can’t swim!” to the killer after he chases her into a pool... it’s just wonderful. But the alpha and omega of baffling incidents actually occurs pretty early on, as our hero (Dan Shor) walks up to his father (Murphy) in the bathroom... completely naked. He then just stands there and waits for him to finish up so that he can shower or whatever. OK, movie.

I just really dug the movie’s laid back charm. Murphy is the chief of police, but I had no idea that was the case until later in the movie, because he can’t even be bothered to wear a badge or any cop type things. He spends the entire movie dressed in khakis and a white polo shirt; it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to mistake him for a postal clerk or maybe a small claims adjuster on casual Friday. There are also a hefty number of scenes with no payoff, which for some reason just entertained me more than they annoyed me. At one point a cop from Chicago comes to town in order to help them solve the murders. He asks for some bourbon, then he talks about the Richard Speck case for a while. He’s pretty much never seen again.

Speaking of Speck, the odd thing about that is that a few scenes later, Shor goes to his love interest’s place, where we discover that she lives with 7 or 8 other girls, a la the Speck case. And since he’s slowly going crazy thanks to the mind control stuff, I was thinking that the Speck mention was actually foreshadowing what would happen in this movie. But nope, it’s also never mentioned again. But at this point I was pretty used to the movie’s “ah, whatever” attitude, and it didn’t bug me too much (there’s also a subplot about the town’s electrical problems that seemingly has no conclusion either).

One thing that DID bug me was the abhorrent editing. There are at least four points in the movie where I thought the DVD was just skipping around at random, as scenes would shift seemingly in the middle of a conversation. There are other quirks too; at one point Shor is accosted by a guy (fake scare), who asks (in a wonderfully terrible overdub) “what are you doing?”. The guy then disappears entirely as another character enters the scene. And the end is like the complete opposite of a Hammer film, where the movie ends the second the monster is dead. No, here the bad guy is finished off, and then the hero and his father head back home. And then there’s a wedding! Hero’s dad marries Louise Fletcher (who plays one of her few sympathetic roles here). So you’re thinking “oh shit, the kid is gonna snap again and kill someone at the wedding for a final scare!”. Nope. The wedding goes well, and then Shor and his girlfriend watch them drive off. He comments about how great they look together. THEN the movie ends. It’s like sitting there with a condom on for a half an hour after you orgasm. You’re done! Peel that shit off and go to sleep!

The commentary is pretty entertaining too. Co-writer Bill Condon (of Candyman 2 fame, though I’m sure his work on Dreamgirls is what he’d rather be parenthetically known for), co-star Dey Young, and Shor watch the movie for the first time in 20 years, and their memory is surprisingly strong. They also poke fun at some of the wardrobe and silly dialogue, making it the best kind of track (equal parts info and laughter). Young even candidly discusses how Murphy broke up her engagement and whisked her away to the Bahamas (or some such locale) after filming, only to dump her afterwards. Awesome. Condon also reveals that they didn’t even have a makeup FX guy, with the director and producers just doing it themselves. A pair of deleted scenes are also included, neither of which would be missed (nor would they be a problem had they been left in). The most interesting thing is that a trailer for “Strange Behavior” is included along with one for “Dead Kids” (if you recall all the way back to the beginning of this review, they are the same movie). “Behavior” is marketed more as a schlocky, drive-in-ready sci-fi movie, but “Kids” is much more truthful, focusing on the actual story (and even the movie’s off-kilter nature, which is hard to pull off in a trailer) while giving too much of the movie away. It’s a very interesting look at how a film can be marketed in entirely different ways, even when using most of the same footage.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Scream Of Fear (1961)

FEBRUARY 3, 2009

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

While most of the movies on my Hammer Horror Series set were pretty good (and in The Evil of Frankenstein's case, great), the Hammer Films: Icons Of Horror Collection is 0-2 so far (with only 4 films on the set). Gorgon suffered from a total lack of monster action, but even that was more fun than Scream Of Fear (aka Taste Of Fear). To be fair, Paranoiac (which came two years later) ripped it off blind, which spoils some of the suspense because I already saw that one, but still, this one’s a snoozer.

However, being that it was produced in 1961, I believe it may be the first in what would be a pretty long line of movies from the 1960s that concern an attractive young person being driven insane so that their evil relatives can steal their inheritance (see also: Dementia 13, Nightmare, The Ghost, and obviously Paranoiac). Usually I bemoan seeing the movies out of order, but in my opinion, those others improved on this one anyway. There are a couple of nice visuals (dead guy in the pool!) and lead actress Susan Strasberg is quite good, but all those other movies offered the same (well, Paranoiac offered a drunken Oliver Reed) and more.

For starters they had some actual intrigue, whereas Fear offers no such thing. There are only four people in the movie, and horror movie rules state that the guy who is being abnormally nice to our heroine must be a villain. Her stepmom doesn’t even really try to hide her villainy, which means the only question you may have during the 80+ minute running time is “Is Christopher Lee a bad guy too?”

Well, no. He’s got a silly French accent (did people enjoy movies ironically back in 1961?) and he sort of looks like Andy Garcia, but I think that’s just to help throw you off track. He’s actually a good guy, and the one decent surprise reveals that some of his more red herring-y scenes were all an act. I usually don’t care for this type of plotting (it requires way too much planning on the part of our heroes, not to mention that any slight deviation on the part of the villains would cause their entire plan to unravel. These people must be chess masters), but at least I was somewhat surprised by the final five minutes. It was still fairly dull, but it’s something.

Separated at Bert.

I almost sort of wish this plot would make a comeback. Maybe not a direct remake of any of these films, but a standard “inheritance/drive someone crazy” movie, albeit with today’s bells and whistles, not to mention more complicated plotting. Say what you will about the Saw films, but damned if I am not genuinely surprised by one or two of the twists in the first few films, something I am finding increasingly rare with these older films. Modern audiences are conditioned to think faster when watching these things, which allows for more characters/complicated plots (if Saw II existed in the 1960s, I am guessing that there would be two people in the house, tops). It’s a shame the series (and their creators) are often lambasted for the gore/torture, because the actual plotting is pretty goddamn clever I think. But an even bigger shame is that their success brought forth a bunch of films that ripped off the wrong aspect of it.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Alien Raiders (2009)

FEBRUARY 2, 2009

GENRE: ALIEN
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

The Blair Witch guys are the masters of creating universes in which the feature film only has some of the information you need to fully understand the story. They did it with Witch (and beautifully so, IMO), with the website, Sci-Fi special, and a couple of books helping flesh out the story and even add weight to some of the scare scenes. They tried it again with Believers, though there it wasn’t AS successful since the finished film wasn’t as compelling as the bonus features. And now we have Alien Raiders (directed by Ben Rock, produced by Dan Myrick), which falls somewhere in between those two.

The movie is about a group of badasses who hold the occupants of a supermarket hostage as they seek for an alien lifeform that has taken over the body of a human; sort of The Thing crossed with The Mist (indeed, the cover of the DVD suggests that the film is nothing but an Asylum knockoff of Darabont’s film). It unfolds almost in realtime as the badasses (led by legendary badass Tony Almeida himself, Carlos Bernard) lose the one guy who can “spot” an alien inside someone, which means they have to improvise in order to find out who’s human. It’s not as unpredictable as Rock and his screenwriters would like you to believe, but it’s still an exciting and fairly original take on the “pod” genre.

But what’s cool is that the movie is never weighed down by explanations and backstory. You know that it’s some sort of alien - do you need to know the hows and whys? Likewise the team itself - do they work for someone or have they just taken it upon themselves to be mankind’s protector? Again - does it really matter? The movie’s about how badly things turn out for one of their hunts - knowing that stuff wouldn’t affect the end result. There is one thing I wish they explained though: how they knew that the alien they were looking for was in the supermarket at midnight. If they had intel that precise, you’d think they’d know who the alien was right off the bat.

The only other blunder (besides the abysmal opening credits sequence, which has a public access-y font and annoying music/editing) is the final 15 minutes or so. The hostages are either cleared and released, or proven to be aliens and killed (or they escape and provide some scares). It comes down to three hostages, two of whom we know are clear. Since this is a modern horror movie, you know there has to be a big “twist”, so the identity of the alien is pretty obvious for nearly half the movie. I wish they had left another question mark alive for as long as possible, which would have added some much needed suspense to the 3rd act.

Still, considering this is a Raw Feed movie (with the lamest Sci-Fi original-y title I’ve seen in years), it’s a wonder the movie is even watchable, let alone good. It took 6 films, but they have finally delivered something that can be considered a success (without reservations), so kudos to the creative team for that.

Like Believers, the extras are mainly “in character” bits that flesh out some of the story. We get the video diary of the person who is revealed to be the alien, an interview with the “spotter” (the movie’s most interesting concept is that only those who are tweaked out on drugs have the ability to “see” the aliens), and a lab report by the team’s medic (super hot Courtney Ford). The other two are standard making of bits that are too short to be of much use. Raw Feed also provides the trailers for their mostly terrible other movies. Thanks.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Igor (2008)

FEBRUARY 1, 2009

GENRE: ANIMATED, MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Man, if Igor had come out when I was 7 or 8 I’d be the happiest little kid ever. Even though I was already watching R rated horror films, I still enjoyed age-appropriate movies, so to have a movie this charming that was also technically a horror movie would have been the best of both worlds.

Of course, we didn’t have CGI films back then, so it would probably be 2D and look like Sword and the Stone or maybe Pinocchio's Pleasure Island), which is to say - good, but not exactly jaw-dropping, with limited range for action sequences. Even though the animation here isn’t up to Pixar, it’s a great mix of typical horror elements (castles, laboratories, lightning/full moon establishing shots) with imaginative and colorful landscapes and set designs. Some of it resembles Nightmare Before Christmas (the character of King Malbert looks almost identical to Halloweentown’s mayor), but it’s not too much of a distraction. The stories and overall design are different enough to forgive the occasional character that should have been redesigned to avoid comparison.

I have to talk about the character of Brain/Brian. He’s a robotic invention; a brain in a jar with an arm, but he’s also borderline mentally challenged. His random nonsense made me laugh throughout the film (when Igor begins to scale a castle wall to mount a rescue, he just yells “Bring me a toy!”), and his interactions with Scamper (Steve Buscemi) are a continual highlight. Randomness is actually the order of the day; it seems every 5 minutes there’s a line or action that is just not what you expect in what is technically a kid’s movie. Any movie with the line “Why’s everything about pants with you?” is automatically OK in my book.

I just wish there were a few more humorous jabs at horror movie conventions. The movie is based on the idea that people named Igor are only allowed to be assistants to mad scientists; their only meaning in life to pull switches. I found this to be a hilarious concept, so I wish the writers had incorporated more concepts in a similar vein. There are still a few little homages and the like sprinkled throughout the movie (the climax occurs at the “Evil Science Fair”), but it’s hardly the focus that the first 10 minutes led me to believe. Especially considering the rather non-kid friendly approach to some of the subplots - not only are there a couple of deaths, but the Scamper character is suicidal, and the film’s heroine spends most of the 3rd act as a giant evil monster.

One thing about that climax - she’s singing “Tomorrow” from Annie the entire time, as she pummels and kicks various “science projects”. How awesome is that? I want to see a live action movie rip this scene off - have like, Van Damme singing “Defying Gravity” as he kicks the shit out of some dudes in a bar or something. It would be the most amazing thing that ever occurred in recorded history.

The DVD is pretty slim, which is a bummer. The commentary is energetic but hardly necessary (nearly 50% of it is the participants fawning over the cast, particularly Jennifer Coolidge), and an alternate opening isn’t really different enough to warrant taking the time to watch it (especially since the final version is much better anyway). Then there are some concept designs and storyboards that will take you about 3 minutes total to go through. It would have been cool to see some of the actors recording their dialogue, or maybe some pre-viz stuff, but then again, box office bombs rarely get any features at all, so I guess we should be happy we got that much.

A fellow horror nerd friend of mine recently had a kid... I think I’ll buy this for them and every subsequent friend who spawns (I'm pretty goddamn lazy when it comes to gift buying). It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a great concept executed with charm. I had a big grin on my face through most of the movie, which is more than I can say for anything Dreamworks has ever done.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...