The Stand (1994)

MAY 31, 2009

GENRE: POST-APOCALYPTIC
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

When The Stand came out on DVD, it got some decent press, due to the fact that it was the first DVD 18 (dual layer on both sides), which allowed the entire movie to fit on one disc. But I am willing to bet that I am one of the few that took advantage of this by actually watching the entire goddamn thing in one sitting (well, between parts 2 and 3 I took a shower), as opposed to over a period of like a month, which is what I did when I was 14. As I had since forgotten everything about it, and that’s no way to watch a movie anyway, I figured it qualified for HMAD.

Another thing that helped my lack of memory is the fact that I have yet to read the book, and the movie makes a pretty good argument that doing that would have been a far better use of my six hours. The film starts off strong, but the 2nd half is plagued from a story that is seemingly moving too fast yet at the same time seems to be stuck in neutral. Characters are literally introduced on their death bed, and other events, such as Stu Redman meeting Mother Abigail, are skipped entirely (I don’t think Gary Sinise ever shares a scene with Ruby Dee). While it’s technically preferable to have King adapt his own novel, in this case I think it would have been better if someone else tackled it. Maybe it was just the result of having to cut things that were shot, but it seems more likely that his close attachment to the novel left him unable to discern how a new audience could follow the material.

Take, for example, the character of Lloyd Henreid. He’s a pretty interesting character, and he’s played by Miguel Ferrer, which is even better. But the movie seemingly skips an entire chunk of his character arc; he’s suddenly a bit remorseful about siding with Flagg, yet feels compelled to stick by him for rescuing him from starvation. And it’s never clear why Flagg puts him in such a prominent role in the first place; all we know about him is that he’s a petty criminal. His storyline, and several others, always give me the impression that “in the book it makes sense”. Like the first two Harry Potter films, I suspect that the filmmaker was merely filming the book instead of making a movie.

If I may, I’d like to compare this film with It (which I have read). Yes, the movie version isn’t as compelling and skips entire chunks of the original novel. BUT, and this is far more important, it never FELT like it was missing things. It told a complete, coherent story. Not the case here. As the film went on, I found myself growing more and more confused as to why characters were behaving in certain ways, to the point where I considered grabbing the book off the shelf and reading along to fill in whatever gaps the movie was leaving. Characters also disappear for long stretches, to the extent that when the movie gets around to them again, you’ve forgotten what they were up to the last time you saw them. Granted, It had a smaller cast, but it also only had half the time, and it never felt rushed or left its characters by the wayside.

Then again, maybe it’s just the simple matter that Tommy Lee Wallace (who directed/adapted It) has proven himself to be a better filmmaker than Mick Garris. I liked Garris’ version of The Shining (it’s better than Kubrick’s from a “coherent story” point of view, if only in that regard), but his movies generally suffer from awkward pacing and a lack of any sort of discernible passion for the material. One exception would be Riding The Bullet, which is his strongest film and unlike his others, found him having to make a feature out of a short story instead of a massive book. Maybe he should stick to short stories, if he must work only within the world of Stephen King, which seems to be the case (he’s currently attached to Bag of Bones, which actually MIGHT work as a two hour film as the book could have used some tightening anyway).

Also, the “end of the world” cutaways don’t really make a lot of sense in this movie. Even in the final section, Garris still keeps cutting to corpses laying around, doing whatever they were doing when they died. Some make sense, such as a guy sitting at his breakfast table or even driving. Others, however, are wholly illogical when you consider how the super flu works. It doesn’t kill you instantly; you get the flu and slowly die. So why would people die in the car wash or at work? At the point where they finally died, they’d be pretty sick, so you’d think getting their car cleaned would be the last thing on their mind. And these shots make up the bulk of the “horror” as the narrative grinds to a halt (whether this is true of the book or not I dunno, but nothing fucking happens from the moment Nick dies at the end of part 3 until the climax at the end of part 4), so it’s a bit distracting when half of it doesn’t even make any sense.

One thing the movie definitely delivers is a strong cast. Gary Sinise disappears for long stretches, but he’s still a much higher caliber than we usually get for a lead in a Stephen King TV miniseries (which are often plucked from Wings). And Rob Lowe is surprisingly strong as Nick. Matt Frewer also appears, in the first of a trilogy of “end of the world” scenario films in which he plays a role under heavy makeup (the others being Watchmen and Dawn of the Dead 04). The minor roles are more often than not played by recognizable character actors (or directors - John Landis and Sam Raimi both pop up), so you get a Sam Anderson or Troy Evans in a few scenes as well. Speaking of Anderson, both he and Sherman Howard are in this film, which is worth noting as they played the pair of “yuppie drug dealers” in I Come In Peace (which was directed by Craig Baxley, who has helmed a number of King TV projects himself).

There’s also a guy that I could have sworn was Michael Moriarty, but was actually a guy named Robert Knott. Sorry about that, Mr. Knott.

And despite the 2nd half flaws, it’s still a decent movie. At six hours, I was expecting to get pretty antsy, but the first half flew by and there was enough good stuff in the 2nd half to keep my interest, not to mention a pretty terrific score by ‘Snuffy’ Walden I also love the idea that the final battle for the fate of mankind would occur in Las Vegas. And it made me want to read the book, so that’s good. Speaking of, I actually own both the original and the revised/uncut version from a few years ago - which one is better? Does the added material slow the book down or make it better? I sure as hell ain’t gonna read both.

The DVD has a commentary, but you can be damn sure I’m not going to listen to it; it was hard enough to set aside the time to watch the movie once. There are also some production notes, a few stills, and a featurette, nothing special (though the featurette is worth a look if only to see Rob Lowe inexplicably made to look like Dennis Miller). The movie aired before the rise of HD programming, so the full-frame presentation is fine, but the audio is terrible. Whenever there is a loud sudden noise, the audio dips out for a while. Weak.

So there you have it, a six hour movie that suffers from rushed storytelling. Maybe they should have just done a “Season-long Miniseries”, like with Kingdom Hospital, which would have allowed more time for character development and a finale that didn’t feel so abrupt. M-O-O-N, that spells missed opportunity!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Piranha II: The Spawning (1981)

MAY 30, 2009

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

As part of my attempt to wash the stink of Terminator: Salvation out of my mind, I re-watched the original film (long gone are the days where a new sequel would be prefaced by my re-watching all of the series’ films up to that point), which in turn got me in the mood to revisit some of James Cameron’s films. Good timing too, because the Aero in Santa Monica was showing Aliens and The Abyss (theatrical versions though, blah). So today I figured I’d finally sit down with Piranha II: The Spawning, which I had never seen (mainly because I still haven’t seen the original, but I discovered that it was a "name only" sequel so I made an exception).

Piranha II is of course a well-documented oddity in Cameron’s career. In addition to being his only feature film that doesn’t begin with the letter T or A, it features none of his trademarks (other than Lance Henriksen, who for a change has his name spelled correctly on the box art but incorrectly on the film itself), has tasteless nudity and bloody gore (re-watching Terminator I was surprised to see how many of Arnold’s kills were off-screen), and essentially kind of sucks. How much of the film he actually directed is a mystery, but everyone agrees that it’s not “his” film in any way shape or form.

However, some things are worth noting. For example, the relationship between Lance and his estranged wife (Tricia O'Neil, who resembles a piece of leather in many scenes) is identical to that of Bud and Lindsay in The Abyss. Hell, it even has the same sort of “reveal” that the two are married after they squabble in front of others. And it has a lot of the underwater photography that has become almost a requirement for his later films (Abyss, True Lies, Titanic, and then his documentaries in the 2000s). So even if these things weren’t his idea, they certainly stuck with him.

As for the movie itself, it’s what I call a “Bev-ready” movie, meaning that I would rather watch it at the New Bev with a bunch of drunks than at home by myself. There are a lot of gory kills and pointless nudity to cheer over, but it’s also too slow (after the opening kill, the fish don’t even appear for another 35 minutes or so) and lacking any real tension. Lance is kept out of the big finale, flying a helicopter around while the wife and her new boyfriend do the real cool stuff (i.e. blowing up a shipwreck where the fish have nested). Since Lance is often killed in movies, it would have been far more exciting to put him down there, instead of the wife/mother (surely a survivor) and the boyfriend who is partly responsible for the piranhas’ existence (a goner).

Also, where the original is a Jaws parody of sorts (from what I understand), this one’s just a straight up ripoff. We get the opening scene with two young lovers (though at least the guy gets killed too), a big annual event with lots of swimmers in danger, a guy who doesn’t want to close the beaches, etc. Plus Lance kind of resembles Roy Scheider at times, and the 3rd act rescue of his son (trapped on a boat) is taken from Jaws 2. Then again, the setting is a resort, which got stolen in Jaws 3, so I guess it evens out. Still, considering the antagonist (flying man-eating fish), more fun could have been had in the proceedings. There are occasional light moments with the supporting cast, but the action and the story are played totally straight.

Unsurprisingly, the DVD has no extra features whatsoever. Still, that didn’t stop Sony from trying to claim otherwise; the back of the DVD has a big box labeled “Special Features” which includes things like “Audio: English” and “Full Screen Presentation”. There are also Thai subtitles, in case some guy in Thailand has a region 1 player and wants to be just as confused as to why a film called Piranha II doesn’t have any piranhas (they are genetically modified grunion).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Children (1980)

MAY 29, 2008

GENRE: KILLER KID
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT VIEW)

I hate to be so mean to Harry Manfredini, but he really brings it upon himself. Within 5 seconds of the introduction of his score for The Children (aka The Children Of Ravensback), I knew it was his music. How? Because, as always, it’s identical to his score for Friday the 13th. But unlike Hills Have Eyes 2 or whatever, this movie came out within weeks of F13, which means he was already being pretty lazy. Plus, the score is practically stolen from Bernard Herrmann to begin with, so he’s endlessly recycling a recycled score. Come on man.

At least the movie works without constantly being reminded of Crystal Lake. Like Crash! or some other low budget horror movies, it’s essentially a moebius strip film, where the same two scenes more or less repeat in succession for the bulk of the running time. Here, we have the sheriff investigating the disappearance of about a half dozen kids from a school bus alternating with scenes of those children, who have been turned into zombies of a sort, killing people by hugging them. I wish I saw this back to back with The Horsemen, as the two carry polar opposite messages (in this case, DON’T hug your children or they will kill you).

Eventually though, the sheriff does his job and figures out what is going on, and then the film kicks it up a notch. And by that I mean we see kids getting shot. But since they are zombies, shooting them in the chest does little besides make me laugh. No, the only way to stop them is to cut their hands off (!!!). There’s a hilarious shot during the epilogue of a bunch of their bodies lying on the ground with disembodied hands laying around. In short, the movie’s kind of awesome.

Speaking of the epilogue, maybe they just ran out of money or something, but it’s really disconnected and weak. We know there’s a final scare coming, and that part sort of works, but it comes after like a five minute sequence of shots of the house, the yard, etc, while the two heroes talk about the female’s impending childbirth. That or they had to make a 90 minute run time for some reason and needed to drag things out (the end credits run a bit slow as well). It doesn’t really hurt the movie overall, but its still pretty awkward.

Something occurred to me a few moments before said epilogue: killer kid movies rarely feature other kids being killed. As the zombie children murder half the town (all adults) I didn’t think anything of it, but I was rather shocked when a kid of about 4 years old is killed by his zombie brother (in a scene that seems inspired by Salem’s Lot). Even when they are the villains of the film and killing folks left and right, it’s still a taboo to have them killed. I actually wonder if that’s why they can only be killed by chopping off their hands, as opposed to the heads. But this was 1980, and I don’t think even today the world is ready for the awesome sight of zombie children being beheaded making up the “heroics” of a movie.

The movie was shot in Massachusetts, a fact that is unceremoniously dropped into the narrative during a news broadcast late in the film. Not that it really matters, but I would have liked to have known right from the start so I try to see if I could spot any locations I recognized. Oddly enough, there’s a prominent bridge in the movie that I actually thought was the one from Funny Farm, which was shot in Vermont (if you’re a geography wizard, you’d know that those two states border each other, something I only know because I lived there).

As I watched this on Instant View, I have no access to the extra features, but since the DVD is distributed by Troma, I’m guessing most of them having fuck all to do with the movie anyway. Still, if I see it cheap enough (doubtful, it's apparently out of print), I’ll totally buy it. Good stuff.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Eyes Without A Face (1960)

MAY 28, 2009

GENRE: FRENCH, MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: CABLE (TCM)

Sometimes I like a movie but don’t really have much to say about it. Such is the case with Eyes Without A Face (French: Les Yeux Sans Visage), a solid little movie in the vein of The Ape, albeit much classier since its French. But luckily, in this case, the film’s trivia from Wikipedia and IMDb gave me enough to make up the traditional 5 or 6 paragrapher that HMAD readers expect (and sometimes demand).

For example, despite my near encyclopedic knowledge of Halloween, I never knew that Carpenter cited this film as one of the inspirations for Michael’s pale mask. In this movie, our heroine has lost her face due to a car accident (that or she’s addicted to the knife), so while her mad scientist father makes her a new one using the faces of unwilling donors, she wears this creepy white mask to cover her Uncle Frank-ness. It’s so creepy, you almost wish that she was the villain, as she would be one of the most memorable movie killers ever.

Another thing I learned was that the film was paired with The Manster and curiously retitled The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, a character that does not appear in the film (with that in mind, perhaps Eyes/Faustus should have been paired with the Doctor X less Revenge of Doctor X, which is strangely similar to Manster to boot). As a viewer of more than a couple of puzzling double features at the New Bev (Bachelor’s Party with Pieces?), I can sympathize with a crowd who went to see The Manster and then had to sit through a weird French movie afterwards. What a tonal mindfuck.

This part I just want to re-quote. Apparently, when the film showed at a film festival in Edinburgh, seven people fainted. When he heard about it, director Georges Franju said “Now I know why Scotsmen wear skirts.” OH, SNAP!

One thing I noticed on my own (and verified with the wiki page) is that the film obviously had an influence on John Woo. Any facial transplant scenario will obviously bring Face/Off to mind, but there is also a clumsy metaphor involving white doves! Sadly, the similarities end there; this film has not a single shootout, nor does anyone have cool sunglasses.

Not all of my thoughts on the film are based on a webpage I could have read without even watching the film, however. I did take notes. One is “music”. This refers to Maurice Jarre’s score, which sounds like circus music. I know Jarre is a legendary composer, and the score by itself is fine, but it doesn’t really fit the mood of the film. I hear circus music, and I expect clowns and maybe a ring of fire. Not a bunch of French folks yapping.

I also wrote down “subs”, because I liked how intelligent the subtitle guy thought we were. Unlike most movies, simple common words like "Hello", "Yes", etc are not subtitled, because we all know what they are in French ("Bonjour", "Oui"). Not constantly having distracting text on the screen allows you to enjoy the actual, unblemished image more often, so this was much appreciated.

Another thing I dug about the movie was how it sort of pulled a Psycho on us. After more or less figuring out what the doctor is up to, we meet a new girl whose face he and his faithful assistant plan to take. So you probably think that the movie will be about this girl finding out the truth and then escaping, but nope, she’s a goner. As the movie plays, you realize that it’s ultimately about the doctor and his daughter, not their victims.

Apparently, the film was also edited during its initial release, and only appeared uncut a few years ago. The “Janus” logo at the top of the film would have me believe that the DVD is from Criterion, so if that’s the case I recommend you rent it at once! I would say “buy”, but since Criterion overcharges for their DVDs, this wouldn’t be a sound investment as you’re not likely to watch it more than once. Save that money for Criterion’s Armageddon DVD.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Horsemen (2009)

MAY 27, 2009

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

I feel bad for Dennis Quaid. He’s a great actor, and like Bruce Willis or Kurt Russell, has aged gracefully and is capable of tackling a variety of roles. But the guy can’t catch a break when it comes to the box office. Looking at his stats, he’s only had three hit movies this decade, out of about a dozen or so. And now The Horsemen, which should have been a minor hit just based on the pedigree (Platinum Dunes, who is batting pretty damn close to .1000 at the box office), didn’t even get a wide release. After shelving it for nearly two years, Lionsgate Midnight Meat Trained it into 5 theaters this past winter, and now its hitting DVD with zero fanfare.

Well, suffice to say that while it certainly deserved better (all movies deserve a chance to be seen; the goddamn thing didn’t even play in Los Angeles!), it’s no revelatory gem either. Of the 4 or 5 movies Lionsgate royally fucked over in the past year, it’s the weakest (though ironically, also the most "commercial"). Apparently, there were some reshoots (and at least one re-cast role - Neil McDonough was replaced with Chelcie Ross, two actors that couldn't be less alike), and they show, but what really sinks the movie is how generic it is for the first hour, only to suddenly pull out all the stops with a finale that means well but unfortunately comes off as laughable.

NOTE - Spoilers will follow, including the killer’s identity and motive.

See, the first hour is your standard 90’s serial killer movie (think Seven or Bone Collector) mixed with the overused “Cop is so devoted to his job he neglects his children” plot. In the first twenty minutes, Quaid’s character goes through every one of the “bad movie parent” clichés: he forgets to buy milk, shows up late to pick one of the kids up from school, and even does the whole ‘Hey kids lets go to the game uh oh my phone is ringing which means we’re not going to the game’ thing. I can only assume a scene where the kid has to forge his dad’s signature on a field trip form was lost in the re-editing process. And while Quaid is as good an actor as any, no one can overcome how painfully generic these scenes are. That, mixed with yet another biblically themed serial killer (don’t any of these guys just kill for fun anymore?), will give you the impression that you’re watching some sort of karaoke version of a real movie.

And then all of a sudden we get a decent twist, and for a second I thought the generic-ness was about to pay off. However, it just goes completely off the rails when you discover that the killer is... his older son. While running around his house looking for the younger kid, Quaid runs into the son's room and finds that its covered with all of the plans, evidence of the murders, etc. And his motive? Quaid didn’t pay any attention to him for too long. So we actually have a serial killer movie where the killer says “You haven’t been in my room for three years!” and the cop tries to get the killer to stop by promising to take him to a ball game or whatever. Amazing. Hell, I will ignore the idiotic plot hole of the concept (OK, Quaid’s a shitty dad, but neither the babysitter or the little brother went into his room for three years either?) because the message - pay attention to your kids - is a sound one, but this is not the way to go about it.

Also, you know, I can’t stand emo kids, and that’s all the killers (four horsemen) are here. Here are their motives: One was touched by her stepdaddy, another is gay and his big brother (Eric Balfour!) doesn’t accept him, and our main guy doesn’t get to hang out with his dad enough. The fourth one is killed off-screen and we never see him alive. Let’s assume he writes bad poetry. So we have this hard R movie that’s essentially masquerading as an after school special. Families, watch The Horsemen together and then discuss ways in which you could bond better (for starters, watch better movies than The Horsemen).

And it’s a shame, because the movie wastes a good cast. Ross is always welcome (he also popped up in Drag Me To Hell), and Peter Stormare shows up long enough for you to say “Hey, this movie sure was re-edited, otherwise they wouldn’t have hired Stormare to play two nearly wordless scenes." And Patrick Fugit plays one of the horsemen, who also doesn’t have enough screen time to warrant an actor of his stature.

So in a way I feel kind of bad knocking on the movie, as the re-editing is so painfully obvious (if the IMDb is correct, at least 20 minutes are missing). Maybe these ideas worked better when given time to grow, but as I said, the character stuff is overly generic, so I somewhat doubt it would improve. And it functions OK enough as a serial killer thriller, with at least one disturbing scene to spruce things up a bit. I also dug the snowy setting; the city is never named (it was shot in Canada, of course, but I think it’s supposed to be an East Coast US city like Philly or Boston) but that works in its favor. There’s a great bit where Quaid is driving out to an isolated area to investigate a crime scene, plowing through stop signs on icy roadways with no one around.

The film was directed by Jonas Akerlund, who has directed several great music videos (and an inordinate number of clips for Roxette) such as "Beautiful Day" for U2 and a few for Smashing Pumpkins. Saddled with this script (and probably reshoots forced upon him) it’s kind of hard to judge him as a feature film director, but I can say that the film doesn’t have that music video feel; no quick edits, pointlessly “flashy” and “stylish” shots, etc. He does have a fondness for rack focus close-ups, but that’s a Platinum Dunes staple. Like The Hitcher’s Dave Meyers, I hope he gets another chance to helm a feature.

So it’s kind of ironic, the Dunes’ first original film suffers from being too late to the game. In 1994 this would have been considered a minor classic, but now with so many other, better serial killer films (hell, even Quaid’s own Switchback, which also suffered post production troubles, was more compelling), it needs to do a lot more than present a fairly unique motive to stick out, not to mention have that motive be something a little less unintentionally silly. Maybe in 20 years they can do a remake.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Till Death Do We Scare (1982)

MAY 26, 2009

GENRE: ASIAN, COMEDIC, GHOST
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

As I near the 1,000 review mark (!!!), I become more and more appreciative of obscure movies like Till Death Do We Scare (Cantonese: Xiao Sheng Pa Pa), because it’s getting harder to find movies that haven’t been tainted by praise (or damnation) or spoiled from the glut of existing reviews (pity the poor sod who sees Psycho for the first time nowadays, probably knowing perfectly well about the film’s two big twists). But of course, on the downside, if I only reviewed obscure movies, the site would likely lose a lot of readers. All about balance!

And Till Death... definitely fits the “obscure” category. The IMDb page has but one user comment, no external reviews, and a ghost town for a message board. Without a Sammo Hung to draw folks in it’s likely this movie will never reach its full awareness potential (though director Chia Yung Liu also made films like Game of Death, so it’s got a shot),. And that’s a bit of a shame, because it deserves to be seen, if only for its unparalleled levels of batshittedness.

To say the film seems made up as they went along is almost too kind; I’ve seen improv troupe performances with more traditional narrative. It starts off reasonably coherent enough: three men who died on their respective wedding days (to the same woman) come back as ghosts to try to find her a new love that will keep her happy. But their methods prove to be a bit baffling, some involve scaring the guy out of his mind by stretching their faces around. And then after a while, the movie changes gears entirely, as a minor character (the would-be new husband’s buddy) suddenly takes on the lead role, the three ghosts turn into umbrellas, and the guy has to travel to Ghost Island to put a pearl in the mouth of the Master Ghost. Or something.

Honestly, if you walked out of the room (or took a BC-style quick snooze) at the right moment, you would return and swear you were watching a different movie entirely. What was once a silly romance becomes a slapsticky adventure in a matter of seconds, and from then it gets even weirder: plot elements include a town made out of cardboard (even the cars), a giant vampire, a 30ish boy scout (possibly a ghost himself), and a quick bit where the new hero guy gets arrested for yelling at some cops, only to be released 10 seconds later before this particular subplot added any real significance to the story.

There’s also a photo of Marlon Brando. I won’t even try to explain that one.

Of course, that’s not to say I didn’t like the movie; on the contrary, I had a blast. I loved the kitchen sink approach and “Sure, why not” leaps of logic (how they even come to pick the guy that they do for their mutual love is beyond me - they just show up where he is performing a live radio show). I don’t think a single minute went by where I didn’t have a big smile on my face, or laughing and asking “What?” to the screen. I mean, within the first five minutes, a man has swallowed a bird, a priest has proposed to a woman as he performs her marriage to another man, and a hitman, seemingly operating under the Rube Goldberg manual, has taken a shot that sets off a chain of events involving ice sculptures and serving trays that ultimately finds someone being run over by a tractor. How can you NOT love this movie?

The 3rd act shift was a bit problematic for me though. While the new plot was not without its charms (I loved the paper car, which they operate Flintstones style), I missed the three ghosts, and wanted to stick with their story, increasingly bizarre as it might have been. Also, the “two buddies travel to a mysterious island” story deserves its own film (well, it sort of has one: Raw Force), not 20-25 minutes’ worth of another movie. It’s like the filmmakers wanted to make both movies, could only afford one, and opted to merely split the difference.

The weirdest thing about the movie, however, is that the effects are by Tom Savini. He clearly wasn’t giving it his full attention, as the creatures are obviously leftovers from other productions (Creepshow in particular), but it sort of adds to the bizarre charm. And it’s funny to see all these unreadable credits and then have “Tom Savini” tossed in there. They’re mostly confined to the film’s final 10 minutes, but fans should definitely check the film out, if for nothing else but to see his creations in a wholly unlikely scenario (sort of like KNB winning an Oscar for a goddamn Narnia movie).

Is there a DVD? No idea. If so it’s not on Amazon, so I’ve done all I can to find out. And as I mentioned earlier, the film is wholly obscure (this very review is the 3rd match you’ll find on Google, after its IMDb page and the Youtube clip I have posted below in lieu of a trailer, which I could not find), so finding it at Best Buy isn’t too likely either. But as always, if you find yourself in the vicinity of a screening or bootleg, by all means check it out. I am becoming a big fan of these special Grindhouse events, and I hope they continue (tonight’s crowd was much bigger than the last one, which is a good sign). And it was good timing, because I’ve had trouble following the last couple movies I saw, so now I have prime examples of how and how NOT to make a successfully incoherent movie. DO: Till Death Do We Scare. DON’T: Necessary Evil.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Necessary Evil (2008)

MAY 25, 2009

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

I think Aliens was the first film I saw with Lance Henriksen, so it’s safe to say that I’ve been a fan of the guy for over twenty years. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a hell of a lot better than 90% of the material he has to work with, and while he’s not getting any younger, I still hold out hope that James Cameron or someone will give him one last meaty role in a worthy film. For now though, I will continue having to say “The only good thing about this movie (in this case, Necessary Evil) is Lance Henriksen”.

So it’s with some sadness that I have to point out that he also personifies a lot of what is wrong with this movie. For starters, he narrates the entire first ten minutes, and a lot of what comes after. Granted, he’s got a great voice, but in this case, the narration seems awkward, because it seems to have been an after-thought, a “necessary evil”, if you will, to help explain some of the muddled (at best) storyline.

If I had to guess, I would say that the script for the film required a budget far greater than what was given (just under one million, according to the IMDb), and rather than wait until the funds were available, or rewrite the film to suit it, director Peter Eaton simply filmed whatever he could afford to, and had Lance record some narration to fill in some of the plot gaps. But if that’s true, then either there’s a limit to what Lance can do, or he severely under-estimated how goddamn incoherent this movie is.

Let me try to describe the plot, based on how I understood it (for lack of a better word). Lance is a doctor trying to develop some new drug named Reficul (first invented by Alucard in the town of Nilbog?). To do this, he needs a town populated with folks under his watchful eye, some soldiers, a monster, and Danny Trejo. The drug, a neon green liquid that is injected much like heroin, gives people green eyes and a Darth-Vader style power to choke people with their mind. His attempts are thwarted by two folks: a cop whose daughter disappeared 15 years ago, and a reporter who is out to take down the FDA. But - plot twist! - the reporter girl has had her memories replaced, and the people she thinks are her parents are really the parents of someone else, who...

OK, I give up. I don’t have a goddamn clue what the hell this movie is about, and I even went back and rewatched some scenes that I assumed were “key”. Is the monster real, or a hallucination? The monster is linked to another guy, who claims to be the reporter’s dad. But is it really him, or is it the cop, who says his daughter was kidnapped 15 years before? Ah, who cares.

Hurting this movie more than the unparalleled incoherency are the woeful performances of the two leads (the non-Lance ones; Trejo’s role is little more than a cameo). Eric Feldman is the least convincing cop I’ve seen in a movie (even the two guys in Suburban Sasquatch were more believable), and Kathryn Fiore’s performance (as the reporter) is shrill and hysterical at all times. Watching someone have a conversation with her is akin to watching someone try to reason with a drunken sorority girl. I’ve never seen either one of them in a movie before, so I can’t tell if their terrible performances are the result of not having a clue what their dialogue was supposed to mean, or if they are merely bad actors. I’m feeling generous, so I’ll go with the former. Either way, it’s a shame to see Lance having to share the scene with these two; you can almost see him thinking “Wasn’t I just in a movie with Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen?”

The other crippling flaw is how cheap the movie looks. It’s shot like a soap opera and looks worse. The “best” example of this is the “police station”, which looks more like a high school administration office. Except it isn’t, because it’s obviously a set as you can see where the walls end (so if it’s NOT a set, then it’s merely the world’s most poorly constructed high school administration office). We also have a “Professor Colbert” (which is what it says on his desk; I guess he has no first name) using the “Interrweb” (their typo, not mine), and when he searches for a guy’s name he instantly gets a video that provides him with the answers he was looking for.

There’s also a scene where someone says “Would you rather have a million dollars, or double a penny (and double that, and so on) every day for a month?” He points out that at the end of the month you’d have 1.3 billion pennies. Well, his math is wrong (it’s 1.073 billion, and that’s in a full 31 day month; if we’re in February you’d only end up with a little over 100 million pennies, which is chump change), but he fails to point out the crucial flaw in this scenario - after like 8 or 9 days you’re going to die of tetanus from touching all of those filthy pennies. Then again, maybe that’s what Lance’s character was trying to prevent with his new drug. It makes about as much sense as anything else in this movie.

So here we go, another movie that has no reason to exist. The director didn’t have the money or resources to pull it off, but went ahead and made it anyway. Because there is apparently a need for incoherent medical horror movies with Lance Henriksen that someone had to fill, and by golly he wasn’t going to sit idly by and let someone else have the glory. Well, grats. Your movie sucks, but no one else can claim they did it first.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Habit (1996)

MAY 24, 2009

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

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I usually will post which movie I am going to watch that day (if nothing else, I hope it cuts down on the “Wait, you really watch a movie every day?” questions). 9 times out of 10, they earn no response, but when I posted today that I was going to watch Larry Fessenden’s Habit, two fellow journalists were quick to reply. One was ComingSoon’s Ed Douglas, who pointed out that the female lead was a good friend of his (why can’t any of MY good female friends play naked vampires with lesbian tendencies in horror movies??), and the other was RobG from IconsofFright, who threatened to hit me if I didn’t like the movie.

Well luckily for Rob (and Ed’s friend), I did like the movie. The editor in me couldn’t help but bemoan the occasional slack pace (it’s 115 minutes long but 90-95 would have sufficed), but it was still a refreshingly low key (and VERY indie) take on the traditional “guy’s new girlfriend turns out to be a vampire” story. Oddly, the moments that were the least successful were the ones that were full-on vampire scenes. An odd scene where the lovers (Larry himself plays the lead) run from wolves before the vampire girl stops them with her hand and a snarl seems completely out of place, and even though its established that Larry’s character likes to cook, why he would have a giant bag of garlic hanging from the ceiling remains a mystery.

Far more successful is the relative mysteriousness of it all. Whether it’s from a lack of the budget or (more likely) a design choice, the full extent of her powers is never really established. She seems to appear out of thin air, but maybe she’s just quiet (we don’t actually SEE her appear out of thin air, in other words). For a large section of the film, we’re not even sure if she’s real at all, as she doesn’t interact with the other characters and only seems to show up when Larry is alone.

I also liked the non-glamorous depiction of New York. Like Mulberry Street (a film in which Fessenden appears), our characters are working class schmoes, and their apartments are hardly palaces. Most NY set films revolve around wealthy folks (or tourists), not the guys who serve your food or run the audio for your band’s gig. I suck at NY geography, so I don’t know which neighborhood it all takes place in (judging by the number of pretentious artists, I would assume Williamsburg), but its much more interesting than the umpteenth Riverside Drive building-set movie where Liz Lemon and 4000 other fictional New Yorkers seem to reside. There’s a great bit where they ride a ferris wheel that is sandwiched between two buildings... there’s something strange and alluring about the idea of looking out your window and seeing a carnival ride inches away.

Also, I kind of like the balls on Larry. He writes a movie for himself to star in which he is constantly fucking the shit out of a hot vampire woman. I should do that.

The DVD has a lot of extras, but they are somewhat obscured by the simple listing of “Making Habit” on the main menu. I was expecting a quick all-encompassing featurette, but there are about a dozen pieces running a few minutes each, each one tackling a different part of the production as Fessenden narrates. Good stuff, and of definite use to no-budget indie filmmakers planning on shooting their own film in a big city. And it’s not all film-school stuff; one of the lengthiest actually just details the similarities between Habit and "Dracula" and other vampire lore. The trailer and a music video (the film has a great soundtrack as well) are also included in this section.

The DVD also contains “the world’s most baffling chapter stops!” I’ve seen DVDs where they merely place a chapter every 10 minutes or whatever, but these have no rhyme or reason. Chapter 2 comes in around 12 minutes (and in the middle of a scene, as are most of the others), Chapter 3 is at 18, but then Chapter 4 is around the 50 minute mark. Huh? It’s like they just dragged a few markers around the timeline in DVDStudio Pro and called it a day.

This makes the 2nd of Fessenden’s films that I have seen. The other was The Last Winter, which started OK enough but completely fell apart in its third act (which is where this film’s weaknesses lie as well, though nowhere near as crippling). Fans of his - with my feelings in mind, which of his films should I check out next?

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Return Of The Boogeyman (1994)

MAY 23, 2009

GENRE: CRAP, SUPERNATURAL (?)
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Since before I even saw the original Boogey Man, I had heard about the sequel that used a lot of footage from the original and generally sucked to boot. But since I kind of dug the first one, I wanted to see it anyway. Unfortunately, Return Of The Boogeyman is actually the THIRD film in the series; there is actually a straight up Boogeyman 2. Apparently, the thing I watched (Return) recycles footage from both 1 AND 2, which might explain why I hadn't the slightest goddamn clue what I was watching throughout most of the runtime.

Now, not having seen 2, I don't know which is footage from it and which is the new stuff. Someone on the IMDb - surely a place where no one ever exaggerates or simply makes shit up - claims that Return only has about seven minutes of new footage. If that's true, I assume its the bookends of the film, which involve the pantyhose wearing man running around on the beach while the extras pay him little mind, and then the ending where our "heroine" (so named because she is in the movie more than the other characters) gets into her car and sees the guy in her rearview mirror.

If THAT is true, and if I also take out the footage from the first movie that I can definitely place, then I guess Boogeyman 2 is about a band or group of filmmakers that live in or want to investigate the place where the murders from the first film occurred. Or something. There's also a beach house, and a psychiatrist....

Seriously, this movie is fucking appalling. Recycling footage or not, there is no excuse for it to be so goddamn incoherent, not to mention wildly inconsistent in terms of film stock. Some scenes are blue filtered, others look fine, sometimes they give the footage from the 1st movie a "flashback" look, sometimes not... even the shit in my Decrepit Crypt pack shows more professionalism.

The weirdest thing about the footage is that they apparently didn't get the rights to the audio? Because it's all but completely muted, while the girl who is telling the story (if its supposed to be the same girl that's in the scenes we are re-seeing, her name is different) just narrates exactly what we see. Also, it makes the movie look just as bad as this one. Nice work.

There is only one moment in the entire film where I was entertained. It's at the very end (the one nice thing I can say about this movie, it's short), when all the footage has been used up. Our "heroine" has seemingly rid herself of her fears by talking about things that she wasn't around to see, and then says "Now I must try on my stockings." Apparently, that was the fear she was trying to overcome; the killer in her nightmares wore pantyhose on his head, and it has kept her from being able to dress appropriately. Amazing.

And of course, now I have no choice but to see Boogeyman 2 just to ease my mind as to how all of this fucking crap fits together. Fuck you, Ulli Lommel (and listed director Deland Nuse; I guess Lommel only "directed" the footage from the other movies this time around).

What say you?

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

PLEASE, GO ON...

Ringu 0: Bâsudei (2000)

MAY 22. 2009

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

When I heard about the prequel Ringu 0: Bâsudei (The Birthday), I was intrigued, because I assumed it would be about the creation of the tape and how it got out in the first place. But no, it’s actually about how the girl in the well got there. So what I want is Ringu 0.5, or Ringu 0 Two. Call me when that one comes out.

Like Gin Gwai 2 or The Wig, it’s less a horror movie and more a sad character study about a lonely girl who already had enough problems before some ghosts or whatever entered her life. I think if I were to watch it again, knowing it wasn’t about the tape or with a lot of horror, maybe I would like it more, but it's a pretty big maybe.

One thing that certainly wouldn’t change is that it’s simply not as compelling a story as Ringu or the other films I mentioned earlier. Sure, we feel a bit bad for the girl, but we know her fate (non-spoiler - she ends up in a well), and the new story (which surrounds the production of a play) hardly picks up the slack. This time around, everyone involved with the play is being haunted by the ghost, but only like two of them die during the movie proper, only to overload the finale with a bunch of kills at once. Again, while the intent may be to focus more on character than scares, it’s still an awkward way to structure what is, in the end, a horror story. And if they want to focus on character, why not focus more (or, at all) on Sadako’s father, who is the one that kills her? His story is far more interesting (and under-developed), but yet he hardly appears in the film at all.

They also miss the opportunity to use the story to tell a mystery that Sadako would be incorrectly blamed for, which would make both this film and the films that “follow” it all the more heartbreaking. Instead, we get some weird nonsense about how Sadako has been split into two beings or something.

Another botched element is the fact that it’s supposed to be 30 years ago. Maybe a native resident can say otherwise, but to my eyes, it doesn’t look any older than the period that the other two films occur, unless you count the male lead’s sort of 70s hair. It’s easy enough to set this up via old cars, outdated electronics, etc, but the movie doesn’t have anything like that. And with everyone having nightmares of the video, it gets kind of hard to distinguish this as a prequel at all, let alone one that took place decades before.

One thing I liked; I can’t read the credits to be sure, but the score seems to be lifted or at least heavily inspired by Charles Ives’ "Unanswered Question", which is one of my favorite classical pieces (it was used in Thin Red Line as well). In fact, a lot of these J-horror films have terrific scores, and I wish there was some way of obtaining them without going into the expensive bootleg market (most of which would be written in their native language and thus I’d have no idea if I was buying the right thing or not anyway).

So I dunno... it’s nice to see a film that’s not about jump scares and long haired ghosts coming out of electronic devices, but what we get instead just wasn’t all that interesting to me. A prequel should give you a new understanding of the already existing films (even the Star Wars prequels, for all their faults, at least give you a new way of looking at Darth Vader), but this film doesn’t do that. If not for the final couple minutes, one would probably not even know it was a Ringu film at all.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Salem's Lot (1979)

MAY 21, 2009

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I’m a big Stephen King fan, and despite almost constant disappointment, I’m always game to see what Tobe Hooper’s up to. So why haven’t I watched Salem’s Lot until now? Hell, the main reason I finally rented it is just so I can watch the sequel, which stars my beloved Michael Moriarty. Also, I watch a Horror Movie A Day.

Anyway, it’s not that great of a movie. The production value is above what one would expect from a TV movie (this is back in the 70s, when a TV movie could easily be mistaken for a real movie), and the acting is good. The main problem is that they were perhaps a bit TOO faithful to the book, resulting in a fairly mechanical film. There’s little narrative flow for large sections of the film, we just see things happen because they were in the book. Someone will drive by another character, and that will be the entire scene. In the book, this was probably accompanied by some interior monologue, but on film, it’s just a guy driving by another guy. Then the scene will quickly cut to another one with little narrative consequence.

They also spend far too much time on the subplots before getting to the goddamn vampires. Like, fine, Crockett is sleeping with Cully’s wife. Do we need like 20 minutes’ worth of scenes about it? And that’s actually a deviation from the book! In the book she was just fucking around with some random dude. Now it’s Crockett, which has some benefit to the plot (he sends Cully out to get Straker's package, thus getting him out of town for a few hours so he can nail the wife), but we don’t need so much setup for a globally understood issue.

Now, I have seen the other adaptation, the TNT one from 2004. Strangely, I saw it in a theater (projected on a DVD! It was like all three mediums colliding), and I have to say it was a more successful version. It wasn’t as faithful to the novel, but it gelled better than this film does, and actually delivered some nice scares (it also got into Mears’ obsession with the house, which this version brings up early on and then more or less drops).

One thing they didn’t change which this one DID is the fact that Barlowis supposed to be a human-looking vampire. Here, he looks like the Hari-Krishna zombie from Dawn of the Dead dressed up as Nosferatu. It’s an odd choice, because a. the makeup sucks and therefore he just looks goofy instead of scary, and b. it makes Straker seem like he’s in charge, when in reality he’s more like the Renfield of the story. Luckily, James Mason (as Straker) delivers a wonderful performance (“Chow.”), which helps even things out a bit.

I can’t remember, but is the novel bookended by scenes in Guatemala? Seemed new to me. Either way, on film it doesn’t work, and the time should have been spent on a better resolution to the Susan Norton subplot, rather than have Mears randomly kill her in some other country two years later, without any buildup.

One thing I did like is the cast. David Soul was great as Mears (better than Rob Lowe, that’s for sure), as was Lance Kerwin as Mark (who has a Dracula model much like the one I just built!). And the supporting roles are filled with familiar faces, such as Fred Willard as Crockett and George Dzundza as Cully. Father Callahan kind of gets short-changed though; I think he has like three scenes. That’s no way to treat a character who will eventually travel into another series and cause everyone to hate Stephen King!

Oh, the film casts both Geoffrey Lewis and Elisha Cook Jr, which is good because it finally proves to me that they are not the same guy. Though... now that I think about it, they never share a scene....

So I dunno, it’s got some good stuff, but it’s just overlong and weightless. King has said that the edited version (which chops over an hour out!) is actually better, as it improves the pace and such. I don’t doubt it, but I also doubt I’ll take the time to watch it anytime soon (is that cut even available anymore?). Oh well, can’t win em all. And in Hooper’s case, it seems you can’t win any unless Leatherface or Steven Spielberg are involved.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Bundy: A Legacy Of Evil (2008)

MAY 20, 2009

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

Having already watched Ted Bundy, I wasn’t really expecting much out of Bundy: A Legacy Of Evil. I knew the story, read one of the books, plus I had seen the ORIGINAL Bundy film, Deliberate Stranger, when I was a kid. But surprisingly, Bundy is actually above average in the land of DTV serial killer movies, with a great lead performance from Corin Nemec to boot.

Now, I can’t recall enough about Mark Harmon’s performance to judge, or compare to Nemec’s, but I do know this: only one of these men have been voted the "Sexiest Man Alive". And the guy in Ted Bundy played him as a complete loon. Nemec, I think, perfectly nails the balance. He’s a handsome fella, but he’s a bit off, like he’s afraid to speak or trying too hard to fit in. This, as I understand from the book I read, is what Ted was like, and it’s nice to see it depicted accurately. Kane Hodder also delivers a surprisingly strong performance, though his role (a sympathetic warden) should have been thread throughout the film instead of just bookending it.

Another surprise was how non-violent the film was. There is very little on-screen violence, with only one of Ted’s attacks depicting the physical violence on the victim’s person. The others settle for Ted swinging away, but not showing the contact. Also, the “Good Samaritan” type of kills (when Ted would kill a girl who offered to help him with his books or his sailboat) are presented in a montage, again with almost zero on-screen violence. It’s refreshing.

However, the film as a whole carries the strange stigma of being inaccessible to those who aren’t familiar with the Bundy story. If you had never heard of the guy or what he did, this movie would be the last place I would start. Even Ted Bundy, with its nonsensical anachronisms and borderline comedic tone, painted a better overall picture of the guy and his crimes. Very little here seems made up or changed (though I don’t recall anything about Ted kidnapping a woman and bringing her to a deserted shack, where he would psychologically torture her), but it’s presented in a very loose manner. Here’s the time Ted escaped from jail; here’s Ted working with the future governor; here’s Ted killing the girls at the sorority, etc. I knew how all this stuff fit together, but the writer/director should not expect everyone in the audience to know those things. As a result, I’m not entirely sure what the overall point of the film is. Am I supposed to feel bad for Ted? Some scenes suggest I should. But then they also include the (true) part of Ted’s trial where he made a cop describe the murder scene in graphic detail for his own amusement, which would kill anyone’s sympathy, I would think.

But here’s the kicker. The film’s final shot faded away, and I said “OK, well, maybe once I know who wrote and/or directed this, my questions will be answered.” And then it appeared: “Written and Directed by Michael Feifer.” Feifer? The arch-nemesis of Horror Movie A Day? The man behind three of what I consider to be among the all-time worst horror films I’ve had to review? Yep, same guy. So if anything, this didn’t help at all, because now not only do I have questions about the film’s intent, I also wonder if this guy (who has several other serial killer movies on his resume) actually does have an ounce or two of talent in his body. Was this movie a fluke, or did I happen to watch his three worst movies? Or are Nemec, Hodder, the DP, the production designer (the 70s wardrobe is spot on, though they kind of botch it during a San Francisco scene, as all the extras are in modern clothing), and the composer (I LOVED the music in this movie) all so good that the lack of filmmaker talent has no effect on their respective duty? It is a mystery.

(The DVD will include Feifer’s commentary, but my screener did not have it. Maybe that some answers.)

So if you have more than a general understanding of the Ted Bundy story, this is definitely recommended. Nemec delivers a terrific performance that should not be missed. Unfortunately, if you only know Bundy by his name alone, then that performance won’t mean too much beyond “Hey, Parker Lewis can act!” (incidentally, this is Nemec’s second serial killer role - he also played Richard Speck in Chicago Massacre. Also, he played Stephen in I Know My First Name Is Stephen and appeared in another DTV movie about the Boston Strangler. Big true crime buff, I guess).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Drag Me To Hell (2009)

MAY 19, 2009

GENRE: COMEDIC, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

Back in 2007, I was at some party for the LA Film Festival, and Sam Raimi was there to present the winner of some Spider-Man 3 contest with a prize (a film scholarship, if memory serves). Afterwards, he spent a good hour making his way from point A to point B (a distance of about 30 feet) as every 20-30ish male in the room mobbed him. By the time he got close enough to me, I had already had a couple of beers, which puts me in the perfect mood to meet an icon: I’m loose enough to not clam up and stammer, but not drunk and making a fool out of myself (as I did with another icon later that year). I shook his hand, told him that I was honored to meet him, and then leaned in closer and said “Please go back to horror.” (had I already seen Spider-Man 3, I probably would have been less polite with my request). So really, I think I will take all the credit for Drag Me To Hell, because he did as I asked.

And he knocked it out of the f-ing park, if you ask me. He hasn’t made a legitimate horror film since Evil Dead 2 (no, Army of Darkness fans, your beloved film is not a horror movie. Nor is it particularly enjoyable to watch, thanks to your incessant quoting of it over the past 17 years), but he hasn’t lost his ability to fully entertain while combining slapstick-y violence with bodily fluids and monsters. Bruce Campbell might not be around, but this is more of a sequel to Evil Dead 2’s spirit than AOD ever was, and hopefully, it will go on to be the first "summer blockbuster" horror film since 1999 (Blair Witch Project and Sixth Sense).

Now, let’s get something out of the way quick: yes, it’s a PG-13 movie. Does it matter in the slightest? Well, let’s see: a little kid is killed in the first 5 minutes, half of a bank gets sprayed in blood, our heroine gets every green/black/red substance ever created for a horror movie in her mouth (and a few body parts as well), and an old woman gets her eye stapled. So... no, it doesn’t. Stop fucking whining about it. Christ, Army of Darkness would have been a PG-13 if Bruce Campbell didn’t swear so much. It’s one thing to make a PG-13 sequel to an R rated franchise like they did with Terminator; it’s another to make an intentionally fun summer rollercoaster movie with monsters and ghosts (and lots of trademark Raimi-style abuse of his actors) and get the same rating.

What’s great about the movie (even more so when you take the rating into consideration) is that there are almost zero false alarm scares. When Alison Lohman sees something by her window or hears a noise, it’s the witch (or a force acting on her behalf), not a bird or a bunch of metal hangers or a goddamn mail delivery. Not only does this keep the audience from rolling their eyes and getting annoyed, but it keeps the pace up to an overly impressive degree. Thinking back, I can’t think of a single time where the movie dragged (heh), which is even more impressive when you consider that there isn’t a particularly high body count and most of the horror/violence is directed at Lohman, who you know won’t be dying anytime soon. It’s not like Evil Dead where you have 4 other people besides Bruce for the monsters to fuck with, Lohman is the only target. Her boyfriend (Justin Long), co-workers, etc are never placed in any direct danger throughout the film.

So it’s with some remorse that I must admit Lohman’s performance is uneven. The entire movie rides on her shoulders, and she’s fine for the most part, but there are key moments that fall a bit flat due to her bizarre decision to channel original star Ellen Page at times. For the record, I think the movie would be insufferable with that talentless bore in the lead (she dropped out supposedly for scheduling conflicts, but she has no movie coming out. I suspect she realized that being tossed around and getting puked on would be too far outside her range of playing her unlikable self in every movie). But it seems like there are a few “ironic” lines that were added to the script to accommodate Page’s razor-thin range, and that Lohman figured she’d say them exactly as Page would. It’s really odd. Other times she simply doesn’t react at all to the nuttiness around her. It’s not too damaging, and she’s terrific in some of the scenes (the car fight, for example), but it’s a shame that someone who really would have dove 100% into the role wasn’t hired instead (Anna Faris would have been a godsend).

But that’s about the only bad thing I have to say about the movie. Otherwise, it delivers on every level that I hoped it would, and surprisingly lives up to the hype that has been surrounding it since the entire horror community seemingly snuck into the test screening for it a few months ago (I was stuck at work and couldn’t go). Raimi fans will be pleased to know that the Oldsmobile and Ted Raimi make appearances (Ted’s is nearly impossible to detect though), and his usual gonzo camerawork is on full display. Whereas the Spider-Man films (and obviously, his more dramatic work like Simple Plan and For Love of The Game) had to settle for mere glimpses of his style, this is 100% unmistakably a Raimi film, making even Quick and the Dead look subtle in comparison. Some have balked at the use of CGI over practicals, but other than a quick shot of a possessed farm animal and some gags involving things going inside of people’s mouths/nostrils/etc (by the way - like yesterday’s Grace, this movie features a fly going into someone’s nose), it all looked great to me (and the farm animal part is so funny I wouldn’t care if it was drawn with a crayon).

In the end, it’s a blast from start to finish. I can’t recall the last major studio horror movie that left me cheering and laughing and smiling the whole way through, without a shred of irony. Hell, even Shaun of the Dead got sappy near the end. There are some minor plot contrivances (does everyone carry a plain white envelope with them at all times?), but they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. And I LOVE that in a month with hundreds of millions being spent on underwhelming spectacle (Wolverine) or dull adaptations (Angels & Demons), Sam Raimi comes along with a comparatively small and ORIGINAL movie, beating them at their own game by doing the whole “summer movie” thing completely right for a fraction of the cost.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Grace (2009)

MAY 18, 2009

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

As I near 1000 reviews for Horror Movie A Day (!!!), I find myself trying to think of films that truly disturbed or unnerved me. Very few come to mind, and some, like Last House In The Woods, merely made me gag or momentarily queasy. Others, such as Martyrs, just made me feel a bit apologetic, as the neighbors could probably hear the sound of a woman screaming for nearly 40 minutes straight. Really, there are only two that I can think of that truly left me uncomfortable, giving me that whole “still thinking about it the next day” reaction I always hear about but rarely experience. One is Dread, which I just saw last week, and now we have Grace, which is another film that seems designed to make carnivores rethink their ways, amongst other things.

As Grace is not out yet, I have no desire to spoil any of the film beyond what you may know from reading about it on horror sites. It’s about a woman named Madeline (played by Jordan Ladd, carrying the film and doing a pretty damn good job if I do say so my damn self) who is in a car crash near the end of her pregnancy, which kills her husband and her unborn child. However, she decides to carry the fetus to term, against the wishes of pretty much everyone else in her life. And when the baby (Grace) is born, Madeline’s seemingly insane desire proves to be the right call, as Grace suddenly returns to life. But something’s wrong with her eating habits...

And that’s all I’d like to say for now. Unlike most horror films, this is the type of movie that demands a “the less you know the better” approach. Furthermore, I urge you NOT to watch the trailer that is currently online, as it gives away more than I would have liked even for a regular movie. I can understand why they would want to entice viewers by showing them some “highlights”, but this is not a slasher movie. Its success stems from the subtle storytelling, the realistic approach, and the unnerving tone that the film conveys almost from the start, with occasional jolts of surprising violence that should be as shocking to the audience as they are to the characters. The trailer, in my opinion, severely dulls the effectiveness of those moments.

Luckily for writer/director Paul Solet, the film as a whole still works as intended. This is not a crowd-pleasing, applaud at the ending type movie. There is only a single moment of levity in the entire film, and even that is only “funny” if you recognize the person saying the line. And like I said earlier, it sticks with you. The movie seems to be making a slight dig at vegetarianism, but at the same time, it doesn’t exactly glorify the act of getting meat from a butcher shop. Hell, I made myself a roast beef sandwich the next morning, and had to pause for a moment to consider whether I should just have some soup instead. Speaking of food, it’s amazing how Solet and his DP (Zoran Popovic) managed to make me feel uneasy just from someone eating a salad, and that’s before Grace is born. Closeups of shredded lettuce and other ingredients managed to make me as uncomfortable as the occasional bloodshed, and I don’t think I’ll ever touch another glass of soy milk.

The film is a feature version of a short film that Solet did a few years ago. I have never seen the short, but I think I can spot the things that were added to help pad the film out to a feature length. However, unlike some films (Sam’s Lake comes to mind), I never got the impression that they were reaching to get to an 80 minute runtime; if anything, these scenes (mostly revolving around Madeline’s mother-in-law) just help extend the uneasy feeling the Madeline/Grace scenes provide. Slightly less successful is a subplot about Madeline’s midwife, with whom she had a lesbian affair with in college. The woman is clearly still in love with Madeline, and dreams of going off together with her and the baby. It’s not damaging in any way, but it’s also slightly underdeveloped, and the two characters are kept apart for a large chunk of the film that keeps the subplot’s resolution from having as much of an impact as it could if they had another scene or two together. However, the upside to that is that by not stopping to discuss their relationship history, the film never really eases up on the tension.

Now, as you might have figured out by now, I am not a woman. I will more than likely never be pregnant, so in a way it’s even more impressive how upsetting the various scenes that revolve around motherhood were (it’s worth noting that the two folks who reportedly fainted during the film’s Sundance premiere were both dudes). Show me a guy getting his head cut off or intestines pulled out, and I’m fine. Show me a woman leaking blood from a troubled pregnancy, and I need to look at the floor for a while. The difference is, of course, that Madeline’s troubles are realistically depicted, and Solet never goes for cheap shock value (this ain’t It’s Alive). And the film never betrays that realistic tone; even though the plot may seem slightly outlandish, it always feels 100% real, which is damn near unheard of in a horror movie, even those based on true stories.

Plus, the movie is just damned sad. Grace is Madeline’s 3rd attempt at having a child, and I’m sure she would have preferred a normal pregnancy, and that her husband be alive to watch the child grow. It’s strange to think, but despite the fact that 99.999999% of horror movies have someone die (damn you Poltergeist!), it’s rare that any of them really deal with grief. And we are spared melodrama; Ladd doesn’t curl up with her husband’s favorite sweater or stare longingly at their wedding photo or any of that Lifetime movie nonsense. But Ladd conveys the loss all the same, as does the mother-in-law, who grieves in a wholly different and rather icky way.

And what the hell? This is the 2nd film in a row that depicted a nipple in the most horrifying state possible. After teeth, any sort of infliction on a nipple causes me serious discomfort. And unlike Big Man Japan, it’s not played for laughs here, so I don’t care for this coincidence. If tomorrow’s Drag Me To Hell has any nipple-based horror, I am quitting Horror Movie A Day for good.

In short, no, this movie won’t be for everyone. It’s slightly depressing, it’s not built around spectacle or jump scares, and it’s unnerving to the point where I wanted to ask if we could pause it for a while (I suspect DVD viewers will find themselves taking “breathers”, something a captive theatergoer cannot do). It’s - shock - a horror film for intelligent adults, and kudos to Solet, producer Adam Green, and everyone else for NOT taking the easy route by pooling their talent and resources only to make a typical horror film, as others would. Anchor Bay will be distributing the film, and I hope to hell it gets a release at least as big as Hatchet’s, if not larger. Movies like this could help change their image from “the guys who put out Evil Dead DVDs” to “the guys who release really great horror movies that the big studios never would”.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Big Man Japan (2007)

MAY 17, 2009

GENRE: COMEDIC, MOCKUMENTARY, MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I’ve never been a big fan of old school Japanese monster movies (i.e. Godzilla). I mean, I get why folks like em, but unless he’s knocking down buildings and fighting other monsters for the entire movie (no plot, no human characters, no message!), I got better things to do. However, Big Man Japan (Japan: Dai-Nipponjin) sounded too great to ignore: a “documentary” about a man whose job is fighting these monsters, which in Japan are commonplace. Brilliant!

And at times it is. Not only is the humor very dry, which is just how I like it, but there are scenes that left me damn near hysterical with laughter, because they were so outlandish and yet on the surface, humdrum. For example, at one point he has to take care of a monster that is waiting to mate. It’s not really harming anyone, but it releases an odor that allegedly smells as bad as 10,000 human feces, so naturally no one wants him around. Big Man Japan tells it to leave, and the two argue. It’s just like something you might see on a particularly low-key episode of Cops (“You’re trespassing!”), but the fact that it’s between a 20 story monster and a 20 story guy in purple underwear makes it a delightfully strange and hilarious sequence; a monster “fight” without any actual violence. And while they sometimes go a bit too long with it in between monster fights, the stuff with Big Man Japan as a normal sized adult, just doing his thing, are often pretty great as well. He lives a pretty simple life, and takes everything in stride (he is not a very popular hero, for reasons that are never quite made clear). The “documentarians” will often try to get him to tell an exciting story, but he’s content with talking about seaweed or his umbrella.

The movie also has what may be the most horrifying visual I’ve seen in a genre film in the past 10 years. BMJ needs electricity to grow into giant man size, and the electricity is conducted via his nipples. It’s not so bad in the present day, but a flashback to the first time he had this done has some botched results, and the image hits lamprey fingers levels of “GAH!”

What keeps the movie from being an A+ classic, however, is the rather botched fight scenes. They are done with purposely cartoon-y CG, and I don’t mind that so much (it’s supposed to be a documentary; a guy in a suit would look way wrong). What I DO mind is that in these scenes you never see any pedestrians, cars, buses, etc. I love the concept that monsters are a common thing in Tokyo, but the film never really visualizes this (i.e. a monster smashing stuff while nearby folks ignore him). In fact, the hardest I laughed thru the entire movie was during the film’s one shot of a monster interacting with normal sized beings (his foot is blocking traffic and he kicks one of the honking cars, but he does so out of frustration rather than any sort of malicious intent).

Also, there are some go nowhere plot threads. We start getting the impression that his agent has been stealing money from him (she buys new cars, but he’s supposedly only making a couple thousand a month), but she never gets any sort of comeuppance. There is a scene where the documentary guys do some “man on the street” interviews, but there should have been a few of them, to get a sense of how BMJ was faring with the average man as different events in the film occur. Also, the ending comes out of nowhere and yet goes on too long as well, without even the slightest hint as to what the hell is going on (it’s also fucking hilarious, but still, I would gladly sacrifice a few laughs for a conclusion that wraps up the storyline).

Speaking of the ending, my best guess is that it’s some strange dig on the Americans. The whole movie has been CGI, but then, before the shift, a message says “We now bring the final battle LIVE!” or something to that effect, and instead of CGI we get men in suits and cheesy models. So - Japanese style = real? But the other heroes in the scene are obviously American, and they save the day, so I dunno. At any rate, it just not a very smooth transition, and taking 105 minutes to set up a 10 minute punchline seems a bit counterproductive.

Still, you can’t dismiss how it manages to be low-key and ridiculous at the same, not to mention that the concept is nothing short of brilliant. I read a while ago that Trey Parker and Matt Stone were making a movie on the same lines (an American family goes to Japan and discovers that monsters and such are real, and that the Godzilla films and their ilk were sent to warn us), but I don’t think they are still making it. So watch this instead!

What say you?

P.S. Los Angeles based readers - you know that earthquake that hit around 8 o clock tonight? I was in the theater for it! It didn’t happen during a monster scene, but it was still pretty epic to be watching a monster movie and feel the ground literally shake beneath you. Also, most folks in the theater had no reaction to it whatsoever, which kind of fit into the film’s “it happens” attitude. Also it proved I did a good job hanging some art in my apartment earlier in the day, because they didn’t fall down.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Slaughter High (1986)

MAY 16, 2009

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

So last night, I had to emergency fill in for Ryan Rotten at his own screening of The Car at the New Bev, but to make up for his absence (and forcing the crowd to deal with me for ten minutes when they wanted the movie to start) he gave me some DVDs to give out as prizes. One of them was Slaughter High, and thus I asked the question “What is my birthday?” so I could answer it and keep it for myself. Take that, Rotten!

I had seen Slaughter High when I was about 14, but only the one time, so I couldn’t really remember much about it. A few things lingered, such as the fact that two of the group stop to fuck when they are already aware of a killer on the loose and have seen at least two of their friends die, and that the finale took place during the day, which is pretty rare for a slasher.

What I couldn’t remember was how much they botched trying to pass off these folks as a. teens (and then early 20s), and b. Americans. Most of them look late 20s at best (why they opted to say its only five years later instead of ten is beyond me), but the lead, the beautiful Caroline Munro, is easily 35 or so here. We’re all used to having to buy the “young” version of these folks in the prologue (nothing can ever top Family Man’s attempt to pass Nic Cage off as a 22 year old in the opening scene), but it’s another thing when they still look too old for their age during the actual movie part of the movie. And the accents! Munro is OK, but there’s a blond guy who has the thickest German accent this side of the tiny footed terrorist in Die Hard. There’s also a Scot who might as well be the groundskeeper (you better get that joke) and another guy who sounds suspiciously Russian.

The setting is also botched, but in a way that makes the premise even more ridiculous. It takes place on April Fool’s Day (the idea that these people thought they were going to a reunion in April is the least of the plot’s problems), and Munro’s character somehow figures out that because of the date, they only have to survive until noon, because then “April Fool’s Day is over and Marty will stop”. Well, yes, IN EUROPE that’s how April Fool’s Day works. Here in the real world of America, we celebrate that shit all day! Marty can kill you at 4 pm if he wants!

Anyway, the movie definitely has its charms. For starters, the Jester mask is pretty creepy. You don’t often get a slasher with a costume that might keep him from walking through a narrow doorway. Also, as I said, the finale takes place during the day, which I really dig. Usually in a slasher, morning = safety, but it’s actually the most suspenseful part of the movie. The kill scenes are usually lacking in buildup - Marty just appears and kills someone the instant they are alone, so to have him actually doing some stalking is a welcome addition to his MO. And the school is pretty interesting for a location (one benefit of the UK setting - the high school resembles an old castle instead of an industrial building like most American high schools).

On the other hand, the pacing is way off. The prologue takes 20 minutes to rip off the 5 minute opening of Terror Train, and another 20 before anyone dies. Then, the first death of a “group” member occurs in front of everyone else, which means that the rest of the movie finds all of our heroes knowing they are in danger. Not only does it make their actions even stupider (if they went to high school there, shouldn’t they know people in the neighborhood that can come help?), but it keeps the suspense/stalking out of the proceedings. Plus, even if we ignore that they don’t have much of a problem with the fact that they are the only 8 people to go to the high school reunion (to be fair, we only see about a dozen total students in the prologue to begin with), none of them show up with a date?

Also, given that the film is from the producers of Pieces, it feels a bit tamer than it should. And it seems that it was designed that way, with added gore tossed in later, regardless of whether it made sense in the context of how the person died. Hence why someone who just got electrocuted in a tub suddenly melts, and why a guy who swallowed acid suddenly has his intestines expand until they burst through his belly.

I can’t make up my mind when it comes to the score though. It’s Harry Manfredini, so you know that you’re going to be hearing slight variations on his Friday the 13th score (which was just a slight variation on the Psycho theme to begin with). But, for once, he actually composed some original music! It’s overly synth-y and cheesy, but at least it’s new, and breaks up the monotony of wondering which note he will change the next time he needs to recycle some of his Friday score (which at one point he does on purpose, as a guy wears a Jason mask to scare the others).

Manfredini’s contributions to other horror movies are mentioned in the "trivia track", which is the only extra feature of note on the (full frame) disc. It’s a pretty shitty track; not only is it maddeningly infrequent (there are maybe 35 total factoids over the entire film), but half the time it’s providing trivia about shit that has nothing to do with Slaughter High. By the end of the film, you will know who invented the Bunsen burner, how Hitler was involved with Volkswagen, the ending of Night of the Living Dead, and the name of the first Hammer film (which wasn’t even a horror movie). You will NOT learn, for instance, why the film has three listed directors, why Simon Scuddamore (Marty) committed suicide, who designed the Jester mask, or any of the other things a fan would actually want to know. Worse, all of the facts are presented as true or false questions, and every single one of them is true (doing it this way takes up 2x as many title cards, which was probably how they tried to hide what little information they actually had to use). Some things are also just plain wrong, such as when they refer to Cutting Class as a spinoff of this movie. In short, don’t bother.

Basically, the only reason to watch the movie is for its occasional charm, and to recall the twilight years of a beloved era of slasher films. I can think of a hundred better examples, but I can think of twice as many that are worse. And since there has never been a really good school-set slasher, it’s not like it’s weighing down a respected section of the entire slasher canon.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Skin Crawl (2007)

MAY 15, 2009

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

The best thing I can say about Skin Crawl is that it’s only 75 minutes long, which allows you to watch it, shake your head, and forget all about it for little more than the time it takes to do the same for yet another disposable episode of Smallville or Sarah Connor Chronicles. But, at the same time, at least you can say that any episode of either of those shows has a discernible point, which Crawl clearly does not (but it does have a lot of nudity, so I guess it evens out).

For starters, after a hilariously inept and overlong prologue set in ye olde times (the actual date isn’t given, and the costumes of the three bad guys don’t quite match, one looks like a Revolutionary War soldier, the others look like early 20th century beggars) that concerns a trio of women who may be witches, we spend a good 50 minutes detailing the account of a love quadrangle between truly wretched and boring people. One of them has the sexual libido of a 14 year old boy, and even allows one of the guys to fuck her up the ass, so by default she’s OK, but there wasn’t a single one of them I wanted to spend a minute with, let alone a movie.

Let me explain the plot briefly, such as it is: Debbie Rochon is married to an asshole who is fucking some other broad (Julian Wells), who has her own boyfriend. Wells and the boyfriend plan to convince the asshole to have Rochon killed by hitmen. Wells claims to know the guys to do it, and gets him to fork over 100k for the murder. As soon as Rochon is killed, Wells dumps the asshole and goes back to her boyfriend to split the money.

So you might read that and wonder how this is a horror movie, beyond the witch stuff at the beginning. Well, Rochon comes back to life (or not, the clumsy direction never makes it clear if it’s real or a dream) and kills her asshole husband, Wells, and the boyfriend. But that’s only the final 5 minutes of the movie, and the opening stuff with the witches is never addressed, explained, or mentioned ever again. There are two other witches, where are they? Skin Crawl 2 and 3?

Really, the movie is the world’s lamest soft-core porn (director Justin Wingenfeld has an extensive background of acting in films like Gladiator Eroticvs: The Lesbian Warriors). The film is only 75 minutes long (with credits over black, lots of flashbacks, and the end credits) and yet there are about six sex scenes (plus the least convincing rape scene in film history). None of them are particularly erotic or interesting, and they all involve Wells (Rochon remains clothed throughout the entire film). I was hoping at least the ass-fucking scene would be good, since the plot actually revolves around it (the film’s best moment is when Wells shouts “I’m not the one who had my wife killed so his girlfriend would let him fuck her in the ass!”), but it’s probably the weakest.

They also botch things by having Erin Brown né Misty Mundae in a small role. Since she already starred in what is likely the definitive “Don’t be a shitty husband” morality horror tale, the short(ish) film In The Wall, having her here just reminds us of how awful it is. Speaking of short films, maybe without the witch crap at the beginning this could be a halfway decent Tales From The Crypt episode (I wouldn’t be surprised if an actual episode had a similar premise), as the zombie ending would be an actual surprise instead of what we are waiting for the entire movie, but even then the story would require padding.

So what does Wingenfeld do, as this is a full length movie (sort of)? Well, he recycles footage over and over, flashing back to things we just saw. Sometimes it’s in a Tarantino-y way, where we SEE something else while HEARING the old dialogue (like in Pulp Fiction when we hear Honey Bunny and Pumpkin talking as we watch Jules and Vincent), but more often than not it’s just the same footage we already saw, and the plot is hardly complicated, which renders it wholly unnecessary. He also helpfully inserts “proof” for some things for no reason. Like when the husband says “I don’t think she suspects a thing” to Wells, Wingenfeld cuts back to a scene where Rochon is telling her friend how she suspects that he is having an affair, a scene we saw some five minutes before. Thanks for thinking that the audience is so stupid that they can’t remember key dialogue from mere moments before, buddy! He also, as I mentioned, piles on the sex scenes, as well as other superfluous nonsense like the two hitmen arguing about how many car lengths to keep apart even though we never see them driving except when they pull up to the deserted murder spot, when keeping car lengths apart wouldn’t matter.

The movie has a commentary track with Wingenfeld, producer Michael Raso, and DP John Paul Fedele, and it’s the rare case in which listening to the track makes me actually dislike a movie more. They trash “Tarantino knockoffs” because of all the fake dialogue, despite the fact that their film has people saying things like, well, “I’m not the one who had my wife killed so his girlfriend would let him fuck her in the ass!”. One of them also says how he dislikes the horror sections of the film (the first 10 minutes and final five), preferring the “meat” of the ugly and boring affair/murder plot. And when someone has the audacity to point out a technical error such as the lighting or whatever, the other two are quick to defend it. At the vague ending of the movie, they criticize “Hollywood movies” for spoon-feeding the audience, despite, as I’ve said, their movie being padded with flashbacks to remind us of things we had just seen. In short, it’s a fucking pointless, arrogant, hypocritical commentary, because it should be 75 minutes of the participants alternating between making fun of it and apologizing to anyone who bothered to watch it. Instead, we get this gem: “You don’t have to be a professional filmmaker to make a film. Anybody can be a filmmaker.” He says over the definitive argument against such a sentiment. And this is before they mock Francis Ford Coppola, despite the fact that it’s probably easier to find someone who loves Jack than someone who even mildly enjoys this piece of shit.

There are also some interviews on the DVD, but fuck you, movie.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Vampire Hunter (2004)

MAY 14, 2009

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

I have a tough time buying the excuse “We didn’t have enough money” when it comes to shitty independent horror movies. Because while I don’t doubt that they didn’t have a blank check to work with, it seems to suggest that they were being forced to make a movie in the first place. Look, if nothing else, this site proves that there are plenty of horror movies to go around, so if you can’t afford to make a movie at least LOOK good on basic technical levels, then don’t bother making it until you can. There is no hole your movie needs to fill. Such is a lesson I would like to bestow on Sean Gallimore, the director, writer, star, choreographer, producer, editor, camera operator and sound effects guru of Vampire Hunter, which single-handedly reduces my expectation of what a movie on the Decrepit Crypt set can look like.

Since there’s no point rambling on about the dumb plot, horrid pace, and complete lack of actors who seem the slightest bit interested in what they are doing (since they are very likely friends of Gallimore who begged them to wake up early on a weekend to be in his vampire movie), I will just offer some advice to Mr. Gallimore and any other filmmaker attempting to make their own epic without any resources whatsoever or the humor to suggest that they were at least having fun doing it (like Suburban Sasquatch).

1. Use appropriate sets. Why all of these vampires seem to congregate around what appears to be a high school art room is beyond me, but it’s a completely ridiculous image, made worse by the fact that about 1/3 of the movie takes place there. Vampires should hang out in dark, kind of creepy areas, not brightly lit galleries with a painting of the Jack of Spades on the wall. Also, maybe it was supposed to be a funny character quirk, but when our title character is supposed to be a badass and he has a room full of action figures and Star Wars posters, I don’t see anything but a nerdy dude trying to look like a badass in a goofy vampire movie.

2. Hire an actor for the lead. It’s nice that you can wear so many hats, but maybe focusing a bit more on those behind the scenes roles will result in a better movie, while an actual actor handles the performance on which the entire film rests. Nearly every city has a community theatre group that will almost definitely have an age-appropriate actor who will be willing to donate his time in exchange for a lead role to put on his reel.

3. Get a boom mic. Luckily the movie isn’t too talky, but all of the audio in the film sounds like it was recorded through a wall, because the in-camera mic wasn’t very good. Since this was a camcorder-shot movie (it was filmed in 1995 and not completed until 2004 - because the time for Vampire Hunter had finally come, I guess), the mic was only designed to pick up the sounds of your children’s delight as they open their birthday gifts, or merely distinguish which of the two people in a homemade sex tape was moaning and grunting. Even the thing I bought for 10 bucks at Best Buy to record our audio commentaries produces a crisper sound than this film does; imagine what 50 or maybe 100 bucks can get you!

4. Learn how to import/export your footage properly. There is no reason why the film should have a horizontal blur at the bottom of the screen, a vertical pink bar on the right, and several bars of video noise running throughout the film. I’ve used a camcorder to make a movie myself, and it looked a fuck of a lot better when I put it on a VHS tape to show my friends (which is where the film’s lifeline ended - I wouldn’t dare think to shop it out to a distribution company and ultimately charge people 40 cents a piece to see it). If your footage looked like that from the start, then you A. need a new camera and B. should be focusing on that instead of making your movie (which presumably was made to show off your skills), as no one will take you seriously when the first 5 minutes contain just about every mark of an amateur production in the book (and a few new ones).

5. I’ve said this one a lot, but it bears repeating: learn the 180 rule. It’s OK to break it in certain circumstances, but two guys talking in their cars is not one of them. It’s a pretty easy rule to follow. When filming a conversation, think about how it will be edited together. If one guy is looking toward the right side of the screen, then the other guy should be looking toward the left.

6. Use less wipes. It’s clear that you are a Star Wars fan, and maybe a simple push would have been OK. An animated wipe that could best be described as “Paint Splatter Wipe” has no business in a humorless vampire film.

7. After your first day of filming, re-watch the movies that clearly inspired you (in this case, Blade seems a likely candidate). Compare the footage, and try to list at least 3 positive things your movie offers that the big movie did not. If it does not, then by all means shoot your movie for the learning experience, but for the love of Christ, don’t put it out on the market for people to pay for. Assuming my advice is not taken, what good did it do Gallimore to shop this movie around? The film’s IMDb page carries no user comments, no message board postings, no external reviews, and only 11 votes (half of which are apparently from the film’s production as they give it a 10), so clearly it hasn’t even found an audience wide enough for someone to bother writing “Worst movie ever!” on the message board. So it’s theoretically possible that the only person beyond your own cast/crew has seen the movie is me, and I am almost annoyed to having had to waste a daily entry on it (I was stuck at work and had nothing else but the Decrepit disc, and it was the shorter of the two movies on the disc that I hadn’t seen yet). No one wins.

Thank you,
BC

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Tremors 3: Back To Perfection (2001)

MAY 13, 2009

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

Since the days of Sega Genesis, I’ve always liked it when a game would have you find items and make a weapon out of it. The Home Alone game had you make your own traps, the No Escape game had you make your own bomb and other items, etc. I don’t know why I always like this aspect of gaming, but I’ve actually bought games just to try out their building mechanic (the newest Banjo Kazooie game, which lets you build your own weapon-based cars!). This applies to movies too (Real Men, when Jim Belushi makes that gun out a tin can and some nails or whatever? Awesome!), so it’s not much of a surprise that my favorite part of Tremors 3: Back To Perfection is when Burt and the others run around a junkyard looking for parts to make a potato gun. If they ever make a Tremors videogame, they should have a level based on this, especially if they want to reach the lucrative "BC" market.

So it’s good that I like such things, because the movie as a whole is a bit of a dud. For starters, it’s almost the exact same movie as Tremors 2, in that some new Graboids come around, our hero from the last movie teams up with a new guy who is looking to make a quick buck to take them out, which they do, easily, only to discover that there is a new form of Graboid that they don’t quite know how to deal with yet. Along the way, Burt makes lots of jokes about what a war-crazy nut he is, people stand on rocks, we see that the town cashes in on their notoriety, some government types come along, etc, etc. Even for a DTV movie, it’s pretty goddamn lackluster, and that’s even more of a crime when you consider that it’s from the same guys who made the enjoyable last film.

Another pretty damaging aspect is the CGI. It’s fucking terrible throughout, with the Shriekers and the new things (they fly) just sort of floating around when they walk (though at least they have shadows) instead of having any real weight. There’s also a scene where an old-school big-ass Graboid pops out of the ground, and when he goes back down there’s no hole in the ground, because the CGI compositor guy didn’t bother to think things through.

Speaking of the ground, why is it that these things never really “break” the ground that pops up as they tunnel along? Everything always goes back neatly in place. You’d think there’d be some pretty torn up landscape in this place by now.

Also, and this would annoy me even if I liked the movie: why do these goddamn movies keep getting longer? The whole concept of DTV is built around the idea that they are “less” than their theatrical counterparts, so why is it that the 96 minute original got a 100 minute sequel, and now this one is 105 minutes? That’s ten more minutes of less impressive visuals, acting, story, humor, etc.

Well, at least the humor works at times. I loved the comic book gag at the beginning, with a new comic called Graboids vs Shriekers on the stands. And someone actually calls them “Tremors” only to be corrected, heh. Burt’s gun-crazy ways aren’t as amusing anymore, so thankfully it’s kept to a minimum (likely the result of the fact that he’s the hero now, not the comic relief - Fred Ward’s character has gone off and built an amusement park). And while I’m not a fan of toilet humor in movies, I have to at least respect the audacity to introduce the idea that the monsters can fly only once they’ve farted.

And, you know, it’s still a Tremors movie. There’s something appealing about the concept as a whole that kept me at least mildly charmed by what was on the screen. A lot of the secondary characters from the original are back in this one (a total of five characters, all played by their original actors, as opposed to just two in Tremors 2), so that’s nice. One of them even has a surprising death that bummed me out, which is sad but also good - it’s the only death in the film that carried any weight. But besides that character, and Burt, the others are sort of kept on the sidelines during the monster scenes. Again, the lack of a population sort of takes away the suspense factor, because you know none of our three leads are going to die, so the movie would have benefited from putting the others in danger more often. But like I said, the movie is as rote as you can get, so that would have required putting some effort into it.

The DVD’s only feature is the “Universal Spotlight on Location”, a bland EPK thing that I have seen enough on Uni’s other DVDs, so I felt no need to bother even putting it on as background noise. As Mitch Hedberg once said, “I ate one anchovy, and that is why I did not eat two anchovies.”

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Grudge 3 (2009)

MAY 12, 2009

GENRE: GHOST, POSSESSION
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

You know, I have a bone to pick with screenwriter Brad Keene. When I sit down to watch a Grudge movie, I expect to be completely baffled at all times, have no idea how one scene connects to the next, and generally feel sort of stupid. So why did he write a relatively coherent script for The Grudge 3? Why is it that I understood who the characters were and how they related to one another? How is this a Grudge movie?!?!?!

In all seriousness, Grudge 3 is indeed the most coherent of the entire series thus far (including the Japanese originals, and the original Japanese originals). It is structured in order instead of jumping around time (occasional brief flashbacks to the original murders of Toshio and Kayako are in black and white, so they are easy to distinguish), and instead of jumping around the globe like the last movie, here we are pretty much confined to the apartment building in Chicago where a third of that movie took place (the only returning cast member is Matthew Knight, the kid from Grudge 2 who I thought died at the end but I guess not).

The problem is, the story itself has long since worn thin. Slasher movies and Godzilla sequels can get away with doing the same thing over and over, because they are based more on the spectacle than the story (“Come see Godzilla vs. Whatevra! They smash entirely different buildings!!!”). That is not the case with ghost/haunting type movies (especially this series, which is almost entirely story based and keeps killing everyone off, so they can’t even focus on a memorable protagonist for an audience to latch on to), and while you can get away with maybe one sequel, two is really pushing it.

Oddly, this was proven without a doubt with Poltergeist III, a film that Grudge 3 has a surprising lot in common with. Both films are set in a Chicago apartment building instead of the suburban homes featured in the previous films, both have almost entirely new casts, and both feature a young couple sneaking around the building with a set of keys that the female of the pair lifted from a family member.

And much like Poltergeist III was the first one of the series to actually kill characters, Grudge 3 is the first one with explicit gore and even a splash of nudity, as it has an R rating instead of the PG-13 originals. It doesn’t add a hell of a lot to the proceedings, but there is some novelty in seeing these familiar ghosts (well, sort of familiar - the roles of Toshio and Kayako have obviously been recast) tearing people’s throats out and shit.

Now, for what it’s worth, it’s actually a pretty good movie on its own accord, and had I never seen any of the others, I’d probably be pretty happy with it. Toby Wilkins (who previously helmed the solid Splinter) manages to wring a few scares out of the material. There’s a scene where Kayako kills an artist in her apartment that had some pretty creepy visuals, and there is even a new ghost to contend with, who has a severed spinal cord and moves accordingly (i.e. not very well). Unfortunately she is only introduced in the film’s final ten minutes - had the plot been structured in a way that she appeared sooner, they could have had a more memorable final film.

Another thing I liked is Toshio’s newfound appreciation of children’s toys. A Mr. Potato Head is actually used for a scare scene, and he also moves a little girl’s doll house occupants around. Why he has taken to simple trickery, I don’t know, but it’s amusing to see a goddamn Mr. Potato Head sitting on the floor accompanied by ominous music.

One thing I most certainly did NOT like was the severe lack of Shawnee Smith. I love Ms. Smith dearly, and will watch her in anything (for example, I watched Scream Queens). But her role is confined to about three scenes of 4-5 minutes each, and she’s only there to provide some exposition to our heroine. Making matters worse, Smith essentially passes the torch to our heroine (Lisa, played by Johanna E. Braddy), who is a wholly unlikable character. She continually shirks her responsibilities to fuck her boyfriend inside vacant apartments (I hope they are cleaning up before showing them to prospective tenants), and could seemingly care less about her sickly little sister.

Her worst offense, however, is when Kayako’s sister comes along and tells her that she needs her help to stop the curse. Now, Lisa’s older brother is the landlord, and thus having a full building of tenants is important to their financial and living security. But it seems every tenant is either dead or moving away because of all of the deaths. So, considering all that, you’d think she’d be all gung ho about putting an end to it, for her family’s sake. But no, she instantly refuses to help get rid of the curse, without even listening to what she would have to do in order to help. For all we know, Kayako’s sister just wanted her to say a prayer. Bitch.

The DVD doesn’t have a lot of extras, but they are at least pretty good for the most part. You can certainly skip the deleted scenes; only one of them is of minor interest. But the two featurettes are interesting, one deals with filming in Bulgaria (the Chicago apartment set was completely rebuilt, and they did a hell of a job fooling me), and the other discusses the new ghost. They both have a lot of spoilers (the ghost one has a clip of the film’s final shot!), so don’t watch them until after you’ve seen the movie. I only say this because of all the commentaries I listen to where they say “I hope you’re not watching this first, because we’re going to spoil things!”, so there must be a number of morons who save the film for last when going through a DVD.

So I dunno, your call. If you love love love the other films in the series, you will probably enjoy this one as well, as it has its own identity while still fitting nicely into the mythos. If you’re like me and never cared much for any of them, this one probably won’t change your tune, but you will hopefully appreciate that they have finally figured out how to tell the story coherently. And with gore. It’s a shame that the unparalleled box office failure of The Grudge 2 (the only film to open at more than 20 million and not even make 40 million total) resulted in this once powerhouse franchise already going direct to DVD, but it’s even more of a shame when you consider that it does so with a technically superior entry.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Suburban Sasquatch (2004)

MAY 11, 2009

GENRE: COMEDIC (?), INDEPENDENT, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

Today’s review owes its existence to Simon Barrett. After recording the 2nd commentary for our Horror People, Dear Reader video podcast, we began to toss out ideas for the next film. I handed him my budget packs, since 99% of the movies on them are in the public domain. It didn’t take long for him to zero in on a title: Suburban Sasquatch. He more or less demanded that it be our next film, and I decided to watch it the next day (today) - Simon likes to go in blind for these things, but I like a little familiarity.

And man oh man, I’m glad I did, because watching this movie once will simply not be enough. It just ended and I already want to watch it again. Not that it’s good in the traditional sense, heavens no. Its inept on every level, glacially paced, and features an endless array of visual effects that are as terrible as they are unnecessary (for example, the CGI net seen below - because simply obtaining a real net would be too much of a bother).

So why would I want to watch it again? You only need to take a look at the clip below for at least three examples (sadly, that cute and hilarious host girl is not in the film). How would anyone ever tire of watching a guy in a gorilla suit wave his arms around, making a sound that sounds suspiciously like a .WAV from Yar’s Revenge crossed with a guy going "RAWR RAWR RAWR!", as helpless victims act scared (or at least, mildly inconvenienced) as their CGI limbs fly through the air, breaking all laws of motion in the process? Shit, I could easily watch this movie all day.

What makes this movie so amazing is how sincerely it seems to be told. I don’t QUITE get the idea that the filmmakers or actors knew that they were making the least professional movie of all time. I can be sure that they know they’re not going to rival King Kong (or even King Kong Lives), but it’s also missing that winking feeling that you get from movies like Die You Zombie Bastards. It’s more or less played straight, limitations of budget, talent, and resources be damned.

You can sense the trouble right from the start, as a pair of vacationers drive around 8 miles an hour on a backwoods road. At least six times during this sequence, we cut to a shot of Suburban Sasquatch watching them drive past him. Either he is running ahead and finding a new hiding spot from which to observe them, or the director wasn’t really thinking (later we discover that Suburban Sasquatch actually does have the power of teleportation, but whether this is explained I’m not sure, as I missed a few plot points here and there while running over to my PC to tell people how much they had to see this movie). Finally, Suburban Sasquatch appears in front of the car, where he proceeds to do his arm waving/limb flying thing (this is one of the attacks seen on the clip below).

From this epic attack we cut to a cute mystical girl who has a spirit guide and a pretty nice looking bow and arrow. She is, of course, one with nature and everything (we know this because a CGI bird follows her around), and thusknows how to stop Suburban Sasquatch. So she sets off on her quest, and then the two worst cops in movie history show up, saying things like “We gotta tell their parents!” as if they just realized that that was part of their job. They are the only two cops we ever see, even though one of them frequently alludes to a police coverup for Suburban Sasquatch.

The rest of the movie plays out identically. There’s a murder, the mystical chick (and our “hero”, a reporter for the local, presumably free newspaper, who is also hands down the worst actor in the movie) runs around with her bow and arrow, and then the cops discuss one or both events. It’s very cyclical, but I sort of liked that, because I knew when to pay less attention (the cops), and when to eschew all distractions so that I could focus (the scenes where Suburban Sasquatch kills some folks).

Really, I think director Dave Wascavage went out of his way to find the shittiest actors possible (I also entertained the notion that perhaps he was the world's most ambitious 7 or 8 year old child, but he appears in the film as "Dave", who is quite obviously a grown man). Not a single one of them gives what could even be considered an acceptably OK performance, and just when you think they can’t get any worse, they inevitably do. Wascavage's own mother plays the hero’s grandmother, and even though the role requires nothing of her but to do grandmotherly type things (i.e. welcome her grandson into her home and tell him she loves him), she can’t quite pull it off. But the hero guy is the worst. He reads every single one of his lines from a note or something in his hand, has no desire to actually react to anything, and begins the movie almost entirely nude. Now, I only bring that up because, as luck wouldn’t have it, this is so far the only Decrepit Crypt film that doesn’t have any female nudity. For the most part, this is not a complaint (the mystical girl is pretty cute, that’s about it), just an observation.

But the CGI in this movie, Jesus Christ. It's not that it's bad (and it is), but that most of it seems wholly unnecessary. I already mentioned the CGI net, and that's just one of the many "why did they bother" visual effects that were seemingly and needlessly rendered with a stolen copy of After Effects. The saddest has to be the hilariously terrible attempt to make Suburban Sasquatch look taller by simply extending his legs with the video version of Photoshop’s Clone Stamp. Needless to say, the effect doesn’t work even slightly, and half the time Wascavage forgets to use it anyway. There’s even CGI that has no effect on anything - at one point Suburban Sasquatch has one of the two cops in his grasp, and the cop holds his gun to Suburban Sasquatch’s head. He then says “Say goodbye!” or whatever, and instead of shooting it in the head, he fires at a “nearby” gas tank (I say “nearby” because it never appears in a shot with a character, so I have no idea where it is in relation to them). He actually fires three times before it finally explodes (and by explodes I mean an After Effects filter is placed in the shot), which sends both cop and Suburban Sasquatch flying, but neither of them sustain any significant injuries. So why bother at all? Who knows, but it provided another laugh.

And in the end, that is all that matters. I laughed out lout at least a dozen times during this movie, and was wide eyed and grinning for the rest. All of this amateur nonsense blended together in a uniquely perfect way that allowed me to not merely ignore, but actually EMBRACE how utterly inept it was. It’s not like I turn on a movie called Suburban Sasquatch and expect anything good out of it, so for Wascavage to deliver a film that went so far into the opposite direction was a wonderful surprise.

I understand that the film is available in a 6 pack called Depraved Degenerates (same company behind my copy). I assume that one at least has chapter breaks, as this film does not (and when it’s over, the next film on the disc, which happens to be Scream Bloody Murder, just starts to play on its own), and is of slightly better quality as it likely is not on the same side of a disc with 3 other movies. But however you find it, I can guarantee entertainment. I can also guarantee it will be the only movie you ever see that contains this following bit of heroically stupid dialogue:

“This could get one of us killed... I don’t know if I could live with that.”

Bless you, Dave Wascavage. Bless you.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Sam's Lake (2005)

MAY 10, 2009

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

I like when things tie together nicely. For example, as I was watching Sam’s Lake, I was noting how much I liked the cinematography, because it reminded me a bit of Gravedancers. Then I took a look at the credits, and discovered it was the same guy (David Armstrong). He also shot every one of the Saw films, so why they aren’t giving one of the sequels to him instead of the goddamn production designer is beyond me.

Sam’s Lake also shares a producer or two with Gravedancers - though they would apparently rather play up their Twilight connection, seeing as the same goddamn suspect quote appears on both the front and back of the DVD. Speaking of the quote, it’s more than a little forced: “The producers of Twilight bring you this true supernatural horror that will leave you trembling!”. Why would anyone say that first part? Wouldn’t “This movie will leave you trembling” suffice?

As always, the film’s “true” origins are a complete mystery, because it’s more than likely to be total bullshit. The relationships between the characters are a little specific, suggesting that they may be based on writer/director’s Andrew C. Erin's own friends, but the horror angle seems less “real” than movies that are wholly fictional in every regard. I would think that a pseudo brother/sister team killing all their friends in the woods, only to be done in by the ghost (?) of their father, who had they killed a few years before, would make the news. Indeed, according to the wiki page, it’s based on a campfire story that Erin’s dad told him when he was a kid. So I guess as long as a movie is based on ANY story the writer was told, it’s true? Hey, guys who wrote Star Trek: Once upon a time Kirk and Spock were stranded on the Klingon planet and it was up to the rest of the crew to save them. There, now Star Trek 2 can be advertised as being based on a true story.

Another quote on the back plays up the truthiness, which makes me wonder if these critics just accepted what the guy told them at face value. The other quote is a bit notable, mainly for being so awkward: “Delivers all the campy thrills so expensively promised by large studio productions!” Huh? Not only is it a back-handed compliment, since the film avoids camp and plays everything rather seriously, but it’s like they are trying to take a shot at studio horror and failing miserably. “So expensively promised” doesn’t mean that the studio film doesn’t deliver those campy thrills, Ms. Lafsky of the Huffington Post (since when they do review low-budget indie horror anyway? In fact, all of the quotes come from fairly respectable sources, the types that never review these movies.).

Well, whatever. In the end, the movie’s pretty dull, based on a true story or not. Nothing happens until the twist is revealed, and then everyone is killed within minutes. Points to making the presumed Final Girl into a killer (it’s kind of botched, since the REAL Final Girl gets all the traditional Final Girl scenes, such as seeing something strange and being the first one to meet the character who throws a wrench into the proceedings), but it just doesn’t work. The problem with these movies that take a well-worn setup (friends going to a cabin in the woods) and try to blow our minds by going off the expected track is that you can tell that the filmmakers are not sincere about making the cabin in the woods movie right from the start. In order for their final twists to make sense, they can’t have anything that would make the movie feel genuine. So our “heroine” can’t ever be fake scared, because that wouldn’t make sense once you know she is the killer. Also, no one can go off alone and die, because that would mean having to explain why the surprise killer left the group as well. But in any REAL cabin/woods slasher, there would be at least 3-4 deaths by the time the killer revealed him/herself. So again, it just doesn’t work.

I will say this though, there is a fucking great moment in this movie, and it’s a shame it has been wasted in this and not in Scream 4 or something. Two of our heroes are running from one of the killers. Suddenly, the male hero stops and tells the female hero to “go on ahead!”, as he plans to stay and fight. He turns to the killer, still running toward him from about 100 feet away, and says “Come on, bitch!” or something equally banal. Suddenly, the OTHER KILLER tackles him out of nowhere, as the first killer, without missing a beat, keeps running straight at the girl. I actually cheered at its awesomeness, and if the movie had 85 other minutes like that, I would be singing its praises.

The fact that Erin (or whoever, filmmaking is a collaborative process and all that) came up with a scare that played so good makes me wonder why he botched so many others. For example, as the group drives to the cabin, he suddenly cuts to the interior of a house, camera facing out the window at the car. A silhouette whooshes by in between the camera and the window. Fine, except that it’s not the house they are going to, so why does our real Final Girl get so concerned about it? Are people not allowed to walk around their own houses?

Also, while we’re not even remotely on the subject, I want to know what happened to Fay Masterson. She was incredibly hot in Eyes Wide Shut, but she looks like Cynthia Nixon here. Get your hotness back, please. Your name is what drew me to this movie in the first place. Luckily the other two girls are nice to look at, helping the movie feel less dull in certain scenes (i.e. sunbathing). Please note - I hate when a movie forces me to sound like a pre-adolescent loser; a movie can be stocked to the gills with fuglies as long as it’s good, and I won’t care. But if it’s bad, eye candy is the only thing keeping me from shutting it off. See: The Eye.

I wrote down “Coldplay” in my notes, in reference to the fact that all of the music in the movie sounds like the original tunes from a Coldplay cover band. But I have no actual insight on the matter.

So the movie’s well shot, fairly well acted, has a decent twist (which I spoiled, but if I didn’t there’d be no review beyond mocking the pull quotes), and is relatively short. But it’s also incredibly dull and misses its mark by a country mile. And I hate when a movie leaves its genre up to our imagination. Was the dad real or a ghost? Was Masterson’s character possessed by his spirit, or just crazy? Who the hell knows. All I know is this: I’ve often said that a horror movie has to let its genre be known by the halfway mark, and literally seconds before the exact halfway point of this movie, a character sitting in a car by herself suddenly says, apropos of nothing, “This is stupid”. Take from that what you will.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Omen IV: The Awakening (1991)

MAY 9, 2009

GENRE: KILLER KID, RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

In theory, doing an Omen movie with a little GIRL Antichrist isn’t the worst idea of all time. So despite its TV movie roots, I figured Omen IV: The Awakening would be all right. And it IS “all right”, because it’s more or less a remake of the terrific original, so by some strange sort of default, it works. Little Antichrist children just plain WORK.

I just wish screenwriter Brian Taggert (who also wrote the "filled with interesting ideas that go nowhere" Poltergeist III) had taken the time to do anything original throughout the film. With only like 10 minutes to go, he finally introduces a good idea - the woman in the Lee Remick role has a newborn son, that Delia may want to harm, or may be yet another Antichrist. It’s suspenseful, and slightly different from the other films. Why wasn’t this the main thrust of the movie? Instead, we get a bunch of stuff we’ve already seen - Delia (the Damien counterpart) does some evil shit at school, looks at someone funny and then they commit suicide or get killed by some Rube Goldberg-y sequence of events (not nearly as elaborate as they were in the other sequels, nor are they gory), etc. And every 10 minutes or so, a choir sings “DOMINUS!” and some other Latin shit I can’t spell/pronounce.

Speaking of the music, the opening credits say “Theme from Omen 1 and 3 by Jerry Goldsmith”. He also did Omen II though? Why skip over it? What do you have against Don Taylor?

There are some pretty nice moments though. I loved the little cuts after deaths to random objects. Since they can’t show gore, they have to use visual metaphor. So after a guy gets decapitated, we see a ball with a clown face rolling around. After a private investigator gets smashed by a wrecking ball (the movie’s most confusing/awesome scene), an egg is dropped on the floor. I love shit like that.

The PI is played by Michael Lerner, always a welcome presence in a movie. He gets introduced halfway through and more or less takes over the movie for the next 20 minutes or so (he is hired by the mother, who is our actual main character but disappears throughout this entire sequence). There are two things I love about these scenes. One, he gets information from what has to be the nicest and most generous pimp in movie history. The guy helpfully offers all the information that Lerner requires, and then when Lerner tries to pay him for his trouble, the guy refuses! Lerner persists and he takes it, but holy shit. I half expected the guy to become his partner.

The other thing I liked is that we once again have a PI in a movie that is overwhelmingly dedicated to helping these people. I mean, yeah there’s money to be made, but he puts more effort into finding out what’s going on than the mother who hired him does. At one point he needs to get some adoption info, and in order to get the nuns out of the room, he hires two clowns to entertain the children, which sends the nuns in a tizzy as they have a strict “Only the priests can molest the children” policy. Seriously, if I ever need someone to carry out a shady investigation on my behalf, I hope I get someone even half as dedicated as this guy.

Also, they read my “favorite” bible passage at one point. I say favorite in quotes because, like the bible in general, it’s hardly what I call leisure reading. But back when I had to go to church every Sunday (actually, my mom, bless her, favored Saturday afternoon, which was a shorter mass), I’d always look forward to around August when this particular reading came up (it was always August. Church runs on schedule, I guess). I can’t recall the exact scripture, but it’s about a dragon with ten heads and seven diadems or something of that nature. Since most church readings concerned Jesus rambling to some guys, or maybe a letter from Paul to the Corinthians (did they ever write back?), this was pretty exciting. I think church would be a lot more appealing to today’s youth if there were more readings about dragons.

One part of the movie baffled me though. Delia is running toward the road, and of course there’s a movie truck barreling along, driven by a movie truck driver who has time to blare his horn six times but not hit the brakes. A guy with a dog is also nearby, and the dog suddenly bolts toward the road and knocks Delia out of the truck’s way. In the next scene, the family has adopted the dog. Did the dog’s original owner really care so little about his dog that he would just hand it over to a stranger? What a fucking asshole. You’d have to kill me to take my dog (or my cats). And maybe they did, but if so it wasn’t shown, so it’s a missed opportunity for director Dominique Othenin-Girard, who also helmed Halloween 5, killing my belief that he disappeared off the face of the earth after helming that underrated entry (this came along two years later – THEN he disappeared off the face of the earth).

It’s the weakest of the series for sure, but I dunno, there’s still something compelling about the whole thing. One cool thing about the originals is that it shows Damien at three different stages in his life, leaving plenty of unexplored "in between" areas to do future movies, so I hope this series isn’t totally dead thanks to the remake (which I also didn’t mind, though the Damien portrayal and 9/11 footage were horrible decisions).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Horror Of Dracula (1958)

MAY 8, 2009

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

In my review for Dracula a few days ago, I joked about how many of Dracula movies I had seen. Apparently, Netflix thought it would be funny to bestow on me another within a few days, so here we are again with Horror Of Dracula, which was Hammer's first take on the legend, Lee's first appearance in the role, and I believe the first to take so many liberties with the story, laying the groundwork for future bastardizations like Dracula 3000.

Renfield? Gone. Carfax Abbey? Gone. Dr. Seward? One brief scene, a glorified extra. Plus there's an inordinate number of full blown changes. Harker is no longer there to engage in some real estate business, but rather to kill Dracula, as he is a vampire hunter. He also dies in the first 20 minutes or so, leaving Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) in charge, while Lucy's brother, whoever he is, takes over for Harker as Helsing's sort of partner. And so on. And I'm not faulting the movie for these changes; again, if every version was faithful to the novel, I wouldn't even be able to get through them anymore. But some of the changes, while perhaps good intentioned, don't quite work.

For starters, the structure keeps Dracula out of the film for far too long. It's only 81 minutes long, and Drac disappears for at least 30 after Harker is taken care of. Lee is one of the best ever Counts, and I would have liked to see him get to do more (he barely even speaks in the role). As we all know, there are several hundred other movies with Lee in the role, which I am sure makes up for it, but still. Another issue is that it loses a lot of the romance - all of a sudden Lucy is bitten, and she dies shortly thereafter as well. Dracula doesn't really have any scenes with Mina either, and again, this sort of robs the story of its appeal, and the changes put in its place aren't quite as compelling.

Also, the ending is somewhat botched, as it was clearly filmed during the day and made to look (slightly) darker. Van Helsing yells "It's getting light!" and it appears to be 9AM. Don't they have sets for this type of thing? Where the light can be controlled and realistically depict whatever time of night the movie requires? If there's one movie monster that can't screw up in this area, it's Dracula. Well, him and Wolf Man.

There is a lot to like though. In many ways this is sort of the ultimate Hammer movie. You have Lee vs. Cushing, Terence Fisher calling the shots, the usual lush photography and sets, and what has to be a record amount of blood (in TECHNOCOLOR!) for a 1950's horror movie. And again, it's only 81 minutes long, so it hardly drags or wears out its welcome. In fact, it could easily have been 80 minutes, but this is the rare Hammer film to offer an epilogue! After Dracula is dispatched, we get a shot of Mina and her husband (Lucy's brother) breathing a sigh of relief, Van Helsing walking about, seemingly satisfied at a job well done, and another shot of Drac's dusty corpse disintegrating. For a Hammer movie, that's on a Return Of The King level of extra endings.

Also, for once (or at least, for once in a while), Harker's diary factors into the plot. The novel is a bunch of letters and diary entries, but few of the films ever use this framing device. After Harker dies, the diary finds its way to Van Helsing, in one of my favorite scenes. Helsing goes to a little pub and orders "a meal" (anything will do, I guess), and the kindly waitress slips him the book. The pub owner figures out that Helsing is there to start trouble, and wants him to leave. But the guy demands that Helsing eats his vague meal first! "Get out!!! ...once you're sufficiently nourished." And apparently Hammer liked the scene as well, they even put it in the trailer.

The trailer is one of the scant extras on the disc. Like most trailers of the era, it's pretty laughable (on-screen text reads: "from the creative team who brought you THAT OTHER thriller, Curse of Frankenstein"), and spoils most of the movie, but I always love seeing them on the disc. There is also a brief rundown of the other films in the series, which does little more than spoil the endings for them ("in this one, Dracula is killed by fire."), but as I was not aware that there were so many, I am thankful for the little checklist. Plus some cast and crew bios, for those who are unfamiliar with this Christopher Lee guy.

Overall, I'll give it a pass. Maybe if I hadn't just watched the well above average 1979 Dracula, I'd be more excited about it. I've also already been introduced to Lee as the Count (in the Jess Franco version), and Cushing as Van Helsing (in Brides of Dracula), so the movie didn't really give me anything new. But it's well made, carries that unmistakable Hammer appeal, and was short enough to allow me to watch some Tivo afterwards before heading out, so that's good.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Pulse (2001)

MAY 7, 2009

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

The “J-horror” remake craze takes a lot of shit, and rightfully so. Part of the problem with a lot of them is that they don’t do anything different. Shutter, for example, is almost a shot for shot remake, and the only real change to The Eye was to change the ending (which sucked). So it’s kind of ironic that the remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (Japanese: Kairo) is probably the least-loved of the group, because it’s the only one that aimed to have its own identity.

Sure, the basic plot is the same, but having seen the remake had no real effect on my enjoyment of the original. The characters were all different, the MO for the ghosts was changed (I don’t think there’s a single cell phone in the entire movie, actually), and there was no real attempt to explain what was going on. Though had I seen the original first, I wouldn’t have expected the remake to follow suit, as it was a Dimension film and the original deals with actual themes and character development, two areas Dimension would eschew as soon as possible. But to be fair, at least they were TRYING to make their own movie, instead of blindly copying it like so many others have done.

As such, those who had seen and liked the remake will probably be bored to tears with this one. With the emphasis on human drama (the movie is basically a metaphor for loneliness), there isn’t as much traditional horror as the remake, or even other original J-horror films. Most of the deaths occur off-screen (in one case, this is maddening, as the character seems to just sort of die one day, whereas everyone else obviously committed suicide), and most of the ghosts we see are just sort of chilling in the background.

And honestly, I didn’t mind that. There are only so many times I can see a soaking wet long haired girl making weird noises and crawling around, so I liked the change of pace within well-worn territory (ghosts in the machine, essentially). The problem is, the movie is too goddamn long. It’s literally a minute shy of two hours, when 90 minutes would have sufficed. For example, there’s a scene where one of the lead characters discovers his computer has seemingly come to life on its own and loaded up a webpage. He gets scared and scatters the parts of his computer. Then, not 10 minutes later, he does the whole thing again, after purposely loading the page to get a screenshot of it. With some clever editing, or even some minor rewriting, this would feel a lot less repetitive, and the movie as a whole would be shorter. And it’s not even a “it gets boring” thing (in fact, I even stayed awake the entire time! No rewinding or “eh it was only a minute” stuff here!), it’s that it’s so long that you start to lose the thrust of the story, and the points that Kurosawa is trying to get across become a bit more muddled than they would be had the film been a bit more focused.

Another issue I had was the rather botched sense of the world becoming empty. We never really see a fully “living” Tokyo; it seems strangely under-populated right from the start. On more than one occasion, I wasn’t aware that the character was supposed to be scared that no one was around, because to my eyes, it wasn’t any different than it was in the earlier parts of the film. Sure, the final scenes pack a punch - our only two survivors drive around a completely empty city, as buildings burn and planes crash (yet when their car breaks down they fix it instead of simply taking one of what should be hundreds left behind); it’s a terrific sequence. But it would have been even better had the same areas been seen with dozens of people and cars bustling about.

Otherwise, it’s definitely one of the better examples of the genre. I love the idea of someone using the internet for the first time (he even installs an ISP! Who has done that since 1997?), and there are other little humorous moments sprinkled throughout the film that give it a unique character. And the abrupt suicide scenes work exactly as intended, which is good (beats the remake’s clueless notion that you need to have a lengthy setup to a character’s demise when their name isn’t Kristen Bell or Ian Somerhalder). And Kurosawa, unlike many of his peers, uses horror devices when necessary to tell his story, instead of building it around trailer-ready set pieces and fake scares.

The DVD has an OK 40 minute-ish behind the scenes piece, which is mainly Kurosawa planning shots and dressing the set. He speaks directly on the film’s ideas every now and then, making it worth your while, and it’s the only extra of note on the disc, so you might as well watch it if you’ve already watched the two hour film. And it’s funny, as it was released by Magnolia, I was suspicious of the quality/accuracy of the subtitles (following the Let The Right One In debacle). And while I can’t speak on their translation merits, I can definitely say that they did a piss-poor job of syncing them to the audio. They run sort of like the close captions on a live broadcast. It’s fine when someone says a single word and there’s no dialogue for another 30 seconds, but it’s damn annoying and occasionally confusing during normal conversations, as you might get a bit lost as to who is saying what. Magnolia seems to have a good eye for picking up and distributing top notch genre fare (they also gave us Severance and The Host), but for some reason, I guess subtitles are their Achilles heel. Speaking of which - has anyone found the “English (Theatrical)” subtitles that they promised for LTROI? I still haven’t bought it, getting kind of impatient...

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Descent: Part 2 (2009)

MAY 6, 2009

GENRE: MONSTER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (TEST SCREENING)

I was bummed about having to run out of The Hills Run Red today without getting to chill outside of the theater with my friends and discuss how fucking good it was, but goddammit, the opportunity to see a sequel to what is hands down my favorite horror movie of the decade wasn’t something I could easily pass up. So as everyone sang their praises (and rightfully so) on the Warner lot, I was sitting in traffic, en route to the first screening of The Descent: Part 2.

I have been accused of wanting to hate movies before I sit down. Hate is a strong word, but I won’t deny that sometimes I dread having to watch a certain film. But I don’t care much for the presumed outcome that I can’t change my tune in these cases. One recent example is Perkins’ 14. I didn’t love it, but being from the director of Dark Ride (a film I DO hate) wasn’t exactly getting my hopes up, and I expected something equally asinine. And the outcome? I said it was my 2nd favorite of the festival (after Autopsy). So there, haters!

Anyway, Descent 2 would fit in that “ugh, this is gonna be painful...” category. Neil Marshall was not directing, nor was he writing, and in fact, I don’t even think his credited role as a producer is anything more than ceremonial. And really, did The Descent need a sequel? What could they do? Bring the monsters out, you lose the claustrophobia. Keep it inside the caves, and you’re making the same movie. Not to mention, the film had two endings, so to pick it up from one would mean betraying the other.

Well, I am happy to say that, for the most part, it actually does work, and works well. The story is essentially Aliens - our female survivor has to act as a guide for a new group, and you can’t really fault with the logic of cribbing the structure from one of the most beloved genre sequels of all time. And both endings are sort of addressed - Sarah gets out (how, we never quite see) like she does in the US ending, but she’s also clearly screwed up (UK ending). You know what eventually happens, but suffice to say that it delivers in the areas that matter. Director Jon Harris (who edited the first film) does good work here - I don’t envy anyone who has to fill Marshall’s shoes. And once it gets going, it’s almost as compelling as the original, with some unexpected, borderline Troma level gore to give it its own identity (not that the first film was bloodless, but you know what I mean).

But that last part contains the problem - “once it gets going”. We know that there are monsters down there, and we know how they operate. A bit too much time is spent getting our team together (a motley crew this time - 2 cops, 3 rescue workers, and poor Sarah, who has amnesia and can’t remember how her friends died) and it seems that even more time is spent traversing the caves until the monsters show. There is a slight attempt to make you think that Sarah may be the bigger problem here, but it’s done away with quickly (and was never really a believable plotline anyway). It worked for the first film, because we had no idea what to expect. But the cat’s out of the bag now, so let’s get cracking.

But the 2nd half, fuck yeah. Not only is it exciting, gory, and scary, but it genuinely feels like an extension of the first film (note the “Part 2”), and not like the cheap cash-in I was expecting. Sarah returns, obviously, but just about every other character from the original “shows up”, albeit in corpse form (it’s the same caves, and it’s only been a day). One of the film’s best scares has a character find the video camera and watch the footage, which includes the reveal that served as one of the best scares in the original. And in turn, the scene ends in an equally impressive scare. And in the film’s most suspenseful setpiece, the still suspended body of one girl (their names escape me) is used as a landing point for a necessary jump across a chasm.

It’s not all “hey we’re a sequel!” moments though. There’s a terrific bit with one of the new characters trapped between some rocks, with a monster trying to get at her. Since she’s trapped, he is essentially acting as her savior by digging the rocks away, allowing her to scramble loose and then... well, I won’t spoil it. But it got the biggest cheer from the audience. I also loved the Sheriff character, who is one of those guys in a horror movie who inadvertently causes half of their problems (sending an ill-timed walkie talkie call to someone who is in the “being quiet so the monster right next to me doesn’t discover me” mode, for example).

In fact, that brings me to my only other complaint about the film: the cast. They’re all good actors, but they’re also all unmistakably "foreign" (the film is set in the US), which is a constant distraction (Sarah’s accent seems even thicker too), as the cast hails from Australia, Ireland, UK, etc (and yes, one American). Plus they’re all unknowns, at least to me (who sees more than his fair share of movies). It’s a sequel to a beloved film - they couldn’t use that to get someone familiar in one of the roles? Like the sheriff - they make him out to be kind of a dick, but he’s still a “good guy”. It would have been more fun if he was being portrayed by a known performer (Brendan Gleeson, I think, would be a good choice).

But in the end, the movie that shouldn’t work actually does. I would stop short of saying I was riveted, but damned if I wasn’t cheering and jumping at all the right moments, and mentally upping my presumed test card score (“fair”) to “good”, which I ultimately bumped again to “very good” after a surprising development turned out to give the film a much better finale than expected. And by finale, I mean, the final scene between humans and monsters. There’s a bit of a groaner final SCENE that sets up a 3rd film, but the stuff before that resonated in all the right ways, so I forgave the lapse in judgment. The movie looked finished to me (it was even on film, very rare for a test screening), but if they are still tinkering, I would suggest losing the final 30 seconds (and the clumsy foreshadowing that preceded it).

I’m not sure what Lionsgate plans to do with the film. I say it’s certainly worthy of a theatrical release, but if they want to send it direct to DVD, it might even fare better. Expectations would be made even lower, and in turn it would be even more enjoyable for those doubters. I knew it couldn’t measure up to the original, but I wasn’t expecting it to extend the original’s legacy by proving that apart from being nearly perfect, it also spawned what so far is a damn good series.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Hills Run Red (2009)

MAY 6, 2009

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (ADVANCE SCREENING)

It’s rare I see two great movies in a row at all, let alone for Horror Movie A Day, but Dave Parker’s The Hills Run Red is, like Dread, a much-needed shot in the arm for its respective sub-genre (in this case, the slasher). Effectively combining an old school slasher’s pace with modern sensibilities (i.e. hardcore gore and some brief “torture”), it’s the type of slasher that should be playing in a big movie theater, and I’m glad I got the theatrical experience.

And it’s even about a slasher movie! Seems there is a lost slasher film called "The Hills Run Red", and our hero, Amusement’s Tad Hilgenbrink (faring far better here, obviously), wants to make a documentary about it. He tracks down the director’s daughter, and she offers up where it was filmed. Things, of course, don’t go as planned. Folks die, blood is spilled... all in the manner we slasher films demand often and rarely receive nowadays.

What I dug about the movie was the structure. It’s not wall to wall kills; in fact the body count is surprisingly low even when the mayhem begins. Like Halloween or Hatchet, we get to know our characters for a while before they start getting offed, and that’s the way I like it. In a sequel, they can get away with having a bit less in that department, because we already know the killer, the general way it plays out, etc. But for part one, I want a formal introduction to the world and its inhabitants, and David Schow’s script gives us just that.

I also love how they truly sell the idea of "The Hills Run Red" (the movie in the movie version) being a real film. We get a wonderfully cheesy trailer, old posters, lobby cards, even a foreign title! And through Horror Movie A Day, the idea of a movie that no one seemingly knows about is pretty plausible to me, given how many movies I see that have no other reviews online, or anything but the most basic information on its IMDb page. Since the film provides the backbone of THIS film, it is crucial that they sell it as fully and completely as possible, and Parker and co. have easily succeeded.

Another I require for my slashers is a memorable killer. The best way to judge is “Would I want an action figure of this guy?”, and for this film the answer is YES. Babyface is a visually arresting killer, with his cracked baby mask and bright red coat, and I loved that he was of average height. Nothing wrong with a giant, physically imposing slasher, but keeping him down to normal size gives him an extra bit of realism. At first I was worried about the mask, as there have been other slashers with “doll” faces of late, but those other, lesser killers never even crossed my mind as soon as Babyface made his first appearance. He’s of the deformed backwoods variety, but he’s also intelligent, which is a terrifying concept to me: this new breed of inbred mutant killer can THINK!

Now, as the movie isn’t out yet (it’s playing festivals throughout the summer - see it if you can at one! - before hitting DVD in time for Halloween), I won’t spoil anything, but I will say this - there are two little moments with Babyface that are so fucking brilliant (and in one case, downright chilling) that I can’t believe they haven’t been done before. Even if you’re the world’s most jaded horror fan, I DEFY you to not give your approval for these two moments.

And that ties into the movie’s best strength: the surprising third act. There’s a plot twist that you might see coming, but I think it’s intentionally a bit obvious. It throws you off track a bit, so you’re like “oh yeah, I saw that coming”, which allows you to be truly surprised by the real twists that follow. The last 25-30 minutes of the film has more than its share of unexpected moments, in terms of what Babyface does, who survives, etc., resulting in the most satisfying finale I can recall in recent memory. The slasher film is, to even its biggest defenders, one based primarily on following a fairly strict formula, so it’s to Schow and Parker’s credit that they have found a wonderful balance that allows them to surprise the audience without going so far off track that it’s no longer a slasher film; embracing it while giving it their own unique spin.

I also love how it has moments to applaud on both sides of the coin. You cheer for a character’s clever way of escaping from Babyface, and then you cheer again when their plan falls apart. I actually like these characters (especially the hero - a plot point about his dedication to doing what he loves costing him dearly struck a particular nerve with me), but Babyface is such a great slasher that I couldn’t help but want him to get his way.

It measures up on the technical level as well. While it may have modern sensibilities in terms of the gore, the editing and direction don’t follow suit (i.e. no Avid farts or quick-cut editing that leaves you disoriented). Parker seems born to handle this type of material (and he used the 2.35 ratio!) and I loved how the “movie in the movie” scenes had their own unique style, as it was supposed to be the work of a different director - a nice little detail that I hope isn’t missed when the film starts to play for audiences. It’s also a fairly colorful movie, even during the night scenes. Babyface’s red jacket always sticks out, of course, but the surrounding atmosphere isn’t just the same browns and dark yellows of some other recent horror films.

Any caveats? Well, there’s a groan inducing “If this was a horror movie” scene, but it pays off well enough to warrant a pass. Still, I think we need to retire this type of dialogue forever. Even in this unique setting (i.e. the movie is ABOUT a slasher movie, something even Scream can’t claim), it’s just too overused at this point. Luckily, it’s the only such type of humor (well, another character makes a joke about “torture films”, but that’s not the same thing. And it’s fucking hilarious to boot). And Tad learns of the daughter’s whereabouts from his friend, which seems just convenient enough to get the plot going - how did HE know where she was, when Tad’s the one devoting his life to researching every aspect about this movie? I would have liked something a little less shoehorn-y for such a crucial plot development.

But really, my only problem is that since the film is a half a year from release, it’s gonna be a long goddamn wait until Babyface gets to slay again in Hills Run Red 2. The setup for the film allows plenty of room for both prequels and sequels (or, though this might be a better DVD feature - the actual "The Hills Run Red" movie, either of which would be fine by me. Warner now has two great horror movies on their hands (the other being Trick R’ Treat), and while it pains me that neither of them are getting wide releases, it feels good to know that Saw MCMXVII won’t be our only option come Halloween time.

There have been a lot of original slasher movies lately, all with their own merits, but also all with their own weak spots. The Hills Run Red breaks that mold - it gets everything right. Kudos to Parker and everyone else involved for providing irrefutable proof that it’s possible to make a rock solid ORIGINAL slasher film some 30+ years after the genre was born.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Dread (2009)

MAY 5, 2009

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (ADVANCE SCREENING)

In a way, the genre tagging that I do is a bit of a disservice to some films. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with saying Halloween is a slasher or Cloverfield is a monster movie, but there are some films that don’t easily fit into such categories. Maybe I should invent a new tag simply called “TRUE HORROR”. If so, Anthony DiBlasi’s adaptation of Clive Barker’s Dread would certainly qualify.

The psychological aspects are not unfounded though. One of the main characters constantly sees visions of the man who murdered his parents, despite the fact that the guy isn’t there (one of the movie’s greatest strengths is that it doesn’t needlessly try to shoehorn the real murderer into the movie - it’s not what it’s about). And the film as a whole plays on the concept of people’s unique fears - surely a concept based in psychology. I just want to make sure folks know that it's its own beast, and nothing like the other films you'd find in the Psychological section of HMAD (most of which involve people purposely being driven mad so they can be scammed out of their inheritance).

I have not yet read the short story by Barker, so I cannot speak to the faithfulness of the adaptation. The film version essentially has two lead characters, Stephen Grace (played by Jackson Rathbone, far more effective and interesting here than he was allowed to be in Twilight) and Quaid (the Paul Bettany-esque Shaun Evans). Grace is a film student, and Quaid recruits him to make a documentary about people’s fears; what causes them dread. After getting fed up with people coming in with generic fears (clowns, the dark, etc), their film’s editor (Hanne Steen) offers up her own unique fear - meat. Her dad used to abuse her after coming home from the meat packing plant where he worked, and now the smell or sight of meat brings those memories back. From then on, the film follows Quaid’s increasing obsession with getting people to offer equally disturbing examples, with, of course, horrifying results.

Since the movie is not due for release any time soon, I don’t want to spoil anything (I actually feel I’ve given away too much, but I want folks to know that this is not a remake of the 1996 DTV movie The Fear), but let’s just say that if there was ever a film that could make someone turn into a vegetarian, it’s this one. The meat fear plays a part in the film’s incredibly gut-wrenching and horrifying finale, building toward a downer ending that redefines “downer endings”.

But what really grabbed me is how the film accurately depicts its own title. It’s not a big spectacle film with “set pieces” or anything like that - it deliberately builds at a sure and steady pace, developing the characters along with the plot as they make their way toward the horrific ending. Some may see this as “slow”, but I found it refreshing. It’s rare to see a horror film - especially one from a first time director, based on a work by one of the foremost names in horror - take time to really make you identify with not one but FOUR characters, to the extent that even the film’s “villain” is sympathetic.

The sound design and score also gets this point across. Theo Green’s score is incredible, and the occasional licensed songs fit well (no Fall Out Boy here). Again, it’s not a film with lots of typical horror scenes, but the score never lets you feel anything but uneasy about what is to come.

My only minor issue was the first 10 minutes or so. The friendship between Quaid and Grace is crucial to the film, and it seems like they meet, talk, and begin working together within minutes. I can see why they’d want to get to the documentary as soon as they could, but I still wouldn’t have minded maybe 4-5 minutes’ worth of the two of them bonding prior to embarking on their “project”.

I’ve heard from a lot of people that “Dread” is their favorite Barker story, so I hope that this film lives up to the expectations of those fans. For a non-reader like me (something I will remedy soon, as I just finally finished Barker’s beast known as "Coldheart Canyon"), I can only say that the film not only extends Barker’s hit streak (not counting Candyman/Hellraiser sequels that he had no involvement with, I have yet to dislike a Barker related film, rare as they are), but also raises the bar for one. After what has to be a thousand movies in a row, I admit to getting a bit blasé at times, which makes Dread’s effectiveness all the more notable. If this movie doesn't end up in my top 5 for the year, then by default 2009 would have to be the best year for horror movies ever.

What say you?

(NOTE - Not a trailer, more of a promotional video for distributing purposes.)

PLEASE, GO ON...

Old Hag (2007)

MAY 5, 2009

GENRE: GHOST (?), INDEPENDENT
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT VIEW)

There’s nothing wrong with making a slow-paced horror movie (or one in any genre, really). Session 9 is a good example - it’s a great fucking movie, and yet there is very little traditional “action” until the end, and a chunk of it is off-screen anyway if memory serves. There is an art to doing it, and I assume it’s not an easy thing to do right. Otherwise, films like Old Hag would be a lot more interesting, and simply a lot better to boot.

The problem with Hag, other than the fact that it’s NOT about a killer granny as the title would suggest (apparently it’s another name for sleep paralysis), is that there is nothing to draw you into the story to make up for its leaden pace. We’re over a half hour into it before anything even REMOTELY horror/suspense related occurs. Hell, it’s almost that long before the movie offers anything at all beyond a few folks sitting around a warehouse, biding their time and mocking one another. The story is almost non-existent, and even when it “gets going”, it’s hardly compelling.

On top of that, it’s simply confusing. They work in a warehouse, but nothing seems to be stored there. Their job apparently requires them to flip coins into cups of coffee, argue over who should do rounds, and every now and then lift a box (by hand) and put it down a few feet away. In fact, most of the rooms are entirely empty. Anyway, for whatever reason, a recently deceased serial killer is being stored there, and one of the warehouse employees wants to get a picture of the corpse. You might think the guy isn’t really dead, or there will be some Shocker-style resurrection to enjoy, but no, he’s dead. It’s just a macguffin; the real villain is... a fat guy who works there. What he wanted to accomplish is beyond me, and he’s taken out by a character who has only appeared in one other scene prior (which would be like if the guy who told John McClane to scrunch his toes was the one to take out Hans Gruber at the end of Die Hard). The end. I’ve seen more complex, well-rounded plots in SNL skits.

I will give credit where credit is due though - the script has the balls to kill off the perky main girl, the direction is occasionally impressive (loved the opening scene with everyone in silhouette), and the acting is serviceable. But it’s all wasted on a story (for lack of a better word) that seemingly has no point. There are just too many problems with the film as a whole, not the least of which is that it’s an ensemble of sorts, but the characters are largely indistinguishable from one another. I mean, I can tell them apart by their physical appearance (the girl, the long haired guy, the fat guy, etc), but in terms of what they do or how they act toward each other, it’s all the same. I couldn’t even tell which ones were in charge.

There are also a lot of interruptions in the dialogue, or people starting to say a line before the other actor has finished theirs, only to quickly shut up and then say the whole line again when they’re supposed to. Granted, people interrupt each other in real life and thus it is “natural”, but it doesn’t come off that way. It comes off as inexperienced actors (Rebecca Larsen, as the lead girl, is the only one with a significant IMDb filmography; most of them are credited solely for this film) who failed to rehearse properly. Worse, there is a character named Grover, but the obligatory Sesame Street reference is interrupted as well.

Now that I think about it, Session 9 seems to be a direct influence on this film. Not only do both films take place entirely in one location, but both feature a team of blue collar workers who need to finish a particular job in a few days. Also, the days are broken down (“Monday”, “Tuesday”, etc), and there is an attempt at “is this supernatural or psychological in nature” suspense, something Session 9 excelled at. Hag - not so much. The bad guy puts some LSD in the coffee,, which explains some of the things characters see, but that doesn’t quite explain how a guy can be pulled across a floor by an unseen force.

There is one saving grace in the film: the fire marshal character. He appears to have been dropped in from an entirely different movie (and acting school), but this movie is the better for it. At the end of the film, he has to explain what happened to a character who was unconscious for the final “battle”, and it’s easily the best part of the movie, due to the guy’s completely laid back cluelessness. “I tried reasoning with the guy, but like the old song says, you can’t reason with a psycho. So I let my buddy Smith & Wesson do the explaining, and they got that explaining thing down pat... what’s up with you?” (this is also the last line of dialogue in the movie). There’s also a hilarious bit where a cop assumes that a 19 year old kid drank himself to death.

Oh, and this isn’t the filmmakers’ fault (I don’t think), but the synopsis tells us that director Channing Lowe serves up the “bloody thrills”, but there isn’t a drop of blood in the entire film. Not that a horror film needs blood, but if its promised in the goddamn synopsis...

I really hate when I have to pan an indie. The movie probably cost less than what I make a year (if so, ouch), and as I said, the directing and acting are largely acceptable (the last 20 minutes take place in almost total darkness though; I assume they wanted it dark but not damn near invisible). I didn’t mind the fact that the film was seemingly shot with a cell phone camera, because I knew that film or even high quality HD video would be out of the question. But as I’ve said so many times before - a good script costs nothing to write. Even if you can’t afford great effects or A-list actors, you can always write a compelling story, regardless of your limitations.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Night Of The Blood Beast (1958)

MAY 4, 2009

GENRE: ALIEN, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 4!!!)

I’m surprised Night Of The Blood Beast doesn’t seem to be more popular compared to some of Roger Corman’s other films of the era. It’s just as cheap and awkwardly paced as the rest, but it’s got some notable highlights. For starters, it seems to be actively ripping off Thing From Another World, only to briefly head into Day The Earth Stood Still's "Not all aliens are here to shoot us with spaceguns" territory at the end. I mean, all Corman films are knockoffs of something, but its rare that they are ripping off renowned classics.

Also, given Joe Dante’s love of Corman and horror films of the 50s and 60s, there is little doubt in my mind that “Gizmo’s Theme” was inspired by the score in this movie, which sounds to my (untrained) ear to be only a note or two different. Yet, both the Wikipedia and IMDb pages for the film are barren wastelands of non-information. Had the film not been lampooned on a 7th season episode of MST3k, it’s possible that it wouldn’t have any sort of cultural awareness at all.

As these things go, it’s not all that bad. Unlike the last couple of Corman entries, at least it’s squarely in the horror genre, as there is a monster, an isolated group of people, and a body count (well, two bodies. Still more than Swamp Women, I think). And the monster may move less gracefully than a GI Joe in the hands of a drunken 5 year old, but the design is kind of cool. Imagine the Metaluna Mutant crossed with a giant pile of mud and you’d be on the right track.

Some of the Corman cheapness is even kind of endearing. There’s a part where one of our two corpses is hanging from the ceiling. One of our heroes runs into the room and sees it, and yells “Wyman!” (the dead guy’s name. That, or a rather strange way of pronouncing “Why, man?”) before talking to the other hero. Then, not 20 seconds later, one of the heroines runs in, and the entire scene repeats, same camera angles and all. The call for help (I forget the actual dialogue, but it’s basically “This is the good guy group, rescue team that we never see, can you respond? Over.”) is also repeated some 5 or 6 times, and I swear it’s the same audio being used. There’s also a hilariously sad shot of a guy “putting out a fire”, and it’s painfully obvious that the fire damage (or a few PAs taking an ax and some paint thinner to a section of the wall) was caused hours ago.

I also loved the final “battle”. After the monster begins explaining why he’s there (he’s essentially proposing a symbiotic relationship between his race and Earth), our heroes toss a few molotovs at him and then shoot him with flare guns. Hilariously, rather than have a typical howl or “NOOOOOOOO!”, the monster keeps talking in the same tone of voice, which makes the heroes seem like a couple of assholes, if you ask me.

But I mean, Corman’s name is right there at the top of the film. Consider it a warning, or the largest font ever given to a disclaimer. You know what you’re in for, and you adjust your expectations accordingly. And on that level, I put this in the win column for the man.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Gate II (1990)

MAY 3, 2009

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Want to hear something really depressing? On a per theater average, attendance was higher for Gate II (the “The” has been dropped, along with everything else) on its opening weekend than it was for Memoirs Of An Invisible Man, which opened on the same day. Who are these people who would rather watch a lousy sequel that couldn’t have possibly even LOOKED good (unless they used footage from a different movie entirely) than a big budget effects comedy with the star of Christmas Vacation, which was a major smash just over two years before?

I’m not being facetious here - this is one of the most thoroughly uninteresting movies I have watched yet for HMAD. To say they were just going through the motions would almost be giving it a compliment. It starts lazily, with Terry (the metal-loving friend from the first film) not even bothering to explain where Stephen Dorff is and then re-opening the gate to help his dad get his job back. Has there ever been a lamer reason for unleashing spirits from hell? Christ, kid, just help him get creative with his resume if you want to give him a hand. To be fair, there’s also some nonsense about how they “didn’t do it right” the first time, but as it’s been two years seemingly without incident, I would say that they closed it up just fine. And from there it just gets lazier. People make wishes, and the objects of those wishes eventually turn into dust, or poop, or the person they affect just sort of zones out. The timeframe also varies from object to object; some things last days, others “go bad” within an hour or so.

The ending though, holy shit. It seems writer Michael Nankin (who also wrote the original) watched Poltergeist II a whole bunch before concocting this nonsense. The final battle takes place in some other dimension, and not only is it referred to as “the other side”, but it also looks like the same desert landscape/old Star Trek set that the former film had. But this time, we are treated to a few stop motion monsters growling at each other, Terry turning into a mutant Harry Potter, and a pentagon shaped symbol that glows. At some point during this confusing mess, Terry dies. And for a second, I was like “OK movie, you know what? You’ve bored me to tears, but at least you have the balls to kill off your main (teenage) character.” But then, during his funeral, Terry suddenly climbs out of his coffin, all cheerful and spunky. Most of the funeral-goers run away and scream, but his girlfriend and father (who was placed in a full body cast just two days before, but now just has a limp) don’t think much of it. His dad even musses his hair up. “Oh you crazy kids with your necromancy and causing crippling emotional distress to a man who has already lost his wife!”

And that’s not even the worst of it! After the undead Terry and co. walk off into the sunset, the two bullies that have been harassing him through most of the movie climb out of the coffin as well! They seem perfectly OK too, and much like for Terry, there isn’t even the slightest explanation of how they were resurrected, or how they managed to find themselves in his casket. But doing so would drag the movie out even longer, and at that point I had already had enough.

The effects also baffled me. I might be wrong, but it seems like that they used a little person or maybe even a normal sized one and put them in a monster suit to play the pint sized little monster that comes from the gate. However, it also looks like the giant monster was done with a stop motion miniature! Big for small, small for big. Doesn’t quite make sense to me, but either way the compositing is lousy across the board, making this the rare sequel in which the effects have actually devolved.

Again, this is the same writer as the original. The director is the same as well, which makes the complete change in quality all the more puzzling. Were they purposely making a bad movie, like in The Producers? Also, Terry used to listen to nerd metal, Iron Maiden type stuff. So why does he have a giant Motley Crue poster in his room now? He got older so he lost interest in Maiden but gained an appreciation for hair metal? What the? And even though he was one of the best things about the original, he’s fairly unlikable here. Most of his role requires him to just sigh at his dad’s drunken behavior, yell out the other character’s names, or poke around his room looking for the little monster. In fact, despite having the same filmmaking team, about the only thing this movie has in common with the original is a wildly unnecessary use of the term “faggot”, which is hardly something one would want to promote.

The full-frame DVD’s only two extras are vague bios for Louis Tripp and Pamela Segall (Bobby Hill!). Also it’s some sort of dual-language release, so the French title “La Fissure 2” is also on the disc, along with its subtitle “Le cauchemar reprend”. As you all know, the French (and thus, real) title for Cathy’s Curse is Cauchemares. But since the English subtitle for Gate 2 is Return to the Nightmare, this means that I still have no idea what the hell a “cauchemar” is in English. I’m guessing it’s either “Nightmare” or “Cathy”.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Dracula (1979)

MAY 2, 2009

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

By my count, I have watched at least 12 incarnations and variations of the “Dracula” story since I began Horror Movie A Day, and probably another 4 or 5 before then. Needless to say, even though they are all obviously different, the overall story holds little surprise at this point. So it’s a shame that I didn’t see the 1979 Dracula earlier, or even first, as the technical aspects, acting, and production design outclass a great number of the other adaptations.

Oddly, the one flaw of the movie is a near total lack of Dracula action. It has an R rating, but I have no idea why; the PG-13 Dracula: Dead and Loving It is more violent and gory (and strangely enough, more faithful, for what it’s worth). It’s not a particularly violent story anyway, but even with that in mind it seems very “horror-lite”. More biting! More blood! More stakes!!!

Otherwise, I really dug the approach. For starters, the Transylvania opening is omitted entirely, which is a terrific decision. The plotting of Dracula has always been kind of awkward, because you have a few minutes of Harker traveling, and then Dracula travels back to where Harker’s from. This version more or less starts with Dracula’s boat crashing on the shore, so we can get moving.

I also loved the cast. Langella’s hair aside, he is a terrific Count. He plays him almost as a sort of douche, which is what he essentially is. The scene where he sends Harker off on an errand so he can mack on Lucy is amazing. He also lacks the teeth or goofy contact lenses traditionally worn in the role, which in a way makes him more frightening, as its just another aspect to refreshingly subtle take on the legend.

And he is backed by one of the best casts ever assembled for a 70s horror movie. First and foremost, Donald Pleasence as Dr. Seward is just brilliant. I remember reading once how Pleasence scoffed at the idea of “method” acting, and that he preferred to just show up and do it. Keep that in mind as you watch his delightfully joyful performance here. Whether he’s chewing on some candy, or correcting someone on the phone (“No, not lied. DIED!”), or greeting Dracula with a charmingly uncourteous “Oh hi Count!”, he steals every scene and is clearly having a grand old time doing it. It’s possibly the finest Dr. Seward I’ve seen yet. And the movie fucks with the common notion that “You don’t need to be Olivier to be in a horror movie” by actually CASTING Olivier as Van Helsing. He’s not as pro-active as some other Helsings (possibly due to Olivier’s age - apparently he needed a double for even a simple running scene), but you can’t get a classier guy in the role, and unlike some of his peers, he gives an actual performance, rather than shrug it off as another late-career paycheck.

Even better than the cast is the film’s look. Apparently the color was muted for the DVD, but if you ask me, it looks perfect. I don’t need a bright and cheery looking Dracula, and the quality of the DVD transfer still allows the detail on the sets and costumes to be seen. A lot of the story takes place at Seward’s asylum, and the muted color perfectly captures the atmosphere of such a terrible place. The 1994 Frankenstein seems to have taken a page from this version’s style, and if so, that would be one of the best decisions they made.

As for the changes, as usual, I don’t mind them. Making a note of what is different from the last version I saw is the only way the story itself can hold my attention at this point. I mentioned the asylum - I liked having more of the movie there (I’m actually surprised someone hasn’t done an all-asylum version of the story - have Dracula imprisoned there under suspicion of insanity. Lucy/Mina/Whoever can be the nurse he entrances.... shit, I’m gonna go write this now!). Harker gets a bit more to do than in some other versions, which was also appreciated (gives the ending an unexpected punch, given another major change that I won’t spoil). Speaking of the end, it’s a bit abrupt, but it’s pretty great as well. It’s set on a boat, and thus utilizes the standard “Van Helsing and co. race against time” scene in a unique way (they need to catch the boat).

So of course, it tanked. It had the bad luck of coming out the same year as Herzog’s Nosferatu and Love At First Bite, and by then folks were sick of Dracula (the generic title didn’t help I’m sure). I myself had the wrong impression of it, or else I would have seen it earlier. For some reason I thought it was a campy, VERY 70s version of the story, and that couldn’t be further from the case.

The DVD has a commentary by director John Badham (why is this man directing episodes of Psych now? Surely Short Circuit and Stakeout alone bought him a lifetime pass to make theatrical features?), which is mostly meh. He delivers a few nice tidbits and anecdotes, but he also narrates or simply watches the movie just as often. Right off the bat you can tell it will be one of “those” tracks, he says “Hi, I’m John Badham and I’m here to talk to you about making Dracula!”, which is followed by a good 30 second silence. Universal has also put together a nice little retrospective, with Badham, Langella, and a few others. It’s sadly lacking in cast members though; Olivier and Pleasence are no longer with us, but thoughts from Kate Nelligan and/or Trevor Eve (Harker) would have been nice. Langella’s comments are the best, of course - he points out his dislike of the goofy red laser scene and recounts a scene where he had to talk to two photographs because the actors weren’t there. A little long (due to lots of clips), but worth a look, especially if you skip the commentary.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Schizo (1976)

MAY 1, 2009

GENRE: BRITISH, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

After the bliss of Disconnected, I probably shouldn’t have watched another “woman harassed by killer” movie so soon, as there is no way it could measure up. Luckily, Schizo brought some good stuff to the table, and what it lacked in delightfully batshit storytelling and “first time filmmaker” charm, it made up for in surprisingly gruesome kills, a fetching lead actress, and a “killer” who often resembled an old man who got lost during his daily walk around the block.

Let’s start with him. The movie’s title is essentially spoiling the ending, but even if it was called “Ham Sandwich”, it would be painfully obvious that the guy we’re supposed to think is a killer couldn’t possibly be responsible for the carnage we see, because he permanently looks confused and unaware of where he even is. I’m not sure if that’s how the role was written, or if it was just an acting choice on the part of Jack Watson, but it’s fairly damaging to the film’s mystery. Obviously he couldn’t play it as a menacing psychotic, because that wouldn’t make any sense once the revelations come around (something that sunk The Uninvited - Elizabeth Banks’ character was needlessly “shifty eyes evil” once the film reveals that she was innocent of the murder), but he could have at least acted a little less senile/homeless.

As for the actual killer, I don’t think it’s even spoiling anything to say that it’s the lead character, played by Lynn Frederick. I spent the entire movie wondering where I had seen her before, and I ultimately gave up and checked the IMDb (it was Phase IV). She’s a beautiful and natural looking actress, and it’s a shame that she became so hated after marrying Peter Sellers shortly before his death (the term “gold digger” will show up on any bio you read of the woman) that she was seemingly run out of town, never making another movie past 1980 and dying of alcoholism in 1994. A bummer; I would have liked to have seen her in more films. However, to make up for her under-populated filmography, she at least offers up the world’s briefest full frontal shot here.

The kills though, oh man. There aren’t a lot of them, but when they come, director Pete Walker makes em count. We get a nice throat slashing, a vicious stabbing, a needle through the back of an old woman’s head (the point then pops out of her eye!). But my favorite has to be the old psychic lady that is viciously beaten with a mallet, and then tossed under a bus! Holy shit it’s harsh. The movie is very British and fairly “proper”, so to have such Grindhouse-y deaths was a wonderful surprise. In fact, the kill scenes are often shot from the POV of the killer, giving them a Giallo feel (the killer even wears black gloves on occasion).

Had the movie been a bit tighter, it would probably be held in higher regard. It’s just under two hours, and it takes a while for the bodies to start piling up. Maybe had the mystery not been so easy to unravel, it wouldn’t feel as slow, but as is, you just want them to get on with it. There are like three scenes where Frederick sees the old guy, get scared, calls for help, and then her rescuers find nothing and assume she’s crazy. There are also a lot of red herring scenes (the husband is briefly set up as the killer), which again, aren’t quite as successful as they should be. However, if you missed the opening narration (which explains “schizophrenia” - this movie uses the incorrect but more widely understood version of the term, i.e. multiple personality disorder) and didn’t know the title, because you were flipping thru the channels and came in 10 minutes in, maybe you could totally buy that the old dude (or anyone BUT Frederick) was the killer.

Regardless, everyone can agree that the DVD itself should be more impressive. Not only is it a fairly lousy print (prepare yourself for a lot of dirt specks), but it’s as bare-bones as they come. Extras? Fuck, this thing doesn’t even have a main menu! Just a chapter search page. Come on now. We can all do better.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...