Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

GENRE: COMEDIC, HERO KILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Hello! I am a 43 year old straight male who didn't think Lisa Frankenstein was particularly good.

Normally I don't bother describing myself in a review, but I feel here it might be useful, because I want it to be clear that I am first to admit I'm not the target demographic for this particular movie, and maybe you simply won't care that an old white dude thinks about it. But that said, considering it's Diablo Cody's first return to the horror/comedy genre since Jennifer's Body*, which I enjoyed quite a bit (with some reservations), it's not totally out of the realm of possibility that I could have enjoyed this more than I did. And I did like it at times, so it's not a disaster, it's just... *off*. And as a result, disappointing.

The plot is perfectly fine and has loads of potential. Kathryn Newton, still playing high schoolers 12 years after Paranormal Activity 4, stars as Lisa, a goth-y outcast who works at a tailor shop (sewing skill foreshadowing is a rare but admirable note in a Frankenstein movie) and longs to be dead like the 18th century guy whose grave she visits. One night a convenient lightning bolt wakes the guy up, at which point he beelines for her house. After a few "WTF?" moments she has him shower and puts him in some fresh clothes, and he becomes her protector/ servant/ confidante. And every now and then the two of them kill people who annoyed her in order to secure a body part to replace something that's MIA on him (his hand, an ear, his... well, spoiler).

As with her previous horror-com, Cody has a weird tendency to introduce completely random plot points that seem to suggest a more fleshed out narrative, only to just shrug them off. In Jennifer's Body it was the thing with the orange balls/waterfall "portal" and the school's gym becoming a swamp. Here it's the backstory for Lisa, as we learn her mother was killed by a Ghostface type masked slasher a year before, leaving her nearly mute. The way it's presented suggests it will play a part in the present day (i.e. the killer will come back, and/or be revealed to be someone she knew), but nope. Her mom was murdered by a masked slasher and I guess he didn't do anything else after that. Why have something so specific if there's nothing further to it? Why not just kill her in a car accident or something? Similarly, what happened to this guy for him to lose a few body parts? It's bizarre Lisa never once thinks to hit up the library and see what she can learn about her new boyfriend, even if to confirm he wasn't, you know, the same kind of murderer who killed her mom.

The weirdest part is how casual she is about the rising body count. She was supposedly traumatized by an earlier act of violence, but now seems pretty blase about doing it herself? It's just a really odd disconnect, and (also like JB) the film's third act is rushed through without any genuine resolutions to these plot threads. Lisa never shows any real remorse for their murders, including that of someone who did absolutely nothing wrong (earlier she goes after a guy who tried coercing her into sex, so we can "go girl!" that one, but this other guy... nope. And he gets it worse!), so it's not even easy to root for her after a while. Like you can have all the weird plot points you want, but if the character development is equally haphazard, there's a problem.

One thing that's not botched, and actually quite endearing, is that the only (living) person who genuinely cares for Lisa is her stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano). Even her own dad is kind of zoned out when she tries to talk to him, but Taffy supports her, tries to get her out of her shell, etc. Normally a stepsister is just another thorn in the side of an introverted character like Lisa, so to see them get along and care about each other was refreshing. That said, Carla Gugino as the stepmother is so cartoonishly mean that it more than makes up for Taffy's refusal to be a stereotype, but far be it from me to decry the sight of Ms. Gugino chewing some scenery. She can do whatever she wants.

Much has been made of the film's 1989 setting, but I never really saw a purpose for it other than, I suppose, having an easy excuse to make pop culture references. Gugino fretting about her Precious Moments figurines, the family going to see Look Who's Talking, a gag about the Sports Illustrated football phone (30 years after Wayne's World 2 already did a better one, but whatever)... there aren't as many as some other period pieces focused on the era, but there are enough to establish it even if you ignore the clothing and hairstyles, which are all on point (take it from me, an Old who was actually around then). Weirdly, the movie takes a while to firmly establish that it's the '80s, and given the Tim Burton influence, one could just assume that it was just being retro with its production design as a choice (sort of like how Edward Scissorhands LOOKS like the 1950s/60s, but clearly isn't since they have VCRs and such) instead of using it to specify a timeframe.

As for the Monster, he's delightful. Cole Sprouse is pretty much mute, using his facial expressions and body language to do the bulk of his communicating, and he does a fantastic job. I also liked the makeup; since Lisa starts to fall in love with him it's obviously not too grotesque, but it's also clearly monstrous - a tricky balancing act that they pulled off well. The PG-13 dictates we don't see much of his carnage, but one moment is played via shadow and it's kind of amazing, the closest we will get to seeing *that* in a teen-friendly movie. And I definitely appreciated the REO Speedwagon usage; I may in fact be the only person in the audience who actually listened to "Can't Fight This Feeling" earlier in the day just for my own aural pleasure (though that's another weird thing about the movie - Lisa's a goth and has a Bauhaus poster in her room, but the soundtrack itself doesn't have much of such things. There are more Yacht Rock staples than anything you'd hear as house music while waiting for The Cure to take the stage).

And to be fair the humor tends to hit more than miss (which was also the case in Body, it's just not as consistently funny), focusing on the unlikely romance more than jokes (or horror, but I expected that much). Had the characterization and plot been a little more fleshed out and less uneven, it could have been an easy film to recommend to all, not just (for the most part) to teen girls having sleepovers. But even on that level, it sends some weird messages to the impressionable, and even that would be OK if the movie just went full throttle into darker territory. Instead it basically just edges for 95 minutes, always pulling back whenever it feels like it's going to finally kick into high gear and get really memorable, or at least commit to a tone. I don't know if Cody's script had to be sanitized or budget cuts resulted in chopping some grander ideas, but it ultimately just never really came to life for me. It's cute, and intermittently charming, but seems to settle for being "fine", making it feel disappointing considering the talent involved. Great animated opening title sequence though.

What say you?

*Diablo Cody has said that the films exist in the same universe, though there are no ties that I noticed. Also since this film takes place twenty years before that one (and in a different town to boot) I'm not even sure why she bothered saying so, other than to perhaps drum up interest.

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FTP: Uncle Peckerhead (2020)

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

GENRE: COMEDIC, HERO KILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

For the most part, the worst thing I can say about Uncle Peckerhead is that it often reminded me of two better movies. Luckily, both of them are relatively obscure compared to the movies most small budget horror films ape (i.e. Conjuring or whatever the newest hit slasher was), so it’s possible one could watch without having seen them, and maybe you’ll be more engaged by what it has to offer. But if you’ve seen Green Room and/or Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal, be prepared for a lot of déjà vu.

Luckily it’s not as hard to watch as Green Room (even if star Anton Yelchin didn’t ultimately die of a gruesome accident in real life, I don’t think I could ever watch his arm injury scene again), it’s just got a similar backdrop: a very poor punk band trying to make a go of it when playing for next to nothing and stealing gas from other cars in the parking lots they often sleep in. The scene where that film’s The Aint Rights plays to a pizza parlor has a very close cousin here, and the plot also kicks off in the same way, when our hero goes back inside the club and sees something they weren’t supposed to. The key difference is that what they weren’t supposed to see there was your standard murder, and here it's their roadie, Peck, turning into a zombie monster and devouring the greedy promoter that just ripped them off.

And that’s where the Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal element kicks in, as Peck seemingly means our hero band (a trio named Duh) no harm, and is actually a pretty helpful addition to their band, so they kinda let his murderous ways slide (and occasionally help cover up evidence of such digressions) as their band is getting more successful due to his influence – he’s quite good at selling merch, for example! But you know how this sort of story goes – they’ll enjoy the success for a bit, and then realize it’s not right, so their ally turns into a foe. So maybe Little Shop of Horrors would be a more apt comparison, but the dry humor and the fact that the monster is a person (not a plant) had me thinking more of Eddie, so I’m sticking with it!

But that said, it’s a pretty fun watch. The trio of band members (two girls, one guy) are likable and easy to root for, and honestly could have made for the basis of a straight indie comedy without “Uncle Peckerhead” worked into the mix. Since they never have money for a motel they often crash at rando’s houses, giving the film a steady stream of new faces/dynamics, and their rivalry with an emo band led by a pretentious Jared Leto type provides the film with its funniest moments (though as an old school Simpsons fan I would cite an out of nowhere Poochie reference as my favorite gag). It’s never really laugh out loud funny, but it provided pretty of amiable smiles, which is fine – if the comedy part of a “horror comedy” is a total failure (and many are), it drags the whole movie down, so getting decent results in that half of the equation is something of a win on its own.

It’s just too bad that the ending is garbage! I won’t spoil it outright, but it tonally didn’t fit with the rest of the movie to my eyes, sending me out on a downer instead of another wry smile that the previous 85 minutes had been providing with regularity. I’m not sure why they went the way they did with it, but man, it’s been a while since I’ve seen so much goodwill get tossed out the window at the 11th hour. I’d almost rather it sucked the whole way through, at least it’d be consistent. I guess I see the intent, that at the end of the day the band deserves some punishment for what they allowed to happen, but it swings too far into the other direction and ends abruptly to boot, leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Your mileage may vary of course, but be prepared for some whiplash.

The disc comes with a group commentary (arranged via Zoom or something, as it was recorded in the early days of the pandemic – at least we know they’re smart!), to which I couldn’t always tell the participants apart but they have a good chemistry and never fall silent, loading the track up with production stories, the occasional jab at each other’s expense, and praise upon the other crew members, many of whom wore multiple hats on the production. A short film about a demon that has a few of the same cast members is also included; the back of the blu-ray promises it’s in the same universe as the film but I don’t see how that’d be possible with the doubling performers. There’s also an 11 minute compilation of Duh’s music if you’d like to listen without the movie’s audio distracting from it. A fairly low-key release for a similarly enjoyable but ultimately just shy of a must-see movie.

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Pearl (2022)

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

GENRE: SLASHER (?)
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Thanks to Marvel, sitting through the credits to see something extra has become so commonplace there are entire sites devoted to whether or not it'll be worth you time (beyond, of course, seeing the names of the people who made the thing you just watched and presumably enjoyed if you're hoping to see more). Usually it's a little joke or maybe a promise of a sequel, but X had to be the first to show not a scene, but a trailer for a prequel film that was already made in secret and would be coming along later in the year. And - less of a surprise since it's been announced and Pearl has been out for a few weeks now - this one ends with the promise of another entry titled MaXXXine! The Ti West-iverse is here!

For those who didn't see the previous film (or just forgot), Pearl is the murderer character in X, and (spoiler here!) played by Mia Goth, who also played that film's heroine. Many films have played the "the hero doesn't want to end up like the villain" card before, but I can't think of one where both roles were actually played by the same performer in order to hammer the point home. Of course, Goth was nearly unrecognizable in her old-age Pearl makeup, and there would be no reason to put her in that makeup again for a sequel, so the prequel route makes total sense: Goth gets to further explore an interesting character without being burdened by latex and such, and we in the audience get a new movie that - being made before the first one was released - wasn't dictated by what audiences would demand from a followup.

Which is to say that this isn't "X 2" by any means - I wouldn't even call it a slasher if it wasn't for its connection to the original. It's more in line with the "Psycho Biddies" films of yore like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, except with the obvious difference that Goth is far from "past her prime" - if anything it's the sort of performance that could elevate her career if the right folks can get past their bias against horror (I saw an article the other day saying she'd be up for an Oscar if it wasn't a horror film, which... sigh). Pearl is a farmgirl who longs for a bigger life, convinced she will be a big movie star if she can just get to show the world how talented she is. A chance arrives in the form of a dance audition, but her domineering mother forbids her to go - naturally this means she'll do whatever it takes to get there, and bad things start happening.

Of course, the truth is that lots of girls are just as or even more talented than Pearl, but she can't accept that she's not all that special in the grand scheme of things. The film is set during the 1918 pandemic, and it's easy to see the parallels: Pearl is a lot like we all have been over the past couple years, longing to escape but feeling trapped and for some of us (thanks to increased online interactions as a result in our case) realizing that we're not bringing anything new to the table. We're all making the same jokes on twitter as dozens of others, all posting the same GIFs in response to someone else... even with the hundred year difference in setting, I feel many will (uncomfortably) see themselves in Goth's character, liable to snap if confronted with one more example of how little we matter to the world at large. It's an incredible showcase for Goth; she's in all but one brief scene in the film, and finds that balance between being sympathetic and murderous; in fact she was almost hitting that mark in X, but here, seeing what led her to murder and how she comes to accept her lot in life, is truly heartbreaking. Even after she's killed a few people (all but one guilty of absolutely nothing), you still feel for her - it's a remarkable performance that could be disastrous in the hands of a less capable performer.

That said, I have to admit I was slightly underwhelmed by the film as a whole. Given the way it was made (written during a weekend Covid-mandated quarantine, shot in secret at the end of X's production) it wasn't exactly a shock to discover that there wasn't much meat on the film's bones outside of Goth's performance. Someone compared it to a videogame's DLC, and I think that's apt - it never quite feels like a complete film on its own, as if it was hollowed out a bit before reaching our eyeballs. It doesn't help that the aforementioned teaser (and subsequent traditional trailers) spoil pretty much every one of the film's acts of violence, all of which are presented as shocking moments we shouldn't have seen coming. It's one thing for a traditional slasher to give away some of its kills in the marketing, but here, the movie is basically a "How much can she take before she snaps?" kind of deal and we go in knowing who will be on the receiving end of her rage. Given the 60 year gap between the two films, anyone could have conceivably survived this film without their absence in X being weird, so I wish the trailer had been a little more conservative with what it showed off if only to give the film some needed suspense.

(That said, I forgot her husband's name from X, so they got some of that intrigue back unintentionally, as I couldn't tell you for sure which of the film's two male characters was her devoted spouse in the other film, or if was even either of them!)

On the plus side, it thankfully avoids too much "prequel humor", which is the sort of thing I can't stand (like in one of the Star Wars prequels when Obi-Wan says "You'll be the death of me!" to young Anakin, arrrgh). Pearl stands on a spot marked X when she auditions for a dancing troupe, and I could practically see Ti West smirking as he trained his camera on it and held the edit a beat longer than necessary, as if he too found such gags to be pretty lame and wanted to go overboard. Instead, for the most part he opted to enrich the X experience for those who go back and watch it again, post-Pearl. The bike she rides throughout this film can be seen rotting away in X, and if you happened to notice a wheelchair in the dark basement when Jenna Ortega was trapped down there, now you'll know where it came from. And yes, the gator's mama is in the nearby pond, getting a glorious moment as the film's title appears.

Speaking of the film's graphics, after Goth the best reason to see the movie is the lush, technicolor inspired photography, where everything pops like Wizard of Oz (a film that has more than one direct influence on this one). Given the low-key way the film was made and the fact that X didn't exactly burn up the box office (though it did turn a healthy profit and is far and away West's highest grossing film) I figured that Pearl would go direct to streaming with maybe a minor theatrical run the week before, and I've rarely been happier to be wrong. In fact it ended up opening on more screens than X did (and is on track to make roughly the same amount of money), allowing me to see it on a big multiplex screen instead of a smaller art house one (which would also be a longer drive, I'm sure). I kind of love that the most vivid and striking live action movie I saw on the big screen this year was a cheap horror flick. More like this!

Ultimately, while it's a bit threadbare in the narrative department and contains few surprises to those who haven't seen the trailer, it's definitely worth seeing even if you didn't like X (and goes without saying, you can fully "get" this without having seen it at all), as it's a much different beast. Goth's performance (I haven't even mentioned her monologue near the end - good lord), the visuals, and the lovely score are all top notch and more or less make up for its slightly undercooked screenplay. And as we get more and more exposed to TikTokers and the like who are far more convinced of their talent than anyone else, I find it endlessly amusing that one of the most timely genre films I've seen in a while is set over 100 years ago.

What say you?

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FTP: High Voltage (2018)

MAY 3, 2022

GENRE: HERO KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

There's a Dollar Tree next to my supermarket, so every now and then if I'm not pressed for time/too tired I will check out their selection of discount DVDs (with the occasional Blu) and see if there's any HMAD-worthy fodder. One such trip yielded a copy of High Voltage, which had a few name actors (David Arquette, Luke Wilson, and Perrey "DeSilva from Child's Play 3" Reeves) but more importantly was a rock n roll horror plot about a singer who gets electrocuted and now, with the power to zap/drain people (like an electric vampire, basically), uses that skill to make the band more successful. Sounds pretty fun, right? Certainly worth a dollar at any rate, yes?

No. Like, "Betty Gabriel in Get Out" levels of "No." Honestly I don't think I've seen a movie this bad since I was watching this stuff every day. And the biggest problem is that they take this goofy plot far too seriously, to the extent that it seems more like a melodramatic adaptation of the least interesting episode of Behind the Music ever produced more than a horror movie. Arquette (who I figured would be a glorified cameo like his other famous co-stars, but is the actual co-lead) is a washed up musician named Jimmy who peaked in the '80s and is now coasting on his glory years with Hollywood hanger-ons when he discovers a talented but green singer named Rachel (Allie Gonino). She's the one who gets electrocuted after their first (disastrous) gig and gets the power, which helps her with her stage fright and in turn makes her an overnight star, something that could be kind of fun (with Arquette tapping into his own comic energy as a sort of Renfield/Billy Cole) in the right hands.

Alas, in the hands of writer/director/producer Alex Keledjian (who created Project Greenlight, respect) the electrocution stuff, while given some goofy flair in the moment (she's got like, electro-scars up her arms and such, as if to visually remind us that this is indeed a genre film) is for all intents and purposes treated like a drug addiction, and Arquette spends most of the movie staring somberly at her decline, arguing with his protege (the band's guitarist who wants to get her help) or offering a hackneyed narration that occasionally seems to be used to smooth over plot details that aren't depicted very well on screen. Perhaps the script had more scenes that couldn't be shot (or they just got chopped out of the edit in an attempt to improve the pace), but either way the film's timeline is very unclear, where a new scene could be a day or a month after the previous one. But even the climax of the film seems to be missing (Arquette voiceover explains what happens, a huge disaster at a concert that we don't see at all), so I'm guessing it was the budget thing. Or just bad filmmaking.

Honestly there's nothing here to recommend. I wouldn't even mind that it's played so overdramatically if it worked (there are no bad plots, only bad executions), but the characters aren't interesting, their success is too vaguely depicted, and it simply just isn't all that engaging. It's too drawn out and maudlin to work as a compelling "rise and fall of a talent" kind of piece, and the inherent silliness of the "electric vampire" concept, even when as underplayed as it is, makes it impossible to take seriously anyway. It's almost like Keledjian WANTED to make a drug movie but couldn't get funding without genre elements, shoehorning them at the last minute and as minimally as possible (it's like 25-30 minutes in before she even gets zapped, in fact). Arquette's manic energy is his key asset as a performer, but he's dialed down for 90% of his screen time (the only time he seems to be having fun is during a montage of the band making either a music video or an album cover, couldn't tell), so I couldn't help but think that the money they paid him could have been used to bulk up the production value and maybe given the movie some semblance of verisimilitude. I paid a buck and still feel ripped off. Everyone else should VOD (or wait two more weeks for the Blu of) Studio 666, which remembers that rock n roll is supposed to be fun.

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FTP: Bite (2015)

APRIL 23, 2022

GENRE: HERO KILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I just now realize that I don't have a "Body Horror" tag here, so someday if there's time I'll go through and mark them all accordingly. For now they're likely to be found under "Hero Killer", the clunky name I gave to movies where the main character is tragically infected/ bitten/ whatever by something and it turns them into a monster. Not all of them would qualify as body horror, but Bite certainly does, with The Fly being a clear influence on the protagonist's makeup progression - there's even a fingernail gag for good measure.

But it also reminded me of Thanatomorphose (all three films are Canadian, interestingly, another tag I somehow forgot to make over the years despite having them for many other countries), in that our heroine, Casey, pretty much never leaves her apartment once afflicted. In the most convenient plotting decision of all time, her fiance lives in the same building but not with her, due to his overbearing mother - also the landlord! - insisting that they wait until they're married before living together. Or even having sex, as it turns out, which is probably why Casey screws around with a rando dude at her bachelorette party. Thankfully, the movie doesn't take the puritan route and blame that encounter for her issues, as they seem to stem from a bite she gets in a lake when innocently hanging out with her friends. So basically, her condition would play out the same whether she was faithful or not - it just gives the movie a little extra bit of drama to pad the runtime.

Unfortunately the script seemingly forgets to really deal with it for close to an hour, which makes the third act seem largely tacked on. Turns out one of Casey's friends is in love with the fiance, and angles to steal him for herself by showing him proof of Casey's infidelity. So an hour in, once Casey's already killed a couple people, it becomes a love triangle movie where one party is already a goopy monster, which would be fine if it was executed with a sense of humor, but director/co-writer Chad Archibald plays it pretty straight. It's fine as these things go (at least the best friend wasn't screwing around with him the entire time), but it could have been weaved into the first hour a little more successfully so it didn't seem like an attempt to make sure the movie hit 90 minutes.

The uneven plot is saved by the production and makeup design, however. Casey was bitten by some kind of insect/fish hybrid and thus has side effects of both, but the nastiest element has to be the fact that she starts giving "birth" to fish eggs all over the place, covering her apartment with the slimy beads along with other layers of goop on the walls and such. It is a truly disgusting visual, made weirder by how people come in and act more like she's merely forgotten to take the trash out for a couple days or maybe let the litter box overflow. If I entered that apartment I wouldn't get more than one foot past the doorway before scanning the joint and hightailing it out of there, but her friends and the mother in law are just like "ew, she needs to clean up."

Still, it's worth watching the movie just for that, so it wasn't surprising that one of the Blu-ray's featurettes focused on Elma Begovic's performance and makeup process. It ultimately took over four hours to apply her final stages, which is an incredibly impressive endeavor for what was clearly not a huge budgeted film. The other featurettes are pretty standard, save one which focuses on Archibald's wedding, which coincided with the film's premiere at Sitges. Kind of a self indulgent piece to include, but hey, good for him/them. There's also a commentary, which is a bit dry despite the multiple participants so I only got through about half before falling asleep. Also, they briefly touch on something I did appreciate about the movie: it starts off like a found footage movie, allowing your heart to sink for a few minutes before boom! It switches to standard third person perspective. Bless.

The same team made The Drownsman, which was also a pretty good little movie (one I actually noted thankfully didn't have a love triangle element, sigh) and I'll Take Your Dead, another fine one time watch, so I guess they know what they're doing and how to pull off reasonably effective genre films with their limited means. But they all lack that je ne sais quoi that makes them must sees (or, in this specific case, an upgrade from "the pile" to the permanent collection); this is probably my favorite of the three but I also wouldn't exactly take to the streets encouraging everyone to drop what they're doing and watch it. Archibald has been producing as of late instead of directing (Dead was his last, in 2018, after helming a film just about every year), but I get the impression he is more of a producer than a director anyway, so perhaps it's a good thing - he and his team can use their experience to get films made but hire directors with a little more moxie and get something that really knocks it out of the park. Either way, at least they're not making cynical crap and blowing a chunk of their budget on hiring Tony Todd or someone to do a pointless cameo, like a lot of these teams do. All the dough is on the screen, and for that I laud them.

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3 From Hell (2019)

OCTOBER 15, 2019

GENRE: HERO KILLER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: 4K UHD (OWN COLLECTION)

With the exception of Lords of Salem, you rarely hear anyone say their favorite Rob Zombie movie is anything but The Devil's Rejects, his 1000 Corpses sequel that dropped the Texas Chainsaw-y kinda stuff in favor of a violent revenge thriller that pitted the Firefly family against the brother of a guy they killed in the first film. I wouldn't say Zombie ever sided with Otis, Baby, and Captain Spaulding in that film, but he clearly didn't want us rooting for their hunter (William Forsythe) either, allowing them a few minutes of "triumph" after offing him before they too met their grisly and deserved end in a hail of police bullets. We never actually saw them die, but it seemed pretty unlikely that a dozen cops firing on them would leave any of them alive, and so when he announced the long awaited (?) sequel 3 From Hell, my assumption would be that he'd be returning to the more traditional horror elements of the first film by introducing a supernatural angle.

(NOTE - Some spoilers follow, including details about the film's third act!)

Alas, the title isn't meant to be taken literally - the Fireflys simply miraculously survived their wounds (we're told they were shot about 20 times each) and that's that. I don't know if it was the lowered budget or simple laziness on Zombie's part, but it's kind of distressing that he'd wave away a fairly definitive ending to his best movie with such a half-assed excuse to keep them around (it's in the same eye-rolling territory as Halloween: Resurrection's "she beheaded a paramedic"). Alas, by "them" I mean Otis and Baby; due to star Sid Haig's health issues, Zombie was forced to rewrite his script a bit (Haig fell ill just before production began, apparently) and fill his role with a new character named Foxy (said to be Otis' half brother) played by Richard Brake. The filmmaker was only able to get Haig for one day to give Spaulding a single scene where he is interviewed on Death Row by a documentary crew, and that's it - we're told in the next scene that Spaulding had his lethal injection and died without any fuss the next day.

Yep, he survives being shot 20 times (not to mention the torture from Forsythe) only for a few fluids to do him in. It feels like a disconnect, which got me thinking perhaps there WAS some kind of "they're unkillable" element in the original script that Zombie had to abandon in order to give Spaulding a proper sendoff? The filmmaker has never been one to be too forthcoming with abandoned story ideas (indeed, the making of doc shows Danny Trejo apparently filming scenes for a part of the movie he has no role in whatsoever, but Rob doesn't explain it there or in the commentary), so we'll probably never know - it's kind of a victory that he even admitted the "Foxy for Spaulding" switcheroo. And Brake is fine, but the movie never quite feels like the "end of the trilogy" it should because of Haig's unfortunate inability to participate two weeks before shooting, when sets had been built and actors/locations secured, etc (i.e. too late to wait for Haig to get better, which, as we sadly now know, he never did - RIP Sid!).

But that said, I don't think Rob changed the script so drastically that he created what the real issue is with the movie, which is that it feels too much like Rejects. If I were generally sum up the film, I'd say that Baby and Otis escape the law, meet up with a relative, terrorize and ultimately kill an adult family, then head to a brothel for safety, only for the owner to sell them out to a guy that wants to kill them as revenge for a loved one they killed earlier - that sound familiar at all to you? One of the things that made Rejects work as well as it did is that it took a few of the characters from Corpses and plunked them into a different kind of movie, something I was hoping he'd do again here, but if anything it's not only the same kind of movie, but it recycles a few too many of the same beats as well. Ironically, if not for Brake's presence it'd come off as a Wake Up Ron Burgandy kind of thing where we might as well just be watching alternate scenes from the last movie.

To be fair, it's not really all that bad - it runs a bit long but I wouldn't say I was ever bored, and Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon deliver their expected animated performances, both of them clearly enjoying revisiting their most iconic roles (well, a tie with Chop-Top for Moseley). Baby is crazier than ever, and her scenes in prison are a hoot - there's a guard played by Dee Wallace who seems kind of obsessed with her, and they have a strange allure that almost gives you a glimpse of what a Rob Zombie Ilsa movie might look like. He even lets the characters just stop and talk about their lives every now and then, and while I never stopped missing Spaulding (Otis giving him a bit of a eulogy takes on new meaning with Haig's real life passing since the film was completed), Brake's character had some amusing monologues and a fun chemistry with Moseley - the two of them arguing about Cagney vs Bogart is a highlight. If there's any such thing as a "lighthearted" Rob Zombie movie, you'll see glimpses of it here. And the torture-y kinda stuff has been toned down somewhat; the new "villain" isn't as vicious as Forsythe and the Fireflys off most of their victims fairly quickly (or off-screen entirely in a few cases).

Then again, the bad guy (Aquarius, the son of the Danny Trejo character from Rejects, who is offed by Otis after a chance "reunion" while on a chain gang) doesn't even exist until the movie's final half hour or so, even though they set him off in the first ten minutes or so by killing Trejo. Their antagonist for the first half of the movie is the warden of the prison they're at, played by Zombie regular Jeff Daniel Phillips. More than once it seems like the character is being groomed to embrace his dark side and become a sort of willing accomplice to them, like Robert Downey Jr in Natural Born Killers, who they'll happily use until they don't need him anymore, but nah - he exits the film just past the halfway mark, almost as unceremoniously as Spaulding is written out. It's very awkward, and gives the film a kind of episodic feel that it doesn't quite benefit from in any way that I can see, since our "heroes" just kinda hang out for a while until Aquarius enters the picture. Sure, it's a surprise when these things happen, but it robs the movie of cohesion and momentum - it feels patched together and even kind of sloppy at times. I've long held the opinion that Zombie is a much better director than a writer, but there isn't much here I'd want to use to prove my point.

At least, not in the movie itself. The feature length making of on the disc shows, in some ways more than ever, how hands-on and detail oriented he is when it comes to his sets and staging the action. We see him fixing up a costume, dressing the set, walking actors through their movements, working things out with the camera crew, etc - he is not a guy who will sit in his chair in video village and wait for everyone else to do the work. As always, he frustratingly ends the doc as soon as filming wraps instead of showing us the post process (again, my man isn't all that into showing alternate ideas), but it's an otherwise thorough look at what was a tight - and unfortunately re: Sid, somewhat melancholy - shoot. Rob provides his usual commentary as well, noting a few on-set issues (Clint Howard was apparently late to set for his bizarre but kind of awesome scene) and why this or that scene was difficult, but it can be a frustrating listen since they didn't turn down the sound of the movie as much as you'd normally find on a commentary, so it can be hard to concentrate on what he's saying when you can clearly hear the dialogue or music he is talking "over".

I liked 31 more than most, but it was one of his lesser films for sure, and now this ends up more or less in the same place. After seemingly hitting his creative peak with Lords of Salem (which followed his Halloween II, which I've come to like more and more over the years), it feels like he's kind of phoning things in now, which bums me out - the movies aren't terrible or anything, but they also lack any real spark. After 14 years, what exactly made him decide to return to the Firefly family when he's not really doing anything different? If this was a "Rob Zombie Presents" kind of deal, with some old buddy of his taking over writing/directing duties and respectfully not putting too much of his own stamp on things, I could forgive the sameness, but I kind of expect more from the man himself. Hopefully it's just a brief rut and he'll come back swinging on the next one - which will ideally be something entirely new.

What say you?

P.S. Amusingly, I have this movie on 4K UHD, whereas I never even upgraded the first two from DVD to regular Blu-ray. It's kind of crazy that an entire format passed by while the Firefly family lay dormant.

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She Never Died (2019)

OCTOBER 10, 2019

GENRE: HERO KILLER, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (SCREAMFEST SCREENING)

Back in the proper days of HMAD, I used to inadvertently watch sequels to movies I hadn't seen fairly regularly. Mostly it was things like the Hammer series (Dracula and Frankenstein), when I knew I was watching the 5th part of a franchise I had little familiarity with, but every now and then there'd be something more along the lines of She Never Died, which is a "sister" sequel to He Never Died, a movie I hadn't seen and wasn't even aware it was a sequel prior to sitting down to watch it. In fact if I wasn't moderating the post film Q&A with director Audrey Cummings and star Olunike Adeliyi I probably would never have known it was related to another movie; I found out while doing some basic research sitting in my chair waiting for the movie to start, at which point I hoped it wasn't a Saw II kinda deal where the movie would barely make sense without knowing the previous film's plot.

Luckily, it was not - far from it, in fact. If I'm understanding correctly, there is only one returning character, who appears at the very end of the movie in a scene that seems like it's setting up a sequel anyway (i.e. a scene that would probably have you thinking "oh I bet this will be cleared up in the next one"). So if you haven't seen it but want to see this one, I can assure you you're not going to have any trouble, as they merely exist in one universe - it'd be like saying you *had* to have seen Jackie Brown before you saw Out of Sight, simply because they share Michael Keaton's character (an example I bring up because Jackie star Robert Forster just passed away and I want to remind you all of how great that movie is, and how incredibly great he is in it).

Adeliyi plays Lacey, a homeless woman who is fixated on a man named Terrance who frequents a mysterious building near where she sleeps at night. The same building seems to be under surveillance by Godfrey, an aging detective who is apparently tracking this case despite objections from his superior. Before long the two of them meet and realize they share a common enemy, but while Godfrey wants to put him away, Lacey... well, she wants to eat him. Specifically his bones - Lacey is a cannibal but also seemingly has Wolverine-like regenerative powers that require marrow to work, and while she saw Terrance kidnap someone and bring her to his building (which is home to a human trafficking ring), she really wants him because "he has long fingers."

So yes, the movie has some dark humor to go along with its various sub-genres (cannibalism, survival horror, revenge thriller, plus another one that is treated as a surprise but will be obvious to anyone who saw "the original"), but it all works quite well, if you ask me. Maybe because I never saw the other one, but I was never ahead of the movie at any point - characters I thought were definite goners survive the film, while others who I thought would play a bigger part end up being sidelined. Lacey's antihero shtick is a bit well-worn, but Adeliyi's deadpan deliveries of the comedic lines and her physical prowess during the fight scenes kept it from being an issue, and she's surrounded by equally colorful characters that make up for it even more.

Even the villains are charismatic and amusing in their own way; Terrance and his sister/business partner Meredith have a very matter-of-fact way of talking about their business, and more often than not their conversations about their horrible line of work dovetail into something mundane like whether or not Meredith remembered to call their mother. This adds to the film's dry/dark sense of humor, which fell right in line with my sensibilities, and given that I didn't know it was going to be funny at all, I found this sort of stuff to be more compelling than the (minor!) genre elements that got the film into the festival in the first place. A second act scene where Lacey and Terrance come face to face for the first time is incredibly funny; it's almost a shame that this wasn't an "enemies team up to defeat a bigger enemy" kind of deal, if only to watch the two of them interact some more.

Really, the only flaw of the movie is probably due to the budget: it occasionally feels like they had to scale back things that may have been envisioned differently. We see very little of the trafficking business (this may be why the villains end up being kind of likable?) and Godfrey's police department looks more like the back office of a big box store or something, plus there's an abrupt cut near the end that robs us of what should be a big crowd pleasing moment (it plays as a visual gag instead, and it's a decent one, but doesn't quite live up to what we didn't get to see). Even the things that tie it into He Never Died seem underplayed, mostly laid out in what amounts to a puzzling epilogue - the movie honestly could have ended a few minutes sooner and would be stronger as a whole.

Otherwise, it's a winner. No, it's not really horror (some choice gore moments are really the only "horror movie" thing about it), but the way it blends some of the genre's tropes together and comes up with its own take on the material is quite refreshing, which is far more important to me than a movie checking off "zombie" or "monster" movie boxes anyway. From what I've learned about the first film, and what this one sets up at the end, it seems like they have an interesting little mythology coming together, and I hope their plans work out (a TV series followup to He Never Died is apparently in the works). If the money isn't there to properly bring it to cinematic life, it seems like it could easily be adapted into comic form, but I know I can't be the only one hoping to see Henry Rollins and Olunike Adeliyi fighting side by side down the road. Here's hoping!

What say you?

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Nurse 3D (2013)

JANUARY 30, 2014

GENRE: HERO KILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

If Paz de la Huerta had even a smidgeon of acting ability (or used it if she has; I've never seen her in anything else), Nurse 3D probably wouldn't work at all. It's basically a mix of American Mary and Single White Female, with the title character going around killing every man in the vicinity like the former and becoming dangerously obsessed with a female pal like the latter. On paper, that sounds like a recipe for a perfectly rote slasher/thriller that you'd forget about within moments of the film's conclusion, but since even merely saying a character's name proves to be an insurmountable task for Paz, it takes on this bizarre, nearly alien tone that, intentionally or not, turns the film into a trashy comic delight.

Again, I've never seen her in anything, so maybe it's just an unusual acting choice, akin to Nicolas Cage deciding to play a character with a heavy Southern drawl or something for no real reason. As we eventually learn (thanks to a hilariously on-the-nose exposition dump courtesy of Michael Eklund), her character killed her dad as a young girl and was raised in an institution, so she clearly has a reason to be "off" - she's never really had normal interactions, we can assume. However, none of the other characters in the movie seem to notice how incredibly awkward she is when making simple conversation; for the male characters (all of whom are constantly horny) I guess you can just assume they don't care because they want to have sex with her, but why do the other females, particularly Katrina Bowden, carry on as if there's no reason to suspect that this robotic woman has a few screws loose? So I have to assume that her clunky deliveries and jaw-droppingly insane moments of "rage" are the result of a bad actress inadvertently making a film funnier than it was meant to be, and that her co-stars merely did their best to ignore it.

Luckily, it seems director Douglas Aarniokoski WANTED to make a funny movie and lucked out with the casting. You don't do a slasher film in 3D unless you're looking to provide an audience with silly thrills, which is why when a guy gets tossed off a roof he can't just land on the ground or on a parked car - he has to land on an iron fence so we can see the spike burst through his chest and splatter CGI blood in our faces. But if Nurse Abby was played normally, the movie would be actually kind of dull. Surprisingly, there aren't a lot of comin at ya gags after that until the film's ridiculous climax, which finds Paz and Katrina tossing each other around various rooms at the hospital as the former makes a very bloody attempt at escaping capture for her crimes. In fact, if you can't find this playing in a theater near you (likely), you're OK "settling" for the (2D) VOD option, because apart from those occasional gags, it's a very flat 3D film (surprising, since it was shot with 3D cameras, not a conversion). Most of the movie takes place in small rooms inside the hospital or someone's apartment; the few exteriors are just alleys and the like (presumably to hide the fact that the New York-set film was shot in Canada), so there's not much depth to the shots - you can take the glasses off and not even notice a difference in several scenes.

Naturally, the warm-blooded males (and some females) are probably wondering if there are "other" benefits to the extra dimension, given the risque artwork and sex-driven narrative (Abby zeroes in on cheating male characters), but in this department it's actually tamer than I was expecting. Paz is naked more than once, but only has one true (brief) sex scene, and Bowden doesn't show off much either (butt in a long shot), so ultimately it's no more explicit than your average 90s "erotic thriller" (even when she cuts a guy's junk, we don't see anything - wimps). The sleazier elements mostly come from Paz's occasional voiceover - said butt shot is accompanied by Abby explaining that she's looking at "the same ass she was eating the night before", and you can laugh just as hard as that in 2D. The movie definitely earns its R rating, but it doesn't seem like they were aiming for anything more explicit.

As a narrative, eh, it's fine. There are some baffling choices (has anyone involved with the production ever used email before? Because that's not how it works) and a few dropped subplots (Nelson seems to have designs on Bowden, but nothing comes of it), but it's got a nice, fast-ish pace that keeps us from asking too many questions while we're watching. Plus, it's only like 85 minutes and Bowden catches on at the halfway point, sparing us too much time where we're way ahead of the film's sympathetic hero, but it still kind of follows the "____ From Hell" template rather closely - a 3rd party catches on to the secret past and is dispatched, our hero is framed for some of the psycho's crimes, etc. It may be short, but it's still copying the beats we've seen a million times, so if you're not on board with the movie's gonzo sense of humor (the "sassy black nurse" character is constantly dialed to 11, and it actually works), or find Paz's non-performance too much (little?) to deal with, there isn't a hell of a lot left to recommend here. One could enjoy the (too) brief turns by Judd Nelson and Martin Donovan as a couple of sleazy jerks (Nelson is the head doctor; Donovan is Danni's stepfather), but otherwise this is strictly a love it or hate it affair; I can't really see any possibility of a middle ground.

And that's a bummer, because I suspect watching alone on VOD will result in a lot of "hate it" reactions. It's a crowd movie that will rarely get the benefit of one, and it's possible that the big screen and 3D presentation, while unnecessary in the technical sense, added immensely to my enjoyment. There were only like 8 other people at the screening, but they were all laughing as often as I was, and post-screening tweets were all positive (but again, of the "so bad it's good" variety). That sort of thing doesn't quite work at home - I encourage you invite a few friends over if you can't find a theater nearby. And it's finally a win for Aarniokoski, who made the woeful-even-by-Highlander-standards Endgame and also the abysmal Animals (under a different name), which nearly scared me out of getting up early enough to drive to Santa Monica for the screening this morning. If he can channel this sort of attitude and energy into something meatier next time around, I'll forgive him for good!

What say you?

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Carrie (2013)

OCTOBER 30, 2013

GENRE: HERO KILLER, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Any hope that the remake of Carrie would overcome the odds and manage to convince me it had a creative reason to exist was erased literally the second the film began, as the first credit appeared and I recognized the "Trajan" font that has become synonymous with generic studio horror over the past decade. Sure, they used it in the ads as well, but the fact that they went all in and put it in the movie practically shouted at me, loud and clear, "This is another reason why people will hate on remakes, sorry." And you might think I'm being ridiculous to lose all hope in a movie because of its damn font, but since the next 90 minutes did nothing but confirm I was right, over and over again, maybe you can give me the benefit of the doubt, eh?

Indeed, the most fascinating thing about the movie was how bland and mechanical it was. Director Kimberly Peirce and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa repeatedly said over the past year or so (the movie was delayed 6 months for reasons still unknown, unless it was the obvious: "It's not very good so let's put it out at Halloween when people will see anything genre-related.") that they weren't remaking Brian De Palma's film but going back to the original text, which is all I can hope for with such things. As I've explained a million times before, I don't consider Carpenter's The Thing to be a remake any more than I do Coppola's Dracula - it's a new take on written material, with anything in common from a previous movie more coincidental than anything. But there's no way in hell you could believe that here; every single thing that De Palma and his screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen changed from Stephen King's novel has been magically changed again here - even the things that didn't quite work when they did it in 1976 (SPOILER: Mrs. White once again dies in a Christ-pose courtesy of a dozen or so telekinetically thrown knives). This is probably why Cohen once again has screenwriting credit even though he didn't work on the film - this is not common for remakes even of movies that AREN'T adapted from books or whatever (the only times I can recall it happening are The Hitcher and The Omen remakes), so the fact that he's still getting credited for HIS adaption is pretty telling.

In fact, the only things that I can see that were taken from the book and NOT in De Palma's (if they were in the 2002 TV movie, I don't know - still haven't seen it) are superfluous. One is the fact that Sue Snell is pregnant, a "plot point" that amounts to exactly one line of dialogue and one moment of morning sickness for which we are led to believe her guilt was to blame. Another I wouldn't even have noticed if not for the fact that De Palma's version "spoke" to me - the gym teacher's name has been reverted back to Desjardin after De Palma/Cohen switched it to the much cooler name of "Collins". And that's pretty much it - there isn't a single thing from the book that we didn't get to see in 1976. It truly baffles me that with the bigger budget and advances in FX that they couldn't think of anything of note to do differently during the TK sequences, especially with CGI at their disposal to pull off things that would have been impossible then. The non-destruction of the town is a huge puzzle - in the book, Carrie destroys the entire city, pretty much, but this movie, as with the original, limits her carnage to the school and a bit of the surrounding area (a few minor explosions from sewer holes and a sinkhole on one street), plus her house.

I also didn't get why they didn't use the book's framing device, which had it all in flashback. Not only would it have been proof that they were truly going from King's text, but it also would have been more modern - the "start at the end" thing is a pretty common trope these days (too common, if you ask me), but often it's not very justified; it just tells us who lives and spoils part of its own ending more often than not. But some random survivor (not difficult; apart from the people I've already mentioned, no one has much of a character here - there isn't even a "Norma" type standin among the girls) telling the tale, over shots of a completely decimated town - that would actually WORK. But no, apart from a scene of Mrs. White giving birth (the most significant "from the book!" element), the movie begins and ends exactly the same, failing to make use of its source material at every turn. Even when things seem like they might be a bit different, Peirce and Sacasa hold back - the girls are playing volleyball in the pool this time, and thus I thought they'd have Carrie have her period there, letting the blood mix with the blue water for a disturbing visual, but no. They go into the shower room (in 2013? That even still happen anywhere?) and things proceed as you'd expect.

So is it any good? Let's assume that I'm the target audience, i.e. teenagers who haven't seen the original (or read the book, but come on, does that need to be clarified in this day and age?). In that case, yeah, it's fine I guess. At the risk of sounding pervy, I don't understand the point of giving the role of Carrie to the most attractive girl in the cast, but Chloe Moretz does a fine job of earning our sympathies, while also fumbling about awkwardly enough for us to understand why the boys wouldn't at least give her a second look (she's less effective in the 3rd act; I don't think ANYONE can pull off moving their arms around REALLY HARD to show telekinesis - probably why they didn't have Sissy Spacek do it). And the rest of the girls are sufficiently horrible without going too overboard into cartoon villainy (though Chris' boyfriend, played by some guy with nowhere near the charisma of John Travolta, comes close), with bonus points for casting Hart "Ellis" Bochner as Chris' dad - a fine shorthand for an audience to understand she comes from an entitled upbringing. The less said about Julianne Moore, however, the better - her over-the-top scenery chewing most definitely will not earn her an Oscar nomination (a Razzie might not be out of the question), though it makes Judy Greer (as Desjardin) shine even brighter by comparison; if there's any reason for a fan of the original to see this, it might be her.

But a younger audience might be just as confused as I was as to how old-fashioned it was. Apart from the "plug it up!" scene being filmed with a camera phone, it's a bizarrely outdated film - the same character with the iPhone at one point even runs home to check her email, as if it wasn't something she can do with her portable device. And when Sue has to make her mad dash to the prom to stop Carrie from being humiliated, she does so by driving, looking around for a way to get into the school, etc - rather than just text her boyfriend the news. Fuck, I'm sick to death of found footage, but there's a way to do the finale that way that would have actually worked on a narrative level (and again, would have been a good way to update the novel's flashback structure), and yet it goes curiously unexplored. It's not uncommon to wonder why a not-great movie didn't do this or that when you're removed from it, but wondering AS IT'S HAPPENING is a sure sign of a film that has completely failed to engage the audience. Hell, I'm not exactly an expert on De Palma's film (I've only seen it twice) or the novel (read once, at least a decade ago), so considering my poor memory I should have been able to more or less "forget" how everything turned out, but the movie's insistence on sticking to the previous film just kept giving me deja vu. Hell even with The Omen (a closer copy) there were a couple of "re-surprise" moments, but I never once got that here. Only the occasional line (like a rather funny one about Tim Tebow) let me know that they HAD indeed written some semblance of a new script. So it's got one up on Psycho '98, I'll give it that much, but to me a good remake should interest viewers new and old - this one almost goes out of its way to alienate the latter.

And then they twist the knife one last time, offering up a ridiculous shot of a tombstone cracking (via not-very-good CGI) to close the film in place of one of the all time great final scares in horror history. But in a way it's kind of perfect; the film starts on something new and ends on something the same only worse, precisely mirroring the likely intentions of Peirce and her cast. It wouldn't surprise me if the studio demanded something "safer" (while still - admirably - R-rated), and certainly the recent (re)wave of school shootings probably didn't help the movie any, but I didn't pay 8 bucks (matinee!) for their initial ideas. With so many paths they could have chosen, they took the least effective one at every turn, and the film's less-than-stellar box office performance - without a single competitor in a year that horror has been doing quite well - proves that their non-risk didn't pay off. Next time do it right or don't do it at all.

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No One Lives (2012)

MAY 9, 2013

GENRE: HERO KILLER, SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Since slashers are my favorite horror sub-genre, it's no surprise that I've seen more of them than any other specific sub-genre (I know the genre tags will tell you "Supernatural" is the highest, but that's such a much broader spectrum)... which also means I've seen too many that don't try to do anything new. Thus, whenever someone thinks outside the box a bit, I'm always an easy sell, be it a documentary approach (Behind the Mask) or simply existing in the world where all those other slashers exist (Scream). So I was pretty stoked when I realized that No One Lives was not merely a gory revenge movie like the trailers suggested, but something that seemed to be a sort of "What if?" sequel to a slasher movie we never saw.

(To explain means spoilers, so if you haven't heard the specifics of the movie's premise - which are revealed by the end of the first act, I should stress - stop reading!)

As a news report tells us, some time ago, 14 teens were killed during a graduation party by an unknown murderer, with one girl's body missing/presumed dead - i.e. the plot of any number of slasher movies that ended with the survivor seemingly about to be done in by the not-dead killer. But what if the guy didn't want to kill her? What if he wanted to keep her as his own, imparting his slasher wisdom on her (it's a good theory for whatever the hell Jason was doing with the Amanda Righetti character in the Friday the 13th remake)? That's pretty much the scenario of No One Lives; our murderer is on the run with both his would-be victim (locked in his mini Uhaul) and his actual girlfriend, and along the way they run afoul of a typical band of assholes you'd find in a rape-revenge movie (or a less mutant-tastic Texas Chainsaw ripoff). The killer (named Driver and played by Luke Evans) loses his prize to these folks, and spends the rest of the movie wiping them out (as per the title!) in order to get her back.

Normally I don't like these "no one to root for" movies, but the premise was so wacky I was kind of in love with it, especially when it's revealed that the kidnap victim (Adelaide Clemens; the Michelle Williams lookalike from Silent Hill 3D) is no saint herself. At first she seems somewhat concerned for the gang of thugs, but within minutes she seems content to let Driver wipe them all out and then worry about him later (after all, it's clear HE means her no real harm), and flashbacks reveal he's taught her how to fight. So you have this bizarre three way fight where everyone's kind of a dick, allowing for some unusual suspense - it's not a question of "Who should I root for?" it's more "By whose hand will it be most satisfying to see this person die?" It's only like 80 minutes long and the movie doesn't waste a lot of time getting to the point where Driver and his girls are run off the road by one of the thugs, so there's not a lot of time to question the morality of anything you're seeing provided you're on board with the film's inherent mean-spirited/gonzo spirit in the first place.

It's also sufficiently gory, with many creative kills - I particularly liked the crucifixion by shower curtain and clipboard decapitation. Someone complained that too many kills were off-screen, but being that this was probably NOT a big budget production, I was satisfied with how many we DID see, especially since they were largely practical FX. You hear these stories about how the filmmakers "didn't have time" to spray a little blood on the wall or something - well these folks found a way to have their handsome star completely covered in blood from head to foot for a few shots, so it's almost like they, I dunno, planned in the time to do things right? Crazy idea, but I swear it works! Lot of stunt work too, which is fun to see - this is, for the most part, nowhere near as visually stylized as director Ryûhei Kitamura's other films (basically just a couple of impressive, standalone shots) but he more or less makes up for it with the inventive stunt work, like when a guy is yanked from a porch by an arrow on a wire, which triggers a shotgun blast along the way. There's also a hilarious, out of nowhere and rather brutal catfight in which the two ladies (the girl from Howling Reborn and America Olivo, who was actually IN the Friday remake I mentioned earlier) toss each other into walls and through glass coffee tables without hesitation.

Now, I'm not going to suggest this is some classic - it's a WWE movie after all, so you get some bad acting from a wrestler (though they have definitely made the right call to cast actual actors in the leads of their last few movies and put their guys in supporting, thankless roles) and a LOT of meatheaded dialogue. I laughed, but if I hear anything stupider than "If I wanted to hear from an asshole, I'd rip you a new one!" this year I might have to quit moviegoing, and there are an alarming number of murders that no one seems to notice, as well - a family is killed in the first few minutes and the cops never seem to notice despite everything seemingly taking place in a 10 mile radius. And Driver seems to have no problem using his hands, but didn't he have to break his own thumb to get out of the cuffs at the end of act 1? In short, it's best not to think about any of it too much and just have fun.

In fact I'd liken it favorably to See No Evil, which I think was the first WWE production and their only other entry in the slasher genre (The Call sort of fits, but it's more of a thriller and as I said in my review, it's the slasher stuff that kind of ruins it). Like that film, No One Lives is definitely aiming at the part of your brain that tends to enjoy really terrible people being murdered by other really terrible people (Silent Night, Deadly Night is of course the granddaddy of such fare), and quite frankly you don't get to see enough of that sort of thing in a movie theater. Sure, the place was practically empty (of the 5 other people in the theater for this 10pm showing, I knew 3 of them), but if it can actually fill a screening at any point, I'm sure it will be glorious if everyone's in the right mindset for it. It's crass and "awesome", and does the aforementioned movies proud. And it's got a built-in prequel in case they want to franchise the thing, so good on them.

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Hatchet For The Honeymoon (1970)

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

GENRE: HERO KILLER, ITALIAN
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Not sure why I had skipped Hatchet For The Honeymoon (Italian: Il rosso segno della follia) for so long - it's been on Instant for a while, and while I'm not a die hard Bava fan I will certainly find his stuff more interesting than any of the anonymous Syfy monster movies or low-budget Hostel wannabes I've watched since the last time I dipped into the maestro's filmography (Planet of the Vampires, back in 2010!). Plus this one bordered on slasher territory, which would entice me more than something more supernaturally driven - what the hell was my problem?

Luckily it was worth the wait. It starts off a bit slow and un-involving, but it picks up considerably around the halfway point when our murderous "hero" (spoiler) offs his wife and is then haunted by her ghost. Or is he? In a fun twist, everyone else seems to be able to see her, even though he does not and is pretty sure he killed her. I never read (nor will I) "American Psycho", so I don't know if the film adaptation was taking directly from it or not, but either way this had to be an influence or one or both of them, and the two would make for a fine double feature as they have similar plots but couldn't be more different visually - Bava's usual rich colors are a stark contrast to the cold/sterile look of that film. And this is the superior of the two, because he doesn't kill a homeless guy's dog.

I was also charmed a bit by the "mystery" built into his killings - he was actually trying to unlock a memory about his childhood, and found that killing women in bridal dresses was the only way to get flashes of what happened. It's not too hard to figure out, but it's kind of amusing that you're almost rooting for him to kill another innocent lady so he could get to the bottom of this other thing. If he was just killing at random for no reason (like American Psycho) it would lose my interest fast, but that and the fun psychological bent in the 2nd half made it a winner.

I do wish the police element was more interesting, however. There's a cop who pretty much knows that he's a serial killer (the dope has killed six women with ties to his model agency - nice way to avoid suspicion, ya goon), and thus just keeps showing up with more evidence that you'd think would be enough to secure a warrant, but alas he seems content to just hang out and wait for John to screw up, I guess. There's a bit of a twist toward the end that helps explain it, but it doesn't change the fact that a lot of it feels like padding. I do like that the cop watches a horror movie that John claims was the source of the loud screams a neighbor heard to prove that he was lying because "no one had screamed in the movie yet". I just picture him going home, his wife is like "How was your day?" and his son wants him to play catch, but he's gotta sit there and watch Black Sabbath (which is what the movie was, though it's never named so I think it's just supposed to be a fun visual joke to represent a generic horror film) and note where the screams are so he can figure out if an alibi checks out. For a cop that diligent you think he'd be able to nab this guy by now, but oh well.

Stephen Forsyth was a pretty great fit for this sort of role, and I was bummed to discover that this was his last movie. Per the IMDb (grain of salt) he didn't like the roles he was getting and thus quit acting and became a music composer - a shame since he's actually quite good here and it should have paved the way for better work. He's charming and likable despite being a killer, and he's got this slight Clint Eastwood flair to him that serves him quite nicely. At one point he point blank asks a girl at a club if she wants to go home with him, and it's only the fact that she can see his dead wife's ghost hanging around that seems to be stopping her - he's THAT alluring! Plus he's wonderfully dry in his delivery about his Oedipus complex and such - it's a pretty delightful role; the sort of thing that a Bradley Cooper or Ryan Reynolds would probably jump at the chance to play nowadays.

Someday I gotta get Tim Lucas' book on Bava and go through his entire filmography (not just the horror stuff, which is what I've been limited to thus far). Apparently this was his most personal film, but I know nothing about him so that was lost on me, and so far almost all of his movies have been the types where I'd rather just watch and enjoy rather than write about (hence the brief-ish review). Plus I should be seeing more Italian westerns anyway, so that'd be a good place to start. It's all about context!

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The Killing Kind (1973)

JANUARY 29, 2013

GENRE: HERO KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Since it was released on DVD a few years back, I can only assume that I queued The Killing Kind up after seeing it in the "Chopping List" in an issue of Fangoria back in 2008, and it's only risen to the surface now (so for those of you who recommended movies in 2010 - sorry! Probably won't come up in the next couple months). Because I have no conscious knowledge of its existence before I saw that it was on the way, and its obscure nature means it's not very likely to have come up as a recommendation. Netflix maybe; their algorithms and such for recommending movies seem to be pretty good - but this was a Blockbuster rental, and they pretty much just recommend Dawn of the Dead for everything.

I'm also not too familiar with director Curtis Harrington; I'm pretty sure the only other of his films that I have seen is Queen of Blood, which was OK but hardly the sort of thing that would make me run over to the computer and seek out every other film he had made. And it's obscure to the world at large, too - on the disc's sole extra, Harrington explains that the distributor did a terrible job, playing it in a couple of cities but keeping no records of where, so they were unable to secure bigger distribution as they would need to know where the film hadn't already played. This is the sort of thing that terrifies me as all those lazy folks move on to streaming and abandon physical media; this film was saved thanks to Dark Sky, but how many other indie horror films (or any genre, really) from that era were met with the same fate but HAVEN'T found their way into permanent preservation? With each new format, more and more movies are lost as is - what about when we don't even HAVE a format? Just some "cloud". Scary.

Anyway, this is a strange little movie that's worth a look for fans of things like Henry or Peeping Tom, or pretty much any of the 2nd features at a proper Grindhouse film festival night at the New Beverly, where the movies tend to be a little slower and harder to pin down. If I were to boil the movie down to a one line summary, it would be "John Savage gets out of prison and gets back at the women who sent him there", but that's highly misleading - there's only two of them (the girl who lied about his role in her attack, and the lawyer who screwed him over) and the 3rd act revolves around the murder of a girl who had nothing to do with it. Indeed, like The Witch Who Came From The Sea, it's just a 70s bummer drama with some light horror elements thrown in to ensure guys like me check it out.

That said, it's interesting that Savage doesn't seem to be trying to suppress his murderous rage all that much - I figured it'd be one of those deals where his victims push him to the breaking point, but he really goes out of his way to kill the girl that got him sent to prison (she was being gang raped and the guys forced him to join - this is our opening scene, by the way), following her in his car, having a chase, and trying repeatedly to run her off the road until he finally succeeds. And the stuff with the lawyer could have been cut entirely since it's the only time the character appears and I'm pretty sure she's never mentioned again - it's like someone realized that the movie needed another kill and hired Ruth Roman for a day or two. This gives the movie a bit of an uneven feel; on one hand he's sort of our hero and is clearly messed up, so you want to feel sorry for him, but he also seems to enjoy killing these women (and a poor rat that he basically places ON a mousetrap, a scene accompanied by a few notes from "Three Blind Mice" to boot) and goes out of his way to do so.

But when the focus is on Savage and his mother, I had no issues at all, as these scenes work great (again, as more of a drama than a horror film). She actually unknowingly sets him on his murderous path, as both of them seemingly live to please the other. Yes, it gets a bit icky at times (many a kiss goodnight is on the lips), and will of course invite some comparisons to Psycho, but it actually provides the film with most of its suspense. Will he go after her, too? Will she protect him if she finds out what he did? In a way the movie is just as much Ann Sothern's as Savage's, and the final scenes legit left me feeling pretty sad for her. I also felt bad for poor Cindy Williams, who comes to town to be a model (something Sothern mocks) and takes a liking to Savage since he's the only other person in the house that's not an old lady. So many lives ruined, all because Savage has the weirdest friends in the world (seriously, who forces another guy to rape the girl they're raping? They literally rip his pants off and push him onto/into her).

It's also got one of the freakiest nightmare scenes ever, where Savage dreams of being in a crib (as an adult) as the old ladies in his mother's house wave bottles and rattles in his face. Then there's a cut and the girl he "raped" (the gorgeous Sue Bernard) is in the crib with him, giggling as the old ladies shout SHAME! over and over. It's appropriately unsettling, and if anything the movie could have used more of this sort of stuff. Indeed, apparently there was a bit where he went to a zoo and began identifying with the caged apes (and also spotted Bernard, which triggered him going after her later), but it was cut by one of the producers. It's a shame that Dark Sky couldn't find it for the DVD, but I guess we should be happy they were even able to present the movie in such good shape. Not like us Cathy's Curse fans will ever get the satisfaction.

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