Dead Men Walk (1943)

FEBRUARY 15, 2008

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

One thing I love about old movies, besides the length (I’m a busy man, I don’t have time for these two hour Argento opuses every day!), is how uncomplicated they are. Dead Men Walk is about a guy who kills his brother, but the brother was into black magic so he comes back as a vampire, and then seeks revenge. That’s it. Nowadays, there’d be a third brother, a real estate scam, some double crosses, a talking sandwich, a few dancing girls, a space shuttle...

This is actually one of the better old-school vampire movies. As expected, you don’t get a lot of violence, but the atmosphere makes up for it, and it also has what had to be one of the first “twin” effects (via a split screen). George Zucco doesn’t fight himself, Van Damme style, but the effect works beautifully and that’s all that matters. There’s also a great deal of fire in the movie; in addition to the standard fiery finale (which contains the longest “thing falls over that starts the fire” shot in cinematic history I think), there’s also 2-3 scenes of book burning in the first 15 minutes.

And also this guy, who resembles a redneck Robert Englund impersonating a chicken when he moves:

Dwight Frye also appears in the film as... the bad guy’s servant! Wow! But to be fair, his role of Zolarr is nothing at all like his Renfield or Igor roles, since this movie wasn’t based on a book. This was a wholly original character, one who just happens to do the same sort of shit that his other ones do. Poor guy. I looked him up on Wikipedia today and found that he died on a bus. A terrible way to go for anyone, but he was about to begin filming a role in a big budget drama about Woodrow Wilson, which must have been pretty exciting for him, since the role probably wouldn’t require him to yell out MASTER! or something to that effect.

Anyway, good stuff. The story might not be groundbreaking, but for 62 minutes you can’t really complain. You CAN complain about the transfer though - it's possibly the worst on this budget pack yet, with lots of that weird shifting effect (where small objects in slow moving shots seem to drift around). Apparently when Turner Classic aired the film a while back, their transfer sucked too. That's one really awesome thing about the digital format - treasures like The Attic will be preserved for hundreds of years to come.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hatchetman (2003)

FEBRUARY 14, 2008

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

When you rent a film from Blockbuster, you have the option of keeping it after a week or two. The price is on the receipt, it’s usually like 19.99 or 24.99. Well, keeping Hatchetman would have set me back a whole 3.99, which was a pretty good indicator of its worth. What I mean to say is: this movie is fucking worthless.

Unlike yesterday’s goofy Backlot Murders, this movie appears to take itself seriously. This is a problem when it’s completely fucking stupid. The problems are evident from the start: a girl gives her boyfriend a tie as a one year anniversary gift, we see the most matter of fact, half-assed mugging in cinematic history (“Give me money!”, the mugger yells. “OK, fine”, the girl replies, as if he was just a rather pushy Salvation Army Santa), and the one kill scene in the first 20 minutes has no buildup or anything associated with decent filmmaking.

Even stupider, the film is about a killer that seems to be specifically stalking the dancers from a sleazy strip club in LA. Nothing wrong with that, but they all seem to live together too! And seemingly all of the other people who live in the apartment complex frequent the joint. Even this would be fine if the two places were next door to one another (nothing beats proximity!) but they appear to be not even within walking distance of each other, as getting rides to and from work/home make up more than a couple conversations. But at least those conversations have something resembling a point, at one point the resident bitchy character enters Final Girl’s apartment for no reason other than to announce she’s going to work. Let’s ignore the fact that they don’t even like each other, but who the fuck walks into someone’s home just to tell them what they are doing without them?

Also, strangely, one of the most annoying things about the movie is the amount of nudity. For the first hour, every other scene is of the women stripping and “dancing”. But the film doesn’t seem sleazy, in fact they actually go out of their way to make the film seem a bit dramatic (after all, our Final Girl is trying to get into law school, of course, and there’s many scenes revolving around whether or not her relationship with Tie Guy is going anywhere). If any of this was presented as tongue in cheek, it would be fine, but since everyone’s so serious, it just becomes dull and pointless, and fast. You hate to think gratuitous nudity actually slows a movie down, but Hatchetman manages to do just that.

And take a look at this guy. Get a good look.

If you’re ever unfortunate enough to watch this film, at least now you are prepared for the sight of the single most annoying character in horror movie history. I’m not joking. It’s rare I loathe anyone so much in a movie, but this guy made me want to literally go back in time to when the film was being shot and convince the writer to brutally kill the guy in the film’s opening scene. Naturally, he’s the very last victim in the film. Thanks a lot, assholes.

The police are the most inept in cinema history too, at one point or another they manage to accuse, arrest, or just kill every single guy in the movie EXCEPT for the one who’s the actual killer. Worse, when the killer is revealed, not only does he keep his mask on for another 10 minutes even though we know who it is, he also reveals a motive that doesn’t make any fucking sense. Apparently his mother was a stripper and he hates her and every other stripper too. Fine, but why did he go to the strip club early in the movie without any problem whatsoever? You’d think if the simple idea of it upset him to the point of murder, he’d at least be frowning when actually watching it and paying 7 bucks a beer to boot. In fact, his identity is actually revealed a bit sooner, once we learn he lives near the woods, since the film’s poster and DVD menu feature a killer standing in the middle of a forest, despite the fact that the entire film up until that point takes place in either a strip club, an apartment complex, or a standard office building subbing for the LAPD precinct.

The film also contains the worst digital blood in movie history:

It’s fucking blue for Christ’s sake!

The only thing I liked about this movie was a scene where a guy explains a cable splitter to another. As a fan of all types of AV components and adapters, I am pretty sure it was the first time I have seen an RF coaxial splitter used in a film. Nice. I also appreciate that there were no trailers for even worse films at the head of the DVD, something that’s almost standard with this type of DTV crap. Hilariously, the disc’s one extra feature is listed as “Trailers” (plural) on the main menu, and if you click on it, you just get a link for one trailer (for a movie about Boris Yeltsin, of all people). Nice work guys.

Fuck this stupid movie. 3.99? It’s still overpriced.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Backlot Murders (2002)

FEBRUARY 13, 2008

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

Let’s be honest, The Backlot Murders is a pretty bad movie. But there’s JUST enough good natured fun in it to warrant a pass (or at least, keep it from a Crap tagging). While there were more than enough groan-inducing moments, on more than one occasion I found myself pretty entertained and even somewhat charmed by the film’s bizarre blending of comedy and horror (heavy emphasis on the comedy). In short, any movie with the line “Pumpkin needs to poop” can’t be altogether bad.

(Pumpkin is a dog.)

I have never seen David DeFalco’s infamous film Chaos, and that is due to the fact that I hear it’s fucking terrible from pretty much everyone who’s ever seen it (including members of its own cast), and the guy says that it’s not a remake of Last House on the Left, when it so clearly is (even the damn poster is a copy). A little honesty goes a long way with me. As I learned on the extra features, DeFalco is a bit of a tool in fact, referring to this goofy, ridiculous movie as a “thinking man’s horror movie”. Maybe he means “a horror movie for the thinking man who is tired of thinking and just wants to be mindlessly entertained”, but I don’t think so. Anyway, when I saw his name in the credits, I feared the worst, and then an establishing shot of a movie studio with the superimposed title “Empire Studios” when we can clearly see that the studio is actually called Metro Studios didn’t help much.

But then, like the voice of an angel, I hear (and then see, obviously) none other than Ken Sagoes. Ken, of course, is Kincaide from "Dream"s Warrior and Master, and his dialogue from those two films was commonly repeated by my friends and I in high school (I don’t think a day went by without someone saying “Yeah, I do it so I don’t have to look at yo’ ugly face all the time!”). Sadly, Sagoes dies about 2 minutes after being introduced, but the work had been done – he had blessed the film with his presence, and from then on, the film was more or less a delight of bad slasher movie clichés combined with hit or miss comedy.

And props to the film for being I think the first slasher movie to take place on movie sets that actually exist in the real world. When someone says “It’s the Psycho house!”, it is indeed the actual Pyscho house (the whole movie was filmed on the Universal backlot) They don’t make up random titles meant to evoke the real films, they just use the real ones. It’s refreshing. Also, using Psycho allows the film to quickly characterize one girl as a total idiot, because she’s more familiar with the bullshit 1998 version than the real one.

Also, the director of the video being shot within the movie is a total hoot. He’s played by Charles Fleischer, better known as Roger Rabbit, and while some of his lines are lame and obvious, he has enough gems to make up for it (there’s a line about Chatsworth, a town I loathe for no real reason, that had me nearly pissing my pants). He also survives most of the film, which is nice since he’s the oldest character, usually a kiss of death.

Speaking of which, it’s actually somewhat difficult to pin down who the survivors will be. Since everyone seems to be a bit stupid (save for an AD who is written out of the film 20 minutes in, presumably to be a suspect), there’s no obvious Final Girl. In fact, one of the few times the movie really got on my nerves is when they kept putting the same two kids in standard slasher movie danger, only to end the scene with them perfectly alive. I think it’s finally on the fourth go-around that they are finally killed (and even then, one of them escapes and gets killed a few scenes later). Come on movie, when two kids go off to fool around, they are to be killed within 7 minutes, not 7 scenes.

I hate to spoil the film, but it’s too admirable not to mention. Not only is the killer the most obvious choice (though he has a slightly less obvious partner), but he actually appears to dress AS HIMSELF. Seriously, the killer’s getup is some human mask that just looks like the bobblehead version of the guy who’s actually the killer. It’s fucking hilarious. Imagine if Michael Myers wore a Sabretooth mask in the Halloween remake? I loved it.

So with all that love, why don’t I give this movie a wholly positive review? Well, the acting is abysmal (part of the point, but it doesn’t seem that many of the actors are in on the joke), the gore is pretty minimal considering how over the top the rest of the film is, and even though they are on an actual movie studio, everything still feels pretty cheap (they also seem to be able to film a music video with only a director and 2 special effects technicians?). The finale also drags a bit; the movie could be 10 minutes shorter for sure. And while I am certainly not one to talk, the profanity is a bit too rampant, and sounds forced to boot. It’s distracting, to say the least. So while I may have been somewhat impressed with the comedic angle, the film is an utter failure when it comes to the horror, which is a big problem when you have a “thinking man’s horror movie” such as this.

Still, not the worst movie I’ve ever seen by any stretch, and the 4 or 5 laugh out loud lines, plus a small role by none other than Corey Haim, are enough to make it worth your time, especially if your other options are Lionsgate scarecrow movies.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Non Canon Review: My Bloody Valentine (1981)

FEBRUARY 13, 2008

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

Fuck you, Paramount. Fuck you in your mountain’s ass! The atrocity that is the Friday the 13th boxed set is nothing compared to the criminally weak treatment that My Bloody Valentine was given for its DVD release. I hope whoever decided “they don’t even need the trailer on this disc” was promptly fired and then shot for good measure. At least some of the F13 movies had commentaries and such. Christ.

See, unlike most of the other slasher films from 1981, My Bloody Valentine is actually quite good even without all of the gore. Something like The Burning or even Halloween II pretty much rely on their gore setpieces to keep viewer interest. But MBV is great fun even with almost zero splatter (with one minor exception, the only blood you see in the film is on already killed folks), all of which was removed by the MPAA (rumored to be around 9 minutes of footage!) for theatrical release, and never restored. Some of the kill scenes are rendered wholly incomprehensible, particularly the death of Howard (which is that one exception to the splatter I mentioned). Instead of, you know, what is happening, you just see a few drops hit the face of one of the heroines and then Howard’s body fall down a shaft. Huh? After about a dozen viewings now I am pretty sure that his body was hung from his neck and then thrown from above, and the impact caused his head to be severed, but when you’re talking about a genre that more or less exists primarily to showcase effects work, cutting it to the point of confusion seems a bit counterproductive.

Luckily, as mentioned, the film works without it. There is quite a lot of character development, but the film never feels slow (there are 3-4 kills by the 40 minute mark). And it’s still one of the only slasher movies with a cast of folks in their late 20s or early 30s (whether they are SUPPOSED to be teens is unknown, everyone refers to them as “kids” but maybe that’s just Canadian slang). I also consider Chief Newby, despite his stupid name, one of the best slasher movie cops ever, up there with Sheriff Garris in F13 part 6 and of course, the patron saint of the horror police force: Sheriff Leigh Brackett.

Also I am forever in love with Cynthia Dale, aka Patty, the hottest slasher victim ever (sorry, Vicky from F13 2):

It also works on a suspense/scare level, which is again, ironically not a strong point of any of these early 80s slashers. The scene of the Miner smashing all of the lights as he heads toward our heroines continues to impress, and the vicious attack on the poor old lady at the Laundromat (and who the hell is Jake, by the way?) is a great setpiece. I also think the mystery holds up, even on repeat viewings there aren’t a lot of “oh why didn’t I notice THAT!” moments, something that cripples Scream on a 2nd viewing (check out how many times Stu and Billy give each other weird looks).

So besides the abhorrent editing, is there anything I don’t like? Well, not really, though a couple things sort of bug me. One is the driving in this movie. Every scene of someone driving involves a car nearly swerving out of control. What the hell is up with these Canadians? I wouldn’t want to drive anywhere near a single character. Also, the accents are distracting, because they are thicker than any other Canada-lensed movie I can remember. I don’t think they ever specify that the film takes place in America or Canada (the town of Valentine Bluffs is fictional, so that’s no help), but still, hearing Axl say “We didn’t knooo waarrr you were!” sort of lessens the impact of the scene. Since they don’t say it’s Canada, I have to assume they are supposed to be Americans (don’t forget, 90% of all movies filmed in Toronto try to pass themselves off as being New York, Boston, etc). I also never got why TJ was so delighted to be climbing that ladder after finding some of his friends dead:

But those are mere distractions (and it's in my contract that I nitpick at least SOMETHING for every review). There’s nothing actually bad about the film other than the editing, and that’s the MPAA’s fault. The recent announcement of a remake is actually good news – maybe Paramount will finally get off their ass and release an uncut special edition DVD of the filjavascript:void(0)m. It’s widely considered one of the better of the genre (Tarantino himself counts it as his favorite slasher, and Entertainment Weekly called it “criminally under-appreciated”).

You may wonder why I haven’t mentioned the theme song. For 14 years now (literally half of my life!) I have been trying to find out who sang the damn thing. No one knows, and the internet doesn’t help, because if you Google “My Bloody Valentine song” all that comes up is either the Irish band or people asking about who sang it. I’ve just about had it. SOMEONE HAS TO FUCKING KNOW!!!

(*Robert Stack voice* UPDATE! Paul Zaza, the film's composer, confirmed via Email that he is both the composer and artist behind the theme song, which is titled "The Ballad of Valentine." I consider the matter closed.)

Speaking of my long association with this film, yes, I first saw it when I was 13 or 14 and have watched it every year since, on my illegal dupe, then on a VHS, and now DVD (maybe next year will be a Blu Ray?). I even wrote a treatment for a sequel when I was like 15, which would involve the staff of the mental hospital where the killer was locked up having a party and then, shockingly enough, being killed when he got out of his room (OR DID HE?). It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, I hope you celebrate tonight or tomorrow with a viewing of this classic. Butchering aside, it remains the all time best non-franchise slasher movie and serves as a reminder that you don’t need to have a lot of splatter (or any, in fact) to make an effective one.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Roman (2006)

FEBRUARY 12, 2008

GENRE: HERO KILLER, INDEPENDENT
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Instead of reading this review, you should go see Spiral, or pre-order the DVD here (it’s only playing in a few cities). You see, Roman is a very similar movie in concept, but on the polar opposite end of the spectrum in execution. Because, while both films are “slow”, Spiral is pretty damn good, and this movie bored the shit out of me, and didn’t look very good either. And it didn’t have Chuck.

Like Spiral, Roman is about a creepy guy who inexplicably draws the attraction of a really hot, spunky girl who might have some mental issues. Unfortunately, the film never once feels like anything but a decent short film that someone decided should be stretched into a feature. So this means we get about 6 scenes of Roman being mocked by his co-workers, 15 scenes of him looking out the window, some 4569766 of him making pork n beans, etc. It’s one thing to draw tension and develop character, but when that character is doing the same thing over and over, it’s not really progressing anything except the audience’s boredom.

Plus, unlike Spiral, there is no mystery as to whether or not Roman is a killer. So I don’t really like him right from the start. Kind of a problem when he’s pretty much the only character in the movie they bother to develop. After he kills a girl (Kristen Bell) early on, another one comes along. She is also annoying, because she’s a hippie who puts twigs and leaves in her hair and makes Roman take her to performance art. Bell wasn’t too bad, but this broad I actually wanted him to kill, so naturally he doesn’t do that. Thanks, movie.

This movie was also shot on DV, so it’s far from enjoyable from an aesthetic point of view either. And what’s with DV filmmakers always having people look into camera and/or shooting entire scenes from one angle? You have unlimited and cheap stock in which to make your film – why not experiment a bit with different angles and such? Director Angela Bettis could have shot this the exact same way on film on a low budget for sure. The commentary doesn’t explain why they used DV, or at least, it didn’t in the time I spent listening to it, which admittedly wasn’t long since it was generally boring “trivia” like “That’s Eddie Steeples, you might know him from the Staples commercial.”

So there’s really not a lot to recommend here. The acting is good, and the end has a nice little twist involving the hippie character’s “art installation”, but that’s not really enough to make up for the snail’s pace, excessive padding, and generally lazy videomaking. I really dug May (which was also written by Lucky McKee), so I was hoping this one would be at least almost as good, but no such luck. If nothing else, it proves that Bettis should star and Lucky should direct (as they did in May), not the other way around.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Whisper (2007)

FEBRUARY 11, 2008

GENRE: KILLER KID, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I really hope that someday ABC buys the rights to Whisper and they just use some footage for it as a Sawyer flashback on Lost (in the movie, there's a back-story about his girlfriend cheating on him, maybe they can use it on Lost to explain why he refuses to get close to Kate). It will make Josh Holloway look better. Because honestly, he may call himself “Max” in the film, but he’s fucking Sawyer through and through. Same hairstyle, same mannerisms, and yes, same character (a two bit crook with shades of nobility). So either the guy is afraid to play outside of his comfort zone, or he simply just can’t act.

Luckily the movie isn’t too bad. Michael Rooker isn’t around as long as I’d like (and since when does a heart attack give you severe facial burn scars?), but any movie with a killer kid is always OK by me. And this kid’s a vicious fucking bastard, not only messing with his kidnappers, but also random folks who happen by. He also controls dogs, a la Damien, but he’s not the Antichrist. Instead, he claims to be a standard fallen angel, which is an interesting idea.

And even though the movie was shot entirely in Canada, I give the production team an A+ for really putting in the effort to sell it as Massachusetts and Maine. While I wasn’t entirely fooled (the roads are a dead giveaway – no highway in Massachusetts has more than ¼ mile without a sign for a Dunkins!), they have the right newspapers, police cars, license plates, even a nice local microbrewery (Wachusett Ale) that any native New Englander such as myself will appreciate. And since they don’t have anyone do the accent, it actually makes it even more believable, since it’s always exaggerated beyond any reasonable belief.

Sadly, Universal did not put as much effort into mastering the film. Even though it was at one point intended for theatrical release (they shot it in 2005), the film looks pretty washed out and thus TV movie-ish. The compression is also horrid – just take a close look at the Universal logo at the beginning and notice all of the blocking/smearing going on in the globe. It’s even more of a bummer when you know that the film was shot by none other than Dean Cundey, who shot a few movies you might enjoy such as Halloween, The Thing, and Jurassic Park. You can tell this would have been a nice looking film had they bothered to take the time to give it a decent transfer. Oh well.

Another bummer is some less than satisfying editing. Jumps in conversation are noticeable in more than a couple scenes (people will respond to questions in a very awkward manner, since they were actually responding to something else entirely). There’s mention of a scar on Sarah Wayne Callies’ eye that’s never elaborated on as well. Speaking of the dear departed Nurse Sara, I must take issue with a film that features no less than 3 scenes in which Callies has the perfect opportunity to flash at least some side boob and gives us nothing. She screwed us over by quitting Prison Break over salary bullshit, and she’s screwing us over here! It’s not fair, dammit!!!

Anyway, as far as direct to video movies about demonic children starring Lost characters go, it’s one of the better ones. I guess it’s airing on TNT already, if you catch it there, you should be satisfied (it’s rated R but only for language, the on-screen violence is pretty tame, so a TV edit will suffice and possibly even look better if it’s TNT HD).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Lake Placid 2 (2007)

FEBRUARY 10, 2008

GENRE: CRAP, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I think I killed Roy Scheider.

As I was watching Lake Placid 2, I commented how it made the original (which I wasn’t a big fan of either, though Brendan Gleeson was pretty awesome, as usual) look like Jaws in comparison. Then a few hours later I went to my PC and saw that Scheider had died a few hours earlier. Sorry.

Of course, the movie is supposed to be as funny as it is scary – but it doesn’t work in that matter either. Cloris Leachman replaces Betty White (she plays the original character’s sister) and her wicked old lady routine is supposed to amuse, but it doesn’t at all, and neither does anyone else. The only actual laugh I got out of the entire film is when some EPA guy picks up his dead friend’s leg and waves it around in a “Do you believe me NOW!” type moment. 1 laugh, 0 scares, 88 minutes. You do the math (if I provided enough information to solve the problem).

Suffice to say, Lake Placid 2 is a really fucking terrible movie, even by Sci-Fi standards. It’s not even goofy fun like the original or the average ‘original’ Sci-Fi film. Headless Horseman may not have been a classic, but I was at least entertained and the production value was high. This can’t even manage that, as (painfully obvious/bad) CG is not only used for every single shot of the damn croc, but even a goddamn seaplane (and they actually manage to make the plane look faker than the crocodile!). At least the CG editor knew how bad the plane looked, since after it docks it promptly disappears from every shot it should be in until they actually use it again. Nice work. And while they actually do a decent job of pretending that Bulgaria is Maine, the over abundance of Bulgarian cast members with thick Bulgarian accents sort of ruins the façade.

But abysmally bad production value on every level isn’t what sinks this film. What really brings it down (besides blatantly copying the character types from the original – Bill Pullman and Brendan Gleeson are combined into John Schneider, Sam McMurray plays an Oliver Platt clone, and some broad I’ve never heard of is the poor substitute for Bridget Fonda) is how nonchalant everyone is when they see this gigantic crocodile bearing down on them. Granted, there was nothing there (there’s a hilarious moment where a guy swings a stick, and we even hear it connect, but the stick doesn’t hit anywhere near the CG croc), and the damn thing’s size changes from shot to shot, but for Christ’s sake, ACT! At one point they simply sit there and watch the croc swim up and then demolish the boat they are sitting on; I don’t think they even bother to scream. Everyone is so matter of fact during the attack scenes that you can almost forget that they are in danger at all. If they aren’t scared (or fuck, even ENGAGED), why the hell should I be?

Sadly, the only frightening things in the film are Schneider’s hair:

And this dude’s bizarre chest hair patterns:

Another annoyance is the film’s ending. After Schneider delivers a record three (THREE!) one-liners to the crocodile and finally kills it, the movie drags for another 3-4 minutes as we learn that Schneider and the EPA chick are going to go out for dinner, and that his son is going to hook up with the girl who lives next door. Guess what, whoever wrote this crap – no one gives a rat’s ass about a single non-crocodile character in this film. Once the last croc is dead, the movie is over. If you’re going to keep it going, at least add in a little set up for the 3rd film, however unwanted it may be.

The disc also has 3 featurettes of equal value to the film itself (so, none whatsoever). One is a fast forwarded version of the film that only plays the parts with tits and gore, but since these moments are so botched those aren’t worth watching either; you’ll want to fast forward this version as well. The other two are just more or less clip reels. Thanks for wasting even more of my time, FOX (or Sony, whoever had the final say in this joint release). The only worthwhile thing on the entire disc is a spot for some Sam Jackson/Josh Hartnett movie that has 1.2 seconds of my beloved Rachel Nichols contained within; though that’s hardly enough to warrant even renting this goddamn abomination.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Inferno (1980)

FEBRUARY 9, 2008

GENRE: ITALIAN
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

While I was going through pretty much the entire Dario Argento filmography early on in the Horror Movie A Day oeuvre, I somehow skipped over Inferno, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, since it’s the sort of sequel to Suspiria, one of few I had seen prior to HMAD, and the sort of prequel to his next film, Mother Of Tears, which I got to see some of last year and was pretty intrigued by what I saw. Anyway, I finally got around to it, and while it wasn’t bad at all, it wasn’t up to par either.

One issue I had with the film is that it wasn’t batshit insane like Suspiria, but instead seemed more or less plausible. People had skeletons, died via reasonable means, etc. But at the same time, the narrative was almost non-existent. Just a bunch of folks hanging out, reading and listening to music, and every now and then someone would die. The thruline, such as it is, concerns a book called The Three Mothers. Whenever someone gets their hands on a copy they usually end up dead. Alchemists and witches seem be particularly interested in it.

There’s not even a real lead character. Every time you meet a person you think will be the heroine, she dies. There’s a bland guy who manages to survive til the end, but he doesn’t do very much in the meantime other than remind me of Brian from Prince of Darkness.

Still, it’s pretty fun at times. In one of the many shots of books on a shelf, we can see one simply called “A Book Of Good Poems” (it seems pretty thick for that title to be true though). The subtitles also provide occasional amusement, such as when they cut from Rome to New York and the subs inform us that it’s the same night in April, which is sort of redundant because the scene is simply showing the other side of a phone call. When else would it be? This isn’t Frequency. I also giggled at the score a few times, especially the end title music which had lyrics that sound like “Domino! Domini! Not Suspiriorum!” Sadly, the instrumental score was NOT done by Goblin and thus pales in comparison to pretty much every other Argento film of the period.

There’s also a fantastic scene where a character is “attacked” by a dozen or so cats. I put attacked in quotes because it is painfully obvious that someone is just throwing the damn things at the actor, and clearly aren’t interested in hurting the person since they almost immediately make a break for it (resulting in about 900 more cuts in the scene than necessary). Plus, come on, cats?? Where’s a killer with Arengto’s hands when you need him?? In fact, a lot of the kill scenes in the film, enjoyable as they may be, could be avoided if the characters weren’t so clumsy. One immolates herself by pulling a fiery drape down onto herself, and another falls down in the water and can’t get back up, resulting in being bitten by rats and then nearly beheaded by a crazed hot dog vendor (this is the weirdest scene in the movie, for the record).

Even the non-death setpieces are impressive, especially the beginning one with a woman who is determined to get her keys back, even if it means jumping into a hole in the middle of the floor and swimming around the submerged level below. But that’s part of the problem with the film – the sequences by themselves are pretty great, but they don’t add up to much. It feels at times like 2-3 different films were edited together.

Like all Argento films (except for Phantom of the Opera), it’s worth watching, but I wouldn’t recommend starting with it if you're new to the man. It’s just too average (this is probably due to the fact that it was financed by Fox) for Argento fans and yet still too strange for a casual horror fan.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Monster Walks (1932)

FEBRUARY 8, 2008

GENRE: PREDATOR, REVENGE
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 2!!!)

Another Friday, another racist budget pack movie. While not nearly as offensive as King Of The Zombies, the character of Exodus (billed as Sleep n' Eat, for some reason) in The Monster Walks will most likely give a modern audience pause, especially in his final scene when Darwin’s theory of evolution is briefly explained to him (he believes it because his grandfather looked like an ape, only he was lazy). He also points a gun at himself while he talks. Nice.

Sadly that’s probably the only interesting thing about this dull movie. At only 59 minutes (the IMDb lists 63, so there are 4 possibly racist minutes left to the imagination) it still moves at a snail’s pace, and I don’t think I need to remind anyone how sick I am of movies in which folks in an old house kill each other for an inheritance. Granted, instead of a fake ghost or whatever, the villain sets up a poor ape as the murderer, which is a bit different, but not nearly enough to retain my interest.

Not helping matters is the odd audio problem over most of the film. Namely, it sounds like everyone is underwater. Now, none of the budget pack transfers are going to win any awards, but this an issue that is (so far) unique to this film. It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if there was a lot of action, but since 95% of the film is just people talking (the first 15 minutes are comprised of nothing but discussions over where everyone should sleep for the night), it’s a bit annoying.

Question for those of you who own and/or use whips – are there often handstraps on the handle that you use to secure the whip to your hand? The killer is done in because he couldn’t free his hand from the strap in time (the ape pulls him against its cage), but it seemed a bit silly that he’d even have such a thing. A good whipper should be able to hold onto his weapon!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Happy Birthday To Me (1981)

FEBRUARY 7, 2008

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I remember it like it was a year ago today... I decided to start watching a horror movie every day. And I’ve only missed one day ever! (I know, it looks like I missed more than that since I still don’t have all the reviews for LAST February up – I swear I’ll get to it).

Anyway, to celebrate the occasion I figured I’d watch Happy Birthday To Me, which I saw (once) sometime in early 1997 I think. I know it was after Scream came out at any rate, because the only thing I could recall about the movie was that Scream had more or less stolen the killer’s backstory, but Kevin Williamson never mentioned it as one of his influences.

It also stole Scream’s running time. There should be a rule that a slasher film should never run more than 95 minutes unless it has more killings to make up for it. But that is certainly not the case here, the killer’s official body count is only 6, for a 110 minute film! Granted, the movie’s tagline sort of tells you right up front that it’s “6 of the most bizarre deaths you’ll ever see”, but that could also mean 6 weird deaths and maybe a dozen straight up throat slashings or what have you! In fact, only 3 of the deaths are in any way unique, the other 3 are in fact just stabbings.

Luckily, the characters are pretty likeable (Matt Craven’s always a welcome addition to a film) and unlike some of the other big studio slasher movies of the era, the MPAA allowed a few gory bits (Glenn Ford’s death is particularly splattery). And the story far more developed than the other ‘holiday’ slashers of the time. Plus it was directed by J. Lee Thompson, who made the original Cape Fear; and the producers also made My Bloody Valentine (the best of all the slashers of the era, in my opinion). It’s obvious that great lengths were taken to make this one a step above the others, combining standard slasher fare with a genuine character driven psychological thriller, but it’s a shame they couldn’t have tightened the pace a bit while they were at it, as it does get a bit long at times (a dirt bike race is fine since it sets up the bike death, but no one is killed with a soccer ball, so we can do without the 5 minutes of soccer game).

Lots of folks have issues with the ending, particular the total lack of buildup to it. Apparently the original ending had Ginny indeed being the killer, but this was changed at the last minute. As a result, there’s no indication or foreshadowing of any of this, and, like yesterday’s Tale Of Two Sisters remake, this also results in some of the earlier actions of both the actual killer and the main suspect making absolutely no sense in retrospect. But this doesn’t bug me as much as the batshittedness of it all. Why is that one spooky looking blond friend standing out in the rain holding a box? Where are the other 2 friends? Why didn’t anyone ever notice that the fake Ginny has a totally different rack than the real one?

Columbia’s choice of trailers for the disc’s sole extra feature is intriguing. We have I Know What You Did Last Summer (which also concerned the effects of trying to bury a secret), Identity (another movie in which they try very hard to convince you that the hero is in fact the killer), and Resident Evil Apocalypse (which... was also filmed in Canada, I guess). I would have liked to have a commentary or maybe a few of the bits that were cut (despite the blood on display, the shish ka bob and dumbbell deaths are cut, and quite noticeably), or an explanation as to why the opening theme is replaced with a song that sounds like “Looking for Trade” from Shock Treatment.

So anyway, here’s to a full year of daily horror movie watching! May 2008 to early 2009 bring us many a good film and 100% less Lionsgate scarecrows. And since all my favorite movies save one have already been remade, we can be assured that unless a Shocker remake is fast tracked, I will be much... calmer this year.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Uninvited (2008)

FEBRUARY 6, 2008

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, REMAKE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (TEST SCREENING)

The shortest review in the Horror Movie A Day canon belongs to the original version of The Uninvited (which was named Tale Of Two Sisters). My whole review, if memory serves, was “I have no idea what I just watched, but I liked it.” And it’s true – I had to go back and rewatch a good chunk of the film to ‘get’ it. This was partially due to my standard 10% doze time as well as my increasingly common problem of watching a film in another language and not reading all of the subtitles. I almost wish these things would come dubbed, especially talky films such as these – you can go a minute or so without ever actually LOOKING at the film itself.

Anyway, not following will not be a problem for anyone who watches this version. In addition to being about 20 minutes shorter and being in English, the director and screenwriters felt that it was necessary to spell everything out for the audience, sometimes flashing back to things that happened only a few minutes before. The cast and PG-13 rating leave no confusion as to who this film is meant for, but even a 14 year old girl might feel a bit insulted at the ridiculous amount of hand-holding on display here.

Worse, the film is almost abnormally lacking in suspense or scares. Granted, seeing the original (which it follows in a general sense, though thankfully isn’t an almost exact replica like The Eye) doesn’t help, but even if you hadn’t seen it, I can’t see how anyone would be scared by the time the 19th dream sequence rolls around, and the scare scenes are presented very half-assed, with no build up (and since they are all dreams, there is no payoff either). In fact, even for a PG-13 this film is remarkably tame, with only one (off-screen) death in the entire thing. If not for the occasional swear and a joke involving the stepmother’s vibrator, this could probably get a straight up PG.

Speaking of the vibrator, this scene is a bit confusing. The girls take the batteries out to get back at their stepmom. In theory, this is OK, but if you think about it, it’s ridiculous. The whole reason they hate the woman in the first place is because she is fucking their father. If she goes to use her vibrator and the damn thing doesn’t work, she’s just going to fuck their dad even more! Score, I guess? Dumb broads.

Another thing that is a major problem is that it might be too obvious to even new audiences that the sister is a ghost/figment of the imagination/whatever (she’s dead, OK?). In Sixth Sense, there was always a good reason for no one talking to Bruce Willis in the few scenes that he was shown with someone else (i.e. his wife was angry for ‘missing’ their anniversary dinner), but here it’s almost laughable how no one acknowledges the sister, who is almost always around and ‘talking’ to people. Obviously it’s a tricky thing to balance, but while Sixth Sense was pretty successful, this film is not at all. For what it’s worth, there’s an episode of Scrubs that pulls off this trick better than any film I’ve ever seen. Check it out, it’s in the 3rd season (I can’t say which episode or else it’d kind of spoil the surprise, duh. Just watch em all! Great show).

So is there anything worthwhile in this remake? Well, the two sisters and their stepmom (Slither’s (and Scrubs'!) Elizabeth Banks) are easy on the eyes, that’s for sure, and the acting is good all around (the always dependable David Straithairn plays their father). And I admit I was pleasantly surprised by the new ending, which is actually MORE downbeat than the original in a few ways. This presents a few problems with the narrative (a character acts creepy and suspicious throughout the film, because we think they are the killer, but it turns out they aren’t, which makes their actions sort of nonsensical in retrospect), but kudos to pulling the rug out from under the feet of those who saw the original and were pretty bored by that point.

Unfortunately, it’s too little too late. Having an ending that differs from a film that is superior on every level doesn’t quite make it worth watching. Since I’m not the target audience, I guess I can’t complain if a few teenage girls see this and decide to check out the original, but they are likely to prefer the American one due to the simpler story and standard modern horror elements (i.e. a WB ready love interest for the main girl). It’s a good story, it’s a shame that one version is so dumbed down and the other is perhaps a bit too head-scratching for a general audience to fully enjoy.

On a final note, you may have noticed this is a test screening review (first for HMAD I think?). I dunno when the movie is actually coming out, and based on the remarks and comments from the folks in the focus group, the movie that comes out may be about dragons fighting puppies for all I know. So if it comes out and this review doesn't make sense anymore - sorry bout that.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Monster (2008)

FEBRUARY 5, 2008

GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Those of you who are familiar with The Asylum will appreciate the following anecdote. If you’re not, let me provide a quick explanation: The Asylum is a direct to DVD company that specializes in releasing quickie ripoffs of high-profile genre films. Some of their titles include Alien vs. Hunter, Transmorphers, and Snakes On A Train. They are usually released on DVD within a week of the real movie’s theatrical release, and very dumb people will often mistake them for the real deal. Their latest is Monster, which is a ripoff of Cloverfield (which was at one point titled Monstrous, so says the internet).

Anyway I knew I was going to be watching it tonight, because I had rented it last week and was running out of time on my week rental. So it was fitting that it was today that I stumbled upon a page in which the "writer" was copying whole chunks of my reviews and posting them as her own. An email and a blatant example pasted on the page has resulted in the site being deleted by the owner. You can still find it thanks to Google cache, but I thought it was kind of sad that the author would rather just abandon their efforts rather than admit to plagiarism. Oh well. Rest assured, if anyone else wants to write their own similar site, go for it! I'd love to know I'm not the only one doing this insane job. Just do it with your own thoughts. And don’t call it Horror Movie A Day (this person’s was simply Horror A Day – the title is now apparently eligible for use!).

This brings us to Monster, which, like all Asylum films, is a copy of another film, with superfluous changes and a much lower budget. This one is set in Tokyo, but otherwise the structure and plot are the same – some attractive folks are shooting on a consumer camera and end up making a documentary about a monster attacking a giant city. Instead of a bunch of hipsters, our characters are just two incredibly cute Americans who planned on making a documentary about global warming. The fact that the one scene in which they do this is almost entirely inaudible is sort of a blessing in hindsight – it would have been a shame if they had made their entire documentary, then went to edit it and discovered that they should have invested 60 bucks in a boom mike.

To be fair, this is actually the one thing that Monster has over Cloverfield – it actually LOOKS like it was shot with a consumer camera by a non-camera operator. Cloverfield was clearly shot with HD cameras by someone who knew what he was doing (the fact that the character is ESTABLISHED as not wanting to film the stuff since he didn’t know how makes this fact even more obvious). Then again, in Cloverfield, it was forgivable since the effects were top notch. Here, the bad CG jets and monster (who we never see in its entirety) are still noticeable no matter how many filters and jerky camera movements they use to try to hide them.

Speaking of the filters, I wish that the makers of this film (and the otherwise superior Poughkeepsie Tapes) would treat the audience with a bit of intelligence when it comes to presenting their footage. By now, anyone renting a DVD has probably used a digital camera (or watched home movies on one at least), and thus know exactly what camera errors look like. None of these following images are possible to achieve with a digital camera, no matter how broken it is, without adding filters and the like on it:

Come on now. The only “error” that looks like a legitimate malfunction is near the very end when some black horizontal bars sweep over the bottom of the image (a dirty tape will cause this).

Worse, though, is the editor’s outstandingly stupid decision to cut to blackness for anywhere from 1 to 5 seconds throughout the entire film (if you cut these moments out, the film would probably be 5 minutes shorter). Not only does the image go out, but the sound does as well. It is so goddamn annoying you’ll probably want to put some light background music on while you watch the film – you will never get used to the abrupt cut of the soundtrack.

Another odd copy from Cloverfield is the date – the “earthquake” takes place on January 18th (Cloverfield’s release date, and yet another fake title – 1-18-08). Of course, this is due to The Asylum having to make their film based on the same knowledge all of us had in the months leading up to the real film, which wasn’t much due to all of the secrecy surrounding it. But the year is said to be 2003. Why, I have no idea (Tokyo was hit with an earthquake in July of 2005, but I guess that would be too far removed from Cloverfield to warrant consideration), but this leads to numerous anachronisms, particularly the characters’ hope that their footage ends up on Youtube, a site about 2 years away from inception in ‘reality’.

I also enjoy how difficult it is for them to find anyone who can understand English when every street sign, restaurant hours, business name, etc is in English instead of Japanese. Little Tokyo is not Tokyo! This is made even more hilarious in the scene where one sister says “Look, we can see the whole city from here”, and we just have to take her word for it, since, for obvious reasons, the camera focuses on the girl instead of the alleged city view.

Now all of these things I can forgive if the movie itself was more enjoyable. But it’s not. The girls are decent enough actresses, but I still didn’t care about their fate (which is sort of foregone anyway), and the movie was an endless bore to boot. At one point I figured it was almost over, only to discover I wasn’t even at the 40 minute mark yet. That’s kind of a problem when you’re making an escapist monster movie. The attack scenes are too quick to leave much of an impact, and there are long stretches where the girls just walk around sort of dazed (one even does a little confession video, shades of Blair Witch).

So it’s a movie that I expected to be bad fun, but it was just a bad bore. A shame really. I can't call it crap, because I knew exactly what I was in for (nothing), and if you have yet to be exposed to The Asylum's brazen yet somewhat endearing forgeries, it's as good a place as any to start. But if you haven’t been convinced this one is a cheap quickie without any merit to it at all, look no further than the film’s one extra feature, a 5 min making of that’s about 3 minutes film footage and this following credit.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Eye (2008)

FEBRUARY 4, 2008

GENRE: GHOST, REMAKE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I know a guy who, no exaggeration, likes any horror movie in which the female lead is hot. It’s literally all it takes for him to enjoy the movie. Not that this is uncommon (I’m pretty sure Sophia Bush makes up for 90% of my Hitcher enjoyment), but with him there is literally no exception to the rule. For proof, I will offer that he even likes Captivity. So it’s probably a foregone conclusion that he will love The Eye, starring the admittedly hot but utterly boring Jessica Alba.

Like some of her peers (but to the extreme degree), Alba would best be used as a model. Her presence doesn’t exactly send moviegoers flocking to the theater (were you one of the 12 people that saw Awake or Into The Blue?), and for good reason: she can’t act worth a shit. The only somewhat decent performance she ever turned in was in Idle Hands, because she was required to be the dream girl and nothing else. But pity the poor sod that has to direct her in a film where she has any sort of dramatic arc to play, because it’s clearly just not in her repertoire. However, if she’s on the cover of Maxim, the issue will sell out.

But even someone who COULD act probably couldn’t save this dull bore of a film. Granted, seeing the original didn’t help, since it barely changes a damn thing (more on that later) and even copies the damn blocking and camerawork from the original on a few key scenes. Hell, even my wife, who probably got a bit tense during Troll, only jumped once in the entire film. If they can’t even scare HER with their film, then they have truly failed.

As for the changes to the original, there are only two worth noting. One, the specialist guy who helps out the girl is kind of a dick in this one. Alessandro Nivola (always a welcome addition to a film) plays the guy, and you half expect him to just punch Alba in the face a few times, since he’s so clearly annoyed by her constant whining (or horrible acting). But he also plays the role admirably half-assed, as if he was as bored as we were (though he’s also clearly amused by some of his dialogue, making it all the more entertaining). Kudos to Nivola for making the film watchable (Parker Posey should have fallen in this category too, but while she looks good, she has absolutely nothing to do).

The other major change is the ending. Like the original, Sydney sees an accident about to occur, and tries to warn everyone off. But here she succeeds. Everyone lives, “yay”! Not a single person doubts the crazy woman running around the highway telling them to get out of their cars. In the original, NO ONE believed her, and they all died. Not only is this a much better ending from an asshole’s point of view, but it also gave the film a bittersweet coda – the girl finally understood what it was like for the eye’s previous owner to have this gift and not be able to help anyone with it. But that’s all gone now, and Alba’s hammy final narration (sprinkled throughout the film, and she can’t even do that well) sounds like it was taken from the Daredevil script with all the “blindness is a blessing and a curse” nonsense.

So it’s not scary, it doesn’t have much of a moral, and the acting is either bad or bored. Is there anything to recommend? Yeah, there’s a fucking GREAT Dark Knight trailer attached. Check it out. Otherwise, no, there isn’t, unless you haven’t seen the original. Or you’re that guy.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Pieces (1982)

FEBRUARY 3, 2008

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

This week will make one year of daily horror movie watching. Imagine if, after going 364 days without missing a single day, I just sat on my ass and did absolutely nothing to ensure that magic 365-0 mark would come to pass? Then I’d fit in with my New England brethren!

Anyway, after that heartbreaking, ballstomping clusterfuck of a disappointment, I needed to watch something VIOLENT. I needed release, dammit, and what better way to get it (from the couch anyway) than with a splatter movie about a guy chainsawing some girls up and making a jigsaw puzzle out of their body parts? Thank you, Pieces, for helping to keep my mind off the depressing “it was all for nothing” events of the day.

However, in an ironic coincidence that I had to laugh at, the film begins with a title saying Boston, 1947. Now, no slasher movies are set in Boston, ever, so this was a bit of an eye-opener. But then, they cut to the interior of a house, and on the kid’s wall is a New England Patriots banner!!! The fact that there WERE no Patriots for another 13 years (and they were the Boston Patriots until the 70s) did not escape me, it seemed like it was Lucased into the film just to spite me. Fuck you, anachronistic movie!

But then the chainsawing began and all was well.

While not as violent as I expected (only 4 or 5 deaths), the movie was a blast, and I for one cannot WAIT to see it again in a few weeks at the New Beverly, where it’s showing as part of Eli Roth’s film festival (full lineup HERE). You never want to watch a movie for the first time with that crowd; it’s designed for appreciative fans who will likely be talking and laughing over most of it. And more than any other film I’ve seen there (or plan to), this one is seemingly filmed with that sort of experience in mind. Scenes like the one where a guy comes out of nowhere and begins kung-fuing the heroine for no reason, then complaining about eating bad chop suey, seemingly have no purpose other than to provide a crowd full of slightly drunken horror fans a reason to laugh as soon as the scene begins.

There are plenty of moments like that in the film, from odd dialogue (“The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed.”), killings that don’t make a lick of sense (the killer grabs a guy’s crotch and manages to tear off his genitalia with his bare hand – thru a pair of jeans no less!), and of course, atrocious overdubbing (they seem to be speaking English, but it’s often clearly not the same actor saying the lines). I also like how blasé the police department is about what has to be the most violent campus in the world – at one point a reporter’s question about the possibility of a serial killer is dismissed by the chief, who says “There are maniac rumors at that school every couple of months!”. How many people have died there, exactly???

Is this why so many of my jeans get a hole there?

The gore is also pretty fantastic (read: ridiculous and over the top). Given the nature of the film, there is a lot of dismemberment on hand, but the fact that we actually see a lot of it is pretty impressive. My favorite was when the killer steps into a small elevator, hiding a giant chainsaw behind his back. The victim doesn’t notice, somehow, but then he whips it out and relieves her of her right arm. A+!

One thing that was kind of a bummer was how they automatically remove one of the primary suspects (it’s a whodunit) early on. We see the killer’s legs as he walks around a library, and he’s got blue pants on. Then the guy they want us to think is the killer walks by, and his pants are brown. Granted, if he WAS the killer it could be chalked up to continuity error, but still, I never once suspected him through the rest of the film. Oh well.

The film has a good pedigree – one of the writers was the infamous Joe D’Amato (if you haven’t seen his film Antropophagus, you’re just not living life), and another writer, Dick Randall, was a producer on Slaughter High (Marty!). I don’t recognize any of the actors, but the music is a Goblin ripoff, so there’s something. My DVD is sadly not the special edition, but a cheapo budget pack version on a set called Blood Bath. Kill Baby Kill is also on the set, and I have the special edition of that via the Bava box set. So if the other 2 movies suck I’ll give away Blood Bath on a future contest. Deal?

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Non Canon Review: Jaws 2 (1978)

FEBRUARY 3, 2008

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

I debated whether or not to count Jaws 2 as my movie for the day. I had never seen the entire thing in one sitting, and some scenes I’m sure I had never seen at all (the gala that Brody shows up late to, for example). But I have seen the last hour what seems like a dozen times. In the end, I opted to watch something else (I do this for YOU!) and simply write a good ol “non canon review” for this one, which is considered the best of the sequels but is also the least interesting, in my opinion.

Unlike 3 (3D, water park) or The Revenge (a shark swims thousands of miles to hunt down and kill the Brody family, Mario Van Peebles), there is nothing really exciting or unique about Jaws 2. Structure-wise, it’s almost the exact same movie as the original – A shark kills at night, Brody is shown trying to run the police department, a body is found, suspicions arise, there’s a false alarm, Brody gets disciplined, and then the final hour is more or less one long scene of shark vs. boat (and the people on it).

But yet it’s still the best of the sequels, thank to better acting all around and less of a detachment from the original than the other sequels thanks to the cast (other than Dreyfuss, who is at least mentioned, all of the surviving principal cast from the original returned for 2; no one returned for 3 and only Lorraine Gary came back for 4) and music (this is actual John Williams, not a pale imitation). The kills are sort of exciting, if not very suspenseful, and while nothing is as “oh SHIT!” as the little kid being eaten in the original, the sheer number of teens stuck on the boat(s) make up for it – you’re not too sure if ANY of them will be safe, especially after that one broad dies trying to rescue Mike (or Sean, I forget which one’s which).

Speaking of the teens, the film is almost like a slasher film at times, with a shark instead of a guy in a mask. We cut back and forth between the fodder and the cops trying to get there in time; one gets picked off every now and then, etc. There’s even a couple of nerdy guys for good measure. Yet it predates pretty much every teen slasher of note (even Halloween). Weird.

One thing I don’t get – why does the deputy have a different name in this movie? Was it supposed to be a different character but the casting person was just really lazy? Did they just forget? You’d think at least the actor himself would be like ‘hey wait a minute...’. Imagine if in Bourne Ultimatum they just started calling him David or something. That’d be wacky!

I should note that before the film we were treated to a trailer for... Jaws 2. But not really. In addition to showing us how beautiful the print of the film itself was in comparison (Universal apparently just made a new 35mm print just for the screening), but the trailer was re-edited to include footage of a car chase movie and some sort of 60s beach party movie. It was fucking hilarious, and whoever did it should be commended. If anyone knows who did it (I forgot to ask), let me know so I can give credit to this wonderfully hilarious edit.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...