Rammbock: Berlin Undead (2010)

MAY 21, 2011

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

One of the cooler ventures my other site has taken on as of late is a distribution arm called "Bloody Disgusting Selects", which will bring a different independent/foreign film to AMC theaters each month. They only play twice a week at random times (10 pm on Wednesdays, 11:59pm on Fridays), and based on the attendance for Rammbock that probably won't expand, as there were only 7 people in my theater including me, and two of them walked out when they saw the movie was subtitled (or had just wandered into the wrong theater). Still, anything that gives wider exposure to these sort of movies is a good thing, and it was cool seeing the B-D logo on the big screen.

Anyway, the movie is pretty good. It's so damn short (64 minutes with credits) that it barely qualifies as a feature, but it also means that there isn't a lot of wasted time or slow moments (hell, I even stayed awake for the entire thing! Not even my standard 2-3 minute doze!), which is always nice. It also had a fun lead character; a sort of German Paul Giamatti type schlub who traveled to Berlin to give his long-distance girlfriend some keys that she had left behind. With so many zombie movies focusing on hardass types, or some sort of law enforcement/military personnel, it's nice to have an everyman in one, as such types are usually only used in more comedic types like Shaun Of The Dead.

Not that the movie was without humor; there's a wonderfully odd running gag about a bear suit (I have no explanation for what it was used for - was his girlfriend a furry or something?), and Michael's initial obliviousness to what was going on was worthy of a few chuckles, as was his irrational opposition to making weapons out of his girlfriend's silverware. And I LOVED one bit, when Michael's newfound friend (a young kid - good dynamic) snaps a pic of Michael standing proudly next to a makeshift battering ram that they devised in order to break down a wall. But for the most part, it's a fairly serious, straightforward, largely conventional zombie flick - folks are trapped in a location, seeking safety and a way to escape while avoiding being bit. There isn't much that is added to the mythology, and there's no explanation for where they came from (at least I don't think so, there's a radio broadcast that goes partially untranslated).

With one exception, at least I think: bright light scares the zombies off, due to their changed retinas. So cameras and assorted portable work lights become weapons, which is pretty cool; I don't think I've seen that used before (someone correct me if I'm wrong!). I also liked that the other characters were trapped in their own apartments; the building had a sort of horseshoe shape with a courtyard in the middle, so the 5-6 survivors would communicate through windows by yelling across to the way. Kind of like Andy the gun shop guy in the Dawn remake, but times five. But again, the movie is incredibly short, so they don't really get to use the potentially exciting setup for much.

And one of those few times didn't make much sense to me. A guy in the apartment across offers to trade food for some sedatives (they slow the zombie infection down; his wife had been bit but hadn't turned yet), and this sets off a good chunk of the action - but why didn't their apartment (or the one they busted into) have any food? The invasion just started at the beginning of the movie, and there's no real significant passage of time (I think the movie takes place over three days MAX, might only be two), so the idea that food was somehow a rare commodity rang a bit false. Do Germans not keep food in their apartments?

Also, and I looked for a while and couldn't find anything, it's just TOO short. If it only takes an hour to tell the story you have to tell, fine, but there are a few things that are glossed over or just unexplained, which there isn't an excuse for in a short feature. If the movie is too long and they need to cut a few things, fine, but not when it's shorter than an episode of Celebrity Apprentice without commercials. A major character turns zombie without any explanation, another hangs himself before we got a chance to know enough about him to care (yet they cut to his hanging body like 5 times), and, again, why did she have a bear suit? Even with these things in the movie it would barely break 70 minutes, so I can't imagine they were cut for pacing or whatever. But information about the movie is hard to come by, and IMDb does not list a longer running time (in fact they list a shorter one - but I checked my watch to be sure it wasn't under an hour).

It was also hard to find information on Zombiefication, the awful short film that played before it. I guess these will be part of Bloody's goal; attaching shorts to the films to both sweeten the deal for the ticket buyer and also give a nice platform to a budding talent. Unfortunately they went with a pretty bad short to kick things off with, as it's yet another "Zombies are an every day problem" piece. These sort of things were played out four years ago when they made Fido (an entire MOVIE based on this one-joke concept), so we certainly don't need another. This one sort of parodies the in flight safety videos that you have to watch when you fly, except it takes place in a movie theater, which kills half the joke right on the spot. It's also too damn long (ironic on a couple levels); at 30-60 seconds it might have been a cute and harmless diversion, but it seems to run about 5-6, which is longer than the damn things its parodying (and not even as funny as Virgin's, for the record). Hopefully future shorts will match the level of the movie; I can't help but wonder if those two walkouts may have given the movie more of a chance if this thing hadn't brought the entertainment level down (not a single person laughed at any of the jokes in the short).

The barely-feature length and inopportune times may turn folks off from checking the movie out in their local AMC for a full price ticket, but I assume a DVD release will be forthcoming. It's not a particularly great zombie movie, but it IS an enjoyable one, and a more cost-effective way of watching will only make it look better. Next month's selection is YellowBrickRoad, which I saw and mostly enjoyed at last year's Screamfest. Hopefully the poor attendance doesn't kill AMC's interest; there's something sort of novel about seeing a little German zombie movie in the multiplex right next to a big IMAX screen showing Thor 3D.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Killing Spree (1987)

MAY 20, 2011

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

For some reason I thought Killing Spree was a Troma release, but I doubt most folks could tell the difference while watching it anyway. In fact, it’s more Troma-esque than last week’s Rabid Grannies, supposedly a Belgium filmmaker’s attempt at making a Troma movie, which impressed Uncle Lloyd enough to distribute it. And since the director of Killing Spree goes on and on about his troubles getting the film distributed, I’m curious why he didn’t just go with Troma, saving himself the trouble and me the confusion in one move.

Anyway, as plotless independent 16mm films from the late 80s that were designed specifically for home video release go, it’s not that bad. As long as you don’t ever take the story or characters seriously, I think there’s enough here to warrant a viewing; there are enough murders and out-of-nowhere acts of casual violence (love when he just punches a guy at the beach for no reason) to entertain a drunken crowd. The FX are pretty fake-looking, but I was charmed by the obvious enthusiasm behind them – any movie that has a ceiling fan equipped with machete blades is a winner in my book, even if the resulting “scalped” effect looks like a hat made out of play-dough (and what’s with the orange blood? Y’all using Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee sauce or something?). Some of the deaths are pretty creative too; I particularly enjoyed when our killer tore out a dude’s intestine and connected the end to an electric source: Intest-ocution!

There are two major blunders though. One is the lack of nudity. Normally I wouldn’t care, but the movie is about a guy who suspects his wife is banging every guy that moves, and we’re kept in the dark until near the end whether or not it’s just in his head or not. But either way, we see like 4-5 “sex” scenes with porno like setups (in one day she gets a delivery man, a landscaper, and an electrician), but no nudity. It just sort of sticks out, as if the movie was edited (or the production couldn’t find/afford an actress willing to disrobe). There’s the old joke that an actress will take her top off “if it’s important to the story”, but in this case it kind of is, especially when instead we get characters doing really awkward things in order to prevent anything from being shown. At one point she’s seducing the electrician and takes 30 seconds to take down the covers on the bed, crawl inside, and put them back over her fully clothed chest – just fuck already!

The other is a whacked out ending that is both idiotic (even by this movie’s standards) and kind of grim, which certainly doesn’t fit the tone. Unsurprisingly, we find out that the wife hasn’t been cheating, but writing down story ideas in order to sell them to a smut mag in order to earn some extra cash for the house, as the husband just got a pay cut at work. It’s the sort of sad irony that doesn’t really belong in this sort of movie, which features dialogue like “You screw my wife, I screwdriver your head!”. But then, out of nowhere, all of the victims in the movie return to life as zombies and try to kill them, and after failing, tell the husband to kill his wife and they’ll call it even. Instead, he kills himself. Finally! The blend of Toxic Avenger, Creepshow, and Serbian Film that you’ve all been demanding!

The problem with doing this sort of thing at the end is that it starts to make me wonder if I was supposed to be taking anything else serious. I was having a good time, thinking the movie was deliberately trashy and stupid, but then this rather dark, laugh-free ending comes along. And then further thinking reveals that maybe the filmmaker just didn’t know what the hell he was doing, and thus the goofs in the movie (like when the TV repairman puts the fixed TV down on and says “Good as new!” without even plugging it in to see if it worked) may not have been intentionally cheesy moments but actual mistakes. Also, this means that the shifts in tone and out of nowhere plot twists are probably the result of a guy merely ripping off a bunch of movies he really loved without putting any thought into how they’d blend together in the end. His appreciation for the genre is readily evident throughout the movie, not only does Fangoria keep popping up (the old lady who lives next door even steals an issue!), but there are shots directly referencing Evil Dead, Maniac, and Creepshow. All genre faves, sure, but you don’t combine them all (plus others) in one narrative unless you’re making some sort of spoof/parody thing. And if so, you don’t end it on a suicide.

And if you weren’t aware of the influences just from watching the movie, his commentary track will certainly tip you off. He says “Sam Raimi” about 100 times over the course of the movie, plus points out all of the other references, including some that didn’t really dawn on me (the machetes were apparently specifically in reference to Jason – I just figured it was a common dangerous object that would work well in a ceiling fan). When he’s not helping out the editors of the IMDb “Movie Connections” page, he’s going on and on about various production issues (“anyway, back to the story” pops up a lot, as if the things he says that are actually scene-specific are some sort of interruption) and his issues getting the film funded/distributed. To his credit, he’s fairly candid about the whole thing, pointing out all of the different fights between cast/crew members that were going on during one particular day of shooting and stuff like that. The only problem is that all of the detail about how he got the film funded/distributed isn’t going to help any budding filmmaker listening 20 years later, so unless this is your favorite film of all time and you want to know every detail about its existence, a lot of this stuff is just kind of dull.

But it’s certainly better than the making of documentary, which I should have known would be a chore when it began with nearly four full minutes of Debbie Rochon (who isn’t part of the production) bemoaning how movies like this aren’t mentioned in the same breath as “horror classics” like Seven and Jurassic Park (weird examples to use, Ms. Rochon), and fawning all over Ritter. Ritter then talks about himself for a while before we get about 10-15 minutes worth of local news footage on the movie’s audition phase – again, not interesting to anyone but the president of the Killing Spree Fan Club. The actual behind the scenes stuff is fun (especially when the real name of lead actor “Asbestos Felt” is inadvertently revealed); you get to see a lot of the DIY methods involved with pulling off the special effects, and the gung ho attitude of the small crew trying to make a feature film with such minimal resources/money – I love that sort of stuff. Unfortunately, after each 5-10 minute sequence about how a particular scene was shot, we have to watch the entire scene play out. Ultimately, this 80+ minute documentary should have been closer to a half hour or so, and by the time it reached the end I was actually starting to hate the movie. Indeed, there is another commentary by Felt and some of the other actors, but I think I’ll skip it – my opinion of the movie was already weakened a bit by its own extras. Maybe I’m off-base, but I got a sense that Ritter and co. are a bit bitter, and also harbor some unearned egos. Either way, I’m curious to see one of their more recent films; one thing I was impressed with is that he has actually made 6-7 films since this; a lot of these indie guys from the 80s never really did much else again (i.e. Robert Scott, who wrote/directed The Video Dead and then went into a career as a 2nd AD), so grats to them for keeping at it.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Children Of The Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)

MAY 19, 2011

GENRE: CULT, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I never really gave it much thought, but Children Of The Corn is somehow the only Stephen King film franchise. Some of his adaptations got sequels that he had nothing to do with (The Rage: Carrie 2, for example), but the Corn series kept on going, with seven sequels (and counting) plus a remake, all spawned from a not particularly successful film based on one of his shortest short stories. But I suspect if Children Of The Corn III: Urban Harvest hadn’t turned out so reasonably decent that it all would have stopped there.

Not that Dimension knows when to stop, but I can’t imagine any of these movies sold as well as the DTV Hellraisers or Prophecy sequels, as the Corn series lacked the name stars or interesting mythology that the others had. But they managed to actually make a decent DTV movie on their first try, plus they were probably cheaper than those others because there wasn’t a Doug Bradley or Christopher Walken to pay, and so the series went on and on, though based on the sequels I’ve seen and remember (I missed part 6, though it’s on the way, and I don’t recall much about part II) it never managed to turn out as well as this one.

Now, it’s not some lost classic or anything, don’t get me wrong. But it’s enjoyable, never boring, and the change in scenery does wonders for the thin concept. Rather than have yet another car full of travelers arrive in Gatlin (or whatever other Midwest town the Children were terrorizing in that particular entry), the kids are taken to Chicago, played here by Los Angeles and some stock footage. I don’t know what it is about LA architecture, but even though I’ve never set foot in Chicago (didn’t I just say that yesterday?), I knew that the house where the kids lived couldn’t be a real Chicago house, and was probably Los Angeles somewhere. But I’ll give them credit, apart from a shot of some mountains, I didn’t notice any truly obvious giveaways (i.e. palm trees, blue street signs). A for effort in that department.

But regardless of where it was shot, the change up allows for new elements that were absent from the previous films. Instead of maybe one lone kid who didn’t shine to the others’ habits of killing folks, our villain Eli is the fish out of water; even his older brother would rather play basketball and mack on the girl next door. It takes a bit too long to explain that they weren’t really brothers, however – I was spending the first 40 minutes or so wondering how the OLDER brother managed to somehow escape being a disciple of He Who Walks Behind The Rows (it actually still doesn’t make a lot of sense since they lived in the town; did he just not notice all the other kids his age were into corn gods?). But it makes for a nice dynamic, with the older brother wanting to be brotherly and not abandon him now that he’s been taken away from his home, but he also, well, wants to play basketball and bang the neighbor. Certainly more interesting than the usual protagonist in these movies, who is usually just someone trying to escape the town.

I also enjoyed the amount of crazy deaths. Screamin’ Mad George did the FX here, and they’re pretty awesome for the most part; a guy getting torn up and stuffed like a scarecrow, another one gets his head (still attached to spine) pulled about ten feet up from the torso, and so on. We even get a real look at He Who Walks..., who turns out to be a sort of Lovecraftian beast with insect like features and some tentacles for good measure (one of which “invades” a young Charlize Theron, in her first role, and even though she never says anything you know the director/editor realized how goddamn beautiful she was since they keep cutting to her). Not all of the FX hold up (especially on the higher resolution Blu-ray), but they are miles better than the stuff you see even in a few of Dimension’s theatrical features (i.e. Halloween 6). Plus, it looked like they used stop-motion for the monster (which was a miniature – check out the doll as a “human” victim), and that’s always a bonus for me.

It’s also paced well; Eli doesn’t waste too much time before planting some corn and claiming a victim (some homeless dude), and then there’s another death every 10 minutes or so, with Eli killing anyone who discovers his makeshift cornfield (he grows it in an abandoned factory that’s conveniently located next door to their house), including his foster mom, a 2nd act surprise that I just spoiled (the movie’s 16 years old!). They gloss over one major part of his plan though; he starts recruiting local kids into his cult, but we never really see that start to develop – all of a sudden a non-turned character bemoans how no one’s around anymore because everyone is following Eli, and the only response from an audience should be “When the hell did this happen?” I also would have liked to have seen Eli interacting with the kids in his own class; I have to assume they didn’t think much of his Amish clothing and strange behavior, but instead we just see older students pick on him, which is kind of weird. Sounds weird to say, but DTV movie about a kid killing people with evil corn could have benefited from being longer.

The music was also pretty enjoyable, with composer Daniel Licht sort of blending The Omen with Carl Orff’s familiar Carmina Burana cues. Licht also composed the second film, a rare instance of anyone being involved with more than one movie in the series; the only other one I know of is the Isaac character who returned for part 6. Speaking of ties, it actually incorporates some footage from the first two movies, as the movie’s priest character has nightmares about what happened there, but he never springs into action for some reason. I kept thinking maybe he would join with the older brother and figure out what Eli was up to, but he gets killed before he gets the chance. So it’s a bit clunky, but at least they were trying; again, excepting Isaac’s return, there’s no continuity whatsoever in the future films if memory serves (one of them doesn’t even have He Who Walks!). Figures, the one time I allow myself to watch a series out of order and they actually refer to events from the previous film! Now I’ll have to find a copy of II, which I think I saw back in the day (I thought I saw this one too but not a single thing registered; maybe I rented it and fell asleep without ever watching the rest? Or my memory has just gotten that bad, which is kind of upsetting). Apparently it was released as a double feature with this one, not sure how I goofed on my screener request and missed it.

Bizarrely, this is the only stand-alone Blu-ray I got from Echo Bridge; everything else was a double feature. They also seemingly didn’t get the rights to the 4th film, which is odd. At any rate, like the others, it’s not exactly a stellar transfer, but it’s fine. It’s the first time the movie has been released anamorphically, I think, and for a DTV movie it looks pretty good. Again, some of the CGI shots look lousy (there’s one that resembles 16mm being projected on a wall more than 35mm film), but that’s expected. Black levels are a bit crushed (everything looks gray instead), but luckily it’s a fairly “light” movie, so it’s not much of an issue. As with the others, there’s only a 2.0 soundtrack, but as this wasn’t originally a theatrical feature with 5.1 sound, it’s forgivable. No extras, no shock there.

Maybe it takes seeing the other, mostly lousy Corn movies to appreciate this one, so keep that in mind if you are new to the series and figure this is a good place to start. “The best Children of the Corn sequel” isn’t really saying much, but it’s certainly worth noting, and it’s a shame that the next couple just went right back to the Midwest/cornfields instead of continuing to explore other areas (the ending of this one suggests the evil corn is spreading worldwide). Hell, maybe they could have even pulled off going to space.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

MAY 18, 2011

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

Until the abomination known as Hellraiser: Revelations, the only film from the series I saw in theaters was Hellraiser: Bloodline, which was released in March of 1996 and was the last one to get a theatrical release (not counting Revelations’ bizarre one-off screening). But since I wasn’t a big fan of the series anyway, I don’t even know if I ever watched it again; I know I rented it so I could copy a clip to use on my public access horror review show in my senior year of high school (so, spring 1998), but if I actually watched it then I can’t recall; I sure as hell didn’t remember anything about it beyond the 18th century Paris and, of course, outer space settings.

But I also remembered that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, considering the widely publicized (well, in Fangoria and such) production troubles that are pretty common with Dimension movies. Apparently, original director Kevin Yagher was so sick of all the meddling that he eventually walked off before shooting even finished, leaving Halloween 6’s Joe Chapelle to shoot the rest of the scenes and reshoot some others based on new script elements. He also reshaped the movie; it was originally presented entirely linear, with the 18th century stuff in the first third, modern day in the middle, and then finally the space sequences. But (and honestly, I think this was a good idea), he changed it so now it starts in space, with Merchant telling the story of his two ancestors, allowing to cut back and forth to the spaceship throughout the movie (and, the whole reason for this maneuver in the first place, allowing Pinhead to make his first appearance a bit sooner). I was actually kind of surprised to discover how little certain things changed, and how a few of the revisions were actually for the better; you can read the script HERE to compare for yourself.

The main problem with the resulting movie, unsurprisingly, is that it’s too rushed. The 18th century stuff got overhauled the most, and it shows. There’s a character played by Adam Scott (who hasn’t aged at all – what the hell, man?) who I guess betrays his boss and takes control of the box/Angelique (the movie’s main villain, a sort of blend between Pinhead and the first two film’s Julia character), but it’s impossible to gauge what he was doing or who was really controlling who in these scenes. A major death is skipped over entirely (we just see his body), and the whole goddamn point of Merchant’s quest is unclear. Hell they barely even address that his wife is pregnant; if you miss the somewhat subtle moment where the child’s existence is mentioned (well, subtle for a movie featuring spaceships, a hell-beast, and a lead villain whose lines seem written by Winona Ryder’s character from Beetlejuice), the rest of the movie will seem like one giant plot hole.

The other segments fare better; the modern day stuff is of course the least interesting, and very little about it changed from the script. It starts to feel too much like a generic horror movie at times – for Christ’s sake, there’s even a scene where our female protagonist goes down into a dark basement to do laundry – but it’s fine, and it’s the segment where Pinhead really enters the story, so fans of the character (the ones who complained he wasn’t in the DTV sequels enough, apparently forgetting he wasn’t in the first one much either) probably enjoy this stuff a lot. And it’s also the area in which one of the script’s more confusing issues was cleared up. Originally, there was a single security guard who met up with Pinhead and basically tried to run only to be sent to Hell. Here, we have a pair of twin guards who become the “Siamese Twin Cenobite” (which appeared in the script without any explanation), so that was a good call – I don’t need to know where every cenobite came from, but it makes a lot more sense to have the sort of cause and effect plotting than to just introduce a character, send her off, and then bring in a male cenobite out of nowhere.

Which leaves the outer space stuff, which isn’t as hokey as you might think. Unlike Jason or Michael (Carpenter himself wanted to send Myers to space; he was thankfully turned down), it does sort of make sense to have Pinhead in space. After all, he is a demon summoned from Hell – it’s a concept based on religious beliefs, and thus having him appear in a place dictated by what SCIENCE can achieve is actually quite interesting. It’s actually sort of a shame that they didn’t set the entire movie there, as these sort of concepts could have been explored, and again, they wouldn’t have to rush things. Angelique and Pinhead are at odds and working against each other, but that power struggle barely registers, and certain aspects of Merchant’s plan are glossed over or just plain confusing. Instead, we get a lot of (admittedly cool) death scenes back to back, as Pinhead and his cronies decimates everyone on the ship except for the guy he’s trying to kill, while Merchant finishes his story and puts his plan in motion. And while the ultimate reveal of the Elysium Configuration is pretty awesome, the changed ending (allowing Merchant to live instead of die like he does in the script) weakens its impact.

And that’s sort of how the entire movie is; you see glimpses of a really good sequel (it could have easily been the best since the first), but there’s always something muddling it, or confusing you with something seemingly left behind from an earlier draft. At one point Angelique tells Merchant (present day) that they “were good together”, referring to his ancestor, but in this version the two never met in the past. You also have to hear painfully on-the-nose dialogue that’s there to sum up ideas that we would have been able to figure out for ourselves if the editing weren’t constantly rushing through major events, which is why you actually hear someone say “Your genius will be passed along your bloodline which is why we have to stop it!” (paraphrased, pretty close though). Which is why I wish Dimension had never gotten a hold of the series; the concept just isn’t a good fit for the way they like to make movies. Hellraiser movies shouldn't be about racking up a good body count or coming up with cool Cenobite designs, they should be about the actual people that INVOKE these things. The first Hellraiser is the story of a woman’s lust destroying the lives of the folks around her; if Dimension had made it that would be a two scene idea and then Pinhead would come along and, I dunno, turn Larry into Speaker-Face or something.

Maybe they should have sent it direct to DVD (well, this would have been VHS) sooner. They sure as hell didn’t care about how early Pinhead showed up in those movies (at least not with Inferno, which is the best of the lot, natch). The budget for this one was reportedly only 4 million, actually LESS than some of the DTVs, so it’s not like the production value would have been severely weakened. Without the pressure of a theatrical release, maybe Big Bad Bob would have left the production alone and the movie would have turned out really good, instead of just “better than most of them!”

Part of why I hadn’t seen the movie again is because the DVD was always really expensive; I remember seeing it for 34.99 at one point, despite a lack of any bonus material whatsoever. By the time it was finally reduced to a reasonable price, I had upgraded to an HDTV and thus didn’t want the disc because it was non-anamorphic. So while I can’t vouch for how much better/worse the picture looks on Echo Bridge’s new Blu-ray, I CAN happily report that it is indeed anamorphic, and not too bad looking either. Hardly the type of disc that you’d want to use to show off Blu-ray’s image quality, but it’s not all washed out and detail-challenged like their H20 Blu, and they certainly didn’t go overboard with DNR (if anything, for once I actually think it could be less grainy). Sadly, like all of EB’s new “Dimension orphan” discs, there aren’t any extras whatsoever (even the old disc had the trailer), and, for some reason, they have dropped the original 5.1 tracks and replaced them with DTS-HD 2.0. Unless you have the most top of the line sound system in the world (which, let’s face it, probably isn’t the audience for Hellraiser goddamn IV), you probably can’t tell much of a difference between DTS and Dolby Digital, but ANYONE can tell the difference between a stereo mix and 5.1. Maybe someone can explain the possible logistics behind this to me? However, it’s pretty cheap, and for another 2-3 bucks you can get Inferno along with it; if you’re a space-saver type, this is a fantastic option as now these two movies will take up about 1/3 the space on your shelf and look better to boot.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m not the biggest Hellraiser fan in the world, but I think the biggest problem for me is that as I grew older, the movies began aiming younger (indeed, the last two were more or less teens in peril movies). It takes a more mature mind to fully appreciate the ideas in the first film (which I saw as a kid), and I think you’d have to be an adolescent to enjoy Hellworld (which I watched a few months ago). So if you haven’t seen any of them yet, watch the entire series backwards, one per year, and see how interesting it gets as you grow wiser!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Wailer II (La Llorona II) (2007)

MAY 17, 2011

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

All I asked was that The Wailer II (aka La Llorona II) was better than the original, and it was. Proving that replacing the entire cast and crew isn’t always a bad thing, the sequel is professionally made, slightly more exciting, and a different kind of movie entirely, eschewing the original’s “kids in a cabin” motif for a sort of mystery, as two guys track down La Llorona, who has possessed the girl from the first movie.

And that was the biggest surprise, it actually was a direct sequel! Since the cast and crew was all different, I figured this was just a case of someone slapping on a sequel title to an unrelated movie, since there are a bunch of La Llorona movies floating around (this is the fourth I’ve seen, I think; even my wife was like “How many of these can they possibly make?”). But no, it actually starts off quickly summing up the events of the first movie via newspaper clippings, as the voiceover from the father of one of the girls informs us that his daughter is now being possessed by La Llorona and he needs to find/save her before it’s too late.

Luckily for us, he’s a lousy tracker, and thus we get a death scene every 15 minutes or so. None of them are particularly exciting, but at least they are spread out (unlike in the first film, where everything was saved for the final 20 minutes or so). And they have surprisingly gruesome aftermaths; you don’t see much while they are being killed but when the bodies are found you see them all literally torn to pieces, with guts strewn about and everything. Again, considering the first movie’s lame-ass slashing makeup, this was a welcome surprise; it didn’t really fit the movie’s otherwise serious tone, but anytime a fat guy’s head is shown a few feet away from his torso, I’m entertained.

Another surprise (spoiler!) is that the father is killed at the one hour mark, after a creepy scene where he momentarily gets seduced by La Llorona (in the body of his daughter), grabbing her boob and what not. Hey-o! But while it was certainly a good shock moment, it weakened the overall story. For starters, that means that the partner, a cab driver who was helping the father get around the city and filling him in on some of the legend, is suddenly promoted to hero, even though he has no personal attachment to saving the girl. Furthermore, right before all of this goes down, the cab driver (Chabba – please, screenwriters, never name a character Chabba in your Spanish movies, because it just sounds like Jabba) discovers that the father can see the murders that his daughter is committing, and her latest victim happened to be Chabba’s uncle. There could have been a great conflict with Chabba wanting to just kill her out of revenge while the dad wanted to save her and just vanquish the spirit, but by killing him before Chabba even knew that his uncle was dead (and then having Chabba go ahead and finish the father’s ritual to save the daughter anyway) rendered the third act largely un-involving. Everyone’s either dead or unrelated to anyone else, so there’s no reason to get invested in the outcome. Maybe if it happened all in one scene, it would work, but the dad dies, our now-hero goes around, sees another priest, enlists a buddy to help him, and then goes back 15-20 minutes later to finish the job - it's very clunky.

When La Llorona (I really want to write a “My Sharona” parody about her) isn’t killing folks, the movie is mostly just Chabba and the father driving around, talking to priests and fortune tellers and such, providing each other/the audience with loads of local superstitions and flavor. I’m hardly the type of guy who dreams of traveling to far away locations and learning about their history (unless it’s Elder Scrolls and there’s a possible achievement in there for me), but I always like it when a horror movie actually inserts the local culture into the narrative or even just the backdrop. So many horror movies either fake their locales (i.e. Vancouver or Bulgaria for some New England state), or go out of their way to exist in generic “Anytown” areas, and I never got why. I suppose the idea is that you can’t identify with Boston if you’re from Missouri, but I think that’s rubbish. Halloween 4 and 5 scared the shit out of me; to this DAY I’ve never stepped foot in Illinois (or even Utah, where they were shot). As long as the local customs are explained in some way so that they aren’t impenetrable to foreign audiences (some Asian horror movies are guilty of this), then I think they should embrace what’s at their disposal.

They shouldn’t try to be funny though. Humor definitely does not translate well, and the attempts here are thus painfully bad. When the police ask for the father’s address he snarls “Portland, Oregon. You want the zip code? 90210!”, and there’s an extended, awkward, and yes, unfunny bit where Chabba and his uncle go through the “Who sings that song?” “(whatever artist)” “Let’s keep it that way!” routine. Even the stereotypes weren’t funny; normally I’d laugh at a big fat guy expressing his desire to get tacos at what appears to be like 2 am, but it just seemed almost insulting here.

The poorly designed DVD gives an option of English or Spanish, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell if one was dubbed while the other was native; the English version SOUNDED dubbed at times, but the lips seemed to match up better than they did on the Spanish one, so I don’t know. I assume they didn’t actually shoot the damn thing twice and put it on the disc? At any rate, the only other “extras” are some trailers and a photo gallery, so that’s the only area where the original had it beat – no self-congratulating making of on this one! I wouldn’t have actually minded hearing about the production’s origins; I honestly can’t recall the last time two movies in a series had totally different crews and even sub-genres, yet were actually tied together. What’s next, a Dark Harvest sequel that actually refers to one of the others?

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Ritual (2002)

MAY 16, 2011

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

It’s never fun to realize that the production history of a movie is more exciting than anything that ended up in the film itself, but that’s the case with Ritual, which was, wasn’t, and then once again was the 3rd film in the aborted Tales From The Crypt theatrical feature series. It took over five years to see release in the US, over which time it changed hands (from Universal to Dimension) and possibly had some half-assed footage of the Cryptkeeper added in along the way, but no one gave a shit when it was finally put on DVD – in fact I forgot all about it until, somewhat ironically, it popped up on a list of titles that had been sold off from Dimension onto another company, Echo Bridge, who now control the US DVD distribution of a lot of your “favorite” Dimension sequels (Halloween 6! Hellraiser: Bloodline! Most of the Children of the Corns!). Ritual is, hilariously, the only one (I think) that wasn’t a native Dimension production, which just adds to it's sad "tossed around" legacy.

The weirdest thing about the film’s lengthy delay is that it’s chalked up to the box office failure of Bordello Of Blood, the 2nd film after the relatively successful (and awesome) Demon Knight. Apparently, Blood’s failure meant no one wanted to see another Crypt feature, and so it sat around in Universal’s vault for a while before Dimension took it off their hands. Makes sense... except when you consider that the film was produced in 2000 or 2001, and Bordello came and went back in 1996. If the movie was suddenly orphaned because of another film’s failure, why did they even make it in the first place? Did they not realize until after Ritual was complete that Bordello had tanked five years before? I hunted around online for a better/more logical explanation, but found none. My only guess is that they were contracted to do the movie by a certain date or would have to pay penalties out to certain parties, and thus just shot it quickly to avoid legal trouble.

A rushed/half-assed production is certainly evident while you’re watching the movie, with its numerous awkwardly blocked scenes and rushed action sequences. Most offensive is how Tim Curry’s character is killed in what can best be described as an edited for TV version of a death scene (even those are often edited better), and then to top it off, his character is barely mentioned ever again, despite the fact that he was the movie’s most interesting character. And the ending, without spoiling anything, is so abrupt and awkward I couldn’t even tell what was actually going on; it seems like there’s a supernatural twist to it (think Skeleton Key) but I'm pretty sure it’s actually just a poorly executed macabre (kind of sick, really) joke.

And that’s the other thing that bothered me – for an alleged Tales From The Crypt movie, it’s far too dry and serious. There are occasional light moments (mainly thanks to Curry), but it hardly showcases the sort of black/ironic humor that the series was known for. Plus, the story has no sort of twisted moral or poetic justice to it, even though it lends itself to one. I never saw Bordello, and Demon Knight only had a few of these touches (the postal employee’s stash of guns comes to mind), but on the surface, you’d think a tale of voodoo, blackmail, and revenge would be right up the series’ alley – yet it feels nothing like a Tales production (and not for nothing, but even the cartoon had more graphic violence - apart from some nudity this feels like a PG-13 affair). It doesn’t help that the Cryptkeeper intro (unlike the others, he doesn’t come back at the end, though there are some outtakes at the end of the credits) is painfully cheap, with a very stiff and lame looking ‘keeper making a few jokes on a beach while a few non-naked girls show off their covered behinds and chests for what I assume is supposed to be our titillation; star Jennifer Grey (Baby!) actually shows more legit skin. His awful/unfunny Jamaican accent does it no favors, either. Rumor is these scenes were shot around 2006 when the movie reverted back into a Tales movie; I don’t doubt it, but I am curious if real scenes were actually shot and just lost forever? I remember the ones in Demon Knight were fairly impressive and fun, but these are just sad.

The real shame is, this could have been a really good movie instead of a fairly watchable one. The voodoo backdrop is always welcome, and it’s not like you see too many horror movies shot in Jamaica. Grey is an unusual choice for a horror lead, but she mostly plays it like she’s in a romantic comedy or something, and her chemistry and surprisingly fleshed out friendship with the Kristen Wilson character was laudable – it would have been easy to just have her spend most of her time with one of the male characters and have Wilson be some sort of rival, but instead we get this fairly enjoyable and strong female friendship taking us through the story. Curry is also a delight, as always; he’s a bit miscast as some sort of ultimate bachelor, but you will start to miss him the instant he’s gone (which occurs fairly early in the proceedings).

However, I don’t know if Craig Sheffer was another miscast actor because I never trust him, but the reveal that he was the one behind his brother’s “zombie” state (and even WHY) was among the least surprising in movie history. I haven’t seen the original I Walked With A Zombie (this movie is a loose remake), but the fact that it’s a 1940’s horror movie, added with some early exposition here about a will and “who gets the house if he dies”, made it fairly easy for me to guess that we were once again dealing with a “let’s screw someone out of their inheritance” plot (which, ironically, was an invention of this movie’s screenwriters – the original boiled down to a jealous love triangle from what I understand). There’s another twist on top of that, one I DIDN’T see coming, but they definitely could have made the first part less obvious.

The horror elements are hit or miss. There’s a great melting scene right at the beginning, and even though the CGI was crap I liked the idea of people hallucinating various monsters and “things come to life” that resulted in their deaths or major accidents. But the climax lacks any real tension or scares, and there are a few too many nightmare scenes, including one truly obnoxious one where Grey is seemingly having detailed nightmares about characters doing things that she’s not even present for. I have little tolerance for nightmare-based fake scares as it is – the least filmmakers can do is keep the nightmare scene from the POV of the character who is about to exaggeratedly wake up from their dream by bolting up and gasping.

Oh well. There aren’t a lot of movies that sit on the shelf for this long that turn out to be any good, and thus my low expectations were more or less met. It’s not a fiasco, but it’s just not very compelling either; it’s the cinematic equivalent of instant coffee (“Hmm, you don’t have anything else? Fine, beats being thirsty I guess.”). Echo Bridge’s disc isn’t anything to get excited about either; it’s as barebones as they come. The original Dimension release had Spanish subs from what I understand, but this doesn’t even have that much. Frankly I’m not even sure why they are bothering with the double-dip – if there was any person on the planet who wanted to own this movie, they already bought the last one, which at least had a relevant cover (a bad Photoshop of the three main actors, which was still better than this one, which shows a little demonic girl hugging a voodoo doll – there’s nothing like that in the movie).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

A Serbian Film (2010)

MAY 15, 2011

GENRE: SURVIVAL, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Seems like every few years there’s a movie that horror fans are almost sort of dared to watch; Faces Of Death, Henry, Martyrs... these are movies where the story and other merits of the film are overshadowed by a few key moments that “you hear” are the sickest or most hardcore thing ever shown in a regularly distributed film. And now A Serbian Film (aka Srpski Film) tops them all in that respect, as it dips in pretty much every taboo, offering just as much if not more sexual brutality than the sort of graphic violence you come to expect; a woman being realistically beheaded (i.e. not in a clean sweep like in Friday the 13th) is probably the least upsetting act of violence in the film.

Before I get into the film, let me get one thing out of the way – the NC-17 version that screened in LA (on 35mm! A nice surprise) had about four minutes edited. However, based on what I understand was cut, there is only one instance in the movie where I feel the editing lessened the dramatic impact of what was happening in the scene. The rest of the time, if anything, the cuts made the movie harsher, because it trimmed the violence down from potentially cartoonish levels into something more “normal”. Nothing from the story has been excised; the “newborn porn” scene that you’ve probably heard about is still there, you’re just spared the visual (you still hear the baby’s screams, and see the most disturbing aspect of it regardless of the editing: the mother’s smile as it occurs). I’m not a fan of censorship by any means (and I am baffled/somewhat amused at the notion of a film having to be edited down in order to get an NC-17), but I’m not a fan of seeing babies get raped either. If this was Irreversible and they wanted to cut out the entire rape scene, I would be outraged – the whole movie hinges on the act, and seeing the awfulness of it is what allows you to justify most of what you’ve already seen the hero do in retaliation. Basically, the movie doesn’t “hinge” on the baby rape scene anyway, but if you’re of the mindset that “only hearing” it happen means that you won’t see the movie, that’s your problem.

Anyway, I knew that going in. What I DIDN’T know is that the film was actually fairly legitimate, with a real plot, strong/interesting lead character, and even a bit of a unique mystery angle. It’s also shot incredibly well; I could have sworn it was film but I saw the Red logo in the end credits (which were in Serbian – I also saw the Kodak logo though, so I don’t know). It’s like, you hear about this crazy movie with baby rape and necrophilia, you don’t expect to be sitting in the theater marveling how great the color scheme was. Dug the electronic score, too.

Another surprise was how long it took for it to get to the awful stuff. For some reason I was under the impression that the movie was like Martyrs; a nearly non-stop endurance fest. But it takes its time, setting up our hero, his home life, how he knows the involved parties, why he would need to take this job in the first place, etc. And even once these things start to occur, again it’s not like you have to watch 45 straight minutes of sexual debauchery – it actually becomes kind of a mystery. After attempting to back out of the film, Milos is drugged, and wakes up 3-4 days later in a pool of blood. He then has to use the videotapes and his fragmented memory to piece together what transpired over those few days (the setup actually allows some fairly seamless editing; you’re always hearing everything, but they can cut away from what’s happening on the video to Milos’ horrified reaction and the audience will be none the wiser). I’ve mentioned before that I am sick of movies that start off with a guy not knowing where he was or what had happened over the past couple hours/days, but by structuring the story so that this occurs at the film’s halfway point or so, it allows us to invest in Milos’ story and thus have an emotional attachment to his plight; I wanted to see what happened to him just as much as he did, something I don’t feel for the characters in movies that start off with this predicament.

As for the acts of depravity, I don’t know if “unfortunately” is the right word but at any rate I pretty much had them all spoiled before going in, with the exception of the last few minutes’ worth. I don’t want to spoil anything but the final scene is the most upsetting part of the movie, a surprising mix of truly disturbing violence and genuine tragedy (slightly marred by a rather ridiculous final “stinger” – more on that later). And it’s what led up to it that the editing cost the movie some of its impact; you know exactly what has happened (it involves a particular character being raped while their face was covered), but by removing a shot of the cover coming off and letting us see who was under it, the moment of shock/disgust for both us in the audience and the other characters is severely blunted, I think. It would be like unmasking the killer at the end of a Scream movie and not showing us who it is, and then later saying “Man, I can’t believe it was Billy!” And since I’d argue that the later, unaltered scenes with this character are more upsetting than the quick shot of seeing them in that situation, the cut really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me (it’s also the only time that I could tell there was an edit).

Another oft-publicized aspect of the movie is that it’s supposedly a metaphor for how Serbian citizens are treated by their government (“The baby is us, our innocence taken away from us as soon as we enter the world!”), and while I am sure that is true, it doesn’t really have an in-film component to let non-Serbians in on that idea. The villain has a bit of a speech that hints at such concepts, but it’s hardly enough to really enforce the metaphor. I don’t need a history lesson in the middle of the movie, but I think when you’re dealing with such extreme atrocities, a little more context to justify them wouldn’t hurt. Romero always has social commentary built into his films, but you don’t need to fully understand those issues in order to enjoy them, because “zombies are awesome!” and thus you can just have fun. But Serbian Film is hardly “fun” to watch, and so unless you constantly keep the metaphor in mind (and/or do like I did and read a few interviews beforehand), it will just come across as a well-shot piece of trash. So if director Srdan Spasojevic thought that these metaphors would translate to a global audience, in that respect he has failed as a storyteller (if he was secretly trying to boost Wikipedia’s page hits, however...). And back to that stinger – the metaphorical idea is pretty clear, and possibly even justified, but it’s overkill on a figurative level AND a literal one.

And, obviously, I have to keep in mind that as a non-parent and a somewhat desensitized movie viewer, my idea of what is too far may be much more extreme than a parent whose harshest horror experience thus far was Saw II. I was drawn into the story and Milos’ tragic story with most of the violence eliciting no more than a raised eyebrow or “ew” face, but other folks may be too disgusted/turned off by those elements to recognize that at its core the movie is actually a compelling thriller.

Ultimately, you’re either going to see it or you’re not. It’s too notorious in the horror circle by this point, and thus I highly doubt anyone reading this site on a regular basis hadn’t yet at least heard of it. I just hope that if you have already made up your mind, you keep your damn mouth shut about the film’s lack of merit until you actually see it. I wouldn’t look down on anyone who opted not to see it because of the subject matter it contains, but I have zero tolerance for the types that hear about these things and automatically get on their soap box and claim that it’s “vile trash” or whatever without even bothering to watch it for themselves. As I said, it’s a technically impressive film and is certainly NOT just a series of awful violent scenes; there’s a legitimately compelling story here and a real lead character to root for/care about. I don’t know if I’d ever want to watch it again (at least, on its own; a commentary track would be very enticing), but ultimately, like it or not, A Serbian Film has more merit than at least half of the movies I’ve watched for HMAD.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Soft For Digging (2001)

MAY 14, 2011

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, POSSESSION (?)
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

As a fan of JT Petty's The Burrowers and (most of) Mimic 3, I was excited to see his debut film Soft For Digging pop up on Netflix Instant (it's possibly been there for a while; I swear half of the horror titles that are available don't actually show up in the horror section, only as "related titles"). Even when my buddy Rob G told me he didn't think it was really horror, I was still interested in seeing it - if anything I'm even more excited to see non-horror fare from an interesting filmmaker who I only know from their horror work (i.e. Elvis from John Carpenter, which I STILL haven't seen because it's too damn long for me to find the time for).

But I disagree with Rob, it definitely fits into the horror genre. It's not out and out scary or anything, but the movie basically boils down to a tale of some sort of supernatural possession, complete with a little girl in demon makeup freaking out on camera (aided by some alt-editing techniques and the like - this movie is VERY much an artsy student film). And whether it was intentional or not, the movie's near total lack of dialogue actually got kind of creepy (for the first hour or so, the only word in the film is "Murder!"), and some of the film's events were kind of spooky as well, such as when the old man discovered a buried body in the woods near his house.

Back to the no dialogue thing, it's actually kind of funny how they work around it sometimes. At one point a phone rings, and I thought "a-ha! Surely there will be dialogue here!", but then they cut to an angle outside and let his facial expressions more or less tell you what is being said. And since a good chunk of the first half of the movie deals with the police investigating his claims about the murder he saw and later the corpse he found, it's quite a marvel that Petty was able to get all of this stuff across without dialogue, and it never gets confusing. However, he does use "Chapter" title cards that sort of provide the jist of what the next 7 or 8 minutes will be about, which sometimes spoil things (the last one in particular) but at least help give us an idea of where the story is about to go.

Interestingly, I had the wrong idea of what the movie was about for a good chunk of its running time. The old man sees a young guy killing a girl, and no one else saw anything nor can any evidence be uncovered. Later, someone drops off an envelope with information about an orphanage a few towns over, and the guy travels there to look around. It seems abandoned at first, and yet there are these quick flashes of the place in a different, livelier time, as if he was remembering having been there before. So I started thinking that he was actually the murderer and had either repressed the memory or suffered a psychotic break of some sort, and would ultimately come to realize that the murder had occurred at his own hands several years before (a theory someone else had on the IMDb, in fact). So it's kind of funny that the real answer turned out to be far more horror-based - Rob's "warning" actually sort of helped me be surprised by the outcome.

I was also impressed by Petty's restraint. I didn't know it was his student film until after I finished, but I certainly wasn't surprised; the 16mm image and aforementioned somewhat "artsy" tone reminded me of most of the stuff I saw during my own time at film school (which was around the same time, incidentally enough; the film has a 1998 copyright, that was the year I shot 8mm for the first time), albeit in feature length form. But there was nothing flashy or provocative about it - Petty was wise enough to do something a bit "small" and also do it right. I've seen too many student films that are way too focused on wowing the audience (or at least, their professors) with technical savvy or "hey look we got one of our actresses to appear topless", but Petty's focus seemed to be on getting a good performance from his lead actor and telling a story with minimal resources (and, again, dialogue). To me, that's a hell of a lot more interesting than a 15 minute short that has some cool sets or whatever, but doesn't make any goddamn sense and has a lot of pretentious voiceover.

I should note that the plot kicked off when the old man went to look for his cat, and it doesn't have a happy ending. As a cat owner, I really felt for the old guy - I freak out when one of my pals has decided to hide under the couch or something and prevents me from finding him right away (part of my OCD "requires" me to make visual confirmation that they are both in the house before I leave for work or whatever, and again as soon as I come back; if this takes more than 30 seconds I start to get upset). Thus, the ending really upset me, both in what happens and how abruptly it all goes down (and in turn how quickly the movie ends after that). I don't know how many friends I'd recommend the movie to anyway - it's slow and strange and requires a bit of thinking to understand, which sadly cancels out most of the folks I talk to in real life (except the ones that have already seen it) - but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has lost a pet in the past, I dunno, decade.

Apparently the DVD has a commentary, so I am bummed that I watched it on Netflix, as I would really love to hear it. I have to assume that the process of making a feature length student film took a toll on Petty and his crew (hell, our 18 minute student short nearly killed us; I'm not lying when I say that my hair began turning noticeably gray while I edited it), so I'm sure the commentary is filled with great war stories. Maybe I'll pick it up at Amoeba or something if it's cheap. But either way, I am now fully sure I am a fan of Petty's, and I hope he gets another relatively big film like The Burrowers sooner rather than later.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Priest (2011)

MAY 13, 2011

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

In a perfect world, we’d be seeing a sequel to Friday the 13th today, one that corrected the problems with that film and delivered the kickass modern Jason film we deserve. But alas, movie studios would rather spend 60+ million on something like Priest than 20 or so on a Friday the 13th movie. This baffles me to no end, but I’m sure it makes sense to them somehow, however, just for the record – while the crowd was decent for a midnight screening of a PG-13 horror movie (compared to Season of the Witch and The Rite’s crowds at the same theater), it was nowhere near as big as the midnight crowd for last year’s Nightmare on Elm Street.

Or even as big as Legion’s*, which is probably the best thing to compare Priest to since it’s the same director/star team, and once again blends religious concepts with post-apocalyptic horror. However, whether due to the fact that the two films do not share a writer, or the fact that Sony has seemingly re-edited the film to the bare minimum length required to call it a modern day feature (78 minutes without credits), it suffers from the exact opposite problem as Legion; whereas that film was too damn talky and waited too long to deliver any action, this one races from one action sequence to the next without letting you or the characters breathe. By the time it got to its big action showdown, I was just sort of tired of seeing Scott Stewart try to pull off Zack Snyder type slo-mo shots of Paul Bettany (least likely action hero ever!) jumping around via wires that they probably shouldn’t have even bothered to erase.

And the sad thing is it’s actually a pretty decent movie. The concept is fairly unique – vampires have taken over the world and thus humans live in walled-in cities that are run by 1984 types, and Priests are sort of the Jedi Knights of the world, keeping folks safe in a variety of ways. But there’s also a bit of Vietnam in there, as these soldiers are shunned by society (there's some quick dialogue about how they can't even get blue collar jobs) and abandoned by the people that they were protecting and/or acting on the behalf of. Interesting stuff for a summer action movie about vampires, right? Unfortunately, I didn’t really skip anything about this backdrop, as it only really takes up five minutes or so of the movie. There’s an “evil” overlord played by Christopher Plummer who runs the main city we see (I assume there are others, anyway?), someone who should be a sort of secondary villain the way the old dude in Demolition Man was alongside Wesley Snipes, but he’s in like two scenes, and is never even mentioned when he’s not present. I assume he had more to do in some earlier version of the script or even filmed version of the movie, but what’s left is hardly worth an actor of his caliber.

The same goes for most of the other actors that aren’t Paul Bettany or Cam Gigandet; they appear in 1-3 scenes, don’t really do much, and then exit the movie, with another big action scene kicking off before you have time to question, say, why Brad Dourif would get fifth-billed for two scenes (more like a scene and a half) as a traveling snake-oil salesman named Salesman. Oh, and that’s the other thing – just about everyone in this movie lacks an actual name. Bettany is named Priest. Maggie Q’s character is, wait for it, Priestess. Luckily, Karl Urban’s villain is no longer a priest, so they don’t have to call him Other Priest or Priest #2 or something; instead he is named Black Hat. Because he has a black hat. Gigandet’s Hicks and the girl they are trying to save are pretty much the only people in the movie with actual names, something that works in a movie like Feast where they are making fun of the genre’s archetypes, but here it just seems sort of ridiculous (and this movie is DEFINITELY not meant to be silly; Bettany in particular acts like he's in Apocalypse Now or something.

One thing I quite liked was the two hero setup, as both Bettany and Gigandet are looking for the same girl but for different reasons. It’s Gigandet’s girlfriend, so his motive is obvious, but Bettany wants to potentially kill her, because if Black Hat has turned her she could kick off a whole new vampire plague (their goal is to infiltrate the city). You kind of side with both men, and thus it’s a shame that it doesn’t really come down to them facing off over what to do with her. In fact Gigandet is bizarrely sidelined for a big chunk of the climax, disappearing for a large chunk of time while Bettany battles Black Hat and Q takes on some Road Warrior rejects. He eventually does come back into play, but takes little part in the actual rescue of the girl, which would be like leaving Jack Sparrow to rescue Keira Knightley at the end of a Pirates movie and then they just sort of catch up with Orlando Bloom later. Another awkward bit, one that doesn't seem to be the fault of the editing, is that Bettany is never aware until the very end that the guy he's after is his old partner. But WE know that, which makes it kind of a lame reveal; I'm of the opinion that we should never be that much ahead of our hero (and we certainly didn't need the flashback to show us how Black Hat was snatched by the vamps in the first place - Bettany may be surprised to see the character again, but we've been cutting back and forth between the two of them throughout the whole movie).

One thing the script DID get right is providing some healthy variety in the action scenes; one on one fights, a monster battle, the train chase, a town being annihilated, etc. The movie is constantly on the move; the characters don’t stay in any one area long enough to get tired of it, and there’s a good mixture of interior and exterior action scenes as well. Some of the action is a bit ridiculous though; at one point Priestess throws some rocks (that are about half the size of a standard brick) into the air and Bettany somehow manages to not only time his already ridiculous jump to connect with them, but also somehow use them as “steps” as he ascends further into the air in order to land a blow on the monster. Sure, it’s a cool visual and definitely something you don’t see very often, but it also makes later scenes, where he can’t even deflect a single punch, seem kind of silly – what happened to his insane skills?

But really, the only thing holding the movie back is its mercenary approach to plotting/character development and seeming refusal to ever calm the fuck down. I enjoy a fast pace, and there’s no law that says a movie has to be 105 minutes or whatever, but when you’re sending me off to this unique world, with a lot of potentially interesting allegory and heroes that have morally ambiguous codes, I want the filmmakers to invest time into making these things seem real and fleshed out. If it’s say, a Fast and Furious movie, fine – it’s normal Earth, these guys want to race and avoid the cops for the bad things they’ve done. Simple. But somehow THAT new movie is 45 minutes longer than this one! Few things would surprise me less if the eventual Blu-ray release offered a longer cut of the movie, giving everyone more to do and helping clarify a few plot points.

I should note that the editing may not be solely the result of a nervous studio wanting to “trim the fat”, as was the case with the same studio’s somewhat similar Ultraviolet, which was hacked to death for its theatrical release before receiving a more respectable home video version. As most of you probably know, Priest is being presented in 3D, and like most 3D movies (sadly), it was not shot in 3D but rather converted into the format much later. As it was not designed/shot/edited for 3D, this can present many problems for the 3D artists, not to mention it’s expensive to do, so perhaps the movie was just cut down to make things easier on all levels for the 3D conversion. I can’t imagine a WORSE reason to edit a film, but as I said at the top of the review – studios and I just don’t have the same way of thinking. At any rate, I saw it in 2D anyway, because I’m not paying extra for a fake 3D experience, and I’d urge you to do the same if you plan to check the movie out. I mean, for all I know I’m completely wrong and there is no longer version of the movie (I should note that I didn't really notice anything in the trailer that wasn't in the movie, which is usually a dead giveaway - though the “additional editing by Bob Murawski” credit at the end certainly aids my suspicions), but I just find it impossible to believe that what I just saw was anyone’s “complete” vision. Luckily, what’s left is still a fairly entertaining way to kill 80 minutes (or 75 if you want to duck out early before the painful and somewhat embarrassing setup for a sequel that will most likely never exist).

What say you?

*I see a lot of midnight movies, huh? Of all the wide release horror films that I didn’t get to see early in the past year or so, I think The Roommate is the only one I saw at a normal time. Luckily I’m getting better at staying awake; I only dozed for a few minutes of this one (and not at ALL for The Rite, may I remind you).

PLEASE, GO ON...

Savage County (2010)

MAY 12, 2011

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

The history of Savage County kind of baffles me. I read that it was a web series, but the movie itself doesn’t have that sort of “broken up” feel to it that you’d expect from a movie that was originally a bunch of 10 minute segments. And it apparently involved some sort of “You Demand It!” type contest, but were there other movie/web series it was competing against? Was there another crappy horror movie left in the dust because it didn’t have enough votes from the lunkheads that watch MTV?

At any rate, it premiered on MTV2 (remember when that was the one that actually aired videos? Is there an MTV3 now or something?), but this DVD version is unrated with the gore that they couldn’t show on TV (there’s also an f-bomb or two, but I don’t know what MTV’s rules are for such things; it premiered at 11pm), making it – theoretically – the better way to watch the movie. But there’s not really a good way to watch this movie, because it’s pretty lousy. In fact I’d argue it was probably better on MTV, because then you’d get commercials to break up the monotony, and the lack of any real gore would be more understandable.

The plot is a boring blend of Wrong Turn/Texas Chain Saw style “backwoods types kill our heroes who were poking around where they shouldn’t” plotting with a minor blend of I Know What You Did Last Summer, albeit nowhere near as logical as that movie (yes, I am saying that comparatively, IKWYDLS was more logical than this – should give you an idea of how stupid it is). In that movie, they killed a guy on accident but the driver was drunk and they all had things to lose (scholarships and the like), so the cover-up in an act of panic made some sense. Here, they whack a redneck over the head with a shovel in self defense, as he is attempting to shoot them. I think the cops would understand, right? Well, they all just run away and decide not to say anything, a plan that lasts about 2 hours. Then they decide to tell the cops anyway, which makes their situation worse because – surprise! – the sheriff is in cahoots with the rednecks. Only someone who has never seen one of these movies before wouldn’t see that coming!

...is something I might say if one of the rednecks doesn’t say in the first scene, when the obligatory opening scene victim pleads for her life and says “I won’t tell the cops”, “The cops already know!”. So not only is this “twist” never even given a chance to surprise anyone, but the scene also kills what could have been the only interesting thing about the movie – maybe these guys were just law abiding backwoods folk and are only taking out the kids in retaliation for what they ‘dun’ to their kin. But since they’re killing random teens right from the start, the whole “revenge” concept is pointless; they would have killed our heroes just for being in the area.

It’s also yet another horror movie in which our main group seemingly has no real interest in hanging out. Apparently to make sure they catered to all possible MTV demographics, we get an almost laughably generic group of stereotypes: the jock, the AV nerd, the punk, the goth, the prom queen, the cheerleader, and the valedictorian. If this is Breakfast Club and they’re forced to hang out because of detention, fine – but they all just take a road trip together, strung together by the loosest possible excuses (the jock needs the AV nerd’s help to edit a video, and said AV nerd is buying pot from the punk, who is dating the cheerleader and is foster brother to the goth..., etc). Needless to say, most of them don’t really like any of the others, and spend most of the movie bickering and mocking one another. I really don’t understand the need to have such a stereotypical group (an oft-mocked selection at that); I use Halloween all the time so let’s go with Friday the 13th to provide an example. Now, while they all had their little differences, they weren’t really pigeonholed; it’s not like Brenda was “the brain” (she was the one who wanted pot!) or Jack was “the jock” – I’d argue he was almost as much of a laid back funny guy as Ned, the requisite nerd who unlike most “nerd” characters (including the ones in the later F13 movies) wasn’t depicted as a despicable, virgin whiner who no one else liked. They were believable as friends – why is it seemingly so difficult for modern horror filmmakers to do the same sort of thing with THEIR characters? As hateful and annoying as the girls were in Five Across The Eyes, at least it made sense that they were all together.

If I can give it some credit, they don’t make anyone besides the final girl too obvious as a survivor or victim, and it wasn’t easy to peg the order in which they died either. Final Girl’s boyfriend bought it much earlier than I would have guessed, and the goth girl almost looked like she’d survive the whole thing, only to suffer the movie’s most interesting death near the end. The rednecks (who appear to be smarter than our heroes, actually) have a big vat of acid that they use to dissolve the remains of their victims and thus limit their chances of getting caught, and naturally, one of them ends up taking a bath in it himself for some poetic justice (or whatever the dumbed down MTV version of poetic justice is). So that was kind of obvious, but then with his last bit of life he reaches up and pulls Goth Talk into the vat with him, which is equally hilarious and nasty.

The actual ending is a total slap in the face though (uh, spoilers, I guess – you really shouldn’t care though), as not only does the guy who killed the redneck and thus more or less set off the whole chain of events (again, there is nothing to indicate that the rednecks wouldn’t have just killed them anyway) not get his just desserts, but Final Girl just leaves him behind! He’s a bit hurt and tells her to go on, and she does, saying “I’ll send help for you!”, but then she is found lying by the side of the road the next morning and picked up by an ambulance. She doesn’t mention the guy at all as the ambulance takes off, and then the movie just ends. No final scare, no resolution to the jock’s fate, and certainly no payoff for all the web media nonsense that kept getting clunkily inserted in the narrative (the jock’s girlfriend has a web series of some sort).

But really, none of this matters, because the project simply doesn’t make sense from the ground up. You can’t do one of these Wrong Turn/Hostel type movies with the basic cable restrictions. Even in this “unrated” form, it’s clearly designed for a “TV MA” audience, not a real R rating, so while certainly more graphic than you see on 24 or whatever, the deaths still are laughably tame compared to the movies it’s ripping off. And the generic story has simply been done to death, resulting in a wholly suspense-free affair where even the most minute aspects of the story have been done elsewhere, and better (did I mention the heroine is also pregnant?).

In a way it reminds me of the games that come out when a new game system launches (called “launch titles”). The Xbox 360 for example; when it launched in 2005, most of the games that were available were just franchise titles with prettier graphics (i.e. a new Call of Duty, new Madden, etc), and none of the games really had much of a lasting impression. The reason is, the game developers hadn’t yet realized the full potential of the new hardware, and were mostly just trying to deliver eye-catching, “easy-sell” type stuff to get folks on board with a new system. And thus, I could almost forgive this movie for being so shitty if it was the first one they had done, because they were new to the filmmaking game and hadn’t quite figured out what they were doing. But alas, there is My Super Psycho Sweet 16, which came along a year before this thing. Now, Sweet 16 is not a perfect film, but it was a lot better than I expected, and delivered a pretty decent slasher movie that also delivered what an MTV audience “demanded” (i.e. pretty, vapid characters, a disposable soundtrack, etc) – a good blend for both fanbases, in other words. So if they were able to get it more or less right the first time around, there’s no excuse for putting together something so damn lousy on their followup.

The only extra on the disc is the trailer. For that I thank them.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...