Haunting At The Beacon (2009)

NOVEMBER 18, 2011

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

The writers of some twist movies seemingly work backwards from a pre-conceived twist (The Village seems to be a good example), and others seemingly pull one out of their ass when they get bored with their own narrative somewhere in the third act. Haunting At The Beacon (formerly just The Beacon) writer/director Michael Stokes certainly seems to be one of the latter types; what starts out as a decent enough "is she crazy or is she seeing ghosts?" movie turns into a ridiculous, plot-hole ridden tale that tries to combine a potentially fun Tales From The Crypt style twist and a typical Lifetime channel horror movie, and (unsurprisingly) fails.

Warning: spoilers ahead!

Now, the idea of a twist where you find out someone was a ghost for the entire movie is nothing new, and it can be done quite brilliantly (just ask Mr. Willis). But when you find out that nearly EVERY CHARACTER in the movie was a ghost, it's just idiotic. Especially when so many of them are seen carrying out their normal lives: going on dates, dressing up for Halloween, etc. Christ, at one point a guy that turns out to be a ghost goes down to the landlord (also a ghost) and causes a distraction so that a human can snoop around, even though the end of the movie reveals that these ghosts are all pretty much working toward the same goal.

Also, again, we can buy one ghost, but how do they explain an entire building full of people that no one seems to be aware are actually dead? Their number includes a famous actress, and one of the still living folks looks her up online - you'd think her death would have been noticed by now? Another is a cop that interacts with other cops - none of them knew about his original death? Again, it seems like Stokes just up and decided to pull this twist out without bothering to go back and make sure it matched up with the previous 80 pages of his script. As I've said before, you might go back and feel dumb for not figuring out that Bruce was dead in Sixth Sense, but there isn't a single thing that doesn't jive with the idea, at least that I've ever caught in 5-6 times watching the flick. Certainly nothing that I thought of right away. And you can get away with plot holes as long as the movie's fun enough to not really notice them until you give it serious thought later on, but this one is too uneventful to qualify for that sort of pass.

It's also one of those horror movies that seems unwilling to kill anyone, despite the R rating. Teri Polo is the heroine and most recognizable actor in the movie, so of course she's fine even though the ghost appears to her more often, but why does her sister survive? In one of the most ridiculous scenes I've viewed all year, the girl picks up a doll in the street as a very slow moving street sweeper makes its way toward her. She steps back on the curb, so the ghost appears inside the truck's cab, distracting the driver, which causes him to swerve up on the curb (still going about 5 mph) and hit her anyway. But she doesn't die - she just loses her legs (hilarious reveal) and gets a bump on her head. However, she doesn't play any part in the rest of the movie, so why not just kill her? It'd be one thing if she escaped the hospital and made her way back to the Beacon to save the day, but she's never seen again.

Oh yeah, The Beacon. For a place that's so important to these ghosts, they sure don't mind leaving it every day, even though that goes against the usual rule of ghosts (even ones that DON'T have any sort of spoken fondness for their locale). In addition to jumping into the street sweeper, Polo follows one to the other side of town, the guy down the hall randomly goes to their office Halloween party, etc. A better script would have found clever/unnoticeable ways to never leave the apartment building. In fact, the movie Circle Of Eight actually has a similar scenario, and they were wise enough to set the entire movie there (but not fully explain their twist - I'm still getting people leaving comments with their theories. Sadly I can't remember enough about the movie to agree/disagree) - it's a shame Stokes didn't see how this could not only save time/money (fewer locations, less travel) but make his twist work a bit better as well.

But again, for the most part it's a harmless enough little movie. Polo is perfectly suited for this sort of thing - she's probably never going to be an A-lister, but she's engaging and personable enough to earn our sympathies and create a real person out of thin material, and has a nice chemistry with the guy playing her husband. There are a few nice little subtle ghost shots (particularly one no one but the audience notices, in a closet early on), and Stokes gets some mileage out of their tragic backstory - their son was presumed drowned but the body was never found. There's a hint that the ghost they are seeing is their son, only to discover that it's a kid who lived there, which leaves the possibility that the son is still alive - it's an interesting way to create a bit of mystery, as you wonder when the son subplot will tie into the ghost one. Also, it takes the entire movie to see them properly, but Vincent Guastini's FX work for the ghost folk (basically zombie/demon things, not transparent spectres) is quite good. I'm so used to seeing Ring-wannabe ghosts in these things (blacked out eyes, jittery movements), it's nice to see an old-school approach, which is better anyway.

Since this was a Starz Play offering on Netflix, the movie was full frame and looked like shit; I assume the DVD is a much better option. I know it will reduce the number of available titles, but I can't wait for the day (in February!) that Starz pulls the rest of its stuff off the service - whether the movie turns out to be good or bad, at least I know I won't have to endure one of their terrible transfers again. Personally I would think Netflix would be happy to improve the overall level of quality that their service provides by dumping all this garbage, but sadly most of the people using the service think the streams look just as good as DVD anyway, so it's not like there's any need to provide quality control - the average Netflix customer's ignorance is key to improving their bottom line. I assume some of the movies will come back through other means, but just in case: you only have about three months left to not bother with this one if it pops up in your "recommended" page.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961)

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

With a title like Doctor Blood’s Coffin, I was expecting something cheesier than the film offered; it was closer to melodramatic thriller than full blown horror, and kept the body count relatively low. Hell, the title wasn’t even being lurid for the hell of it – the character’s actual name was Peter Blood, and he was a real doctor. So I guess his decision to turn to mid-century horror movie mad science was probably for the best; it’s not like anyone is going to go to a chiropractor or podiatrist named Doctor Blood.

Anyway, the movie’s OK. Shaving 10-15 minutes from the runtime and/or adding another kill scene couldn’t hurt – there really isn’t a lot of meat on its bones, rendering its 91 minute length a bit excessive. They could have had a lot of fun with the idea of constantly asking former resident/poorly named doctor to help out on the deaths he himself was committing, but there are less than a handful of them over the course of the movie. And the only cop in town starts to suspect him around the halfway point anyway (though not as quickly as he should, considering his name is DOCTOR BLOOD), so there’s not enough to it to warrant making up for the movie’s dull spots.

It’s funny how the composer took it upon himself to make things more exciting though. During a transplant scene near the end, Doctor Blood just calmly does his thing, and the camera isn’t really moving much or anything - but if you shut your eyes and listen to the score, you’d swear you were listening to an incredibly tense chase scene or something. I mean, the whole movie is coming down to him trying this surgery – obviously SOMETHING’s going to happen, so there’s not really much excitement in seeing the process. And that’s part of the problem with the movie – it’s a Frankenstein tale where the monster doesn’t awake until the final 5 minutes.

In fact, it actually works more as a tragic romance, since Blood falls for a woman who (spoiler) was married to the guy he is trying to resurrect. Obviously if his experiment works, he will probably lose his new girlfriend in the process – an angle I wish they explored more, but instead save the resurrection of the guy for the final sequence, when it’s too late for any sort of quirky character stuff like that. I propose a remake where the dead guy is resurrected at the end of the 2nd act at the latest! I mean, we’ve seen a zillion Frankenstein wannabe movies, but none that were also love triangles, right?

(I really should stop suggesting awesome ideas in the middle of a blog. As always, if you steal my idea I only ask that you name a character after me.)

It also works as a travelogue for Cornwall, as the ocean-side scenery is just wonderful to look at, and the village itself looks charming as all hell. The film was directed by Sidney J. Furie, whose name should be familiar to anyone who watched 80s and 90s action movies (including Iron Eagle!). Odd, this is the 2nd movie this week directed by a guy who should be making far more exciting horror movies (after Mark L. Lester’s Pterodactyl). Then again, Furie’s filmography is more random than Alan Smithee’s, so he doesn’t exactly have a noticeable style or anything. If you found an old Michael Bay horror movie and it didn’t have a bunch of orange-filtered shots or low angles that swoop around the actors, it’d be one thing, but there’s no signature Furie style for his fans to look for in this early work. “Ah, classic Furie shot.” – something no one has ever said.

MGM has released the film via their on demand service, and it looks pretty damn great. The film had been available on a few budget packs in the past, but from what I understand they were washed out (and full-frame – this is an anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer), so if you’re a fan of this film it’s definitely worth the upgrade. On the other hand, they didn’t provide the trailer like they did for Quatermass, and once again it’s the sort of disc that won’t play in your DVD-rom drive, which just baffles me. Plus it’s hardly a movie you’d want to watch over and over. But the lurid title and intriguing love/Frankenstein mix definitely lends itself to a remake, so if that ever comes you should check it out so you’re not that guy saying “I never saw the original”. Even for not very good movies, you still sound like a chump!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Breaking Dawn [Part 1] (2011)

NOVEMBER 16, 2011

GENRE: VAMPIRE, WEREWOLF
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

I was tempted to give up on the series after New Moon, but the promise of vampire c-section was too tempting for this fan of batshit insanity, and so in order to keep up with the events of Breaking Dawn Part 1, I saw Eclipse, which turned out to be pretty good relative to the others. And BDP1 continues that tradition; if you were to go in blind you’d probably walk out before any of the truly ridiculous stuff happens, but compared to the woeful 2nd film and forgettable 1st, these last two border on genuine, no excuses entertainment.

Now, Eclipse is still the “best” in my opinion, because it had the most action and thus spent less time on the angst, minimizing the time I spent watching these thoroughly uninteresting people do thoroughly uninteresting things. But what BD lacks in action it makes up for in sheer ridiculousness, some of it bordering on some sort of Cronenberg-esque body horror, albeit filtered through teen melodrama. I mean, the movie is essentially a tale of a girl who is having a monster’s baby, one that is breaking her bones from within and essentially eating away at her (Kristen Stewart looks gorgeous in her wedding scenes, which is good since she is made to look like shit for the movie’s entire 2nd half) – certainly SOUNDS like a movie the average hardcore horror fan would dig, right? But it’s still Twilight, so before you get there you need a big wedding and dreamboat shots of Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, and sub-soap opera dialogue that you can either laugh, groan, or applaud at depending on your sensibilities. You also have to buy that Carlisle apparently owns an island off the coast of Rio, but, you know, whatever at this point.

So yeah, the first hour is pretty dull, bordering on New Moon levels of pointlessness. As Summit has decided to split the movies in two, you can see that the book didn’t exactly NEED a four hour film to tell its story, so everything gets dragged out, with several scenes that you know would have been tossed immediately had they only had a single film to work with. As much as I love Anna Kendrick, the only reason she is here at all is to keep people from saying “Where’s Jess?” – she doesn’t even share a single moment with what was her best friend a few years ago (Bella has no bridesmaids, apparently). Had this been a single 2, 2.5 hour film, Kendrick’s scenes probably would have been first to go.

Ditto most of their time on the island. Edward is hesitant in sleeping with her over and over like she wants because she gets a bit banged up on their wedding night. Apparently in the book he actually knocks her out, but apart from a pretty funny moment where he breaks the bed, it plays out like pretty much every other “and finally they fuck” scene from any other romantic movie ever made. So that’s fine, but I don’t think we need what seems like a full ten minutes’ worth of him resisting her advances to get the point. And if it was a single film, they’d probably just condense it so that she noticed she was pregnant the next morning (the baby grows at super speed so this wouldn’t be too much of a stretch) so we could move things along. We could also probably skip the pointless stop on the mainland in Rio; it’s the first time one of these movie’s budgets actually seemed to reflect what was on screen, but Summit could have made another movie or two with the money that was basically wasted here.

Anyway, once the pregnancy finally DOES happen the movie finally takes off, and that’s when Bill Condon starts to have more fun with the material. Unlike David Slade, who you could practically hear laughing off camera at times, Condon wisely decided to play this ridiculous material completely straight, which of course just makes it funnier. So while I missed some of Slade’s touches (no exploding glass vamps this time, dammit), I don’t know if Slade would manage to make the film’s climax as whacked out amazing as Condon did. Condon shoots the scene where Jacob imprints on a newborn baby as if it really is a man falling in love for the first time, and thus it completely lives up to its charmingly idiotic potential.

However, Condon actually manages to find a few scares in this one as well, so even though there’s less action it’s actually more of a “real” horror movie than Eclipse. An early nightmare scene is legitimately creepy, and the scene of Edward stalking a victim at a movie theater (showing Bride of Frankenstein – a nice little homage to his Gods & Monsters days) is played like any regular vampire film, and it’s pretty much the first time I saw Edward as a real vampire, not an emo weirdo. There’s also a fairly fun wolf vs. vampire fight in the 3rd act that sadly has no consequences (come on, kill Jasper!) but at least has some decent beats (read: shots of a vampire punching a wolf into a tree). The CGI is also much improved; the wolves still seem to change size depending on the scene, but at least they look pretty good and blend with the background/human actors better than they have before. There’s also a scene where the wolves all argue (with their human voices), and believe me - it’s even sillier than the sequence under the bridge in Transformers where they all debate about their next move.

I was also impressed with how they took what is just the first half of a book and made a 3 act, fairly “full” film out of it. Obviously the series die-hard fans will feel like it stops just when it gets good or whatever, but as far I was concerned, this movie was based on a book where the two main characters got married and dealt with the consequences of getting pregnant with a monster, ending on a note that set up the final book. The only obvious signs of it being halved involve the new characters, including some of the Cullen’s cousins (one played by Maggie Grace), who only appear in one scene and foreshadow some stuff that never pays off in this entry. Ditto the vampire overlords led by Michael Sheen, who only appear in a mid-credits scene that is pure exposition/set up for Part 2. But overall, the movie is about Bella getting pregnant, and in that respect it tells a complete story, from conception to birth.

It’s also the story of Jacob turning on his wolf family in order to “join” the Cullens, albeit only for Bella’s sake. And while that seems noble on paper, yet again the movies make me wonder why there’s any such thing as “Team Jacob”, because he’s just a total dickhead from start to finish. Everyone in the Cullen family (save the blonde girl who used to hate Bella but now is OK with her I guess) is perfectly kind to him, but he never stops insulting their kind and behavior. Even during a pivotal moment in the climax where Bella is in mortal danger (spoiler: she “dies”), he doesn’t seem sad or give a NOOOOO! but instead takes the opportunity to twist the knife a bit, insulting Edward for the 50th time. I mean, yeah, if she went with him she wouldn’t have to turn into a sparkly vampire, but she’d also have to spend the rest of her life with a guy who seems pretty damn hateful. Even when he turns on his family; it doesn’t seem like a guy doing the right thing, it comes across more as a dude who is still holding out hope that he can end up with her in the end. Let it go, man! At least he keeps his shirt on this time around; apart from the hilarious shot from the trailer where he disrobes after getting the wedding invite, he is welcome inside convenience stores for the rest of the film. Even when he returns to being human after wolfing out, he somehow instantly has a shirt on – I would have given them that one!

But, ultimately – who cares? The faithful will see it; the haters will still mock those who enjoy it and question why I bothered (what’s the current over/under on some anonymous ignoramus commenting “This teen shit ain’t horror!”). Even the Star Wars films are less critic proof than these, so it doesn't matter what anyone says, good or bad. However, if there ARE some open-minded folks who have yet to check any of the movies out, I guess you can start here as long as you know the basics, or maybe back up to Eclipse so the whole drama of what they plan to do after their wedding is a little more clear (the movie doesn't bother reminding us). The irony of them splitting the last book into two movies when they probably could have told the ENTIRE SERIES in as many films (given how un-complicated the thin “plot” is) is probably lost on most of its intended audience, but on the other hand there’s no real need to suffer through the first two wheel-spinning films to get the “context”. Twilight: Bella meets Edward and they fall in angsty love. New Moon: Edward takes off, Bella falls in love with Jacob, but then Edward comes back and she returns to him. There you go, now you’re all caught up. Pop in Eclipse for the exploding vampires and go see this one for the weird AIDS metaphor and hilarious wolf conversations.

And see you in November to see how it all wraps up! (p.s. What the fuck? A whole year for a split in half movie? Relative bull shit!)

What say you?

P.S. I’m busy anyway, but if I had any plan to talk about the deeper meanings and subtext of this thing, it would pale considerably to Film Critic Hulk’s piece on the series as a whole, which is as genius and well thought out as his other columns, and (goes without saying) much better than anything I’d come up with anyway. So I opted to more or less review this one at face value and how it stacks against the others, especially since this is hardly what anyone comes to HMAD for anyway. That said, I urge you to head on over to Badass Digest and read Hulk’s piece for a genuine critique of this series’ whacked out and potentially psychotic subtext.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Pterodactyl (2005)

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

A bad Syfy movie is somehow much worse when it’s directed by someone whose name used to mean something. Mark L. Lester helmed a number of awesome 80s/90s action flicks like Commando and Showdown In Little Tokyo, but there is precious little of that spark on display in Pterodactyl, a woefully by the numbers cheapo monster movie that could (should) have been directed by any random asshole off the street. At least Joe NoName or Brian Collins wouldn’t have raised any false hopes.

As much as I love Jurassic Park, I was annoyed that there were no pterodactyls in the film – I considered them to be one of the cooler dinosaurs when I was a kid. Seeing them in that crappy 3rd film wasn’t quite enough, so I was excited to see them get their own movie here. However, now I see why they don’t make for particularly exciting movie villains; while an attack or two is fine, it seems all you need to do is just go inside to be safe from them for the long run. Apparently sensing that, Lester and co. stage the film pretty much as one overlong sequence of our characters making their way through a clearing on the island where the things have suddenly re-appeared (the eruption of a volcano is apparently to thank for un-thawing some of the eggs). It’s almost remarkable how little variety there is to the film, a problem made worse by the fact that there’s no real story to it either.

See, Spielberg had the good sense to save the “escape from the dinos!” part of Park to the 2nd half, but Lester isn’t that patient. So while it’s nice to see some action right off the bat, after 40 minutes it gets pretty damn tiresome seeing the same basic scene over and over again – a ‘dactyl swoops around, and then dive bombs to take someone out. I swear, they even use the same footage during some of the kills, even on the humans – two guys get their torsos torn off leaving bloody legs behind, and I’m pretty sure they just used the same shot for both. There’s a brief bit in a cave, but otherwise you could walk out of the room for five minutes and wonder if the movie had been paused or something while you were out; it all looks the same.

Spicing things up (for lack of an accurate word) is the usual gang of soldiers and their target (a terrorist), who are just there to provide more fodder to keep things moving until it comes down to the three people billed first; Cameron Daddo, Amy Sloan, and Coolio (as the head soldier!). Apparently understanding that their names wouldn’t matter anyway, everyone is named after a famous genre author, which is just plain distracting. Burroughs and Clarke are fine, but Lovecraft? Lem? Heinlein? These aren’t average everyday names (no offense to any readers with those names), and since they’re the only memorable thing about any of the characters is just makes it all the more painful to hear them shouted in the middle of action scenes.

Luckily they go with first names quite a bit, which provides some unintentional humor for Heavy Rain fans. One character is named Jason, and goes MIA, resulting in a character shouting “Jason?” in a concerned voice a few times, not unlike the father in one of the earlier, most oft-mocked levels of that unique game. But as with the sci-fi last names reminding me of all the great novels I’ll probably never find time to read, now it just makes me wish I was finally finishing it (I was about halfway through when another game distracted me; never went back) rather than watching this crappy movie.

AND THE CGI! I feel when you see bad CG being used for dinosaurs it’s even more insulting than normal, because if there is one bit of infallible proof that CGI can be used effectively in movies, it’s Jurassic Park. So seeing these horribly rendered things swoop and screech is just painful; it’s like being forced to eat leftover Jack In The Box when the town’s best steakhouse is handing out free New York sirloins a few feet away. At least if it was an original monster I don’t have a frame of reference for how infinitely superior it could look had they just bothered to use a practical animatronic for closeups and then use that time with the CGI guys to make better shots for when there was no other option (i.e. multiple birds flying in the air).

On that note, I’ll give it credit for that much – despite the singular title, there are a ton of the things in the movie, allowing for a fairly even body count of humans vs. dinos. Coolio hilariously blows a few out of the sky, and the last one gets taken out with a homing missile! It all looks like shit, sure, but at least it’s not all run n’ hide; if nothing else, these boring idiots fight back.

Ah, who cares. The thing aired on Syfy back when it was still Sci-Fi and wasn’t even memorable enough to live on as a punchline. The only reason that this movie might ever come up in anyone’s conversation again is the fact that (per the IMDb anyway) screenwriter Mark Sevi is one of the writers on Devil’s Knot, Atom Egoyan’s feature version of the West Memphis Three case. And that worries me a bit; I trust he won’t change Jason Baldwin’s name to Douglas Adams, but as his entire career is filled with this sort of C-level junk (Ghoulies IV, Scanner Cop II, etc), I can’t help but be a bit concerned that they didn’t hire someone with a little more drama in their filmography to tackle what is a very serious and tragic story. Prove me wrong, Mr. Sevi!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Corman's World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel (2011)

NOVEMBER 14, 2011

GENRE: DOCUMENTARY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

I don’t do too many documentaries here, but when it’s about the guy who produced at least a dozen movies I’ve reviewed over the past couple years, I figure it qualifies. Boasting one of the most impressive collections of interview subjects I’ve ever seen for a Hollywood-based documentary, the only problem with Corman’s World: Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel is that it’s too short – I could easily listen to these guys tell stories about their various Corman productions for hours on end, but until the (hopefully jam-packed) DVD, 90 minutes will have to suffice.

The number of Hollywood A-listers who got their start working for Corman has been well documented over the years, but seeing them all together in new interviews is nothing short of jaw-dropping: Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, William Shatner, Pam Grier, John Sayles, Robert De Niro, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, Gale Anne Hurd, and Joe Dante are all on board here, telling stories about how Corman gave them their first shot, plus giving general praise and defense of his output as a whole and how he is perceived by some Hollywood snobs (“Schlockmeister” and things of that nature). Not everyone is accounted for – Francis Ford Coppola and James Cameron are noticeably absent – but director Alex Stapleton makes up for it with appearances by folks like Quentin Tarantino and (of course) Eli Roth, who have never worked with him but are among his biggest fans and supporters.

But the real “get” is Jack Nicholson, who doesn’t often do these kind of things. Given the huge “cast” of the movie (including several who were apparently cut entirely), some folks are only seen briefly, but Stapleton got a lot of mileage out of her time with Jack, who is wonderfully candid about the quality of the films but 100% sincere when he discusses Corman himself, who he claims was the only one who had any faith in him for the first decade or so of his acting career. As the most beloved actor to appear in the film (besides De Niro anyway, but he only pops up once), these moments can solidify Corman’s importance to someone who didn’t even know who he was far more easily than the number of directors, whose names might not mean as much to a younger audience.

Having Nicholson and Dick Miller (yay!) also adds immensely to my favorite segment of the film, when The Terror is discussed at length. As Nicholson hilariously points out, not a single person in the world is capable of explaining what the movie is about, which makes me feel a lot better about my puzzled reaction to it. And his laughter is infectious as he recounts the bit where Miller is taxed with trying to make sense out of the storyline via a glob of exposition in the movie’s climax, as well as another actor whose character’s muteness randomly disappears halfway through (which I never noticed!). The famous story of Little Shop of Horrors’ two day shoot is also discussed, including a good anecdote about the dental equipment that I never heard before.

And it’s visually interesting! A lot of documentaries are more worthwhile for what is being said than for what it looks like, but this is a remarkably colorful film. Some of the participants are filmed in unusual locales (Demme is in the back of a moving car; Howard appears to have been on his way to walk to a cemetery), and they’re all in natural locations – no generic green-screen setups here. I also loved the end credits sequence, which presented a montage of key art from the older movies with fonts that more or less matched the style of that film’s credits. Very cool – it’s almost a bummer when they switch to a traditional scroll. Similarly, it’s rare that a documentary of this sort gets me choked up, but I defy any movie buff to watch the climactic sequence without getting a bit teary eyed (or even the scene before it where Julie Corman – who deserves her own documentary at this point - helps him tie his bowtie).

As with most documentaries, it’s framed by something mundane and modern, in this case the production of Dinoshark. Obviously it’s not the best movie to use in a tribute to the guy (though better than Sharktopus, at least!), so they wisely don’t try to glorify the film’s merit; if anything they merely show that Corman is the only one involved who seems to know what he’s doing at times. There’s a bit where he has to explain to one of the actors (who he is sharing the scene with in a cameo) at what point she should say her lines, something that the director should be doing. He can also be seen pointing out a few continuity issues and bemoaning another actress who keeps getting her makeup fixed and wasting time. Of course, they didn’t have EPK crews on The Terror or anything, so it’s a shame we can’t see this stuff juxtaposed with him working on his older films, but it’s still wonderful to watch him in action.

That said, I wasn’t entirely joking when I said the film is too short – after taking us through the 50s-70s in fairly good detail (considering that’s about 150 films’ worth of his career, all the more impressive), it skips over 30 years entirely, going from Piranha (1978) to his 2009 Lifetime Achievement Oscar. No mention of his return to directing with Frankenstein Unbound, his Showtime series “Roger Corman Presents”, successfully getting Carnosaur into theaters before Jurassic Park, etc. Just “then a lot of his movies went straight to DVD” and other somewhat dismissive brief comments, without a single specific film from that era mentioned. Not that any time was wasted in the previous 80 minutes, but it just seems like an entire section of the film was chopped out, since they were being so thorough with the years before it. I’m not going to argue with the film’s point that the years that produced Wild Angels, The Intruder, and the Poe films were much more impressive than the ones that gave us Dinocroc and Carnosaur 3, but skipping them entirely (and his still impressive ability to find young talent – including Cameron) is a bit weird. Certainly some mention could be made of Slumber Party Massacre being the first slasher film to be written and directed by women?

But ultimately, it’s the quality and love that pores from the film throughout that makes me bemoan the occasional oversight. I was riveted even with the sections on movies I had little interest in (The Trip, for example), so seeing similar chapters on something like Chopping Mall would just be pure bliss. It’s rare to see a film where the biggest complaint is “I wanted more!”, and for that Stapleton and her crew should be commended. As the film is being distributed by Anchor Bay I assume that the eventual DVD will be chock full of bonus interviews (especially considering the number of credited participants who don’t actually appear in the film, such as Darren Bousman and Lloyd Kaufman), and perhaps some of that stuff will address my minor concerns. And not to be grim, but considering at least two of the people in the film have since died (David Carradine and George Hickenlooper), I’m glad that this movie was made when all of these old Hollywood guys are still alive and lucid. Who knows, maybe in a few years they can do a “sequel” that covers the movies that came out during my lifetime.

The film is receiving limited theatrical release on December 16th; I assume (hope!) a DVD release won’t be too long after that. Either viewing method is fine; anyone who appreciates the horror genre or independent filmmaking in general should just check it out as soon as they can.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Forget Me Not (2009)

NOVEMBER 13, 2011

GENRE: REVENGE, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

For a while now, I have been quietly bitching that Netflix should separate legitimate movies from the shot on consumer video dreck, because it’s not fair that a solid, well-made movie like Forget Me Not is lumped in with nonsense like Don’t Look In The Cellar. Since all we have to go by is the cover, it’s impossible to tell what you’re going to get until you actually start watching (and I am 100% against turning a movie off). Plus, sometimes I’m genuinely in the mood for one of those “true indie” things, and thus I wouldn’t want to inadvertently start watching a slick, million+ budgeted movie instead. They can at least tag them somehow.

On the other hand, thinking it was one of those laughable movies made me enjoy Forget Me Not even more. A few lesser actors aside, this is a fully professional film, and even better – it has a script worth a damn. Unfortunately Netflix’s synopsis gave away information that was purposely withheld until the film’s final reel, which hampered my enjoyment some (as I joked on Twitter, it would be like describing Planet Of The Apes as a movie about a man who discovers that Earth has been overrun by intelligent apes), so I urge you to skip reading it if you plan to watch the flick.

And you should plan to watch it, especially if you dig slashers. I didn’t list it as one, because it’s closer to a Final Destination movie than Friday the 13th given the specific victims the killer is after as well as the heavy supernatural elements. But at the end of the day it IS a movie in which 6 or 7 teens are creatively killed until only one girl is left, which is very much a slasher movie scenario. So as a slasher fan, I really enjoyed how it took the basic blueprint of one and made it something vastly more interesting.

Even with my casual attitude toward spoilers here, I don’t want to say much more, because the movie is very much under the radar and chances are you’ve never heard of it. Plus the hook is fairly nifty, and part of the fun of the flick was not only figuring it out, but appreciating how they slowly reveal what is going on in the first half, while teasing us with the killer’s motive in occasional flashbacks (the final one being what Netflix used to describe the film). I was particularly impressed with the very first occurrence; the situation is addressed but it plays as if the character was just being a bitch – it’s not until it happens again that you realize that the previous exchange had a different meaning.

I also dug the variety in the death scenes – a pretty spectacular car crash, a gory workshop “accident”, someone is buried alive… when one happens off-screen later in the movie, I was actually kind of mad. Not because I was spared some visual carnage (which is never a good thing), but because I was enjoying the effort that they were putting into each one. So many modern body count type movies (especially low budget ones) don’t bother doing anything creative with the kills anymore, so again, I walked away quite impressed and wondering why the movie wasn’t given a bigger release. The cast is familiar enough to warrant at least a limited theatrical release, I think (star Carly Schroeder was in a few well received indie films, plus the Lizzie Maguire show), and even if they were all making their first movie, a creative script that doesn’t tell you everything in the first 10 minutes is rare for ANY genre these days, even more so for horror – this sort of thing should be championed, not dumped on DVD two years after it was first shown (at Screamfest! I missed the screening and now I regret it).

Speaking of Schroeder, there was one bit that made me groan, when the group attempts to buy beer. Schroeder is the only one in the cast who is playing her age (they’re all supposed to be high school seniors; minus Schroeder the average age was about 24 or 25), so seeing a bunch of mid 20s people worry about how they’re going to get beer when they’re not old enough is just ridiculous. Obviously I’ve seen worse (actors like Breckin Meyer and Stacey Dash were playing this age for a decade straight), but when their solution is to basically steal it while one of them nails the clerk in the back room, you gotta wonder why they bothered spending more than a single line of dialogue on it, rather than a whole scene of them each explaining why they couldn’t be the one to try.

On that note I should add another minor thing that was surprisingly cool – they never get to the lake house. 95% of teen horror movies revolve around them heading toward a cabin or lake house or whatever, and that’s where the bulk of the action occurs. But Schroeder’s character (the only one who seems to know what’s going on) gets wise before they even get there, and thus detours are made and they never even really get out of their general area, I think. Again, it’s all about expectations – you see the pretty cast and hear their plans, and instantly you think it’s the most generic horror movie ever, when in reality it’s craftier than half of the theatrically released horror films in the past five years.

And again, that’s why I’m being vague with the review. I don’t want to oversell the flick – it’s not exactly a masterpiece (as with most high concept movies – not just horror – the 3rd act drags some because all of the pieces are in place and there’s nothing left to discover), but it’s also a horror movie that has a real script at its core, something screenwriters Tyler Oliver (who also directed) and Jamieson Stern should be lauded for. Plus, it’s so rare that you stumble across anything that can surprise you anymore - with all of the websites and other sources (I’ve had more than one movie spoiled by Twitter), some movies feel like old news by the time you can actually watch them. I have avoided as much as I can, but does anyone feel like they know pretty much everything that happens in The Dark Knight Rises already, thanks to spy reports and such? So because this movie is rather obscure, I just want to do my part by telling you guys to check it out, but without giving away key information that could dampen some of your enjoyment, like Netflix is.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Taste The Blood Of Dracula (1970)

NOVEMBER 12, 2011

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

Part of the fun of watching the Hammer Dracula series out of order is figuring out where the movie falls in the overall timeline, since I have trouble remembering the titles/years of release. For example, when Taste The Blood Of Dracula began with Drac at the bottom of a cliff with a cross through his chest, I knew I had seen the previous entry (Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, as it turns out). But when this one ended with ("spoiler") him dying in a church, I thought it led to Dracula AD 1972, which I believe had him resurrected in one. But there's another in between (Scars Of Dracula), so I guess that one is very cyclical in nature.

That or it's just an odd coincidence. 1972 began with a flashback (?) to an entry where Van Helsing killed him after a fight on a wagon, but the good professor isn't even IN Scars, so I dunno. I do enjoy how much effort they put into tying them together, and even explaining how it's possible to continue after usually very definitive endings. Unlike modern horror movies, which always show the killer or monster opening his eyes or something at the end, Hammer films end usually the second that Dracula or whoever has been dispatched, without even an epilogue for the hero characters, let alone a set up for another go around. So how does Dracula come back after being dusted at the end of Grave?

Well, there's a fat guy sharing a coach with two weirdos, and after a scuffle over a snow globe, the fat guy gets tossed out of the coach, where he wanders around for a while and stumbles across Drac as he is shrieking and turning to dust. The character is far enough away to explain why we didn't see him before, and they don't change anything - the guy just inexplicably decides to take Dracula's clothes and ring (and some blood) before continuing on his way. Later, a trio of jerks and some pompous guy (Hammer regular Ralph Bates) obtain the items and, as the title suggests, use Dracula's blood in an attempt to resurrect him.

The weird thing is, Bates is killed in the process, and transforms into Lee - something the original script didn't reflect. They figured Lee wouldn't come back and had written the Bates role to be the movie's vampire, seeking revenge against the three guys who let him die during the botched resurrection. But apparently the American distributor demanded Lee, and he was coaxed back, prompting a "rewrite" (read: they replaced "Courtley" with "Dracula" for the 2nd half of the script and did nothing else). So the movie is kind of wonky - you have Lee/Dracula seeking revenge against three dudes who never did anything wrong to him; if anything he should be thanking him for bringing him back and killing some douche in the process.

Another odd thing is that he kills the most prominent (read: biggest asshole) of the group first, rendering much of his "revenge" rather uninteresting. Revenge plots follow a specific pattern - the one you should hate the most dies last! This guy was a total piece of shit: slapping his daughter around, hating on her boyfriend for no reason, not even seeming to like his friends, etc. The other two guys weren't interesting or memorable in any way; what reason do I have to want to see them dead? So once that first guy is dead, I lost interest in Dracula's already thin excuse for a storyline. As sick as I am of the usual Dracula story, I actually enjoyed the movie more when he was just doing his "Do my bidding" hypnosis stuff with a couple of fetching lasses.

And what's with Hammer's obsession with young male heroes named Paul? Grave, Scars, and this all have Paul characters in more or less the Harker role; you gotta wonder if Dracula ever found this coincidence a bit extreme. This one's a bore to boot, and certainly doesn't make up for the lack of Van Helsing/Peter Cushing. But it's not entirely his fault - the awkward plotting leaves him off-screen for large chunks of the film, so when he turns hero in the last 10-15 minutes it might as well be some random guy. It's actually a problem for most of the characters in the movie (even Dracula); it seems like I was thinking "Where the hell is he/she?" for just about everyone at one point or another. The focus will be on the trio of jerks for a while, then it'll be all about Paul and the daughter... even the guys in the opening scene seem like they should have been given more screentime (seriously, why's that guy so crazy about snow globes?).

However, all the above makes it kind of fun in a strange way. I can't say I ever knew quite where the movie was headed; for a while it seemed like the whole movie would be built TOWARD resurrecting Dracula, so when it happened like 40 minutes in I was kind of surprised. Throwaway characters kept reappearing, upping the body count a bit over what I was expecting, and given that the blood here was at its most ridiculous - you half expect to see the bucket of Benjamin Moore paint on the side of the frame - all of the kills were goofy highlights. And while Dracula isn't in it much, Lee makes the most of his appearance, particularly in the finale, where he randomly starts ripping pipes from the organ and throwing them "at" the heroes. I put that in quotes because he doesn't even seem to be aiming before he throws, just tossing them in their general vicinity. None of them even come close!

Speaking of the finale, anyone have a clue what the hell was going on? Dracula smashes a window and then suddenly the abandoned/decaying church looks brand new, bright and shiny and candles burning as if mass was about to begin. He howls, spins around a bit, and then falls to the floor and "dies" - huh? It's not a well shot/edited scene - the way it cuts together makes it look like he smashed the window and saw a perfectly good church on the other side. I assume it's a hallucination or something that exists only in his mind, but what caused it? Is smashing a stained glass window part of the vampire lore that they just never explained in the movies, like in that one entry where they brought in the running water weakness without any real setup? Either way it's another example of the movie's generally lazy and unsatisfying script.

As with most of Warner's hammer releases, the only extra is a trailer, though I should note that this is the full 95 minute cut, not the 91 minute one that had some cuts (and had been the most widely available here in the US until this disc came along). Was kind of weird to see topless women in one of these movies; I believe the others were all rated PG (even 1972 with all of its swinging 70s youth didn't have any nudity that I can recall). But it added to the movie's loose, strange charm, where they almost seemed to be improvising the plot and adding weird tics (there's a minor running gag about what time the trio of jerks was supposed to meet that killed me) just to give it some personality after four previous movies. Luckily for them I watched a pretty bad vampire movie yesterday so the fact that this had some fun action (and Lee is slightly more charismatic than Michael Paré) was enough to give it a pass.

Next up: Dracula: Prince Of Darkness, which is the 3rd entry. I could (should?) do Scars, but the idea of watching two connecting entries in a row just doesn't feel right.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Bloodrayne: The Third Reich (2010)

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Is there any worse way to honor the veterans than watching a DTV video game movie about vampires in World War II? One directed by Uwe Boll, no less? Now, to be fair, I was actually in Boll’s corner for a while there (like 2006-2007 or so), but what little progress he was making as a filmmaker seems to have stalled, and if Bloodrayne: The Third Reich is any indication, his first few video game movies were actually BETTER than what he’s doing now – at least those were jaw-droppingly, hilariously bad, whereas this (and its predecessor) are just plain boring.

In fact this one might even be worse than Deliverance, which at least had a fun villain and some decent action. Here, Rayne (Natassia Malthe, reprising the role and thus doubling the number of times the character was played by Kristanna Loken) does the same damn thing every time – spins a bit, slices a guy with her sword, and then makes a pose before going off to the next one. Only her brief battle with main villain Michael Paré (his third character in the series) has any variety to it, with a pretty awesome killing blow, but it’s so short and blandly shot that it doesn’t really make much of a difference.

It’s also distractingly cheap and obviously made quickly. I’m sure you’ve seen the trailer for Blubberella, which has most of the same cast and the exact same locations – I suspect that Boll was given the money/time for one film and opted to make two. Thus, scenes play out almost entirely in hand-held master shots, they never seem to move beyond the same three locations, and the action is insultingly unsatisfying. When guys get shot they just sort of clumsily fall over – no squibs or anything to show that they’ve actually been shot (even a major villain character gets this half-assed treatment for his death scene), and even though there are a ton of vampires, they never really use their powers (or show their makeup). I can’t imagine this thing took more than two weeks to shoot (if that), which would be fine for some anonymous DTV slasher but not for a sequel in a once theatrical franchise, one with a fairly cool concept to boot.

See, each film takes place in a different time, and if nothing else they do a decent job selling the period settings on each. So the original was 16th century Romania or something, and the last one was a 19th century Old West tale, and now we have World War II. I like the idea of a series that can literally do whatever the hell it wants as long as it keeps the central character, and assuming the series keeps going, they have free “Rayne” (arrrrgghh) to go back and forth, covering different wars in different countries. It’s not like there’s any real continuity among them anyway – we’re not told how she ended up in Europe or what she’s been doing for the past 100 years or whatever it’s been since she fought vamps in the old west.

Speaking of continuity, there’s a brief flashback to the original where we see her “origin” (the death of her mother), which pays off when she has a nightmare that Hitler himself was the vampire that caused her affliction. Sort of like in Batman Forever when Bruce dreams that it was actually Two-Face who killed his parents, or in that made up Spider-Man movie where they try to make you think Sandman was responsible for the death of Uncle Ben. Except infinitely more hilarious, because, you know, it’s Hitler, with vampire teeth. I kept hoping he’d pop up in the film for real (the plot has something to do with his getting some of Rayne’s blood to him), but alas, Paré is as villainous as the movie gets.

There are two minor improvements over the last one, keeping this from being a total waste of time and energy. First (actually this one might be a MAJOR improvement in your eyes), Malthe disrobes this time around, engaging in minor lesbian activity with an anonymous masseuse and then later having a romp with Brendan Fletcher on a train. Personally, I think she looked better in the last movie than she does here, but it’s still worth noting for those who were massively disappointed that she kept her clothes on in Deliverance. The other improvement: no Chris Coppola! I don’t know if he’s moved on from the Boll troupe or if they just couldn’t afford to fly him to Croatia, but while Paré, Fletcher, and Clint Howard are on board, that unfunny distraction is kept away, and that’s all that matters.

I also appreciate the practical FX work. There’s not a lot, but with so many movies overusing digital blood these days (especially on quickie productions), seeing genuine splatter is always a nice “bonus” of sorts. At first I was thinking this would be a huge makeup movie, since the (laughably overlong) opening credits had two separate full screen cards for “Prosthetics” (with two names each!), but apart from some mutated vampire thing early on, there’s nothing here beyond teeth and the occasional impalement. But they’re done in camera instead of on a computer, which is enough to forgive their abbreviated usage.

If you take out those credits and the slowed down end titles, plus the worthless flashbacks to the original, the movie would only be an hour long. I wonder if Boll would fare better with a syndicated TV show? Obviously he couldn’t do the different time periods every week, but maybe one setting per season would work, and with a variety of writers (and Boll largely kept to a producer role) it might actually be kind of fun. A weekly show about a vampire woman who can “day” walk (the entire movie is set during overcast daytime hours) and uses her powers/strength to fight Nazis or whatever? I’d watch that. But a fourth film that continues this downward trajectory? No thanks.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Curse Of The Cat People (1944)

NOVEMBER 10, 2011

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I know I said Cat People was barely horror, but it’s Dawn Of The Dead compared to The Curse Of The Cat People, which has no cat people, but MIGHT have a very benevolent ghost, depending on your interpretation (keeping with the original, Val Lewton kept the more “horrific” elements up for debate). Even the “Lewton Walk” scare scene is incredibly brief and timid, with only the fact that it centers around a child giving it any sort of suspense – if it was Jane Randolph again it wouldn’t even qualify.

It’s also not as interesting. Even with the horror elements kept to a minimum in the original, I still enjoyed the sad love triangle at its center, and dug the (subdued) “curse” plot that ran throughout, starting with the strange woman who appeared at Ilena and Ollie’s wedding. There was a minor mystery there, hints at something quite unique and strange – but those elements don’t really play a part in this one. The closest they get to something along the same lines is a mother-daughter pair who live a few houses down from the Reed family. The mother is an elderly ex-actress who believes her daughter is an impostor, something that I bought because the actress was in Cat People! She played the aforementioned mystery woman at the wedding in the original, and I spent most of the movie assuming that we weren’t supposed to make the connection and it would be “revealed” later. But as the movie neared its conclusion and it became obvious that it was just a really odd casting decision, I realized that I had subconsciously given this movie more of a plot than it actually had.

Because really all there is to it is the story of Ollie and Alice’s daughter, Amy, who is “troubled” in that she believes in fairies and such, and ruins her own birthday party by dropping the invitations in a “magic mailbox” (a hole in a tree). So of course when she sees the ghost of Ilena no one believes her, but when you consider that the ghost doesn’t DO anything (if Ilena was out to get revenge on Ollie for dumping her for Alice, maybe…), coupled with Lewton’s insistence on leaving it vague, it certainly doesn’t provide enough tension or even curiosity to sustain a feature film, even one that’s only 70 minutes long. Amy sees a ghost and… the ghost is nice to her. Near the end she “saves” Amy from the vaguest danger ever seen in a movie, and that’s pretty much it.

Hell, Lewton and returning screenwriter Dewitt Bodeen even go out of their way to introduce potential scary/interesting stuff, only to drop it. The characters now live in the town of Sleepy Hollow, and the “Headless Horseman” story gets mentioned now and again, but it amounts to nothing. The photos of Ilena that Amy finds seem to have appeared there on their own since neither Alice nor Ollie know where they came from, however neither of them seems too concerned about it (Alice is actually remarkably calm about photos of her husband’s ex lying around). And again, they “bring back” the weird Cat Person from the original and cast her in a different, vastly less interesting role. I know Lewton liked to fight the studio (who wanted a lurid, eye-catching follow up), but did he have to go THIS far in the other direction? Especially when it’s not very satisfying as a drama, either?

In a way it almost feels like fan-fiction. People who love a particular work of fiction will often write their own sequels and spinoffs, but often miss the point of what made the original special. They will also often shoehorn in stuff that they care about or is specific only to them, which is why you can probably find a story online where the brothers from Supernatural fight the ghost of someone’s bitchy mom who just doesn’t understand her daughter and wouldn’t let her go to Mark’s party. Once I realized that the actress from the original was playing a different character, I actually wondered if her and her mother’s storyline was being continued from another movie of Lewton’s that I hadn’t seen, because their story had these very specific beats to it that were never fully explored. Indeed, as the commentary explained, this story WAS very close to Lewton (the invitations thing was something he himself did as a young boy), so perhaps the movie was a bit too personal? Especially for a sequel?

At least it’s well made, all things considered. The original director was moving too slow and thus editor Robert Wise (yes, that one) was given a promotion, taking over and shooting the rest of the film, as well as a couple of reshoots that occurred later when the ending was changed and also the studio demanded at least ONE cat in their Cat People sequel (the scene is so arbitrary you probably wouldn’t even need to be told that it was an insert). But apart from that little excursion, it doesn’t feel like a movie that had a lot of trouble getting completed.

Plus, Kent Smith and Jane Randolph slip back into their roles with ease; she’s still a bit sassy, he a bit of a dick (he basically tells his young daughter that she’s a weirdo). It was very rare to see human non-villain characters return in sequels to horror films back in the day, and in fact, the wholly different approach would be even more obnoxious if not for them giving us some sort of anchor. I remember Pierce Brosnan pondering why Bond couldn’t be used in a horror movie or something, because the character was strong enough at that point for people to follow him even if he wasn’t saving the world while banging chicks with silly names – this “sequel” sort of has that same mindset. “This is what happens when Ollie and Alice have to deal with a weird kid instead of a wife who can turn into a panther. Sorry about the title.”

As with the original, Greg Mank provides a commentary that is mostly summarizing the on-screen action while listing off the credits of the new actors (he also repeats some of the info on the returning actors; we once again get a complete description of Randolph’s role in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). He does explain the nature of the reshoots and a general idea of which footage was Wise’s and which was original director Gunther Fritsch, as well as providing some decent insight here and there, but overall it’s not really necessary – the IMDb page will fill you in on most of it. The only exception is when he edits in part of an interview with Simone Simon (top billed for less than 10 minutes of screen time), where she explains that she was offered a role in a bigger movie but did this out of loyalty to Lewton, which is nice. Shame it probably wasn’t worth it though; I suspect that only those who own the box set or this double disc set have the movie in their collection. Highly disappointing.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Interplanetary (2008)

NOVEMBER 9, 2011

GENRE: ALIEN, COMEDIC
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

If nothing else, writer/director Chance Shirley certainly appreciates his John Carpenter movies. The opening of Interplanetary felt a lot like Prince of Darkness’ own opening, where we’d get some movie intercut with credits (similar music too), in a sequence that felt almost like we were being dropped into a movie already in progress. Then the plot itself is a bit Thing-esque, with the jaded/tired crew in a remote station (albeit on Mars here) getting picked off by a creature. And overall, it has the same sort of low budget, laid-back sci-fi/horror/comedy blend of Carpenter’s first film Dark Star.

And like that film, you have to go along with the movie’s off-kilter sense of humor (and obvious low budget trappings), because otherwise there’s no way to enjoy the film. A bad Friday the 13th movie or something can be “saved” with frequent kills and appearances of its iconic killer, but Interplanetary – which had a surprising amount of blood, actually – is not a “body count” movie. Its goal is to make you laugh, and thus if its sense of humor doesn’t jive with yours, there’s nothing else here to enjoy for you. Fast forward until the final 10 minutes so you can see what the monster looks like (he’s wearing a spacesuit for most of the movie) and be done with it.

As for me, I admit a lot of the jokes fell flat, but there were a number I did quite like (“Windows 98… it’s an operating system from like 2003.”). The main joke of the movie is that even on Mars and even when guys attack you out of nowhere with rocket launchers, there’s still paperwork and bureaucracy to deal with, not to mention inter-office squabbling. It’s not a documentary type (though a little 50s style training video offers some of the film’s most spot on satire), but the humor is not unlike The Office’s first couple of seasons (before it just turned into an increasingly weak and generic workplace comedy – they might as well just add a laugh track at this point), or Office Space in some respects.

In fact I couldn’t help but wonder if it might have been funnier to actually shoot it like The Office, with an unseen “camera crew” documenting what we see, and having the actors talk directly to camera in confessionals. Part of my issue with the film was that I felt I didn’t really get to know any of the characters well – they’re under attack like 20 minutes in, giving us no time to understand their group dynamic. You can tell their basic job (mechanic, cook, etc) but that’s about it; the most backstory we get is that one of the girls is passing time by trying (and succeeding) to nail everyone on the base (male or female). Part of what makes this style of humor work is getting a firm grasp on the characters first – that’s why the first couple episodes of Community aren’t that funny. Once the dynamic was established and individual bonds were formed, it made their interactions and dialogue much more amusing. Here, they don’t really give them that time – I don’t even think you ever see more than three characters in one room.

But you gotta love the ambition. They clearly didn’t have much money, but damned if they didn’t put every dollar of it on-screen. Nearly every set in the film was built from scratch, and the homemade feel of the props and such actually works in the movie’s favor; it’s like they’ve gotten the bare minimum resources to work with. There’s no CG in the film either; everything is done in camera (and on 16mm, woo!), from rocket launchers firing to the monster. Their space buggy was made from a Volkswagen, and they even gave the guys those full comic book style fish-bowl helmets that you don’t often see in movies (since they reflect too much of what should not be seen in camera). And while we don’t see too many on-camera acts of violence, the resulting prosthetic work was quite impressive – I particularly liked the bloody spine stump of a guy who was ripped in half while sitting on the toilet.

Shirley and his producers provide a commentary that serves as the disc’s only extra besides a trailer reel. The others barely speak, but Shirley covers pretty much every base – how some of the actors were found, building the sets, minor issues during production, losing some of the budget, etc. I was also mildly amused by the fact that they recorded the track while watching the movie on a PS3, as Shirley warns the listeners that it’s about to start getting loud – I myself watched on my PS3 when the disc wouldn’t play in my DVD player, and cursed myself for turning on the machine 20 minutes before I started watching, which meant the obnoxious whirring* would be heard over 20 minutes more of the movie than it had to be. Just one of those nice bits of synchronicity, and also one that probably would have been edited out if they edited the track, something Shirley looks down on (which is why we get to hear him leave the room to grab a beer at another point). There are a number of gaps, however, and the movie’s audio is muted throughout, so I wish it was a more lively track.

Ultimately I think I wish that they had put their money into making a really kick-ass short version of the movie, one that could play at festivals and attract attention (read: money) to make it into a feature with more dough and resources at their disposal. The concept was great and the money was spent wisely, but with a few better actors and maybe another pass at the script, this could have been a top 10 of the year type movie for me. However, if you start watching and find yourself laughing a lot in the first ten minutes, I think you’ll be just as entertained for the 75 that follow.

What say you?

*If you don’t have a PS3 then you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. Basically after 40-45 minutes the thing turns on a fan or something inside and becomes about 10x as loud, almost like hearing a vacuum cleaner in the next room. It’s part of why I haven’t fully moved over to Blu-ray yet; there are too many dialogue heavy (or just plain quiet) movies that I love that would be obnoxious to watch that way, and even though I barely use it for games I don’t have room (or inputs) for a dedicated Blu player.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Swamp Shark (2011)

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I caught an ad for Swamp Shark when I watched Ice Road Terror earlier in the summer, and meant to record it, but forgot all about it until I saw it on the shelf at Blockbuster. And yes! The shelf! They’re actually stocking DTV/Syfy junk again (I got Mothman there last week, too), which is either a good sign (they can afford to stock stuff besides the A titles again), or a bad one (I’m their last customer and they’re trying to keep me). Either way, it was a nice surprise to see it there; usually these things take a year or so – Mothman aired over a year before Swamp Shark but they seem to have been released on DVD around the same time.

Anyway, like Ice Road, it’s the type of movie that would probably bore the usual Syfy audience, as the body count is much lower than they are used to. Swamp Shark kills less than 10 people in the movie I think, and almost none of them are just random swimmer/boater types that get introduced only to get eaten moments later before the commercial break. Hell even the rare teens that DO fit that bill last quite a while (relatively speaking) – the movie was not apparently designed to ensure that channel surfers wouldn’t stray, fearing that they’d miss a kill.

As if to even things out, the movie offers the most ridiculous version of the “close the beaches” plot I’ve seen in quite some time. This time it’s “Gatorfest”, an annual event that celebrates the gators, which are something of a tourist attraction. Human villain Robert Davi even explains that the town can’t afford to close it, too many businesses depend on it, etc. And that would be fine, if the festival didn’t amount to four tents with carnival games and a bounce house with a gator head at the top. Plus, there’s only like 17 people attending, so I suspect they lost money anyway. That they kept it running and thus caused the death of 2-3 people is just salt in the wound, really.

I really think it’s time to retire this subplot in monster movies. It worked in Jaws because they had the dough to pull it off (and an earlier beach scene that showed the vast difference between a normal weekend and the 4th of July holiday crowd), plus it wasn’t an “event” – it was a national holiday. Seems like any reasonable person could agree to merely postpone their localized traditional festival for a week, instead of being cartoonishly ignorant. Plus, they always build these things into the end of the movie. Even a low budget Syfy movie created mainly to entertain drunks/stoners on a Saturday night won’t have the balls to end a movie with a giant CGI shark killing families at a town fair or whatever, so why always save it for the end? Again, in Jaws, this wasn’t even halfway through the movie, and we got the death of that one guy as a motivating plot point for the mayor to pay Quint and have the team go out. These things all just have the “Oh no, he’s heading toward the (whatever event)!”, and then they show up and save the day. Piranha 3D is the only recent movie I can think of that actually let the monsters create some real carnage at one of these things, but they had the money to do it. Syfy movies? Not so much.

At least they sprung for a real head for closeups, sparing the amount of terrible CGI that usually plagues these things. Since Swamp Shark doesn’t really appear all that much, they apparently had the time/money to make halfway decent CGI shots for the bigger kills (including a hilarious decapitation that seems to be paying homage to the famous Free Willy shot), so it’s a quality over quantity affair, for once. The blood is nice and practical too; said decap shot spills a ridiculous (read: awesome) amount of Karo all over the dock where the poor sod was standing.

They also apparently had a little extra dough for actors – there are three decent names in this! Kristy Swanson, Robert Davi, and DB Sweeney are certainly no strangers to this sort of thing (this is actually the 2nd killer shark movie for Swanson), but all three in one? Plus Wade Boggs, for some goddamn reason? That’s basically an Irwin Allen-esque all-star cast for one of these. And it’s a good thing, because as you might have guessed from the fact that there’s not a lot of Swamp Shark action, this one is more focused on character, so having people who can act is quite a blessing. Sweeney in particular is an underrated performer; in an alternate universe, he’s the one who broke out of rom-coms and indie junk to become a big star, and Paul Rudd is the one starring in Syfy movies (I like them both about equally, for the record).

In fact, it’s so focused on character that it actually provides the most unique reason yet for a bunch of folks to go out on a boat and stop a shark in a B-movie: clearing their name for murder! The first death in the movie is chalked up to the gators owned by Swanson’s family (specifically her brother), so they all go out to catch Swamp Shark to clear their name. I actually wish they had gone further with this; maybe had Swamp Shark lawyer up and get away with it for a while, only for them to go rogue in the 3rd act and take him down. Jokes aside though, at least there’s more to it than the usual financial or revenge reasons. I also liked that Swamp Shark was actually brought there (in a truck!); I missed the exact explanation but it was somehow part of Davi’s evil plan, which went awry when Swamp Shark busted loose from the truck in the movie’s opening sequence. And (spoiler) his demise is pretty great too, involving a wench, a tied up Swamp Shark, and buckets of blood and Swamp Shark bits being tossed on the supporting actors.

Not Swanson though; she inexplicably does almost nothing in the finale, even though she’s the heroine and is also BUFFY (to older folks like me at least). I would have thought she’d get in the last kill shot or something, but instead the men do most of the work while she just sort of crouches nearby. She also doesn’t seem to care much that her boyfriend died; she’s flirting with Sweeney at the end even though her beau got eaten only like a half hour before. Sure, he was douchey, but you’d think she’d still be at least a little upset about it.

The DVD doesn’t have a damn thing, not even a trailer, making this two movies in a row that made the timing on my Badass Digest article all the more impressive. Granted, the movie is destined (designed?) for Wal-mart’s five dollar bin, but who is going to buy it even at that price, besides ironic wiseasses needing a gift for a Yankee Swap at Christmas time? At least with some bonus features (and a low price) the folks who enjoy these movies might be enticed to pick it up. Especially on a monster movie – a few minutes on the design of the thing would be awesome. But alas, Swamp Shark is not going to save DVD. And given its low “Let’s put this part on Youtube” potential, it’s just going to be forgotten about in a few months. It’s a shame; I would actually like to see MORE movies like this (i.e. character based, FX shots kept to a minimum so that they don’t look too terrible), but I understand why Syfy might want to commission more in the Sharktopus vein than this. It’s not that it’s a bad movie, but the low body count coupled with the low budget means it doesn’t really please anyone – guys who just want to laugh at crazy attacks will stick to Dinoshark or whatever, and if you want a real monster/predator movie that favors character over action, you can just pull out Jaws again. Swamp Shark sort of sits in the middle of the spectrum: not GOOD, but not bad ENOUGH to work on an ironic level, either.

What say you?

P.S. Another check in the plus column – the movie has one of the quirkier variations on the obligatory “Bigger boat” reference. I’ll let you find it for yourself.

PLEASE, GO ON...