Faces Of Death (2026)

APRIL 6, 2026

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER, TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)

Lots of movies feel dated due to changing attitudes, or focusing on technology that was almost outdated by the time the movie came out, let alone decades later (The Net is a real laugh riot now). But the original Faces of Death is an unusual example in that it’s dated simply because its “appeal” (for lack of a better word) has since been outpaced by our everyday life. Sure, in 1978 and for the first few years of VHS supremacy, the idea of watching an alleged snuff film carried a certain taboo thrill, but now we get people live streaming their murders and/or suicides, sometimes seeing these things without even looking for them thanks to autoplay and “suggested” reels on social media.

So on one hand, on paper it’s the exact kind of movie that should be remade, because the original almost feels pointless now (that it’s a somewhat boring movie is another benefit; I DARE someone to come out and say that they’re “violating my childhood!” or whatever). On the other hand, how can this new Faces of Death possibly compete with what we see on any given day when scrolling through Twitter?

The relatively genius answer from the team of Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei is to take things into a meta direction. Our hero Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at some kind of TikTok-like social media channel as a content moderator, occasionally flagging things that are too extreme while allowing pretty much most others to get through. (In what I assume is a joke about America’s puritan ways, she is fine with pretty much every violent video she comes across, but when she sees a clip of a woman demonstrating how to put a condom on by using a banana, she flags it as “sexually graphic.”) One day she sees a clip of a man being executed in the electric chair and is somewhat unsure if it’s real or not, tentatively allowing it to go through. Then the next day, she sees another one that’s seemingly even MORE realistic, and starts getting concerned.

Eventually she breaks a work rule and reposts one of the clips on Reddit, asking the forum if they think it’s real or not, and someone points out that it "looks like a scene in Faces of Death." She can’t find it on streaming (A+ joke that was probably true when the movie was shot three years ago; it's on Roku and Amazon now) but luckily her roommate has a VHS copy and she checks it out, coming to the conclusion that YES these videos are legitimately snuff films and the culprit is intentionally restaging scenes from the original movie. But the movie is actually a two-hander, because rather than treat this as some kind of 8MM-style mystery, we spend half our runtime with the actual killer, played by Dacre Montgomery (Billy (RIP) from Stranger Things). He’s a tech whiz who can find someone’s location in seconds and goes after pseudo-celebrities (an influencer, a TV news host, etc) as the unwilling actors in his recreations, and naturally gets alarmed when Margot figures out what he’s up to and posts about it, tries to get the cops to help, etc.

I know that’s more of a summary than I usually bother with here, but I want to make sure it’s clear that unlike the original, this is a traditional thriller with suspense and cat and mouse sequences and all that good stuff, not a series of random clips like the original. Some might cry foul that making what essentially amounts to a modern-day, tech driven Seven-type thriller is a waste of the branding (no one will “dare” you to watch this, in other words), but as I have zero affinity for the IP I just took it as a perfectly decent serial killer thriller with a few good jokes at the expense of influencer culture. The movie could have been titled anything (it was shot under the title Home Movies) and just used the original film as a point of reference in the same way that Scream used Halloween or Prom Night or whatever.

Another smart move was to have the killer drug and kidnap his victims to bring them back to his home / “studio” for his recreations (which are otherwise populated with mannequins , a creepy visual). This allows Margot a chance to save some of them as he gets everything ready for the next video, giving the movie more suspense than it might have if it was just a series of straightforward killings. At one point he DOES kill someone instantly and it was actually a bit of a shock, as so far he hadn’t been so direct and it stood to reason that he wouldn’t bother anyone that wasn’t going to be the star of one of his clips.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not some minor masterpiece or anything. It gets a bit draggy at times despite a mere 95 min runtime, and there’s a brief turn from Charlie XCX that exists only for the producers to say that Charlie XCX is in the movie, which is the sort of thing that tends to annoy me (especially given the occasional flab in the runtime; both of her scenes could be deleted entirely without a single effect on the rest of the movie). And there’s a tragic backstory for Margot that rings false; she herself was inadvertently in a viral video in which her “co-star” was killed, but is mocked in public for it as if she was the “Boom Goes the Dynamite” guy or something. And when we learn this bit of history, her actions at her job make less sense to me - you’d think she’d be flagging pretty much everything as too graphic, instead of being so lenient on other violent images.

But again, the original isn’t something I hold dear, and I was worried a modern one would attempt to “top” it in some way, so using it as a springboard for something a little more involving (if not particularly groundbreaking) was a relief. I should also note that I had a little bit of personal attachment to the concept that I wouldn’t have gotten if I just watched the movie on streaming or even a day later. As I was walking from the parking garage to the theater, I saw a police car barreling down the street and suddenly swerve into a gas station where I had just been walking not 15 seconds before. The cops got out of the car, guns drawn, screaming at someone to get down, as two other officers (also guns drawn) made their way around the building from the other side to join them.

I couldn’t see the suspect from where I was now standing, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder if I should pull out my cell phone and start filming in case they ended up opening fire (from my position, they’d have to be wildly terrible shots for me to be in any danger from them OR whoever they were about to arrest. Luckily, the suspect surrendered without a shot fired and I just continued on my way to the theater, but it was that very “dare you to watch” kind of thing that drove interest in the original, and (not a spoiler, it’s in the trailer) gave the killer his motive in this new take. I was almost part of the problem!

(Alas, as is almost always the case, I can’t find anything online about the incident. If someone savvier than me wants to look, it was at about 615pm on Monday, April 6, at the VP Racing Fuels gas station at Hollywood & Highland.)

So, I dunno. YMMV. A friend said it was the worst movie he’s seen in over a decade, so clearly it’s not a universal crowd pleaser. And even though I enjoyed it, I can’t say for sure I’d ever watch it again, though I’d probably check out a commentary if offered (the filmmakers were there for Q&A and were worth listening to; they also made CAM, if you liked that one). But for a movie that’s been on the shelf for almost three years and was (technically) a remake of a film I considered a complete waste of my time, that it was even watchable is kind of a minor miracle. That it held my attention and made me chuckle a few times at the expense of influencers (I also liked the score a lot, reminded me of Rob’s for Maniac) is a win, in my book.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (2025)

OCTOBER 16, 2025

GENRE: BLANK FROM HELL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)

I saw the original The Hand That Rocks The Cradle in theaters, but can't recall if I ever saw it a second time. If I did it had to have been right when it came to video, because before we watched this remake a friend noted Julianne Moore was in the original and I had no idea; I was only 12 when I saw it for the first (only?) time but by the mid 90s I had a mega crush on her and have been convinced for 30 years that the first time I saw her was via her bit part in The Fugitive. But even with my hazy memory, it didn't take long for me to realize that this version was, at least in theory, the right kind of remake, where it took the same basic plot but changed all the details, letting it succeed or fail on its own terms instead of just copying what someone else did thirty years ago.

So the two line pitch is the same: a career woman with two children decides to hire a nanny to help out, and after a few weeks of feeling the woman is the answer to all her problems, the mother starts to suspect that this "helper" might be dangerous. And she's right, as it turns out the nanny has a personal vendetta against the mom, and is seeking revenge. But this take changes all the details, and even weirdly hides the woman's agenda from us until the third act. In the original, we knew all along why the nanny (Rebecca DeMornay) targeted this family: the mom (Annabella Sciorra) had testified against DeMornay's rapey doctor husband, but here it's only revealed an hour or so into it.

Don't worry, it's not that new nanny Polly (Maika Monroe) hides her intentions until then. It's actually amusing how casual she is about some of her early transgressions, like poisoning one of mom's (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) dishes before a dinner party. But the switch means we never have the same kind of unnerving sympathy we felt for the DeMornay version, so she just comes off as another random psycho, and it's too late to fix the movie by the time we find out she actually has a good reason to want to go after Winstead and her family. Of course, since it's a third act reveal I can't get into it, but I can say it's very clunkily handled throughout, so it never quite works as (seemingly?) intended - despite her reason, we are never once sympathetic to her plight.

It doesn't help that the script is one of those ones where large chunks of the movie wouldn't even happen if people acted like normal human beings. Taking Moore's place as the meddling friend is Martin Starr, who goes through Monroe's trash and gets some of her DNA to run a background check on her. He finds out this tragic connection, but rather than call his best friend and tell her about it, he randomly has Monroe over and invites her in (to "explain herself") even though he's only doing this because she's already weirded them out enough to get suspicious. We also have to just roll with the idea that Winstead, who is overly protective to the extent that she won't even allow the family to have certain kinds of pesto sauce because of the oils in them, would settle for just one random reference by a complete stranger before allowing this woman to watch her children alone.

And then there's the stop sign. Early on, a neighbor speeds past their house and hits the baby stroller after it rolls out of their driveway (empty, thankfully), so Winstead says "There should be a stop sign there" as the scene continues, then repeats it in closeup. Then there's talk of a meeting about having one put up. Then there's a completely baffling scene where she's driving along and suddenly pulls over, gets out of her car, and inspects a different (busted) stop sign elsewhere. Later on her and Starr actually stand outside and watch the stop sign be installed, so by now they've clearly beaten us over the head enough that this stop sign is going to play a major part in the climax. But all it is is... someone misses the stop sign and causes an accident that dictates how the rest of the final fight goes. Personally, I think an ironic payoff, where the other driver DOES stop and Winstead realizes that her helicopter-y ways can be a detriment, or a running Monroe was able to get further away because the car stopped instead of plowing right into her, would have at least made this ridiculously blunt bit of foreshadowing pay off.

It's also simply not that suspenseful or tense. The highlight for such things is probably a scene where Winstead comes home and finds Monroe hanging with her husband and also her girlfriend, and that's only because we know in the original that DeMornay had designs on Sciorra's hubby so it stands to reason that this incarnation might follow suit. But nah, nothing really comes of it, nor do they explore the interesting idea that Monroe may actually be into Winstead's bisexual character (and vice versa). A goofy little bit where Winstead removes one of Monroe's socks while she sleeps is about as close as they get to having the women get intimate, which would have been at least a new dynamic to explore, especially since they establish her and her husband haven't had sex since the baby was born. Then again relationships aren't the movie's strong suit across the board; poor Riki Lindhome pops up as Starr's girlfriend in two scenes, the first of which has her lamenting that she wants a baby (with Starr saying that they'll discuss it later) but in the second we learn they don't even live together, making the idea that they're apparently talking about having a child a bit premature. Why they cast Lindhome to play this role, which would be thankless even for a first time performer, is beyond me.

(Without spoiling particulars, the movie perhaps inadvertently creates its best moment in this second scene. If you watch it, consider what Lindhome plans to do for Starr's sake, and what happens to him next.)

The score is also bizarrely ill-fitting, often sounding more like the soundtrack to a movie about a drug trip or maybe some kind of A24 drama. Not the end of the world, but adds to the feeling that this was a movie where a producer said "I have the rights to remake this movie!" and everyone that got involved after had a different idea of how to modernize this '90s staple. As with The Stepfather, modern technology makes a lot of these kind of plots harder to pull off, because you can just Google/check social media for anyone and learn more about them than Winstead does with her one (1) phone call to an unknown reference (who eventually re-enters the story and is yet another person in the movie who can't be bothered to act like a normal human being). So they side step that sort of thing and just hope we won't notice, despite (again) establishing Winstead as an overbearing worry wort.

Basically: it just doesn't work, man. The leads do their best and it's always nice to see a modern movie being shot in Los Angeles, but without any real thrills and a convoluted backstory, there's just nothing that justifies its existence, either. After a while the audience was laughing at it (it's not a comedy), so was at least an amusing experience to see this direct to streamer movie with a crowd, but that's not going to apply to you watching alone at home. I mean you can give it a shot I guess (bring a few friends over?), but if your Hulu subscription is about to expire, I certainly wouldn't renew it just to see it if I were you.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Blu-Ray Review: Night of the Living Dead (1990)

OCTOBER 13, 2025

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: 4K UHD (OWN COLLECTION)

A while back during the glory days of HMAD, I spent a week on different versions of Night of the Living Dead, including this 1990 remake. (The others were the 3D one with Sid Haig, an animated one, and the godless "30th anniversary" recut version.) In my review of the original DVD, I noted that it surprisingly had some bonus features, considering the film was a flop and, being a library title, meant new features would have to be created (as opposed to modern films, which have EPK crews and commentaries recorded before the film is even released, so if it tanks, the stuff all exists already so they might as well put it on there). And thankfully, Sony has seen fit to carry them all over to this new 4K UHD set, along with other ones that were created for a standard Blu-ray in 2016.

But the main draw is that the film is presented in Tom Savini's preferred director's cut form, restoring the gore that the MPAA made him cut and also offering the first few minutes in black & white; an homage to the original that the studio wouldn't let him do at the time. So when Barbara (Patricia Tallman) and Johnny (Bill Moseley) are driving to the cemetery and doing the whole "They're coming to get you!" sequence, it's all in B&W like the original, with the color only showing up when the first zombie attacks Barbara few minutes later. It's a fun little gimmick, and I'm glad Savini was finally able to show us all how it would look (though I must admit I did momentarily worry that the entire film would be stripped of its color, a trend I do not have much patience for).

Unfortunately, if you're expecting other major changes, that's pretty much it - everything else is just a little bit of gore here and there. Apparently even in its "X rated" form, the film was pretty tame in that department, and I am willing to bet that if the film were shown to the censors even a few years later, it would have passed with an R easily as they got more lenient after their overly conservative approach to the '80s horror fare. The most overt restoration occurs when Barbara is trying to prove to the others (mostly the hysterical Judy) that the things attacking them are not human, shooting a zombie a few times in the chest before taking him out with the standard shot to the head. In the cut version we've had for 35 years, he is shot and goes down quick without any real splatter, but now a nice little geyser of blood explodes up from the top of his head before he drops. Again, if you just saw this uncut version for your first viewing, you'd never guess the MPAA ever had a problem with it, but for those who have watched it a bunch, it's sadly the highlight of such re-insertions.

The 4K transfer looks spectacular though, and for those who had the Twilight Time Blu, you can be relieved that the weird recoloring that they gave it for that release has been undone, and it looks like it should again. I know it's an overly bright film at times (even at night), but I never minded it all that much, and I'd take that look over the bizarre recoloring that we had to deal with if we wanted the film in high def. Even the B&W sequence (which, to be clear, was a normally filmed scene that had its color removed in post) looks really good to my eyes, and I had to chuckle that one scene actually made more sense to me now, as I never realized Sarah was laying on one of the doors that Ben wanted to board stuff up with, as the image was always too murky to really tell what she was laying on. When Harry says "You want this one too?" I always thought he was referring to the girl herself, like that Ben wanted to bring her up to the main floor as he did Tom and Judy Rose! I will happily junk my DVD, now.

As for bonus features, again Sony has brought back pretty much everything of note that I could find (thanks, DVDCompare.net!), including Savini's commentary and a retrospective documentary called "The Dead Walk!" from the DVD. They also included everything from the 2016 special edition Blu-ray, which mostly consists of new interviews with Tallman, the Optic Nerve FX guys, and Savini himself. That actually would have been plenty, but they really went all out and offer a bunch of brand new bonus features on top of the already generous assortment, making this a true ultimate edition.

The big one is a new commentary with Savini, moderated by Michael Felsher (whose Red Shirt Pictures produced all of the new features). I actually noted when I watched his original commentary that he might be better off with a partner, as he often went silent and just watched the movie, so I'm glad they listened! Felsher keeps him talking, with the only silences most likely being edits (Sony is notoriously cautious about potential "dirt" being spilled on their tracks). He also seems to remember the film better than its director; more than once Savini will say "OK now watch this" and then Felsher will have to remind him that the moment won't be coming for several more seconds. At any rate, it's a much better track than the older one.

Then there are several new interviews with Moseley, Bill Butler (Tom), McKee Anderson (Helen) and Heather Mazur (Sarah), who has the funniest recollection in that the FX team kept getting annoyed with her showing up in full "pretty girl" makeup (she was 13 and boy crazy at the time) because they had to spend time cleaning it all off before applying her zombie look. There's also one with editor Tom Dubensky, two of the guys who played zombies, and (sigh) John Russo along with Russ Streiner, who shouldn't be allowed within 50 yards of anything involving this franchise after their godawful 30th anniversary thing, but oh well. At least they have nice things to say about it. It's unfortunate that they couldn't have gotten this going before Tony Todd (or Tom Towles for that matter) passed away, as their absence is notable when it has thoughts from pretty much everyone else involved (sans Romero, but as it wasn't really his thing, it's not essential to hear from him and several of the interviews note that he did show up on set a few times and gave the editor some notes).

But really, while all the bonus features and the restored images are great, the best thing about rewatching this particular take on the story in the year 2025 is that it actually has a message of how we all need to calm down and listen to our fellow man. While Cooper is an even bigger jerk here than he was in the OG, at the end of the day he was not only right about the basement being safer, but if Ben had at least taken a few minutes to go down and see it for himself, he might have found the key to the gas that would have saved them all. Ben is also quick to assume Harry is stealing the TV, and throughout the movie Barbara has good ideas that are ignored. I feel a number of the problems in the world right now (both on a macro and micro level) are the result of everyone thinking they are right and everyone else is wrong, and this is a movie that could have had a much happier ending if people just took the time to hear someone else's perspective instead of stubbornly accepting only their own. Something to consider!

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Speak No Evil (2024)

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

If you’ve been to a movie in the past six months you’ve probably seen the trailer for Speak No Evil; if you go as often as I do you are probably more familiar with some of the film’s moments than you are with the faces of your own family members at this point. Which is kind of ironic, because it’s a remake of a film that isn’t all that old, and the film doesn’t really have much to it beyond its thrills, so the familiarity was a detriment to what was actually a solid nailbiter.

If you’ve somehow escaped the trailer (or, again, the original film – more on that soon), the plot is pretty simple: an American family (Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, and a daughter) makes the acquaintance of an English couple (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi) who has a single child of their own. They hit it off, the kids enjoy playing together, and everyone has a pretty good time. Then the Americans go home (to London, having moved for a job that ended up fizzling) and get an invite from Paddy (McAvoy) to join them for a weekend in their country home. Wanting a change of pace, they decide to go, despite some hesitations re: not really knowing them all that well. The first day goes smoothly enough, but Paddy and Louise (Davis) butt heads over their differing lifestyles (he hunts with a rifle, she’s a vegetarian, etc.), forcing Ben (McNairy) to constantly try to play peacekeeper. Eventually they cross a line that’s too much for Davis and she decides that they need to leave early, at which point it becomes clear why this film might end up on a site covering horror movies.

That said, as far as violence goes it’s still pretty tame even for a thriller. The order of the day here isn’t racking up a body count, but seeing how far writer/director James Watkins can push the tension BEFORE it erupts into violence. And thanks to McAvoy’s towering performance, it actually works quite well, as you get the idea he can suddenly kill any of them just as quickly and casually as he lets out an inappropriate comment or putdown. If you’ve seen the trailer you’re probably familiar with the “Cotton Eyed Joe” dance scene between the two kids, but the full version is truly terrifying as he gets angrier and angrier with his son’s inability to keep time. He's obviously played villains before, but he's in next-level mode here; the sort of role that might get name-checked among "great psychopath performances" down the road.

Honestly, the whole thing really hinges on McAvoy’s performance. Everyone’s good (Franciosi in particular has a tricky role in that you aren’t sure until very late if her Ciara is a true partner to her more outwardly evil husband or another of his victims), but this is all his show as he walks that fine line of being juuuuust weird enough to understand why Ben and Louise might not want to stay as long as originally planned but without going so far that they seem like idiots for not leaving even sooner. Of course, people have still decried the two for their actions, saying “Any normal person would have left already!” or whatever, but the script showcases how both of them are kind of afraid to do anything about anything (Louise won’t jump into the water with the rest, Ben won’t let her have it about a brief affair she had), so it tracks that they’d probably feel they were being rude by leaving.

Also, as a parent, I want to assure non-parents who have seen it that yes, we absolutely would go back for our child’s sacred “Lovey.” There’s a scene in the movie where they DO decide to finally leave due to something Ciara had done that unnerved them, only to turn back when they realize they forgot their daughter’s beloved stuffed bunny named Mr Hoppy. And then, after they discover Paddy’s true nature and try to make a calm escape so as not to enrage him, they see he has thrown the doll on the roof, forcing Ben to climb a rickety ladder to retrieve it. I’m sure childless audiences feel this is insane and they would just drive away, but nope. You wouldn’t believe how long I spent in the dark looking for my kid’s beloved Elmo doll when he dropped it during a walk many years back, so the idea of merely turning around to grab it from the bedroom of a house owned by some people I didn’t really gel with is certainly within the realm of possibility. And the ladder scene is Paddy trying to call their bluff; if Ben DIDN’T go out of his way to get the thing, now that it’s been established over and over how much the doll meant to their daughter, Paddy would have known right away that they knew his secret. So TLDR: it's not as dumb as critics would like you to believe.

Which brings us to the whole remake aspect, and you might want to skip the next two paragraphs if you haven’t seen either version, as there are spoilers for both! Yes, surprising no one, this version is much tamer than the Danish original, in which the bad guys won. That doesn’t happen here, but I didn’t mind it, because ultimately it’s a different kind of movie. The original was your typical dark/grim European thriller, most of which end on a downer, and while there’s nothing wrong with those, to me personally they often lack tension. Once we know how far they’ll go (in that case, the Paddy character kills his own son) there’s precious little reason to believe anyone else will make it out alive. Here, by repeatedly putting the heroes in danger, Watkins gives the movie a suspenseful edge that the original somewhat lacked, because there's simply more uncertainty.

That said (again we are still in spoiler territory here! Skip to next paragraph if you must!), Watkins maybe plays things a little TOO safe, in that the family not only escapes intact but barely even sustains any injuries (Ben hurts his foot a bit, that’s about as deep as it goes). Sure, this helps with the suspense element, because the husbands tend to die in these things and so you’re thinking it’s not a matter of if but when, but… you know, he doesn’t die. None of them do. I get not wanting to make it as bleak, but perhaps Watkins went a little too far in the other direction. It’s a good thing that McAvoy is so scary in the role just with his mannerisms and expressions, because the script curiously keeps him from doing all that much to our heroes, so a lesser actor/performance would have left the movie without any real threat at all for the most part.

Then again the script DOES let him angrily sing The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame” and it might be one of the best things I’ve seen in a theater all year, so forget what I said about its shortcomings. It is evened out!

For real though, this has been the only Blumhouse movie all year that I enjoyed without any real reservations. Sure, it could have retained at least SOME of the original’s darkness, but I can’t completely dismiss a movie that kept me fully engaged and gripping my armrest, anchored by an all timer performance by one of our more interesting modern actors. So without going so far as to say it’s an essential view, it’s another solid entry on Watkins’ filmography, and another chilling reminder of why we shouldn’t make friends with whoever we meet on vacation.

What say you?

P.S. You don't need the trailer again. Watch the Bangles video.

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Strangers: Chapter One (2024)

MAY 20, 2024

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

Sometimes, a movie tells you almost instantly that you shouldn’t expect too much out of it, acting almost as a warning to discerning audiences that they might as well cut their losses and leave now. The Strangers: Chapter One is one such example; after a cold open where a guy is chased through the woods and then killed by the title characters, we are shown one of those overhead landscape shots along with an on-screen title saying “Somewhere In Oregon.” But in that same shot we see an exit sign for the town of Lime, Oregon, so despite the title’s insistence, we know *exactly where* we are. A nitpicky thing, sure, but it just suggests a certain halfassery, like someone (a producer most likely – and there are several of them, including Courtney Solomon, another warning I didn't heed) wanted to play up on the “middle of nowhere” cliché that’s so prevalent in these kinds of movies, even if it wasn’t accurate.

It’s also another example (some of which we learned in the trailer) that this movie, which for all intents and purposes is a remake of the 2008 film, missed the point of what made the story work so well the first time around. For those who can’t recall (the fact that it’s been sixteen years since it came out is mind-blowing to me), the central location of the 2008 movie actually belonged to Scott Speedman’s character’s family, so it wasn’t some random house in the middle of nowhere to him, it was HIS. That’s a big part of what made it scary, as it took elements from the classic home invasion scenario AND the “we’re miles from help” type stories that set up any number of horror movies.

The other thing that made it more interesting than so many others of its type is that the couple (Speedman and Liv Tyler) were not all lovey dovey; in fact they were in a very odd spot, as he planned to take her there as a celebration of their engagement, only for him to turn him down before they got there (even romantic movies sometimes can’t pull off a devastating moment like Speedman realizing he has laid out flower petals all over the place – awkward!). Even if the killers hadn’t shown up, I’d be interested in watching how the rest of their weekend went, you know? And then you can even consider things like "She just broke his heart, is he going to be all that invested in putting himself in harm's way to help her?" (There's an idea: the Strangers pick a house where everyone inside is more likely to kill each other before they have a chance.)

Alas, this time around it’s the usual thing; the couple is on a cross country trip for a new job and their car breaks down after they stopped in a random little town to get some food. And instead of being in that awkward position of “I don’t want to marry you but I don’t want to break up, either”, it’s just a standard lovey dovey couple where the girl wants to get married but the dude hasn’t had the stones to ask yet. So it’s a setup you’ve seen a million times, with a couple you’ve seen even more. And that’d be fine if the movie was doing something different, but these alterations (which, if I haven’t made it clear, make the movie less interesting) are pretty much the only parts of the movie that aren’t directly swiped from the original. From then on it’s pretty much the same: the guy leaves on an errand, the girl smokes and doesn’t notice a killer walking around behind her, he accidentally kills someone who came to help, they go out to a shed next to the house, the Strangers ram the car they try to use to escape, etc, etc.

So that’s what the experience is like for anyone who has seen the original. Will it work on folks who HADN’T seen that one, or maybe even those who only saw it the one time in theaters and forgotten about it? Well for those it’s certainly a decent enough timekiller, I suppose. It’s never all that tense (even without the flash forward this time), but there are some decent jump scares and a suitably creepy moment where the girl is playing piano (“Moonlight Sonata” of course, because again: effort was not anyone's priority when it came to crafting this take on the story) and we realize via dim reflection in a frame above her that the Man in the Mask (sorry, Scarecrow now for some reason) is sitting behind her watching her play. The obligatory attack on the girl is also surprisingly brutal, which isn't exactly a selling point on its own, but after the tedium of some other genre films this year (i.e. Night Swim, which offered a premise that essentially guaranteed no one would ever even get hurt let alone killed), I guess it was nice to see one that wasn’t afraid to actually bang the heroes up a bit.

There are at least a couple of brief sequences that manage to get the pulse racing a little more, to its credit. At one point they realize the house has a crawlspace under it, so they go under there to try to make their way to safety, only for some rats to scurry past/over them and then the girl drives her hand right through a nail, both things leaving them wanting nothing more than to shriek/scream but having to remain quiet and not give their position away. And the shed scene has a quick flash of intensity when one stranger attacks the girl through a window with another advancing on her from inside. Also, while they do some dumb shit for sure, they actually circumvent one cliche in a way I haven't seen before; our male hero is asthmatic and of course drops his inhaler, so I immediately thought he'd have an attack at the worst time and be unable to help or the gasping would give his position away or something. Instead, when he realizes it's gone, he fashions a makeshift one out of a water bottle! Not sure if that's scientifically possible, but at least it showed some quick-thinking skills.

If you’re a fan of the original who is thinking “I don’t remember things like that happening?” you are correct – these moments are among the only times that they carve their own path. But whenever it starts to actually have its own identity, the movie quickly resumes its copycat nature, once again reminding any fan of the original that they’ve seen this all before, only better. Christ, they even have the two Mormon kids on their bikes handing out fliers and the climax (once again in the early morning light) where the two protagonists are tied to chairs while the three Strangers (in the same order no less) stand over them. It’s one thing to pay homage to an earlier film when doing a remake, but copying the same beats over and over, for a story that wasn’t all that complicated in the first place, is just remarkably pointless to me.

And that’s sad, because I was legit excited when they announced Renny Harlin was directing this (and the two already shot sequels that will follow). I don’t think he’s ever made a completely great movie (Cliffhanger probably comes closest), but he’s certainly made a lot of really fun ones over the years and given his early days in supernatural horror (with a few trips back since, like Exorcist: The Beginning) I was excited to see what he’d do with a more grounded slasher type. But his wealth of experience—far and away the most of any Strangers director thus far—was no match for the stretched-thin budget (less than the original even without inflation) and far too basic/uninspired script. They honestly could have hired anyone and I’m confident they would have ended up with roughly the same level of quality.

As for the sequels, well obviously I’m not too excited to see further adventures of our survivor, as she didn’t exactly scream “The new Laurie Strode!” to me (hell, she barely even hits the levels of “The new whoever the girl in Final Exam was!”). That said, if the very clumsily implemented setup for the next one* is an honest depiction, it’ll be set in the hospital where she’s been taken for her injuries, so at least it’ll be offering new scenarios and locations simply by default. But per Harlin, the three movies together tell one complete story, so Chapter 2 will be the middle, which is traditionally the least interesting of the three acts of a traditional narrative. So again, yeah, can’t say I’m refreshing the AMC page to find out when I can buy tickets for that one (as of now, the plan is to release the next one sometime this year and part 3 early next year). But hey, kudos to them for a decent opening weekend, proving that this IP still has some pull (it actually opened higher than Prey at Night did, in a pre-pandemic, pre-“everything is on VOD in three weeks” world). So at least the next chapters are coming out to an audience that might actually want to see them, though I think they’ll really have to offer a knockout part 2 for anyone to still be interested by the time part 3 comes along.

What say you?

*It seems this section of the film got reworked some, as the “cast in order of appearance” lists some people at the end who don’t actually appear. I also have to assume that they didn’t hire Richard Brake to just be in this one movie without any lines (he’s the sheriff, seen watching them at the diner and doing absolutely nothing else) and that he’ll return in the others. But if not, that means they likely re-edited the first act as well. Amusingly, if I'm right then that just makes it even more like the original, which also got overhauled in the post process. But at least there it paid off.

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

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

It wasn’t long into House on Haunted Hill that a devastating fact occurred to me: it had been 23 YEARS since I had last seen it, on opening weekend in theaters. I mean, there are some reviews on this site where I had decided to watch it as “new” because it had been maybe ten years since I last watched and thus didn’t remember it very well anymore. Hell, more than once I watched a movie thinking I hadn’t seen it yet only to find my own review of it later – and even those were only about half that length of time. TWENTY THREE YEARS!!! Texas Chain Saw Massacre wasn’t even that old when I first watched it.

Anyway, it likely goes without saying that I didn’t remember much at all about the movie, not even why I didn’t like it much (basically all I remembered was that I didn’t feel compelled to give it another look). But my tastes have changed a lot since then, so I figured – along with the seasonal appeal* – it might be fun to finally watch the blu-ray I was sent years ago. Alas, I still don’t think much of the movie, but at least this time I can write down why, so in another 23 years, when I get a copy on 16K Ultra Mega Highest Possible Def Brain Implant Disc, I can hopefully find the brainpower to find this old review and realize that there’s probably something else I should do with my increasingly limited time left.

The weird thing about the movie is that it sets up a more fun, trickster-y narrative than it ends up being, and never quite recovers from the tonal shift. We quickly meet Geoffrey Rush (channeling James Woods just as much as, if not more than, Vincent Price) as he takes some reporters on his fiendish new roller coaster that uses some kind of holographic tech to simulate a derailed car in front of the one that the actual riders are on, and then his wife (Famke Janssen in full fatale mode) in a bubble bath, plotting some future scheme. So even if you haven’t seen the original, you’ll probably get the idea that the movie is about the two of them in a sort of War of the Roses-type battle with the rest of the cast (Ali Larter, Taye Diggs, etc) caught in the middle.

But alas, there’s precious little of that. I think they only have two more scenes together before splitting into different parts of the house, with Janssen “dying” at the halfway point (if that far?) and Rush clearly not behind the spooky shenanigans that are occurring, as he is frightened by a corpse when he’s by himself. It’s the rare remake (in my opinion anyway) that could have benefited from copying more of the original; the tête-à-tête between Price and Carol Ohmart was one of the 1959 film’s greatest assets, and these two are just as up for having fun – but the script barely lets them sink their teeth into the dynamic. And there isn’t anything else fun in its place, unless you are as amused by Chris Kattan’s mugging as audiences presumably were in 1999 (I couldn't even stand him then, so you can imagine how well his shtick landed for me now).

Instead it’s a rather repetitive affair once Famke is removed from the group, as it focuses almost entirely on Larter, Diggs, and Kattan wandering around the dungeon-y basement levels of the house, peppered with occasional scares and appearances by Rush, who they keep thinking is the real bad guy. Alas, we know he’s not, so there’s no real drive to the mystery of it all, and it’s hard to root for the heroes when they keep trying to basically kill the innocent Rush every time he shows up to try to help them (and himself) escape the damn place. And despite a fairly prominent billing, Jeffrey Combs doesn’t appear nearly enough as Vannacutt, the actual villain, the ghost of the insane doctor who ran the asylum that the house used to be.

And that leads me to what really kills the movie for me: the crappy “Darkness” that serves as the primary villain for the film’s final sequence, where the survivors are chased through the house by what is basically a swirling mass of visual effects. It’s NOT CGI (as I may have mistakenly referred to it in the past), but it’s not a flesh and blood being either – it’s a bunch of footage that has been composited together (and not that well, though a bit of phoniness is fitting with the source material) and floats around to give chase but respectfully keeps its distance whenever the heroes are hampered by a broken floor or whatever. It’s just not an exciting conclusion in the slightest, after what’s been a fairly hit or miss series of events to begin with. A knockout ending coulda saved it in an “all is forgiven” kind of way, but instead it blows away what minimal goodwill the movie had built up by that point.

Not that it’s without merit. Again, Rush and Janssen are having a blast, so all that stuff, however brief, makes it worth a look. And the cast is kooky enough to admire; Lisa Loeb and James “Spike” Marsters show up as the aforementioned reporters, Peter Gallagher in a rare genre turn as Janssen’s secret lover, and – hell yeah – Peter Graves even pops up as himself on a true crime show Janssen is watching. Plus Combs, who wasn’t exactly someone you’d see in the multiplexes all that often (between this and the previous year’s I Still Know, it’s a damn shame that the most mainstream audiences ever saw of this terrific actor were in two of his junkiest movies). The production design is also top notch; I realize that I didn’t love any Dark Castle movie until House of Wax (their I think fifth film?) but I’ll go to bat for the sets in everything prior, at least.

Plus, I was surprised how damn WEIRD it got at times; Malone is not a mainstream-leaning guy, and it was kind of charming to look back, with fresher memories of FearDotCom and Parasomnia in my mind, to realize he was getting some of that anarchy through on his first major studio release. The scene where Rush is locked in a deprivation tank is a spectacular highlight (one I unfortunately couldn’t fully watch due to the strobe lighting throughout), with Combs appearing as a sort of painting inside a zoetrope from hell – it’s a legitimately great piece of wtf-ery, in a fairly big budget movie from the same company that would be releasing You’ve Got Mail a few weeks later. Had the script dived fully into that sort of stuff after tossing the comic tone of the first half hour, I might be on board with the film as a whole, but alas, too much of it is simply spent on endless hallway wandering with the only two people you can be pretty sure are going to survive anyway.

Scream Factory’s blu-ray comes with their usual mix of older bonus features and newly created ones. The highlight is actually one of the older ones; a trio of deleted scenes with introductions by Malone, who explains why they were cut. Many of them feature Debi Mazar as Larter’s boss, which explain why Larter’s character is using a different name in the film, and there’s even a full action scene where she falls into a sort of zombie pit, which was cut for time as it was slowing down the climax some. Malone also provides a commentary, though he spends most of his time explaining this or that effect or makeup design, not too much on the story (he also pauses quite a bit, which serves as more proof that solo commentaries are almost never a good idea). He also provided a new interview, along with composer and the VFX supervisor; alas, none of the cast could be roped in to relive their experiences, though by all accounts past and present they were all great to work with and fully cooperative – no one was treating this as some junky horror that was beneath them, even when it came to the less glamorous parts (i.e. getting covered in blood and such).

I wish I could like these earlier Dark Castle movies more; I genuinely loved the idea of reviving the old William Castle properties and using modern gimmickry (i.e. CGI) to bring new life into them, but as I said, it didn’t really click for me until House of Wax, and after that they basically stopped doing remakes anyway. They all seem to start better than they end (Ghost Ship being the best example), so I always end up feeling disappointed, as it’s obviously better to have a good/great finale after a so-so beginning instead of the other way around. I never fully dislike any of them, but until Wax I was always walking out thinking “Eh, worth the one watch but I never need to see it again.” And then I end up rewatching them again 15-20 years later anyway and not really changing my mind. Someone please stop me from revisiting Gothika if that one ever lands in my lap!

What say you?

*As I've said before, the season isn't complete until you've watched at least one Vincent Price movie, and the OG House on Haunted Hill is a perfect option. I probably would have just watched that again if I hadn't already gotten my Price fix earlier in the week with Pit & The Pendulum. But for everyone else - the 1959 Hill is the way to go if you only have time for one this year!

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Slumber Party Massacre (2021)

JULY 10, 2022

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

One of the downsides of traveling to only *part* of a film festival is that you might end up missing the movie you were most excited to see. That was the case with last year's Fantastic Fest; as always I could only attend the first few days instead of the whole thing (I believe it runs for just over a week) and sure enough, the Slumber Party Massacre remake that had been on my radar since it was announced was slotted for Monday night, and I was leaving Monday morning. I still got to see some stuff I was excited for (The Black Phone, Titane), of course, but I knew there would be other opportunities to see those with a crowd. SPM, however, was made for the Syfy channel, which meant future theatrical showings would be rare, if they existed at all.

So alas I had to settle for home, with no one to laugh with or, if my "blind to horror references" wife was with me, explain why I was laughing at the sight of a telephone truck. I still had a pretty good time, but during every crowd-pleasing moment I couldn't help but sigh that I missed my chance to see it with, well, a crowd. The pandemic has made me cherish a good crowd more than ever, and at the same time they're harder to find (watching movies at home for a year or two has left even more people unaware of how to properly behave in a theater), but at Fantastic Fest that wouldn't have been an issue. Anyone being a jerk in a Drafthouse would have been removed, theoretically (their LA location doesn't enforce the policy, I've noticed - not sure if that's a company wide relaxation).

Anyway, it's the kind of remake I always appreciate, in that it has the same basic premise (the one promised in the title) and a few nods but is otherwise its own movie, so that it can succeed on its own merits and, in turn, make its own mistakes. I always think about the Halloween remake and how it actually had its own identity for the first half, to the extent that maybe I could grow to like it on a second viewing now that the shock had worn off, only for Rob Zombie to not only start copying Carpenter's film scene for scene, but even keep the dumb sister twist from the sequel, rather than course correct something even Carpenter himself said was a bad idea. By creating their own story, writer Suzanne Keilly and director Danishka Esterhazy can't use the 1982 film as a scapegoat if something doesn't work.

(Obviously, one thing they've retained is keeping the tradition set by the original, of women writing and directing these films. And it's nice that nowadays it's (slightly) less novel to see.)

Luckily, for the most part it works just fine. After a 1990s set opening where all but one girl is killed, we flash forward to the present, where the survivor's daughter is about to make a girls trip of her own (right off the bat they're doing something different even in the cold open - it's a rented cabin in the woods as opposed to their "safe" suburban home), and said mom is understandably nervous - real "Keri Tate" energy about her nearly adult child being away from her for a couple days. And due to some well-worn horror movie traditions (i.e. their car breaks down) they end up not at their intended destination but... the same cabin/lake where her mom was attacked! What are the odds?

(SPOILERS AHEAD!)

Well the odds are, as they say, stacked, because one girl's teen sister who tagged along for the ride finds a bloody corpse almost instantly, and then tells the others that the original killer must be back. It's only like 20-25 minutes into the movie at this point, so any astute fan would know that's far too quick for everyone to be on the alert - but then Reilly and Esterhazy show their cards. All the girls pull out weapons, and reveal to the younger sister that this was their plan all along: to pose as the usual group of oblivious girls and lure Thorn out so they can kill him. The reveal is slightly hampered by some forced awkward writing (the main girl, Dana, is introduced listening to a podcast about her mother's attack, so she knows where it happened, but also has no reaction when they "find out" they have to stay there), but it's such a great idea that I let it slide.

Naturally, things don't go fully as planned. The other cabin across the lake is being rented by a group of dudes who are fans of the podcast, and they think the girls are "man-haters" who might kill them. So there's some mild paranoia, not to mention some hilarious role reversal stuff (the guys have a shirtless pillow fight) and a running gag about how two of the guys are named Guy, keeping the energy level high to make up for the fact that there isn't much in the way of actual stalk n' slash kind of material. With everyone knowing that Thorn is around, they obviously aren't going to go off to have sex or any of the other F13-y kind of things you'd expect when a group of girls meets up with a group of guys (the credits even copy F13 3D's font/style, so they clearly want to get the viewer in that kind of headspace). I wouldn't have minded some of that early on before their true motive was revealed, but as with the mother's backstory thing I mentioned, I can see how it would strain credulity even further.

Plus there are more reveals/surprises that I won't spoil, making it a pretty enjoyable 90 minutes overall. Not all the humor lands (there are at least three too many "the drill is his penis" visual gags) and more could have been done with the idea that the girls are fully prepared to take on a slasher killer, but it's rare to watch a remake and also have the "I'm not sure what will happen next" kind of thinking, so it's forgivable. And I appreciated that they gave a little love to Slumber Party Massacre II as well, with one of the guys finding a familiar guitar and trying to use it as a weapon (if there's anything specific to the third film, I missed it). The references to the original were also largely subtle instead of grating (the phone van I mentioned doesn't even get a closeup, it's just in the background of a shot for those who can get it - no one else will feel they're "missing something"). They recycled a few character names (and Thorn himself is basically the same guy, but not ACTUALLY the same guy) but I think the most overt "remake" moment was actually just kind of goofing on one of my favorite parts of the original, where the girl comes running out of the house and stabs the killer even though he's already dead.

I also liked that it was just Russ Thorn again. Not the actual same guy, it's definitely a remake, but there's no real whodunit aspect to the proceedings nor does he wear a disguise. Post Scream, there was talk that you couldn't even do a slasher anymore, and while that isn't true, there has definitely been a sharp decline in the number of named killer types (i.e. "Michael Myers") beyond sequels. Most prefer to do it as a mystery now, and while I like those too, there's something charming in just having a random psycho again. I recently watched another newish slasher called Varsity Blood (which ALSO had everyone clued into the killer's presence too early - is it too much to ask to let these kids party for a while?) and the backstory was super convoluted; one of the would-be victims explains the obligatory past tragedy while dropping the names of people we hadn't even met yet, making me feel like I needed to take notes. As a result, the killer's reveal meant almost nothing to me, as it was someone who I had mostly just heard about instead of seeing. Not the case here. It's just Russ Thorn, and all we need to know is that he's a fan of drills and denim jackets.

As it was made for Syfy it isn't too explicit in any department, though there are some nice prosthetic gags here and there. The disc has an alternate ending that is more of an extended epilogue (unnecessary) and a director commentary that I started listening to but she is a soft spoken type and I have the AC on all the time in this hellscape, so I will have to get to it when the house is otherwise quiet (or when my idiot cats stop thinking that a headphone wire is something they need to attack). But the movie itself is one I can see myself throwing on every few years when I'm in the mood for a few cheap slasher thrills with a below modern average number of things making my eyes roll.

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

Night of the Animated Dead (2021)

OCTOBER 4, 2021

GENRE: ANIMATED, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this Blog Post. The opinions I share are my own.

Several million years ago, I spent a week of HMAD reviews on Night of the Living Dead and its many incarnations (the 30th anniversary, the Savini remake, etc.), and while it wasn't the "best" the most interesting was NOTLD Re-Animated, which took the audio from the film but replaced all the imagery with a variety of animated scenes: traditional animation, stop motion, 8-bit video game style, etc. It wasn't the greatest thing in the world by any means, but it was interesting to see how the film could be reinterpreted; even with the same dialogue and music we've heard a million times, scenes would have a different tone just from the aesthetic. It's a strong contrast to Night of the Animated Dead, which is basically a shot for shot remake (the script is about 95% identical, more on that soon) but with one animation style throughout, so after five minutes (if that) you'll know whether or not you're going to like it.

...I did not like it.

The credits list a lot of animators, so I'll refrain from critiquing that aspect of it - I didn't particularly care for the style, but others may find it great, and that is the hallmark of animation. There are people who absolutely love pixel-art type animation; I find it to be an eyesore. There's no right or wrong, so beyond saying it wasn't for me, there's no real point in going on and on about that aspect of it. You can watch the trailer and decide for yourself if it's something you'd enjoy. That said, there are some inventive gore gags that are the invention of this film (obviously not something that could have been done in the 1968 original); I particularly liked what actually kills Tom when the truck explodes.

I WILL, however, take the creative team to task, because there are two unforgivable things about it that would leave me cold on the film whether it was stick figures or the greatest 3D animation ever produced by mankind. The first is that this is literally just the same script from the original live action film; they snip some dialogue here and there or speed up some of the action (much less boarding up of windows, for example), but apart from the film's final minute every line of dialogue, every action, every character motivation, etc are all taken word for word from John Russo and George Romero's script. On the making of (the disc's lone extra), the director says "Once we had the script locked down..." (prefacing how they approached the animation) and I had to wonder what exactly he had to "lock down" beyond taking a sharpie and crossing out a few things here and there, generously assuming they made those snips that early in the process and not when editing the animated picture together.

And yes, this means it's not even modernized, which seems to be the only reason to remake a movie like this in the first place (besides money, of course). As hard as it may be to swallow, we're actually further away from the "modern" version Savini made than he was when updating Romero (it's been 31 years since that one; Savini's was only 22 years after the original), so there's obviously lots of new things they bring to the table even if it was in live action, even more when given the freedom of animation (as they intermittently prove with the gore gags, which obviously don't have the same kind of impact in cel-based animation as they would on actual actors). When Barb and Johnny pull up to the cemetery and the radio broadcast once again crackles back to life, I was kind of aghast - what purpose does it have to stay in 1968, when new technology could open up possibilities of how they get their information (or misinformation; think of how an actual zombie outbreak would be handled on twitter!).

That leads me to the other red flag: Romero, Russo, etc are not credited anywhere on the film, not even with a token special thanks. The credits skip over a screenplay credit of any sort, just the director and a bunch of producers, so we can assume that not only is the Romero estate not being paid for the very ideas they are recreating (seriously, the characters even all wear the same clothes), but they don't even acknowledge the creators with the bare minimum. It's an incredibly gross realization, and honestly if the credits were at the top of the film I wouldn't have even bothered to watch the rest of it. It's only after an hour of their weird recreation that the viewer can discover (through very slow credits that bring the film up to a still laughable 70 minutes) no one involved bothered to credit the people who created the story in the first place. It's one thing when you're making a sequel and forget to credit the people who made the original when you might be bringing back one or two of their characters, it's another thing entirely to take their dialogue and actions verbatim and not even give them a "thank you" (the making of even has clips of the original, but still no one utters Romero's name).

So who, exactly, is this for? I mean, any horror fan knows that NOTLD's public domain status means anyone can make a buck off of it, but the other remakes - even the 3D one with Sid Haig - all put their own spin on the narrative, something that does not occur here. There are exactly two creative moves of note here: one is actually showing Ben's flashback to the diner and truck explosion instead of just hearing him tell the story, and the other is at the very end we listen to the posse make idle chit chat about the houses in the area ("That house has three chimneys!") instead of the still photographs that ended the original film. But those are hardly substantial enough to believe anyone would go to the trouble of remaking the entire film to "fix" two minor issues some people may have when watching it, and since the animation style isn't exactly revolutionary or unique, I have to assume that despite the lengthy animator credits, this was very cheap to make and was easy to profit from once they had distribution, and that was the extent of their creative ambition. Cool.

At least they put some effort into hiring a recognizable voice cast. The generally likable/leading man type Josh Duhamel is a left-field choice for the awful Mr Cooper, but he puts in a good performance, as does Dulé Hill as Ben. The women are all wasted though; Katie Isabelle would have been great for Barbara if they were going for the asskicker version seen in Savini's version (which impressively started off identical but then switched gears for a very different third act), but as anyone knows she doesn't exactly say much once she's at the house (here I will mock the animation to say they seemingly loved her turning boderline comatose, allowing them to "animate" entire shots where she doesn't move at all), and Nancy Travis as Mrs. Cooper sees some of the character's already limited amount of dialogue excised, making me wonder why they bothered hiring a name for her at all.

But, shocking as it may seem, a few good vocal performances and some amusing gore gags are not enough to recommend a movie that tells the exact same story we've seen before before slapping you in the face by not even crediting the people who actually wrote it. If you absolutely love the animation style (sadly nothing like the one on the cover, which seems like false advertising when it comes to animation; it'd be like if Disney showcased 3D models of their characters on the Blu-ray reissues of their cel-based classics) then I guess it can provide 60 minutes of background viewing amusement, but even then I'm sure any reasonable viewer would constantly wonder why it is they were half-watching the story like this when even a colorized version of the original on 1.5x speed would be a better and more respectful use of their time.

What say you?

P.S. Since WB does not release unrated movies, there's an MPAA R rating at the top, rare for a DTV release. Since the language says "Under 17 requires accompanying parent or guardian" I had a mental image of a 15 year old trying to watch this by themselves only to be stopped by a door to door carder. *KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK* "Open up! Movie police - where are your parents?!?" It was more amusing than the film, that's for sure.

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

House of Wax (2005)

JULY 11, 2021

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, SLASHER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

Even if I disliked 2005's House of Wax, I'd be forever indebted to its existence, because in the Fangoria writeup on the film around the time of its release, director Jaume Collet-Serra noted that it was actually more of a remake of Tourist Trap than its Vincent Price namesake. Knowing next to nothing about Tourist Trap, I tracked down a copy and quickly fell in love with it; in fact it's one of the very few DVDs in my collection that I've watched more than once or twice, as there's almost always another good excuse to revisit it. But, sort of as a bonus in retrospect, I quite liked House of Wax too, and watching again for the first time in over fifteen years (Jesus...) proved it has held up nicely.

In fact I'd almost say it was the best Dark Castle movie if not for Orphan, which is, incidentlly, also from Collet-Serra. I credit him with 50% of Wax's succes, if I'm being honest, as the script (by the Hayes brothers) is nothing particularly special on its own. While it admirably moved away from the Price film (naming a character "Vincent" is about the only connection it has beyond the title) and even Tourist Trap (albeit to a lesser extent), it's for the most part a fairly generic slasher on the page. Our characters run through all the cliches: taking a shortcut, having car trouble, poking around creepy places... in some ways it's almost admirable how unambitious it is on that level, as if they knew whatever flourishes they added would be ignored and any such ideas should be saved for another screenplay where inventiveness might be better received (as any Friday the 13th filmmaker can tell you, the more you divert from the formula, the more you risk angering the fanbase). The one thing they do bring to the table is allowing cell phone use and even letting someone be alerted to danger by a phone message, instead of going the usual "no service" route early on like most of these things. So I'll give the writers that much.

But Collet-Serra is giving 110%, so that you might not even notice how on-rails it can be at times, especially to anyone who had seen the then-recent Texas Chainsaw remake, which it often resembles right down to surprisingly killing the heroine's boyfriend first (a move that might even play better now since said boyfriend is Sam Winchester himself, Jared Padalecki, i.e. a guy you'd think would outlast the three other dudes). Crane shots, diopter shots, long lenses... at a time when TV directors were getting these gigs and giving the movies no personality at all, this newcomer was clearly fired up, doing the sort of work that should make it no surprise he'd be helming big budget Liam Neeson movies in a few years. That he wasn't afraid to hold back on the gore/violence (even against the heroine, who loses a finger and probably wouldn't want to apply lipstick anytime soon after her ordeal) was just icing on the cake; even if shot for PG-13 I suspect his efforts would have been noticed and put him on the list of people to keep an eye on in the future.

The other half of the movie's strength comes from the production design. By now this was sort of a guarantee with the Dark Castle movies, but they hit their apex here with the titular house, which (unlike the original) was indeed made entirely of wax, allowing the fiery finale to showcase some truly icky visuals even though blood/violence wasn't really a factor by that point. There's something incredibly gross about seeing our heroes endlessly sinking and clawing through the mud-like house as it slowly caves in around them (I think I heard on one of the bonus features that it was peanut butter), and after seeing a million scenes of the angry killer smashing through a door to get at his would-be victims, it's kind of great to watch one casually slice through it and then peel it apart without really breaking a sweat. Even if you hated the rest of the movie, that ten minute climax would be something you'd dig, I think.

And the wax figures (read: corpses covered in wax) are no slouches either, as Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray run across well over a dozen as they make their way through the town and give us closeup looks at many (one of which the camera lingers on for a bit as if setting something up, but turns out was a *payoff* for a deleted prologue showing her demise). As we learn on the behind the scenes, most if not all of them were actually living people wearing wax masks, as opposed to just dressing up mannequins or whatever. While this may have been a needless expenditure (not to mention set the filmmakers up for gaffes when the actors inadvertenly moved a bit), it pays off - we've seen dummies/corpses propped up in any number of movies, but the unspoken fact that they're legitimately alive gives their scenes (particularly the movie theater sequence) an extra dose of atmospheric creepiness.

As for the cast, they're, you know, doing their job. Even Paris Hilton seems to "understand the assignment" as the kids say today, and I can't tell if it's funny or sad that, despite her notoriety (and the film's "See Paris Die!" ad campaign) she's actually more likeable than anyone in, say, Texas Chainsaw 3D or some of the other films in this vein that came along later. Hell, I'd root for her over most of the people in the two Fear Street movies that have been released thus far, and it ain't out of any particular fondness for the woman - she's just more sympathetic. Her death IS great though, and I'll always wonder if they pumped it up a bit after she was cast. Also, having not seen it since it came to DVD (i.e. long before Friday the 13th 2009), it was funny to see that Chad Michael Murray's role in the film is a lot like the one Padelecki played in F13, as if he took that role if only to make up for being killed off so quickly here. "Now it's my turn!"

Scream Factory's blu-ray has a new transfer that looks fine to my eyes (as I've noted in the past, I'm not particularly diligent when it comes to tracking these things; as long as I don't have to adjust my existing settings or say "Hey, this looks like shit", I think it's a good presentation) and carries over all of the bonus features from Warner's own DVD/Blu. They also add four new interviews, including one with Hilton, who is very proud of her work here and speaks highly of the cast, Silver, etc. Unfortunately, as was the case before there's almost nothing from Collet-Serra across the board; he pipes in with a few soundbites on the fluffy making of, but that's about it. I would have loved to have known why they cut the original opening, as not only did it have a great kill but the movie took its time to get to the carnage, so it would have bought it some goodwill for those who were getting impatient.

Somewhere on those older features Silver notes that the movie will be in theaters on Halloween, but that ended up not being the case as it was moved up to May, and I'd love to know more about that. Not only did that potentially eat into their post production time, but it also may have cost the movie a few million at the box office, as if they waited they would have the star of Supernatural as another marketing hook (the show premiered that September) but also nabbed the people who tend to get more excited about horror movies in October than they do in May. I assume it was because the October schedule ended up being sort of competitive with IP offerings (The Fog, Doom, and Saw II, all with far more built-in awareness than a 50+ year old Vincent Price movie offered), but again, this is the sort of thing the director would probably address if he was on hand to give his thoughts. Oh well. Maybe for the eventual 4K UHD? I'd be down to get it again; that peanut butter wax will look more viscous than ever!

What say you?

Tweet

PLEASE, GO ON...

King Kong (1976)

MAY 13, 2021

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

When Peter Jackson's version of King Kong came out in 2005, people either loved it or found it to be bloated, but pretty much everyone I remember speaking to/reading was in agreement that it was better than the 1976 version. And I had to take their word for it, because I had never seen it and, given how little I enjoyed Jackson's, didn't ever really see the need to. But I would get curious from time to time due to its cast, Rick Baker's work, and - perhaps most importantly - my growing realization that I click with 1970's cinema more than any other decade, which meant I would probably like it just fine. And guess what: I did!

Even better, it cemented why Jackson's version never really worked for me (though I haven't seen the - gulp - even longer one, if that was an improvement): he was too infatuated with the original. Not that I blame him; it's a great movie after all, and so many monster movies since owe it a huge debt, making it not just great but important, i.e. the sort of movie you leave alone. He seemingly agreed, which is why his film never finds its own soul, as its constantly bending over backwards to honor the original, which - especially given its mammoth length - just has me thinking about that one the entire time and also that I could have just watched it and gotten home earlier.

Luckily for me, the makers of the 1976 version share my belief that the best remakes are the ones that take the basic concept and create new characters and situations within it. So instead of Carl Denham, Ann Darrow, etc making a movie and running afoul of the big guy, we get Charles Grodin as Fred Wilson, an oil tycoon who has discovered what he believes to be an uninhabited island with a surplus of untapped texas tea, which he hopes to bring back to the US and be a hero (and get richer) for helping the energy crisis. A paleontologist named Jack (Jeff Bridges) gets wind of his plan and sneaks on board, not really trying to stop him but instead convince him that what's there isn't oil but animals, and since he's just as curious he just wants to tag along, document what's there, and get a nice "told you so" out of the deal. Along the way they pick up a shipwrecked actress named (sigh) Dwan, played by Jessica Lange in her first movie, but there's no rivalry between the two men: Grodin's character is married (he even encourages them to get married later on in the movie after they've fulfilled their duties as the leads in a major movie and fallen in love).

Nope, Bridges' competition is, of course, Kong, who they discover when they arrive on the island and run into a tribe. This stuff is pretty similar to the older movie, but by then they've changed enough that it doesn't really hurt things, and Grodin's decision to capture Kong and bring him back has its own unique motivation: having failed to get the oil (and yet promised "the big one" to his investors) he decides to recoup his losses with a new mascot for the company, in the vein of the Exxon Tiger. Sure, at times things seem reverse engineered to get to what are the same beats from the original, but there's just enough that's unique to this version that it rarely enters "why did they bother?" territory.

Curiously, one thing they dropped was the dinosaurs. Other than a quick fight with a giant snake, Kong is the only creature in the movie, which means there's not as much action as in the others (despite the excess length; it's forty minutes longer than the original). I can't say this was the wisest choice; perhaps if there were a few snakes or the fight lasted long enough to be a kind of showcase it would be OK, but it almost feels like something they threw in at the last minute. There's a clear desire to make something like the disaster movies of the era (they even got one of its directors: John Guillermin previously helmed The Towering Inferno), so perhaps they left monsters out so they could get to New York quicker - but they ultimately don't? There's only about 30 minutes left by the time Kong even gets there, let alone starts wreaking havoc.

That said, I found the mix of effects techniques to be quite successful, with respect to limitations at the time. Yes, the blue-screen shots probably look a little too fake (especially on a gorgeous Blu-ray) for a modern audience, but at the time that was the norm, and they do a terrific job mixing the guy in the suit (Baker himself) stuff with close-ups on Lange that utilize giant animatronic hands and the like. They also had a giant robot version, but apparently it didn't work all that well so you barely see it. There's a "commentary" with Baker (actually a very long interview that is spread out a bit to make it last over the whole film)  where he talks about the various problems with the effects, including barely being able to see when he was in the suit due to the hard plastic contacts he was wearing, but you'd never tell from the finished product. I rarely found myself thinking "they could have done better back then"; it was poised as a spectacular event in that regard and I think they delivered for 1976 audiences.

Plus I genuinely enjoyed the characters; Grodin was a hoot as the KINDA but not really slimy oil guy (I kept waiting for him to turn full heel but nope, his only crime is being too optimistic, really), and after so many years of the mumbling old man Bridges, I was delighted to see a new performance of him as a young and coherent leading man, the sort of role that would go to one of the Chris' today. And Lange is a bit green at times, but she's playing a ditzy actress so it fits just fine, and I found her gradual "trust" of Kong to be more believable than Naomi Watts' incarnation of the beauty to Kong's beast, as "Dwan" (Jesus, that name) knows he won't hurt her on purpose but is still pretty hesitant about being clutched and going up buildings, whereas Watts seemed to be enjoying it after a while. The supporting cast is great too: Ed Lauter, Rene Auberjonois, and even John Lone (!) all pop up, as does my man Walt "Crazy Ralph" Gorney as the subway driver (funnily enough, I had to take my F13 blu out of the player to put this one in - Gorneyfest!). Per the IMDb, Corbin Bernsen and Joe Piscopo are in the crowd in New York somewhere, but I didn't spot them.

Scream Factory's blu-ray took me all week to get through, primarily due to the two commentaries for the nearly two and a half hour film. Baker's is loaded with candid and hilarious stories, but I wish it wasn't spread out the way it is, as the breaks that are inserted are often unnatural, not to mention long, so he'll be telling a story that will cut out for 90 seconds or so (with the movie audio returning full blast) before he comes back to finish it up, blowing some of the humorous buildup in the process. But otherwise it's an essential listen, both for budding FX artists as he talks alot about his process and why certain things won't work, as well as why he retired (too many producers getting in his way) and other goodies. The other commentary is by Kong expert Ray Morton, who wrote a book about the big lug and brings a fairly dry but extensive history of this production along with some info on the original film.

And that's good, because now that it's 45 years old and nearly behind the scenes higher-up who made it is dead (Guillermin, writer Lorenzo Semple Jr., producer Dino De Laurentiis, etc), there isn't much of that "authority" to be found here outside of Baker, who obviously wasn't privy to casting issues and legal battles with Kong's rights holders. But instead, we get interviews with the sort of personnel who rarely get to offer their insight: the assistant director, the second unit director, a sculptor, two production assistants... these interviews are all in the ten minute range and give some great "ground level" kind of anecdotes that would otherwise be glossed over for the flashier material, providing an interesting and entertaining look at how this kind of production was mounted back when film shoots could last the better part of a year (the shoot ran from January to August of 1976).

A longer television version of the movie is also included, though after the two commentaries I was kind of sick of looking at everyone (well, maybe not Lange) so I'll save that for down the road. I looked it up and it seems like it's mostly just scene extensions and a few things clarified (like how Bridges' character obtained a crew shirt), all of it added back into the movie so they could turn it into a two night event given how long it was to begin with. Then again, last time I watched a King Kong that lasted three hours I didn't think much of it so maybe I'll just leave it safely in the case (it's on a second disc) next time I get the urge to watch this particular film. I'm getting older and it's getting harder to find lengthy blocks to watch even a normal length movie in one sitting, so unless I hear otherwise I'm going to assume the theatrical version is the way to go anyway. Still, I'm glad it's included, as I'm sure it's the version some folks grew up with after taping it off the broadcast or something. Scream has always been pretty good about including the TV cuts when they were available and it's a tradition I'm glad to see continue.

What say you?

Tweet

  

PLEASE, GO ON...