Premonition (2004)

AUGUST 11, 2009

GENRE: ASIAN, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: CABLE (ON DEMAND)

Ever since Time Warner decided to be a even bigger pile of fucking douche and drop Fearnet from its lineup, I’ve had almost no use for the On Demand service I probably pay extra for every month (I should probably look into that). The only sliver of hope lies in the occasional horror movie that pops up on Sundance On Demand (trivia - I get the free on demand stuff, but I don’t actually have the Sundance channel), such as Premonition (Japanese: Yogen), which is an OK enough mix of The Ring and Final Destination, filtered through Asian horror tradition (i.e. it’s slow and baffling).

I also wonder if the Sandra Bullock film of the same name was actually a remake of this one. Like that film, it hinges on the film’s hero losing a loved one to a horrific car crash (caused by a giant truck), and then a fragmented timeline allows them to try to prevent it from occurring. But where the Bullock film (which isn’t that bad, for the record) made this the bulk of the film, here it only happens in the film’s final 15 minutes, which suggests a director who wrote himself into a hole more than anything else. If your plot has a gimmick, it needs to be used throughout; you don’t see Bill Murray waking up again on Groundhog Day for the first time during the film’s climax.

Plus the suspense is incredibly deflated due to the fact that our hero is a moron. He knows that the truck is going to hit his car, which is parked on the side of the road, and then his daughter, trapped in the backseat, will be killed by a mixture of fire and terrible CGI glass. So when he finally gets to go back and relive the incident and “save” her, what does he do? He fiddles with her seatbelt for five minutes, before the truck is even in view, rather than drive the goddamn car out of the way. In fact, he does this twice (the first time he succeeds in getting his wife killed instead), which is just incredulous.

And it’s a bummer that the climax spins so far off the rails, because until then it’s not too bad. Yeah, it’s a bit similar to The Ring, with the estranged couple trying to get to the bottom of a mystery (they even, as always, have to go look at old records and visit some remote place for some background information). Creepy videotapes even factor into the story (weird, this makes two movies in a row where someone played a VHS cassette with a masking tape label). But at least it’s similar more in character than plot; there are no vengeful ghosts or haunted electronic devices in this one. In fact, it’s sort of refreshingly old-school in that regard. Despite being made in 2004, the horror element stems from a newspaper clipping instead of text messages or whatever (plus its VHS tapes instead of DVDs).

Two things really irked me. One - he finds out about a train crash that will kill his wife, and he manages to get her off, but everyone else dies (selective heroism). For some reason, they go to the wake of one of the people who died on the train - but nothing seems to suggest that they knew the girl, so how did they know her name? With a giant disaster on a commuter train, there’s bound to be a lot of memorial services in town, so how’d they know which one was hers? But then, some other random person at the wake asks to see the body, and the girl’s mother opens the casket right in front of everyone. Who the hell does that? Plus it has no bearing on anything, so it’s a really odd, unnecessary scene.

The other concerns the opening accident. The car is hit by a big semi truck that makes no sound. I walk in traffic all the time, and I’m sorry, if a big fucking truck is even within a block of you, you can hear it. Yet these damn things are always sneaking up on people in movies. It’s contrived and totally sucks me out of the reality of the situation every time. Plus it’s just a cheap scare. Maybe just think of some other way to kill people, since whenever someone absent-mindedly wanders into a street in a movie, we know they are going to get hit.

Also, is there some sort of petition we can sign or something to get DVD producers to stop being so lazy with their subtitles? The movie revolves around a magic newspaper, but half the time it doesn’t bother providing a subtitle that explains why our hero is so startled by whatever it says. There’s also a scene where it scans over someone’s book collection. It’s a traditional shorthand for character development (so like, if they are all psychology books, we know the character is a shrink), but if they aren’t going to bother translating the titles for us, it’s just making us feel left out. I was about to say that the character development is rather thin, but for all I know it’s quite rich in subtle clues to give us the background, and the sub company deprived us of this information. Yet when someone is saying someone’s name over and over as they look for them, they will translate each and every one of those. Put a little effort into it guys.

I watched it on cable, but if my review has gotten you curious - I urge you to find the DVD (which I should have after HMAD reader Lambert recommended it a while back). Not only will it look better, but it’s probably also at the correct aspect ratio; for some reason Sundance offers us a 1.85 transfer of what appears to be a 2.35 film. It’s nice that they meet you halfway, but it’s a rather lousy (and noticeable) cropping job, and having the opening/closing credits at the correct aspect ratio adds insult to nerdy injury. Plus, if you’re like me and doze off, a DVD is much easier to rewind/fast forward to where you left off, whereas on Demand only allows 4x speed for such things. Which REALLY sucks, because I fell asleep with a half hour to go and it played to the end, so I had to fast forward at 4x from the film’s beginning until an hour in, which took like 15 minutes. I guess it was nice to quickly watch the movie again up until that point though.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

13 Hours In A Warehouse (2008)

AUGUST 10, 2009

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I was looking at a movie called Fermat's Room at blockbuster, but had to put it back because it was unclear if it was actually a horror movie or not (according to the IMDb, it’s not. I still may check out though, sounds interesting). Then I noticed 13 Hours In A Warehouse, a title I had passed by a few times after giggling at the title. I read the back and discovered that, like Fermat, it also dealt with a small group of folks in one location, with mysterious numbers seemingly guiding them. And with a vampire type thing on the cover and a boast that it won Best Horror Film at the Indie Spirit Film Fest, I didn’t have to worry about its horror status.

Sadly, the film is the 2nd in as many weeks to simply take a classic slice of 90’s cinema (in this case, Reservoir Dogs) and shoehorn a horror plot into it, much like Necroville’s “Clerks, but with zombies” approach. And just like that film went so far to copy Smith’s dialogue style, writer director Dav Kaufman not only has Tarantino-esque monologues sprinkled throughout, but even cribs plot devices from Pulp Fiction (a valued package where we never see its contents) and From Dusk Til Dawn (the criminals hole up somewhere until their liaison shows up early the next morning).

One monologue in particular sums up everything that is wrong with this movie. Our main guys sit around discussing the career of Robin Williams; one of them claims he is a comic genius and cites the example of how Spielberg would call him while he was filming Schindler’s List in order to cheer him up. He then explains how you can tell if a Williams film is going to be a comedy or drama, simply by whether or not he has a beard (beard = drama). But then he namechecks Jumanji (comedy with bearded Williams) and What Dreams May Come (drama with clean-shaven Williams), blowing his whole point out of the water to anyone smarter than Kaufman.

Then again, maybe this scene is just supposed to make you realize what an idiot the guy is, but since he’s the closest any of them are to sympathetic, I doubt it. But hell, even if so - why would I care about a bunch of idiots? They’re thieves AND they don’t know how to determine a Robin Williams film by his facial hair? Fuck em, let em all die. And to the film’s credit, they DO, but that’s the other problem.

Our heroine is a woman named Jennifer who they kidnap and bring to the locale (more Dusk Til Dawn theft here). She then spends the entire film either unconscious or off-screen entirely. But then once all the guys are dead, suddenly she’s the heroine, and we’re supposed to give a shit about whether or not this cipher of a character will survive. Ironically, the DVD has a deleted scene that not only gives her something to do besides nothing, but also sets up the fact that she is in financial trouble, which would make the ending justified instead of just un-deservingly comic. The scene was apparently deleted because it slowed the film down (as if a 10 minute monologue about Robin fucking Williams didn’t?), so I guess Kaufman was more concerned about pace than character development.

And it’s not a very fast movie anyway; in fact, it’s quite boring. Nothing much happens; they sit around, bicker, and every now and then one of them wanders off by himself and gets killed by a ghost, or gets shot by the resident back-stabber of the group. But worse, the layout of the warehouse is never made very clear; it’s supposedly big enough for someone to get lost or be far enough from the others to scream without being heard, but we only see two or three rooms for the entire movie (without any indication of where they are in relation to one another). You think of a film like Die Hard - it’s a 40 story building, and yet you know exactly how everything is laid out and where it is in relation to other key locales. I could draw you a map of the 35th floor just from memory. Yet this movie, in a (presumably) one story warehouse, I couldn’t even tell where the main room is in relation to the bathroom. Maybe there was a wide shot laying it all out that Kaufman deleted for slowing the film down.

But the most crippling thing is the fact that it makes zero sense. We find out that the ghosts are those of people who were killed there as the unwilling stars of snuff films (this is a plot twist of sorts, but since its spelled out on the DVD cover, might as well spoil it here too). Not the worst setup, but the ghosts for some reason put “32369” everywhere, which turns out to be the combination of a safe that holds a few of the tapes. Well, if they can paint numbers on the wall (not to mention slash tires, swing weapons, open/close doors...), why can’t they just open the goddamn safe themselves? And why are they trying to get their background story through to these guys when they just plan on killing them anyway? It’s the supernatural equivalent of the big villain explaining his entire plot to James Bond instead of just shooting him in the fucking head and calling it a day. I’m sorry, but if your horror elements are kept to a minimum (the traitor guy kills more folks than the ghosts do, I think), then they should at least be solid enough to make up for it.

Oh and the vampire on the cover is nowhere to be seen, but that’s sort of par for the course nowadays.

Instead of a vampire, maybe they could have used the space to list the available extras on the DVD. There are bloopers and the aforementioned deleted scenes to ‘enjoy’, but no mention is made of them anywhere on the packaging. Then again, I guess this thing was rushed onto shelves; where the rating would be it simply says “MPAA rating pending”. I didn’t know you could release a film before the MPAA made its decision - seems like that would help out a lot of horror filmmakers, no? Why trim your film for an R if you can just get the rating later on? Maybe winning the Best Horror Film at the Indie Spirit Film Fest (where it vied for the award against two other movies) can get you some pull.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Born (2007)

AUGUST 9, 2009

GENRE: RELIGIOUS, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I rue all of the times I passed by Born at Blockbuster in favor of crap like Sharks In Venice, because it’s quite possibly one of the most delightfully batshit and entertaining movies I’ve seen all year. Like Silent Night, Deadly Night or Cathy’s Curse, it’s that rare form of movie that positively relishes in its un-PC wretchedness, resulting in a film that I honestly cannot tell if I like it or not; I only know that I would jump at the chance to watch again.

The plot is wonderfully convoluted; something about a demon who can become human again if he rapes his sister, impregnates her, and then has her kill six people for the unborn child to feed on (the demon tells this story to a psychiatrist, who he kills halfway through the movie, only for her to return and reveal herself as Satan). And our characters include a priest who was once a Marine and then a private detective, twin blond women who walk around naked, a best friend who moonlights as a phone sex operator, an albino handyman, and several disembodied heads that are placed around a pentagram on the floor as they yell obscenities at our heroine. Oh and the demon (Kane Hodder) spends half the movie disguised as a Cardinal, allowing us the joy of seeing Kane “Jason” Hodder, a man with “KILL” tattooed on his lip, playing a role synonymous with decency and good.

But the real highlight is Alison Brie as the heroine. Not only is she cute, but she comes across as a female Nic Cage (Wicker Man variant) in her “possessed” scenes, where her demon baby takes over her mind and makes her deliver horrid one-liners (“Rub a dub-dub, clean the dolly in the tub!” she shrieks as she metal scrubs a woman to death) and bug the eyes out of her head while killing people. She even borderline rapes a dude before the baby eats half of the guy’s babymaker off (we see the head and some of the shaft lying in a pool of blood on the floor - thank you, movie), and makes out with her hot friend (the phone sex operator one) for a bit before ripping her head off and putting it in her purse. If there is a subtle moment in this movie, it’s there purely by accident.

There are two things that nagged me though. One - the demon baby occasionally bursts through the girl’s stomach to do the killing, yet it somehow manages to leave no scars. Also, either the casting person was as insane as his/her characters, or there is a valid excuse for the puzzling differences in age between the family members that was deleted or something. The 20ish Brie has a sister played by Denise Crosby, who looks old enough to be her mother, and her father is played by a guy who looks like he might die of old age at any moment. And Kane Hodder is supposed to be her brother. Plus, adding to this, the phone sex girl lives with them, and the relationship she has with Crosby is more stepmother/daughter than... whatever you’d call the relationship between a 45 year old woman and her 20ish sister’s best friend that lives with them. It sort of adds to the batshittedness, but in a way that distracts instead of entertains.

The disc’s sole extra is a 25 minute behind the scenes piece, which is interesting because it talks to folks like the line producer (possibly the bitterest sounding woman I’ve ever seen in one of these things) and the offline editor, instead of spending all of the time with the leads and the director. Kane, for example, only appears for about a minute, but we see the casting session and an interview for the dick-less guy who is only IN the movie for about a minute. And as an editor, I was mildly offended by the presentation, not only do we get three different aspect ratios (fullscreen, non-anamorphic widescreen, and 16:9 footage horizontally squeezed into fullscreen), but all of it is very interlaced and poorly compressed. The movie isn’t that long, and it’s a dual layer disc, so there is no excuse for it to look so poorly. Have some pride in your work, fellas.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen something in this sub-genre of horror film, and as I had Shocker on the brain due to the screening announcement, it was actually perfect timing for this earnestly insane movie. If you can see the humor and have a good time with the movies I mentioned, then by all means check this one out ASAP.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Sea Beast (2008)

AUGUST 8, 2009

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Sometimes I wish I could take a week off of HMAD* and focus on a few studies/experiments I would like to conduct. For example, why was I more or less entertained by Sea Beast (aka Troglodyte), when I was bored to tears by every minute of Loch Ness Terror, which is for all intents and purposes the same goddamn movie (it’s even by the same writer/director, which I didn’t even realize until later)? It would take back to back viewings, research, extensive note taking, etc... and I just don’t have time for that sort of thing.

So I have to go by my ever worthless memory to try to justify why, if asked, I would tell someone that Sea Beast is pretty good, after trashing so many similar films. For starters, I believe this film has the best CGI of the lot of them; at times it even exceeds the quality of theatrical films like Van Helsing. The compositing is good, the design/animation is even better, and apart from some weightlessness, I actually believed that the monsters were part of the scene. The scale even seems correct, something NONE of these movies ever seem to get right.

And yes, I said monsters, plural. Despite the singular title, there are actually like a dozen of the damn things in the movie; the giant one and several baby sized ones. Not only does this mean more action than usual (as the big one can be attacking at the same time as the smaller ones are somewhere else), but it also allows for some variety, a la Jurassic Park. The big one can stick to exterior locales; the tiny ones can get through an air vent and attack someone in a theoretically “safe” storage closet. Plus, it actually makes the decent FX all the more impressive, as there are more shots for the VFX guys to work on.

Another thing I liked about the movie was the complete lack of FBI warnings and studio logos. You hit play movie, and BAM! You’re on a boat (motherfucker don’t you ever forget) and the monster is seconds away from attacking. In fact, my biggest complaint about the film (besides the sort of “goes without saying” that it’s generic and largely forgettable - I expect nothing more from these things) is that it reveals the monster way too early - in this first scene in fact. Before long, a guy is being pulled off into the water by an unseen monster... but then we see it. I like a bit of mystery to these things, but director Paul Ziller doesn’t allow any such suspense.

Also, no one seems really freaked out by the damn thing. A giant sea monster that can walk on land, turn invisible, and spit paralyzing venom at you would freak me right the fuck out, but these folks are like “Huh, I wonder what that is.” One guy is so nonchalant about it that I momentarily thought that he couldn’t see it in its camouflaged state, and that the shiny outline we could see was just for viewer benefit (sort of like when you can see Chevy Chase in Memoirs of an Invisible Man and just have to remember that no one else can). It reminded me of my idea to have an ID4/Mars Attacks type alien invasion film, except set in South Boston, where the colorful (read: impulsively violent and angry) residents would just be like “Ah, faaack you!” and hurl their beer cans and such at the spaceships and generally consider it yet another annoyance of living in New England.

One other, smaller complaint is that too much of it is land-based. I know filming on water is more expensive and time-consuming, which would be a giant headache for a small production (and if more was on boats, then the FX budget would probably suffer), but since the film’s first 15 minutes are almost a scene for scene remake of Perfect Storm (with some Armageddon tossed in for good measure), I was hoping for at least a big water-based, Jaws-type ending. Corin Nemec (who looks nothing at all like a grizzled sea captain) even has the whole “We’re going back out!” scene after coming back with an underwhelming catch, but he never actually does. Bummer.

If you were wondering, the Armageddon thing stems from the fact that one of the guys on Nemec’s crew has been secretly dating his daughter, and Nemec would not approve of her dating a fisherman because it’s so dangerous. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really have the same emotional weight as Armageddon’s; in fact, Nemec never really confronts the guy about it; they only share a single scene together after this, and it’s about the monster, not the girl. The ending is kind of harsh though, and if Willis and Affleck were playing the roles here... let’s just say the ending wouldn’t make me cry.

(What I’m saying is Nemec lives and the boyfriend is brutally and un-heroically killed).

Like the similarly “Yeah it’s meh but the good kind of meh” Hydra, Sea Beast has no extra features whatsoever. I’m not sure why these things never have commentaries - but given the fact that Ziller was essentially remaking his own movie (or, maybe Loch Ness was a remake of this one - this comes first on IMDb but was only recently released on DVD) it would have been interesting to hear his perspective on the matter.

What say you?

*I wanted to finish reading Clive Barker’s “Coldheart Canyon” last May, so I stopped watching Daily Show/Colbert “for a week” so I could have that extra time to finish it. I finished the book, but have not yet resumed watching Daily Show/Colbert. I also quit Oblivion “for a week” so I could have time to transcribe Comic Con interviews... in 2007, and haven't touched it since.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Black Roses (1988)

AUGUST 7, 2009

GENRE: POSSESSION, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

My best friend Jeff has been telling me to watch Black Roses for years, but always ends his request with “it’s so bad!” Now, obviously I have watched my fair share of, and even occasionally enjoy bad movies, but still - I do this primarily to find rare gems and expand my horror film knowledge, not to watch bad movies that even someone among the few who have seen it don’t seem to care for. More of a disincentive, really.

Luckily for Jeff, he hasn’t sat through as much garbage as I have, so I can see why he would think this would be the epitome of “so bad it’s good” horror movies. Sadly, it wasn’t even the best example of this type that I watched this week (that would be Night Of The Demon); I merely found it kind of boring for the most part.

Part of the problem is the film’s repetitive storytelling. The titular band (who can apparently possess their fans through the power of their two songs) plays for 3-4 nights in this small town, but you know that all hell can’t really break loose until the last half hour at most, so you get a concert, and then maybe one death, then the hero investigates a bit, tends class (the hero is an English teacher), and then the next concert begins and the whole cycle starts up again. I would have preferred that the band only did two shows, with some actual build up to the first show, then a small wave of murders, and then our hero tries to stop the 2nd show from occurring. Or something of that nature - anything but the lather/rinse/repeat setup they got going now.

Also, the opening scene sort of spoils the film’s end. It’s an 80s horror movie, so you know perfectly well that the villains won’t really die at the end, but still, it kind of deflates the suspense when the plot hinges on the fact that the band has never played live before and have decided to start in this little town, when the film opens with them playing for a large audience in some major city.

Right after this, we witness a continuity holocaust, though I must admit that I probably only noticed due to the fact that there’s a "Collins Hotel" in the shot.

First, the singer looks at the town (this is his POV). Note the Collins Hotel further up the street.

Then he turns to look at his bandmates...

...and now the hotel is behind them.

Still, it’s not without entertainment value. Many of the kill scenes are delightfully insane, such as when a dad plays “strip gin” with his daughter’s best friend (apparently the actor suggested the daughter be a part of the scene, but the actress refused to do nudity), or when a girl gives her stepdad a back rub before clubbing him to death with a weight, or when another girl tries to seduce her teacher (every murder starts off like a letter to Penthouse, you see) before turning into a little dinosaur type thing and chasing him around the house.

Also, the lead singer looks like an 80s’ Michael Bay.

There are also a number of performances from future or past stars. Creature from the Black Lagoon’s Julie Adams plays one of the mothers, and Vincent “Big Pussy” Pastore has his screen debut as a dad who is sucked into a speaker. It’s not the best acting work he’s ever done - he merely seems kind of confused during his death scene instead of frightened or angry - but it’s fun to see him before he just played generic mob guy in every movie. And for the first time ever, I’ve watched a movie with a My Bloody Valentine lead. Paul "TJ" Kelman plays the aforementioned stepdad, and further demonstrates why he didn’t have much of a career.

In another tie with My Bloody Valentine, we have people who are way older than the suggested age of the character they are playing. But where in MBV it was kind of vague how old they were, here they are high school students, and yet this one guy is clearly 35 years old. I actually thought he was the film’s hero for a while, but he gets sort of phased out of the movie after awhile, allowing the mustachioed English teacher to take front and center while displaying ugly sweaters.

Director John Fasano, writer Cindy Cirile (wait, this was written by a woman? DADDY ISSUES!) and some other folks offer a commentary track, one with the usual sort of “OK it’s been 15 years so we can mock our movie” tone. Unfortunately he’s afraid to burn bridges I guess, and only hints at some behind the scenes drama (a fired DP, for example) rather than give details, which is a bummer. His young daughter also joins in, and doesn’t seem to be much of a fan of the film. I guess it’s supposed to be funny but it’s just annoying. Then there are some auditions for the role of Damian, which is a surprise as they usually won’t even give the names of other actors who tried out for a role, let alone their audition footage (maybe because none of them seem to have gone on to anything resembling a successful career?). There are also a pair of promos, one used at Cannes to try to sell the film, which are interesting because they make the film look even more boring and cheesy than it actually is.

So it’s not without its entertainment value, but there are a number of films far better (and by that I mean worse) to amuse yourself with in this manner. And it’s rare, apparently, so it’s not worth the effort you’d probably have to put into finding it (not counting a Netflix rental, of course) unless you are an aficionado of the rather small sub-genre of rock n' roll horror movies.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Small Town Folk (2007)

AUGUST 6, 2009

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

I think I have put more effort into watching Small Town Folk than I have for any other movie in history. I rented it from the store a while back, but the disc wouldn’t play on my DVD player. So I drove back to the store and replaced it for their other copy, only to run into the same problem. I tried copying the disc onto a DVD-R, but the same problem plagued my DVD-ROM drive, so I gave up and queued it from the online service. But the shipment was lost, so I ended up having to report it and have them send me another. For Christ’s sake, can’t a man watch a Warwick Davis movie at ease?

Now, it would be easy for me to say “this also means I put in more effort than the filmmakers did”, but that would be a cheap shot, and not even true. While the film has its share of problems, it’s actually quite evident that everyone worked hard and with genuine enthusiasm for what they were making, which is enough for me to overlook most of its problems.

Two issues though, I need to address. And one is more just a question - why did they shoot half of the movie in front of greenscreen? It’s obvious that they wanted a hyper-reality look for Grockleton, so even though it’s not very well done (learn to use the matte choker filter!) at least it made visual sense, unlike the Pulse sequels. But again - why only half? If you’re going to do it, stick with it for the whole movie. So scenes will be largely shot on a real location, but a few close-ups or cutaways will be shot over a greenscreen. It’s sort of like watching Transformers 2 in IMAX; you’re constantly snapped in and out of the “world” of the movie by technical change-ups.

Also, the script. Come on guys, you gotta put a little more effort into these things. I can say without hyperbole that there are eight million horror movies like this, but scriptwise, there is nothing unique here to set it apart from those. Folks come to the creepy little town, the residents try to kill them. That’s it. There’s some stuff about them wanting to breed with strangers to keep their bloodline going, but even that’s been done before. In fact, I saw a movie at Screamfest last year called The Season that this reminded me of on a few occasions. In fact,I didn’t even bother to review that one because I already had another film for the day, but more because it was so stripped down in the story department that I felt like I myself had nothing new to add to what I had already written about similar films.

But the script lapses are made up for by the interesting visual scheme. Sure, it’s not the best green-screen work, but it’s interesting to watch nonetheless. And again, unlike Pulse 2/3, it’s intentionally a bit off, so it works to the film’s favor (had they had the money for a longer prologue, I’d have suggested that they pull a Wizard of Oz and have the opening scenes in the “real” world shot normally, only to switch to the greenscreen stuff once they enter Grockleton).

The various killers are also a delightful lot. One in particular looks like something out of the most fucked up version of Wizard Of Oz’s Scarecrow ever, with a giant carrot nose for good measure. And even though he’s only in it for like 5 minutes, Warwick is a delight; not only is he out of makeup for once, but he plays his entire role on a big mook of a man’s back, and even gets a few limericks in to appease his Leprechaun fanbase.

I want this guy to get his own movie.

It’s also got a pretty great soundtrack. The score is a bit generic (apparently they have never met the composer in person), but the songs are terrific. Think the Dropkick Murphys but more folky and you’d have the right idea. If there is a soundtrack album, I would certainly consider picking it up.

One of the songs has a music video at the end of the “Grocklementary”, which is the film’s behind the scenes piece. It’s a fun piece, showing the team efforts of these guys and just how DIY the film really was (the director goes to a convenience store to buy a pregnancy test to be used in the film). It ends with a delightfully random series of trivia facts about the production (and other things that have no relation to the film, like that Cleopatra married two of her brothers), which I think is a first. There is also a commentary track with like six or seven people, including director Peter Stanley-Ward. As with all these multiple people commentaries, I have no idea who is who, but it’s a good track all the same; they not only admit certain mistakes (always a plus with me) but they also have a sense of humor about the low budget, instead of whining and using it as an excuse as several other low-budget filmmakers have done on these things.

So was it worth all my efforts? Eh, not really - the thin story means that I probably won’t remember much about it in a few months. But the visuals, interesting killers, and often successful humor (“If it’s a boy we’ll call him Rupert, and if it’s a girl we’ll call him Rupert”) was enough to make it enjoyable all the same. And having seen more than my fair share of American “true” independent films, it’s nice to see one from across the pond for once.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The She-Beast (1966)

AUGUST 5, 2009

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 4!!!)

It’s been a while, but I’ve finally found another movie on the Tales Of Terror set that made it worth the purchase. All I ask for is four good movies on these things - which would translate to about 5 bucks per film - but such films have been difficult to find on this set, which is half poverty row 1930s/40s junk and half 60s fare like The She-Beast (Italian: La Sorella Di Satana), which is a delightfully humorous take on the standard “couple enters strange town and gets menaced” plot.

Right off the bat I was enjoying myself, because the couple is a wonderfully sarcastic couple of pricks. They snidely mock each other, the people they talk to, their surroundings... it’s like if Fletch found a soul mate and decided to take her to Transylvania (which is called Transylvania-Town here). And some of their humor actually works into the plot; after encountering a creepy old guy, she asks him if he knows Dracula. He of course has no idea what she means, but later on they meet Van Helsing ('s descendent, but come on), so her smartass comment sort of comes full circle.

Also the wife is played by Barbara Steele, in a rare non-ghost/witch role. I love this woman dearly, so to see her playing someone on my wavelength (i.e. a charming jerk) added immensely to my enjoyment of the film. It’s a shame she didn’t get more roles like this (or, if she did, it’s an even bigger shame I haven’t found them yet). Apparently, she could only film for a day, likely due to having to play dual roles in sixteen other movies that day, so she’s not in it a lot, but she makes an impression.

I also liked the relationship between Helsing and the film’s hero, Ian Ogilvy. It reminded me a bit of the Polanski/Jack MacGowran dynamic in Fearless Vampire Killers (which came out a year later), and while the hero gets most of the funny lines, Helsing works in a few as well. Hell, even the antagonists are kind of funny; at one point a cop is admonishing their Igor type guy, who is panicking about his situation (being in jail) and the cop tries to calm him down by assuring him that “For running over a chicken you won’t get more than 2 years!”

Only bummer was the ending, which is pretty abrupt and not very satisfying. We spend like 5 minutes with a trio of cops trying to fix their car, before our hero and Helsing just quickly drown the monster and everything turns out OK. I would have liked a bigger battle, or at least not so much time spent with people who didn’t really matter. Plus, the score here is straight out of a Benny Hill episode; the movie has humor, but it worked because it was in an otherwise straight up horror plot. If you’re going to resort to farce/slapstick, it severely diminishes the impact of the horror angle.

The cropping was awful; while a few other scope films on the set got some semblance of a letterbox transfer, She-Beast did not. Adding insult to injury, there’s a gray and black stripe running over the right side of the frame, resulting in even MORE picture loss (plus it's a B&W transfer when it's a color film). There’s a bit where Helsing is yelling at Ogilvy, and except for Helsing’s hand occasionally swinging in and out of the shot, you can’t see anything but a hallway. Apparently, Dark Sky has recently released a widescreen transfer (with a commentary by Steele!), I might have to pick that up.

Also on that commentary is producer Paul Maslansky. If his name sounds familiar, that’s because he produced all of the Police Academy movies, as well as similar films like Ski Patrol. It’s worth noting that I was far more amused by this than the bulk of his legit comedies. I won’t deny that it could have used some Michael Winslow though; the bad dubbing here resembles his Bruce Lee shtick anyway.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Clown Murders (1976)

AUGUST 4, 2009

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Many people know that The Clown Murders boasts an early, largely non-comedic role for John Candy. But not as well known is the fact that the title was shortened from The Clown Murders One Guy In The Film’s Final Five Minutes. Producers apparently felt that the title was not only too long, but would give away the suspense of the film’s most pressing matter, which would be “Exactly when the fuck is anything going to happen in this goddamn thing?”

A chicken is killed early on, but other than that, the entire movie consists of largely unappealing actors sitting around yelling at each other. There’s a guy named Rosie who wants to party and get laid (he’s like 40 though, so it’s kind of sad); a guy named Peter who just moans and bitches about everything; Charlie, the ringleader of the group; and then Ollie (Candy), who just eats stuff, including fresh donuts that he found on the mantle in an abandoned home. The plot is about how they kidnap a woman to prevent her husband from signing off on a land deal in time, thus keeping their childhood farm from being torn down to make condos. But a guy in a clown mask shows up and begins picking them off one by one....

Well, that would be the case if this was actually a horror movie. Instead the clown shows up, watches them for a while, throws an ax at one (missing entirely) and shoots another. The film’s total body count is two (three with the chicken), and the other guy isn’t even killed by the clown. Ollie shoots him, then weeps. That, plus the fact that even a blind guy could identify the clown before he even appears, renders the film largely suspense/thrill-free, saved from the crap bin only for the inherent creepiness of clowns, a nifty bit involving an electric fence, and a John Candy love scene.

Make that rape scene. He doesn’t really seem to be into it, but the girl is in total command (and on top, obviously) and having a grand old time as Candy reacts like a guy having a nightmare. It’s probably why the film is commonly listed as a horror film.

And it’s a shame that it’s not really horror, because the few scenes that qualify as such are actually kind of creepy. Director Martyn Burke (director of the DTV Stallone flick Avenging Angelo) takes a page from fellow 70’s Canadian film Black Christmas and has the clown say some creepy gibberish as it stalks Charlie around a barn, and the afore-mentioned electric fence scene (Charlie is trapped between one and a locked door) is probably the only suspenseful bit in the entire film, since it’s not yet clear if Charlie will survive this non-ordeal or not. But really, how can you call your movie The Clown Murders and present the only two murders in the film (one is an accident committed by a non-clown) in the final five minutes? That’s not a title, that’s a spoiler.

As for Candy, well, he’s not bad. He’s had other dramatic roles (JFK, for example), so it doesn’t have as much pure novelty value as some might think. Also, Rosie is constantly on his ass about his eating/weight, and he’s snacking on stuff in every single scene he’s in (even when they are all singing, he pauses to take a big bite of a sandwich). Given how he died, it’s sort of depressing to watch, as many of his more popular films presented him as a big lovable guy, not a “fat” guy like Chris Farley. His weight wasn’t really a factor in stuff like Great Outdoors or whatever, so to see it used as the “comic relief” in a dramatic thriller is rather mean-spirited.

See, this is the type of film that should be in the remake game. It’s got a perfectly decent plot (and I’ve already requested the return of “real estate horror” anyway), and if the clown/mystery stuff was bulked up to be an actual focus of the film, it could actually be a lot of fun, especially with some meaty actors in the roles (given the age groups - I would actually try to get a few of the Ocean’s 11 guys in there - Charlie’s subplot about trying to win back his old flame even mirrors the Clooney/Roberts stuff from the first one). But the way it’s structured is just too sluggish, and the actors too unappealing (except for Candy none of them have gone on to have any sort of popular career) for it to work properly; most folks would be completely bored out of their mind by the time the “plot” kicks in, and even that stuff is too minimal to make getting there worthwhile. Plus, a better director would find a way to make it so that there was more than one possibility for the identity of the guy in the mask.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Sharks In Venice (2008)

AUGUST 3, 2009

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

As it is Shark Week, I wanted to watch a film with sharks. Unfortunately, I got Sharks In Venice, which is about as much of a shark movie as Eraser is an alligator movie (or were they crocodiles? I forget). It’s more of a crappy ripoff/blend of Last Crusade and Cliffhanger, with Stephen Baldwin forced to help a bunch of bad guys find their treasure in the canals/tombs of Venice. Even the score is copied from another film (The Abyss, of all things). Worse, the best shark scenes are largely inconsequential; most of the time they are just another obstacle for the humans en route to treasure. Mafia Goons in Venice or Tricky Maze-Like Canals In Venice would have been just as, if not more, acceptable titles.

Another one could be Machine Guns In Venice, since more people die by gunfire than sharks in the film. The entire climax is all but completely shark-free, it’s just a big shootout between a bunch of faceless mafia goons and equally faceless SWAT guys. It’s not a bad shootout (there’s a cool overhead tracking shot of the entire scene), but I rented a movie called SHARKS In Venice, so I want to see some goddamn SHARKS. Finally, Baldwin and the main bad guy topple into the water, and a shark comes more or less out of nowhere, and since it’s a heroic shark, eats only the bad guy and leaves Baldwin be. Hilariously, the shark is then forgotten about; no attempt is made to kill it or at least herd it back to the ocean proper. Throughout the movie, it has occasionally eaten a tourist or attacked a boat, but I guess all is forgiven. Then again, maybe it died on its own - the final shot is of a canal with a shark fin breaching the surface, but the fin is stationary, which means the shark has stopped moving and is thus dead.

Speaking of the boat attack, even if there was only one shark scene in the entire film, you know that the only reason to set the damn thing in Venice is to have it attack/eat a gondola. So why does it take a full 50 minutes to get to this scene (in an 87 minute movie)? This should have been the opening scene. And many of the middle scenes. And the climax. In fact, this movie could be absolutely nothing but an endless series of scenes in which sharks eat gondolas, and it would be the better for it. Like anyone gives a shit about the treasure hunting nonsense.

There is one thing about the treasure story that got me thinking. Baldwin is offered a full 20 million dollars to help the bad guys find it, but he turns it down because of the danger (his dad died doing the same thing). I couldn’t help but wonder - how many movies would turn out differently if a noble guy was like “Holy shit, a lot of money to do what they will probably end up forcing me to do anyway? Done!”. Furthermore, would they pay up? Incidentally, I had just watched the film 12 Rounds, which is a Die Hard 3 ripoff, and was pondering a film where a bad guy attempts to force a good guy to aid him in his nefarious deeds, only to get the wrong guy. But the guy has nothing better to do that day so he helps the bad guy just for the hell of it, even though he has nothing at stake. I think it’d be pretty awesome.

Oh, and everyone speaks while they’re underwater, despite the fact that they have breathing apparatuses in their mouth. Another blunder on director Danny Lerner’s part that causes some confusion is that everyone looks the same with their scuba gear on; resulting in a scene in which it seems like Baldwin is getting attacked when it’s some other guy that you forgot was even in the scene (this actually happens twice in a row). That’s what happens when you film everything in frenetic rapid-fire edit closeup to try to hide the fact that the effects suck.

And Lerner should know better, since a quick look at his IMDb filmography reveals that this is like his tenth shark movie. In fact, pretty much all of his movies have one of the following words in the title: Shark, Force, Octopus, Seals (as in Navy or US), Strike, Operation... you get the idea. Then again, maybe all those other shark films have worn him out, and he’s looking to branch out a bit by blending his shark stuff with his action stuff. Either way, he’s not a very good director. He even botches traditional transitions: there’s a scene where Baldwin holds a map up, and we get a full screen shot of the map. This usually means that we’re about to fade to an overheard shot of the same location albeit in the real world, but he fades to a side view of some other place. Schmuck.

As complete junk goes, I’ve certainly seen worse. It’s rarely dull, and even though there aren’t nearly enough shark scenes, at least there are shootouts and clumsily staged hand to hand fights to enjoy in the meantime. And Baldwin is the worst action hero since Rob Schneider in Knock Off, which adds to the hilarity. But Goddammit, I’m not here for any of this stuff, I want sharks! And as a shark movie, it’s a failure. As a perfectly crappy piece of junk that you throw on while drinking, I place it somewhere between a lesser Seagal movie and Thomas Ian Griffith’s Die Hard ripoff Crackerjack.

And one final note, to First Look Studios - Turn down the fucking volume on your shitty logo! It’s always about 10 decibels higher than the film itself. So I turn down my receiver, and then I can’t hear the opening dialogue of your equally shitty movie.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Frighteners (1996)

AUGUST 2, 2009

GENRE: COMEDIC, GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Something in the universe was telling me to watch The Frighteners today. During a midnight screening of Dungeonmaster (AMAZING movie, by the way), I was trying to think of other Richard Moll movies and for some reason thought of The Frighteners, which he does not appear in (I got him confused with R. Lee Ermey I think). Also, I was mildly smitten with Dungeonmaster lead actress Leslie Wing, and began wondering what else she had been in and more importantly, what she looked like now. So I went home and looked her up on the IMDb, and saw that she had a small role in... The Frighteners! And then to cap it off, I logged onto Twitter when I woke up and saw that Joe Lynch’s weekly “Top 3” poll (where he inquires of our top 3 films from a certain director) focused on Peter Jackson himself. Christ, how could I NOT watch the movie now?

Now, I HAVE seen The Frighteners' theatrical version, but only the one time, when it first hit VHS. I didn’t care for it much then, but my taste has changed a lot since then (to compare, the film came out in the summer of 1996, same as ID4, a film I used to really enjoy but now can’t even get through). So I bought the special edition DVD when it came out in late 2005 (and now that I finally opened it, I can apparently see King Kong for free! Score!), intrigued to give it another look. Aiding matters was the fact that it was a director’s cut, which for Peter Jackson is NOT the usual bullshit. While I think the Fellowship (my favorite of the 3 LOTR films) extended edition just slows the movie down more often than not, both TTT and ROTK are better films in their longer form, and I hoped that Frighteners would be no different.

(As for King Kong - I can’t possibly fathom the idea of sitting through an even longer version of that one, since it’s biggest problem was that it was an hour too long as is.)

Well, I can’t really remember what I disliked about it back in 1996, but I’m still not entirely sold on the film. It’s not bad by any means, just sort of... missing something. Maybe the extra 14 minutes made it better, maybe not. I love the concept, and a lot of the character stuff is terrific (the idea of a guy living in a half-finished dream house is outstanding), but there is a sort of disconnect for me; I never really got “into” the movie. And, again, it’s simply too long. If someone were to ask what the film was about, you’d probably say “Michael J. Fox can see ghosts and uses that skill to track a ghost serial killer” or something to that effect - but this story doesn’t really kick in until almost an hour into the narrative.

Plus it’s missing the key ingredient for one of these con man setups: the successful con. If you think about the movies in which people pretend to stop some sort of monster or supernatural entity for profit, and then we discover that they were working together (Brothers Grimm is a good example), they always start off with one that works great, and then they get a new job in which the plot kicks in. Here, we get this prologue, and then a funeral, and then we meet Fox, and then he pisses some guy off, and then we meet the female lead, and then.... you get the idea. It’s like 30 minutes into the movie by the time we realize Fox’s gimmick. And we never get to know why he even bothers doing it; the one we do see (where his ghost friends don’t commit to a full blown haunting, which screws things up for him) only occurs because he ruined the guy’s fence and needs to avoid having to pay for repairs by “trading” for a ghost removal. So does he only do this when he screws someone over? We never know. As a result, the concept never really blossoms.

And then it’s another 20 minutes or so before the serial killer plot kicks in. Again, it’s an interesting concept, but by the time it’s actually a full part of the narrative I was starting to get disinterested. I felt like I was watching a failed TV show pilot that they decided to film more stuff for and release it as a feature (indeed, it WOULD make a good TV show, I think, with the serial killer thing being a season-long arc sprinkled in with stand-alone adventures).

The comedic angle is also a bit scattershot. It starts off with humor, but it’s all but completely phased out of the 2nd half of the film, which is a bit odd. I think the casting has a lot to do with that: you have Michael J. Fox, Robert Zemeckis, and a high concept narrative - expectations are that the comedy and genre stuff can blend seamlessly and continually; the BTTF films always came through on that front. Not that the movie HAS to be funny, but it’s strange that it started off that way and then got forgotten about. Jeffrey Combs adds a bit of levity with (introduced too late) FBI agent character, but even that angle is missing once he is revealed to be a sort of secondary villain.

It is saved, more or less, by the incredible FX and sheer ENERGY of the film though. Summer of 1996 was essentially the first big CGI summer, since Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and it took about three years for everyone else to develop, produce, and release their own CGI spectacles. So you had Twister, ID4, Eraser, Escape From LA, plus CGI “trickery” films like Multiplicity and The Nutty Professor, all coming out at the same time (ironic footnote - Michael Bay’s The Rock was one of the smaller budgeted films of that summer). Frighteners looked better than just about all of them, and still holds up today (if I liked the movie more, it would be a definite Blu-Ray request). And unlike a lot of those films, the effects were used to tell the story (it’s about ghosts, after all) instead of being designed around them like Twister (“OK, we have these awesome destruction scenes! Shit, we need something to bridge them....”). And Jackson was in fine form as a director; it’s got his trademark low angle close-ups and stuff, plus the camera never stops moving (but not in the Bay way, the shots usually last more than a few seconds). He fails miserably at making New Zealand look like a “small American town”, but I was amazed to discover how small the budget was on the film; I would have guessed at LEAST double what it was, especially with visual effects in pretty much every shot of the film’s final hour.

The DVD comes jam-packed with the type of stuff that would make me cream if I loved the movie (and it does have its fans - my friend Matt prefers it to just about every other Jackson film, including the LOTRs). There’s a commentary (haven’t listened yet), the trailer, and a nice storyboard piece that runs 45 minutes. Jackson explains how he hates sitting there skipping through the images with the chapter skip button, so he filmed all of the boards and set them to Danny Elfman’s woefully generic Danny Elfman-y score, providing occasional narration with what is going on or why things changed. It takes patience to get through the whole thing (I nodded off) but it’s the best way of presenting storyboards that I can recall.

The other side of the disc has the real meat: a 3 hr+ documentary about the film’s production. It’s not straightforward like other lengthy docs, I think it was originally broken up into sections (pre-production, casting, etc) on the laserdisc release - but it’s a terrific piece all the same. Having watched the pointlessly overlong Halloween documentary recently, I know these things can flounder, but this one is precisely what I would want from such a lengthy endeavor. Jackson is constantly providing insight and context for what we are seeing, the post production process is covered at length, and, for me anyway, it actually feels shorter than the film itself, despite being an hour longer. My only complaint is that we have to deal with Richard Taylor, a man with such a sleepy and nasally voice that it actually kept me from watching the extras on the TTT and ROTK DVDs, because I couldn’t bear to hear him yammer on anymore after I went through the ENTIRE Fellowship 4 disc set a few years back (including the commentaries, it takes a total of 24 hrs to “complete” the set). But his 1996 hair was delightful, so I guess it’s OK.

Peter Jackson is one of our most gifted filmmakers; few would argue that. But like Sam Raimi, I think he works better with limited funds. I enjoy the LOTR films just fine, but he had blank checks to work with on the 2nd and 3rd films (so it’s not really surprising that I liked the first one the best), and none of them are as interesting to me as Brain Dead or Meet The Feebles. Someone needs to rein him in. I mean, how the fuck did he spend 200 million on Lovely Bones? I read that book, it’s about a ghost watching her family muck about for a few years before her killer slips on the ice and dies. I could have filmed it for 20 million, half of which would be spent on acquiring the rights to Josh Todd’s incredible song of the same name. Hopefully, he will take a cue from Raimi and do his own Drag Me To Hell. In the meantime, The Frighteners will have to do as the last time he was working without the entire world at his fingertips, and it’s a shame that it’s not as good as its potential.

What say you?

P.S. In case you were wondering, Ms. Wing was still quite attractive in 1996, despite being made up to look like a WASP-y matron.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Night Of The Demon (1980)

AUGUST 1, 2009

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BOOTLEG)

Those of you who have enjoyed the Horror People, Dear Reader series that Simon Barrett and I have “created” are probably wondering why we haven’t had a new installment since May. Well, we DID, but the track we recorded turned out to be for a film (Suburban Sasquatch) that was not in the public domain, as originally thought. The track may surface someday, but to make amends, we decided to do another Bigfoot/Sasquatch type film to make up for it: Night of the Demon. We finally got a chance to get together to record it this past weekend, so look for it hopefully this or next week.

Unlike Cathy’s Curse, which we had both seen, Demon had escaped us up until today, but rather than go in blind, we decided to watch the film in silence (I use the term more loosely than any term has ever been used before) and then watch it again with the recorder on. I would argue that some of our quips were lost this way, as the lack of spontaneity resulted in a “I don’t feel like making this joke again” feeling, at least for me, but it was an interesting way to do it - I can’t recall the last time I watched any film twice in a row unless I was the one making it.

Luckily it’s not a painful film to sit through again. Night of the Demon is probably the most ridiculous and gory Bigfoot movie ever made. The plot (which was largely stolen in Boggy Creek II) is more violent than most Bigfoot films, which allows director James C. Wasson to include tits (the ugliest pair I’ve ever seen I might add), a penis which is then castrated, a couple of disembowelings... plus an inordinate number of “environment” kills. Even though the film pre-dates Jason, you might get an F13 vibe from the way that Bigfoot (or whatever the hell he is) uses various tools (an ax, a pitchfork) and the settings (broken windows, stoves) to kill people, instead of his Sasquatchian arms and claws. I almost considered calling the film a slasher, because it unfolds almost exactly like one, except for all of the flashbacks.

See, not only is the entire film the account of Bigfoot’s sole survivor, but the story he tells often pauses to have flashbacks. I had to keep wondering how the guy was actually telling this story. “We got into camp, and I then told them the following story...”. Since none of our real characters gets killed until the film’s final 5 minutes (which unfolds entirely in slow-motion, Devil Times Five-style), these stories he tells are about other people getting killed. Who actually told HIM these stories is unknown, since they often depict one or two people who were in the woods and then killed, leaving no one to tell the tale, but it beats nothing happening until the end. Plus these deaths are far more entertaining than the ones in the finale - all of the ones I mentioned earlier happen to random people who are introduced just to be killed moments later. Most of them don’t even have names; the credits list characters such as “Van Lovers” and “Older Girl Scout”.

Also this has to be the only monster movie, or possibly ANY movie, in which a woman seems to orgasm herself to death. The lass and her beau are going at it, and then Bigfoot drags the poor sod out of the van and eviscerates him. She watches all this go down, but her screams sound far more orgasmic than terrified. And then, after a particularly heated cry, she suddenly just dies without the Bigfoot ever laying a paw on her. It’s breathtaking.

Odd bit of trivia: at one point our heroes stumble upon a cult in the middle of the woods. They look like regular townsfolk and are singing as they prepare to make a sacrifice. The scene is very reminiscent of the “Amazing Grace” sequence from A Touch Of Satan, and I said as much on the commentary track. Later, when I IMDb’d “Night of the Demon” in order to prepare for this review, A Touch Of Satan was one of the search results (it actually comes before this one), as it apparently goes by the same name sometimes. Weird.

There is one scene that sticks out as particularly unpleasant. We discover that the Bigfoot wanted to keep his bloodline going, so he rapes a girl. And unlike Jason’s rape exploits in Friday the 13th 3, this is most definitely NOT up to interpretation. But what makes it really awful is that the girl’s dad just sort of stands there and watches it while he asks God why he would allow such a thing. To hell with God, man, why are YOU allowing such a thing? Go knock that fucker off your daughter before he shoots his Sasquatch semen and gives you a grandson you most definitely DON’T want strangers to ask you about!

The film is, for all intents and purposes, unavailable; Simon’s disc was a DVD-R copy of a VHS with bad tracking, and the (out of print) DVD release is reportedly the same. A real DVD has never been released, and the VHS itself is long out of print (apparently, it was hard to find even in the format’s heyday). If anyone gives us shit about putting up a copy with our commentary over it, I will simply counter-sue them for not giving it a proper release after all these years. You simply have to see this thing to believe it (I haven’t even mentioned the “Bad Lettuce!”).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Necroville (2007)

AUGUST 1, 2009

GENRE: COMEDIC, INDEPENDENT, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Here’s a change. Usually these things are felled by poor direction or a concept that goes far beyond the resources of the production, but in Necroville’s case, those things are fine. The scope is smaller than something like The Dead Next Door or Shatter Dead, and the direction is quite good. The problem is that the script doesn’t have a single original idea, and the blatant theft from Clerks really ruined it for me.

The two main characters in Necroville as 100% identical to Randall and Dante, a fact that never stops distracting from the film’s strong points. Jack is a borderline neurotic who is having girlfriend issues, and Alex is a wiseass who never stops to think before he speaks, and seemingly has no life outside of insulting his “best friend”. They both swear way too much (and I’M the one saying this), make Star Wars references that double as dialogue, and spend most of the film talking and yelling at each other. Christ, they even work at a video store. There’s a bit of Shaun of the Dead in their roles as well, but the dialogue style is far more into Kevin Smith wannabe land than Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg. Plus, while they are better than some other no-budget films, the actors aren’t nearly as appealing as Brian O'Halloran or Jeff Anderson (it’s not fair even trying to compare them to Pegg or Nick Frost), which just makes the Smith-ified dialogue even harder to endure, because you know how much better similar sentiments can sound when delivered by better actors. They also have grating running gags that are the polar opposite of amusing. One involves the Dante guy hitting the Randall guy in the arm and saying “that’s my girlfriend!” (usually with an F bomb or two thrown in for good measure). The other involves Alex’s addiction to drinking holy water, which is just a setup for a dumb way of killing the vampire. It’s unique, yes, but nowhere near as amusing as it’s supposed to be.

Also, they blow their best ideas in the first few minutes. It starts off with a zombie wandering into their video store, and they are both distracted. You think that they will see the zombie, and then be like “Holy shit!” but it turns out that they know it’s a zombie and just don’t feel like dealing with one right now (one of them has a shotgun in his lap and eventually blows it away). So it’s one of those “Zombies are just an annoying part of life” movies. Then, they demonstrate this further when a homeless man asks them for spare ammo instead of coins. Unfortunately, after this, it’s just the usual stuff, with scenes you’ve seen in other movies blended with the annoying girlfriend subplot. Zombies aren’t the only problem, they also deal with werewolves and vampires (the film’s main villain is a vampire, in fact), overstuffing the narrative and giving our heroes more things to have a laidback reaction to. I always feel that these kitchen sink style movies are simply trying to cover the thin story, and this is no exception.

Another issue with this setup is that the villain hardly factors into the movie, giving the climax (which goes on way too long) a disconnect from the rest of the film. Had the girlfriend turned into the big bad, it would have been OK, but instead it’s just this shitty vampire guy who has been sitting in a chair for the whole movie. The girlfriend is dealt with in a quick epilogue, and then they steal a joke from The Simpsons (think “You shot the zombie Flanders!”) to finally end it, about 20 minutes after what would have been a reasonable end point for the film. You would think with a low budget (and presumably, limited time) that they would opt for a tighter script so they wouldn’t have to spread the wealth so thin, but that is not the case.

Luckily, the production value seems to be higher than the film’s reported $7,000 budget. The zombie makeup is good, and there are a lot of locations and minor action scenes to enjoy. And I laughed at a few of the sight gags (the bad guy drinks a baby!) and the odd Christopher Walken impression on a TV commercial advertising the “Zom-B-Gone” (yep, they crib from The Power Puff Girls too) service the heroes work for. The rotoscoped CG effects are largely acceptable, and derivative or not, the film is rarely boring as they are constantly hunting a different monster or moving around. The “zombies and humans co-exist” thing seems to just be a way to keep them from having to close off streets and such, because the town doesn’t need to look deserted. Even so, it’s kind of funny to see people going about their business in the background as our heroes prepare to fight off the giant swarm of zombies standing nearby.

The DVD seems jam-packed, but it’s largely filler. There’s some deleted scenes and outtakes that won’t be missed, and some behind the scenes stuff with the guy who played the vampire (ditto). A look at the Photoshopped special effects could have been interesting, but it’s just a bunch of clips set to music with occasional before/after still frames - the FX guy provides no insight as to how he achieved the effects or what he actually added to the scene. Then there are a pair of short films of no relation (they share some crew), and a commentary by star/co-director/co-writer Billy Garberina (he played Jack). This is the type of commentary where having the other guys (Adam Jarmon Brown, who also wrote and played Alex, as well as co-director Richard Griffin) would have been more appealing, as they are all friends and have clearly worked together before. But it’s just him, and he’s not particularly interesting - he just (very quietly) runs through the usual stuff - where this was shot, what that background object is referencing, etc. I was tuning in and out, so maybe he acknowledges Clerks as an influence at some point (he points out Evil Dead references at least), but if not, he should be ashamed of himself.

I appreciate the effort, and on a technical level its superior to many of its peers (including the others I watched in the past week - I need a moratorium on these things), but the script was just too damn messy for me to really get into it. Maybe 10 years ago it would have been kind of amusing, but constantly cribbing from a unique voice (of a film that hasn’t aged well to boot) just rubbed me the wrong way.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...