Fear Of The Dark (2002)

JANUARY 13, 2010

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, TEEN
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT VIEW)

I think it should be a rule that if your movie shares a name with an Iron Maiden song, then that song should be played over the opening and end credits, and maybe during a few other scenes at random for good measure. Especially in a movie like Fear Of The Dark, where nothing much is happening and you know for sure that the only two people in the movie won’t ever actually get hurt. A little Maiden goes a long way.

Anyway, the movie isn’t all that bad, but I had to keep reminding myself that it was intended for children. I’m sure if I was 12, when I was more susceptible to fear (and not knowing what the word “susceptible” meant), I would have been pretty scared and telling my friends at school how awesome it was. But now that I’m damn near 30, I had to settle for merely admiring certain aspects of it, giving it the benefit of the doubt for its cheesy ending, and promptly forgetting everything about it as soon as it ended.

One admirable aspect is the acting. Both Jesse James and Kevin Zegers have impressed me in other films, and they do so here. Even with the thin plot and occasionally awkward writing (James and his mom have a relationship that borders on flirtatious), they create real characters, so that by the 3rd act, when the 16-ish Zegers is hiding under the sheets with his brother because he’s afraid of the monsters in the closet, you actually believe that he’s scared, and like him enough to almost hope that the filmmakers never grow a pair and actually hurt/kill him.

And even with the thin plot and the fact that the whole movie takes place in a not-very big house, it feels shorter than it is. It gets a bit repetitious at times (lot of “why did that light go out?” “OK I’ll check it out.... (2 min later) It was nothing!” type stuff), but I was never really bored, and was surprised to see that 50 minutes had gone by when I thought it was more like 30. In fact, it reminds me of the movie Clownhouse, except without the actual threat of murdering clowns. In fact, Clownhouse itself only “works” on me as an adult due to the horrible backstory causing the creepiness; the actual movie, I now realize, is just as repetitive and back-loaded as this one.

By back-loaded, I mean yes, there are actual monsters in this movie, oddly enough. I legit thought it was all building toward an “it’s all in his head” (or worse, a dream) thing, but nope. For whatever reason, his house is being plagued by some legit monsters that can be killed with the light (this movie pre-dates Darkness Falls, for what it’s worth). I just wish that they did more, and did it sooner. It’s almost built like a surprise for the ending that there IS indeed something to be afraid of in this movie. You look at a movie like Halloween, where it’s similarly playing on childhood fears (the boogeyman) but there it was never any question that there was a real threat. I think the reveal should have been moved up and allowed for a more exciting third act.

I also think one of the monsters should have gone RRAAAAAAAARGHHHH! and beheaded the annoying girlfriend character who shows up in the second half. She’s played by that one non-superhero girl from Birds Of Prey (if you remember that show), and her appearance slows the movie down considerably. I figured she was fodder, so I was willing to accept the diversion. But sadly, she survives, so that’s some major BS right there.

Mostly though, I just like the idea that they made a horror movie for kids and more or less deliver the message that there ARE monsters in the closet and under the bed. Enjoy the added therapy bills, parents!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

(Lesbian) Vampire Killers (2009)

JANUARY 12, 2010

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

With a cover so shamelessly ripped off from another movie (Zombieland, to be exact), I thought for sure that Vampire Killers (aka Lesbian Vampire Killers) was an Asylum release. But nope, it was actually from Dimension Extreme! Since they have a slightly more dependable output, I hoped that, if nothing else, it would amuse me for 85 minutes and not make me wish I was back in that decrepit, empty theater watching Transylmania.

And it didn’t! It’s not a good film at all, but it lived up PRECISELY to my expectations: I was mildly amused and I never once wished I was watching Transylmania instead. But that’s about it. It’s only been a few hours and I’m already hard-pressed to recall anything about it beyond what I wrote in my notes, and if someone were to quote a line from the film I doubt I’d be able to recall the reference.

Part of the problem is that it spends so much time homaging other movies that it never has the time to have its own identity. It starts off like Shaun of the Dead (British slacker gets dumped, finds solace in a bar with his chubby, rude best friend), then dips into American Werewolf territory (they hitchhike their way to a local bar and are not welcomed by any of the patrons), before finally settling for a mix of any number of horror comedies, including Buffy (slacker learns his birthright is to slay vampires), Fright Night (young dolt teaming up with harried expert), and Evil Dead (lot of excessive bodily fluid gags, a cabin in the woods, etc). Add in the usual “straight” movie references (Star Wars) and the (admittedly cool) Hammer look to the final half hour (graveyards, fog machines cranked to 11, etc), it’s a wonder that they even bothered coming up with the original title instead of just calling it “Vampire” or something.

One thing it DOESN’T really deliver is lesbians. I’m sure the title change had more to do with possibly offending some folks, but I often wondered if they had cut the movie along with the title (IMDb claims there was an 88 minute cut at one point - anyone know the difference?). They are referred to as lesbians, and they fondle each other ever so slightly every now and then, but really, the video for "I Would Do Anything For Love" has more R-rated action in this department. In fact, other than language, the film as a whole is rather tame - no blood (just white goo - unless this is supposed to be jizz in which case the movie is disgustingly R rated), no nudity, not even any real explicit violence. The big bad vampire just gets a sword to the chest.

Speaking of jizz, the film’s most original gag is that the only sword that can kill the main vampire has a handle that is shaped like a penis. It’s a funny sight gag (as are some of the followup gags, such as the hero’s reluctance to grab onto it), but I was a bit puzzled at what this may be suggesting - the only way to stop a lesbian is with a cock? Did Banky write this movie? Or am I reading too much into this nonsense.

And I don’t know who thought it would be funny or helpful or necessary to have onscreen captions for every location, but they aren’t any of the above. Especially when they repeat - it’s been 5 minutes since we last saw it, do we really need to be reminded that Fletch (awesome name by the way) is in the McClaren graveyard? Christ, even Fringe lets us use our noggins every now and then when it comes to labeling establishing shots.

So I dunno, if you haven’t seen too many horror comedies then you will probably enjoy this one, but nearly everything in it has been done before, and better, so its of little use to horror fans. And the DVD doesn’t even have the trailer (it DOES have an unusually long and somewhat out-of-date spot for Planet Terror though - huh?), let alone real special features, so I certainly wouldn’t suggest buying it. It’s the movie free rental days were made for!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Don't Look In The Basement (1973)

JANUARY 11, 2010

GENRE: EXPLOITATION, PSYCHOLOGICAL (literally!)
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

It’s at least once a month that I have the “You REALLY watch a horror movie a day?” conversation with someone, but it’s rare that I am having it while in danger of blowing my streak (which is at around 1050 days right now). But that’s what happened last night, as a friend was grilling me as I was nervously checking my watch, having not yet watched a movie and seeing no tell-tale signs of the gathering being brought to a natural end. So I had to duck out early in order to get home and pop in Don’t Look In The Basement before the dreaded 11:59 PM deadline. I hope you folks appreciate this!

Luckily it’s a pretty good movie. Made on the cheap (and quite quickly) to cash in on Last House On The Left, it’s sort of like a better Dr Tarr’s Torture Dungeon, with an “inmates running the asylum” scenario, except without all the boredom (and Shakespearean nonsense). Christ, this movie offers up two deaths before the opening credits! And one of them was clearly seen by someone involved with Friday the 13th Part V and then copied for Joey’s murder at the hands of Vic, so I appreciated seeing that scene’s cinematic father.

They don’t do a very good job hiding the twist though. I called it early on, and then spent half the movie wondering if it was even supposed to be a twist and I had simply missed the scene where this plot point was clarified. On that note, I think Jack Sholder’s Alone In The Dark was influenced by this film as well, with the colorful inmates and the place being run by someone just as batshit.

I particularly liked how, even though it was a Last House cash-in, the film wasn’t particularly unpleasant. When the sweet and slightly naïve young nurse shows up to work there early on, I expected the worst (i.e. a rape) but the folks there are legitimately insane, not cold-blooded criminal psychopaths. One guy is a simple giant with an affinity for popsicles, one’s a batshit old lady who speaks in babble, one’s an older guy convinced he is still working as a judge, etc. No Krugs or Weasels here.

The film’s quickie production carries some problems, but nothing too damaging. There’s a subplot about broken phones that is way too padded (to the point where its not even remotely plausible), and the twist only works if you accept that our heroine is a complete idiot and horrible job researcher. There are also some bits of dialogue that only exist to explain what is happening in the scene due to primitive special effects, such as when the girl stumbles upon a woman whose tongue had been cut out and helpfully shrieks “Your tongue’s been cut out!”

The ending is a knockout though. The twist is revealed, the patients get their revenge, and then the “hero” patient gets his own revenge on the “villainous” patients. And then: bliss, as the end credits put the actor/character names over shots of their corpses when applicable. What a wonderfully mean-spirited and awesome thing to do. Also, if I were to fall asleep watching the film at the Bev, this particular set up would spare me from having to ask friends if/how certain characters died. I could totally fake staying awake!

The DVD is a horrid relic from the early days of DVD (1999), with nonsense being thrown on it to make up for the fact that it really had no effort whatsoever. “Movie Trivia” is simply a few filmographies for the primary crew members, and the “Preview reel” is as random as they get (Bird With the Crystal Plumage and Gorgo?) without having a trailer for THIS film. And the transfer is a full frame offering from a VHS source. Luckily (?), the film is being potentially remade, so if that comes to pass, I’m sure we can expect a new release. (or should I say, a BETTER release - there are multiple releases already, since the film is apparently in the public domain, but they all seem to be the same bad transfer). Director S.F. Brownrigg has unfortunately passed away (at a fairly young age - anyone know what happened?) but the film was written by Tim and Thomas Pope, who went on to direct The Crow 2 and write The Manitou, respectively. Love to hear those guys talk about it.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Second Chances: Pandorum (2009)

JANUARY 11, 2010

GENRE: MUTANT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)
LAST SEEN: SEPTEMBER 2009 (THEATERS)

As I predicted, Pandorum plays better on a 2nd viewing, and additional bonus points are awarded for watching it at home, where the confined air duct scenes feel more, well, confined. I’m still not entirely sold on the mutant scenes, and I think the Cung Le character should have been excised entirely (why are there TWO badass fighters on this ship?), but overall I was enjoying the film much more for what it was this time around, instead of being bothered by what it wasn’t.

One thing I definitely appreciated more this time around was the film’s rather simple plot, albeit with this huge backstory (Daybreakers also follows this path). The movie is basically about a guy trying to start up an engine so another dude can open a door. Sure, there are mutants spawned by a reaction to their cryo-chamber feeding tubes, and the destruction of Earth, and the titular mental condition that is causing one of our main characters to suffer the indignity of playing out one of cinema’s most overused and lame twists, but we learn about all of these things along the way, as our hero makes his way to flick a switch (sort of like how LOTR is just about a dude tossing away a ring). The similarity to some recent video games (Dead Space primarily) actually makes this more apparent and admirable - so many games extend their length by making you carry out ridiculous missions that don’t really make any sense that you might actually forget what the overall goal is, but that’s not an issue here.

I also enjoyed the sort of ballsy decision to trust a big budget sci-fi movie in the hands of Ben Foster. This isn’t like when Johnny Depp made that Nick of Time movie and left all of his quirkiness behind; this is the same sort of tweaky, off-kilter Foster performance we’ve come to expect, and it helps give the film its own identity even when things get sort of generic (mutant scenes). Even though I don’t care much for the character, his “conversations” with Le are hilarious, because Foster’s baffled expression has the sort of realistic feel that is often missing from these sort of scenes.

Also on Blu-Ray, 1080p Antje Truae. Nuff said.

(I know this would be a good place for a screenshot, but I can't do that with my Blu-ray player. Sorry.)

The Blu has a bunch of the standard features, but they are mostly worth a look. There are close to 30 minutes’ worth of deleted/alternate/extended scenes, many of which I think should have been included in the final film. In the film, technically inclined folks might notice a lot of awkward edits, and more often than not you will see the scene played out as intended in this section (no explanation is given for any of the cuts, but I assume the bulk of them were for time, as the film is longer than average as is). The only one you should skip is the final one, which is sort of a deleted ending that makes no sense whatsoever. Director Christian Alvart and producer Jeremy Bolt also provide an audio commentary, where some of these scenes are mentioned. They also reveal that the film was indeed a combination of two separate (but similar) scripts, which might explain the sort of unfocused feel. Then there’s a short video that details what happened to Truae’s character’s team, and another that’s a commercial to join the film’s flying program. The making of is rather useless, however, as it’s too short to be insightful but it also spoils key plot twists, which makes it lousy for promotional purposes as well. The only thing about it that caught my attention was the fact that producer Paul WS Anderson was nowhere to be seen in the piece. Since he was the one doing all of the promotion for it at Comic Con (Alvart was out of the country), it’s odd that he didn’t offer up a few words for the DVD. I now suspect his appearance at Con was primarily motivated by his desire to start drumming up interest for his Resident Evil sequel (which got announced the day Con started it - SHOCKING coincidence!).

The audio and video are superb. Anchor Bay’s blu-ray output is pretty much always stellar, and this is one of their rare new (and big budget) releases, so fans are in for a treat in the video department, especially during the brightly lit climax. The audio, however, is even better - it’s been a while since I’ve heard such an active surround mix, with the ship’s “dying” sounds and scurrying mutants constantly emanating from the rear channels. And my system is hardly worth bragging about, so I can’t imagine how good it looks/sounds on a top notch LED display with full 7.1 sound (I only have 5.1). It may not be a perfect movie, but it’s definitely worth watching, and if you’re a good horror fan, you should be supporting Anchor Bay’s blu-ray output so that they continue to pursue it for their library titles (Halloween 4, for example!).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Xtro 2: The Second Encounter (1990)

JANUARY 10, 2010

GENRE: ALIEN, CRAP, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

There are a number of films that were disowned by their creators that I happen to like (Valentine is one, off the top of my head), so Harry Bromley Davenport’s dismissal of Xtro 2: The Second Encounter wasn’t really too much of a red flag for me. But 89 minutes later, I realized he was right on the money - this movie is a stunning bore, without a single good kill or even enough “so bad it’s good” moments to make it worthwhile.

Davenport also said that the film had no relation to the original, but I assumed he was exaggerating and that it simply didn’t have any returning characters. But no, this movie hasn’t even the slightest resemblance, which has to be a first (and last) for a movie that was filmed as a legit sequel (as opposed to say, a retitled Italian movie). The alien is no longer a parasite inside human forms; instead it’s a combination of a Chestburster from Alien and a Pumpkinhead from Pumpkinhead. And they keep mentioning an incident in Texas, but the first movie took place in London, so it actually feels like a sequel to a different movie entirely. Davenport said that he didn’t have the rights to the story, but I don’t think merely saying “London” instead of “Texas” would have caused him any legal trouble. Besides, since the film rips off Alien and Aliens at every turn, shouldn’t he be more worried about getting sued by Scott/Cameron?

But sequel continuity or not, it’s a wretched film from the first frame. The effects are terrible, and apart from the odd chest-bursting ripoff shot, none of the kills are shot/edited properly; you see a guy scream and then it cuts to someone throwing blood on the wall (I’m waiting for the movie so shitty that you actually see the crew member throwing the blood). Some are put together so poorly that I couldn’t even tell what was happening; there’s an elevator shaft scene where the Xtro seemingly plummets onto a guy and then they both fall down and get sliced up by a big fan (in an elevator shaft?), but I didn’t understand that until someone clarified it later. From my POV, the Xtro puppet fell, a guy screamed, and then someone lit a frozen turkey on fire and threw it at a fan.

In a way it’s sort of the prototype Sci-Fi original movie, the type that cluttered the 90s and early 00s before they switched to Bulgaria forests. You’ve got the underground base, the team of commandos, the has-been lead (Jan-Michael Vincent, whose past popularity remains a mystery to me), a bunch of crappy actors who inadvertently look the roles they are playing (lab techs, blue collar folks, etc; a Hollywood production would have amazingly beautiful women as lab techs, these broads wouldn’t be allowed within 50 yards of a Bruckheimer production), and a plot that is stolen from other movies. Character development is limited to a single adjective description (the “asshole”, the “funny guy”), or in some cases, a role from a better film (Nicholas “Krycek” Lea’s character, for example, is simply Michael Biehn’s Hicks with shittier dialogue).

I was entertained precisely twice during the entire fucking thing. At one point, a character informs “Dr. Shepard” of his plans to blow open a hatch, which made me think about Lost for a few minutes instead of paying attention to this movie. The second is when I realized that the main girl was also the mom in Silent Night Deadly Night. And thus, the phrase “Silent Night Deadly Night star’s career plummets” was born. Thanks, Xtro 2.

There’s a third one as well, which Davenport claims is his favorite. While I hardly doubt that it’s better than the first one (by all accounts, Xtro 3 doesn’t have circus animals or a naked Maryam D’Abo), I have to believe it’s better than this, so maybe I’ll check it out someday. I’m in no rush though.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Long Weekend (1978)

JANUARY 9, 2010

GENRE: PREDATOR, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Ironically, my wife decided to watch (most of) Long Weekend with me instead of going to the recycling center as she often does on Saturdays (something I requested as the designated “cardboard” bin was overflowing). So instead of doing her part to save the world, she watched a horror movie about the world getting revenge on two assholes. I was hoping that would scare her into going, but no. She went to yoga while I played Dragon Age (which is awesome but hard - goddamn bot teammates don’t know how to use their good attack spells!). If a koala or some sort of sea creature eats her today, she will regret her decision I am sure.

Anyway, I love the concept for this movie, and most of its execution (more on that later). Sort of like Frogs, it’s about how the world can strike back at annoying humans via its large selection of animals and sea creatures. A possum bites our hero’s finger, a massive spider-web seemingly traps the heroine’s car, and a goddamn eagle bites a presumably innocent truck driver, distracting him and causing him to mow down one of the protagonists (oddly, the 1st of two movies I watched today - the other being Knightriders - that features the film’s main character getting nailed by a giant truck out of nowhere). There’s also a possibly-not-as-dead-as-they-thought dugong (“Sea cow”) whose “corpse” keeps moving closer to their camp.

And of course, they are unhappy, so most of the non-horror scenes concern the two of them bickering over pretty much everything. Usually filmmakers try to keep it even in terms of who is the “bad guy” in their trouble, but its no question that the wife (Briony Behets) is the bigger pain in the ass here. She complains about going, she complains about staying, she snaps at the husband (John Hargreaves) for turning off the radio while she was clearly asleep (“I was LISTENING to that!” she says as she wakes up), and she tries to convince him that their dog is dead so that they can leave without her (it had merely run off).

However, she’s not as much of a villain to the environment as he is. This guy is a real piece of work. Tosses a cigarette into the brush, throws glass bottles into the ocean (and then shoots at them), chops down a tree for no reason (he admits this!), litters... It’s amazing it takes Mother Nature so long to get back at the sod. He’s also a bit of a moron, instigating not only the possum but an obviously angry dog later on.

The only slightly negative aspect is that it gets a bit repetitive/slow. Since there is no actual villain per se, the movie is almost over before they realize that they’re in actual danger. There’s a local guy who gives them the evil eye early on, maybe the screenwriter (Everett De Roche, which wasn’t a surprise as this is, after all, an Australian horror film) should have brought him into the story as a red herring somewhere around the 50 minute mark, just to break up the monotony a bit. It would also work as a sort of reveal for nature; we as an audience know how much trouble locals can be for vacationing city folk, so to see him be relatively harmless in comparison to what the earth could do to them would be kind of cool I think.

The DVD has my favorite execution of a bonus feature ever: an audio interview played over the still gallery. Both things are fine to have, but listening to an audio interview over a still of the actor gets dull. Likewise, no one wants to look at pictures set to a loop of the score. So presto: they combine them, and you get 2x the entertainment value in the same amount of time. There’s also a commentary by the producer and the DP, but it’s very dry (nearly 20% is about using Panaglide/Panavision) and their voices are a bit monotone, so go with caution. There are some good tidbits here and there, of course, but many have been repurposed for the IMDb trivia page anyway.

In closing, I just want to pose a question: does anyone ever have a relaxing vacation in Australia? It seems like going there is merely the world’s most elaborate (and expensive) suicide mission.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

99 Pieces (2007)

JANUARY 8, 2010

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT VIEW)

If the 1st HMAD movie concerned “BC” going off to a house in the woods to write a book about all of the movies about writers going off into a house in the woods to write their own book, then the sequel would have to be about BC being trapped by a guy who talked to him over a PA system and forcing him to work out a series of traps involving the Saw and Cube movies, plus their indie cousins like 99 Pieces, which is a unique take on the setup (the guy is trapped in his own house, for starters) but ultimately too convoluted for its own good.

Warning, there are spoilers ahead for both this film and the film Usual Suspects, so if you haven’t seen them yet, you really should go watch Usual Suspects.

Suspects has a pretty convoluted plot, and all of the connections and such probably aren’t crystal clear after a single viewing (I’m STILL picking up on minute things). But on the plus side, you get a bunch of great actors being badass, some well-shot action sequences, Oscar-winning dialogue (“We can put you in Queens!” “Really. I LIVE in Queens!”)... the whole nine yards. If you were starting to get overwhelmed with exposition and revelations, you could at least still enjoy the scenery, in other words. But 99 Pieces, which eventually gets even MORE convoluted, in my opinion, doesn’t have that going for it. The actors are all amateur and hardly award-worthy, and the entire thing takes place in a dark house (shot with digital video that doesn’t allow for things like a good enough contrast ratio for you to be able to separate one dark object from another). So even though the ending reveals that the story is more or less not supposed to make any sense (again, like Suspects), getting there takes far more patience than should be necessary. I started getting really frustrated when flashbacks revealed, for one example, that two characters - neither of whom are the ones trapped in the house - had a gay affair. Who the fuck cares? It’d be like blaming William H. Macy for all of the shit that happened to everyone else in Magnolia. And that just brings me back to the same point - it’s not that the twist ending is bad, but the movie didn’t give us enough reason to be patient enough to get there.

I also didn’t buy how quickly Josh accepted his situation. He doesn’t really panic, or try to get out of it, or get help. The killer guy has him do all of these ridiculous things (throw away all of the perishable food, shut off the water to the house, remove all of the light bulbs in the house, etc) and he does them seemingly without question. If someone kidnapped my wife and told me that I needed to get rid of all my forks, I’d ask the guy what the fuck for. And when he said “JUST DO IT OR I’LL KILL HER!” I’d be like “You’d kill someone because her husband liked his silverware? You’re a goon.” And then he’d be like “AAAARRRGGHH!!!” and probably run out to smack me. And then I’d stab him with a fork.

Plus the killer offers a point system, and Josh can use his points to get food or water or whatever for the day, 1 point for him, 1 for his wife (Josh actually writes “My wife” instead of “Rebecca”, for some reason), etc. But one of the things is electricity, which doesn’t make sense as he has taken away all of their lights anyway, and I doubt the dude would want to watch a DVD with other matters at hand (though maybe he would - he owns a copy of Starsky and Hutch and has a Pooh’s Heffalump Movie poster in his living room - guy’s obviously a movie fiend). Hilariously, the killer says early on that this is his first time, so some of his rules and stuff might not work or make sense. Nice way to cover your plot holes, sir. And the water thing, again, only makes sense once you get to the end and realize what the point was, so I wish they had come up with SOME reasonable (fake) explanation so I wasn’t spending the entire movie going “Why did he make them shut the water off?” Unlike some other puzzle based movies, I knew there was no way I could figure it out myself due to the setup (it starts pretty much on their first day of imprisonment, before we meet any of the “puzzle pieces”, i.e. other characters), so my mind was focused on things like this.

I was also continually annoyed by the on-screen text captions. Reminding us what day it is was reasonable, but the particular puzzle piece number and whatever clue it contained was a bit much. Sure, it’s unique - I guarantee this is the only feature film to have the words “Body Wash” appear not once but twice over a shot of a bruised and malnourished man laying on the floor - but annoying all the same.

Also I liked the soundtrack a lot, but it didn’t quite fit the movie at times. Sometimes it had the effect of putting the Garden State soundtrack over The Machinist. I’d buy it in a heartbeat on CD though.

It’s an ambitious effort to be sure - Anthony Falcon was the (take a breath) writer, director, editor, composer, title creator, location supervisor, prop master, make up artist, executive producer, casting director, producer, AND star of the film. But ambition doesn’t have a direct correlation to merit, and while I liked the final twist and was intrigued for a while, the movie ultimately tried my patience far too often to really enjoy it. And the final twist renders all of the puzzle-solving scenes meaningless, so it’s the rare twist film that doesn’t inspire a 2nd viewing either. Good effort and all, but it just missed the mark for me.

Oh and there's only 45 pieces. Not sure what that's about.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Landlady (1998)

JANUARY 7, 2010

GENRE: BLANK FROM HELL
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT VIEW)

As The Landlady slogged on towards its dull-as-the-rest-of-the-movie finale, my buddy Matt and I began to discuss the sad fate of most of the principal cast of The Godfather films*. Pacino and DeNiro have become parodies of themselves, Brando became a punchline and died as reclusive tabloid fodder, Robert Duvall was in Four Christmases... But Talia Shire just seemingly disappeared. In fact, Landlady is the only movie post Godfather III that I can even recall her being in, and I hadn’t even heard of it until I began surfing through Netflix’s insta-view list for something to watch that WASN’T some random indie movie that was shot for 12 bucks with a bunch of the director’s friends.

Needless to say, it’s hardly the best vehicle for a comeback. Sure, she gets to be front and center without some Italian guy overshadowing her for once, but it’s a lousy movie all the same. I guess we’re supposed to feel sorry for her, but the movie starts with her killing her husband and then a few minutes later she’s chastising strangers for using the Lord’s name in vain, so I’m not really feeling the warm and cuddlies. And the only likable supporting character is Jack Coleman’s neighbor who Shire falls in love with, so you know he’s gonna be fine. So it’s a horror movie without a shred of suspense or intrigue.

Back to Coleman - he lists this film as one of the most embarrassing things of his career on his little Heroes blog. But he wrote this AFTER that show’s 2nd season, so you KNOW it’s terrible. Like me, he actually dozed off at one point (except he was filming, whereas I was just watching it), but unfortunately I woke up and simply watched the rest of this lousy movie, whereas he woke up and went on to star in a successful TV show a few years later.

Shire gives it her all though, tossing off the feeble one-liners with far more effort than they deserve (and even managed one laugh, when Coleman says she deserves a gold medal and she mutters “I deserve a gold ring” - compared to the rest of the lines, it’s positively hilarious). And there’s one good kill in the movie, when her and this other guy are carrying a large trunk down the stairs and she lets it fall and crush him. However, director Robert Malenfant botches it by putting the guy way at the bottom of the stairs long before the trunk gets there, which doesn’t make any gravitational sense.

Speaking of the director, he has also made similar “____ from hell” movies: The Perfect Nanny, The Nurse (and those are just the ones that caught my eye). You’d think since he’s obviously such a big fan of the scenario that he would be good at it, but if anything this should be the best, as it came between the others; after he’s had some practice, but before he started to get bored. If I’m right, and this is indeed the best of the three, then I swear I will quit HMAD for good if it comes to the day that my only option is one of those two movies. And I have to blame him, because the film’s producer is none other than Pierre David, who also produced such films as Of Unknown Origin and The Brood. I can vouch for that guy.

The script is just as terrible. You’d think after killing 3-4 people, Shire’s character would learn to come up with an alibi for that person when someone came looking for them, but she never does, resulting in saying things like “Oh she’s staying with her friend... Mary... Smith.” One could chalk this up to her simply being a moron, but she was smart enough to get away with killing her husband in the first 5 minutes (and moving away the next day without the cops being suspicious, apparently?), so you’d think offing some random schmuck from her building would be easy enough to cover up. And the plot contrivances are painfully stupid, like when Shire and another neighbor both have identical dry cleaning packages and get them mixed up in the hallway. If the movie was funny/stupid, it would be one thing, but other than a few of Shire’s off-the-cuff remarks, it’s played straight, so these dumbass moments are even more grating.

The only sorta creepy moment in the entire thing is when Shire installs a smoke detector with video camera (she apparently called the Spy store) in Coleman’s living room, and then replaces their shared wall with a two way mirror so she can watch him as he sleeps. However these elements are hardly used in the movie after their introduction, which means that for the first time ever, one can utter “This was better in Sliver.”

Well, whatever.

What say you?

* John Cazale, of course, more than made up for their nonsense, dying with five movies under his belt, all of which were nominated for Best Picture (3 of which it won).

I couldn't find a trailer for this movie, and I've run out of Meat Loaf videos, so instead, just watch the first ten minutes of NOT QUITE HUMAN, and you like what you see, head over to Youtube for the rest!

PLEASE, GO ON...

Paranormal Entity (2009)

JANUARY 6, 2010

GENRE: GHOST, HAUNTED HOUSE
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

“You know this is Paranormal ENTITY, right? Not Activity?” Ah, the Blockbuster staff, always trying to keep me from watching complete shit. But I laughed and explained to the girl* that that was precisely why I was renting the movie, as I had to know what The Asylum was going to do with a movie that had a budget less than that of their usual productions. While their nonsense like Transmorphers and The Day The Earth Stopped couldn’t possibly compete with its big-screen brethren, Paranormal Entity’s namesake film only cost 11,000 dollars itself, which means that for the first time, the excuse “we didn’t have as much money” couldn’t possibly apply (not that I ever really give that argument much weight anyway; a case I’ve made several times in the past). In fact, it’s theoretically possible that this film had a HIGHER budget than the real one.

So I guess we have definitive proof that The Asylum just plain sucks. I can’t blame the director, writer, or actors for this snoozefest, because they opted not to give them any credit (and the film has no IMDb page), so I’ll chalk it up to their lazy approach to filmmaking. Unlike most of the films they ripoff, they must have actually had a copy of PA to work from (or they shot this thing last month after pooling their money together to send someone to the theater to see it), because several of the “scares” are stolen directly from Oren Peli’s film - the loud thumping footsteps, the broken photo frame directly over someone’s face, sheets being pulled away, sleepwalking outside in the middle of the night, etc.

What they DON’T have, however, are likable characters. Some folks thought Micah was a bit of a douche, but I thought he was pretty normal, and Katie was cute/not dumb (people who thought they should just leave apparently didn’t pay attention - the ghost was following her all her life). But these folks (a mother and two teenage children played by 25 year olds) just constantly bicker, and it’s not until the final 2 minutes of the movie that someone (a fourth character - a paranormal investigator who looks and acts exactly like the one in PA) points out that the ghost will “probably” follow them if they leave, so until then you’re just saying “Why the fuck aren’t they leaving?” (unless the film’s gotta-be-illegal swipes from PA make you think that it’s the same deal and the ghost is after them before that point anyway).

They also don’t have Peli’s skill at setting up the layout of the house, or his ability to create dread. I never quite got where any of the rooms were in relation to another, and it wasn’t until late in the film that I even realized that there was a 2nd floor. Worse, the main kid (who we only see like twice) has set up at LEAST four cameras (Micah had one), which further deflates things. Katie might walk downstairs while we watch Micah sleep, and our minds make up what’s happening. This movie simply switches to another one of his cameras, and the character does nothing interesting. So it’s doubly stupid.

Also, what the fuck do these people DO for a living? They never leave the house, nor do they seem to have work-from-home jobs or anything of that nature. But the dude can afford four nice cameras somehow. Then again, maybe the family saved money from not buying things for their rooms. The mother’s has a nice little piece of wall art and a canopy bed, but the sister’s room is a bed and a dresser and a crucifix, and that’s it. No posters or photos, no clothing on the floor, nothing. At one point the brother opens her dresser and in the top drawer is her journal and a scarf. Maybe I was wrong, maybe they DID spend less than Peli did for his film.

And it’s poorly made, no shock there. There’s a scene in which the sister claims she is getting ready for bed when you can clearly see that it’s still broad daylight outside. The faux improvisation usually just means that the actors swear at each other, and Mr. Anonymous Movie Director blows his wad by giving us a scrawl at the top of the film that informs us that the brother killed himself after being accused of killing (and raping, though I’m not sure where the hell that came from) his sister and the paranormal investigator. So you wait around 80 minutes for them to get to that point. I know Blair Witch had the “this is the found footage” thing, but they didn’t go into specifics, and we don’t know for sure that any of them are dead anyway.

Plus it’s simply not scary or interesting. Something falls off the wall or breaks (off screen), and the guy films it while his sister and mother try to explain what happened. There’s a decent/creepy moment when the mother appears standing before the guy’s bed after slashing her wrists, but that’s about it. Usually it’s just stuff like the (literally) TEN MINUTE scene of the guy walking around shooting close-ups of the footprints that the ghost made (out of their father’s ashes - which is sort of badass).

Extras on the disc? Fuck, this thing doesn’t even have a goddamn scene selection. Pressing the menu button during the film will simply pause it for a second, and when the film ends it just goes into an endless loop of blank screens that run for four seconds before starting over (and once you’re in this loop, there appears to be no way to get back to the movie without shutting down your player entirely and starting it up again). Looking at all of the evidence, I would have to guess that Paramount’s unusually quick release of Paranormal Activity on DVD and the film’s shocking box office success caught them off guard, so they scraped this thing together over the course of a week or two so that they could have it in stores on the same day. And thus, things like a DVD menu, credits, an IMDb page, and a decent movie were simply not in the cards.

What say you?

*Same girl, with whom my previous longest conversation was “Find everything you were looking for?”, was taken aback by my haircut. She was the third person of the day who I never actually talk to that was surprised by this. Is this normal for people? I never notice things like that.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Dead Curse (1985)

JANUARY 5, 2010

GENRE: COMEDIC (?), GHOST
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Prior to the start of Dead Curse (Hong Kong: Meng Gui Po Ren), I joked that we should call up Dreamworks and inform them that there was an Asian ghost film that they had not yet remade, and try to secure the rights before someone else found out about it. So I was surprised to see how much of the groundwork for the typical J-Horror remake was seemingly laid in this film: it’s actually about a pissed off ghost seeking revenge against a woman and her small child. Sound familiar?

Of course, it’s also a mid 80s Hong Kong horror movie (one being shown at Brian Quinn’s sort of Grindhouse Night spinoff series), which means it’s also pretty goofy, occasionally features martial arts for no discernible reason, and has been apparently translated by a drunken four year old. And it’s also as obscure as can be physically possible; while none of the previous films have had wealthy IMDb pages, Dead Curse’s page is a ghost town even by those standards. My inquiry as to whether or not the film was horror turned into “has this movie actually been SEEN before?” - the page has not one external review, user comment, or message board posting. Christ, the goddamn CAST isn’t even listed, and, needless to say, it didn’t help me learn if it was horror or not.

Luckily it was, with a ghost trying to get revenge on the family of a cop who interrupted her attempt to sacrifice a child. To do this, she... well, shit, I already forget. Most of the movie was just a series of scenes in which our heroine wanders between the homes of a few other characters, seeking information. The cop gets killed about halfway through, but otherwise I don’t think anyone actually died until the end (not the most effective revenge-seeking ghost). There are also a pair of little child ghosts (dubbed "Mr and Mrs. ET" by a little kid whose sex was a bit of a mystery to me) leading the kid around and failing to kill him/her, despite several opportunities. In fact, the night’s 2nd film had a little kid constantly being put in danger but not dying, which was upsetting to me. You can’t blue-ball horrible people like me twice in one night! If I owned it, I would have gone home and watched Who Can Kill A Child twice in order to make up for it.

The translation errors kept me entertained though. Most of them were simple verb/pronoun mix ups (“is” instead of “are”, “him” instead of “he”, that sort of thing), but there were a few scenes that I simply had no idea what the fuck they were supposed to be saying. My favorite, however, was early on, when some punks on motorcycles harass our heroine and some other folks, and as they race off, someone yells “Are you living too long?” I think they meant to more or less say something like “You’ll be dead soon (if you keep up your reckless behavior)!”, but the mis-translation made it sound like the guy was responding to the threat on his life with a philosophical musing.

I also enjoyed the film’s silly subplot about the number 7 being related to the ghostly goings-on (so this influenced Number 23 too?). One of the things that they mention is that the Soviet Union shot down a 747 in July. And that was funny enough, but later, we find out that a related character was actually on the plane! Goddamn commies! Also, like Lost with its numbers, I started looking for 7s in the movie and going “Seven!” whenever one appeared, though more often than not they seemed to be coincidental, especially since this was a Hong Kong movie - they usually forget about their own subplots not long after they are introduced anyway.

All in all, it wasn’t one of the better movies I’ve seen in this series, but as always I had a blast watching it all the same. The poor translation and gonzo storytelling are always worth a few laughs, and the crowd is always appreciative (but not annoying). There’s no place I would rather watch Dead Curse, I guarantee it.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Header (2006)

JANUARY 4, 2010

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Back when Ransom came out, I remember people getting all pissed off that some reviews noted that Gary Sinise’s character was the villain, because the ads didn’t give that part away (even though it’s “revealed” in the film’s first act). Likewise, I’ve been told not to “spoil” what exactly a Header is, because it’s supposed to be a big surprise when you see the movie. So I won’t, but I will say this - don’t expect to be kept in the dark too long, because the movie tells you what a header is within minutes of its first mention.

And that kind of bummed me out, because it’s built up to be this huge reveal in the stuff I’ve read about the movie (such as the “Rue Morgue” article), and I wouldn’t have minded a little more of a mystery to it. Like the victims of headers are found, and the cops are like “what the fuck is happening?” and then they catch someone in the act maybe at the end of the second act. But no, it’s all digital, but in general terms, we know before the end of the first reel. Bummer.

Besides the script’s impatience, my only other real issue with the movie is that it was kind of sloppy, and being on a digital format, I don’t see why these issues couldn’t have been corrected. Light will go from overly bright to overcast (and back and forth) during a scene on several occasions, and there are an inordinate number of shots that are clearly just zoomed in versions of previously-seen angles. Digital doesn’t look all that great as it is, why make it look worse by zooming in on a shot with your NLE instead of just re-shooting it properly if you forgot to get a closeup on the day (which seems to be the usual cause for these shots)? It’s not like the star of the movie is Tom Hanks and you can’t get him back, the dude was probably just the director’s buddy.

Otherwise, it’s a wonderfully offbeat little movie, with almost zero sympathetic characters (the closest we get to one turns out to be a drug addicted whore) and a gleeful approach to deviant sex and all purpose hick-ery. Our “hero” is a guy who masturbates by the side of the road because his wife can’t perform (she is sick), one of our villains is a footless shoemaker (he’s also toothless, and I must admit I didn’t understand half of what he was saying, though it’s all quite charmingly terrible), and, well, if you know what a header is already, then: the movie has about a half dozen headers. And not always on women. In short, it’s the most glorious depiction of sex-crazed rednecks since Bloodlines.

The disc’s only extras are a bunch of interviews with key talent from the film, as well as Jack Ketchum, whose interview I couldn’t even finish because I can’t stand listening to the guy. The only one that I enjoyed was the director (Archibald Flancranstin - this has to be a pseudonym, right? The only thing that comes up for the name “Flancranstin” on Google is about this guy/movie), because it was the shortest. The one on the effects is good too, because it has a few participants, isn’t shot in a static angle of the guy in front of some trees, and inadvertently reveals how long the film has been on the shelf (one of the guys says that he got the job because the original guy went off to do Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, which would be in 2003 as the film came out early in 2004). You also learn that the brain matter is hog meat mixed with macaroni salad, which sounds delicious to me, personally.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

TerrorVision (1986)

JANUARY 3, 2010

GENRE: ALIEN, COMEDIC, MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

As an editor (Tourist Trap) and sound recordist (Texas Chain Saw Massacre), I think Ted Nicolaou is a hell of a guy. But as a director, he seems pretty abysmal. I was willing to chalk up Puppet Master Vs. Demonic Toys to the fact that it was a movie called Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys and thus no one could have made anything good out of it, but Terrorvision (AWESOME title) is only slightly better, and his other movies are either low-budget kids movies like Leapin' Leprechauns, or mid-90s Full Moon movies, all of which seem to suck based on my experience.

The main problem with the movie is that they were trying to be funny, when it would have been a lot funnier to just play it straight. Everyone is so broad and garish, their behavior only elicited groans for the most part (I was often reminded of the awful, thankfully short-lived FOX sitcom The Pitts - not a good thing). The dad in particular irked me to no end; it was like a live-action, even more jittery Quagmire from Family Guy. I know he was SUPPOSED to be annoying and dumb, but that only works in small doses, yet he takes up half the goddamn movie it seems with the go-nowhere "swinger" subplot (he's also one of the last to die). The only exception is the spaced-out metal-head OD (played by Jon Gries! Ben Linus' Dad!!!), who is more or less charmed by the giant man-eating monster (because it reminds him of E.T.) and is convinced that he's "metal" because he seems to like his metal studded arm bands. Whenever he was on-screen I was far more amused than I was during scenes with the other characters. I also dug the Gramps character, but he is killed off in the first reel (though he pops up briefly in the film's funniest sight gag, forty minutes later).

It's also painfully repetitive. The monster never leaves the house, so people just keep showing up there and getting killed. I actually dozed off for two ten-minute chunks and had zero problem catching back up with the "narrative"; if anything I probably could have slept for twice as long and not been in any different a position.

The monster, however, is amazing. The design suggests a mutated Madball toy, and he talks a bit for good measure. And he racks up an impressive body count, though the gore is a bit lacking (when a guy gets impaled, green stuff shoots out?). Once again, we have a movie with an R rating that seems to be aimed at children. But the gonzo soundtrack by The Fibonaccis makes up for it - I would buy this soundtrack in a second. As I've said several times, no horror movie with a theme song can be all together bad.

I think that is the main problem with the movie, ultimately: it's too down the middle. It's got some funny stuff, but the unfunny stuff seems to be the primary focus. The monster is awesome, but his kills are borderline off-screen. Etc. I'd almost rather a completely terrible movie (especially at a midnight screening) than one that was sort of dull with occasional bits of insanity.

As always though, I must remember/confess that I am not a pot smoker and thus I am probably not the target audience for such things.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Death Note (2006)

JANUARY 2, 2010

GENRE: COMIC BOOK, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

The power in Death Note (Japan: Desu Nōto) is a pretty awesome one - you write someone’s name down and they die (cue Rob Zombie trying it on my name). But unfortunately, the executions themselves are pretty dull; pretty much everyone dies via an After Effects jitter/zoom effect and a heart attack. I was hoping for some Final Destination-esque “setpieces”, but the movie takes a different route, one that is interesting but not quite compelling enough to keep the 126 minute (!) film from lapsing into dullsville on several occasions.

Instead, the police figure out pretty quickly that all of these deaths are the work of one guy, and a great deal of the movie is devoted to them trying to narrow his identity down, and then once the culprit (a guy named Light, dubbed Kira by the press) has been identified, they just watch him and try to catch him in the act. Meanwhile, Light/Kira tries to clear his name while still killing random criminals. This leads to some pretty sweet sequences (I love the bit where a guy takes the bus Light is on hostage, but Light is being watched by a cop so he is unable to write the guy’s name down and end things), but a lot of repetition, and with the film running long even by Asian standards, I began to wonder if they were using the length to make the film feel more like an epic even though it wasn’t one.

There were also a lot of holes and completely idiotic moments. For example, at one point Light kills a reporter who is calling him out live over the news. Ignoring that the guy is just doing his job and isn’t worthy of dying anyway, why would he do it live on the air? All it does is cement the police’s theory about him in the first place, and probably lose public support in the process. I know if some dude took down Brian Williams in front of my eyes, I wouldn’t back him even if his target was Hitler (this theoretical dude is also a time traveler, I guess). And when he googles “Kira”, it returns 50,000 matches, which he claims is all about him. Uh, no pal, some of that are just the blogs belonging to some dude named Kira. It’s also one of those movies with a wealth of rules that don’t make any goddamn sense at all beyond providing conveniences for the plot. Why would you get 40 seconds to add a cause of death to the Death Note? Why is the statute of limitations on a death note 23 days? Such arbitrary numbers.

I do like that they explain that you need to have a clear image of the person you intend to kill in your head though, because I started wondering if all people with that name were dying. It’d be kind of funny if it just killed them all, Terminator-style. Some dude has a beef with his gym teacher, but the guy’s name is George Clooney - what does he do? No one wants Clooney harmed. Likewise, what if the guy was using an alias? If I wrote down Michael Douglas, Michael Keaton would die instead (or as well). The “see them in your mind” thing is a damn good rule.

Since this is based on a manga, that means we have to deal with some additional nonsense not really related to the plot, such as the fact that the embodiment of death is obsessed with eating apples. There is an honest-to-God subplot about the fact that he can’t eat apples while the room is being watched by the cops. Also, said death-incarnate looks like this:

I mean, I guess it looks more like my idea of death than say, Brad Pitt, but still - what the fuck kind of goofy ass shit is that? Between that and the fact that our main character’s name is Light, and with all of the death, I legit thought I was watching some sort of live action Final Fantasy/Persona hybrid movie.

But the movie is entertaining enough for the most part, especially during the scenes where Light has to maneuver around the limitations placed on him in order to continue “Kira’s” work. And I liked that for the most part, they kept it more global (though we never really see it in action anywhere besides Japan), instead of having the kid use his power to kill bullies and teachers who gave him a bad grade or whatever (which is actually what I thought it was about, for some reason). Apart from the reporter and a few “witnesses”, he only kills horrible criminals, so that’s cool.

One of the brief extras is about what happens in Death Note 2, which looks pretty sweet as it seems Light and L (his nemesis) team up to take on another guy who has the Death Note (why is Death Note written in English?) power. I would tell you how to find this particular piece (of about 13, plus a few trailers), but the extras menu is the most confounding and annoying goddamn menu I’ve ever seen. The selectable items are scattered at random over the screen, with no indication as to what are buttons and what are just pictures of apples. And there are three pages of such apples, but there is no way to navigate from one to the other. Every now and then it just switches to another group, and then there’s no way to get back. And nothing is really worth all of the trouble, some of the director’s comments are interesting but most of it is just generic behind the scenes stuff. The trailers spoil most of the movie, and many of them make a big deal of the fact that the film has the Red Hot Chili Peppers song “Dani California” as its “theme song”, which is odd since the song is about a runaway girl. But oddly, as I was double checking the song’s title (since every other RHCP song is about California and I can’t tell them apart), I learned that the character in the song is a cop’s child who enjoyed making trouble wherever she went and eventually met her match, so sex aside, it’s kind of a fitting theme song.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Mister Frost (1990)

JANUARY 1, 2010

GENRE: RELIGIOUS, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT VIEW)

I think Mister Frost was the first movie that made me aware that some films were never given a wide theatrical release. I remember seeing it advertised in the in-store "magazine" for my local video store, and thinking "What is this movie? How did I not hear about it when it was in theaters?" I then promptly forgot all about it until today, when I realized I had no disc rentals and went to Netflix to see what they had available for instant viewing.

Well I'm glad I saw it now instead of then. Even now I was a bit bored, but as a kid I probably wouldn't have been able to even finish it. It's an intriguing idea to be sure, but the execution is a tad too dry, with the few actual horror highlights seemingly thrown in simply to ensure the audience knew they were watching a horror movie (not unlike the way I felt Antichrist, incidentally). I kept hoping for Goldblum to get a chance to cut loose and chew the hell out of the scenery (and the set, and the other actors, and maybe even the camera itself), but apart from a big rant halfway through, he is actually sort of subdued the entire time.

Except, of course, for the opening scenes, which are also pretty much the film's best. A cop comes to investigate a claim from two would-be robbers that they saw a body in his garage, and Goldblum is baking a souffle. He then takes a Polaroid of it and throws the perfectly good treat away, explaining that he's only interested in "the trophy" (the photo, of which he has several dozen lining the walls of the kitchen) and that he doesn't care much for sweets. Hahahaha, awesome. Nowadays this would be the "whimsical" trait (read: all that passes for character development) of a minor character in some bullshit faux indie movie starring Zooey Deschanel or whoever the fuck, but to see it used in more or less the same capacity for the goddamn DEVIL is awesome.

However, that leads to my biggest problem with the film (which I otherwise enjoyed, though not in a "I must watch this again right now!" type of way), which is that they don't play out the mystery of whether or not he is the Devil or just some loon long enough. Pretty much at the end of the first act, he melts a piece of jewelry with his bare hands, which means he's either the Devil or the world's most limited-use X-men, but either way, not just crazy for sure. I would have liked to have seen this been more of a through-line of the movie, with the reveal saved for the end of the SECOND act, resulting in a crazy-ass third act.

The film's other best scene is when Goldblum goes off on a rant, and makes a pretty amazing point about how the concept of God and the Devil is no longer as relevant in the modern world. Paraphrasing here, he basically says "Back in the day, one would pray to God or sell their soul to the Devil in order to get what they want, now they take a pill." Again though, it brings up an intriguing idea that the movie never really explores - is anyone even afraid of the Devil? Other than Kathy Baker's character, he doesn't really interact with anyone else who is aware of his identity.

Most of the horror stuff stems from the subplot in which Goldblum possesses a fellow patient, who gets out and begins killing priests. The scenes aren't particularly violent, and again, seem like they are just there to spice things up a bit. The film's most chilling scene, however, is actually kill-free. It's a flashback in which Goldblum tells the cop that his wife's final words were to curse him for not being there to save her (dude, that is HARSH, even for the Devil).

This scene also clarified an issue I've always wondered about: in movie scenes where people tell a story, are they actually telling the person each thing that the characters in the story are saying? Apparently, they do - when the cop finishes telling Baker's character the story, she inquires about a particular line that Goldblum said. I want to see an alternate version where we just watch the cop recite each line. "And then I said 'What have you done?', and then he said 'Wouldn't you like to know?' and I said 'Tell me or I'll kill you!' and then his eyes lit up like that's what he wanted me to do, and then he leaned back in his chair a bit and smiled and said 'If you must.', and then..."

I'd totally endorse a remake of this movie. Not only do I think the idea of the Devil not being the go-to guy for when people want a quick fix for their lives might be even more relevant today (in addition to more and more pills, we also have Scientology, debt settlement negotiators, lawsuits filed for any old reason, etc.), but also they could toy more with the idea that he might just be some loon. And with a wacky enough actor in the role (hell, Goldblum could even reprise it, though, of course, Nic Cage would be my choice) I don't think people would even feel cheated if he DID turn out to just be some whackjob this time around. And then maybe the original movie would get released on DVD, as I understand this US version is 15 minutes shorter than its UK cut. Whether that version is better or not, I have no idea (I can't even find a description of the differences), but I might be curious enough to watch THAT version someday.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...