Peter Rottentail (2004)

FEBRUARY 6, 2010

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

Before I give some mild praise to Peter Rottentail, let me assure you that this is not a very good movie. It’s amateurish, awkwardly paced, cheap beyond belief (a guy supposedly gets cake thrown at him - and we don’t even see the cake), and doesn’t have nearly enough kill scenes. But it’s still enjoyable, partly because at the end of the day it’s still about a killer anthropomorphic bunny, and because filmmakers John and Mark Polonia have no pretense that they are making high art.

And that is why I always encourage folks to check out the commentary tracks when they are available. You could turn on any five minutes of this movie and come away thinking its one of the worst movies ever made. But if you listen to these guys talk, you know that they are just having fun - they still work their day jobs and make movies when they can, and they use what little money they got from the last one in order to fund the next. And the commentary is full of self-mockery (when a homeless guy opens a trash can, one of them quips that their other movies are in there) and, more importantly, a lack of bitterness in their tone. Sure, they still chalk up the film’s faults to a lack of money or resources, but not in a defensive way; they are merely providing an explanation, without the usual slams on Hollywood and the studio system that many independent filmmakers resort to on their commentaries.

Now, before you call hypocritism (not a word) - a reader claimed that Splatter Movie (which suffers from many of the same faults yet I didn’t like it) is also the result of a group of folks who are having fun. Now, I am sure to some extent that is true, but I think that if you’re going out of your way to hire Debbie Rochon and Tom Sullivan, and rent locations, and set up a website with the viral marketing “this was a real movie that had a tragedy” nonsense, then I think you’re taking your film at least a little bit seriously. These dudes shot this thing in their house (and it actually looks better than Splatter Movie to boot despite being 5 years older) for 400 bucks.

But again, this isn’t some lost gem. Only someone who has A. made similarly goofy movies himself with his own friends and B. has seen far too many pretentious indie horror films can probably enjoy it, and even I had problems at first. But after like 20 minutes or so (of the 70 minute film, 5 of which are the slowest crawling end credits I’ve ever seen) I became sort of charmed by the film’s good natured silliness and complete lack of pretension. The bunny has a few one-liners and kills someone with a carrot, and the characters he encounters seem to think he’s just a guy in a bunny costume, so again, it’s not like they are asking us to buy into any of the nonsense. And near the end of the film, a lonely girl who lives across the street from the hero is inexplicably smitten with him and takes him to bed, which of course allows for an epilogue where she gives birth to a baby bunny (who can already talk).

Also, this killer rabbit movie has a character named Lenny. Come on, that’s awesome (even if it’s the wrong spelling - Steinbeck’s rabbit-loving character was Lennie with an “ie” instead of a “y”).

However, none of it is gratuitous. There’s not a lot of blood, the language is PG-13 at best, and there isn’t any nudity. So instead of Jack Frost or a Troma-type thing, you get this goofy movie with a practically PG approach. I just assumed it was a budgetary decision, but the directors claim on the commentary that they simply don’t like splatter and hardcore horror, and I believe them (though the idea that it would potentially “limit their audience” is a bit hard to believe - how wide is the potential audience for these movies anyway?). It goes along with the film’s breezy charm, and I would like point out that this makes the 2nd laid back horror movie in a row I watched, after yesterdays Blood Of Dracula’s Castle. I’m all for these sort of films - if you know of any others, send ‘em my way!

Some of the cheap work-arounds are just inexcusable though. I mentioned the cake already (and that’s in the first minute of the movie), but there’s also a scene where a girl is watching what I guess is supposed to be a sitcom but is clearly just a looped clip of 3 people giggling, which inadvertently makes it the creepiest part of the movie. And the Polonia brothers’ editing skills leave much to be desired, particularly during conversation scenes, where they constantly cut on each line, instead of holding on someone’s expression while the other talks, or cutting to a master (it’s particularly jarring on phone call scenes). And (as alluded to on the commentary, as if it wasn’t obvious) they film several scenes without all of the actors present, which makes the scenes awkward and disjointed, something that could be avoided with a bit of “scheduling in advance” magic. Plus it seems like everyone is either a drama student or a family member - film on Sundays after church! No school, no work, family’s all together...

The sound effects need to go too. They play this same BOING! sound every time the bunny jumps or takes a step, and also what sounds a lot like the opening drum/synth notes to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” every time the bunny appears. I know it’s goofy, and it’s fine at first, but they get really grating after a while, but not to the point where they become funny again. Less is more!

Along with the commentary, there’s a 12 minute interview reel with the directors and some of the actors, box art for their other films (this is their 20th film!) and the trailer. Co-writer John Dalton also provided a commentary, but I just don’t have the time for two tracks on Peter Rottentail. But the track with the Polonias is a must - both for the laughably “no shit” moments like when he points out that the non-actor kid is his own son (and then praises his performance!), and for the enthusiasm (but not the blind kind) that the two share as they discuss this and their other films (which they tend to address as if we have seen them all - though I guess if you are watching a commentary track for Peter Rottentail you’re either a die hard fan of these guys or are an OCD sufferer watching a horror movie a day). And they reveal that despite being shot in 2003, the actor who is seen playing with an original Gameboy and then later an 8 Bit NES system wasn’t given props - the scenes were shot in the actor’s actual house and filmed “as is”. I love it.

One final note, as I went to the IMDb to check the spelling of their name, I learned that one of the brothers (John) passed away from an aneurysm in 2008, at the age of 39. Not only is that depressingly young, but as someone who has an otherwise irrational fear of dying of an aneurysm (when I get a shot, the piercing of my skin and possibility of it snapping off inside are the least of my concerns), this made me sad. Assuming that their films are more or less all the same in terms of technical prowess and resources, I may not ever have loved any of the films that they made, but I like the idea of guys making movies on their own, more or less as a hobby, in this day and age of so many indie filmmakers doing what they do for no reason other than to cash in on crazes (see, or not, all of the god awful Saw/Hostel wannabe movies of the past 3-4 years) or something. I hope that Mark continues on in some capacity, even if it’s just giving advice or even producing films for other aspiring filmmakers in his area (Pennsylvania - sort of the capital of truly independent horror filmmaking thanks to Romero), so long as they share his enthusiasm.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Blood Of Dracula's Castle (1969)

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I’m sick of straight up Dracula adaptations, but I’m all for more movies like Blood Of Dracula’s Castle, in which Dracula is a character in an otherwise completely different story (the story of Manos: The Hands Of Fate in this case). No Van Helsing, no eternal love... he’s just a guy who hangs out in his castle with his wife, has John Carradine bring him (real) Blood-y Mary’s, and entertains the local serial killer, a guy named Johnny who may or may not be a werewolf.

Apparently, in some TV versions of the film, Johnny’s werewolf-ism is made a little more clear, though whether these scenes were the intention of director Al Adamson or if they were inserted to pad the running time (or make more sense out of the plot - a novel approach!) by producers I do not know, nor do I really care. The completely vague nature of his character is what made this movie such an oddball delight.

But Johnny isn’t the only laughably puzzling part of this movie, not by any means. We have a man who decides to wait until he is at the top of a rotating sky-tower ride at the carnival before reading the certified letter letting him know that his uncle died and left him his castle (he then casually tosses the letter into the wind). The same man later claims that the sounds of a woman screaming were likely “an electric toothbrush that short circuited” (what the?). Johnny begins a scene with the curious punchline of this “joke” - “and then there was a character, he used to hold out his hand. And he’d ask me what was in it. And I’d say “an elephant.” And then he’d say - “what color?”. And despite several lines placing the castle in the middle of Arizona, there’s a scene later in the film where the heroes and Johnny go to the ocean. Oh, and again, the movie as a whole is sort of like Manos (deformed henchman, a cult with fuzzy objectives, etc), so that’s always good for a laugh.

There are also TWO characters with black and white striped shirts, which I guess must have been the style back then. It doesn’t help that Johnny is one of them, and he has a very similar physical appearance to the hero (whose wife is the one wearing the other shirt), so that coupled with the late hour of watching the film, I started getting confused as to who I was looking at sometimes. The lousy transfer didn’t help - while it was given an anamorphic transfer (thank you!), it was not remastered in any meaningful way, and also had some of the worst scratching I’ve ever seen on a DVD:

The movie’s in jail!

But again, the thing I dug about the movie was that it was just so loose with both the Dracula mythology and its own over-stuffed storyline. Johnny has no concern about the fact that his friends are vampires, and there’s a wonderfully nonchalant conversation about how they hated having to bite into necks and that the new way is so much better. And the hero’s wife practically has a monologue about how she can’t wait to swim in the moat around the castle (again - what the?). I don’t think the vampires ever actually kill anyone in the movie (though Johnny makes up for it by killing a bunch of people at random - including a hitchhiker in a surprisingly gory scene - before he actually gets to the castle and thus joins the story proper), as their butler (Carradine) and the aforementioned Torgo-lite guy do the bulk of the dirty work, which again, ties into the film’s surprising laid back nature. And it ends with a guy falling to his death while on fire, so automatic win.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Splatter Movie (2008)

FEBRUARY 4, 2010

GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

When I was writing my (still unproduced - anyone got lots of money? And a cable channel?) animated series Fright Reviews, I took the time to keep the meta-humor to an absolute minimum, because I was then and am still tired of “it’s a movie in a movie” type non-cleverness. So a movie like Splatter Movie (The Director's Cut - I am not sure if this is part of the actual title) is akin to my kryptonite, it’s (stay with me here), a movie about a film crew getting killed while making a movie about a film crew getting killed while making a movie. The fucking Bewitched movie was less of a head-scratcher.

The problem with these films (this is what, the 5th “horror movie film crew is killed” movie I’ve watched?) is that the filmmakers spend so much time trying to be clever that they forget to give you any characters worth giving a shit about, which in turns makes the overly convoluted plot all the more frustrating. Why should I spend so much time wrapping my head around the travails of people who annoy me? Especially when they begin commenting on their roles in the movie within a movie, which is supposed to be a meta-comment on this film (“I’m an actress playing an actress who is playing an actress...”). If a movie requires a flow-chart, then it’s probably too convoluted for its own good. And I say this as a man who has no trouble following the Saw films or 6 seasons of Lost.

It doesn’t help that the film looks and sounds like complete ass. By now I’ve come around to HD being used, but I can’t and WON’T condone using consumer grade digital video. Not only does it look terrible, but it just says to me that the filmmakers simply don’t give a shit about making a professional looking film. They can cry all they want about the expense of HD (or god forbid - FILM), but once again, I refuse to accept these excuses, because a. No one is forcing you to make Splatter Movie at all, let alone right now before you’ve raised enough money to afford professional equipment (and this is a filmmaker with 4 other films under her belt), and b. There are plenty of terrific independent horror films from the 60s and 70s that were shot on film. Even Super 8 looks better than DV. The fact is, it’s “easier” and thus 9 out of 10 of these productions never even considered using film (which doesn’t really cost that much more - and your film will likely turn a higher profit when they see it was shot by someone who actually gave a shit), and simply use the cost excuse to hide their laziness. Why load a camera when you can pop in a tape?

The audio is even worse though. I don’t care if your movie cost 12 cents - basic audio mixing can be done on Final Cut or AVID or Premiere Pro or whatever you used to edit together your film. Not only does the sound veer wildly from too low to too high, but whenever the “documentarian” asks a subject a question, it is painfully obvious that he/she was dubbed in over the original audio, yet no one on the post team opted to take all of 20 minutes to lay some of the same room tone under the question, lower the level on his voice to even them out, and crossfade the audio tracks so that you didn’t hear the audible “pop” when an overdubbed vocal section starts/stops. Christ, people - have some fucking pride in your work.

The sad thing about it is that director Amy Lynn Best and/or writer Mike Watt actually make some interesting points about horror films throughout the course of the film, to the extent that I wished they would simply drop the “real killer” aspect (which is often botched anyway - Best abandons the verite approach for the kill scenes so that we can see them) and simply make a real documentary about the nature of independent productions and the current state of horror. Debbie Rochon tells a (probably true) story about an on-set mishap in which she nearly lost her fingers, and it’s probably the scariest part of the entire movie, not to mention eye-opening. Best herself also makes a good point about how people turned to entertain themselves with horror films after 9/11, Katrina, etc, because there’s a comfort in the fact that they never really change, unlike our rapidly deteriorating world. A stretch? Sure, but it’s still far more compelling than any of the slasher stuff (that the tone veers from cheesy-comedy to insightful commentary doesn’t help.

There are a few extras, nothing particularly exciting. A 10 minute blooper reel (where I can’t even spot what the error was in several) and a few unnecessary deleted scenes compliment the “Companion Film”, which is a series of video blogs and stuff we’ve seen in the movie. Not quite sure what the point is, but suffice to say at 26 minutes, it doesn’t wear out its welcome and pretty much tells the exact same story, so I’d actually recommend watching that first, and if you think it’s interesting enough, watch the 90 min feature. Sort of like watching Dumplings in 3 Extremes, and then watching the full length version.

I dunno, B for effort and all that, and there are some interesting insights on the genre sprinkled throughout, but the half-assed presentation and tired “cleverness” of the approach kept me from liking it. That and the fact that the slasher’s mask sucked, but I dunno if that was supposed to be a joke or not.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Legacy (1978)

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

At the urging of my good friend Matt (who reviewed the film for his own column over at Dread Central), I queued up The Legacy the other day and put it in the #1 slot, despite having never heard of it. And as I watched it, I began to notice similarities with other 70s movies that I never would have seen had it not been for HMAD (such as The Sentinel), thus renewing my resolve to continue on with the site. You can’t go through life without seeing the “Expert” from Rocky Horror Picture Show (Charles Gray) being immolated and fed to dogs.

His death is one of the five in the film that are ironically tied to some crime that the person committed in the past (very Agatha Christie-ish). Gray’s character was responsible for a fire that killed some people, so he dies by the flame as well. How exactly the villain is able to set all of this stuff up is never quite clear (what if Gray never went near a fire again?), but it allows for some delightfully silly death scenes, made even funnier by the fact that director Richard “Ewoks” Marquand seems to be playing them straight.

And that is part of the joy of the film. It starts off like a lot of films of this era - very melodramatic, without any evidence that you are watching a horror film (though the opening Kiki Dee ballad about a “Sunset stained with gold” is certainly a candidate for ironic terror), and then it slowly draws you into the horrible goings-on. But the pacing is on such an even path into gonzo-ville that the silly stuff never really sticks out as such in the context of the film. For example, the finale of the movie involves Sam Elliott running around with a crossbow, while a guy on a roof shoots at him with a rifle (both men are terrible shots). Out of context, that sounds ridiculous, and it’s certainly not how you’d expect the movie to end up based on the first reel. But when it comes after a woman is suddenly annihilated by shards of glass, it’s almost like “Well, how else would this particular movie end?”.

There are also at least two moments that I swear were the inspiration for particular gags in the movie Airplane. In one, a nurse who wears a nun outfit is reading “Nursing Times” magazine, featuring an obviously upset guy with an oxygen mask on its cover, which reminded me of the scene in Airplane where the nun and the little kid have seemingly swapped their issues of "Nun’s Life" and "Boy’s Life". Then later, right before his death, Gray solemnly points out that a character who died from choking on a chicken bone was not eating chicken, revealing “He had ham.... and some pate!” (again, played deadly serious. Gray also has a ridiculous German accent, for the record), which reminded me of the classic “We had a choice, steak or fish.” “Yes, I remember, I had lasagna.” exchange. Weird.

Now, the movie is weird, a bit dull, and somewhat confusing, but the only thing that really bugged me is that we are never told if the Satanic folks that run the house are using their powers to trap Elliott and Katharine Ross in the town, or if they just have no sense of direction. At one point, they steal a car from the house’s chauffeur, and try to escape, only to end up driving back to the house over and over. If they have that much power, why did they let them drive around at all? And if they just can’t find their way out, why the fuck are they so dumb? Granted, I have a pretty keen sense of direction and can usually find my way around anywhere just using common sense, but still, they should have clarified whether or not it was their powers or not. This scene also includes a hilarious bit where Ross drives straight into a truck for no goddamn reason at all.

As a horror film, it doesn’t quite work. There’s a creepy-ish scene at the end of the first act where Ross and the others first “meet” their dying host, as he talks in an unsettling whisper and briefly appears to be part monster, but otherwise the horror elements are extremely light; the death scenes often lack buildup and two of them are presented as accidents anyway. But it certainly works as a “what the hell am I watching?” slice of 70s cheese, which is why I opted not to mention too many specifics (Gray’s death is spoiled on the trailer, for the record). And for the ladies, there’s a shot of Elliott’s ass that is more gratuitous than the one in Loaded Weapon 1 that was parodying such moments, which I think is pretty impressive.

The only extra is the trailer, though the trailer reveals that there was a novelization for the film, which I must read at once. I’d love to read what was going on in Elliott’s head during key scenes, such as the one where he fights a woman who makes cat noises.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Black Cadillac (2003)

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

“My picture is now the first one that comes up on Google for ‘Class A Moron’, so step aside, Randy Quaid.” - Jack Donaghy.

Like many film fans, when I think of Randy Quaid, I think of his buffoon characters from the Vacation films and assorted other nonsense like Not Another Teen Movie and Kingpin, and not so much his dramatic work (which actually covers more of his filmography) in films like Brokeback Mountain or his Oscar-nominated turn (!) in The Last Detail. And I CERTAINLY don’t picture him as the star of a horror movie like Black Cadillac, which is sort of like Duel meets Wind Chill. The only other horror film I can think of with him is Parents, and that’s a black comedy first and foremost.

(Note - when I checked his filmography I found a Frankenstein film from the early 90s where he played the Monster. Must see.)

Anyway, Quaid isn’t too far out of his element here, as an easy-going cop who is stuck (or IS he?) with three college guys who are being menaced by an ominous black Cadillac on the occasionally snowy (continuity is not this movie’s friend) roads of Wisconsin. For a while, he just seems like the most awesome cop ever - he doesn’t mind that they’ve been drinking, he urges the one driving to race the Caddy, etc. But eventually he, like the movie itself, wears out his welcome and goes far past the breaking point of believability.

As is usually the case with these sort of car-based thrillers, the movie has no believable geography - they drive for hours (at high speeds) and never come across a house, place of business, or major road? Wisconsin is not THAT big, and we are told that the bar wasn’t too far from the Minnesota border (which is where Minneapolis is located), so even if they were as far from Minneapolis “along the border” as possible, they should have come across a populated area after 3 hrs max. And for most of the movie, this didn’t bother me, because I assumed it was some sort of supernatural element that was keeping them lost, but the final reveal is not only a letdown, but it’s very much a real world answer, thus preventing the filmmakers from being able to chalk up the illogical isolation to ghosts or whatever.

On the plus side, this means that the film is NOT a ripoff of Carnival Of Souls (which I often suspected), and that is a good thing. I just wish the reveal was a bit more interesting than what it was (spoiler - the guy chasing them is the husband of a girl one of the guys in the car fooled around with at the bar). There are times where it seems that the car has omnipresent “powers” (getting ahead of them after they leave it behind), so the fact that it’s just a guy driving around is sort of weak. And when you consider that the ultimate point of the film is more or less a life lesson for the main kid to stop being such a hothead and trying to be “number one” (as it is his bravado that gets them into trouble in the first place), I really don’t think we needed any explanation for the driver at all. Granted, this would give it even less of its own identity from Duel, but I think being ambiguous is better than being lazy.

There was an odd set of circumstances that sort of helped me feel like I was in the movie though - I had no way of knowing when it would end. The DVD didn’t have a time counter built into it (or at least, one my player could “read”), and the clock on my cable box was just saying “REC” the whole time (for the Lost premiere - which I had already watched thanks to the East coast ABC feed at work). I also had left my cell in the other room, so I spent the entire film in this sort of weird void where I had no idea what time it was or how much of the movie I had seen or how much was left. As the characters in the film kept driving around and engaging in the same scenes over and over (there are at least three “lets drive alongside each other and have a lot of shots of the two cars skidding ever closer to one another” scenes) wondering when daylight would come, I found myself wondering when I could “escape” and play some Xbox.

But until that letdown of a finale, it actually works as a low-key thriller. The three leads are good (though I was constantly distracted by actor Shane Johnson’s voice - it doesn’t sound like it belongs to him), and Quaid is a welcome addition (at least until the point where it’s impossible to believe that this cop would spend this much time driving around with these kids without coming across a radio to call his fellow officers). It also has a brief appearance from actress Kiersten Warren, who I was quite smitten with in the 90s (to this day, I will stop and watch at least a few minutes of an episode of Saved By The Bell’s “college” incarnation, which was my introduction to the lass) and STILL looks like a 20ish young woman.

This is addressed in the commentary by director John Murlowski (joined by writer Will Aldis and DP Steven Douglas Smith) who claim that her youthful appearance actually caused some confusion amongst audience members, because they thought she was too young to be married to the guy playing her husband, when in reality she was in her late 30s at the time the film was shot. The rest of the commentary largely concerns both the rigors of shooting (apparently they destroyed 3 Caddys and 4 Saabs over the course of production) and a lot of slightly pretentious observations, like the hero’s “Christ” pose near the end of the film. Murlowski also explains the “based on a true story” text at the top of the film - apparently one night he got into an altercation with some guys in a bar and was then chased by them for hours. You might think it’s thin, but compared to other claims in modern horror films, the film might as well be a docudrama. They also allude to making-of documentary, but that is not included on this disc. There are a pair of deleted scenes (one featuring Quaid’s Vacation wife, Miriam Flynn, though they are not in the scene together) and a series of shockingly unfunny outtakes, which are broken up individually for some goddamn reason. You know, in case you specifically wanted to see Quaid botch his line about lipstick on someone’s collar.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Dante's Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

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

“Raaaaah! Violence! Damnation! Unborn babies! Raaaaah! Boobies! More Violence! Menacing vaginas!”

That was the tweet from my buddy Ryan over at Shock Til You Drop, prompting me to save my originally intended movie for the day until tomorrow and watch Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic today instead. Best as I could tell, the other movie did not offer “menacing vaginas”, nor did it take a classic piece of literature and turn it into a gorefest. Sold!

The film is based on the EA game that is hitting stores next week, and while I was initially intrigued by the concept, most of my interest wavered after I played the demo and saw what kind of game it was. I’m not a big fan of games where you run around and chain combos and pull off counter-attacks for hours on end and then fight a boss, and that’s exactly what Inferno seems to be. It looked amazing, and I’m sure the boss fights are fun, but it’s the type of game I’d probably rather just watch someone else play than do it myself and get a hand cramp from all the button-mashing. Personally, I think it would have been cool to have the game play out like Shadow of the Collussus, where each circle of hell (i.e. level) has one boss (that circle’s “guardian”) and you have to figure out how to best him in order to proceed. THAT I’d be excited to play. But hack n’ slashing just ain’t my thing.

At least, not for games. But for movies - hell yes! I’ll gladly watch 90 minutes of a dude running around Hell chopping up demons and monsters and such. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t QUITE offer that level of action and entertainment; the fights are plentiful, but they are also incredibly brief. Dante is rarely in any sort of danger, and all but two of the fights last less than 30 seconds. Most of the time, he just runs up to the monster or demon, jumps around, swings his scythe, and it’s over. Now, this would be OK if the guardians were just random thugs, but they’re the friggin’ guardians of Hell! Surely they have some skills of their own? If so, they don’t really use them - even the fight with Lucifer himself seems somewhat easy. Luckily, this allows for the film to have a pretty breakneck pace, as Dante races from fight to fight, traveling further into Hell. So while the action may lack the epic feel the subject matter should allow it, it’s never boring.

Also, there are some great touches in terms of how the story is depicted. The animation allows for such abstract concepts like “a sea of nothingness” or whatever to play out on screen, where a traditional background is gradually reduced to a void. And flashbacks are inserted with admirable ease - they don’t do a lot of the usual stuff (fades, pans up to the sky, or whatever), but you’ll always know when a flashback has begun due to the subtle change of animation.

Unfortunately, the constant changing of animation STYLES kills the flow of the movie, because just when you start getting sucked in, the hero changes his look considerably. He starts off like a typical soldier looking guy, then turns into more of a “hunter” with long hair, and then the hair disappears and he has a little helmet, and then the helmet changes... it’s so goddamn annoying (Dante’s ever present guide, Virgil, undergoes even more drastic changes, to the extent where I was sometimes confused as to who the character was). See, five different animation teams worked on the film, which I knew about beforehand. But I thought there would be one team in charge of the characters, one for the backgrounds, one for the monsters, etc. The change doesn’t matter much for the levels of hell (indeed, having different teams for each level is a phenomenal idea), but the main characters should remain constant, and even if different teams worked on the animation (swinging, running, etc), they should have at least stuck to the same design. It’s like taking one issue from each decade of "Batman" and presenting them all as a singular story. Basically, every 15 minutes or so, you are disoriented (“Who the hell is that? Oh, it’s Dante, just taller and with a helmet covering his head all of a sudden.”), and then there’s a bit of time to get re-acquainted with the story. None of the animation is bad (though I could do without the Dragonball Z-esque look of JM Animation’s segment), and I have enjoyed the multiple team approach to things like The Animatrix, but unlike that collection, Dante is one story, thus it’s a needlessly distracting approach.

It doesn’t help that Film Roman’s style is the best, and that’s the one that starts the film. They are also the best at lip-sync, which is another jarring issue that persists throughout the film. Some of the teams are good, others are terrible. I momentarily considered just turning on the Spanish dub track, because at least then there would be a reason for the way off voice-to-mouth presentation. That said, the vocal talent throughout the film is quite good, with Mark Hamill turning in another great vocal performance, and Rambo’s Graham McTavish makes an excellent hero (he also performs the voice for the game itself).

Now, unlike Anchor Bay’s Dead Space animated film, the movie seems to be telling the same story as the game (two scenes in the film are pretty identical to ones that I played in the demo), so I guess, story-wise, whatever you see first will spoil the other. There are some cool twists near the end, and (again, assuming) they might be more earth-shattering if presented in a story that (yikes, I ASSUME) is spread out and slightly more developed. I’m sure the cut-scenes and such in the game take up more time than the 80-odd minute film (a third of which is dialogue-less fighting), and also, with a game you take on a bit of a sense of ownership with the character and possibly care more about what is happening to him. The game might also give more weight to things in the film that seem out of nowhere and pointless, such as when Dante cheats on his beloved Beatrice at the drop of a hat.

Oh yeah: “Beatrice”. Do you like that name? I hope so, because you’re going to hear it some eight thousand times over the course of the film. He never substitutes “her”, or “my love”, or anything like that. Just “Beatrice!”, over and over. He also says “What IS this place....” a few times more than necessary (one). Come on Dante, after traveling through 5-6 circles of Hell, why are you STILL acting all surprised when you see something terrible?

The only extras beside a trailer for the game are a few “animatics”, which are mostly just storyboards being filmed and zoomed/shifted around, plus some dialogue and sound effects. I would have preferred a sort of “evolution of a scene” type approach, where we see the basic stick figures, then the finished storyboards, then the computer animatics, and then the finished animation, but still, animation buffs should enjoy seeing a few key scenes in their raw form. But the lack of supplements means even more space for the video transfer, which is, as always the case with Anchor Bay, amazing. The fantastic monster designs are crystal clear, and the high def presentation allows viewers to fully appreciate the level of detail visible in some of the backgrounds (which would be dulled by the standard def version).

So it’s sort of a mixed bag. The animation is great, but it keeps changing around, which distracted me from the story. The fights are cool, but they are often too short because there are so many story twists to reveal and so much exposition to deliver (the movie really should be 2 hrs long). But, then again, it exists primarily to help sell a game, and with that in mind, it’s the best commercial in ages.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Lake Mungo (2008)

JANUARY 31, 2010

GENRE: GHOST, MOCKUMENTARY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

For a while, Lake Mungo seemed like it might buck the trend of found footage type movies and deliver something truly unique and great. For starters, it’s not really found footage, but presented as an actual documentary (not unlike the bulk of Poughkeepsie Tapes, though far more successfully depicted) with talking heads and news footage and all that. Unfortunately, the filmmakers allow too many threads to go unexplained or underdeveloped, resulting in a decent film that squanders its promise and above-average presentation.

Mungo sort of unfolds like a long-form episode of Unsolved Mysteries, with news footage about a missing person (in this case, a teenage girl named Alice) who ultimately turns up dead paving the way for speculation and few answers. But Robert Stack isn’t here to frighten us by shouting “UPDATE!” at the end of the film and let us know that the killer had been caught or whatever. Instead, the movie ends without even some text wrapup (gotta be a first for this type of movie), and instead makes the movie even MORE bafflingly over-complicated.

Some spoilers follow!

See, for the first half hour or so, we are told about how the family of the dead girl has been hearing things, and then the ghost of the girl begins appearing in photographs and home videos and such. These moments aren’t particularly interesting, but the explanation IS - it turns out that the girl’s brother has been faking the photos in order to help his mother get some closure (the photos make her decide to dig up the girl’s body - which was bloated from being in the water for a few days - and get DNA testing to confirm that it really was their daughter). But then they notice that their neighbor was caught in the girl’s room in one of the photos, and a whole new storyline opens up. And this is fine (the plot twists unfold much like in the terrific mini-series The Staircase, where a guy is accused of killing his wife and halfway through you find out that he was married before and that THAT wife also died mysteriously), but unfortunately, writer/director Joel Anderson never really follows through with it. It turns out Alice slept with the neighbor (and his wife, or mother - they never really explain the neighbor’s family genealogy) and videotaped it, so they assume the guy was in the bedroom looking for the tape. I’ll ignore the idea that a guy would be able to sneak into a house where the occupants are already paranoid about ghosts and not be noticed (even with video cameras rolling!), but I’m baffled as to why this plot thread ultimately goes nowhere. They tell us that the family has moved away, and that’s the end of it. Um, did they not leave a forwarding address? Isn’t their disappearance a bit strange?

And then out of nowhere, one of Alice’s friends lets them see some cell phone video she shot on a class trip to the titular locale about 6 months before she died, where she claims she can see Alice digging a hole. Now, the video is so blurry and dark that I can’t even make out people from trees, let alone specific people doing specific things, but again, I’ll go with it. But I think it’s a bit late to finally get to what I assume is the point of the movie, and it turns out she was just burying her OWN phone to hide a video that was on there! It’s like a Russian doll in the form of video footage. Now, THAT video is undeniably creepy and will likely scare the shit out of folks watching the movie at home, but again, we get no clear explanation or answers for any of it, which seems a bit puzzling when the film is ostensibly a documentary. The video isn’t shown to experts, the other girls aren’t questioned about what they saw, etc. They watch the video, come up with a half-assed/halfway decent explanation for it, and then the movie more or less ends.

Well, almost. Just to further complicate matters, we then see the photos that we know were doctored by the brother, only this time we see that Alice’s ghost REALLY WAS in the photo elsewhere! Like he Photoshopped her on the left, but her real ghost was off to the right. What? Why go through the whole Photoshop plot thread if her ghost really was haunting them? And since the video shows that Alice encountered her own ghost (they think it was warning her of her impending death) then why is she sticking around after she dies? See, that is the problem with the movie - it continually raises questions but never gives a straight answer for any of them, and overcomplicates what should be a simple and subtle story. Ghosts both real and staged, premonitions, shady psychics (I haven’t even mentioned him), sex tapes, possible murders... I wouldn’t have been surprised if they started tossing aliens or something into the mix. “Upon careful re-examination of the photo, I can see what is, without a doubt, a Triceratops.” It reminded me a bit of 24, where each episode is fine on its own, but when you think about the overall arc, those plot twists simply make zero sense when combined with the other episodes. Lake Mungo is similar with scenes - sure, it’s a great twist to discover that the photos were faked, but not so much when you discover that he didn’t need to fake the photos in the first place.

On the plus side, again, it’s well made, and the faux news footage is so good I began questioning whether or not the story WAS based in reality. The actors are good, another thing that can sink this type of movie (they say “Uh....” a lot and sometimes trip over their words - like real people do and actors PLAYING “real” people always forget to do*). And even with its multiple plot branches keeping the movie from having a focus, the basic story (family coping with their loss) resonates in a way few faux docs manage. It’s the rare film that falters simply because it ends when you think that more resolution is on its way; the director’s credit came up and my mental grade for the film dropped a few notches.

Hopefully the DVD will have some deleted scenes and/or a commentary that can clear some matters up. As it stands, it’s a technically well made film (I am definitely interested to see what Anderson does next), but one that is somehow both over-plotted and vague. There are a few creepy moments (Alice’s cell phone video gave me the willies, not unlike that kid’s birthday video from Signs) and nothing particularly gruesome or explicit, making it a must-rent for teenage girls having a sleepover near Halloween-time, but otherwise, I’d suggest holding out (still!) for Poughkeepsie Tapes.

What say you?

*I later discovered that the film was largely improvised, so these might be genuine “flubs” and not actor’s choices. Also, this means that it’s possible that some of these go nowhere plot threads were improvised and Anderson left them in for whatever reason.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Prime Evil (1988)

JANUARY 30, 2010

GENRE: CULT, RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Some folks on Twitter tried warning me away from watching Prime Evil, and I should have listened to them. It’s got a few fun scenes here and there, but it’s overall a mindless bore of a film, and for the life of me I cannot understand why director Roberta Findlay or the screenwriters thought anyone would be interested in this particular non-story.

I know there are more to see, and I’m sure I’m wrong, but I’ll say it anyway - this has to be the boringest Devil movie ever made. It’s about this cult looking to please Satan, but Satan isn’t really in the movie. We see this little puppet at the very end that I guess is supposed to be the Dark Lord, but he just sits there doing nothing until he gets stabbed. And he’s never in a shot with anyone or anything else, so I can’t tell how big he’s supposed to do. It’s no End of Days is what I’m saying.

Don't sell your soul to this... thing.

And the cult is half-assed too, their leader needs a virgin sacrifice, but all the guy will get is 13 years of immortality. Only 13 years? He doesn’t look that old (he DOES look like a hybrid of Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham though), so why he’d go through all this trouble just to get 13 years of immortality is a bit puzzling. Unless he’s like a skydiver or something, where he is often in life-threatening situations. Then I can see him wanting a little insurance.

There’s also a plot thread (the closest the film has to an interesting one) about a nun renouncing her vows (woo, she can fuck!) in order to infiltrate the cult so she can help the cops bring it down. She even has a backstory about being abused by Satanists or something. But after all of this is set up, she more or less disappears for the entire movie, as we focus on the next intended virginal sacrifice, who is the estranged granddaughter of the cult guy. She too has a backstory - her father made money by letting guys take nude photos of her when she was a child. And thus now she is understandably frigid (hence the still-virgin status), but all this serves is to pad the movie out to feature length by including a bunch of scenes where her boyfriend gets blue balls and her whorish, junk food obsessed best friend mocks her for not giving it up.

And there’s also a few (not very good) cops on the trail, and a guy who looks like Fink from Meatballs who runs around the city killing women, though, as is often the case with this movie, I’m not sure what he was trying to accomplish. I thought maybe he was looking for virgins, but since one of his victims is a crackhead hooker, either I’m way off or he is. But either way, the movie has way too many characters (none of whom are particularly interesting or likable) and not enough action, which is even more of an issue when you consider that Findlay comes from the porn world. A healthy dose of sleaze would have improved matters greatly, but whether Findlay was trying to show she could do serious work, or they couldn’t afford to film anything interesting, either way it’s a shockingly dull movie.

But a grown man does refer to another as “Fart breath”, so there’s something. And I think Brian Yuzna and co. took a page from the film when they made Silent Night Deadly Night 4, as they feel very similar at times (yes, I finally get to use the phrase “Not as good as Silent Night Deadly Night 4”!). I also liked the balls on the writers to set up a sequel - Cravengham gets away, shouting “You win, this time!” and then sets up shop in another big city (the movie is supposed to be set in Boston I think, due to the “New England” title at the beginning, but it’s clearly New York). But it’s been 22 years, so I think we can all stop holding our breath for Prime Evil II. Shit, Millennium Films wouldn’t even want to remake this fucking thing.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Kill Theory (2009)

JANUARY 29, 2010

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

The main problem with Kill Theory (formerly Last Resort) isn't that it's not very good, it's that it's not good enough for a theatrical release. Had it just gone DTV like countless other Saw wannabes, I'd probably look at it differently and give it a pass. But when it's in theaters, for the same price as every other movie (well, except for Avatar - easy to be number one when every 5 tickets sold is the equivalent of 8 standard ticket prices), it has to be judged on the same lines, and that is where the film fails to measure up.

Now, I must point out that in, heh, theory, I like what After Dark is doing - giving a theatrical release to films that wouldn't quite fit in the multiplexes if given a traditional rollout. They lack stars, they lack big effects, they're usually smaller in scope... even the most commercial entries in years past still wouldn't be able to compete with Drag Me To Hell or the newest Final Destination or Saw sequels. But ADF should focus on films like Dread (which despite the Clive Barker connection, is a tough sell due to the fact that it doesn't fit into a traditional sub-genre) or ZMD, which is a low budget zombie film (of which there are countless thousands these days) but with the brains all those others usually lack. A film like Kill Theory doesn't offer that originality OR intelligence - it's yet another hybrid movie (Battle Royale meets Saw, set in a generic "parent's lakeside house" to add that slasher feel) with an occasionally excruciating script.

I have to mention writer Kelly Palmer, because he is the only one who gets a credit at the top of the film. Director Chris Moore (loved this guy on Project Greenlight - I hope the DVD has a lengthy making of with him doing his thing), the actors, the producers, etc. - they are only credited at the end, which isn't uncommon (if it were up to me, no film would have opening credits). But for some reason, "Written by Kelly Palmer" appears before the title. All this accomplished for me was thinking that the script would be pretty amazing (it's not like Kelly Palmer is a selling point; I could see a film maybe wanting to point out that it was written by Shakespeare or Stephen King at the top, but this is the only produced script for the lad). Which is hilarious, because the writing in the next two scenes is jaw-droppingly terrible. First we get Don McManus as a shrink, telling his patient (read: us) about the guy's own history. "You were on a mountain, and the rope was about to break, so you cut your friends loose in order to save yourself, and that was three years ago..." I momentarily thought that the film was a spoof of such films, and that they were going to cut to the guy saying "Yeah, no shit. I'm me." Anyway, once McManus has delivered all of the exposition we need (for now), we cut to our group of kids, who are, of course, a largely intolerable lot, obsessed with sex and drinking. And there's all of the usual stereotypes for good measure, right down to the fat guy who doesn't have a bed partner as of yet. It's so much like Friday the 13th 3, I kept wondering where the two stoner characters were.

Things pick up a bit once the shit hits the fan though. First, they kill off the least annoying character first, which is ballsy (and the jump scare is pretty terrific as well), and then our killer provides a videotape where he explains the rules of the game - they have until 6 am to kill all but one of themselves, or he will kill them all. See, our killer is the guy from the beginning, and he wants to prove to his shrink that anyone, not just him, would kill their close friends when their life was on the line. Not really the worst theory, but the largely intolerable characters keeps the film from being as interesting as it could have been. As usual, I could care less if any of them died, so it makes no difference to me whether or not they kill each other or are killed by the bad guy. Had they been presented as good, interesting people (or even better/more disturbing - a family), maybe things would be different. But no - one's trying to steal her friend's boyfriend, one's trailer trash, one cheats on his girlfriend, one sucks at Gears of War... good riddance to the lot of ya, I say.

Back to the bad guy, for some reason his identity is kept from us until the end, when it turns out to be (non spoiler) Kevin Gage. Kevin Gage was not a previously seen character in the film, so why they kept him off-screen during the opening scene and then throughout the course of the film is a bit puzzling. I assume maybe they were trying to make us think that one of our "heroes" was the killer, but this doesn't work for two reasons - one, early on he shoots at them when they are all together, and two - they are all long-term friends from college who have been together for four years, and we know the guy was away for 3 for killing his friends on the mountain. So for that to work, the mountain accident would have had to have occurred in high school, and then he would have had to have waited for four years after getting out to prove his shrink wrong. So yeah, no. There is a slight twist to the end, but again, the lack of giving a shit about any of the characters keeps it from being as interesting and/or downbeat as intended.

But again, it's not a flat out terrible film. Some of the scares work, there is an admirable tension for most of the 2nd act of the film, and the lack of favoring one character over another (even Agnes Bruckner, who is about the closest to a star the film has, isn't really in the film more or less than the others) makes it a bit harder to peg the final girl/guy. The killings are also pretty surprisingly vicious; one guy gets beaten to death with a shovel (and then some), and another one's eyeball meets the business end of a fire poker. Plus these kills aren't necessarily carried out by the person you thought would do them, so it adds another layer of enjoyment.

I was also tickled by a particular painting in the living room of the house where the movie takes place. I don't know if it's original art for the movie, or something they found, but I want it for my house. It's basically a guy using binoculars, looking at "you" the viewer. Behind him, laying down, is a naked woman. It sticks out like a sore thumb, and every time it found its way into a shot I couldn't help but giggle. My art knowledge is a bit ignorant (and by bit I mean, "wholly"), so for all I know it's up there with the "Mona Lisa" or "Starry Night", so if you think you know the painting I am referring to (again, assuming it's not an original created for the film) then please let me know who painted it and at what Target I can buy a cheap reprint of it.

So when the films hit DVD, it will probably be considered one of the better ones, as it's the type of hard R fare that will go over well with the types of people who watch Saw films for the torture scenes and think Rob Zombie's Halloween is better than the original. And for the price of a rental, it provides 90 minutes of mildly enjoyable, low grade entertainment. But it's also the type of movie that would have done fine on its own, without the ADF push (well, theoretical push - as with last year, the awareness of the festival is next to nothing as they didn't bother to spend any money marketing it), which makes me wish that ADF had given its slot to a more original, challenging film.

What say you?

P.S. Side trivia note - my very first phone interview for Bloody Disgusting was with Agnes Bruckner, when she was promoting Blood & Chocolate. When we got to the "what are you doing next?" portion of the interview, she told me she was shooting this film. And that was three years ago, so maybe it DID need ADF to get released.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Mimic 3: Sentinel (2003)

JANUARY 28, 2010

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

If there was an award for “Most Surprisingly Good Franchise”, I think the Mimic series would definitely net a nomination and possibly the award. The first film was famously troubled during production due to fighting between Del Toro and Dimension, though the finished product, while uneven, was still an original and enjoyable film. Then the first sequel expanded on one of the original’s minor characters and delivered some great death scenes and a pretty decent sequel story to boot. And now Mimic 3: Sentinel (just Mimic Sentinel on the film itself) turns out to be borderline great for its first 45 minutes or so, only to turn a bit too traditional for the finale (though still good). What the hell? Aren’t these movies about giant cockroaches that can impersonate people? How did they make ONE good movie out of that, let alone three?

Well that’s not my job to figure out. My job is to tell you that Mimic 3 is essentially Rear Window, except that the villains are human-sized cockroaches. And when the film sticks to this concept (i.e. takes place almost entirely in the hero’s room, observing both human and monsters from across the street where the action is taking place), it’s wonderful. Director JT Petty, who previously impressed me with (what was actually a followup) The Burrowers, is a far better filmmaker than you would expect to be given a thankless job directing the 2nd DTV sequel to a not-very-successful movie, and it shows. He could have phoned this thing in and cashed his check, but damned if he didn’t make a solid thriller, with colorful characters you actually care about and some exciting setpieces to boot.

Oddly, my favorite attack scene occurs in that less-successful third act, when the Rear Window type stuff is tossed out in favor of more traditional action. After some rather generic exterior scenes and the like, Petty once again returns to the idea of confinement, as our hero hides in a refrigerator and struggles to keep the door shut from a rampaging Judas Breed. The only light is the fridge light, which turns on when the monster momentarily succeeds in getting the door open. Its talons are also puncturing and slashing the shit out of the guy, so his increasingly bloody hands are making it harder for him to get a grip on the inside of the fridge door (the butter and egg trays and such). He is just trying to hold out long enough for his makeshift bomb (oxygen tanks in the oven) to go off and kill the damn thing, and given Petty’s surprising willingness to kill off characters you “know” will be safe, you actually believe that he is in actual danger, something few horror films can pull off with their hero.

I hate to say it, but it’s largely the scenes with Lance Henriksen that keep the film from being a total A winner. He’s fine (he actually has the film’s best line - he sees some Judas about to strike, and simply utters “Well.... fuck.”), but again, they take away the “All from the hero’s POV” aspect. There’s an attack scene about halfway through where the hero watches it all from his camera lens, obscuring from us what is actually happening, and I wish these Lance scenes were the same. Of course, it’s Lance Henriksen and thus it would be kind of a waste to keep him out of focus and in shadows and such, but still, it feels a bit like a missed opportunity.

I was also a bit puzzled by Petty’s tendency to fade to events that were occurring at the same time. Like at one point Lance puts a character into a trunk, and then fades to show her inside trying to get out (two trunk scenes in a row!), rather than just straight cut. There are other instances as well, and it distracted me. I was hoping he’d address it on the commentary, but if he did it must have been when I dozed off (he’s got a soft voice, and also I have been working double shifts and thus not getting much sleep). Otherwise, it’s a good commentary - he is definitely a creative and thoughtful director, and points out several things that never dawned on me (like how the actor holds onto the camera throughout a scene, as if it was his anchor). He also reveals that the apartment building that we are looking at for like half of the movie is actually a giant photograph plastered over the hero’s window. Fooled me!

The other extras are cast auditions (no thanks) and a making of featurette that is largely informative, but there’s a bit about dead dogs that I didn’t find amusing, mainly because they never make it clear that it’s a joke. But it’s largely focused on the production side of things, instead of actors blowing each other, so I dug it. I was surprised that there weren’t any deleted scenes (the movie only runs 75 minutes), as they are the most common offering on Dimension DTV movies, but then again this is above and beyond the usual Dimension DTV movie, so I guess it makes sense. Even if you haven’t seen the others, I highly recommend checking this one out.

I also want to point out that this makes the second “It’s Rear Window With A Monster” movie that I’ve seen that worked far better than I expected, the other being Abominable. I say someone tries to meld the story with a giant monkey next.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Trunk (2009)

JANUARY 27, 2010

GENRE: CRAP, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I ordinarily shy away from going too much into my personal life here, but just to give some context, on Monday morning my mom called to let me know the family dog had died (liver cancer - luckily it was detected and they were able to put him to sleep before it spread to his other organs and he began to suffer). And yet, somehow Trunk is still the worst part of my week. See, I knew that Buddy would eventually pass someday (he was 91 in dog years), but I didn’t know that I’d ever see a movie as fucking pointless as this.

(And I should note that I had no major problems with the movies I watched on Monday and Tuesday, so this isn’t some sort of “taking my grief out on the movie” thing.)

The best thing I can say about the movie is that it lives up to its title. 95% of the movie takes place in the car, with the girl in the trunk and her captor driving around the same 3 blocks of Los Angeles (seriously dude - way to not arouse suspicion. Can’t you at least get on the 101 and head north for a bit?). I assumed that it would be like Phone Booth, where there’s some buildup before he gets to the booth, and a few cutaways to concerned parties in their homes or offices or whatever. But nope, in fact, these two are the only two people in the entire movie, which I guess is kind of impressive.

But it’s also one of the reasons that the movie fails so miserably. After ten minutes, you’ve seen just about everything this movie offers. The bad guy (George) has installed a two way speaker so that he and the girl (Megan) can converse, and converse they do - for 80 fucking minutes. They argue, they threaten each other, they have phone sex (seriously), and they psycho-analyze each other. Over and over and over... you could leave the movie for a full hour and come back for the "finale" (for lack of a better word) and not miss a single thing. The only diversion in the entire film is when the car is pulled over by a cop, who we never see and is killed almost instantly by George. A good filmmaker would have realized that his “inventive” “let’s stay in the car” motif wasn’t working for a full length feature, and used the diversion to create a bit of a setpiece here and break up the monotony, (which is already considerable despite not even being half over), but nope. It’s over almost as soon as it begins, and the shooting death of a police officer after he has pulled the guy over (and thus more than likely has called in the plate number) seems to have no effect on George’s ability to drive around the downtown Los Angeles area all night.

The abysmal script doesn’t do either actor any favors either. Or maybe they just can’t act, I dunno. All I know is, their fighting exchanges sound more like two 7 year olds fighting in the schoolyard than grown adults (I kept expecting her to shriek “Cut it ouuuuuuuuuut!” or maybe “I’m TELL-INGGGGGGGGG!”). The psycho-analysis stuff is OK every now and then, but neither character ever fesses up to what is real or not (it’s suggested that he was molested by his father, but he never admits to it. He just yells “Shut up you bitch!” and “I’m gonna fuck you!” and stuff like that over and over). And the not one but TWO “phone sex” scenes are about as ridiculous as you can possibly get.

I was also dumbfounded as to what little attempts Megan makes to free herself. She has a variety of objects at her disposal, but yet it takes her until the end of the movie to finally shut the fuck up and try to use them to escape. She FINALLY disables the two way speaker with her nail file and rigs something to keep the trunk from opening (to make him angrier when he tries to get her out, I guess?), something she should have done over an hour ago. And why does he leave her with all of these things, exactly? Ah, who the fuck knows/cares.

The ending is the ass cherry on the piece of shit cake that is this movie though. She manages to subdue him and lock HIM in the trunk, and she then runs off into the night. We then cut to the next morning; the trunk is open and there are some bloody handprints on the rear bumper. And... credits (over a picture of a SAW - as if we weren’t aware of what film they were trying to emulate with their “two people in one location” setup). Did he free himself? Did she come back and kill him? I guess it doesn’t matter. It feels like a sequel setup, but Jesus christ, they couldn't come up with enough of a story to sustain even half of one movie, can they really be thinking of making a followup?

I can offer it mild praise on the technical level. The Red camera is perfectly suited for this sort of thing, and Weisman and DP Ricardo Gale manage to find multiple angles of the trunk to keep it from getting too monotonous. And I’m not sure about the female top 40 songs that pepper the credits but the score is pretty good when it’s used. But again, the script (if there was one - there is no actual writer listed, only a “Conceived by” credit for Weisman) is utterly worthless almost from start to finish, so all the technical merits in the world can’t save this one from being what I hope turns out to be the worst film of the year (I know it's only January, but I'm trying to be optimistic here!).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Satan's Slave (1976)

JANUARY 26, 2010

GENRE: CULT
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

When I was back in Massachusetts for Christmas, I picked up a new set from Mill Creek called "Gorehouse Greats", which was 12 films for 5 bucks (as opposed to the usual 50 films for 20 bucks). I was attracted to it mainly because the films all seemed to be from the 60s and 70s (unlike the primarily 30s/40s junk on the Horror Classics and Tales of Terror sets), which would make it more like the Chilling Classics, a set I have long since exhausted for HMAD purposes. So imagine my delight when I cracked the set open, put in Satan's Slave, and was treated to a pretty good anamorphic transfer! Most of the transfers on their previous sets weren't even worth the average 40 cent price per movie, so this was a very welcome surprise.

Another surprise - the movie was pretty good! I was happy to see that it was directed by Norman J. Warren, who was responsible for Alien Prey, which is one of the best "I never would have seen this if I wasn't doing HMAD" movies I've seen in quite some time. Slave isn't quite as successful, but it's still a fairly engaging, atmospheric British chiller with whopping doses of nudity.

Seriously, in the first 10 minutes we are treated to not one, not two, but THREE pairs of breasts. Shit, I've seen pornos that didn't even offer that much skin variety in their opening moments. Now, I'm not exactly a "WOOO!!! BOOBS!!" type of guy, but I AM a "WOOO! THIS MOVIE HAS NO SHAME!" type of guy, so it set the tone nicely, and I actually began to wonder if I should save my first viewing of the film for the New Beverly, where I could, well, yell "WOOO!! BOOBS!!" along with several dozen other drunks, instead of watching it by myself at work (luckily, my office-mate was gone for the day. Would have been a lot of minimizing going on).

Unfortunately, the plot has to get in the way, so after that the movie calms down some, and spreads out its "visuals" a bit more evenly. Ten minutes of talk, and then another nude scene. Another few minutes of talk, and then a guy plummets to his death (and the dummy they use was apparently made out of cake, so what should be a "oh man, so fake!" turned into a "Mmmm, I think I want to eat that guy's arm."). Other highlights include a woman being (seemingly willingly) penetrated by a wooden cross during a cult ritual, cousins going at it without anyone else (including his dad/her uncle) being concerned, someone impaled on a door 4 years before Friday the 13th came along, and a downer ending. And more nudity here and there, of course.

I was also impressed with the quality of the FX. Apart from cake man, most of them still hold up favorably to the prosthetics work of today. An eye gouging during the climax is mighty impressive, and the assorted other gags (such as a pretty graphic "branding with hot iron" flashback scene) are pretty good as well. It's weird, I was trying to think of FX work that equaled it for the US, and all of the movies that came to mind are from 1980 or later. I think the UK deserves more credit for ushering in the splatter craze.

The only downside to the movie, apart from some occasional draggy parts (again, the inadvertent result of having such a delightfully "action packed" opening - maybe this movie inspired Legion) is that it reminded me of The House of Usher update from a couple years back. Like that film, a lot of Slave is just a girl in a mansion, trying to figure out why her house-mates are so creepy while also falling in love with one. Both films have a lot of scenes where someone should be questioning their situation instead of making doe-eyes at their male relative, and the structure is nearly identical. I wouldn't be surprised if Usher's creators had seen this film and drew some influence from it, though if that is indeed the case, they should have swiped less of the structure and more of the cross-fucking. Of course, either way, the similarities are no fault of Slave's, but rather just another reason why I should watch movies in order, even if they seemingly have no relation. I could have enjoyed Slave even more had I not been occasionally distracted by memories of watching that piece of crap.

At any rate, for a movie that cost me about 50 cents, the transfer and the film itself were quite the bargain. One other movie as good as this on the set and it will be the best DVD investment I've made in years (since 2006, when I picked up the Chilling Classics set, in fact). All hail Mill Creek!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...