Eye See You (aka D-Tox) (2002)

MARCH 14, 2011

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I bought Eye See You (aka D-Tox) years ago, and watched it with some friends, which is to say I never really watched it. I could vaguely recall who the killer was, but nothing else (i.e. what his motive was, if he had a costume, etc). At the time I figured “I’ll just watch it again tomorrow and pay attention”, but that was like 7 years ago. The only reason I finally got around to watching it properly is because I was stuck for an idea for a Terror Tuesday column, and then I noticed on my DVD rack that it was next to End Of Days, and started thinking about writing about action stars doing horror movies. So here we are.

Oddly, someone on Twitter took me to task for my choice, saying it wasn’t a horror movie, and I was baffled about that even before I watched it “again”. One of the few things I COULD remember about it was that it was very much like a slasher movie (which surprised me at the time), and unlike Arnold’s End Of Days, wasn’t a typical vehicle for its star with some genre stuff tossed in. Apart from the fact that Sly and the killer have two very brief shootouts (in which neither of them land a shot), there’s nothing action-movie about D-Tox at all. The villain is a serial killer, there’s no car chases or explosions, he usually fucks around with his victims before killing them, wears a costume (well, a big coat – like the Urban Legend killer), and even has some variety to his weapons – a drill, a knife, strangulation, etc. Hell even Scream 3 had an explosion and a race against time.

And it’s a whodunit! Not a lot of action movies tend to hide the identity of the villain. It’s not like you’re watching Cliffhanger wondering if John Lithgow is the bad guy. No, for the first hour or so, we are supposed to be suspicious of several characters, including Tom Berenger, Stephen Lang, Robert Patrick, some bald dude named Mif (?), and Jeffrey Wright, who essentially plays John Leguizamo. They’re (mostly) ex-cops, like Sly, as the detox center caters to law enforcement types who are battling some form of addiction or other. Kris Kristofferson (also an ex-cop) runs the place, and Berenger is their handyman, and there are some other guys... I think the idea was to populate the movie with a lot of red herrings (many of which are played by bad guy actors like Patrick or Lang) to make it harder to figure out who the killer was, but either due to bad editing or misguided screenwriting, it doesn’t really work. You’d have to be a complete virgin to whodunit slashers to be surprised who the killer turns out to be, and perhaps that’s why they didn’t drag it out a bit longer.

But even though it’s not much a shocker when it’s revealed that the guy who had been the nicest to Sly upon his arrival (and also played by the only British guy in a group of American hardasses) turns out to be the killer, they still could have made some of the other characters at least SEEM like plausible choices. The overcrowded cast is a major issue here - had they cut the cast down by a third, they could have spent some more time with the others and maybe made the mystery a bit more of a challenge. This means we also get a limited number of kill scenes – at least half of them are off-screen. With everyone wearing the same blue/hooded winter coat, Gillespie could have had some fun with the confusion that it causes, but apart from a quick bit near the end, this is never capitalized on for the kill scenes. And I guess it would have just inspired unflattering comparisons to The Thing, but the brief section of the film where everyone starts to suspect each other is VERY brief, almost an afterthought. Again, with fewer characters, this sort of stuff could have been a lot more interesting, but it’s just too crowded – most characters aren’t even viable suspects because they had too many witnesses to their whereabouts.

There’s also an unfortunate subplot with Charles S. Dutton as Sly’s partner, who has inexplicably decided to take an ice-fishing trip nearby while Sly detoxes (doesn’t he plan on going back to his own family and job? I know Sly is awesome, but even he would need more than a night or two to get better, no?). Every now and then we cut (well, fade – Gillespie and/or his editor(s) abuse the hell out of the fade button in this movie) to Dutton trying to drill a hole in the ice or shooting the shit with Rance Howard or something, scenes that either provide (non) comic relief or tip off plot developments way too early. Part of the killer’s plan is that he has killed one of the police officers en route to the facility and assumed his identity, which would have been cool if we didn’t know about it at least 20 minutes before Sly did, when Dutton finds the body in the ice.

But it’s still a pretty decent slasher thriller. Obviously the acting caliber is a lot better than your usual Jim Gillespie movie (he also directed the woeful, equally glorified DTV release Venom), and having the great Dean Semler (Dances With Wolves) as your DP is never a bad thing – the film looks terrific. The kills that we DO see aren’t particularly memorable, but there’s a good throat slashing at one point, and I like that the big budget (55 million!) and A/B+ list cast didn’t stop the killer from using various implements – knives, drills, strangulation, poison... it’s very “Ten Little Indians” in that respect. Too bad they didn’t stick to just ten people.

And Sly is pretty good, doing the whole burn-out cop thing (much better than Arnold was at playing a similar character in End Of Days). Apart from the happy opening scenes, he doesn’t get to display much of his natural charm, nor does he look particularly heroic – 3-4 days’ stubble at all times, dark circles under the eyes, etc. He looks, simply, like shit, and kudos to him for that, especially since it’s not until the film’s final 5 minutes or so that he gets to do anything heroic. At two points in the film it seems like he’s going to punch out an asshole, or at least say something quote-worthy, but nope. Hell even in Copland he got to shoot some guys and romance Annabella Sciorra, and that’s the one people often point to when they talk about him doing something different.

Sadly he doesn’t say much about working outside of his comfort zone on the DVD. Or, anything, really – he’s pretty much the only one in the cast who doesn’t appear in a collection of brief interviews in the extra features. And I mean BRIEF; many replies are a single sentence response to a bland question like “What was it like working with Stallone?” (typical answer: “He was great, I think people will be surprised to see him in this role.”). Everyone heaps praise upon him, Gillespie, the script, the set, and each other, but tells you nothing of use. The deleted scenes are a slightly better use of your time; they don’t solve any of the film’s narrative problems (such as why at least three people are left behind in the freezing facility at the end of the movie, or what happened to Kris Kristofferson’s character), but it adds some nice character bits here and there, and includes the nightmare scene seen in the trailer, which is otherwise surprisingly filled with footage from the movie – for a movie that was on the shelf for a while and likely re-edited, you’d think the trailer would be loaded with stuff that wasn’t in the finished product. Good on you, trailer editor.

I don’t know where the hell the 55 million went, but I’m even more confused why Universal would greenlight a film, sign a lot of good actors, produce it, and then decide when it was finished that they didn’t want to release it. I doubt it would have been a big hit, but it didn’t deserve to be tossed under a bus like it was, either. And you’d think that some other big studio would have wanted it (Warner, for example, for whom Stallone made many of his big hits), sparing it the indignity of being released by something called DEJ Productions, who have one other theatrical release to their name (hilariously, their static logo appears in the film for like 25 seconds, likely to hide Universal’s logo without screwing up the soundtrack). Stallone may not have been the big star he used to be, but coming off of the reasonably successful Copland, coupled with the revived slasher genre, the movie could have found an audience if it was given a chance to do so. Oh well.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Sharktopus (2010)

MARCH 13, 2011

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

The other day, someone on Formspring asked me what my five favorite Syfy movies were, and I almost held off answering the question until I saw Sharktopus, because I assumed it would make the cut. First of all – there’s the title, which is awesome in its purest form. Secondly, unlike the bulk of Syfy Original Movies, it was produced by the king of monster movies – Roger Corman himself. With that pedigree, I figured it would be the one to beat.

But what I WASN’T aware of until the credit flashed on-screen, was that it was directed by Declan O’Brien, who couldn’t even make a decent Wrong Turn movie (and yet he’s directing the fourth film). Worse, he clearly has no idea how/when to use CGI, ruining nearly every kill in WT3 with bad CGI on kills that could/should have been done practically. So I got nervous, and fast – if he couldn’t even have a mutant (played by a real person) eviscerate someone on the woods without overusing CGI, what would he do when he had a goddamn sharktopus (not played by a real sharktopus) whipping people around or swallowing them whole? On a Syfy channel budget no less?

Well, what he did was overuse CGI and botch every single kill in the movie. I’m not expecting WETA-esque realism on shots of the sharktopus, but more often than not he employs the use of CGI tentacles even on close-ups, when a practical arm operated by a guy off-screen would have been a lot easier and looked a lot better. Plus, if he wasn’t stretching the FX budget so thin, perhaps every shot that used a practical effect instead of a CGI model could have resulted in improved effects on the shots that could NOT have been done with real-world models and the like. As a result, the sharktopus looks like a PS1 cut-scene cartoon in every single shot, of which there are far too many.

But I can forgive them on that one. As Corman explains on the commentary, in a theatrical feature you’re allowed to tease the audience with glimpses, because they are a “captive” audience. However on TV, if the audience gets bored, they can flip the channel, so they have to deliver a money shot every couple of minutes, even if they don’t have the money/resources to do so in an adequate manner. I have to remember that I’m in the minority of folks who don’t give up on a movie no matter how bad it is. The only times I’ve ever walked out of a movie (that I can recall) were at Screamfest, during horrible movies that started late when I had something else to do after. So maybe I’m not the target audience for Syfy Original movies.

However, even the least discerning audience in the world would probably be appalled by the shockingly bad acting in this one. I’ll never put in one of these movies expecting great performances, but even by those lowered standards and expectations the acting in this was awful pretty much across the board. You know the drill for these movies – you have like 4-6 core characters that are driving/boating around looking for the monster, intercut with scenes of folks who are “introduced” and then killed moments later (usually right before a commercial). Usually, the main ones are fine and it’s just these random shark(topus) fodder types that are lousy, but here it’s pretty much everyone. The two leads are particularly painful, because unlike Eric Roberts (who disappears for most of the film’s second half), they don’t seem to be in on the joke. It’s bad enough watching bad actors in any movie, it’s worse watching bad actors taking it serious in a movie that’s intentionally silly – they ruin the fun. And then some of the anonymous folks can’t even deliver lines like “I’m thirsty!” with any conviction. Corman’s cameo as a slightly pervy old man (who casually watches a girl get eaten, and then takes the money she had just found on the beach) is as good as the movie ever gets – they should have given him a real role to play.

The climax is also incredibly lackluster. For starters, the movie is STILL in “let’s cut to some new folks in danger” mode, sidelining our heroes’ involvement. With ten minutes or so to go, Sharktopus finds himself inside a resort of some sort, with a zipline and a little waterfall and such. And the destruction of Sharktopus comes down to setting off a virus in the computer tracking chip he has inside him, which means we just get a lot of shots of our terrible lead actress trying to make it look like she’s frantically doing things on her computer, none of which match up to the graphics they show (I love that she’s hammering away at the keys when the display just shows the mouse cursor slowly floating around at random). Hell, they don’t even offer us a tease of a sequel, with a sharktopus egg or something laying in the bottom of a lake or whatever. LAME.

O’Brien also tosses in some tricks that don’t belong in the movie, such as 24-esque split screen scenes that show phone calls from multiple angles. Who the fuck cares? Unless it’s Sharktopus swimming toward them while they are distracted or something, there is no need to show the faces of people taking a dull phone call. He’s also in love with tossing digital blood on the camera; literally throwing the film’s shortcomings in our face in the process. Also, he foolishly sets an early scene in a room with a bunch of bright green “windows” behind the actors, which just makes it look like they forgot to add in some greenscreen plates in the background. And if anyone can explain the “film grain” effect in this movie, I’d love to hear it. Several shots have this thick layer of grain over them, but the grain isn’t animated – it just sits on screen. But it’s clearly not a dirty lens or something, someone obviously put it over the footage. Speaking of image quality, there is no reason to spend the extra money or effort on the Blu-ray for this; apart from a few shots of water spraying, the image does NOT look high-def in the slightest, and anything that can downgrade the sound quality can only be considered a good thing, since the score is one of the worst I can recall in recent memory.

In fact, you might as well just skip the movie’s audio entirely and start with the commentary, in which Roger and Julie Corman discuss the specific movie only fleetingly and focus more on their general approach and theory behind making low budget movies. The only thing in the movie you might not understand just from looking at the images is why Sharktopus was created, but Corman explains it better on the commentary than it comes across in the movie anyway (it’s actually kind of admirable how insistent he was on coming up with a plausible reason for the thing’s existence). But for the most part, it’s a wonderful chat that could have played over any of his movies, filled with terrific anecdotes (including the sweet story of how they got involved romantically – they’re about to celebrate their 40th anniversary!) and lots of helpful information for would-be low budget filmmakers. Tellingly, Corman says that he was overruled by O’Brien on some of the decisions regarding the design and use of CGI – I would have loved to have been at the meeting when the guy who directed Wrong Turn 3 essentially tells Roger Corman that he’s wrong about something. He also stresses that CGI should only be used for long shots, and any close-ups should employ practical effects, a mantra O’Brien would have been wise to follow (the few practical shots are incredibly quick and almost never involved with the actual kill shot). Maybe then we’d have fewer shots of actors pretending to be getting tangled up inside some tentacles.

Again, I really wanted to have fun with this one, but there’s only so many times I can see a poorly animated sharktopus eat someone whose name I don’t know – I need a little meat on the bones. Mega Piranha did this sort of thing far more successfully, I think - the acting and FX were just as bad, but they kept the pace up and more importantly, offered a lot of variety to the proceedings. Here, you can watch any 20 minute chunk and pretty much see everything the movie has to offer. The title deserves better than the result.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Day X (2005)

MARCH 12, 2011

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

Rare is the non-comedic zombie film that actually says the word “zombie”, so I was kind of impressed when a character in Day X said it (and later alluded to Night of the Living Dead specifically). I don’t exactly relish in meta HUMOR (in small doses I enjoy it, however), but I wish more serious films took place in “the real world”, because it’s the sort of thing that’s always at the back of my mind – “Don’t they have horror movies in this world?”. Unfortunately, they seemingly only bring it up to point out that these aren’t zombies, which is always a sore spot for me.

I’m all for creating new monsters, but it annoys me when you get a movie where the filmmakers seem to be saying “this ISN’T a zombie movie!” but yet have their monsters look and act exactly like zombies. They bite, they stagger around, attack in groups yet don’t seem to be actively working together, their skin is black/green, and they seemingly possess no other intelligence beyond seeking human flesh. How is that NOT a zombie movie? That would be like saying “this isn’t a slasher movie!” but having the film’s villain wear a mask and stalk some kids in the woods, as far as I’m concerned.

But it’s actually a decent indie zombie film all the same. One thing I liked is that the hero of the movie (who, yes, does act a bit like Duane Jones) is quite level-headed and has strategies and plans for every situation. It reminded me of the Chris Evans character in Sunshine (directed by “not a zombie movie” 28 Days Later’s Danny Boyle!), in that the choices he makes are 100% logical but can sound heartless to others. They also kept the personal drama to a minimum – there are a few small arguments but none of that “the real danger is each other!” shit that nearly every other zombie movie leans on (usually as a way to avoid the more expensive zombie action, I think).

In fact, there’s actually quite a bit of action. The FX and zombie makeup aren’t exactly stellar, but it gets the job done, and the pace is much faster than expected. There are about 10 survivors to get picked off, and most of them do, so hurrah! Also, there’s a video-game style subplot where they need to acquire some colored keycards (for real) in order to get into a safehouse, which they need to get to because their temporary shelter is already failing (unlike Night of the Living Dead, where they seemed perfectly safe until they tried to go for the truck), so at least the action is more motivated and “movie plausible” than usual.

I wish there was a bit of variety to the killings, however. Just about every human death in the movie made me think “ah, they’re paying homage to the death of Rhodes from Day of the Dead” – a movie can only get away with one, MAYBE two of those before it gets a bit obnoxious. Since the killed folks don’t “turn” (one of the “it’s not a zombie movie” concepts), there’s no need to always tear them apart to prevent them from doing so, which is usually (to me) the idea behind killing them so viciously in these movies.

I also wouldn’t have minded a better looking film. I don’t know if it was sub-par lighting on location or a poor transfer during post production or both, but the movie is just damned ugly during all of the primary scenes with our hero and the other survivors. Oddly, there’s a B-story concerning the scientists who may have been behind the virus, presented via a video diary, and that footage looks a lot better, even though it SHOULD look sort of grainy and washed out. Another thing about these scenes – what the hell is up with the timecode? I get that it’s counting down to the initial outbreak (so that the science lab stuff chronologically happened a day or two before the rest of the movie), but it goes all over the place, even when it’s clear that no time has passed. At one point the main scientist talks about finding a microphone and monitors, and as he explains this, clearly in one unbroken short paragraph, the timecode suggests that it took him several hours to do so. Very weird.

Lead actor Ken Edwards doesn’t have any explanation for it either, which is why I wish anyone besides him was on the commentary. Nothing against actors, but they don’t make for very good commentators unless joined by other actors or have major involvement with the film’s creation. Someone like Tom Cruise or Will Smith, who gets involved with casting, the script process, etc – they can probably do a solo commentary and make it pretty interesting. But Edwards (and 99% of all other actors) simply don’t know enough about the sort of details that people who listen to commentaries are interested in hearing about, and the fact that he himself is asking the same questions the audience members are just sort of solidifies that. So when he’s not talking about how great (or how hot) Austin, TX is, he’s just narrating the movie.

And yet it’s still more useful than the 45 minute making of piece, which is (sigh) another collection of random behind the scenes footage without any sort of perspective or thru-line. Director Jason Bounds (who annoyingly credits himself as Jason Hack) barely appears, let alone offers any insight into how the film came together, where he got the idea, etc. I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating – these are the types of movies where quality commentary and/or making of can actually be useful, not to mention stand out in the wasteland of crappy EPK fluff pieces or commentaries where the participants just explain how great everyone else is. There’s no one really looking over their shoulder, and they aren’t being released by some giant corporation that has too many partners to count (can’t complain about your Entertainment Weekly review if you’re a Warner Bros movie – they’re both owned by the same group!). And the making of doesn’t have to be flashy and loaded with clips of their high paid stars doing their thing – they can actually demonstrate how budding filmmakers can go about creating their own film. It’s a sin to spend 45 minutes watching the making of a movie and walk away not having learned anything.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Red Riding Hood (2011)

MARCH 11, 2011

GENRE: WEREWOLF
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Considering that I didn’t mind Twilight, I figured Red Riding Hood might be an enjoyable surprise. The trailers did nothing for me, but it had a cast full of folks I dig (Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Lukas Haas, Virginia Madsen) and the script was by none other than Orphan scribe David Leslie Johnson – surely the trailers were “wrong” and this might actually be pretty good, right? Wrong. Oh, so so wrong. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is the worst movie I’ve seen theatrically since the Nightmare On Elm Street remake, and then some.

Not a single thing about the film worked. For starters, for something built around a love triangle, they sure do a piss-poor job giving the girl caught in the “middle” look like she has any real conflict about it. Say what you will about Twilight’s confused and borderline stalker-y approach to relationships, at least they put SOME effort into showing why Bella is torn – she can be "herself" with Jacob, but Edward’s the one who gets her all hot and bothered (and does so with his shirt on). But here, her choices are a nice enough fellow who she is being forced to marry and shares almost zero one on one scenes with, or the guy she’s been in love with since they were children. I’m sorry, where exactly is the conflict, here? It’s like being ‘torn’ between choosing a delicious slice of cake or stale saltines.

I mean, you’d think after Twilight that Catherine Hardwicke would have a grasp on how to create a compelling romantic drama in a horror/fantasy setting, but if anything she botches it even more than she did there. I suppose we can blame Johnson’s bland script (assuming he wasn’t rewritten or something – I am aghast at how someone who wrote something as whacked out and great as Orphan could produce something this tedious), but a good director would be able to transcend the weaknesses of a script. It’s also a largely ugly looking film; I was rather shocked to discover that it was shot on film and not with the Red or something, because it was so flat and lifeless throughout. I assume the sets and costumes were SUPPOSED to look fake in order to play into the fairy tale motif, but if not they screwed that up as well – I half expected M. Night Shyamalan to walk out in his park ranger outfit from The Village.

The werewolf mystery is a total failure as well (spoilers ahead!). There are a ton of suspects, but it turns out to be her dad (Burke), which would have been interesting if he hadn’t all but completely disappeared from the film after a half hour or so. It’s a good thing he appears in the Twilight films, since their audience will be the only ones seeing this goddamn thing – it’s the only way they’ll even remember who he is when he is revealed, because it had been so long since he had done anything of significance. And then he goes into exposition mode, explaining the entire plot thus far, aided with flashbacks of stuff we just saw. They might as well have put the Saw theme over the scene while they were at it. And again this is entirely botched – you’d think a girl finding out her own father was a monster would be upset or scared, but Amanda Seyfried just stands there making that same pleasantly curious face she makes throughout the entire movie. It’s just a giant shrug of a climax, but then again so was everything that led up to it.

Seyfried also added nothing to the movie – I really don’t get her appeal. She was OK in Jennifer’s Body, but in this and everything else I’ve seen of her, she’s just very bland, and doesn’t quite have what it takes to carry this kind of film. She’s also wrong for this sort of fairy tale stuff; maybe it was the Sucker Punch ads blanketing the entire city, but I couldn’t help but wonder how much more suited Emily Browning would have been for the movie. Now there’s a girl who looks like she walked out of a fairytale – Seyfried looks like she just walked out of a hipster clothing store in Bed-Stuy. In fact, they seemingly went out of their way to find actors that looked out of place in the period setting; only Michael Hogan (in a brief turn as one of the townsmen) and Julie Christie “fit”, everyone else looks like they’re in a high school production. Again to bring up The Village – they should have just realized this halfway through production and made it part of the movie, so at least there would be an excuse for the lack of authentic period feeling. Like, they were a theater group in the year 2011 trying to revive the Renaissance period, and suddenly found themselves in a real life big bad wolf scenario. Terrible idea, yes, but at least it would justify how cheap everything looked.

The callbacks to the original tale are laughably bad as well. Poor Julie Christie has to suffer through the worst of the lot, doing the whole “What big eyes you have!” bit with Seyfried during a nightmare scene that is somehow obvious as a nightmare and yet STILL ridiculous, but the others aren’t exactly better. The “three little pigs” in particular make an appearance during the scene that will remind viewers of the awful “rave” scene from Matrix Reloaded, and Red gets her Riding Hood as an early wedding present directly after a scene where she got something else as an early wedding gift – for Christ’s sake, save some gifts for the actual wedding, people!

And then there’s the matter of the werewolf’s voice. Sure, it’s part of the story and I guess I can give them credit for making it a voice that only Seyfried can hear in her head as opposed to a talking wolf, but it’s still embarrassingly bad. Whoever it was doing the voice inexplicably did so using a Jackie Earl Haley “Rorschach” (or Freddy, natch) delivery, and when coupled with the horrid CGI creation they whipped up (which manages to look WORSE than the Twi-wolves), it just becomes a perfect storm of bad ideas.

There’s nothing even worth recommending on a minor level. There’s an early hunt scene that seems like it might be exciting but it’s over in like two seconds. Gary Oldman has some fun chewing the scenery and giving the film an obligatory metaphor for modern times, as a tyrannical leader who takes away civil liberties in the pursuit of making the world safe (zzzz), but his subplot is never really allowed to take center stage, and during his final scenes he kills a guy for no reason, which goes unnoticed by the rest of the town. And what the hell is up with the elephant statue that he uses as a torture oven? Hell, I can’t even say “at least the score was good”, because the music was bizarrely anachronistic and wholly forgettable.

I hope no one reads this and thinks “man, I have to see this disaster for myself!” This isn’t spectacle bad, it’s just an inert bore from start to finish. I’m actually kind of stunned at how uninteresting it was. And the audience seemed to agree – no one jumped at the scare scenes, laughed at the halfhearted attempts at humor, or even seemed to care about anything on screen. And at one point I could hear two different people snoring - granted it was late, but if you’re going out at midnight to see a movie on opening day you must have some interest in the film, right? Trust me, there are better things to spend your money on. Go back and read my Twilight review – I’m not too “proud” to admit when a teen movie is relatively entertaining, and I like to think I have a good sense of when a movie may not be working for me but can work for its intended audience. But with this, barring some sort of insane crush on Seyfried, or the long wait between Eclipse and Breaking Dawn making you starved for anything even remotely similar to Twilight, I cannot possibly fathom how anyone would enjoy it on a legitimate OR ironic level.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Mansquito (aka MosquitoMan) (2004)

MARCH 10, 2011

GENRE: MUTANT
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Apparently, Sci-Fi Channel movies used to actually be pretty fun. In the ye olden days of 2004, the now Syfy aired Mansquito (inexplicably renamed MansquitoMan for DVD), a perfectly enjoyable B-monster movie that doesn’t waste time, keeps the CGI to a minimum, and takes a full hour to finally slip and give away its Bulgarian roots (it’s supposed to be in Baltimore). Why the hell can’t they still make em like this anymore? I’d gladly watch one of these every week.

It helps that they are ripping off a genuine classic (both versions of The Fly were clear influences), instead of other Sci-Fi Channel movies like they usually do. There’s no team of commandoes or whatever, or even any teens in a side plot – even the Mansquito’s victims are largely involved with the plot (his girlfriend, the scientist running the lab that created him, the hero’s partner, etc). But rather than just have the one scientist slowly becoming a Mansquito, we get the best of both worlds – a criminal turns into a Mansquito ten minutes in after being exposed to a ton of the chemical (they were trying to stop the West Nile Virus or something), whereas the heroine only gets a bit of exposure. So he turns instantly, becoming a full fledged Mansquito by the end of the first reel (and yes, this was pre-digital mania, so it’s actually shot on film) and killing folks, but she does the Goldblum thing and turns slowly – behavioral changes, then a few physical blemishes, discolored eyes, etc. That way we can get a lot of monster movie action that we tune in for, but also an above average tragic storyline, and enough time is spent with the character to actually care about her a little.

And then you have Corin Nemec, as her cop boyfriend who is investigating the Mansquito’s victims and then of course has to try to convince everyone else what they’re up against before it’s too late. Dude’s like a secret weapon of movies that should suck – as with Sea Beast, he straddles the line between camp and serious perfectly. AND he gets to yell MANSQUITO!!! before a failed attempt to blow the thing up with a grenade launcher. THIS is “winning”. I just wish Christa Campbell was in it more - she dies in the opening sequence, and by gunfire! She never even gets to SEE a Mansquito, let alone get killed by one.

Also, as I mentioned, Mansquito is not a CGI creature. For 95% of the movie, it’s just a dude in a pretty good suit, which allows director Tibor Takács (director of The Gate!) to make the action scenes a little more interesting than we usually get in these things. It’s not until the 3rd act (when it sprouts wings and begins flying around) that they start to use CGI, but he’s grounded again for the final 10-15 minutes and thus back to a practical suit. Shame they had to derail their effort (the flying scene is hardly essential), but the fact that they used the guy in a suit for as much as they did was admirable.

It’s also this 3rd act where they “prove” that they’re not in America or even Canada. I mean, I suspected as much, since all of these things are shot in Bulgaria, but they were doing a pretty good job of masking it, and the compact cast was primarily folks you had seen before. But the third act takes place at a hospital, and a bunch of cops show up once the Mansquito arrives and causes a panic, and pretty much every cop and doctor that speaks has that unmistakable awkward English accent. Plus the sirens are the UK “wheee YOOOOO wheee YOOOOOO” type, not the “Woooooroooowooooroooo” we have in America. Nice try, fellas.

I do wish they had done a little more research about mosquitoes. At one point Nemec discovers that the mosquito is bulletproof – where the hell did they get that? Cockroaches or beetles I could see, because they have hard shells. But a mosquito is pretty much the easiest thing in the world to kill, so I’m not sure why the man version would gain this unbreakable shell ability. Also (and I didn’t know this, it was in the IMDb goofs), male mosquitoes do not bite people for blood – they drink plant juice. This could have been used to a really interesting effect in the movie; the female hero starts wanting blood while the male villain (who was a murderer prior to becoming a Mansquito) slowly LOSES the desire to kill as the human side of him dies, and starts eating trees and flowers. Probably a bit too out-there for a Sci-Fi movie though. Still, something to think about for the remake in 2035 or so – after, The Fly was originally a cheesy horror movie too.

No matter. I have zero expectations for a Sci-Fi movie, and certainly wasn’t expecting this one to change things (indeed, it was given to me by someone who was hoping for a funny review). But I’d put it in the 95th percentile of Sci-Fi Originals, and will now seek out others from the era. It’s possible this was just a fluke, but maybe, just maybe, there was a time where they delivered reasonably entertaining movies more often than not. You have given me a reason to hope, Mansquito.

What say you?

P.S. According to the IMDb the DVD should have a making of – mine doesn’t have a goddamn thing except for some trailers (not even the trailer for Mansquito). Does yours? I assume you all own a copy.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Black Death (2010)

MARCH 9, 2011

GENRE: RELIGIOUS
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

I “saw” Black Death at Screamfest last October, but I never wrote a real review, so we can all probably guess what happened there (and if you’re new to the site – that means my narcolepsy kicked in and thus I didn’t see enough of it to write a proper review). And while I was sort of disappointed in myself at the time, because I had been really excited to see it (it showed at 10 pm after 3-4 other movies – they stacked the odds against me!), I’m sort of glad I saw it in its entirety now. Why? Four words: Season Of The Witch.

See, the two films are similar, in that they involved a bunch of badass knight types in the 14th century going from a city run by a great character actor (Christopher Lee in Witch*, David Warner in Black Death) to a remote village, and dealing with the plague and suspecting a very attractive woman of witchcraft. But Witch was pretty lousy, and Death, while not perfect, improves on that movie in just about every way. Now that I know how poorly this type of horror/adventure blend can turn out, it makes me appreciate Black Death all the more.

For starters, they were wise to cast an unknown in the actual lead role of Osmund and have him be act as our surrogate, instead of focusing on the big star, in this case Sean Bean. Bean is actually not in the movie all that much, but he has a presence that keeps you from noticing how often they get around showing him. It’s like the old Hammer films where Cushing or Lee would get top billing but if you were to count their screentime it would be much less than their co-stars. But it’s really Osmund’s story, and it’s remarkable how much he transforms from the beginning to the end of the film. I hope George Lucas sees this movie and realizes how much he botched Anakin’s transformation from good to bad in the prequels – THIS is how you show an innocent boy becoming a damaged man (and in one film instead of three, I might add).

Also, without spoiling much, the movie never turns into a silly FX showcase. It’s remarkably grounded in reality, and while the answers we get might disappoint some (or confuse them if they’re not paying enough attention – or falling asleep during key scenes L), it also makes you realize that the film isn’t really about the hunt for a necromancer after all – it’s something far more interesting and less-overplayed in movies. Someone mentioned Witchfinder General as a cinematic cousin of this film, but I have yet to see that (queued!), plus a bit of The Wicker Man with the whole “secluded religious group that doesn’t trust our hero” thing, but the only other movie I thought of was Sauna, and like Season, that was more of a general structure thing than one of theme (also this movie is a hell of a lot more accessible).

Production value is also excellent. Even when familiar faces like Andy Nyman popped up (I love that guy – shame his big scene is played out mainly with a goddamn snorricam, however), I was never taken out of the movie – they really sell the period well, and cast it with actors that don’t look out of place. I mean, nothing against say, Shia La Beouf, but if he was playing Osmund this movie simply wouldn’t have worked. Not only does he lack that “disappears into a role” quality, but he’s just too damn modern looking. However, guys like Bean and John Lynch blend in effortlessly.

My only issue is that it takes a bit long to get to the town. I don't know if they just figured it needed more action or what, but they really could have done without the big fight scene near the caves. They start on their journey rather quickly, so it feels like they should have arrived a bit sooner as well. I wouldn't have minded more time with them "investigating" the town before the shit hits the fan - it seems like they rush that part in order to get the 3rd act moving. So basically, just some pacing/structure shifts in the first 45 minutes or so would have been a benefit. Nothing too damaging, but since this is likely to be seen OnDemand or whatever instead of in theaters, I fear today's ADD-crippled audiences will tune out before it really kicks into high gear.

And thus it’s another “win” for underrated director Christopher Smith. I didn’t love his first film Creep, but it was a watchable Death Line “homage”, and Severance remains one of my favorite movies of the past 5 years. His last film Triangle was another solid thriller, unfortunately released after Timecrimes which shared the same central concept/twist (kind of ironic, that one suffered from being seen after a similar film). And while there’s nothing really tying his films together in any way, he has shown that he can tackle different sub-genres with reasonable ease. Guess it’s not a bad thing if a “typical” Christopher Smith movie is simply an enjoyable genre piece (as opposed to a “typical” Quentin Tarantino movie, which usually means criminals talking about food and old TV shows).

Now, as I alluded to, this movie is not really horror in any traditional sense. There’s some gore, but nothing is played for scares and the violence is primarily sword-based. I mean, yeah it’s more horror than romantic comedy, but if you’re expecting a bunch of witches flying around and Army of Darkness style resurrections and the like, then you will be disappointed. If you want a good story and a compelling character arc (shame that THAT is something that sticks out – “Hey, this movie actually has a character change over the course of it in an unexpected way!”), then your disappointment will be non-existent.

What say you?

*Weird little coincidence of sorts – Christopher Lee and Nicolas Cage are the stars of the two Wicker Man movies (albeit in different roles) and were both in Witch, and Black Death will probably be described as “A cross between Wicker Man and Season of The Witch” by someone. I dunno, kind of interesting. To me.

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Wailer (La Llorona) (2006)

MARCH 9, 2011

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Instead of the usual loud fan on the ceiling, my bathroom has this sort of space heater thing built into the wall, right below the towel rack. Which I love, because it makes my towel nice and warm for when I dry off after my shower. Unfortunately, I hung it a bit “low” and the towel was actually resting on the heat, which burned a big circle in my towel this morning. No fire, didn’t even make a hole, but it’s still kind of scary and interesting, unlike anything in The Wailer (La Llorona).

Honestly, this may be one of the most generic movies I’ve ever seen in my life (I wish there was more to the towel story – this will probably be a short review). It never gets better than its melancholy opening, with a woman drowning her kids in the river, believing that if she got rid of them she could be with her lover, who rejects her when she tells him what she did (as per the traditional La Llorona story) . Although in this version he sort of kills her (a joint effort – he’s holding the knife and she more or less forces him to stab her), so it’s a little different than the version I know, where he just leaves and she kills herself later.

But after that, yikes. We meet our bland and annoying teens, and of course they are comprised of two couples and two single “nice” folks who are getting to know each other, and of course they are heading out to an isolated house to party for the weekend, and of course they go swimming and one of them pretends to drown in order to add some excitement to the interminable first two acts, and so on and so on. I don’t even know why I bothered pausing it when I left the room to check an email – it was a new movie, but I had seen it 49596 times already.

The horror elements, which finally kick in at around the 55 minute mark of the 80 minute film, are no better. If anything they are worse, because after almost an hour of this crap you owe me some good kills and maybe even a scare or two, but it’s just as rote and pathetic, boiling down to nothing more than an endless cycle of shots of someone getting attacked, a cutaway to someone hearing them struggle, and then finding their dead body, followed by a lot of panicked crying and screaming until the next person gets grabbed. We never get a real good look at La Llorona, the gore is laughably generic (everyone seems to have the same “slashed face” appliance), and it’s just plain dull. Evil Dead may lack a crackerjack story, but Sam Raimi and co. more than made up for it with their inventive camerawork and FX (and for a larger chunk of the film’s running time to boot).

It’s also an ugly looking movie. I was suspicious right off the bat, when the company’s logo appeared, looking like it was taken from a VHS (the poor tracking being a key giveaway), but the movie itself didn’t look much better. Some of it was obviously just poorly compressed for DVD, but I could tell that even from the source it was hardly a visual masterpiece. The sound was also pretty bad, often sounding like it was recorded directly in camera. There’s also a scene where the male lead is clearly talking but the soundtrack has him muted while another guy makes drinking/burping sounds. OK.

This scene also kicks off the only part of the movie besides the opening where I was enjoying myself. The kids are either socially advanced or stuck in 1985, because rather than producing some weed or acid to party with, one of them pulls out a vial of coke. Four of them snort up happily, but the obvious final girl turns down the offer. And she’s quite civil about it (“No thanks”) but one of the other girls immediately snaps, asking why she is being such a bitch and ruining their fun and what not. So they start fighting, which is always awesome, with the nice one mocking the cokehead’s fake breasts and such. Then, the icing on the cake, she takes off, followed by the guy who is trying to nail her, who tells her “I think it’s really cool that you stay away from coke”, the same way one might compliment a love interest on their interest in charity work. Yeah, she’s a real independent spirit.

The DVD has a bunch of trailers for movies that look equally as bad, as well as a behind the scenes piece that is primarily the actors talking about how much fun they are having and how well everyone works together, so at least it fits the movie’s cookie-cutter approach. It ends with a split-screen showing the behind the scenes of a particular shot along with the finished product, except it appears to either be a different take or just out of sync. Good to know the editor was just as disinterested as the audience.

Oh, and there’s a sequel. I know this because both Wailers are among the four horror titles at my Blockbuster that I haven’t seen yet (not an exaggeration – the other two are Curse Of Alcatraz and something called Freakshow from The Asylum). Impressive or sad? Your call. Either way, let’s all just hope Wailer II is better (it has a different director at least, so I’m hopeful).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Children Of The Corn: Revelation (2001)

MARCH 8, 2011

GENRE: KILLER KID, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: CABLE (SHOWTIME)

I watched the first few sequels to Children Of The Corn back when they were first released on VHS, giving up after The Gathering (part 4 by my count). It’s been so long that I could conceivably watch them all again for HMAD, but the only thing I DO recall is that I didn’t really care much for them, so I probably won’t bother. And seeing Children Of The Corn: Revelation (part 7) just reminded me: “This is not a very good series of films.”

And even by franchise standards, Revelation is pretty lousy. It follows the structure of the fourth film (with Naomi Watts!), with an attractive young woman going to a Nebraska town and uncovering a mystery, though if memory serves that one had nothing to do with He Who Walks Behind The Rows, so at least Revelation has got one up on it. In fact, to give the series any credit, with that exception (and I may be wrong – it’s been well over a decade after all) they all sort of tied together via that deity. It would/could have been pretty easy to just have a bunch of kids in some Midwestern town killing travelers in each movie, but instead they sort of made a loose mythology about it. Not a GOOD or even interesting mythology, but hey, at least they tried.

It also continues the series’ tradition of tossing in a genre legend for a brief role. Karen Black was in 4, Kane Hodder popped up in 5, and Nancy Allen was in part 6 (which I haven’t seen). Here it’s Michael Ironside, in a wholly useless role as a priest who appears in shadows a couple times, finally introduces himself and delivers some exposition in the 3rd act, and then exits the movie without being spoken of again. It does NOT continue the tradition of featuring early appearances by future big stars though – 3 had Charlize Theron, 4 had Watts, 5 had Eva Mendes... but all we get here is perennial sequel victim Crystal Lowe (Final Destination 3, Wrong Turn 2, etc), who disrobes twice for our pleasure and has the distinction of being the only one with a suspenseful death scene. Most of the deaths occur out of nowhere (particularly the old man neighbor), but hers is built up, with a kid watching her as she bathed and such.

The old man was actually my favorite thing about the movie, since he was so insanely hateful and profane. I don’t think he even had a name; he’d just roll by and call our heroine (the lovely Claudette Mink) a “stupid bitch” or call Lowe a “filthy whore” and go on his way. I actually started wondering why the kids hadn’t killed him much earlier, but this is an apartment building set horror movie, so you know the drill – there are 5-6 colorful tenants all living there, and then our heroine’s arrival springs the killers into action, killing everyone but her.

At least they kill them with their own hands for the most part, though. The climax is largely children-free, as Mink and her love interest are menaced by corn come to life. Look, corn isn’t inherently scary (lettuce, on the other hand...), so just placing it around the town in every nook and cranny (it even grows in the parking lot of the apartment building) was already goofy enough. They certainly didn’t need to “escalate” the corn menace by having it come to life and grow all over the place to block our heroes as they tried to escape the building, or swarm around and pull them back and forth like the rapist tree from Evil Dead. You know what IS kind of scary, though? Creepy little religious cult member children. Let’s have some more of those, less of the damn maize.

Sadly, the Time Warner cable synopsis described a far more interesting film, in which a pair of FBI agents (investigating what they think is a serial killer) run afoul of the murderous children. I don’t know where the hell they got that idea (it doesn’t describe any of the other films, either), but it’s kind of funny how it almost seemed to be the case, because Mink’s character says she’s a reporter but we never see her doing any writing or real research, so I assumed maybe she was an undercover fed and the synopsis gave away what was supposed to be a twist. But no, they were just wrong, and the movie was just lazy (the screenwriter didn’t know how to write for cops either – I don’t think a detective would say “I’ll come over and look for clues.”).

Interesting-ish trivia – director Guy Magar was responsible for Stepfather III, aka the One Without Terry O’Quinn. TV episodes make up the rest of his resume, so I think it’s safe to assume he shouldn’t be trusted with any more franchises. That is, if he’s still alive – despite a pretty consistent output throughout the 80s and 90s, this is his final credit (he’s only about 63 today). But he didn’t write this one – credit goes to SJ Smith, whose only other produced work is a story credit on Silent Night Deadly Night 4, making his IMDB page pretty much the most depressing one I’ve ever found. Including my own, and that has Field of Screams, plus my sole acting credit as a zombie named Deer Poop. Yeah, I win.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)

MARCH 7, 2011

GENRE: HERO KILLER, SLASHER
SOURCE: CABLE (MGM HD)

If you didn’t like Sleepaway Camp II, then you should probably avoid Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, since it’s pretty much the same goddamn movie. And thus, even if you did like it, you should skip this one, unless you just want to see more of the same except without any gore whatsoever, not to mention the lack of younger victims. I know folks hate on Return To, but at least it offered some gore and wasn’t a direct copy of the previous film.

This and Happy Campers were actually shot back to back, a process that has seemingly never worked once (and don’t bring up LOTR – that’s a completely different thing). More often than not, the first of the two works out better (Dead Man’s Chest vs At World’s End, for example), because everyone is fresh and eager to go, and the writers probably didn’t know they were doing back to back movies when they wrote the first of the pair, so they had to cobble something together when they might not have been on their A-game. And let’s be honest - Sleepaway II wasn’t exactly a great film to begin with, yet III follows the same pattern as the other back-to-back productions, i.e. being worse.

Plus, once again Angela is just sort of walking around and cheerfully killing people in broad daylight, an approach that wore thin before II was even finished. At first I thought they were trying to pull some sort of switcheroo on us, because she’d have sunglasses on sometimes and then they would disappear in the next shot/scene, so I was thinking maybe there was an impostor of some sort actually committing the murders, but no – it’s just Mike Simpson’s piss-poor direction.

And maybe it wasn’t screenwriter Fritz Gordon’s fault, because he probably didn’t know who would be playing the role, but the fact that Michael J. Pollard is one of the first to die is just inexcusable. Pollard’s the kind of guy that can make even the worst movies entertaining, and this movie needed all the help it could get. At least he gets to lick a girl’s nipple before he gets offed (it’s pretty much the only thing he does in the movie besides stand around making confused faces). And whatever happened to him, anyway? He hasn’t been in anything since House Of 1000 Corpses – someone needs to cast him in a juicy supporting role, ASAP (unless he is sick or something, in which case I hope he gets better).

Luckily there are a few good bits sprinkled throughout, keeping it from being a complete waste of time. I loved Angela’s excuse for her short size (“My town didn’t have fluoride in the drinking water”), as well as the hateful street kid who pulls a gun on folks at the drop of a hat. I also enjoyed the “climax” (this being a Sleepaway Camp movie, I have to use the term loosely), where Angela has some of the remaining counselors play a hide and seek type game while they are tied up – if they find the girl before time is up she’ll let them go free. They really could have used some more summer camp motifs throughout the film, in fact; the absence of kids makes it easy to forget why they are even there.

It’s also easy to forget why YOU are there watching the film, since all of the gore was excised from this version (apparently it’s on the Anchor Bay boxed set, however – not sure where MGM HD got their otherwise nice looking transfer). I don’t know why the MPAA would come down on this particular film (I don’t recall II being so bloodless), but they really did a number on it – there’s hardly a single drop of blood to be seen. The double-axe death near the end of the movie is borderline incoherent because they had to cut around what actually happened; the two teens run into a room and then suddenly they are pinned to the wall. So basically, if you absolutely have to see this movie, make sure it’s the uncut version.

One thing puzzled me – is all the racist stuff supposed to be funny? The black kid is a cartoonish stereotype, one girl won’t look at a guy because he’s Mexican, etc. If they were going for a sort of “kitchen sink” approach to humor (like Postal, for example), I could see the humor in it, but it’s rather limited in scope, which just makes it seem actually racist. But I’m guessing the only folks who would be watching this movie nowadays aren’t exactly discerning, so it doesn’t matter.

It takes some effort to manage to be the worst Sleepaway Camp movie, though. Grats on that one.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Blu-Ray Review: The Walking Dead Season 1

MARCH 7, 2011

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

As a huge fan of both Frank Darabont and the "Walking Dead" comic by Robert Kirkman (I've been reading since issue #1 - which is tucked away in a box somewhere and apparently quite valuable now), I practically drooled when I heard Darabont would be in charge of bringing it to life via AMC, who had made a name for itself in recent years for producing quality television with some of the liberties afforded to them as a non-pay cable station (all the swears except for the F-bomb! Brief nudity! And most importantly for this particular series - gruesome violence!). So how did The Walking Dead turn out?

Well like all TV shows, some episodes fare better than others, but the abbreviated season (six episodes) makes the low points stick out a little more than they would on a regular 22 or even 13 episode run. On the other hand, that just makes the highlights all the more appreciated. Standouts like "Guts" (episode 2) and "Wildfire" (episode 5) look even better when you put them up against the Haggis-level racial drama of "Vatos" (episode 4) or the misguided, rushed, and bafflingly action-starved season finale "TS-19" in back to back viewings. And of course, the pilot (reviewed HERE) remains a grand achievement*, with feature-film production value (and length! I've seen actual movies that are shorter) and a strong turn by Lennie James as Morgan, who I wish had returned in the season, but like his comic counterpart he has remained elusive.

And that's another great thing about the show - they truly made it their own without totally betraying the source material. There are some major deviations from the comic, plus a bunch of new characters, but like the original they don't seem to be in any rush to explain where the zombies came from, and even though Kirkman got a ton of shit for it at the time since it resembled 28 Days Later (issue #1 was written (but not published) prior to 28 Days' release, for the record), they recreate Rick's initial entry into the zombified world quite faithfully. So there's a good balance of fan-pleasing moments and new stuff that "fits" that fans can enjoy, and newcomers can go back and read the comics now without having everything spoiled. More importantly, all of the characters from the book are represented, and share some physical resemblance (particularly Dale/Jeffrey DeMunn) while also doing the far trickier job of bringing each character's sensibilities and attitude to life despite some different plotting (SPOILERS FOR THE COMIC AHEAD). In the book, Shane died shortly after Amy, but it seems that they are keeping him around for the show. However, it totally works despite being a major change, and will obviously provide some excellent tension in the upcoming season(s) if they plan to work Lori's baby into the mix.

Watching them in quick succession also allowed me to enjoy certain elements that went over my head the first time around. For example, in "Guts" Rick tells Andrea how to take the safety off from her gun, something I had forgotten about 3-4 weeks later when "Wildfire" had a little callback to the moment. It's not exactly Lost or 24 when it comes to the serial nature of the show - most episodes more or less work as a standalone viewing experience, but there is a consistency that lends itself nicely to back to back viewing (the one nice thing about the short season - you can watch the entire season in under 5 hours, in one sitting - it's a long movie!).

Anchor Bay has supplied a generous supply of extras for this Blu-ray release, all of which are contained on disc 2 (the episodes are split up - 4 on disc 1, 2 on disc 2). None of the episodes have commentaries, which is a bit of a shame (Darabont, who directed the pilot and wrote a few episodes, is a terrific commentary guest), but there are detailed looks at each episode that run about 4-5 minutes each. In these, Darabont, producer Gale Anne Hurd, and the cast talk about key points in the episode, so I wouldn't recommend viewing before you've seen that particular chapter, and it's almost as good as a commentary; not as detailed obviously but it allows for insight from more participants. There are also a handful of featurettes (some of which I think aired on the website), including two terrific looks at Greg Nicotero and his team's makeup process. In one, Nicotero discusses the creation of the "Bicycle Zombie" we see in the first episode, and then we see a 3 minute time-lapse sequence of the 4 hour process of putting the actress in the makeup (and the annihilation of an entire paper towel roll if you look at the background), and in the other him and one of his guys show you how to make a pretty good zombie makeup for Halloween using household and grocery store items (gelatin, oatmeal, food coloring, etc). There's also a fun piece about the "Zombie School" that the extras went through to show them how to appropriately walk and attack like the undead (we see Nicotero showing them the original Night of the Living Dead at one point!).

Then there are a few cutesy pieces with the actors talking about their characters or DeMunn showing us around his RV - skippable fluff for all but the die-hards. There's also a half hour making of that you might as well skip if you plan to watch all the other stuff, since it's sort of a Cliff's Notes version of the supplement package as a whole, with clips that get used again in the episode-specific pieces (there's also a huge faux pas when they have Bear McCreary discussing his music for the show - over clips of the scene from "Wildfire" where they used John Murphy's Sunshine score). Sadly there are no deleted scenes, which I assumed there were plenty of given the rushed feeling of the finale (Dale and Andrea are seemingly very close but we hadn't really been given any proof of that), and apart from a quick look at a Comic Con poster (an edited version of their panel is also included), there isn't any "comic to film" comparison type stuff - I would have dug something like that.

Overall, however, it's an above average and worthwhile supplemental package, and when you factor in the incredible transfer (looks a lot better than it did on AMC HD, that's for sure) and low price (it can be found for less than 25 dollars at most outlets), it's a no-brainer: this is a must-own set for fans of the show, and a very safe blind-buy if you missed it the first time around. Get on board before season 2 starts up later this year - join our suffering during the agonizing wait!

What say you?

*Now that it's on DVD, you can go back and verify the inclusion of the Xbox360 "Achievement Unlocked" sound buried in the mix when Rick shoots the zombie through the fence. Awesome Easter egg.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Blood Car (2007)

MARCH 6, 2011

GENRE: COMEDIC, HERO KILLER, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

As some of you know, I bought a new (used) car last week, and thus just “enjoyed” my first fill-up just as gas prices were once again skyrocketing. Sadly, even though the new car gets better gas mileage than my last one, the tank is smaller, so I’ll probably have to fill it just as often if not more so – bad timing, BC! However it was excellent timing with regards to watching Blood Car, which is about a world where no one drives because gas costs too much, leading our “hero” to invent a new engine that runs on, you guessed it, blood.

So it becomes a Little Shop Of Horrors type deal, where he gets in over his head keeping the thing running in order to impress a girl he likes. At first he’s feeding it pets (dog lovers should steer clear), and then a car-jacker, but ultimately he’s picking up hitchhikers and tossing homeless folks into the thing (the trunk is retrofitted with a giant blade that cuts the victim up and funnels the blood into the tank), while going crazy.

And for a while it’s pretty fun and funny, but like a lot of ridiculous concept movies, the 3rd act stumbles. Archie gets kidnapped by some government agents who want the Blood Car, a subplot that is neither particularly funny or well implemented, and these folks are the focus for most of the final 30 minutes. Also, he loses his grip on reality and begins eating meat at a barbecue joint (he’s a vegan hippie at the start of the film – he was trying to find a way for the car to run on wheatgrass when some blood found its way into the engine) in a surreal sequence that goes on forever and doesn’t really have much to do with anything. A shockingly (and hilariously) grim final scene sort of saves it at the last minute, but it’s a shame that their plotting caused me to lose interest in a 75 minute movie about a car that ran on blood.

I was also a bit confused about the movie’s stance on vegan types. Archie the vegan is trying to save the world but becomes a huge unlikable asshole, and the meat-eating slut almost becomes sort of sympathetic by the end – so do they side with the folks that understand that steak and burgers are the best things in the world? But at the same time, Archie is the one trying to solve the gasoline problem that everyone else has seemingly ignored, so we’re back to him being “right” again. I assume they just did whatever they thought was funny, regardless of how it came across in the grand scheme of things.

And it is indeed funny. There’s a terrific bit where a car-jacker complains that it will cost about 450 bucks to fill the tank (gas is seen to cost 36 dollars a gallon) and then Archie corrects him on his math, resulting in the car-jacker actually doing the multiplication on a piece of paper to see who was right – I love shit like that. The movie also offers one of the best sight gags in recent memory, when Anna Chlumsky’s (!) character, who has a crush on Archie, is seen doodling an image of her performing oral pleasure on him while complimenting him on his tofu-tasting semen. Also: human fire truck – you have to see it for yourself.

There were a couple things that I just didn’t get, however. One – why was Archie so repulsed by Chlumsky’s character? She’s cute as hell, she’s all over him, and they have a lot in common – they really should have explained what his problem was there (or at least hired a far less appealing actress). Two – what is up with the backwards license plate? I get that they wanted to make the locale sort of ambiguous (it was shot in Georgia), but wouldn’t no license plate, or a generic fake one for “Pleasantdale” or something make a lot more sense and be far less distracting? I guess number 3 would be why he bothered taking off the homeless vet’s fake legs before tossing him in when he never took their clothes off, but since that paid off with a hilarious punchline (he only gets half a tank of fuel out of it) I’ll let it slide.

I’m less willing to forgive the bulk of the bonus material, however. There’s a cast and crew commentary that seems edited by a drunk child with two VCRs – people dip in and out, the movie’s soundtrack is sometimes muted, sometimes louder than the people talking, no one seems to be in the same room with anyone else, and worst of all it’s just plain boring and filled with a lot of gaps, which you’d think with 6-7 people would never be a concern (it’s almost worth listening to for when one of the participants suggests that “If you have money and you still shoot on video, you’re a schmuck”, however). Then there’s a 40+ minute behind the scenes feature that’s just a series of random bits with no interviews or any sort of cohesion, seemingly not even edited from the original DV camera it was shot with (there are several quick “bursts” in between shots, as if someone accidentally hit record for a second, or rewound the tape to record over something but didn’t quite cue it up properly). The only thing I got out of the experience was a rather ironic shot of a gas station taken during production, with the current gas prices at around 2.40 a gallon. So essentially, I would rejoice at the thought of paying the prices that they thought were so high that they had to make a spoof movie about it. Another five or six minutes of disc space is wasted on Mike Brune (who plays Archie) delivering a “Presidential Speech” that his buddies all seem to think is hilarious, but when they intercut it with him giving the speech to what appears to be a film festival crowd, you can see that no one else finds it amusing (kudos to including the audience’s disinterest on their own DVD though). There’s also a short film but I skipped it, because based on pretty much everything else I suspected it wouldn’t be worth my time.

The trailer, however, is quite fun and worth a look, and if you fast forward through the making of stuff you’ll get to a 20 minute piece about the creation of the fake blood used in the film’s original title sequence (which was ultimately cut) – you can tell where it begins because the aspect ratio changes. Why these two pieces were melded together, I don’t know, but the guy does offer a pretty good recipe for fake blood and he’s pretty enjoyable to listen to while he makes it, telling random anecdotes about getting flat tires and professing his love for Dead Alive (he hasn’t seen I Spit On Your Grave though). It’s a shame most folks would probably give up on the making of before this segment begins. Finally, there’s a (fake) film historian commentary that’s not exactly a riot, but it’s certainly more fun than the real commentary, and the speaker shoots himself with 10 minutes to go, so you can be done with it quicker to boot.

So it’s uneven and doesn’t quite stick the landing, but it’s a nutty concept and frequently quite amusing, and it’s too short to really get annoyed with (as long as you are on board with their brand of humor). Plus it’s nice to see My Girl all grown up, and any movie that makes fun of vegan food is OK by me.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Croc (2007)

MARCH 5, 2011

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT)

I bet if Croc was the first RHI/Maneater film I had seen, I wouldn't think much of it, but it's a lot better than some of the others (though not without some major issues), so I'm willing to give it a pass. Plus it delivered the only thing I can ask for in a killer water monster movie - the consumption of a small child! And it did so after teasing us with a little girl who gets away early on, making me think the movie had no balls. Well played, movie.

I was also relatively impressed with how they got around a potential plot hole after the opening scene kill (which is surprisingly bloody). Part of the plot involves the local heavies trying to run our hero's low-rent Sea World type place out of business, and one thing they do is let out three of his crocodiles, so of course everyone blames him when someone turns up dead. But what about the guys in the opening scene? They died before his crocs were set loose! But they were also douchey fishermen who used dynamite to make their job easier. Thus, no one probably knew they were out there at all, and/or gave a shit about them. If they went the usual route and just had the croc kill a couple of teenagers screwing around in the water, they wouldn't have been able to give the hero this extra bit of investment into finding the croc. Again, for a Maneater movie, this is fairly decent plotting.

And again - a kid gets munched! And in fairly spectacular fashion too; the kid is swimming and a cop comes by and tells everyone to get out of the water. However the kid refuses, saying he wants to keep swimming. So his white trash-y dad, beer in hand, mutters "Fine, let the croc eat him!" - and the croc instantly surfaces and swallows the kid whole! And before I had even stopped clapping, the dad jumped into the water still holding his beer!!! Classic! I was a bit confused why two white trash looking folks had a little Thai kid, but whatever, I can overlook puzzling family trees when a giant croc isn't playing it safe.

Speaking of Thai folks, I also liked seeing the Thailand scenery. You'd think after watching 1600 movies in a row that I'd be seeing quite a bit of the world, but sadly I can probably count the number of Thailand-shot films on one hand. Oddly enough, one of those would be Crocodile, which is still the killer croc movie to beat in my opinion (unless you're counting Alligator, like Wikipedia is for some reason). Whatever drawbacks there might be to doing HMAD, at least I can say that I've now seen Thailand come under siege by killer crocodiles twice.

Which still isn't as often as I've seen Michael Madsen pop up in a low-budget horror flick, sadly. Not sure what happened to his career, unlike his screen "cousin" Tom Sizemore, he never got into any trouble with the law, nor did he star in a bunch of duds like other DTV "legends" like Seagal or Cuba Gooding. And his few theatrically released films of the 00s (Sin City, the Kill Bills) were big hits. So why is he constantly appearing in junk like this? Hilariously, it takes literally a half hour for him to appear (pretty much EXACTLY at 30:00 on the timecode), and another 25 minutes for him to actually speak, since he just plays his first couple scenes looking around with a knowing look on his face. And even after that there are still lengthy scenes without him (particularly a rather silly sequence where the croc finds his way over to the villains' swimming pool and eats them both). Yet he gets top billing.

Now, when I say villains I mean the local heavies who are trying to buy out our hero's land - they had nothing to do with the croc. In fact, another thing I dug about Croc was the lack of a human-based explanation for the thing's size (which is only a couple feet over the average) or appearance (someone suggests global warming made him swim further away from its native area). No toxic spill, no crazed scientist creating a mutation, none of that shit. Like Jaws, it's just a hungry animal. Why it left the water to crawl along on land for a while and then hide in a swimming pool to kill two assholes, I have no idea, but at least it didn't seem to be revenge-motivated (like in Alligator).

But, you know, it IS an RHI movie. There's a lot of dull spots, the effects aren't very memorable, and everyone except the one name draw is kind of bland. It probably could have used another kill in the 2nd act somewhere, and it DEFINITELY could have used a more exciting climax. With only 12 minutes to go including credits, the heroes are still in search mode on their boat, and worse, the way they actually kill the thing is incredibly dull - Madsen just shoots it with a sub-machine gun from like 100 feet away (and above!). There's more tension AFTER the thing is dead, in fact, because right before it died it clamped down on the hero's foot, so they had to decide whether or not to cut off his leg before he drowned. I would have preferred another death here (surprised Madsen survived, honestly) as well - no one dies in the last 15 minutes or so.

So while it's not up to Sea Beast levels of quality, it's a lot better than Blood Monkey, Shark Swarm, and even the namesake entry Maneater. Hell it's also better than Jaws 3, because at least they had an excuse for the bad effects AND didn't spend too much time on shit that couldn't involve a killer water monster (i.e. interior scenes, which are rare in this movie).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...