Dream House (2011)

OCTOBER 8, 2011

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

With the director wanting his name taken off the final cut of the film and the two main stars refusing to do press, you'd think Dream House would be a disaster from start to finish, with obvious reshoots, jarring editing, and the other usual signs of a heavily tinkered film. But to my eyes, Dream House just seems like it was always destined to be exactly what it is: a dull, pointless Hollywood attempt at a twisty horror/drama that any respectful genre fan could figure out after 15 minutes or so. If this was heavily re-edited, they did a fine job of making it look like it was always lame.

SPOILERS AHEAD! Even a couple the trailer doesn't give away!

Much has been made about the film's trailer spoiling the entire movie, but that's slightly misleading - the twist everyone is referring to is actually the halfway point of the movie, and thus a trailer that hid it would technically be selling a different movie (that a woman is currently suing the studio behind Drive for their own allegedly misleading trailers makes this point all the more relevant). See, here's the thing - I actually managed to avoid the trailer, and someone on Twitter actually misdirected me by claiming the film was a ripoff of a different movie, but I still figured out the so-called "twist" after about ten minutes. The odd name given to Daniel Craig's character and the fact that we were never getting a clear shot of the killer he was supposedly looking for made it pretty obvious what was going on.

So that wasn't really the problem with the film - it's the fact that once it's revealed, the movie completely loses momentum. Craig, now knowing he was the man who was accused of killing his family, spends the rest of the movie trying to convince wife Rachel Weisz that she's a ghost, while also trying to solve the mystery of who REALLY killed her. Unfortunately, this mystery was completely spoiled even before the so-called "split personality twist", because the film goes out of its way to introduce a shady looking Elias Koteas, as well as a subplot about Craig's neighbor (Naomi Watts) engaged in custody battle with her ex - two elements that stick out like sore thumbs and thus are obviously important, in a narrative that offers no red herrings of any sort.

Thus, maybe the specifics won't be obvious from the start, but those two key points (as well as a throwaway line about the confusing layout of Craig's street) are set up and then not mentioned again until the movie's almost over, which is always a problem. And since it's not particularly interesting, you have a movie that simply has nothing to retain audience interest in between these wholly botched "reveals". There's just not enough meat on the bone; perhaps in original cuts the Koteas character and the divorce/custody subplot were given more time, but here, with their obligatory single mentions in the film's first ten minutes, they might as well have just explained their connection right off the bat, rather than delay it to the end, where we're supposed to be surprised that Craig's family was the victim of mistaken identity (the ex-husband hired Koteas to kill Watts, but Koteas fucked up and went to the wrong house).

On that note, once again, the Elias Koteas problem. How many times am I going to see a horror movie that features Koteas as some cryptic character who pops up early on and then more or less disappears until the end of the movie when his character takes part in the big revelations? He's a good actor and has been around for well over 20 years at this point - is this really the best Hollywood can do for him? He's playing a street hood for Christ's sake - this is a role that should have gone to a recurring actor from a TV show that was testing the waters for a transition to big screen work, like, I dunno, that Lincoln dude from Fringe or maybe Castiel from Supernatural. He barely even has any real lines, just a lot of "What are you doing here?" type filler dialogue.

Plus, and far more troubling, it's not scary or suspenseful in the slightest. The early stuff is too generic to register ("I thought I saw someone standing outside!"), and once you realize how incompetent Koteas and the ex-husband are, you can pretty much guarantee the survival of the still breathing actors. The film's final shot definitely sticks out a bit, so perhaps there was one more bittersweet death in the climax at one point, but it hardly would have mattered much. There's also little to suggest why any of these great actors signed on; while Craig is a good choice (he gets to play against type, and then totally his usual type), for the life of me I can't figure out why Rachel Weisz would play such a thankless wife role, or why Naomi Watts would play a neighbor who barely even speaks until the third act. Again, these are the sort of roles that should be played by relative newcomers best known for TV roles (January Jones and maybe the girl from Castle), not Oscar winners/nominees. There would have to be at least an hour's worth of quality excised material (either on the script or the cutting room floor) for me to start to understand why they bothered signing on. Especially Weisz - she turned down what was most likely a better payday for the 3rd Mummy movie because she didn't agree with the script (the part went to Maria Bello, now - heh - starring on a TV show), so what the hell drew her to this?

(Unless she knew she'd end up falling in love with and marrying Daniel Craig. In that case, good for her!)

Even in the realm of "If you've never seen a movie before..." twist thrillers, this one just doesn't deliver. Too slow and uneventful to provide mindless thrills, and too under-developed to appeal to those who enjoy using their noggin a bit (actually borderline insulting to those folks; why would Koteas kill two children - even the wrong ones - if he was hired to help a guy win custody of his child?), nothing about it works beyond a few scenes of Craig investigating what turns out to be himself, and those who saw the trailer (or read this review) would already be ahead of him anyway. Waste of talent and time on all levels.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Late Fee (2009)

OCTOBER 7, 2011

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Oddly enough, I watched Late Fee in pretty much the exact same position I was in just two hours previous when I got a wisdom tooth removed: reclining, staring at a TV (my dentist’s office has TVs – they’re not usually on though), and wishing like hell it was over. But the dental procedure actually managed to be the better experience; my dentist finished his work much quicker than I thought, whereas Late Fee ran ten minutes longer than the time promised on the Netflix envelope (gotta love that Novocaine – I thought he was just scraping away at something for extraction only to see my tooth already laying on his little table – I put a pic on Twitter if you want to see!).

What I’m saying is that the movie sucks. The concept was fine – a couple looking for something a little off the beaten path to enjoy on Halloween is goaded into checking out a pair of “banned in America” movies from the very strange owner of a video store that is also hosting a Halloween party. The title refers to the fact that they sign a contract stating that they’ll return the movies by midnight or else face the consequences. So, obviously, the movies are the segments, they’ll miss the deadline, and there will be a darkly funny Tales From The Crypt style ending. Should be fun, right?

Well, it’s not. Not in the slightest. The movie is tone-deaf from start to finish, trying to be funny one minute and extreme the next, and failing at every turn. The fact that not a single person in the entire movie can act is bad enough, but that they’re all on different pages with regards to their non-acting just makes it unbearable. Some of the actors play it straight, others go for camp, while others just basically act like they’re in pornos or something. It’s as if no one on the production ever bothered to discuss the film with anyone else.

And what the hell kind of anthology only has two stories? Well, I guess there’s three if you consider that the second segment is seemingly haphazardly edited together from two different movies, but still – if you’re going to fuck with tradition at least make it worth our time. The first is the best (by default), if only because what seemed like a story about a hooker and a john who both planned to kill the other ended up being about a hooker that turned into some sort of half Lovecraftian monster that tears the guy’s dick off while riding him like a champ. Points for novelty, I guess. But the painful acting, obnoxious faux porn music, and grating “manager” character keep it from ever being even slightly amusing – ultimately the only good thing I can say about is that it’s better than the other one.

“Damnation” is the bafflingly convoluted tale of a girl having a very bad day, I guess. Over the course of a half hour she is imprisoned, kidnapped, made to look like a whore, filmed during an attempted rape/snuff shoot, at which point the guy who kidnapped her shoots everyone else and takes her away. Meanwhile, back at the prison, the warden and his head guard (an Ilsa type named, wait for it, Elsa) engage in weird sex games only to be interrupted by a cannibal who has escaped from the evil scientist running experiments in the prison basement. In other words, it’s a smorgasbord that might be too much even for a feature film, but compressed into a half hour or so just becomes an unbearably pointless and confusing endurance test.

Oh, and half of the actors in it are played by the people in the first story, and a chunk of it takes place at the same hotel, making it even more confusing. The great thing about anthologies is that it gives you license to cast a bunch of folks to come in to play central roles in short stories (which is why theatrical anthology movies tend to have great casts), so why they’d double up on performances by people who can’t act in the first place just baffles me. Wouldn’t surprise me if the two segments were produced separately and then later on someone decided to film a wraparound to repackage them as an anthology (it would certainly explain the lack of a third story - perhaps they didn't have anything else laying around?).

Oddly enough, that’s how I felt about Screamtime, which was another anthology that revolved around people watching rented videos. But at least that one had a decent story or two, and didn’t feel so half-assed across the board. However, for both movies I have to wonder about the internal logic: are we seeing the entire “movie” that the wraparound characters are watching? Or are these people renting 25 minute movies without any fuss? I guess it’s just a stupid concept (this bothered me in Chillerama as well, for the record).

Because they hate me, Shriek Show has included some bonus material, further extending the time I had to spend with this awful movie. A making of largely focuses on the filming of the she-monster part, which is probably the closest thing to entertainment on the entire disc since the actress is making casual comments and suggestions about her fake vagina. Then there’s a confusing collection of public access/local channel promos and such, ending with a National Anthem “sign off” (and color bars!) that I’ve never actually been lucky enough to see for real (do they even do it anymore? Infomercials air all night on every channel, right?). There’s also a trailer reel and some stills, which will hopefully satisfy the appetites of all those Late Fee fans who might bemoan the lack of a commentary or deleted scenes.

One of the trailers is for Wicked Lake, a film that is also name-checked in the movie itself. I later learned that John Carchietta and Carl Morano (the writer/directors of this thing) produced that equally abysmal movie, so they are hereby placed on the “avoid” list with Nick Palumbo and Mike Feifer. Life’s too short for people with this much contempt for their audience.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)

OCTOBER 6, 2011

GENRE: ALIEN, MONSTER
SOURCE: CABLE (TURNER CLASSIC)

Ordinarily I don’t check cable too much for qualifying HMAD entries at this time of the year, when I’m trying to find time for new shows as well as keep up with my returning ones. As I tend to fail at this, my DVR fills up pretty damn quickly, so recording movies as well isn’t the best idea. But when I saw that my hero John Carpenter was hosting a few movies on TCM, including It! The Terror From Beyond Space, I made an exception (I also recorded Rio Bravo, the sole non-genre film in his lineup*), especially since the movie was only 68 minutes long.

The recording was 75 minutes though, as it included some thoughts from Carpenter, who was being interviewed by Robert Osborne. In typical Carpenter fashion, he starts off by saying what a big a fan he is of the movie before pointing out all of its flaws – characters frequently shooting guns and even bazookas in their space shuttle, a couple of poor performances, the hilariously chauvinist depiction of the ship’s female crew members – but makes the (correct) point that the movie still works despite all of that.

He also points out that it was an influence for Alien, which is obvious once the monster starts picking folks off when they’re alone. However, the pacing here is much faster; only about 25 minutes have gone by before the entire crew is aware of the monster and thus sticking together and being proactive, which limits the body count some. It’s funny to see how things have changed; while the movie still offers 5-6 kills, the fact that there are still about as many left alive at the end, as opposed to the now standard one or two, can give a modern audience a minor feeling of being ripped off. They could have at least sucked a guy out of the airlock at the end when they’re attempting to deprive the monster of oxygen (they’re all wearing spacesuits).

That’s their final and only successful plan, out of what seems like a half dozen. Since they’re aware of the monster early on, there’s not a lot of folks talking normally or carrying about their normal business; everything is always part of a plan to kill the thing. Hilariously, one plan actually involves “acting normal”; two guys go outside the ship and re-enter below the deck the monster is on, and to distract him the others just wander in circles and mumble vague things like “check that gauge” “what time is it?” and such. I’ve seen a zillion movies but I must say, this is the first one where having the cast mutter was a crucial part of the plan. Others involve exposing it to radiation, shooting it, gassing it… you can’t accuse these guys of sitting around waiting to die.

Well, except for the one that sits around waiting to die. One guy gets his foot caught on the base of a tank of some sort, and somehow this breaks it. So he spends the rest of the movie just sitting there with a little blow torch, which somehow keeps the monster at bay even though a goddamn bazooka barely fazed him. It’s a bit silly, and made worse by the fact that it’s very difficult to understand the geography of the ship and/or where the monster is in relation to him or the others. Every level looks pretty much the same, and I couldn’t understand why the monster was just sort of hanging out on one level instead of going up or down to find other people to kill. Same with the guy – even with the broken foot it seems like he could have dragged himself out of harm’s way, but it’s impossible to know for sure because it’s hard to understand where exactly he is in relation to the others or a door to another section of the ship.

But the pace works in its favor; unlike most old monster movies where you’re constantly just listening to dudes drone on or finding evidence of something that happened off-screen, we’re constantly on the go here, with the added bonus of the “lone survivor” storyline. Our core team picks up this one guy Carruthers who is the only survivor of another crew, and they all assume he killed his own men. We know he didn’t, of course, but it gives a fun dynamic to the early scenes where they think he’s a killer yet let him wander around the ship unsupervised or retrained in any way. Plus the monster itself is cool; it sort of looks like Creature From The Black Lagoon, but with a face that resembles a werewolf/beast creature. Most of the time he just lumbers around (read: looks a bit silly), but there are some minor scares, such as when he approaches while smoke (from the gas grenades I think) blankets him and his surroundings – very eerie visual. There’s no real explanation of what he is or how he came to be, but we do know he’s from Mars, and back then that was pretty much all that was necessary anyway.

Speaking of Mars, I LOVED the end of the movie, in which a bunch of reporters are informed about the events of the movie by a guy who caps things off by pointing out that Mars also means death (it does?) and that it should be left out of any further space exploration. How wonderfully cynical, and a far cry from any other movie where life is discovered – where the hell is the Weyland-Yutani of 1958 to be like “No way, we need to study it!”. But it makes sense that Carpenter would love this movie when it ended this way; most of his films also had this sort of cynicism built into their conclusions, so you gotta wonder if this is where he got the idea.

I could see this being a cool remake (different name might be in order); having the team show up and find Carruthers, not sure if he’s the killer or not. And we could be unsure as well – did he kill them? Is it a monster? Or is HE the monster and this is some sort of Thing type scenario? Play up the mystery, improve the spaceship concept (as with many space movies; including Alien at times, it’s easy to forget that they’re flying through the emptiness of the galaxy – put some damn windows in or something!), and populate the cast with genre vets, and you got yourself a pretty kick-ass monster movie.

Final note – between the gunplay and anti-exploration message at the end, why does NASA beat up on Armageddon but leave this movie alone? So what if Bay and co. got the science wrong, at least they were all for what you guys do!

What say you?

*He also hosted the original Thing From Another World as well as Curse Of Frankenstein, in case you were wondering. I would have loved to watch his segments but alas I couldn’t afford the space on my DVR, even temporarily.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Witchfinder General (1968)

OCTOBER 5, 2011

GENRE: RELIGIOUS, REVENGE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

As with Black Death, Witchfinder General isn’t a horror film in the traditional sense, but is actually more terrifying than most movies when you consider that the panicked, senseless killings depicted in the film occurred for real. The character Vincent Price plays was a real guy named Matthew Hopkins who would accuse people of being witches/Satanists more or less at random and kill them in 17th century England, before finally being exposed and “fired”. In real life he died in his sleep; the movie gives his character a far more fitting denouement.

Unlike Black Death, however, there isn’t a lot of moral ambiguity for our hero to deal with – he’s actually kind of a generic protagonist for the most part. As with just about any monster movie, he is in love with a girl and then is forced to rescue her from the clutches of evil, just in this case it’s a power-mad “Witchfinder” instead of Dracula or whoever. The middle act of the film is a bit repetitive as he seemingly spends most of it on his horse riding back and forth between the town where things are going down and other towns where people tell him what is going down. His revenge is limited to two people (Price and another guy on Price’s “team”), so there’s not a lot of action until the end either – at least if there were 4-5 guys we could have a fight every 10-15 minutes.

Otherwise this is pretty dang good stuff. I like that AIP was doing something different (even if they quite ridiculously changed the name and added some bookending narration to tie it into their Poe series), and I REALLY liked Price’s performance. He is truly evil here, without a shred of his usual charm or even sometimes campy approach to playing villains, and manages to go through the entire film without ever really chewing the scenery. The DVD’s bonus features (a commentary and a retrospective) are filled with stories about how he didn’t get along with director Michael Reeves (who wanted Donald Pleasence for the role – AIP demanded Price be the star instead), but it paid off – this is one of his best ever performances.

I also liked the “deep” period setting; while just about every Price film takes place in the past, it’s usually the 19th century or so; this goes back 350 years from its production. So everyone rides horses, their guns can only hold one round, and Price is able to do what he does because there’s no way for anyone to send a telegram about his nonsense. And it’s also quite gory for a film produced in the 60s; the immolation near the end is pretty gruesome, as is an axe murder in the climax. The fake blood is silly looking, but it’s easy to see why the censors and critics were so taken aback by the film when it was released (of course, it’s tame by today’s standards).

Plus, again, it’s just different. I love when I watch a movie and have no idea what genre tags to put in - as long as the movie entertains and intrigues, I could care less if it “fits” anywhere. There are no attempts to make it more like a traditional horror film (Price barely even puts up a fight at the end), and the attention to character and the ideas about the nature of violence are far more interesting than seeing Price running around yet another burning mansion. There aren’t even really any scares – the concept alone provides the horror. I’m actually surprised there aren’t more films about this period in history, or this character (going by IMDb’s “movie connections”, there doesn’t seem to be a single other film about Hopkins, horror or otherwise) – this is a very loose retelling of the events; surely a more factual account would be just as if not more interesting. Indeed, one major change is that Hopkins didn’t even live to be 30, whereas Price was in his 50s at the time of filming. So a new film with a guy in the right age group (there are no photos of him, obviously – so let’s just say Michael Fassbender should play him, as he’s good at being evil but still a compelling lead) would be very appealing to me, even if they dropped any pretense of it being a “horror” film. They could/should also drop the rather bland “Hero rescuing his girl” subplot, which wraps up nicely (read: it’s a downer) but takes time away from the far more interesting Hopkins.

As mentioned, the disc has a commentary track, featuring Ian Oglivy (the hero), one of the producers, and some fan/journalist who starts off the track by describing the on-screen action in heavy detail, which made me wonder if I had turned on one of those descriptive video tracks for blind people. It’s a fun track, they talk about Price and Reeves on-set quarrels (one anecdote about a fake ax is particularly amazing), and also point out a few minor anachronistic mistakes and things of that nature. The retrospective is half about the movie, half about Reeves himself, who sadly passed away not long after this movie was completed (accidental overdose of sleeping pills) and thus never completed another feature, which is a shame as anyone as young as he was (only 25) that could stand up to Price is definitely a unique talent. It should also be noted that the film also has the original (and quite good) soundtrack restored; apparently the US releases always had some replacement synth score that was universally described as awful.

So obviously it’s a must see for Price fans, and even though it’s inaccurate, also one of the few horror films that can also appeal to history buffs, as they only took the usual liberties instead of using the story as a springboard for something a little more conventional. Indeed, I actually kept expecting someone to turn into a witch, but they keep it grounded throughout. Well played!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

DVD Review: Scream 4

OCTOBER 4, 2011

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

While I knew Scream 4 wouldn’t live up to either the quality or the financial success of the first two films, I wasn’t expecting it to outright tank either, barely matching its 40 million production budget (getting trounced by Insidious in the process). Talks of a 5th film continue, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, at least not with the core team returning; a DTV “Wes Craven Presents” film with a cameo from David Arquette is probably the best Scream fans can hope for unless sales for this DVD are astronomical. Is it worth the purchase?

Well, yes and no. As I explained in my original review, the film is an improvement over 3, and it’s great to see our trio again. But a second viewing has also revealed other problems, and even though the disc comes from Anchor Bay and not Weinstein’s own label, there isn’t a lot of behind the scenes info or dirt on the production’s well publicized problems (i.e. the rewrites; Ehren Kruger, who is likely to blame for every single one of the movie’s script issues due to the fact that he is a terrible, terrible writer, isn’t mentioned once), so those looking for a candid look at the film’s shooting/editing will be disappointed.

The main problem is that the movie never successfully blends its two main storylines. The new kids (Hayden Panettiere, Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin, etc) are actually pretty fun and likable for the most part (only weak link is the guy playing Roberts’ boyfriend), but they never get the time/chance to come into their own because the movie has to devote too much time toward bringing Sid, Dewey, and Gale back into the fold. Add in the other new characters: the pair of cops, Marley Shelton’s lovestruck deputy, Roberts’ mom (Mary McDonnell), Alison Brie’s bitchy assistant, etc – and you just have way too many characters for a film like this. As much as I hated the deaths of Randy and Cotton, it’s good that they’re no longer around or else the movie would be even MORE overstuffed. Plus, as it is a whodunit, they are forced to try to paint every character as a possible suspect until their demise, which again takes time away from really developing our real heroes. Excising 3-5 of these characters (the two cops and Olivia in particular) might have resulted in a lower body count, but a better film for sure.

The movie also suffers from the usual Dimension bullshit, such as the fact that Bob Weinstein clearly thinks we’re all idiots. A plot thread would have had the killer recreating the murders from the first film, right down to even having the 3rd victim die with a doggy door around her neck (a la Tatum), but Weinstein ordered it dropped because he didn’t think anyone would get it. Does he think that the audience for Scream 4 is going to be made up of newcomers that wouldn’t understand a fairly obvious reference to the first film? So this stuff is dropped, along with other scenes, resulting in several plot holes and a pace that never finds its groove.

Still, it’s a decent enough slasher, and again, much improved over the last entry. The humor is much more in line with what I’d expect from a Scream film, and even on a second time I found myself chuckling at some of the dialogue and references. Panetierre steals the film away from even Campbell and the others, playing a girl who looks like a typical best friend bimbo at first but is also as much of a horror nerd as Randy was, which was a nice play on expectations. The reveal of the killer is a reasonable surprise, though the logic of both their motive and their size with regards to Ghostface is best left un-thought about.

Anchor Bay has provided a standard set of bonus features, with the most interesting being the nearly half hours’ worth of deleted scenes, most of which deserved to be left in the film. Nearly all of them were apparently cut for time according to Craven (who provides optional commentary on all), except for those few aforementioned scenes that were taken out because we’re all too stupid to understand a reference to the previous film(s), according to big Bob. Another tells us that Sid’s dad has passed away, a minor question mark in the theatrical version, though it hardly seemed necessary to kill him off. We also get to see the original versions of two of the early death scenes, both of which are superior to the dragged out, less exciting theatrical versions. It’s funny that so many scenes were cut for time; had they not needlessly added 5 minutes to the runtime with these reshoots, maybe some of these other moments could have been left in. There is no extended version, unfortunately, but this being Anchor Bay I wouldn’t be surprised to see a “director’s cut” release of the movie next year.

The rest of the stuff isn’t particularly essential. The “making of” is largely generic interviews taken from the junket, the gag reel isn’t particularly funny (though it’s fun to see the actors getting scared by Ghostface popping out somewhere he isn’t supposed to be), and the video game promo (actually listed as a bonus!) is just a still image telling you how to access the game on your iPhone. That leaves the commentary, which might have been OK if Wes was alone and providing insight, but alas he is joined by Panettiere and Roberts, who mainly repeat their dialogue, giggle at the jokes, and discuss OMG, how hard it was to shoot this or that scene (oh, and everyone in the movie is “great”, in case you were wondering). Campbell also pops up for about 45 minutes’ worth of the track, phoning in from London, but she doesn’t have the movie in front of her, so Wes has to tell her what’s going on (“Neve, we’re at the scene where Marley gives David the lemon squares”) – needless to say, her brief comments are hardly necessary, and you probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone until Wes points out that she had left. Again, the rewrites, Kevin Williamson’s departure, etc are never mentioned, but apparently Matthew Lillard stopped by, which delighted one of the girls very much because she had a very big crush on him from the first Scream (I say “one of the girls” because I couldn’t tell them apart unless they were specifically discussing their own character).

Picture and audio quality are sufficient for a modern film, nothing blew me away but I didn’t have any issues either. I should note that even though the reliable Peter Deming came back to shoot the film (he shot the other films as well), this is hardly the best looking film in the series; frankly, it looks cheap. And I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but the halo-y lens flares around the numerous cop cars in the movie drove me up a wall, making every shot of them (and there are many) look like a cut-scene from a PS1 game.

Ultimately the biggest problem with the film was that it was too little, too late. After 11 years, they had plenty of material to work with both from a character standpoint (they never actually explain what Sidney has been DOING for the past decade) as well as a chance to send up the modern horror trends, but instead it just largely felt like another rushed sequel, with new technology and the current state of horror given little more than cursory references before returning to the same old shit. Hell, if you remove maybe a dozen lines of throwaway dialogue then there’s nothing about this movie that couldn’t have been done in 2002. Improving on 3 might be enough for one viewing, but they needed to do more than that to give the film the sort of longevity that the original has; now that this review is done I’ll probably never watch it again, though I’ll still pull out the first 2 from time to time. Hopefully they will let the series die, or at least drop Sidney from the proceedings for a while – there’s just no way in hell I will buy yet another killer with a voice box pulling off the murders of a dozen people just to get back at her for everything that’s gone wrong in their life. Frankly, she’s not all that interesting anymore.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004)

OCTOBER 4, 2011

GENRE: WEREWOLF
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX)

I know I can be pretty optimistic with regards to HMAD plans (such as watching all of the video nasties this year – I’d have to watch one every other day to get em all), but even by my standards my delay in seeing Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning is a bit ridiculous – I promised to see it “soon” back in July… of 2007. That is when I watched the 2nd film, but since this is a prequel it doesn’t matter that I can’t remember a lot about it anymore. If anything, given my dislike of prequels, it could have been a blessing to go in “blind”.

Alas, even if I had only read the synopsis of the first film it would render a lot of this one rather pointless, as obviously the movie would have to end with both of the girls still alive in order to go on and have ancestors that look exactly like them in 200 years (and also have the same names). It would have been fine if the plot didn’t require them to be in danger, but the ENTIRE THIRD ACT revolves around how Brigitte has to kill Ginger in order to stop the curse from continuing. Uh, spoiler – she doesn’t do it.

So without any real tension to the bulk of the movie, all that’s left is a fairly generic period werewolf tale, except even less interesting because there’s no real mystery as to who the werewolf is when it’s human. Basically the two girls find themselves trapped in a fort in the middle of nowhere, populated by a half dozen or so surly dudes with a werewolf problem, but it’s not a “whodunit”, which might have been cool. Instead the wolves stay in wolf form for pretty much the whole movie, and some local Native Americans introduce their usual legends and curse talk in a largely unsuccessful attempt to give the girls something to do. For a series that started off as “feminist horror” (not my term), it’s sort of embarrassing that this one essentially sidelines the two heroines in favor of guys not trusting each other and shooting at wolves.

They also make no effort to explain how the girls end up continuing their timeline. I mean, the whole point of a prequel is to lay down the groundwork for the events of the other films, right? So why does this feel more like a period remake? The fact that they have the same first names doesn’t make any damn sense, and once again it comes down to Brigitte betraying human allies in order to protect her infected sister – if they transplanted the setting to modern day this would be pretty much the same damn movie. Ginger Snaps 2 worked because they continued with her character and came up with a different story – this one just goes backwards in more ways than one.

It doesn’t help that Emily Perkins gives a wholly obnoxious performance this time around. After getting the previous movie pretty much to herself, she spends this one in a constant state of near-shock, always looking like she just woke up and saw a spider crawling on her chest and is panicking but afraid to move. She also spends at least 50% of her screentime clutching onto Ginger, who doesn’t fare a lot better as SHE spends most of the movie making a slightly stoned face as she fights (?) the werewolf curse. It almost seems at times that they took an unrelated script and shoehorned the girls and their story into it at the last minute.

In fact, that wouldn’t surprise me, as the film was shot back to back with Ginger Snaps 2, but curiously doesn’t share the same writers or director. Usually a back to back production has a remarkably similar crew, which allows everyone to work for a little less dough and make the most out of the production. But here, not only is the principal crew different, they’re not even in the same location. The best thing about the flick is the fort set, which has been used in other productions (including the Fear Itself episode "The Sacrifice" – I recognized it instantly, proving my memory isn’t totally worthless), and it has nothing to do with the hospital from the last movie. So really, only the actors and a few producers could really see this as “back to back” – director Grant Harvey didn’t have a damn thing to do with the previous entry.

But despite the change in crew, it still suffers from the same thing that plagues most of the latter movies in back to back productions – a lack of good ideas and actors who are clearly getting sick of being in this character’s shoes. I dug the first film and liked the 2nd even more, but this just didn’t work for me. And it doesn’t seem like it worked for too many others, either – what could have been a decent DTV franchise (female werewolves!) was killed with this entry.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Escape From Vampire Island (2009)

OCTOBER 3, 2011

GENRE: ASIAN, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

I’ve been down on subtitles lately, and Fantastic Fest just made it worse, since so many of the films had sub-bootleg level titles (multiple typos, obvious “dumbing down” of longer phrases, skipping thing like newspaper headlines and such). So I was relieved to see that the 122 minute Escape From Vampire Island (Japanese: Higanjima) had an English dub option, since even perfect titles would be a chore for such a long flick. However, I did turn them on from time to time to see how closely they matched the voices, and more often than not they didn’t. Not sure why subtitle outfits are getting so lazy lately, but it’s a real problem and I wish more people would rant about it.

The problem is that sometimes it actually changes the meaning of what is being said/conveyed. For example, early on there’s a scene where our hero is chased by a bunch of bully types, and along the way we sort of meet the rest of who will be our supporting cast in the main part of the movie. At one point he encounters a friend who is selling fish, and they are all dropped to the dirty ground in the fracas. In the subtitles, the guy says “Hey, buy my fish!”, which makes it sound like he’s some sort of asshole trying to pawn off dirty food. However, in the (correct) dubbed version, he yells “Damn punks, why don’t you buy some fish?” - in other words, they owe him for the damages. Just seems to me it would take just as much effort to do the subtitles wrong as it does to do them right, so this sort of stuff really baffles me.

Anyway, the movie’s only real problem is its length. It’s not a very complicated story, nor are the characters really that interesting, but it just gets too damn drawn out. Any time you hit a point in a movie where you feel things should be wrapping up soon, only to discover it’s barely past the halfway mark, it’s a problem. Granted, most Asian horror films tend to run a bit long, but that’s usually the ghost/revenge type ones – not these silly gore flicks (Alien vs. Ninja was a far more respectable 80 minutes, for example).

Otherwise it’s pretty enjoyable. As I’ve said numerous times, I’d love to see more non-ghost films from Japan, but I’m also not a big fan of what my Twitter pal Evan Husney refers to as “Robo fart ninja” movies (i.e. Frankenstein Girl) – those things tend to wear out their welcome long before they’re finished even when they’re technically short. And I was afraid this would be like one of those, but instead I was more often reminded of the 80s Hong Kong comedy-horror films that Brian Quinn programs on occasion for the Grindhouse nights at the New Bev, where the tone sort of veers between slapstick-y comedy and melodrama at the drop of a hat, and the plots tend to be loose at best, but everyone involved seems to be working hard to ensure that the audience is never really bored.

Indeed, even with the length, it’s never really BORING – it’s just a matter of how much time I felt I should be spending with this particular narrative, in which a guy whose brother disappeared two years before is roped into joining an expedition to “Vampire Island”, where the brother is said to be. The action isn’t particularly great – director Tae-gyun Kim loves closeups and shaki-cam, unfortunately – but there’s plenty of it. And there’s some variety to it; big brawls, one on one sword fights, even a big monster rampage/scramble not unlike in Fellowship of the Ring when they take on that giant troll in the mines (except this is some spider-vampire beast).

It also offers a variety of villains. There’s a steampunk-ish head vampire guy, a mad scientist type, a “tank” type who keeps getting taken out and then improved by the scientist dude, the aforementioned monster, an old witch/crone, and then a ton of anonymous vampires. Of course, this is why the movie’s over 2 hours long, since you probably could have spread this out into two movies, but if it was just the steampunk and the vamps, even at 90 minutes the movie probably would have gotten stale, fast. I sort of liked the kitchen sink approach, and wasn’t surprised to learn that it was based on a Manga. My guess is that they combined a few volumes into one narrative, hence the rogue’s gallery of villains.

Another surprise was how (largely practically) gory it was. According to the IMDb, the movie is rated PG-12 in Japan, which is the same rating given to the LOTR films and even Princess Mononoke, so I assumed it would be pretty tame. But no! Plenty of splatter just in the first few minutes, and it continues throughout – slicings, beheadings, dismemberment, etc… all that good stuff is on display. Guess I should have looked into the rating more; movies like Fight Club and Die Hard also received the same rating. Apparently Japan has a very different approach to ratings.

The disc’s only feature of note is a 45 minute making of, narrated by one of the actors. It covers the entire production fairly well, and I liked that the actor admitted when the footage would depict something he wasn’t present for (“I wasn’t here for this, I was off fishing. Sorry.”). I wish more American productions would take this sort of approach; it’s a nice change of pace from the usual EPK bullshit where everyone sits down for scheduled interviews and talks about how great everyone else is. The interviews here seem to be impromptu, and it’s interesting to hear an actor’s take on things like the CGI work or changing locations. There’s also a trailer at the top for Alien vs Ninja that cannot be skipped or even fast forwarded through, which is annoying as hell.

The disc just hits today even though it was released in Japan almost 2 years ago; I don’t know if they make a lot of these sort of movies and very few of them make it over here or if Funimation is actually putting them all out for US audiences, but either way I’m glad they offer up an alternative to the sort of films that Tartan specialized in, and I hope the releases do well enough for them to continue bringing them over (and dubbing them!) for US audiences. None are exactly my favorites, but they are a very refreshing alternative.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Hell Night (1981)

OCTOBER 2, 2011

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

Beyond The Door was the only film in the lineup that I had never seen, but Hell Night qualifies for HMAD since I had only seen it once, back in high school. And I’m not even sure I watched the whole thing – granted my memory sucks, but I would think that I’d remember the amazing scene where one of the male heroes escapes from a police station carrying a shotgun that he stole from the evidence room, a scene that managed to out-ridiculous even the events of Inseminoid later in the evening (well, morning by then).

I think I’d also remember the obvious Halloween lifts, likely courtesy of producer Irwin Yablans. In addition to a very similar score at times, there’s a bit where heroine Linda Blair (and her boyfriend, Peter Barton, aka the guy from Final Chapter that looks like Jared Leto) very slowly walk up to the house of doom, with lots of cutting back and forth between their glacial pace and the house, looking larger and more ominous with each shot – a sequence stolen directly from Laurie walking over to the Wallace house at the top of Halloween’s third act. Also, even though it doesn’t take place on Halloween, it feels like it does, with everyone wearing costumes and playing pranks (the actual date isn’t made clear I don’t think, but it can’t be Halloween if the students are making their pledges to fraternities/sororities – that sort of stuff is finished by the end of September, no?).

And like Halloween, the characters were likable. To be fair, the age of “they're going to die anyway might as well make them jerks” hadn’t really hit yet, but even compared to other 1981 slashers, I liked these folks. The aforementioned guy at the police station is probably the biggest jerk of the bunch, and even he’s fairly affable (that he actually goes back to save his friends is pretty awesome). Plus they’re all frat/sorority folks – I’ve never been in one so I don’t know for sure, but most horror films traditionally present these people are shallow assholes. Here they’re the same sort of fun-loving, slightly moronic types you’d see in any old slasher, and I liked that the bulk of the film wasn’t given over to them playing pranks or hazing poor would-be initiates.

In fact, the killing starts rather early. Once we hear the back-story and get everyone into the house, it’s not long before the first kill, with another following every 10 minutes or so. The body count is a bit lower than most ’81 slashers, but they make up for it with a lot of great chase scenes, some fun kills (scythe!) and again, characters who you might actually want to see survive. Being that this was before it became customary to let a male survive as well, I was actually hoping Barton would break tradition and pull through. Hilariously, his death actually occurred right before a reel change, and is often the case with these older prints (it was pretty beat/faded), such areas are often lost for one reason or another, so his death was largely missing (we see the killer lunge at him and then it cuts to Blair scrambling away, having already reacted to his fall).

It does run a bit long though, with certain scenes dragged out a bit too much for my tastes (particularly when the guy comes back with the shotgun). At 101 minutes, you’d think they’d have enough time to explain why there are two killers when the mythology that they establish only leaves room for one, but instead the time is given to extending shots and scenes beyond the necessary length. This could easily be 90 minutes and it wouldn’t affect the story or the suspense at all. In fact, I was actually fairly impressed with the scares here, particularly the great misdirect at the end when the killer pops up in the car scene – tighter editing could have gotten those great scares closer together.

Also, the most titillating thing about the movie is the credits, which neglects to mention the actors that played the killers (and thus, since there are two but only one mentioned by name in the story – Andrew – the other one doesn’t even get a character name). The IMDb hasn’t added them, and apparently they don’t even name them on the commentary, only noting that one of them died after the movie was completed. My guess is that they were played by random stunt men and this bit of business was made up in order to intrigue schmucks like me, who would spend the rest of the day researching it on the internet if I had the time to do so (instead I just asked Twitter). It’s also possible that one or both were SAG actors who didn’t want to get in trouble and asked not to be credited, which is common (though usually they just use fake names). Either way, they are cool looking killers and deserve a toy or at least a good T-shirt, but their lack of a solid identity is probably keeping them at bay. What good is having an action figure of a killer when there’s no way you can pay the actor 20 dollars to sign it at a convention?

At any rate, my half-remembered opinion of the film was largely incorrect; it might run a bit long, but it’s a fun and likable addition to the glut of 1981 slashers (I read somewhere that a new one opened in theaters nearly every week – I don’t doubt it), with enough of a personality and impressive enough production value to not have to coast on nostalgia in order to maintain a fanbase.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Shriekfest: And All The Rest...

OCTOBER 2, 2011

GENRE: MOVIES!
SOURCE: SHRIEKFEST

And now I bring you my traditional festival wrapup for the movies I saw but either didn’t like or don’t have the time to review in full. Shriekfest is actually one of the shorter festivals, so this one isn’t as long as the others (I also missed a few movies due to the New Bev all nighter), but I will say that I didn’t outright dislike anything in the lineup that I saw, which is a first. I wish I saw the shorts, but alas, I needed to sleep at some point.

THE FEED
Probably my least favorite movie of the fest, though not entirely the filmmaker’s fault – I’ve just seen too many “paranormal team experiences a real haunting” movies in the past year or so (I’m also growing weary of found footage stuff). However, it is nice and short, and they clearly put a lot of thought into the back-story, which involves a haunted theater. Before the haunting stuff starts, we are shown an “episode” of a travel show about the history of the theater, including several scary stories that aren’t really connected to the ghost story that takes up the bulk of the movie. I also loved that they really sold the “basic cable TV show” aspect of the presentation, as they cut away to three commercial breaks during the movie, complete with (fake) cheesy ads for local pizza shops and 2nd rate lawyers. It’s a well-meaning flick, just a bit late to the party and not particularly scary enough to stick out.

MILLENNIUM BUG
As I mentioned in my Opus review, the only problem with this one was that they shot it too soon; they should have held out for more dough and a more traditional shooting schedule. As a result, a pretty good script got hampered by a cramped, clunky production that resembles one of those lousy Pulse sequels more often than not, with botched composites providing a bunch of “Alice in Wonderland” style visuals where characters look too small or too big compared to their backgrounds. Still, I enjoyed it to a degree; the idea of combining redneck terror with a giant monster movie is kind of awesome, and I was quite impressed with their casual approach to killing heroic characters. Also, since they pointed it out about six thousand times, I should mention the monster was not CGI, but practical, so that’s always to be lauded.

Less laudable was their over-zealous promotion at the festival, with a guy bombarding everyone with fliers for the movie. We’re already there, dude – we know it exists! I was also nearly knocked over by one of their team wearing one of the “NO CGI” shirts as they paraded around the cramped area around the entrance. This sort of stuff is why I find it hard to pimp the festival to friends; it often feels like a glorified networking event, with everyone concerned about promotion and selling, and almost no one there to simply enjoy cool horror movies.

RAGE
Really unsure what to say about this one. It’s essentially Duel (an acknowledged influence, as two characters pop up in a garage and discuss the film), albeit with a motorcycle rider instead of an unseen truck driver, but with two key differences. One, we actually learn the reason that the villain has such a vendetta against our hero, and two, the truck driver never raped Dennis Weaver’s wife. Now, while the scene is horrifying and ramps the intensity of the film up a bit, it doesn’t fit with the silly reveal of the motorcyclist’s motive in the slightest, rendering the entire last act (which includes the gory, out of nowhere chainsaw murders of the hero’s elderly neighbors) incredibly confused and fairly stupid, if you ask me. You can go for a campy tone, or you can go for the intensity and shock value of a rape scene, but you can NOT have both. It just doesn’t work at all, and I am baffled at what Chris Witherspoon (who was behind nearly every job on the film, and played the biker) was going for with his storytelling decisions. And it’s a shame, because the Duel stuff (i.e. everything until he returns home) is fairly well done, with a great setpiece in a parking garage and another in a bathroom providing the sort of taut but simple thrills that Spielberg’s movie delivered all those years ago. Also I liked that the killer (whose face we never see) had the same outfit as the killer from Night School – he even had that same curved knife!

THE ORPHAN KILLER
This one had to do a lot to win back my favor, after an intro from the director that was merely a rundown of other festivals the movie was going to be playing (So what? We’re watching it now! Are we supposed to follow it around like Phish fans or something?) and then a lengthy delay of movie because they didn’t bother to check it beforehand. Also it started with one of those “let’s show the ending of the movie and then flash back and build up to it” things that always annoy me. But once it got going I was impressed by the kills, and like Laid To Rest or Sweatshop, that’s pretty much the only reason anyone would want to watch the movie. The story is ridiculous, and the killer talks too much (and his dialogue sounds like Pinhead fan-fiction to boot), but the practical kills are pretty great, and setting it inside a Catholic high school was an inspired touch. Any movie where the killer uses the “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again!” refrain (the one that I had to sing along to every Sunday for more than half of my life) as a taunt to a priest he’s about to dismember is automatically worth a look. Advice for the director if he makes a sequel, though – instead of spending money on a helicopter (the footage of which is used over and over), how about investing in a decent fake police uniform for the hero? I half expected his NY Police patch to fall off in every shot, which would be a shame since he had no badge or any other item that would sell the idea of him being a cop.

PIG
This wasn’t a horror movie, but a pretty damn good dramatic thriller about an amnesia victim who may be losing his memory on purpose. I always love amnesia movies; watching characters uncover little clues about their past just works like gangbusters on me, so I loved that the movie was entirely about this “investigation”. While most would have him find out who he is and then focus on the whys for at least half of the movie, even after an hour or so he’s still sifting through photos and trying to fit the pieces together. The reveal is a bit clunky – it almost seems like they got bored and decided to wrap it up – but it’s certainly original, and even intriguing. Add in a good performance by Rudolf Martin (Dracula from Buffy!) and some surprising humor and you have a surprisingly solid addition to the lineup; the type of movie that would probably get a theatrical release if the actors were more well-known (or our theatrical system didn’t currently suck).

Again, I didn’t see any of the short blocks (there were three), and I had to go early on Saturday for the all nighter and thus missed The Hike (which has already been picked up by Lionsgate) and The Dead Inside, a horror musical (!) from the writer/director of Lo (and apparently starring a gorgeous brunette – the posters around the festival area were constantly drawing my attention). They also showed Isle Of Dogs, which I saw at Frightfest in 2010, and once was more than enough for that one.

I should note that they finally answered my wish and provided food – a food truck was there for most of Sunday, though I didn’t actually use it because I ate at home and didn’t feel like spending 5 bucks on a hot dog (the cheapest option). But still, at least they gave the option – as I’ve mentioned in my coverage of festivals past, it’s hard to convince folks to sit around and watch an entire day’s programming when all that’s available are sodas and candy bars from a cooler. There are a couple of small restaurants nearby but by the time you walk over, order, and walk back, the next movie will have started, so they’re hardly suitable options (food is technically not allowed in the theater, either). I don’t know if they ever consider a more suitable venue, but it seems the Cinefamily would be an ideal location – it’s more accessible, has that back area for folks to gather and talk shop, and has an actual concession stand. Then again, at least the theater itself is comfortable enough to watch 3-4 movies back to back, whereas I can barely make it through a single movie on the Cinefamily seats. So I guess either way I’d be bitching about something; might as well stick with what seems to be working.

At any rate, I enjoyed my time there, though I was a bit disheartened to see the lack of “colleagues” in the crowd. With so many major horror sites (all of whom have several stringers in the area) I should have recognized more than 2 other writers over the course of three days (neither of whom stuck around for long, for one reason or another). I’m a giant pain in the ass and a crank; I’m sure both the filmmakers and the festival staff don’t want me as the only one providing coverage of the films/the fest itself.

PLEASE, GO ON...

Absentia (2011)

OCTOBER 2, 2011

GENRE: GHOST, THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

I almost skipped Absentia, having not slept at all the night before (sans some dozing at the all nighter) and already having two valid movies to review for HMAD today, but I figured I’d watch it for a bit and leave if it wasn’t grabbing me. A damn fine decision as it turned out, since the film was pretty damn good (it won best feature for the festival, in fact) and introduced me to an actress named Katie Parker with whom I was instantly smitten, which is always a plus.

Now, it’s not just that she was attractive (and she was), but she had that rarest of qualities among actresses in her age group – the ability to “glam down”. At one point she plays an entire scene with a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth (except for when she spits out a glob of paste), which of course is hardly the most attractive thing in the world. But having seen so many horror flicks (even indies) that have these CW-ready girls who have perfect makeup and impeccable fashion no matter what their character is doing, it’s so refreshing to see one that can let her guard down a bit and play a scene as a normal human being – especially in a horror film that relies so heavily on relating to the characters and buying into their situation. She also swears like a champ, but not excessively so – again, she sounded like a normal girl of her age, instead of the overly foul-mouthed and thus fake sounding characters in Zombie’s Halloween.

Back to the reality of the film, for the most part it felt very much like a drama that used horror elements to tell its character-based story, not unlike the underrated The Eclipse from 2009. Parker plays Callie, the younger sister of a woman whose husband disappeared seven years ago and is now able to be legally declared dead (the title refers to the Latin phrasing for such an occurrence – “In absentia”, i.e. they don’t have the body but they do have enough legitimate reason to assume he has died). Callie has come to help her go through the rather painful process of filing the paperwork, as well as help her move to a new place so that she can finally start her life over. It’s quite heartbreaking to watch her go through the process; the first scene has her sadly (but familiarly) walking through the neighborhood replacing the faded/torn “Missing” posters with fresh ones, which reminded me of similarly quiet/sad moments from The Vanishing.

So how is this horror? Well, soon after Callie shows up we also start seeing the seeming ghost of the husband, the first of which is one of the most effect subtle jump scares in years as you gradually realize that the soft focus object in the background is not décor or a coat hanging on the door – it’s a person. Also, Callie discovers a mangled and bloody Doug Jones in the creepy ass tunnel near their apartment, who disappears by the time she comes back. Plus it seems someone has broken into their house and left a pile of old jewelry, which is just damned unnerving if you ask me.

Without spoiling much, the movie eventually switches gears and gets down to answering a few questions while raising new ones. The ending is a bit vague, at least I think it was – I was damn tired after all, so while I stayed awake for the whole thing (yay me!) it’s possible my brain didn’t process everything I was seeing. I’m pretty sure that writer/director Mike Flanagan was going for a sort of “Sometimes things just happen and you can’t explain why” scenario, with the more supernatural elements of the story being nothing but a depiction of someone’s mental anguish as they try to justify what happened (i.e. “It must be monsters!”), but if so then they should have dropped that final scene, as it seems to suggest otherwise (or hint at a sequel). It’s also one of those movies where we get characters theorizing about what they think happened, depicted with wordless scenes that show us these things even though it’s possible they never happened. Sort of like at the end of Brokeback Mountain when Anne Hathaway is telling the fake story about Jack’s death and you’re not sure if she knows the truth or not.

But either way, all that matters is that the film is very effective at creeping me the hell out. I have long been fascinated by kidnapping/disappearance stories thanks to watching Unsolved Mysteries and the like since I was 9 or so, in particular when it’s an adult as they don’t get the same sort of public aid that a child would, which bums me out (although it's probably because it’s possible that the adult merely chose to walk away from an unhappy life). There’s a missing poster up in the snack room near the exit to my building that I saw one night, and I was legit spooked all the way back to my car because I got it in my head that he was a fellow employee that got taken from the parking lot (I later learned he didn’t even work there and it happened hundreds of miles away). And that tunnel where most of the bad stuff goes down is just plain chilling to look at, as it’s tucked away a few dozen yards from a dead end street – you can just TELL it’s bad news by looking at it, even before the movie tells us so. And that it’s located not too far from where I live (somewhere in Silverlake or Echo Park, judging from its proximity to the Hollywood sign) makes it even creepier – and by that I mean I totally want to go find it and see if I can run through the tunnel when it’s dark out.

Hopefully with the film doing the festival rounds right now it will be picked up by IFC or a similar distributor in the next few months and released in time for Halloween next year. As it’s a very small film (not a criticism), I think it’s a perfect “at home” horror thriller, one that can unnerve even the most jaded viewer (obviously - *points at self*) and make them afraid to turn the lights out or check behind the shower curtain out of fear that something might actually be there. I just wish that recommending a horror movie because it managed to be scary while telling a good story with relatable characters wasn’t such a rare occurrence; Absentia succeeds because it gets what should be the most basic things right.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Moleman Of Belmont Avenue (2010)

OCTOBER 1, 2011

GENRE: COMEDIC, MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (FESTIVAL SCREENING)

As with yesterday’s Opus, The Monster Of Belmont Avenue was an enjoyable entry in a genre that I’m fairly sick of, in this case the comedic horror movie that was probably inspired by Shaun of the Dead. As is usually the case, our heroes are two lazy dudes who frequent a bar and come up with idiotic plans to avoid the problem at hand before finally springing into action (and bettering their lives in the process), but luckily that’s where the similarity with Shaun ends. A surprisingly strong ratio of hits to misses with regards to the laughs and a cool monster elevate this one above many its peers, most of which had a lot more money to deal with.

Now, I only point that out because I have grown tired of producers or filmmakers claiming that their low budget was the result of their movie being underwhelming. While it can certainly be blamed for poor effects or other technical issues, having two lead characters that are enjoyable to watch and worth caring about costs absolutely nothing, as does a decent story. In fact just a few minutes ago I read a new article about Primer, one of the best films of the 00s and shot for about half of what I make in a year (hint: not a hell of a lot at all) – more proof that blaming the budget alone is a bullshit excuse.

And hey, they even got Robert Englund to appear as one of the residents of the run-down apartment building, plus SNL/Police Academy vet Tim Kazurinsky as a homeless guy that they attempt to offer to the monster as a sacrifice so he won’t eat one of their paying residents. In fact, if I had a single real complaint about the film, it would be that they don’t get enough use of their supporting cast, all of whom just disappear (via a joke, not the monster) for the bulk of the third act, which is a bummer. They took the time to create a bunch of colorful characters with distinct personalities, but then dropped them all in one fell swoop (basically, they all refuse to help battle the monster and exit the movie) – just seems like a waste.

By "they" I refer to Mike Bradecich and John LaFlamboy, who wrote and directed the film as well as star as the pair of brothers who run the building. I can’t recall two actors playing siblings who have looked LESS alike, but they make up for their lack of any physical similarity with terrific chemistry. They both play the Costello role, which would be disastrous in most cases but actually works well here; rather than constantly having the more responsible one be the butt of the lazier/funnier one’s jokes (i.e. Dante and Randall), they’re equally dim and lazy, though Bradecich might have gotten a few more laugh out loud lines. They’re also not the only funny ones; a random guy who is in their band got a few chuckles out of me, and the funniest line in the entire movie comes from their female bartender, reacting to a character’s out of nowhere dismissal of one who had recently died.

The titular moleman was cool too. The movie as a whole sort of reminded me of Bubba Ho-Tep, and in turn the monster sort of had a mummy-esque appearance (or Darkman in bandage/crazy homeless guy mode). It doesn’t really appear in full much, which I didn’t quite get as it looked cool and should have been shown off more (as opposed to some horrid CGI creation that is best kept hidden as much as possible), but at least they make it count when he does. Most of the time we just see him in long shots or in closeups of its hand/claw reaching through a vent to steal a resident’s pet to eat. On that note, it’s a testament to the movie’s quality that its able to get away with the (off-screen) deaths of several cute cats and dogs – not always at the hands of the monster – and still retain the goodwill of the audience.

I was also impressed how tight the script was. For example, late in the movie we learn how the Moleman ended up in the walls, and it actually ties into a throwaway line from the first scene that we were meant to understand as exposition about a completely unrelated issue. I love stuff like that; so many movies have obvious and clunky foreshadowing dialogue for things like this, it’s a wonderful surprise when you see a movie that actually gets twice the mileage out of one setup. Just because a movie is essentially a one joke, simple idea doesn’t mean that it can’t be well-written.

Now, if they want to blame the budget on the look of the film, I can accept that without question. It’s not a particularly good looking film – everything looked slightly out of focus, and they weren’t using the best cameras in the world. However I'm pretty sure the screener they were using was a bit lo-res (the trailer looks much better), so hopefully an eventual DVD release will be OK. It would be a real shame if folks missed out on the movie because they assumed anything that looked so cheap wouldn’t be worth their time. It’s actually a fairly accessible movie, especially when compared to the other movies I saw at the festival, but general audiences might not be as forgiving of (or used to seeing) a lo-fi presentation.

But who cares? It’s a charming, well-paced, and very funny indie horror flick – a group of words that rarely goes together without major caveats. Hopefully it gets picked up and Bradecich and LaFlamboy continue on this path together.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Beyond The Door (1974)

OCTOBER 1, 2011

GENRE: ITALIAN, POSSESSION
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

When Phil and the New Bev parted ways earlier this year I assumed that the all nighter would go with him, as it was his baby. But in his intro, in which Phil was thanked (and loudly applauded) first and foremost, Grindhouse night guru Brian Quinn explained that the staff of the theater convinced Michael (the owner) to keep it going, and thus after spending a day at Shriekfest I found myself plopped in my favorite seat (which has a broken armrest - I will kill that sunofabitch!), ready to spend 12 more hours at the movies. First up: Beyond The Door (Italian: Chi sei?, or "Who Are You?").

While past festivals have included a top tier Italian horror title (Gates of Hell, Zombie, etc), the decision was made to make this year's lineup entirely "rare", in that none of the movies have shown theatrically in the area for the past 4-5 years (as opposed to something like Zombie, which shows quite a bit - and for good reason). In fact I had never even heard of Beyond The Door, and knew nothing about it other than the fact that it was an Exorcist ripoff.

It didn't take long for me to fall in love with the movie. After a strange opening involving a bearded dude and a car crash, we cut to a family on a shopping trip in San Francisco. Now, normally this would not be very interesting to anyone, let alone me, but this being an Italian horror movie from the 70s, there's actually a lot to love. For starters, the children of the family both swear without much concern from the parents, even though they seem to be about 5-8 years old. Also, the little boy drinks pea soup from a can with a straw poked into it, and gleefully litters when he is done. Perfect.

Obviously the pea soup thing is just a direct reference to Exorcist, but director Ovidio G. Assonitis really goes the extra mile to prove it's more than that. In addition to using it for what it's for (possessed women to spit at concerned friends), the kid constantly has cans of it around, even apparently putting one on his nightstand the way most folks place a glass of water down there. He even has a giant painting of it above his bed! The obsession is never explained or even mentioned, I think, making it all the more charmingly ridiculous.

I also enjoyed that the mean-spirited profanity apparently came from their dad. At one point the little girl mutters "Christ, what now..." when he knocks at their bedroom door, and after he comes in and addresses the issue (the little boy has a bruise), he asks his daughter why she is such an idiot. Later the mom slaps her around a bit, shortly before kissing the boy full on the mouth (I think she's possessed by this point so it's kind of OK). I'm so used to seeing movies where just one person in the family is messed up; it's quite refreshing to see one where I couldn't even tell which one was possessed at first because they were all so goddamn awful (read: awesome).

Then of course there are the usual silly moments, like when the mom asks the dad about baby names and suggests "Steve" (not "Steven"), to which the dad asks why it matters. Or when the little girl asks the dad to promise not to leave them alone with the mom anymore, a request that is immediately followed by a cut to the next scene, in which the dad is outside, sans the kids. Plus numerous other instances where they swear for no reason. I just hope that their dialogue was what was intended; as with most Italian productions, it features a mix of English and Italian speaking actors, all of whom use their native tongue. So while the parents were speaking English, the kids were clearly dubbed from Italian, which makes me wonder if some producer didn't see the value in foul mouthed children and change it from originally normal sweet-natured dialogue.

And thus it's a shame when they exit the film (sent off to be safe), as it loses much of its comedic value. It's not a particularly exciting film, with a low body count and, as with Exorcist, a slow build toward the full on possession sequences. But it's also needlessly convoluted, as the whole movie is just a long term ploy between the Antichrist and some guy who made a deal with the devil in order to extend his life, or something. I even went home and read the Wikipedia entry trying to make sense of the final five minutes or so, and while I get the gist, there were still some things I don't comprehend at all, such as the old fortune teller lady who lives on a boat.

Also, I watched another 8-9 movies in between seeing it and writing my review. I think the brain can only retain specific information about 2-3 movies before it makes room for the next one, so maybe it would make total sense if I thought about it for a bit while it was still fresh in my brain, but alas. Luckily I've already HMADed all but one of the other films from the all nighter, so for my thoughts on Creature From The Black Lagoon (which showed in 3D! Very cool, even if I went a bit cross eyed), Brain Damage (the secret movie, which went over quite well), Pit And The Pendulum (which I slept through), and Inseminoid (a crowd pleaser, but the place was only about half full by then, with lots of sleepers), just check out those reviews. The only other one was Hell Night, which I had seen in high school but couldn't remember much about it. They also had several trailer reels, tied to the theme of the movie that played after (so for this, we got a lot of Exorcist/Rosemary's Baby wannabes), a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and a very weird interview with Bela Lugosi which ends when he out of nowhere tells the reporter "I'm coming." and then makes a weird face until she runs away. I haven't the slightest clue if it was a skit of some sort, or a legit interview that went astray, and I don't want to know. It was glorious as is.

All in all, I think they did a great job of carrying on Phil's tradition, and the sell out crowd means that it will probably continue. And I'll be there, with my little cooler of cold coffee drinks, trail mix and a Papa John's pizza, plus a bottle of eye drops for my contacts, dried from all of the occasional dozing (I didn't remain awake for the entirety of any movie, but for this I was only out for a brief period in the early part of the film and thus didn't miss much).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...