Cravings (2006)

AUGUST 19, 2009

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, VAMPIRE (?)
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

It’s a shame when a good movie gets mis-marketed. Such is the case with Cravings; not only was the title changed (from the sort of porno-y sounding Daddy’s Girl, which is still the title per the end credits) to something that sounds more horror-y, the cover also depicts a straight up female vampire, with fangs and bright red lipstick (I momentarily thought it was Vamp II). In reality, the film has no actual vampires, but rather a troubled girl who suffers from Renfield’s Syndrome.

I actually looked this up, and yes it seems to be a real syndrome (though not categorized in the DSM-IV, which I guess is a giant book of syndromes) in which the sufferers are compelled to drink blood. Couple that with the tale of a psychiatrist whose wife killed herself (for reasons never made completely clear) and may or may not be haunting him, and you have what is technically a horror movie. But it’s a character piece first and foremost, so I suspect those who are lured in by the graphic and traditional box art will instantly rush to the IMDb to dub it “worst movie I have ever seen” before admitting that they shut it off after ten minutes (which, no lie, is a thread I see on nearly every single movie I watch, including legitimately great ones).

And that’s a shame, because it’s much better than I was expecting. The hero of the film is a fascinatingly flawed character - he seemingly breaks every patient/doctor rule in the book over the course of the film - and the acting is far above what you normally get from a DTV Lionsgate movie. In fact, I’m pretty baffled why they didn’t select this for one of their After Dark releases (or even Ghost House Underground), as it would give the film more exposure, instead of it being one of the dozens of undistinguished DVD cases on the shelf at blockbuster, rented only by folks like me (indeed, even I had passed it by a couple times).

It’s also impressive on a technical level. It’s well shot, and often resembles a 70s film. Even during the few straight up horror scenes (poodle owners should probably skip this film), takes are long, instead of the hyper-edited style that I’ve grown increasingly tired of seeing in every 00’s horror movie. At no point did I say “What the hell am I looking at here?” Kudos to first time writer/director D.J. Evans for being more accomplished than most directors are in their 4th or 5th movie. The score is also quite good; there’s a hauntingly sad piece that plays early on that I could kill to have an Mp3 of. Composer Owen Powell, message me!

Also, it’s the 2nd film in a row in which you see more male nudity than female. I assume (tomorrow’s) Halloween 2 will not continue this trend.

My only sort of problem concerns the “ghost” of his dead wife. I assume that these visions are just in his head, but either way, they never seem to come full circle. It ultimately feels like something they added in to give the film more of a horror feel, and other than further clarifiying that her suicide really messed him up (as if the constant pill taking, drinking, and fucking his young patient’s mother weren’t enough of an indicator), they don’t really have any bearing on the story.

Those who like low key chillers should definitely check it out. If you’re expecting a trashy, vampire version of Alicia Silverstone’s The Crush (which it slightly resembles at times, to be fair) - steer clear. And again - if you own or have an affinity for poodles or other small cutesy dogs, dear CHRIST do not watch this one. Poor puppy.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Patrick (1978)

AUGUST 18, 2009

GENRE: HERO KILLER, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REVIVAL SCREENING)

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again - whenever possible, watch films in order. Had I watched Patrick before I saw Patrick Still Lives, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more. By design, the Italian ripoff turned sequel speaks more to my sensibilities (i.e. it was ridiculously gory and mean-spirited) than Richard Franklin’s film does, so I must admit I was a bit bored at times during the film. Franklin made a genuinely good film - but I’ve already seen it filtered through the eyes of crazy Italians, which kind of subdued its merits.

But again - it’s a good film. Don’t let my obsession with “awesome” ness make you think otherwise. Franklin is a student of Hitchcock (it was this film that got him the gig directing Psycho II, arguably one the best “this should have been a disaster” movies ever), and it is quite evident here, particularly in the blend of dry humor and suspense. There’s a nutty old patient at the hospital that killed me every time he was on screen (love when he takes our heroine up and then back down a porch to show her a door that was merely around the corner from where they started walking), and a cop investigating the murders also tickled me more often than not.

Plus, let’s not beat around the bush - most of the movie is about Patrick trying to get a hand job. See, he has supposedly lost all five of his senses, but he CAN hear, so he makes clicking noises (one for yes, two for no) to answer simple questions (Franklin cuts to Patrick’s POV as Patrick claims he cannot see, an odd little touch). Then he starts getting touch back, so the cute nurse begins touching various body parts to see if he can feel it. When she touches his cock, he gets aroused (we don’t see this, thankfully), but they are interrupted before she can proceed any further with her “test”. And then later on, he uses his powers to fuck with her typewriter, asking for her to finish giving him his hand job.

Of course, he’s a sympathetic villain of sorts, so we can’t hate him. Therefore, her actual romantic interest is not killed, but trapped in an elevator for half the movie, and the people he does kill are largely abhorrent, such as “The Matron”, a Nurse Ratchet-esque woman who wears the worst hat ever. Again, this is where I was sort of spoiled by Patrick Still Lives - that dude would kill anyone for the hell of it. But it DOES give the movie a sense of class that I wasn’t expecting. I knew Franklin was no hack, but still, I wasn’t expecting Patrick to be sort of likable. And you can’t really fault a guy for wanting a hand job.

Speaking of hand jobs - I think I understand now why the "sequel" had so much female nudity; this movie is wall to wall with naked or mostly naked... dudes. I'm all for equality and all that good stuff, so I cannot COMPLAIN about such things, but merely WARN fellow male viewers that this movie offers far more cocks than vaginas, with a male to female chest ratio of about 5:1. The one female chest we do see is quite lovely though, so it makes up for it.

The only real problem I had was the film’s length. It’s just under two hours, and gets quite draggy and a bit repetitious. For example, there are like three scenes where the girl sees Patrick doing something, then gets someone else to witness it and he refuses to comply. Apparently, the film was cut by about 15 minutes for its original US release (it’s an Australian film), and since it’s not particularly gory, I can’t help but wonder if the US version was simply faster paced. I wouldn’t mind checking it out.

As this was a Grindhouse night, there was another movie screening with it. Harlequin (aka Dark Forces) was another Aussie flick (written by Patrick's Everett De Roche, in fact), but more of a dramatic thriller at best, instead of the horror film I was expecting. It starts off pretty creepy, with Robert Powell as a clown who is suspiciously hanging around a kid’s birthday party, before seemingly appearing out of thin air in his room later on to cure him of his leukemia. But then it becomes a modern day take on the Rasputin story, with a bunch of political chess-type maneuvering to ensure this one guy gets into office. So it’s like Omen III, but with a weird clown instead of the Antichrist. Not bad, but after Patrick, which was unusually classy for a Grindhouse night, I was hoping for something a bit more schlocky. If anything, it actually made Patrick seem like the less respectable film of the pair. I brought my usual beer, but these films were more bottled water or maybe a nice cup of tea-style affairs. It was a nice change of pace though; I wouldn’t mind seeing more “legitimately good” movies get added to the GH lineup, so long as I KNOW they are such type films beforehand. I felt like a dumbass sitting there with a 6 pack for movie that actually had a discernible plot and well-drawn characters.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Last Resort (2009)

AUGUST 17, 2009

GENRE: POSSESSION (?), SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I like short movies. You give me a movie under 80 minutes and it’s almost a guarantee that it won’t end up in the Crap bin, at the very least. And I ESPECIALLY like movies like The Last Resort, which promise a short running time anyway (75 minutes, according to the DVD case), but are actually shorter (it’s actually 74, with a full minute of black at the end credits, so now we’re at 73 with credits. So the actual movie is like, 65 minutes tops). Horror Movie A Day-ing is a time consuming process, so if a movie can offer me an extra 20-30 minutes of free time, I am in its corner.

I also, as you all know, enjoy batshit movies, and this one ultimately certainly qualifies. Ironically, my one real complaint about it is that the movie is TOO short, leaving the batshittedness confined to the film’s final few scenes. America Olivo’s heroine character doesn’t arrive at the titular locale until the 56 minute mark, and it’s over 10-11 minutes later. Her arrival is essentially the end of the 2nd act, but the 3rd act is rushed through. Granted, this makes the insanity even more enjoyable, because it all happens so fast, but still, a little breathing room or simply a longer sequence of events would have been nice. The true nature of the place is also sort of left under-explained; I wasn't sure if the girls were possessed by the spirit of the World's Most Interesting Man-esque guy we see in flashbacks, or if they simply went crazy.

But like I said, this compression allows for some truly memorable moments. See, the resort is a place for people to let go of the restrictions they have placed on themselves (so the reserved girl becomes a nymphomaniac, and the vegetarian becomes a cannibal, etc), and since Olivo just got there, she’s not overwhelmed by its power. So she stumbles across the nympho girl, who violently attempts to seduce her. It’s a wacky enough scene as is, but then the girl who turned into a psycho killer (as she was the straight-laced, “lets avoid dangerous situations” girl of the group) suddenly comes out of nowhere and begins slashing away at the nympho. If the movie was taking its time, these moments would have been separated, but by combining them, we have some truly inspired, fairly unique lunacy.

I also love how the girls, even before they start turning, seem to hate each other. It’s a bachelorette party, and the one getting married is kind of a bitch. She manages to insult each one of them in quite hurtful ways throughout the movie, culminating in a scene where she brutally mocks one girl - first she says “No wonder your boyfriend cheats on you”, followed by “Those guys didn’t even want to rape you!”, which in a weird way is probably the meanest thing someone could say to a woman. Like Cathy’s Curse, it’s a slice of that rare form of wholly unnecessarily mean-spirited dialogue that I can’t help but love.

Quick question - why are fortune tellers in horror movies always right? Early on, they go see one, and of course she gets the “I see disturbing events in the near future” riff. Just for once, I want to see a fortune teller scene in which the teller is like “Everything will be fine, you’ll marry a guy named Robert, and live in Des Moines” or whatever, and then the girl walks outside and gets hit by a bus or something. Because come on, if these tellers are so good at their job, why are they operating on the side of the road near shitty Mexican bars?

Surprisingly for a low-budget film, Lionsgate actually bothered to give it an anamorphic transfer. And it’s quite good in terms of contrast and such. Unfortunately, the DV (HD?) camera used isn’t the best, so there’s little detail in the shots, plus a strange artifacting on edges that makes it look somewhat like you’re watching a 3D film without the glasses. So I guess it just didn’t look that great to begin with, but kudos to LG for putting time into making sure it didn’t look WORSE. Instead, they half-assed their trailer reel; instead of new (and multiple) releases, they just offer Frontieres (on DVD for over a year) and The Slaughter, which I watched almost two years ago and was already on DVD for a while at that point to boot. Luckily, I just got a whole bunch of LG screeners (including one called War Wolves, which is the best title ever and I can’t believe it hasn’t been used before), so I don’t need a heads up to know what kind of junk is en route.

By no means is The Last Resort a great movie, but it’s an entertaining one. I heard there were some production problems, and some financial stuff that resulted in further problems in post (which may explain both the misspelling of Olivo’s name and the odd fact that the film has no copyright/MPAA/ “All rights reserved” legal language at the end of the credits), so I can cut it some slack for its blemishes. Plus, it’s too short to bore, and its somewhat generic setup (it feels VERY Turistas-y at times) is redeemed by the gonzo finale. And the backstory carries shades of Clive Barker’s novel “Coldheart Canyon”, which I quite enjoy and will probably never become a film, so this is a nice little consolation.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

A Cat In The Brain (1990)

AUGUST 16, 2009

GENRE: ITALIAN, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

No one sits down with a Lucio Fulci movie and expects coherency, but A Cat In The Brain (Italian: Un Gatto Nel Cervello) goes a step beyond the norm. Usually I can at least understand how scenes relate to one another, if not what exactly is happening in them or why, but here, I felt like I was watching 5 different movies at once. So I wasn’t too surprised to discover that it WAS a few different movies (previous Fulci films), outtakes of which were assembled with newly shot footage of Fulci (as himself) and edited together in what some might consider a narrative.

Let me see if I get this right... Fulci is making a new horror film, which seems to be some sort of Giallo, but he is having trouble making it because the violence is getting to him, which is causing him to have paranoid delusions and freakout episodes where he sees everyone as drug/sex-addicted Nazis. He also may be a killer, but we know he’s not pretty early on because we see his shrink (a guy who kind of looks like him) is the actual killer, but he also hypnotizes Fulci into doing a few killings himself. And at the end, we find out that all of this was a movie Fulci was directing. So he was directing a movie about himself playing himself? LEVELS.

But all that matters is that it’s a lot of fun. The kills come along at a steady pace (much more often than in Zombi or The Beyond), and they are quite gory - we even get a little kid being beheaded! And there are also some borderline porn scenes for good measure; I would actually argue that the sight of a fat guy licking a younger woman’s breast is the most repulsive thing I’ve ever seen in one of Fulci’s films. Fulci’s performance adds another level of enjoyment - he’s not a guy you see too often (having been screwed out of the rights to every single film he made, and the fact that he died in 1996, sort of prevents him from taking part in too many DVD releases), so it’s a nice little novelty.

There’s one scene in particular that cracked me up, when Fulci is driving along and comes across this Charles Manson-looking hitchhiker. For whatever reason, Fulci begins chasing after him, and the guy is like “What’s the matter with you, Fulci?” Now, I DID doze for a few minutes, so maybe this guy was an established character, but it seemed like he just happened upon this guy and the guy recognized him as a horror movie director, and was now just completely baffled by the fact he was trying to kill him. Like if I was walking home one day and then George Romero tried running me over. And then Fulci runs him over like four times, which is pretty awesome. The incident is never mentioned again.

I also dug the whole meta-concept, as it reminded me of the “film within a film” cartoon series that I’ve been developing for the past couple years (anyone know anyone at Adult Swim? Hook a brother up). In fact, the film would make an excellent source for an episode (each episode concerns a single horror film), but I also considered using it as an inspiration for the HMAD book, which I still haven’t decided on a concept for. If I was to do a novel, I think it would be about how BC (a fictionalized version of myself) was going crazy due to watching horror movies every single day, and then a wave of murders begins, with BC being the prime suspect because the murders are re-staged versions from shitty horror movies, movies that only someone like him would have bothered to watch. Could be funny.

The only real complaint I have concerns the ending. We follow Fulci on his final mental breakdown, and then his friend finds him lying in the grass a while later. The friend, who suspected Fulci of being the killer, is like “Oh we know its not you now, the killer was your shrink and the cops shot him” (not exact quote). What the hell kind of bullshit is that? He never has a showdown with the real killer, and worse, the guy is offed offscreen? Weak sauce. The Coens can get away with that sort of nonsense, but in an Italian horror movie, I shouldn’t be denied the sight of a single person’s demise, especially if they’re the goddamn killer.

The 2 disc set comes jam-packed with shit, and I still haven’t gone through it all. On disc 1, there’s about 25 minutes of footage from Fulci’s appearance at the NY Fangoria show in 1996. The panel footage is sort of frustrating to watch, as it’s only 20 minutes of an hour long session, half of which is just translation (a question is asked in English, the translator asks Fulci in Italian, Fulci answers in Italian, the translator then says it in English). I would have preferred they subtitle Fulci and leave the translation stuff out, if time was a factor. The other 4-5 minutes are of Fulci signing stuff afterwards. It’s an odd piece, since it has no direct narration of any kind, but it’s also sort of heartbreaking for me, as he signs his two Fangoria issues for people over and over. See, the only autographs I ever ask for are of the directors for the “cover movie” on each issue of Fangoria, and I will obviously never get Fulci to sign my copies of those issues (he actually died about 6 weeks after this appearance, his first at a US convention). Bummer. Disc 2 has a whopping two hours of interviews, half that time on Fulci himself. I watched a few of the short ones, called “Memories of Lucio” in which some of the actors from Cat offer their, well, memories of Lucio. They’re sort of bland and generic (“He was a bit cold, but once you got to know him he was quite nice.”) and yet in between each one is an ad telling us how these are part of a four hour version, with 90 people offering their memories. If these are the clips they are using to drum up interest, I shall pass. Then there are some trailers for a bunch of Grindhouse-y movies, including Massacre Mafia Style, which is probably my favorite trailer of all time. At no point is Cat’s alternate title “Nightmare Concert” explained, as there is no concert in the film. There is a cat though. Hopefully I will get to the rest of the interviews tomorrow; I’ll watch Fulci’s for sure as he is a delight (during the Fango one, he accuses Wes Craven of ripping this film off for New Nightmare, and advises the crowd to never work with Franco Nero).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The House Of The Devil (2009)

AUGUST 15, 2009

GENRE: CULT
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

Few things would excite me less than watching a Ti West movie right after watching the snoozer that was They Came Back, but I had heard from a few people that The House Of The Devil was by far his best film, and since he’s a guy that genuinely loves making films, I was willing to give it a shot. And they are right - House Of The Devil IS by far his best film. In fact, I actually liked it, though I could have REALLY liked it had someone else edited the film.

Like The Roost and Trigger Man, not much happens in the film. There are long stretches of people walking around (or just sitting around), and when traditional horror elements DO occur (i.e. someone is killed or attacked) they are largely underwhelming. But the difference is, this time it mostly works. Our heroine (the preternaturally cute Jocelin Donahue) is hard up for cash and takes on a “babysitter” job at an isolated house on the night of a lunar eclipse, and over the course of the night she begins to get freaked out. That’s pretty much it, but since the place is run by Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, you know something is going to happen, and it’s gonna be EVIL (film’s title notwithstanding). But the rubber-band stretching of the tension works here; I only started getting really restless a few minutes before the shit hit the fan.

And that’s where having another editor would have helped. There are at least three scenes of Donahue walking (slowly) down this one particular hallway as she investigates a noise or tries to satisfy her curiosity as to why she’s there (without spoiling anything - there’s no baby to sit). There’s also a scene early on, before she even gets there, where she goes into a bathroom, turns on all of the faucets (?), and sits on a toilet while she cools off after being annoyed by her roommate. And another brief scene where she drops off a paper with a professor. Little moments like this just aren’t necessary - they either reiterate what we already know, or provide “character development” that we don’t need. Does it matter that she’s someone who turns in her assignments? Get to the damn house!

Also, the money/time used to shoot these scenes could have been used to make the finale a bit better. I can sort of see why West would draw out “suspense” scenes for longer than usual, but why does he suddenly get so edit happy when something’s actually occurring? There’s a sort of Texas Chain Saw moment (the film as a whole is a sort of TCM/When A Stranger Calls hybrid, with Satanists) where she is tied up and screaming and being presented with all manner of disturbing behavior from the people around her, but it goes by so quickly that it’s hard to really feel her extreme distress the way we did for Sally Hardesty. And without spoiling anything, she undergoes a “change” that is not really clarified well, rendering some of the film’s final minutes needlessly confusing. Again, West will spend 30 seconds showing her dropping off a term paper, why not spend a little more time on her fate?

So if you remove those 5 minutes of fluff and apply it to the finale, you have a really good movie. The suspense in some of the house scenes calls to mind Laurie’s walk/inspection of the Wallace house in the original Halloween, praise I don’t give out easily. And there’s a murder halfway through that genuinely shocked me, in both its suddenness and because the character in question was incredibly likable, someone you wanted in the movie more to begin with. Plus, you just can’t go wrong with Noonan; he’s only in it for like 10 minutes but that just makes you appreciate his screen time all the more.

But what really impressed me was the technical quality. If not for Noonan and the other recognizable actors in small roles, you could easily be fooled into thinking this was an actual film from 1983 (the time it is set). The clothing, styles, props... all of it feels authentic (not “retro” - AUTHENTIC), and the amazing soundtrack aids immensely as well. Again, it’s not just a generic “hits of the 80s” song selection, but instead a mix of obscure songs and minor hits from known artists (Greg Kihn, for example - but not “My Love’s In Jeopardy”). And Jeff Grace’s score is even better. Plus, I have half a mind to find musician Mike Armstrong and demand an mp3 of his opening credits theme, which sounds like The Cars doing a Goblin song. And I’m always tickled by the site of those giant orange padded headphones.

This film got West a gig directing The Haunting In Georgia (again - I really hope they do one for all 50 states), and it’s easy to see why, as it’s sort of a haunted house movie (plus his exceptional skill at creating the period setting, which Georgia will also require) that wrings a good amount of suspense with little means. I just hope the producer (or, god willing, a different editor) can rein him in a little and let him have his vision without sacrificing pace. But then again, if this is any indication when compared to his earlier films, he’s well on his way to getting it right on his own.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

They Came Back (2004)

AUGUST 15, 2009

GENRE: HORROR?, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

Mr. Disgusting is always looking for lists to run on Bloody D, so maybe I will put together a list of horror films with terrific sounding concepts but largely failed executions. And at the top of that list, I think, would be They Came Back (French: Les Revenants), in which 70 million people return from the dead across the globe. But they do not eat other folks, nor do they look horrific. They also seem to retain their basic communication and motor skills. The problem is, they don’t do ANYTHING.

Within 10 minutes I had dubbed this the “Frenchest movie ever made”, and nothing about the following 90 changed my mind. A sizable majority of the film is little more than people looking at each other, walking around, and/or engaging in pleasant small talk at a level hardly over that of a whisper. Christ, even the government is incredibly delicate - instead of installing cameras around the town to watch the zombies, they put them on balloons. It’s a coffee table zombie movie.

Part of the problem is the ensemble nature. We follow 3-4 zombies as they re-adjust to their life (or try to), but we also follow the government’s attempts at controlling them (via medications and the aforementioned Up-brand cameras), plus lots of scenes of many anonymous zombies just sort of wandering around. As a result, none of the stories are really that compelling, because the characters aren’t really developed beyond their basic relationship with the zombie (i.e. Mathieu, a zombie, was married to Rachel, who works in a hospital and has really beautiful eyes. And that’s about all we know). A film like Deathdream was far more successful at portraying what life was like for both the returning person and their family, and did it with some zombie action to boot.

And that’s the other thing. I knew it wasn’t going to be Romero-esque splatter horror, but for the love of Mike, throw us a bone here. Even the finale, in which the zombies are more or less gassed back into death, isn’t prompted by any real event. They don’t start eating people or infecting them or anything of that nature. No, it is discovered that they don’t have the capability to learn or fully adjust, so they are done away with. And even that would be fine if it was presented in a sort of black comic manner, but it’s so matter-of-fact and humorless, it doesn’t even really resonate as a chilling concept. Since most of the zombies are old people, the film could have had a fascinating metaphor for how we treat our elderly once they are no longer able to do manual labor, drive, etc. but the screenwriters never really draw this parallel.

And it’s kind of a ripoff too - I actually thought that the only people who returned were ones who died from natural or health related causes (old age, cancer, etc), because none of them bore any sort of physical trauma. But we find out that our main guy died in a car accident, so why doesn’t he have any visible wounds? Give us a scar or something at least. And unless I missed it, they don’t explain why someone who was obviously injured enough to die from a car accident looks perfectly healthy and undamaged.

Despite all that, it’s not a total loss. There are some effective scenes (usually involving the zombies doing something inappropriate, like when one keeps spinning a little kid on a merry go round), the score is often fantastic, and the concept, despite its largely botched execution, is still a lot more interesting than the umpteenth “The dead are returning let’s hole up in a _____ and bicker with each other” zombie story. It might not be very good, but its at least DIFFERENT, which earns it a few brownie points.

Oh and a little kid zombie kills himself, so there’s something.

The disc's only real extra is a 20 minute making of, which like the film itself, suffers from a lack of any real drive (as well an abhorrent absence of someone yelling “Sacre bleu!”, which should be a requirement for any French language film). We see them set up some shots, the actors talk about their roles... and that’s about it. You won’t gain any insight into the script/story, so unless you found the 105 minute film to be too short and crave more existential French zombie non-action, feel free to skip it.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Zombie Girl: The Movie (2009)

AUGUST 14, 2009

GENRE: DOCUMENTARY, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: ONLINE (STREAMING)

I believe I first heard about Zombie Girl: The Movie in an issue of "Rue Morgue", and I was instantly intrigued. Not content with fooling around with her dad’s camera to make 3-4 minute shorts, like I and countless others began doing around the age of 12, young Emily Hagins actually filmed an ENTIRE zombie movie in her hometown, using friends and family (which is no different than what several grown men and women do, and I have the HMAD reviews to prove it!). Her movie is called Pathogen; Zombie Girl is the damn fine documentary chronicling the production, from the first day of shooting all the way up to the film’s premiere at the Alamo Drafthouse.

What I almost instantly loved about this girl was her ability to admit her faults and not use her lack of resources as a crutch. Continuity errors, bad effects, jarring angle changes... she is refreshingly honest about such things, instead of blaming others or chalking it up to her low budget. I’ve seen plenty of equally low budget/no resource productions, and it’s amazing how often a director (via the commentary track) will watch his mess of a film and not have the stones to point out a single error, instead of marveling how much he was able to accomplish with so little money and unprofessional crew. It’s kind of sad - by the time she was finished post production on the film she was about 14 or 15, the age when you think you’re a genius and everyone else is wrong, but she got up in front of a sold out crowd at the Alamo and told them that it was OK to laugh at things that weren’t supposed to be funny. That’s an ability some filmmakers in their 30s and 40s still don’t possess and probably never will.

Another nice thing is that you can watch her become a filmmaker, without it seeing contrived or edited in a way to make it seem like there is conflict when there is none (a problem that plagued Project Greenlight). She had no film classes or anything as far as I know, she literally decided to make a movie and set off to do so. So at first she forgets to turn the camera on, but by the end she is standing up to her mom on what takes are better and demanding better After Effects work. The movie takes place over two years, so it’s not only an achievement for her, but also the documentary team itself, who probably wanted to shout MOVE! and start editing Pathogen themselves just to speed things along (most of that 2 year period is spent in post).

To me, the most surprising thing about the movie is that it’s the film Undead that inspires her to make a zombie film (why not Brain Dead/Dead Alive, since her hero is Peter Jackson?). Of all the great zombie movies, why that one? And that was at Butt Numb-A-Thon, which means we get Harry Knowles’ perspective on the whole thing, which is fun (even he seems a bit puzzled why Undead would inspire someone). I kept expecting him to have one of his filmmaker friends show up and help her out, but to her credit, it seems she does the entire movie without the help of anyone but her mom in terms of crew.

And as I’ve said before, I tried making a zombie film back in the day, and it fell apart pretty quickly, so for anyone to do one, regardless of their age, automatically gets my respect. The doc clearly shows that she is in over her head more than once or twice, and it would have been easy to give up, but obviously she never did, which is beyond laudable. There’s a heartbreaking scene where she accidentally records over some key footage (and the location wouldn’t let her come back due to some of her extras messing up the bathroom), but she presses on and gets it finished. In fact, the one complaint I have about the doc is that things like this are glossed over - we never know how she managed to reshoot the scenes without the location available to her. There’s also a scene where her failing grades are mentioned, but it’s never brought up again. I would have liked a little more about how this was impacting her family, especially the father, who is MIA for large chunks of the film.

The mother, on the other hand, is in it just as much as Emily. She’s the film’s producer, makeup effects creator, boom mic operator, driver... and primary financier, it seems. There’s a scene later on where Emily is up for a grant, one she ‘doesn’t care’ if she gets or not, as the shooting is complete so money isn’t needed, but of course the mother wouldn’t mind getting back some of the coin she sunk into the film. Scenes like this sort of remind us how immature Emily is (i.e. she doesn’t seem to think that getting a thousand bucks would be helpful), but also helps drive home the point that her mom is pretty goddamn supportive of her daughter and has put in just as much, if not more, time into seeing this thing through. She can be a bit annoying at times (she drew my ire when she called “cut!” during a take - you NEVER say that unless you’re the director!), but any viewer should be just as concerned that the two retain their close bond as they are that the film is complete.

And it is! You can purchase it through her website. I most definitely will be checking out soon (based on what Zombie Girl shows us, it’s probably better than half of the no budget zombie movies I’ve watched, if only for the sight of zombie toddlers). Also, you can watch Zombie Girl for free until August 20th via SnagFilms (the link is embedded below in lieu of a trailer). Not sure the economic feasibility of this - unlike Hulu, it’s not interrupted by ads, so I’m not sure how they make money from doing it. But hey, if they want to legally show us a movie for free, I’m not arguing. And while you’re on the site, I would check out Darkon, which is a terrific doc that I saw a couple years ago, about some LARP guys. Think Trekkies crossed with the last half hour of Role Models. Great stuff.

In closing, I just want to say - why the hell wasn’t there a budding horror filmmaker girl in my 6th or 7th grade class? I couldn’t even get the girls in my class to watch a goddamn Chucky movie. Weak.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Combat Shock (1986)

AUGUST 13, 2009

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

See, this is how you do a “sort of horror in the last 10 minutes” movie. Unlike Audition, which was pretty goddamn boring until it actually became a horror film, Combat Shock is a compelling and depressing tale of one day in the life of a Vietnam vet who is faced with eviction, hunger, and pretty much every other shitty way of living. And then the end, which owes a bit to Taxi Driver, manages to make the previous 80 minutes look like lighthearted Disney fare.

Part Taxi Driver, part Falling Down (which came after Combat Shock, yes - just trying to paint a picture with more popular movies), with a mutant baby straight out of Eraserhead for good measure, the film is hardly traditional entertainment. Our hero spends the entire film wandering around Staten Island looking for a job (and ultimately, a quick score). It’s hardly the most picturesque film; the entire thing takes place in burnt out husks of buildings, train tracks, and an apartment that should have been condemned. What I’m saying is... this is most definitely NOT a movie you’d want to watch with a big group of friends. Unless you plan on killing each other, then it’s probably ideal.

Apart from baby mutie, the horror is more of the ‘real world’ variety... at one point, he stumbles on a pimp who is trying to trick out a 12 year old girl. There’s also a scene where he contemplates eating some maggot infested food out of a dumpster. The ending though; good lord. You think it’s going into more exploitative territory when the guy uses his oven for something that is most definitely not food, but it doesn’t go that far, and retains the depressing realism of the guy’s situation. It wouldn’t surprise me if the event actually occurred, save for the baby being a mutant.

I just wish it had a better editor. Writer/producer/director Buddy Giovinazzo also cut the film, but didn’t seem to know (at the time) that there’s no law stating that a movie has to be 90 minutes or more. While the slowness sort of helps to make the end more shocking, it still could use to shed 10-15 minutes. For example, the opening ‘Nam flashback runs a full 14 minutes, including two that consist entirely of establishing shots and cutaways to trees and such. There’s also a go-nowhere subplot about our hero’s junkie friend, who goes to see another junkie, uses a hanger to inject heroin, dies, and then gets rolled by the other junkie and some other random woman. Sure, it further demonstrates how shitty life is for these folks, but again, it could be shorter and have the same point.

Let’s talk the mutant baby. This thing’s howls will haunt your dreams for days, I can guarantee. According to the director, the sound is simply him moaning, which was then reversed and sped up on top of that. It’s almost inimitable with human vocal chords, which is probably the point, but it won’t stop me from trying to mimic it when I discuss the film with friends. And it’s a pretty impressive little thing; the movie only cost 40 grand (and it’s on film - so suck it, DV filmmakers who claim that film is too expensive for their budget) but the puppet is up there with the It’s Alive baby.

Another impressive feat is that all the ‘Nam footage was shot in Staten Island as well (a fact Lloyd Kaufman cheerfully points out in the traditional Troma intro). The stock footage, of course, doesn’t really match the new stuff in terms of film stock and quality, but I sure as hell never would have guessed that the goddamn Statue of Liberty was nearby in the original footage. A+ trickery work there.

Troma has recently released a 2 disc set, which features a longer cut of the film (mostly character stuff) as well as some interviews and a retrospective with guys like John McNaughton and Jim VanWebber. Unfortunately I got the original single disc release, which features a boatload of the usual Troma crap (including a cooking show parody with a young Joe Lynch!) and very little concerning the film. On that front, all we get is a brief interview with Giovinazzo conducted by Lloyd (so you can guess how informative it is), and a commentary where Giovinazzo is joined by Nekromantik director Jorg Buttgereit It’s not a bad track, I just wasn’t really in the mood to watch the film again, lest I turn suicidal myself. He admits a few of his mistakes (and makes a few jokes about the fact that most of the film is the guy walking around) and points out who is playing the assorted supporting characters (family members, ex-wives, etc). Worth a listen, just maybe not right after you’ve watched the movie.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go stare at a poster featuring a puppy napping with a kitty for about five hours.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Room 6 (2005)

AUGUST 12, 2009

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: NETFLIX (INSTANT VIEW)

Remember how blown away we were by the end of Jacob’s Ladder? I kind of fear that a movie will never have that surprise again, because there are so many movies like Room 6 in which that sort of “they were dead/dying the whole time” twist is so obvious right from the start, you almost come to expect it in any movie where something traumatic (in this case, a car crash) occurs to its main character. Or, you end up with movies like Wind Chill, where they make it seem like that and the twist is that they are NOT dead and the movie is actually kind of about nothing.

Anyway, Room 6 is decent. According to the IMDb, the budget was only a million bucks (yes, it was “only” enough to pay off my debt and live comfortably for the rest of my life - instead they made Room 6), but it looks like a lot more, and considering 2 sort of A-list (B+ list?) actors in Christine Taylor and Jerry O’Connell probably weren’t cheap, it’s even more impressive. It’s technically great, thanks to a DP in Ray Stella and editing by Kevin Greutert (who is helming Saw VI - which I keep hearing is the best one in a while). The makeup by Rob Hall is also quite good, and plentiful - at one point I considered labeling this a zombie movie due to an extended sequence where Taylor is chased around a hospital by zombie-ish folks.

But the obvious twist makes the whole affair a bit un-involving. It’s hard to really pull for Taylor to find her boyfriend when you know it’s not actually happening. Plus, writers Mike Hurst (who also directed) and Mark Altman sort of cheat, as they also continually show the creepy goings on at the hospital where the boyfriend has been taken to. These scenes, for obvious reasons, do not involve Taylor, and since the whole movie’s in her head, why is she imagining a B-story? Especially one that’s actually more interesting than her own?

And one of those scenes is a random lesbian session between the nurses at the hospital where he’s staying. I’m all for gratuitous and extraneous scenes where beautiful women kiss and fondle each other (and then drink from syringes filled with blood), but why is Taylor imagining her boyfriend seeing such things in her dying throes? I thought it was “your life flashes before your eyes”, not “the wishful thinking version of your boyfriend’s life flashes before your eyes”. I hope to hell when I’m dying, I’m not just watching my wife visit Europe and opening her own practice.

One thing I did like is that the whole movie is about Taylor’s unexplained daddy issues. So when it comes time for the flashback, you know they won’t just have some no-name dude as the dad. And who is our mystery guest? Marshall Bell! Love that guy. Kane Hodder also pops up in a brief turn as a homeless guy who turns into a demon and fights Jerry O’Connell. And Billy Gardell is a delight as the taxi driver who brings Taylor around. A lot of these DTV movies with a reasonably famous star have complete no-names for the rest of the supporting cast, so it’s nice to see good actors even in the smaller roles.

So I dunno, it’s a twist movie where the twist won’t surprise anyone who has ever seen a twist movie before, but it’s still sort of entertaining. Taylor’s always nice to watch, and it’s rare to see her in a lead role, so there’s something. Your life won’t be empty if you never bother to watch it, but hey - it’s a hell of a lot better than the Carnival Of Souls remake, at any rate.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Premonition (2004)

AUGUST 11, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

13 Hours In A Warehouse (2008)

AUGUST 10, 2009

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Born (2007)

AUGUST 9, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Sea Beast (2008)

AUGUST 8, 2009

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What say you?

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

PLEASE, GO ON...