Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore (2010)

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

GENRE: DOCUMENTARY
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I’ve only seen a couple of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ films, and haven’t really loved them, but I was still interested in seeing The Godfather Of Gore, a documentary about his career featuring many of the folks involved with the films, well known fans such as John Waters and Joe Bob Briggs, and even Lewis himself, who seemingly hasn’t lost any of his spark despite being in his 80s. Also, unlike the usual unknowns who helm these sort of things, it was co-directed by none other than Frank Henenlotter (who also appears as one of the talking heads), which suggested that this might be a slightly more interesting take on this sort of thing.

Unfortunately the film is geared more toward die-hard fans than newbies such as myself. While they do talk a bit about his pre-movie life (he was a teacher!), it’s not even five minutes in before his first movies are being discussed in detail. Prior to the gore films we all know him for, he produced and/or directed a number of “nudie cutie” films; most of which seem to involve little more than naked girls dancing around in between bits of lame comedy. They spend an awful long time on this stuff (well over 20 minutes) before getting to Blood Feast – which I found a bit odd for a movie called “Godfather Of Gore”. I understood the need for context, but as time went on I realized that this wasn’t so much a documentary about HGL but a long form retrospective about his most notable films.

And again, I haven’t seen many of them. So while it’s fun to see him and some other production veterans of Two Thousand Maniacs returning to the town where they shot the film and taking part in a makeshift parade, or hearing about a botched gore effect in Wizard Of Gore, most of the film consists of folks reminiscing about similar events on movies I haven’t seen, so after a while I started feeling like I was watching the bonus features on a DVD when I had yet to see the film. Indeed, you could chop any section out of the movie and put it on its respective DVD as a “30th anniversary reunion!” featurette. This is especially true of the Maniacs segment, where they devote some time to guy who played the little kid; at one point he tells a story about some Maniacs fans who were friends with him without realizing the connection – um, OK, that’s amusing and all, but can we get back to Lewis?

Thus, we get a lot of moments like this and precious little time devoted to his influence, his life outside of the movies, etc. It’s not even really clear why he more or less quit the business after 1972’s The Gore Gore Girls – hell they even skip over Blood Feast 2, which you’d think would make a logical endcap for the film since the first Blood Feast was his first foray into gore films. The remakes of Maniacs and Wizard aren’t mentioned at all, another thing that would seem obvious to me. There’s a quick shot of him talking at a marketing seminar, as that is what he does for a living now (and is even more successful in that field than he was in films, from what I understand), but that’s about it.

However, if you ARE a die-hard fan, this should prove to be a very entertaining film. I’ve never even heard of some of the films that they discuss, but comparing the doc to his filmography proves that they don’t really skip over much. Obviously the big hits are given more time than say, Suburban Roulette (a drama about swingers that he made in the late 60s), but it would have been very easy to just focus the doc on the movies that have some name value to casual fans – given the number of still-living participants of Maniacs, they probably could have made a full length doc about just that one film.

And even I took much delight at the insights from Briggs and Waters (Henenlotter is also pretty hilarious). For the most part they’re not under any illusion that these films are legitimately any good (at least twice we hear the sentiment that a film was released only because “it had sprocket holes and could run through the projector”), which is a blessing – I don’t know if I could sit through an entire movie of people trying to convince me that Wizard Of Gore is anything but a boring movie punctuated by ridiculous (and too-infrequent) kill scenes.

Some stuff, I have to wonder if even his biggest fan would find interesting. Henenlotter (and/or co-director Jimmy Maslon) has a strange fascination with showing “outtakes” that are merely crew members clapping the slate on the set of whatever film is being discussed – how is this interesting? I guess showing it once is a nice visual way of showing how everyone on these crews more multiple hats, but if that’s the only point, why show such sequences 3-4 times? And only someone with the Blood Feast logo tattooed across his entire chest would enjoy hearing that film’s obnoxious two-note “theme” playing over the ENTIRE segment on the film (15-20 minutes).

The disc has a lot of extras also geared more toward satisfying fans than “introducing” this guy to newcomers. An hour’s worth of deleted scenes are pretty much indistinguishable from what’s in the movie, so if you enjoyed the movie then by all means go right into watching these. There’s a pretty great anecdote about Charles Manson in here, and Henenlotter’s take on Miss Nymphet’s Zap-In (a Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In wannabe) is worth the cost of the disc alone. Less successful is Lewis’ short “Hot Night At The Go-Go Lounge”, which is literally ten minutes of nothing but girls dancing around. Then we get a pretty comprehensive trailer reel (with a “Play All” option for parties!) and a gallery of original art, which of course is hit or miss but a unique addition all the same. My only gripe is that the deleted scenes section has a few chapters but no index or chapter selection menu of any sort, making navigating it a bit cumbersome (on my player I couldn’t even fast forward for some reason), as folks might want to just see what extra bits there are on a particular film but would have to run through the whole thing to find them. I wish they had taken a cue from their own trailer page and let you watch deleted material by film or just play all if you wanted to take it all in at once.

Granted, few will be the folks who pick this up having never heard of the guy, so the fact that it has next to no real biographical information on him won’t bother the target audience – his biggest fans who already know all of this stuff. But I think Spine Tingler was more successful, providing more context for its subject (William Castle) and keeping die-hard fans and newcomers equally entertained and informed throughout its runtime. A nice collection of extras makes it an easy sell to the HGL faithful, but everyone else should probably check out a few (or a lot) of the movies and maybe read his Wikipedia page first - I think I'll hold on to it and give it another look after I've seen another half dozen of the flicks.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Psych:9 (2010)

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

It’s rare, but occasionally I miss a movie at Screamfest and need to catch it on DVD later. However, the esteemed Simon Barrett (my frequent “date” for Screamfest screenings) did NOT miss Psych:9, and later told me that it was the absolute worst film he ever saw at the festival. I assumed whatever I did instead (can’t recall what it was) was a better use of my time, but it always nagged at me, and with the new festival just around the corner I figured it was time that I finally found out if I agreed with him or not.

Well, I don’t. It’s certainly not very good at all, and I can certainly understand why it was on the shelf for over four years, but I’ll take it over dreck like The Canyon or Train, because at least here the characters have a good reason for doing colossally stupid things – they’re crazy! Well, at least our heroine is, and also kind of a bitch, so when she does something that might endanger her most audience members would probably cheer at her impending doom. I don’t know if the character was written to be this unlikable or if Sara Foster just played her that way, but by the time we finally get around to knowing WHY she’s so cold, it might be a bit too late for folks to care about her dilemma. Plus, some of the supporting characters seem “off”, particularly Michael Biehn as the least subtle cop of all time (at one point he makes a big show out of “accidentally” dropping some papers he wanted Foster to see). I didn’t quite get her husband either – why did he marry this girl in the first place? Yeah, she’s smoking hot, but he can’t even bring her a pizza at work without her snapping at him. And she’s got bedroom issues, so it’s not that keeping him around either. Cary Elwes is seemingly the only one that’s got a clear head, but since he’s a shrink I guess that’s sort of a given.

But that’s not the problem with the movie – it’s actually kind of ballsy to make your heroine so unpleasant. The problem is the second half, when the generic but not too terrible spooky hospital movie (it’s closing down, she is tasked with packing up the records room) becomes an obnoxious twist movie. Characters are revealed to be all in her head, back-stories reveal that some of them knew each other before the events of this film and one party has simply forgotten/blocked it from memory, etc. We also learn who the killer is, and I highly doubt anyone will be shocked by the reveal if they’ve been paying attention and/or have ever seen another psychological horror film. As all the twists pile up (sometimes they even double back on them), the movie gets less and less interesting, and certainly less successful/scary.

I don’t know why horror filmmakers try to over-complicate their horror films – the more your brain is concentrating on trying to figure out what exactly is going on, the less likely it is that you’ll be scared or even mildly unnerved. Not that you can’t tell a good story in a horror film, certainly not. With Elwes around it’s easy enough to make a comparison to Saw – the story in those movies really isn’t all that complicated, nor are the twists based around what is essentially cheating. Everything we see in a Saw film actually happened at some point or another, unlike here where you have to rewind and puzzle over what scenes really occurred and which were just in Foster’s head. Plus it doesn’t even all add up – a character is killed on one floor at the same time that the person we are led to believe is the killer is up on the roof. So who killed her, then? If you’re going to go down the twist path, you have to make sure you QC your script and make sure everything adds up. Otherwise, the dim folks in the audience are just going to hate your movie because they can’t follow it, and the smart ones are going to be annoyed at the lack of care that went into the plotting.

It’s also weird that they switch focus at the hour mark. For the entire movie, Foster is front and center for every scene, but then suddenly we’re following her “partner” from the records sorting job around the hospital, and seeing Biehn talk to the husband, etc. There’s also a flashback sequence with Elwes character that comes so out of nowhere I momentarily assumed that the DVD had glitched. Not that any of these scenes are outright terrible (well, the Elwes flashback is, since they try really hard to hide something that is very obvious about it), but by this point of the movie they have seemingly intentionally given us the entire story solely from her POV, so to have scenes in which she’s not even present when the movie is heading toward its conclusion is quite jarring.

If you weren’t annoyed or bored by the movie itself, the extra features might appeal to you. You can waste your time with 35 minutes of deleted/extended scenes that are largely of no use whatsoever, or if time is fleeting you can take in the 25 minute blooper reel, 90% of which is just Foster flubbing her lines. Look, bloopers can be funny, but if you’re going to show someone screwing up THIS MANY TIMES, it loses its comedic value, fast – it starts to feel like they’re actually showing us this to be mean to her. The making of is somewhat entertaining; in addition to giving Ms. Foster a chance to be herself (i.e. charming) during interviews, we’re also taken on a tour of the pretty great hospital location. Fluff, sure, but apart from the trailer it’s also the shortest thing on the disc, making it the least offensive.

Speaking of offensive – there is a subplot about the sexual abuse of a child (by her father no less), so be warned. I’m not against such a thing in general, but when its used as a plot point for a very silly pseudo-slasher thing like this, it feels even cruder than usual. I guess I can appreciate the filmmakers attempting to tackle more difficult subject matter, but unfortunately, as with the twists, you either have to nail it perfectly or else it just comes across as somewhat exploitative. View at your own risk!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Killer Rats (2003)

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

GENRE: PREDATOR
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I recently learned that I will most likely never get to show Of Unknown Origin at the New Bev, as Warner doesn’t have any prints but also won’t allow privately owned prints to show (as they are technically “stolen”, but fuck them! If they cared they would have kept a couple!). And that’s a shame, because it’s a legitimately good killer rat movie, whereas most of the others are like the imaginatively titled Killer Rats (an upgrade from Rats, its title per IMDb), which are fine/fun time-killers but aren’t the type of movies I’d go out of my way to recommend to friends.

However, it’s certainly got the most unique setting for this sort of movie that I can recall – a mental institute. As with the recent Asylum, our hero (well, heroine in this case) gets herself purposely put in the institute to investigate something, but here she’s a reporter. Also, her story doesn’t have anything to do with killer rats, the presence of which distracts her away from doing much investigating. However, unlike Asylum, she doesn’t get involved much with the fellow patients; she doesn’t along at all with her roommate and the others she barely interacts with at all. Instead, we get a lot of killer rat scenes, which is all we’re here for anyway so that’s not a bad thing.

But I swear, I’d take 5-10 less minutes of rat footage if it meant that the remaining shots looked good. This movie was made at a time when bad CGI was at its worst in Hollywood (2001 – same year as The Mummy Returns and Jurassic Park III, which remain low points), so it’s “nice” to see that it affected low budget Bulgarian productions as well. Some of the shots of them just sort of scurrying around and nibbling on non-people are real rats, but pretty much everything of note – even shots of one running through a doorway or whatever – are either bad CGI or bad composites of real ones. They look equally terrible though, so it doesn’t really matter which non-practical method they choose. I mean, fine, if they need to bite a person or do something really “intelligent”, fine, but come on! You can’t get a real rat to run through a doorway? Put some fucking cheese down!

Some of the bad effects actually enhance the B-movie fun of it all, however, particularly when a couple of exterminators attempt to wipe out the rats with some sort of Ghostbusters-esque raygun – the cheap lightning arcs coming out of the guns are wonderfully 50s esque creation, and the scene as a whole is one of the highlights (spoiler: they don’t succeed at exterminating anyone but themselves). And of course there’s one giant rat, but they save him for near the end, giving the otherwise lame climax a bit of novelty (they just blow up the basement where most of them are in – no real fight or interaction).

Speaking of the giant rat, I was baffled by the sound design for the thing. It just growls everywhere it goes, but there are two things that are wrong about this: 1. The growling sound they use sounds more like my stomach on a Saturday morning when I sleep past my usual cereal eating time, and 2. A rat’s squeak is way more unnerving/scary than a damn growl anyway! What I would have done is given it a squeak that actually hurt the humans’ ears, turning it into a weapon of sorts while also retaining the idea that it IS in fact just a giant rat, not some sort of tiger or whatever the hell they used to get the vocal.

The cast is pretty good; lead Sara Downing is very easy on the eyes and has a bit of spunk to her, reminding me a bit of Amber Heard in The Ward. Ron Perlman pops up as the head doctor, though his character disappears for too big of a chunk of the runtime. However, I liked that he wasn’t an antagonist for the human characters; he wasn’t exactly a saint, but I was expecting some ridiculous nonsense where we find out the rats are doing his bidding or something. Instead (spoiler?) he finds himself a victim of the actual human villain, an orderly who takes a Willard-esque liking to the damn things.

Fans of The Gate should know that this is from the same director, Tibor Takács, who also helmed the “better than it should be” Mansquito. I don’t know why he never had a bigger career in Hollywood; The Gate made some dough (and it’s actually good!), but he never really capitalized on it, following it with the barely released I, Madman and woeful Gate II before going into television and DTV movies for the remainder of his (still going) career. Perhaps The Gate was a fluke? I mean, movies like this and Mansquito are fun, but I attribute that to a few good performers and above average scripts more than any sort of directing prowess; seems anyone could have done his job here and come out with similar results (if not better). His next one is Spiders 3D, which stars Patrick Muldoon from the pair’s previous effort (the terrible Ice Spiders) but he’s playing a different character, so I guess it’s not a sequel. Let’s see how he does with 3D on a budget.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Chromeskull: Laid To Rest 2 (2011)

SEPTEMBER 18, 2011

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

I wasn’t too big of a fan of the original Laid To Rest, but I did really dig the kills, which I assumed the sequel would offer up plenty of while hopefully improving the story/character issues. And depending on how you look at it, Chromeskull: Laid To Rest 2 does indeed improve on its predecessor in those departments, but in my opinion dropped the ball in other areas. But considering that the target audience for this (and most sequels) are the folks who enjoyed the original, I would consider this to be a successful followup.

For starters, the characters are much less idiotic this time around, which makes the film as a whole easier to digest. Apparently writer/director Rob Hall was listening to complaints about the original, and thus decreed that this time everyone would have cell phones and there would be a heavy police presence. And the phones work! Our hero (Thomas Dekker, reprising/expanding his brief role in the original) is in Chromeskull’s base of operations, which appears to be an underground facility of some sort, but he is able to get in touch with the cops when he tries. Not that it helps him (or the cops) much in the end, but it’s better than another cliché, and the part of me that watches these things every day can always appreciate ANYTHING that breaks from the norm.

And again, they’re not as stupid this time around; no one has a strange form of amnesia that prevents them from remembering what a “coffin” is, nor is anyone stuck in 1998 with a dial up modem. Most of the time our characters do pretty much what anyone would do, and by making the would-be heroine practically blind we can accept that she’s not too quick on her feet or able to figure out where she is. There’s still more than a couple groan-inducing lines of dialogue, however – at one point a female cop asks if Chromeskull’s personalized license plate (“CHRMSKL”) has one L or two, for example. Now, if she was using the DMV computer to find information on him, that’d be one thing, but she asks a fellow cop over the phone while investigating a warehouse that he might be at – so, what, does she think she might run across a personalized CHROMESKULL license plate with the incorrect number of Ls and thus accidentally take down an innocent man? But still, there’s nothing as insufferable as the “dead boxes” nonsense so I’ll let it slide.

However, the plot for this one draws heavily from the “organization” that Chromeskull belongs to, and for that you either have to go with it or just skip the movie entirely (note - spoilers ahead!). I must admit, I fail to see how killing hookers is an effective business model, but it must be as Mr. Chromeans has a staff of medical experts (handy for repairing his mostly mushed head at the beginning of the film), plus a pair of handlers that are seemingly engaged in some sort of corporate turf war, attempting to take control of this particular corporation. One is Danielle Harris, who is on Chromeskull’s side, and the other is Brian Austin Green, who seemingly wants to BE Chromeskull, and helpfully takes care of the “killing women” part of the job while the real Chromeskull is recuperating.

Yes, that’s the story. For a movie called Chromeskull, the real McCoy actually isn’t in it a hell of a lot for the first hour, as Green’s “Fauxskull” actually commits most of the killings. Also (spoiler?), he loses his mask early on during the big climactic rampage and thus spends a good chunk of it showing his less-than-handsome face. Personally, I feel it’s a bit early in the franchise to go the Jason Goes To Hell route of keeping our real hero out of the action for so much of the movie. Plus, while Green has effectively shed his 90210/rapper (read: lame) persona thanks to a fairly impressive turn as a badass on the Sarah Connor show, he’s still no match for Nick Principe, a nearly 7 foot tall guy who is sort of born to play these sort of roles. I appreciate that they didn’t just use some sort of deus ex machina to keep him alive after his seeming death at the end of the previous film (or just flat out ignore it), but this should have been a real tour de force for the guy now that he’s been established – let’s wait until part 4 or 5 before going this outside the box (to be fair, I felt that the original felt like a sequel in an established series as well, so maybe this like Star Wars where we’re getting chapters 4-6 before we get 1-3).

Also the kills aren’t quite as interesting this time around; most are variations on someone’s chest or head being stabbed and then ripped apart, something we saw a lot of in the original. The only one that really sticks out is the last one in the movie, and it’s also stolen from Jason X (any guesses?), so that’s a bit of a bummer. However, they are equally if not MORE impressive from a technical point of view, as Hall and his crew involve basic sleight of hand tricks to pull a lot of them off. For example, one girl is stabbed, gutted and then realistically killed all in one shot, and it was pulled off not with CGI but by simply hiring twins – one twin got stabbed (presumably with a retractable blade of some sort), then she was thrown off camera. The shot continues as Fauxskull walks over to her, but now it’s the other twin with the necessary appliances already placed on her in order to complete the kill. It’s a genius idea, but I don’t know if anyone will appreciate it without watching the bonus features, because A. we’ve gotten so accustomed to computers doing the work that most audiences will probably assume it’s just really good CGI, and B. a lot of folks will probably not be asking “How did they do that?” but “Why isn’t she already dead?”, as the initial move (first twin) would seemingly kill anyone, let alone a tiny young woman.

Also, and maybe this was true of the original too (can’t quite recall), but I love how “messy” the kills are. I’m not talking blood – there’s plenty of that, of course – but in a lot of horror films the knife always seems to go through a body like butter. But here, you really see him struggle to cut through bone and clothing and hair and such, and there’s always a lot of connective tissue and sinew holding body parts together for an extra second or two as they are pulled apart. In a way it’s sort of weird that they go for realistic kills inside of a world that can apparently turn killing hookers into some big bucks business, but it certainly makes the kills stick out a bit from something like Hatchet, which aren’t that concerned with realism (i.e. Crowley’s “curb stomp” in H2).

The structure of the 3rd act is also a bit strange; instead of coming down to a big showdown with Green (essentially the film’s villain with Chromeskull as its “hero”), they have a quick fight with the obvious outcome with like 25 minutes to go, and then some random cops who we haven’t seen before show up to provide the bulk of the climactic action. And with the Dekker/final girl characters to worry about, plus Harris’ character, it starts to feel a bit disjointed, with none of the elements really tying together in a satisfying way from a storytelling point of view - it seems like you can swap around the order of the scenes and it wouldn't matter much. Then again, this was also an issue in the original, with Dekker and his buddy showing up out of nowhere at the end, so I guess it fits the overall/random chain of events plotting that is now I guess sort of a trademark of the series.

It’s a much more assured film visually, however. The film was shot with cameras that are more suited toward still photography, giving the film a unique, hyper realized look. Some of the night shots look too “digital” for my tastes, but when you see the size of the cameras in the behind the scenes stuff you’ll probably be pretty impressed that the film looks as sharp as it does. And, let’s face it – this is not a big budget production, and so by using this presumably cheaper equipment, they were able to put more dough into the kills and actors (probably saved a lot of time as well). Don’t get me wrong; I still wish everything was shot on 35mm, but having suffered through so many terribly shot digital productions, I can at least take comfort knowing that at least there are people who know what they are doing when it comes to the new technology that is slowly taking over.

I also liked the hand-held look, which is ramped up for the scenes involving Green’s “out of control” character but toned down for the scenes of the far more skillful Chromeskull. And Hall has even tossed in a bit of stalking this time around; there’s a bit where Chromey seems to have taken a page from Michael Myers as he appears/disappears standing behind unaware future victims – cool stuff. He also has a sweet new weapon, a circular device with six blades that open/close like scissors, though I wish he used it more often.

The Blu-ray has pretty much the exact set of features that were on the original; a few deleted scenes that are of no real use, an outtake/blooper reel that isn’t really that amusing, and the trailer can be skipped, but the behind the scenes is worth a look, as it largely focuses on the kills and reveals a cool surprise about the tattoo scene. There’s also a jump to a kill feature that’s always fun, though some have too much of the padding beforehand. The commentary is a good listen as well; Hall, co-writer Kevin Bocarde, and Green joke around and dish on actors who bailed out, tricks that they used to save on budget (a good chunk of the film was shot in Hall’s own home), etc. I was particularly amused by the origin of the prologue featuring The Girl from the first movie. Originally she would be killed off-screen and not really appear at all, since the character was played by Hall’s now ex-wife, but through auditioning another role they met an actress who physically resembled her and even shared a similar voice, so they ended up casting her and rewriting the opening a bit to give the character a real sendoff. They also point out that co-star Owain Yeoman was also part of Sarah Connor, which I think brings the total number of SC cast members in Laid To Rest movies to four. Hopefully they can get Richard T. Jones for LTR3, love that guy.

Overall I’d say it was a minor success. Fans of the original will probably be satisfied (if they can get past “David Silver” wearing the mask more than the real guy), and those who didn’t, like me, found this one to improve in several areas. I didn’t yell at my TV this time around, at any rate – maybe not a very good quote for the DVD cover, but again – sequels are made for fans of the original more than their critics. If it can entertain said critics AND fans, then they’re on the right track. And as long as they actually go with what was hinted at during the final scene of this one, I’m definitely excited for a third.

What say you?

P.S. Make sure you stick around after the credits for one of the most wonderfully batshit moments of the entire movie!

PLEASE, GO ON...

Deadtime Stories Volume 2 (2010)

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

I rarely seriously contemplate quitting HMAD (usually it's just because there's a video game I'd rather play), but I swore that I would kill the site on the spot if Deadtime Stories Volume 2 actually managed to be worse than the first volume, which is one of the worst films I've seen this year. There's something that's just too soul-crushing about hating a movie as much as I did that one, only to discover that it was actually BETTER than its sequel, which came along just a few months later, to risk continuing watching this sort of stuff on a daily basis.

Luckily, it was an improvement. Not a marginal one either; it's actually... well, I couldn't go so far as GOOD, but it's "not terrible" and even a bit interesting at times. It baffles me that they potentially killed any interest in this one for a lot of people with the terrible first one, especially when it seems like the two volumes were swapped (the IMDb page for the first volume STILL has all of the information for this one, as did the original trailer), but if it takes seeing V1 first to appreciate the improvements here, so be it.

For starters, they worked within their means this time around. While the other tried to give us period pieces, jungles overrun with cannibals, and sea creatures on a budget of maybe 10 or 12 bucks, the locales/characters are much more grounded and commonplace this time around: a cave, a college classroom, and a guy's house are our primary settings, respectively, and the horrors are a bit more simple as well.

In fact it's not until the third story that we really deal with anything supernatural of note. The first story, "The Gorge", depicts a tale of three spelunkers who get trapped in a cave with one of them seriously injured. With my Descent screening that none of you came to on the brain I initially assumed that some monsters would show up, but instead it turned into a cannibal tale. And interestingly, they were rescued at the halfway point, with the rest of the installment dealing with their guilt and fractured mental state. It's the weakest entry in the film (I was particularly annoyed with the unexplained water situation; they're down there for a month (!) but we never see them drink anything), but already showed an improvement over any of the entries in the last one.

The second, "On Sabbath Hill" was probably the best, another guilt-based story in which a professor who has been banging one of his students starts to crack up after she kills herself (she had gotten pregnant; he being a married professor told her to abort it so it didn't ruin his career). I mean, I THINK he cracks up, he sees her ghost and other odd visions, but no one else does, so I assume it's all in his head. But either way, it's the type of short I'd like to see more often, in that it just tells a simple story that doesn't need a feature length to depict. So many shorts nowadays are geared toward twist endings, or an eager would-be filmmaker trying to show how much he can do with limited means (that recent Portal fan film being one example), it's nice to see one that's actually concerned with character and story, even when it's not particularly exciting - you can kind of see where it's going as soon as he first sees her "ghost".

The third, "Dust", started off pretty good but went off the rails at the end. In addition to sporting the only actor in the film I recognized (save for George Romero, more on him soon), it was a fun twist on the usual "scientist goes too far to prove his research can cure cancer" story. Here, the scientist wanted to play by the book, refusing to test it out on a human patient too quickly, so his buddy, a security guard (the actor I recognized, he's in the movie Sneakers - awesome flick) steals some of the formula (which is some sort of self-regenerating sand) in order to cure his dying wife. As always, it works, but with consequences - in another spin, all she wants to do now is fuck, which ultimately wears him out. This side effect is never explained, however, and instead of following through with it they go down a more generic route, as the doctor is accidentally killed while the guard tries stealing more of the stuff, and then it turns into a Creepshow-esque "back from the dead" thing (think "Something To Tide You Over"). It's not too bad, but I'd rather they stuck with the sex addict stuff. Not that the sexually charged scenes were particularly enticing (the sight of the actor's hairy arms might have rendered me impotent, in fact), but it was something new and also would have ended the film on a higher note, instead of just reminding me of the far superior Creepshow.

As for the Romero segments, they're just as depressing as the ones in the other volume. Like before, they seemingly edited his segments together from two different sessions, as he keeps changing clothes and even moods (he seems a lot more tired in some than others). Also, maybe this was true in Volume 1 as well but I didn't notice, but it seemed like they occasionally edited together back to back comments that didn't really fit together Like he'll say something along the lines of "Well, what did you think about that one?" and then it'll cut to a different clothes Romero saying "And that's why you don't do that.", as if both comments were meant to be the first thing you hear after the story concluded. Very jarring, and just needlessly draws attention to the movie's half-assed production.

Also, his pun-filled, Cryptkeeper-y segments don't really fit with the tone of the segments, which are (as with the original) largely humor-free (the second one is borderline depressing, in fact). Sort of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation here; George's segments don't fit and should be removed, but without him this movie sits on a shelf forever, or gets zero attention if released. None of the other people in the movie will draw a crowd, there's no big monster or crazy effects to put in a trailer, etc - he's literally the only thing that sticks out, good or bad.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a 180 from the original, either. It still suffers from a very bland presentation, particularly in the direction. At one point in the second story the ghost appears to give birth, but the camera just sits there on a tripod, refusing to bring any life to the proceedings. The plotting is very shaky at times (why the hell do the characters in "Dust" live in a cemetery?), and once again terrible music (same guy) plays non-stop over the segments, particularly in the second where the only time it seems to stop is when they play some source classical music. It also still looks like a cheap soap opera, but I guess they wanted some visual consistency between the two volumes so that the die hard fans wouldn't be outraged.

This time around we get a bonus feature, a loosely edited (well, assembled) collection of random behind the scenes footage. Admirably it's not a lot of ass-kissing, but rather focuses largely on some of the things that were holding them back. Missing extras screwing up continuity, problems with the owners of various shooting locations, and other minor issues make up the bulk of the 16 minute runtime. Oh, and that's the running time of the piece on the disc itself - it appears as if it should run longer, as it cuts out mid-sentence and offers no credits (not even a generic "copyright 2011" tag). But it wouldn't be Deadtime Stories if there wasn't something laughably inept about the affair!

Again, you probably need to watch the first volume to appreciate what this one offers, as it's slow-paced, cheap, and not particularly exciting at any point. But knowing how bad the same team can make one of these things, along with somewhat admirable attempts at decent stories this time around, makes it a lot easier to digest. Maybe Volume 3 (there's still at least one entry that hasn't surfaced, titled "Quota") will continue the upward trend.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Sector 7 (2011)

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

GENRE: ASIAN, MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

The other day someone asked what my favorite country for horror was, and I said that by default it was the US because it offers the most variety, specifically pointing out that you barely ever see any Asian monster movies (but can throw a rock and hit a dozen vengeful ghost films). So I felt sort of obligated to check out Sector 7, which is indeed a Korean monster film, especially as it was playing theatrically in LA - very rare I get to see any foreign horror on the big screen outside of festivals.

And it was in 3D, but had I done some research I would have known it was a post-convert, which I usually do my best to avoid (especially when I'm buying a ticket), as they all pretty much suck. Indeed, this was the weakest 3D presentation I've seen in ages; even by conversion standards it was very flat and uninvolving, and if not for the fact that they put the damn subtitles in 3D I probably would have just taken the glasses off, since 95% of the time they were the only noticeable part (read: blurry without glasses). Even the CGI monster wasn't particularly life-like in 3D, and they only really do like one "Comin at ya!" shot with him, even though he has tentacles flying around all the time. Maybe this would have been impressive back in the early 00s when 3D films were extremely rare, but nowadays, shit, even My Soul To Take utilized the technology more successfully.

But even in 2D it would be kind of lackluster. The main problem is, sadly, the monster, as it's yet another one of those horribly over-created "things" that seemed to be the joint design of a bunch of guys trying to see what other cool shit they could throw on it in the computer. Tentacles! Spikes! Extra legs! Some sort of circular mouth! I don't understand why monster designers feel the need to make these ugly, non-real world based mutant things nowadays; the best and most iconic monsters are simple in their design: Godzilla, King Kong, the Gremlins, the various Alien creatures - you can draw them or at least describe what they look like. This just looked like some random mess of pixels that you'd find near the end of a Resident Evil game before your final showdown with Wesker or whoever, and if someone took the time to make a toy or model of it I probably wouldn't recognize it without context.

It also doesn't do much that's very cool, nor do the kill/chase scenes have much of a buildup. At one point a guy tries to escape in a submersible, and he sees another guy thought dead swimming toward him. Then, all of a sudden, the monster is on the top of his submersible, which it then smashes a hole in and lets the guy implode/sink while it swims back up. There's no buildup to its appearance whatsoever, and it's over so quick you gotta wonder why they even bothered. The climax also goes on forever; once its down to one person vs. monster the movie just becomes the longest quicktime event/boss battle ever, as our survivor dodges it, does something that you think will incapacitate it for good, only for it to get back up and resume chase, until she dodges it... at least if there were two characters around it could be more fun - saving each other, working together to pull off some sort of counter-offense, that sort of stuff. Instead it's just a long, not particularly exciting chase with an obvious outcome.

Compared to the last monster/oil rig movie I watched though, it's a masterpiece. Like that one, it seems like they've watched Armageddon a couple times, as an opening "oil drill goes bad" sequence plays out almost exactly like the one in the 'geddon, completed with our now oil covered hero turning one last valve and giving a very tired thumbs up to some folks off camera. The music is even very Bruckheimer-ian, taking on a very Zimmer/Pirates feel. Also, the characters have a fun chemistry, particularly in an early bit where they all compare scars and generally have a grand old time. There's also a rather touching bit of "Go! Save yourself!" "NO, I won't leave without you!" type scene, which is extra interesting because it appears that the two male characters in question are also lovers, something you don't see a lot in ANY horror film let alone a foreign one.

I also liked the brief attempt to add some mystery to the proceedings, as someone dies suspiciously and we are led to believe that she was killed by the creepy Peter Lorre sounding guy who was in love with her. Of course we think it was actually the monster, but there's more to it than that, and I was actually sort of intrigued by the idea of there being a human killer as well as a monster - if nothing else it could make up for the few off-screen kills. Also, in the movie's best sequence, one of the older riggers decides to go all Ahab on the damn thing, more or less calling it out and then fighting it directly with a spear and a flamethrower. Badass, man.

One curious thing - the movie was projected at around 2.35:1 and looked horizontally stretched, and the fact that the IMDb lists 1.85:1 as its ratio certainly seems to back up my suspicion. Just curious if anyone had any insight on the matter, as this could be why the 3D effect was so diminished. I've never been to this theater before (the CGV Cinema in Koreatown), and it was very nice inside (reminded me of the Landmark on Pico) with assigned seating and plenty of legroom - in other words, seems like the sort of place that would know better than to show a movie at the wrong aspect ratio. Still, my eyes instantly told me something was "off" about the way people's faces looked.

I assume that the film was some sort of response to The Host (it even shares that film's structure; starting off as a bit goofy and ending on a fairly melancholy note), but that film delivered great, varied monster action and a compelling hero. This one, one the other hand, settled for a generic "girl who's tougher/smarter than the guys" archetype and a monster whose most interesting trait was the fact that he was really clumsy, constantly slipping around and missing his targets. Like the movie as a whole, these elements offered mild amusement, but nothing I'll really remember in a week or so.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Descendant (2003)

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

As much as I enjoy Valentine, it does take a whole 10-15 minutes to get around to killing off Katherine Heigl, so at first I was pretty impressed with Descendant for killing her in the first 4 minutes. As the film was from 2003, it was conceivable that she could be dispatched for good this soon; her career was sort of on a downward spiral after Roswell went off the air until it was revived by Grey's Anatomy. But alas, she plays two characters, so a few minutes later we flash forward 200 years (or whatever it was) and meet her REAL character, one who probably won't die at all let alone in a timely manner.

To be fair, back when this movie was produced I actually liked the lass; she was attractive and made a couple of horror movies, and her character fell for the dorky guy on Roswell which was endearing to me, a dorky guy who watched the show with a girl who never followed suit (sigh). But once her career really took off she became one of those actresses who you never hear anything nice about; slamming the writing on her show, dismissing Judd Apatow, etc. She also left horror long behind in favor of horrendous rom-coms like The Ugly Truth, and thus now I can barely stand to look at her.

But she's actually the least of this movie's problems, which is yet another goddamn real estate plot worked into a very thin horror story. Seems Heigl and her brother, a no-gooder who seemingly wants to ignore the whole "we're related" thing when it comes to their relationship, are the descendants of some guy who fucked Poe over back in the day, and now a descendant of Poe (Jeremy London, horribly miscast and thus inadvertently helping make the movie somewhat entertaining) is seeking to wipe out their bloodline so that he can inherit some bit of property. Riveting!

The horror stuff comes from his slasher-esque tendency to kill everyone BUT her, going after her brother, her best friend, her shrink... you get the drill. The kill scenes aren't too bad (I actually thought this was a TV movie) but because they inexplicably try to hide the fact that London is the bad guy (it's obvious from the first time we meet him, when he slams Poe's work - obviously not a hero character for a horror film) they aren't as interesting as they could be. Then we also get a bit of a psychological/ghost spin on things as he is constantly mocked/egged on by the spirit of Poe. Thankfully he doesn't play Poe as well, but the other guy isn't much better. So in short, it's a more dramatic approach to the material that would require great actors to pull it off, and instead they got these folks.

As is customary for any modern Poe-based movie that isn't specifically tied to one of his stories, we get a bunch of random "shout outs" to his more famous stuff. The House of Usher elements actually make sense in the confines of the story, but by the time he's curiously swinging a blade of some sort over (co-writer) William Katt's character ("Pit and the Pendulum") and walling up another character like in the "Cask of Amontillado", it gets a bit silly, even for this already rather ludicrous movie.

Speaking of ludicrous, this movie has one of the most inept chase scenes ever filmed. Heigl manages to escape London's grasp and run out of the house, driving away. There's only one road to their isolated house, but somehow he manages to get ahead of her and park his car across the road. Does she ram him? Turn around and figure out a way around (hey, he clearly found one)? Nope, she stops and runs away at a very un-frantic speed. And then it gets sillier - she manages to run right to the spot where he has propped up her mother's body in the woods. What are the odds? But it gets better - at that moment her brother, thought dead, resurfaces and momentarily plays hero. It's like they took elements from three separate scenes and put them together despite the fact that it wouldn't make any goddamn sense and serve only to annihilate the film's already tenuous credulity.

I also had to laugh at the box art, which uses what appears to be a red carpet shot of Heigl and adds the tagline "True Beauty Can Be Lethal", which hasn't a goddamn thing to do with the movie and suggests that she is the killer more than anything else. I briefly considered that it might be a Poe quote that they tossed in, but when I Googled the phrase the first thing that came up was the IMDb page for this obscure, unloved movie, so I guess not.

In some ways I feel bad for Stephen King; Poe was lucky enough to die before he had to see his work misrepresented in junk like this. But you gotta figure that King has at least caught some of Children of the Corn 6 or Mangler 2 on cable. I know he claims that the movies are separate and all that, but still, his name's on it. Also, he's sober now - Poe would have the option of chugging another bottle of cognac if he was forced or tricked into watching Descendant.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Splatter University (1984)

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

A good number of my Formspring questions are folks asking to identify a movie that they can’t recall the name of, because I tend to be pretty good at that sort of thing (also, I’ve seen a lot of movies. See: Horror Movie A Day). But the tables were turned not too long ago, as I needed help identifying a movie I only saw the last 5-10 minutes of at a party over a decade ago, as the fellow participants had either forgotten themselves and/or no longer kept in touch with me. But it didn’t take long for someone on Twitter to identify my vague memory as Splatter University.

In retrospect I probably should have “found” the movie sooner as it’s one of the ones that Randy name-checks in Scream 2, which gives it a small bit of cred. But as it was a bit late to the game with the slasher boom (1984; most were 1981 or 1982), it is often forgotten when folks discuss the slasher films highs and lows; even the pretty great slasher doc Going To Pieces skips over it (a poster is shown, however). However, now that I’ve seen it, I’m actually surprised it doesn’t get referenced more often, because it’s actually one of the most mean-spirited entries in the original slasher era.

Spoilers for a 27 year old movie ahead!

There’s a bit of a reason for it, as our killer is a priest who looks down on fornicators, but it’s really weird that not a single male student is killed throughout the course of the film. In fact, the only male victim at all is an orderly at the institute that our killer escapes from in the opening scene. Even when he’s in close proximity to potential male victims, he leaves them be, such as at the drive-in where he kills the girl but lets the guy (who went off to pee during the murder) sit and watch the movie, thinking that the girl is just pissed at him and not dead.

And not only that, but the bulk of them are decent people. The first student to get taken out is seemingly the only one in our heroine’s sociology class that actually does her homework, and the reason she is walking around by herself is because she wanted to work on her paper instead of drinking with her friends. And then, just to toss a little more cruelty her way, her friends walk the dumpster that her corpse is in and throw cans of ginger ale on her (unknowingly, of course). Basically, she went off to be more like Laurie Strode and got killed for her behavior.

But that’s nothing compared to the next one. Our seeming Final Girl is a nice young woman who IS indeed sexually active – in fact she’s pregnant. They take time to show her explaining to the teacher why she won’t be in class, let her have a couple heart to hearts with her gal friends, etc... and then she gets killed forty minutes in (the one at the drive-in). You don’t do that! And even THAT’S sort of tame when you consider that our heroine gets killed as well, without even taking the killer down with her. Jesus Christ, movie. Even Maniac let a girl get away.

I should note that the movie doesn’t FEEL sleazy or misogynistic like Maniac or some others with a heavy female casualty rate; if not for the rather cheap production value and occasional Happy Birthday To Me-esque hijinks committed by our core cast, I’d actually consider them to be really good shock twists. But the loose and sloppy approach to this sort of material leads me to believe that it wasn’t intentional, and that they probably just didn’t even notice that they forgot to kill any of the male characters, because they were too busy just having fun cashing in on a trend that was on its last leg.

It’s also a hilariously lazy production at times, with a record number of random “extras” who were possibly townsfolk who wandered onto the set without anyone bothering to tell them to move before they started shooting. I particularly liked when we watch a pretty long shot of some of the teens getting into a car, talking for a while, and then driving off – as the car exits the frame we see that a little kid has been standing on the other side of the car the other time, staring pretty much right at the camera. There are at least 3-4 other instances of “is that a crew member or did the extra forget to move?” throughout the film, keep an eye out! Also, the kills are all exactly the same; apart from one random forehead slicing (huh?), everyone just gets stabbed in the stomach.

Oh, and they botch the whodunit aspect (the trailer gives the killer’s identity away entirely, for what it’s worth), introducing a red herring very early on and then never showing him once again throughout the entire movie. They try to make it look like it’s our heroine’s new boyfriend, but since they’re trying you know it can’t be him, and there’s really only one other suspect (we know it’s an adult male from the prologue). So again, despite three writers (all male, I should note), it’s a pretty sloppy script.

There IS some character to it though. Most interesting is the random (read: wholly out of place) message on the blackboard concerning color film deterioration and “how it affects society”, which would just be wholly baffling unless you knew that director Richard Haines is something of an authority on the matter, having written a book on Technicolor films (the dye transfer Technicolor process does not fade over time as other films do – if you’ve ever gone to see a revival screening and the print looked pink, it’s because of fading). So I like that he threw that little background detail in for folks that were paying attention. I was also amused by the lazy kids in the class, one of whom asks if one of the recent deaths meant that they didn’t have to pass in their homework that day. The kids also have pretty good chemistry, though the fact that most of them had never been in a film before (and haven’t since) makes me wonder if the director didn’t just hire an actual group of friends.

Oh, and it’s only 78 minutes long, so even though the body count is rather low for a slasher around this time (only 7 I think?), the pacing doesn’t get too sluggish, though I was starting to get tired of seeing this damn hallway (where nothing much ever happens):

The disc’s only extras are two trailers, which again spoil the killer’s identity for those 2-3 people who weren’t able to figure it out on their own, as well as pretty much every kill. But it’s worth watching for the amazing tagline: “Enroll now in a theater near you and earn a higher degree in blood dripping terror!” That’s what I hate about modern trailers; there’s no hucksterism or corniness to them anymore. Everyone takes shit too seriously nowadays.

And at long last, I can sleep eas- oh wait, I still don’t know what that werewolf movie was! To Twitter!!!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Sweatshop (2009)

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

GENRE: SLASHER, SPLATTER
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

The next time I need to explain why it’s so important to have a movie end on a high note, I think I’ll use Sweatshop as an example. As my Twitter followers can attest, I all but hated the movie at first, thanks to applying a classic slasher structure (meaning: one or no kills in the first half) to a film populated with horribly annoying characters. But once the killer showed up and started decimating these idiots in wonderfully gory (and practical!) fashion, it picked up and I started enjoying myself, ultimately walking away a fan.

And a big part of that was the wonderfully gonzo finale, where everything really came together. With most of the cast dead, there wasn’t as much of the gutter dialogue that would make Rob Zombie’s characters blush, so they were already ahead of the game, but even then I was finally being amused by it instead of appalled. There’s a bit where two of the male characters are about to die and one confesses to the other that he had been with his wife, going into needlessly specific detail about what exactly they did (paraphrasing: “We didn’t fuck, we just made out for four hours and then she blew me...”), which is the sort of random shit I love. And then there’s a mini twist of sorts that I won’t spoil, but it addressed what I thought was a plot hole of sorts in a very satisfying way, allowing for more kills than expected and a hilarious final shot.

Also, even when I wasn’t really enjoying it (i.e. the first half hour), I admired the production team’s commitment to making an intentionally repulsive slasher movie. At times I was reminded of See No Evil, which was another “hulking brute” sleazo-slasher with unlikable protagonists, but while that film eventually went into more typical territory (back-story for the killer, anti-hero turned real hero, etc), this one never stopped reminding us that our characters were selfish assholes. No one makes any attempt to save anyone but themselves or even really fights back against the killer, they just want to get the hell away if they can. I know I come down hard on these sort of characters, but in a way, I’d rather never like them then have them suddenly turn into typical hero characters out of nowhere. Plus, it’s been a long time since there’s been a masked killer who was also, well, fat. Nowadays, masks are primarily used for whodunit style slashers, which means everyone in the cast has to have a similar build – nice to have that bit of mystery (he is never unmasked) but also allow him to be physically imposing to the rest of the cast. I don’t want to say he’s a slasher icon just yet, but he makes a great first impression and passes the basic test – would you want an action figure of him? (Yes.)

Besides, I’ve said all along that I’m more concerned with how well a movie succeeds at what it set out to do than pretty much anything else, and there is no evidence in the film that they wanted us to like these folks, or even tell a good story. Their concept appeared to be “let’s do a sleazy late 80s style slasher about punk/goth types partying and getting killed”, and that’s exactly what they delivered. They didn’t “fail” at coming up with a good back-story for their killer, they just didn’t find it necessary (and if it wasn’t obvious enough in the film, they clarify it in the commentary, pointing out that it wasn’t until the sequels that we knew the backstory of Leatherface, who was an obvious influence).

It’s also in the commentary that they actually make a really great point about the likeability of their characters, using something I believe Carpenter said about “the final girl”. Carpenter (or whoever it was, but I can almost HEAR him saying it) believed that the final girl was the one who does exactly what a person should do to remain alive, i.e. be smart and aware of their surroundings. Thus, in this particular scenario, where you’re up against a giant killer wielding a four foot hammer, being smart won’t really help you much, and your best bet of survival is to kind of be an asshole. And for that I hope this commentary (and this review) never gets listened/read much, because then we’ll get a bunch of less intelligent filmmakers claiming “Yeah that’s what I wanted to do too!” (but just forgot to mention it on their own commentaries, I guess).

I should also admit that after the asinine Creature, seeing on-screen and creative kills was a relief. Even though the hammer is used for pretty much every kill, there’s a lot of variety here, with people being smashed to a pulp, getting their heads knocked clean off, or (in the movie’s best kill) battered through a mesh fence. And there are refreshingly few off-screen kills, so that’s another plus. Look, when it comes to slashers, creative kills may actually be low on my list of priorities (story/technical prowess is first), but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them when done right, and again, they weren’t really concerned with doing those other things. Something like Creature, they didn’t do ANYTHING right, let alone whatever it was they were supposedly trying to achieve (unless they wanted to make the best PG-13 rated incest moment in recent movie history, then they pretty much pulled it off).

Ultimately, the only thing that really drove me nuts was the constant cutting and zooming, particularly during the kill scenes. It’s the sort of style that can be used to great effect in certain scenes, but its overkill here, and not always well done either. Imagine they style of the “Ash gets prepared” sequence from Army of Darkness applied to roughly half the movie, and not as well done (it looks all hand-held, for starters), and you can probably get a good idea of how it looks. At one point there’s something like 40 cuts in 10 seconds, which would give Michael Bay a headache. It also runs a bit long, a full 90 minutes for a plotless movie is a bit odd, and they definitely could have sped up the opening some (or just cut the prologue with the cop – it’s a lame kill and has no bearing on anything).

Oh, and while I love that they are influenced by Carpenter scores, I wish they had just stolen some cues outright instead of playing the same tiny bit of (very late 80s Carpenter sounding) music over and over. They also use very Halloween-esque stings way too much; even Carpenter is embarrassed by those nowadays! May sound silly for this particular movie, but less is more, folks.

In a way I was kind of disappointed that the extras were so slim; no behind the scenes material of any sort save for a few random set photos. Even a look at the creation of the hammer would have been cool. Instead we just get the photos, a motion comic that plays too fast to read in spots (it’s not a true motion comic, it’s just a filmed actual comic book layout set to music – best to pause/fast forward at your own pace since the song is just some techno nonsense), and the commentary, which is definitely worth a listen. Director/editor/ton of other stuff Stacy Davidson, co-writer Ted Geoghegan, and associate producer John Torrani never stop talking throughout the runtime, and appreciably divide their time between discussing their influences and relating production information. It’s clear that they’re happy with their film and know what they’re doing, which as of late is more than enough to earn my approval (have you read my Badass Digest article about folks who DON’T?), and again, they actually mount good defenses for things that I might otherwise look down at. They also briefly discuss 100 Tears (Geoghegan worked on that film, and Tears director Marcus Koch worked a bit on this one) and give props to bit actor Fernando Phagabeefy, a terrific performer that also appears in Chillerama – I think that dude’s going places.

So it won’t be for everyone, and even I can’t defend much about the first half hour or so, but if you can stomach the behavior of these (intentionally obnoxious) dolts and don’t get motion sickness from all the zooms, you will be rewarded with one of the most satisfying climaxes in recent slasher memory, plus the debut of what I hope will be a returning killer.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

From The Dead Of Night (1989)

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

Question – did any of you watch From The Dead Of Night when it originally aired as a two-parter in 1989? And if so, what in the name of Christ compelled you to come back for the second half? I have to assume audiences just simply weren’t too discerning back then, because it’s not that the movie is bad, but there’s just no hook whatsoever, and everything plays out as blandly and uninvolving as cinematically possible, with only two decent chase scenes (in the 2nd half) saving the movie from total failure.

Also, it would have been even longer than this version. A four hour miniseries would have been close to three hours without commercials, but this version runs a little under 2.5 hrs, which means that as dull as it is, it could have been worse. The “rules” of the horror plot are very specific – there are only six spirits trying to get our heroine (TV movie staple Lindsay Wagner), and we see each of them try to kill her in fairly un-rushed fashion, so I have to assume that the excised material was just even MORE scenes of our protagonists milling about doing nothing of note.

I’m also curious, if they were OK with editing the thing down (apparently it was released as a feature in other countries), why didn’t they really go for broke and pare the thing down to 90 minutes or so? For example, at one point Wagner goes to a fashion show that she’s been planning, despite all of the problems in her life. She goes, and... nothing happens. We watch some models show off the clothes, then they bring Wagner up on stage and folks give her applause, including her boyfriend, and then the scene ends. Five minutes for nothing. Worse, it cuts to her walking up to a fortune teller’s house along with her ex, so it doesn’t even match up. Where did the boyfriend go? I can assume that there was material in between these two scenes that was lost, but again, why not just cut out the fashion show entirely? It doesn’t serve the story at all, and introduces clunky editing to boot.

Another thing that seems to have been altered is the relationship between the ex (Bruce Boxleitner) and the new boyfriend, played by Robin Thomas, the dude who was the dad in Amityville Dollhouse (stop boring me, Thomas!). They’re sort of cordial to each other at first, with Boxleitner seemingly understanding that its his own fault he’s no longer with Wagner, and Thomas trying to keep it from being too awkward. At one point they even sit outside and chat while Wagner talks to the fortune teller, but after that they share no scenes until the final reel, where they pretty much just hate each other. I would have liked if they were forced to cooperate to help her out, not unlike Witchboard, but they skip over this potentially interesting dynamic in favor of Lifetime esque dullness in which (spoiler!) Wagner gradually falls in love with him again. It’s funny, it's similar to the setup in Tron, except Boxleitner is in the Bridges role this time around, but then it switches somewhere so that the girl still ends up with Boxleitner. Sly devil.

And it’s a shame, because the horror plot is actually kind of cool. Basically, Wagner died for a few minutes, and when she was revived she brought a few (well, six) spirits back with her, and they want to bring her back to the land of the dead. But they’re not ghosts or whatever; instead they infect the bodies of recently deceased folks and become “Walkers” (which is the name of the novel it was based on, by “Howling” author Gary Brandner). So basically, every 25 minutes or so a peripheral character is killed and then tries to kill Wagner. However it gets overly rule-heavy, with nonsense about how they only have until the full moon to get her, and then also they try to pull a little twist where one of the assumed walkers was actually just some pissed off dude and thus there’s still one to go... it’s the sort of shit that could/should have been excised when they pared the novel down to a more suitable running time.

Unsurprisingly, the Walker scenes are the only ones in the entire movie that are entertaining, particularly the skateboarding flower delivery kid who chases her around a parking garage, as well as the one who drives a semi truck and chases her and Boxleitner down a dark road. Being a TV movie, these scenes are hardly classics of the genre, and the movie obnoxiously keeps everything off-screen (I know they’ve gotten lax over the years, but wasn’t network TV allowed to show SOMETHING back then?), but compared to the excess of soap opera scenes around them, they feel like Hitchcockian masterpieces of suspense cinema.

It also boasts, for lack of a better word, a brief turn by Carpenter regular Peter Jason as a loudmouth tourist who bothers Wagner and Thomas on their romantic getaway, and then becomes one of the walkers after choking on some food, forcing him to play his final scenes without a voice and with his face covered in a Day of the Dead mask, lest Wagner catch on to the plot too early. And Robert Prosky also pops up as a doctor with a silly accent, a character who unfortunately spends the bulk of his scenes talking to another doctor about discrepancies in autopsy reports, which is about as riveting as it sounds. It’s a shame to see good actors wasted in roles like this, but at least they momentarily allowed me to think fondly about their better films, distracting me away from the soul crushing tedium of this one.

In short, this is why the horror-based miniseries is pretty much dead.

What say you?

P.S. I wasn't expecting to find the trailer, but why the hell did this come up as the like 6th match for "From The Dead Of Night"? It doesn't share a single word! Was this the actual horror film he was watching?

PLEASE, GO ON...