There are only two options: by 6am only one remains alive or all will die.
Standing the classic "The Most Dangerous Game" on its ear, ten recent college grads find themselves at the mercy of one of those now ubiquitous pre-recorded-distorted-voice interlopers who forces them into playing kill-or-be-killed with each other. Unfortunately none of the characters develops beyond the first dimension and the cast of bargain basement actors is unable to elicit much in the way of sympathy. When one 20-something runs around the house yelling "This is bad! This is really, really bad!" it's hard not to agree--on so many levels.
On the plus side, the story is allowed to follow through to a satisfactory and perhaps even logical conclusion. If there's a sequel in KT's future the writer might want to substitute carbon copy college kids with Bill Maher, Rush Limbaugh, Taylor Swift, Sarah Palin, the Dalai Lama, Jack White, Glenn Beck and the current cast of SNL. Now THAT would be worth watching.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
The Fourth Kind
Not too bad if not taken seriously. The pretense that it's based on real events with actual archival footage is suffocating by the end, however. The acting in the "real" footage is obvious and, well, not very good. Good chance the director made an initial attempt at filming the movie with unknown actors. At some point a producer said "Whoa! This is good stuff but let's get some actors who can act!" Then he wound up with two films with two sets of actors. Later that night he was visited by an owl that told him "Splice the two together! Splice the two together!" Like the X-Files always claimed: The Truth Is Out There. Just not in this movie.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
In a dark theater...GLEN & RANDA, FLESH GORDON & MARK OF THE DEVIL
And then there were the films I actually went to the theater to see in the 1970’s. Some I went to out of curiosity, some because I was tagging along and it happened to be the film being shown. Some are well known and a few are known only to fans of 70s exploitation. For instance, everyone has seen Jaws (dir: Steven Spielberg, 1975) and I’ll bet you--just like most of us (of a certain age) can remember when and where we were the first time we heard Sgt. Pepper’s--the time and place we sat in the darkened theater and first heard the famous notes that usher in the movie are etched forever in our memory. Oswego, end of summer of ’75: I was about the last 17-year-old on the planet to see it. I finally went with Colette Simonetti, the most beautiful foreign exchange student I’d met and very quickly fell in love with. But I digress. My point is, the summer of ’75 was Jaws.
Few however probably have any memory of Glen & Randa (1971), a post-apocalyptic vision from Jim McBride (Big Easy 1983, Great Balls of Fire 1985). It was 1974 and I was staying with my brother Edward in Buffalo for a week. I ended up going with him and his housemates to the on-campus viewing of this X-rated non-classic. What do I remember? Lots of nudity for one. Not much sex but almost everyone was nude. Basically Glen & Randa were young beautiful naïfs growing up in the shards of civilization in the aftermath of a global catastrophe. Glen learns to read from looking at old Shazam comic books that for some reason or other didn’t disintegrate.
The most memorable scene involved an old salesman who peddled wares he had collected and rescued along his way. An old phonograph record played a 45 of the Rolling Stones’ Time Is On My Side. The record sits un-centered on the turntable hence the song is heard slow-fast-slow-fast. Later on, Glen is seen walking along, singing the chorus in the same lopsided way he had heard it. Hilarious...
I believe that same vacation, we trooped off to see Flesh Gordon (dir: Michael Benveniste, 1974). For all the frontal nudity and implied sex (my 2nd X-rated feature), I remember this as being really witty with Flesh & Dr. Jerkoff flying off to the planet Porno to stop the evil Wang from shooting his evil sex ray at the innocents of earth. Along the way, they confront penisauruses, raping robots with rotating drill-like members, and a foul-mouthed bird-flipping giant that would make any Ray Harryhausen/stop animation fan happy. Oh, and Flesh’s rocketship is shaped like a huge erection. Great stuff.
And then there was the great exodus of 1971 when the entire 8th grade class marched off to witness the depravity of Mark Of The Devil. A movie touted to be so violent it was given it’s own rating of V for…well, violence. We were each given a barf bag upon entering the theater too…just in case. Mark Of The Devil (dir: Michael Armstrong, 1970) was the Saw or Hostel of our day. It was a movie we were each dared to see. And how much we were able to stand marked where each of us stood on the evolutionary path from childhood to adulthood. I watched most of it through my fingers: the famous tongue-ripping scene; the eyeball being gouged; someone’s ass punctured on a seat of nails; all great stuff indeed. The most confusing thing for me however was the ending that didn’t seem to happen. Moments after the handsome blond hero got strung up and killed, the theater curtains shut (theater curtains? This was a long time ago!), lights came on and we were ushered out. Mostly to the sound of inflated barf bags being popped.
Next up…The Incredible Melting Man vs. It’s Alive vs. Phantasm
Few however probably have any memory of Glen & Randa (1971), a post-apocalyptic vision from Jim McBride (Big Easy 1983, Great Balls of Fire 1985). It was 1974 and I was staying with my brother Edward in Buffalo for a week. I ended up going with him and his housemates to the on-campus viewing of this X-rated non-classic. What do I remember? Lots of nudity for one. Not much sex but almost everyone was nude. Basically Glen & Randa were young beautiful naïfs growing up in the shards of civilization in the aftermath of a global catastrophe. Glen learns to read from looking at old Shazam comic books that for some reason or other didn’t disintegrate.
The most memorable scene involved an old salesman who peddled wares he had collected and rescued along his way. An old phonograph record played a 45 of the Rolling Stones’ Time Is On My Side. The record sits un-centered on the turntable hence the song is heard slow-fast-slow-fast. Later on, Glen is seen walking along, singing the chorus in the same lopsided way he had heard it. Hilarious...
I believe that same vacation, we trooped off to see Flesh Gordon (dir: Michael Benveniste, 1974). For all the frontal nudity and implied sex (my 2nd X-rated feature), I remember this as being really witty with Flesh & Dr. Jerkoff flying off to the planet Porno to stop the evil Wang from shooting his evil sex ray at the innocents of earth. Along the way, they confront penisauruses, raping robots with rotating drill-like members, and a foul-mouthed bird-flipping giant that would make any Ray Harryhausen/stop animation fan happy. Oh, and Flesh’s rocketship is shaped like a huge erection. Great stuff.
And then there was the great exodus of 1971 when the entire 8th grade class marched off to witness the depravity of Mark Of The Devil. A movie touted to be so violent it was given it’s own rating of V for…well, violence. We were each given a barf bag upon entering the theater too…just in case. Mark Of The Devil (dir: Michael Armstrong, 1970) was the Saw or Hostel of our day. It was a movie we were each dared to see. And how much we were able to stand marked where each of us stood on the evolutionary path from childhood to adulthood. I watched most of it through my fingers: the famous tongue-ripping scene; the eyeball being gouged; someone’s ass punctured on a seat of nails; all great stuff indeed. The most confusing thing for me however was the ending that didn’t seem to happen. Moments after the handsome blond hero got strung up and killed, the theater curtains shut (theater curtains? This was a long time ago!), lights came on and we were ushered out. Mostly to the sound of inflated barf bags being popped.
Next up…The Incredible Melting Man vs. It’s Alive vs. Phantasm
Monday, January 28, 2008
HOSTEL 2 and HALLOWEEN
Maybe this is too much of a cop out. Too facile a thought. But I’m thinking if a visitor from another planet wanted to see where we as humans are at this point in time, he should sit down and watch the following movies: Saw, Saw 2, Saw 3, Saw 4, Hostel, Hostel 2, House of 1000 Corpses, Devil’s Rejects and the remakes of Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. Good or bad, they are an excellent means to measure a world dissolving from the inside out.
Our country is sick and the prospects are not good. The United States of America is terminally ill. Maybe it has more than six months to live, but whatever time is left it must be medicated, palliated, provided comfort care as it moans, wheezes and rattles its way to its inevitable end.
Hostel 2 (dir: Eli Roth, 2007) is bleak, wretched and avoids anything I use to associate with the term ‘entertainment’. It’s two hours of people being cruel to other people; people in control being sadistic to powerless people. If one were so inclined, one could interpret it as an allegory for the disappearance of the middle class and the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy. The twist comes when a would-be victim buys her freedom and pays for the privilege of castrating her would-be killer. Those with power can and will be cruel to those who don’t. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or something like that.
Halloween (dir: Rob Zombie, 2007) is bleak, wretched and avoids anything I use to associate with the term ‘entertainment’. If nothing else, though, it stands as a reminder of just how brilliant, lean, economical and satisfying the original John Carpenter shocker was and still is. We are now supposed to swallow the idea that an ‘auteur’ like Mr. Zombie does not ‘remake’ movies, he ‘re-imagines’ them. What horseshit. While the original depicts the psycho killer Michael Meyers as an unstoppable force of evil, Mr. Zombie attempts to fill in the blanks of Meyers’ youth so that we can ‘understand’ how he came to be an unstoppable force of evil. And in understanding him, perhaps we can be more forgiving of him when he impales his victims or perhaps crushes their heads. “I know it’s awful, but he was abused as a child!” In re-imagining Michael Meyers as a victim of society, the movie actually undermines his mystique leaving the filmmaker nowhere to go but to up the carnage and slop more red colored Karo Syrup around.
I watch these movies because I’m curious about them. The original Halloween frightened me in the way I like to be frightened. Movies like the Hostel series, the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre series and the newly re-imagined Halloween are presented as dares. Sitting through them without becoming physically ill buys you some macho cred on the street, or something like that. Better yet, arm chair quarterbacking, slamming the releases of wimpy PG-13 movies and hailing filmmakers who hold on to their R ratings like badges of courage has become a fanboy pastime.
But I guess I would have to counter with an offer: since ratcheting up the gore seems to be of the order, I maintain these movies don’t go far enough to that end. I think in Hostel 2, when a victim is suspended upside down and carved up with a scythe, the viewer doesn’t get to see enough. Sure we see blood spray across the face of the killer--who seems to be in a state of erotic euphoria--but we don’t actually see blade enter skin. Hence, I believe the gorehounds of the world have fallen to the old bait and switch. Who cares about the story, just pile on the gore. Don’t cutaway before a toe is snapped off, dammit, show everything!
These movies are not horrifying so much as they are horrid. They are only tests for how much the viewer can stand to watch. Like going on the tilt-a-whirl without blowing lunch.
I give Hostel 2 and Zombie’s Halloween 1 severed toe each. Use the other nine to limp your sorry ass out o’ here.
Our country is sick and the prospects are not good. The United States of America is terminally ill. Maybe it has more than six months to live, but whatever time is left it must be medicated, palliated, provided comfort care as it moans, wheezes and rattles its way to its inevitable end.
Hostel 2 (dir: Eli Roth, 2007) is bleak, wretched and avoids anything I use to associate with the term ‘entertainment’. It’s two hours of people being cruel to other people; people in control being sadistic to powerless people. If one were so inclined, one could interpret it as an allegory for the disappearance of the middle class and the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy. The twist comes when a would-be victim buys her freedom and pays for the privilege of castrating her would-be killer. Those with power can and will be cruel to those who don’t. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or something like that.
Halloween (dir: Rob Zombie, 2007) is bleak, wretched and avoids anything I use to associate with the term ‘entertainment’. If nothing else, though, it stands as a reminder of just how brilliant, lean, economical and satisfying the original John Carpenter shocker was and still is. We are now supposed to swallow the idea that an ‘auteur’ like Mr. Zombie does not ‘remake’ movies, he ‘re-imagines’ them. What horseshit. While the original depicts the psycho killer Michael Meyers as an unstoppable force of evil, Mr. Zombie attempts to fill in the blanks of Meyers’ youth so that we can ‘understand’ how he came to be an unstoppable force of evil. And in understanding him, perhaps we can be more forgiving of him when he impales his victims or perhaps crushes their heads. “I know it’s awful, but he was abused as a child!” In re-imagining Michael Meyers as a victim of society, the movie actually undermines his mystique leaving the filmmaker nowhere to go but to up the carnage and slop more red colored Karo Syrup around.
I watch these movies because I’m curious about them. The original Halloween frightened me in the way I like to be frightened. Movies like the Hostel series, the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre series and the newly re-imagined Halloween are presented as dares. Sitting through them without becoming physically ill buys you some macho cred on the street, or something like that. Better yet, arm chair quarterbacking, slamming the releases of wimpy PG-13 movies and hailing filmmakers who hold on to their R ratings like badges of courage has become a fanboy pastime.
But I guess I would have to counter with an offer: since ratcheting up the gore seems to be of the order, I maintain these movies don’t go far enough to that end. I think in Hostel 2, when a victim is suspended upside down and carved up with a scythe, the viewer doesn’t get to see enough. Sure we see blood spray across the face of the killer--who seems to be in a state of erotic euphoria--but we don’t actually see blade enter skin. Hence, I believe the gorehounds of the world have fallen to the old bait and switch. Who cares about the story, just pile on the gore. Don’t cutaway before a toe is snapped off, dammit, show everything!
These movies are not horrifying so much as they are horrid. They are only tests for how much the viewer can stand to watch. Like going on the tilt-a-whirl without blowing lunch.
I give Hostel 2 and Zombie’s Halloween 1 severed toe each. Use the other nine to limp your sorry ass out o’ here.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
HORROR...70s STYLE
Growing up in the 70s and left alone late at night with the family TV set, I discovered a world of horror and fright that to this day remains unequalled on Sci-Fi or any other channel. Cheap horror, exploitation and Vincent Price were always available in the wee hours of Friday and Saturday night when I’d find myself flipping between Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, The Midnight Special and any fright fest I could lay my eyes on. The following is a short list of movies I’ve, well, never quite forgotten regardless of whether I saw them in their entirety or only partially. Rock n roll and horror films, I have to agree, were two great taste treats that tasted great together. Read on, if you dare…
Abominable Dr. Phibes (dir: Robert Fuest, 1971)
One of the all time great Vincent Price movies features diabolical death scenes, post-Avengers wit and humor, sexy assistant named…Mulvania (?), a home filled with a life sized mechanical band and a most-excellent theater organ that rises from the floorboards. Most memorable death: what patience it takes to drill a large hole directly above the head of a sleeping soon-to-be victim, slip a plastic tube through the hole, pour honey through the tube covering the face of the soon-to-be victim and then finally, through another tube, releasing hundreds of locusts who feed on the honey and flesh of the…well she’s a victim now! And to think she never stirs during any of this. Priceless!!
Blue Sunshine (dir: Jeff Lieberman, 1976)
Memorable for the plot that had people who had all dropped some bad acid, man, back in the 60s experiencing horrifying side-effects ten years later like losing their hair and becoming homicidal zombies. It was the 2nd movie I’d seen starring Zalman King, this time taking the role of dashing hero shooting the bad baldies and getting to the bottom of things. Best scene: guy loses hair and turns zombie at a party and holds another partygoer’s head in the fireplace fire.
Ouch, dude!
Deathdream aka Dead of Night (dir: Bob Clark, 1974)
Caught the last third of this late one night and found myself simultaneously baffled and intrigued. I wasn’t privy to the fact that this was based on Monkey’s Paw with a distraught mother bringing back her deceased Vietnam veteran son with a wish. He’s back but guess what: he craves blood! Best scene and BIG TIME SPOILER: the end where the boy returns to his gravesite, lays down in it and reburies himself. Absolutely freaky and chilling. Director Bob Clark went on to direct the Porky movies as well as one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, A Christmas Story (1983)
Dr. Phibes Rises Again (dir: Robert Fuest, 1972)
The follow-up is more of the same and features one of the strangest endings I’d seen in my young life involving an underground stream to…ever after? Eternity? More laughs, more gruesome dispatching, more British wit. Most disturbing death: guy is…folded up? Crushed? Squished...inside a cube that comes at him in two halves and is slowly brought together and fastened. Only his sad head is visible peering out of a hole in the top. Very odd and quite unsettling.
Homebodies (dir: Larry Yust, 1974)
Old folks are being kicked out of their long-time domicile by greedy real estate moguls and they take matters in their own hands…by ruthlessly dispatching each in wonderfully gruesome ways. Can’t remember the ending except that it seemed to get trippier and trippier as it progressed. Imprinted in my memory: the old timers wheel a bound and gagged victim over to the construction site where they cover him in cement. Better hold yer breath!
SSSSSSS aka SSSSnake (dir: Bernard L Kowalski, 1973)
Strother Martin is a mad scientist who wants to turn people into cobra snakes. I have no idea why although I’m sure he feels it will be for the benefit of mankind. Poor boob who begins working for him as an assistant winds up a guinea pig. Movie ends with a climactic fight between cobra and mongoose. Guess who the cobra is. Creepiest scene: guinea pig-guy wanders into a carnival side show and witnesses one of the doctor's…failures: a moaning humanoid with no arms, no legs, scales and reptilian face. Very disturbing.
Tender Flesh aka Welcome to Arrow Beach (dir: Laurence Harvey, 1974)
Director Laurence Harvey, nowhere in the vicinity of his Manchurian Candidate days, stars as a Vietnam veteran who has learned to love the taste of…tender flesh. What’s that in the fridge in the basement? Is the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster going to be his next victim? Stand out scene: nothing aside from the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster who is indeed lovely...and green-eyed.
Theater Of Blood (dir: Douglas Hickox, 1973)
Another brilliant entry from Vincent Prices wonderful early-70s period. He plays, of all things, a ham Shakespearean actor who commits suicide after getting skewered by the critics for his latest performance. He doesn’t die and in fact is able, with the help of the sewer dwellers who rescue him, to off each critic in a manner described by the Bard himself. This features very British wit and the fetching Emma Peel, I mean Diana Rigg, as his foxy assistant. Best scene: hell, all of it. Then again I’d have to say Mr. Price throwing lit torches from the stage into the box seats still has kind of an apocalyptic feel to this day for me. Burn, baby, burn...
Trip With The Teacher (dir: Earl Barton, 1975)
Gruesome exploitation features the crazed Zalman King as, get this, a psychopath who abducts a mini-school bus of three students and their hot teacher. They're subjected to rape, torture and murder before the big Z winds up impaled on a big metal rod. In movies, it’s always possible to shove a big metal rod completely through someone with one’s bare hands with equal parts sticking out the front and back. Scenes I regrettably remember: dude gets run over by a biker and girl is smothered having her face forced into the sand. Yuck.
Twisted Brain aka Horror High (dir: Larry N. Stouffer, 1974)
I remember almost nothing of this except for the twisted brain boy running down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. I think it was filmed with a fish-eye lens too. How cool is that? Best scene: boy runs down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. Gabba Gabba Hey!
Well, that's it for now! Up next: movies I actually saw in the theater way back in the fabulous day-glo seventies! Stay tuned and...make sure your night light works.
Abominable Dr. Phibes (dir: Robert Fuest, 1971)
One of the all time great Vincent Price movies features diabolical death scenes, post-Avengers wit and humor, sexy assistant named…Mulvania (?), a home filled with a life sized mechanical band and a most-excellent theater organ that rises from the floorboards. Most memorable death: what patience it takes to drill a large hole directly above the head of a sleeping soon-to-be victim, slip a plastic tube through the hole, pour honey through the tube covering the face of the soon-to-be victim and then finally, through another tube, releasing hundreds of locusts who feed on the honey and flesh of the…well she’s a victim now! And to think she never stirs during any of this. Priceless!!
Blue Sunshine (dir: Jeff Lieberman, 1976)
Memorable for the plot that had people who had all dropped some bad acid, man, back in the 60s experiencing horrifying side-effects ten years later like losing their hair and becoming homicidal zombies. It was the 2nd movie I’d seen starring Zalman King, this time taking the role of dashing hero shooting the bad baldies and getting to the bottom of things. Best scene: guy loses hair and turns zombie at a party and holds another partygoer’s head in the fireplace fire.
Ouch, dude!
Deathdream aka Dead of Night (dir: Bob Clark, 1974)
Caught the last third of this late one night and found myself simultaneously baffled and intrigued. I wasn’t privy to the fact that this was based on Monkey’s Paw with a distraught mother bringing back her deceased Vietnam veteran son with a wish. He’s back but guess what: he craves blood! Best scene and BIG TIME SPOILER: the end where the boy returns to his gravesite, lays down in it and reburies himself. Absolutely freaky and chilling. Director Bob Clark went on to direct the Porky movies as well as one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, A Christmas Story (1983)
Dr. Phibes Rises Again (dir: Robert Fuest, 1972)
The follow-up is more of the same and features one of the strangest endings I’d seen in my young life involving an underground stream to…ever after? Eternity? More laughs, more gruesome dispatching, more British wit. Most disturbing death: guy is…folded up? Crushed? Squished...inside a cube that comes at him in two halves and is slowly brought together and fastened. Only his sad head is visible peering out of a hole in the top. Very odd and quite unsettling.
Homebodies (dir: Larry Yust, 1974)
Old folks are being kicked out of their long-time domicile by greedy real estate moguls and they take matters in their own hands…by ruthlessly dispatching each in wonderfully gruesome ways. Can’t remember the ending except that it seemed to get trippier and trippier as it progressed. Imprinted in my memory: the old timers wheel a bound and gagged victim over to the construction site where they cover him in cement. Better hold yer breath!
SSSSSSS aka SSSSnake (dir: Bernard L Kowalski, 1973)
Strother Martin is a mad scientist who wants to turn people into cobra snakes. I have no idea why although I’m sure he feels it will be for the benefit of mankind. Poor boob who begins working for him as an assistant winds up a guinea pig. Movie ends with a climactic fight between cobra and mongoose. Guess who the cobra is. Creepiest scene: guinea pig-guy wanders into a carnival side show and witnesses one of the doctor's…failures: a moaning humanoid with no arms, no legs, scales and reptilian face. Very disturbing.
Tender Flesh aka Welcome to Arrow Beach (dir: Laurence Harvey, 1974)
Director Laurence Harvey, nowhere in the vicinity of his Manchurian Candidate days, stars as a Vietnam veteran who has learned to love the taste of…tender flesh. What’s that in the fridge in the basement? Is the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster going to be his next victim? Stand out scene: nothing aside from the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster who is indeed lovely...and green-eyed.
Theater Of Blood (dir: Douglas Hickox, 1973)
Another brilliant entry from Vincent Prices wonderful early-70s period. He plays, of all things, a ham Shakespearean actor who commits suicide after getting skewered by the critics for his latest performance. He doesn’t die and in fact is able, with the help of the sewer dwellers who rescue him, to off each critic in a manner described by the Bard himself. This features very British wit and the fetching Emma Peel, I mean Diana Rigg, as his foxy assistant. Best scene: hell, all of it. Then again I’d have to say Mr. Price throwing lit torches from the stage into the box seats still has kind of an apocalyptic feel to this day for me. Burn, baby, burn...
Trip With The Teacher (dir: Earl Barton, 1975)
Gruesome exploitation features the crazed Zalman King as, get this, a psychopath who abducts a mini-school bus of three students and their hot teacher. They're subjected to rape, torture and murder before the big Z winds up impaled on a big metal rod. In movies, it’s always possible to shove a big metal rod completely through someone with one’s bare hands with equal parts sticking out the front and back. Scenes I regrettably remember: dude gets run over by a biker and girl is smothered having her face forced into the sand. Yuck.
Twisted Brain aka Horror High (dir: Larry N. Stouffer, 1974)
I remember almost nothing of this except for the twisted brain boy running down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. I think it was filmed with a fish-eye lens too. How cool is that? Best scene: boy runs down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. Gabba Gabba Hey!
Well, that's it for now! Up next: movies I actually saw in the theater way back in the fabulous day-glo seventies! Stay tuned and...make sure your night light works.
Friday, December 21, 2007
BUG, 28 WEEKS LATER, WRONG TURN 2, PLANET TERROR, DEATH PROOF, ELEPHANT
This is day three of a superb chest cold, very likely bronchitis, which has laid me up good. This has happened before but to be honest, not in quite some time. My curative pattern hasn’t changed though. I stay in bed, drink lots of fluids, take all the drugs my doctor prescribes and then I rent every other splatter film from Movies On Demand. And so, dear reader, as it’s been awhile since I’ve bothered reviewing anything, I will review the following all at once: Bug, Death Proof, Planet Terror, 28 Weeks Later, Wrong Turn 2 and Elephant.
BUG (2006, dir: William Friedkin) is one of the best small scale character driven horror films I’ve seen in sometime. Ashley Judd proves to be one of the strongest female actors on the scene and delivers a harrowing and skillfully paced transformation from lonely and grieving bartender to full-blown delusional schizophrenic. By the end of the movie I couldn’t believe the difference between where the characters began and where they ended. And so as not to be purely a study of psychosis, it cleverly leaves all explanations to the apparently demented characters themselves. Which begs the obvious question, Are they delusional or simply the very few who know the truth?
I followed BUG with 28 WEEKS LATER (2007, dir: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo), the ingeniously titled sequel to the surprise zombie-style British hit 28 Days Later. I was happy to see one of my favorite UK actors Robert Carlyle starring as a husband and father with a very troubling secret about the circumstances surrounding the death of his wife. The premise of the film is skillfully set up and the characters are well developed before any of the grisly and nasty stuff begins. The only purely forced moment comes toward the end with the final meeting between father and children. With all the incredible action preceding including the firebombing of London, that they would ever meet again, let alone be alive, seems quite unlikely.
In a real effort to not stray too far from the game plan into the purely dreadful, I actually Googled the question: Wrong Turn 2 or Hills Have Eyes 2? Sadly, it did not give me an answer but a quick scan of the pubescent punters on IMDB led me to believe that of the two, Wrong Turn 2 was the right way to go. I’ll make this both short and brief. WRONG TURN 2 (2007, dir: Joe Lynch) is a fine comic-splatter film filled with bad actors, great blood-letting, thick-lipped hillbilly mutants (for some reason mutants, while hunched over and eyes pointing in all directions, are very strong and agile in these films). It borrows scenes freely from all the inbred hillbilly slaughterhouse atomic testing films of yore. Movies like this typically set up one character to be the last person standing by the end of the film. They stand apart from the others, show more compassion, humility, and have a stronger sense of the ironic. Wrong Turn 2 bravely sets up this character only to bury a hatchet in her head. Now that's class!
The best thing is Henry Rollins doing his best to out-Rambo Rambo. He’s not very good, but I kept thinking, Wasn’t he in Black Flag? Wasn’t he a California punk once? Anyway, it’s not nearly as nail-biting as the first Wrong Turn which I frankly admit to liking much more than Michael Bay’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise or anything Eli Roth sinks his depraved teeth into. Besides that, I’m a fan of special effects artist Stan Winston who directed the underrated 1989 non-hit Pumpkinhead as well as producing the first Wrong Turn movie. With credentials like that, no wonder I’m a fan.
Today began with renting PLANET TERROR (2007, dir: Robert Rodriguez), another zombie gusher, followed by DEATH PROOF (2007, dir: Quentin Tarantino). Originally packaged as GRINDHOUSE, the two films were cleverly separated pre-MOD so that suckers like me would pay the full 3.99 per flick. The best thing about PT was the preview at the beginning for MACHETE, a fictitious film that actually looks like a 1970s grindhouse hit. Every detail, down to the title font, brought me back to my preteens when all I would have to fire my imagination, being too young and too scared to actually see anything like that, was the trailers, most often aired on Saturdays in between Creature Features and Monster Movie Matinee.
PLANET TERROR is a loopy, mostly comical, take on zombie films with the now-cliched subplot of government hi-jinx and biological weaponry. The whole movie seems to exist only to have Rose Mcgowan waste zombies and the infected military with an assault rifle-as-prosthetic limb. The only thing that really makes this film feel like a 1970s grindhouse flick is that its treated, digitally I assume, to look like very grainy scratched film stock. It even has the prerequisite “missing reel” cleverly appearing half way through the obligatory sex scene.
DEATH PROOF (caution: may contain spoilers, for those who care) is closer in feel and pace to '70s exploitation films and even pays lip service to films such as Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry and White Line Fever, the muscle car driven action films of the early to mid ‘70s. Problem 1 is director Quentin Tarantino’s at-this-point way overused technique of non-stop banter-while-the-camera-tracks-around-the-table. Effective and original in the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs, it now feels like it's all of DEATHPROOF. Girls talk in the car, girls talk in the taquería, girls talk in the bar, girls talk in the car, girls stop talking when psycho stuntman killer Kurt Russell smashes into them at 200 miles per hour. And all the talk in the world doesn't add up to character development. And when all four characters are dispatched at once, development of any kind is moot.
Second half starts with a new group of girls. Then: girls talk in the car, girls talk in the 7-11, girls talk in the luncheonette, girls talk outside as they try to finagle Jason the Hick into letting them test drive his cherry 1970s muscle car. Finally, the film gets interesting. The girls are all Hollywood players to one degree or another and one of them, Kiwi-native Zoe Bell, a stunt person herself, is played by non-other than Kiwi-native Zoe Bell, a stunt person herself. The point being when Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike begins to rear-end the girls after they have embarked on their test-drive, Zoe is on the hood of the car playing something called “ship’s mast”. It’s all very white knuckle as you realize the cars are driving very fast and she is literally hanging on for dear life. And while in the past, scene's like will tend to make the more jaded movie goer think "Oh, that's just a stunt person", the stunt person here IS the character. You see her, you see her face, it's all her on the hood of a car moving very quickly. Mind you, this is a good 10.5 hours into this film. But now the film is delivering. The film ends with Stuntman Mike getting his comeuppance at the hands of the girls and even freeze frames and flashes THE END in very wonderful crappy ‘70s movie fashion.
Finally, having put an end to my viewing madness to begin writing, my wife casually turned the channel over to IFC where ELEPHANT was playing. I’d seen parts of it before and dutifully began watching it again, putting my laptop aside. ELEPHANT (2003, dir: Gus Van Zant) is without a doubt one of the most horrifying pictures I’ve seen to date. It calmly goes about it’s business introducing its characters, mostly kids at a high school, and slowly reveals a Columbine-like scenario where two psychotic teens bring down students and teachers with a frightening calm and an impressive arsenal of Internet-purchased weaponry. The horror and sadness come from the matter-of-factness in it’s portrayal of normal kids living their day with their not fully developed sensibilities. In fact, most, if not all, the characters are played by non-actors using their real first names.
It’s a troubling, harrowing and painful indictment of a country that believes its troubles are somehow fixable. That no matter what goes on here, we don’t live with suicide bombings on our soil. Never mind that we could just as easily call the perpetrators of Columbine and Virginia Tech suicide shooters, every bit as delusional as the bombers in the middle east. Every bit convinced of their own heroism and rightness as the martyrs in Iraq.
ELEPHANT was a reminder after a good 10 hours of “horror” films what true horror is. With ELEPHANT comes the painfully sad truth that this is the horror we live with here and now.
BUG (2006, dir: William Friedkin) is one of the best small scale character driven horror films I’ve seen in sometime. Ashley Judd proves to be one of the strongest female actors on the scene and delivers a harrowing and skillfully paced transformation from lonely and grieving bartender to full-blown delusional schizophrenic. By the end of the movie I couldn’t believe the difference between where the characters began and where they ended. And so as not to be purely a study of psychosis, it cleverly leaves all explanations to the apparently demented characters themselves. Which begs the obvious question, Are they delusional or simply the very few who know the truth?
I followed BUG with 28 WEEKS LATER (2007, dir: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo), the ingeniously titled sequel to the surprise zombie-style British hit 28 Days Later. I was happy to see one of my favorite UK actors Robert Carlyle starring as a husband and father with a very troubling secret about the circumstances surrounding the death of his wife. The premise of the film is skillfully set up and the characters are well developed before any of the grisly and nasty stuff begins. The only purely forced moment comes toward the end with the final meeting between father and children. With all the incredible action preceding including the firebombing of London, that they would ever meet again, let alone be alive, seems quite unlikely.
In a real effort to not stray too far from the game plan into the purely dreadful, I actually Googled the question: Wrong Turn 2 or Hills Have Eyes 2? Sadly, it did not give me an answer but a quick scan of the pubescent punters on IMDB led me to believe that of the two, Wrong Turn 2 was the right way to go. I’ll make this both short and brief. WRONG TURN 2 (2007, dir: Joe Lynch) is a fine comic-splatter film filled with bad actors, great blood-letting, thick-lipped hillbilly mutants (for some reason mutants, while hunched over and eyes pointing in all directions, are very strong and agile in these films). It borrows scenes freely from all the inbred hillbilly slaughterhouse atomic testing films of yore. Movies like this typically set up one character to be the last person standing by the end of the film. They stand apart from the others, show more compassion, humility, and have a stronger sense of the ironic. Wrong Turn 2 bravely sets up this character only to bury a hatchet in her head. Now that's class!
The best thing is Henry Rollins doing his best to out-Rambo Rambo. He’s not very good, but I kept thinking, Wasn’t he in Black Flag? Wasn’t he a California punk once? Anyway, it’s not nearly as nail-biting as the first Wrong Turn which I frankly admit to liking much more than Michael Bay’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise or anything Eli Roth sinks his depraved teeth into. Besides that, I’m a fan of special effects artist Stan Winston who directed the underrated 1989 non-hit Pumpkinhead as well as producing the first Wrong Turn movie. With credentials like that, no wonder I’m a fan.
Today began with renting PLANET TERROR (2007, dir: Robert Rodriguez), another zombie gusher, followed by DEATH PROOF (2007, dir: Quentin Tarantino). Originally packaged as GRINDHOUSE, the two films were cleverly separated pre-MOD so that suckers like me would pay the full 3.99 per flick. The best thing about PT was the preview at the beginning for MACHETE, a fictitious film that actually looks like a 1970s grindhouse hit. Every detail, down to the title font, brought me back to my preteens when all I would have to fire my imagination, being too young and too scared to actually see anything like that, was the trailers, most often aired on Saturdays in between Creature Features and Monster Movie Matinee.
PLANET TERROR is a loopy, mostly comical, take on zombie films with the now-cliched subplot of government hi-jinx and biological weaponry. The whole movie seems to exist only to have Rose Mcgowan waste zombies and the infected military with an assault rifle-as-prosthetic limb. The only thing that really makes this film feel like a 1970s grindhouse flick is that its treated, digitally I assume, to look like very grainy scratched film stock. It even has the prerequisite “missing reel” cleverly appearing half way through the obligatory sex scene.
DEATH PROOF (caution: may contain spoilers, for those who care) is closer in feel and pace to '70s exploitation films and even pays lip service to films such as Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry and White Line Fever, the muscle car driven action films of the early to mid ‘70s. Problem 1 is director Quentin Tarantino’s at-this-point way overused technique of non-stop banter-while-the-camera-tracks-around-the-table. Effective and original in the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs, it now feels like it's all of DEATHPROOF. Girls talk in the car, girls talk in the taquería, girls talk in the bar, girls talk in the car, girls stop talking when psycho stuntman killer Kurt Russell smashes into them at 200 miles per hour. And all the talk in the world doesn't add up to character development. And when all four characters are dispatched at once, development of any kind is moot.
Second half starts with a new group of girls. Then: girls talk in the car, girls talk in the 7-11, girls talk in the luncheonette, girls talk outside as they try to finagle Jason the Hick into letting them test drive his cherry 1970s muscle car. Finally, the film gets interesting. The girls are all Hollywood players to one degree or another and one of them, Kiwi-native Zoe Bell, a stunt person herself, is played by non-other than Kiwi-native Zoe Bell, a stunt person herself. The point being when Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike begins to rear-end the girls after they have embarked on their test-drive, Zoe is on the hood of the car playing something called “ship’s mast”. It’s all very white knuckle as you realize the cars are driving very fast and she is literally hanging on for dear life. And while in the past, scene's like will tend to make the more jaded movie goer think "Oh, that's just a stunt person", the stunt person here IS the character. You see her, you see her face, it's all her on the hood of a car moving very quickly. Mind you, this is a good 10.5 hours into this film. But now the film is delivering. The film ends with Stuntman Mike getting his comeuppance at the hands of the girls and even freeze frames and flashes THE END in very wonderful crappy ‘70s movie fashion.
Finally, having put an end to my viewing madness to begin writing, my wife casually turned the channel over to IFC where ELEPHANT was playing. I’d seen parts of it before and dutifully began watching it again, putting my laptop aside. ELEPHANT (2003, dir: Gus Van Zant) is without a doubt one of the most horrifying pictures I’ve seen to date. It calmly goes about it’s business introducing its characters, mostly kids at a high school, and slowly reveals a Columbine-like scenario where two psychotic teens bring down students and teachers with a frightening calm and an impressive arsenal of Internet-purchased weaponry. The horror and sadness come from the matter-of-factness in it’s portrayal of normal kids living their day with their not fully developed sensibilities. In fact, most, if not all, the characters are played by non-actors using their real first names.
It’s a troubling, harrowing and painful indictment of a country that believes its troubles are somehow fixable. That no matter what goes on here, we don’t live with suicide bombings on our soil. Never mind that we could just as easily call the perpetrators of Columbine and Virginia Tech suicide shooters, every bit as delusional as the bombers in the middle east. Every bit convinced of their own heroism and rightness as the martyrs in Iraq.
ELEPHANT was a reminder after a good 10 hours of “horror” films what true horror is. With ELEPHANT comes the painfully sad truth that this is the horror we live with here and now.
Monday, July 17, 2006
PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN 2 (2006)
Once I got through this summertime juggernaut, it was hard for me not to hold it up next to Star Wars (the first three episodes now cleverly numbered 4, 5 & 6). They seem to come from the same source and I can only close my eyes and imagine a dark room illuminated only by candles in which mysterious robed and hooded men sit at a large long wooden table and chant until the ideas for the next megabudget film begin to appear in the dripping wax. The chanting grows louder as the seated begin to realize how this Summer's film will improve upon past summertime successes: "OMMMM We, the dark lords of the film industry which took The Hidden Fortress into outer space and called it Star Wars, will now turn the space ships into pirate ships and call it Pirates of the Carribean. In this way we will generate billions and insure our continued existence OMMMMMM."
If you stand Pirates of the Carribean up next to Star Wars looming like indestructable twin towers you get this:
Captain Jack Sparrow = Han Solo
Will Turner = Luke Skywalker
Elizabeth Swann = Princess Leia
Pintel & Ragetti = R2D2 & C3PO
Captain Barbossa = Darth Vader
Davy Jones = Jaba the Hutt
the Kraken = the big nasty toothy thing that Jaba the Hutt feeds victims to.
Plotwise, the comparison is a little shakier except that thirty years ago I left Star Wars feeling baffled and bludgeoned and today I left Pirates in much the same state. This time, however, being in the company of my 5-year-old, I concentrated a little bit more on plot points in an effort to be able to answer the barrage of questions I fully anticipated afterwards as he and I dug into a cheeseburger and Bourbon St. Steak respectively at Applebee's.
In the midst of all the overblown CGI tentacled nonsense one thing stands clear: Johnny Depp is a great actor. In particular, he's a great comic actor. And I'm happy to report that billions of years ago when my guilty pleasure was watching 21 Jump Street with my soon-to-be wife, we used to tell everyone "Yeah, it's awful...but keep an eye out for Johnny Depp."
There are moments of real laugh-out-loud comedy in Pirates: the swordfight atop a runaway waterwheel; a three-way joust on the beach between Sparrow and Turner, Turner and Norrington and Norrington and Sparrow; Captain Jack running like a dandy from a huge throng of cannibals; the crew imprisoned in suspended cells of lashed-together bones. And as Richard Schickel pointed out in his recent Times essay, the comedy is in the scenes that contain no special effects. There is a trim, focused and funny movie somewhere in this mess but it suffocates under the necessity to be a huge movie-for-everyone.
CGI looks like CGI and CGI doesn't look real and in 95% of movies employing massive amounts of CGI the suspension of disbelief is impossible. And in a movie that only needs to shiver its timbers with ships, cutlasses, bottles of rum and dead men's chests, the moments of intense and painful CGI grind Pirates 2 to a screeching halt.
Directed by Gore Verbinski (I can't help but wonder if he'll deffect to the X-Men series while Bryan Singer moves to Pirates 3 and Brett Ratner picks up Superman Returns 2), this movie's beating heart is being held captive in buried treasure chest. It seems it requires an enchanted compass to find it.
And to Johnny Depp I offer this question: will you do a comedy that requires only your broad physical gestures, your cleverly modulated voice and your perfect sense of timing to generate laughs? I look forward to seeing that.
If you stand Pirates of the Carribean up next to Star Wars looming like indestructable twin towers you get this:
Captain Jack Sparrow = Han Solo
Will Turner = Luke Skywalker
Elizabeth Swann = Princess Leia
Pintel & Ragetti = R2D2 & C3PO
Captain Barbossa = Darth Vader
Davy Jones = Jaba the Hutt
the Kraken = the big nasty toothy thing that Jaba the Hutt feeds victims to.
Plotwise, the comparison is a little shakier except that thirty years ago I left Star Wars feeling baffled and bludgeoned and today I left Pirates in much the same state. This time, however, being in the company of my 5-year-old, I concentrated a little bit more on plot points in an effort to be able to answer the barrage of questions I fully anticipated afterwards as he and I dug into a cheeseburger and Bourbon St. Steak respectively at Applebee's.
In the midst of all the overblown CGI tentacled nonsense one thing stands clear: Johnny Depp is a great actor. In particular, he's a great comic actor. And I'm happy to report that billions of years ago when my guilty pleasure was watching 21 Jump Street with my soon-to-be wife, we used to tell everyone "Yeah, it's awful...but keep an eye out for Johnny Depp."
There are moments of real laugh-out-loud comedy in Pirates: the swordfight atop a runaway waterwheel; a three-way joust on the beach between Sparrow and Turner, Turner and Norrington and Norrington and Sparrow; Captain Jack running like a dandy from a huge throng of cannibals; the crew imprisoned in suspended cells of lashed-together bones. And as Richard Schickel pointed out in his recent Times essay, the comedy is in the scenes that contain no special effects. There is a trim, focused and funny movie somewhere in this mess but it suffocates under the necessity to be a huge movie-for-everyone.
CGI looks like CGI and CGI doesn't look real and in 95% of movies employing massive amounts of CGI the suspension of disbelief is impossible. And in a movie that only needs to shiver its timbers with ships, cutlasses, bottles of rum and dead men's chests, the moments of intense and painful CGI grind Pirates 2 to a screeching halt.
Directed by Gore Verbinski (I can't help but wonder if he'll deffect to the X-Men series while Bryan Singer moves to Pirates 3 and Brett Ratner picks up Superman Returns 2), this movie's beating heart is being held captive in buried treasure chest. It seems it requires an enchanted compass to find it.
And to Johnny Depp I offer this question: will you do a comedy that requires only your broad physical gestures, your cleverly modulated voice and your perfect sense of timing to generate laughs? I look forward to seeing that.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
GODZILLA VS. MEGALON (1973)
If you had been lucky enough or depending on your disposition had had the great misfortune to enter a discussion about movies with the late Colorblind James, ne James Charles Cuminale, you would have learned that he regarded movies in general as junk worthy of less praise than aluminum siding. That is, of course, until the discussion steared itself towards the works of Fellini, Kurosawa, "Morgan", "Putney Swope", "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" and anything else that seemed for whatever reason to transcend the form and constraints inherent in a flawed medium. The flaw had apparently more to do with the public's certainty that film was the new art and that the level of importance imparted to it by critics and fans was somehow deserved. To Chuck it was all junk but the occasional flower bloomed amid the wrecks and detritus rusting in the backlot.
Which brings me of course to this discussion of Jun Fukada's arguable masterpiece Godzilla vs. Megalon. As I'm writing this, my wife is dozing gently having opted to watch Star Wars Episode 3 over my suggestion of Shaun of the Dead, a sort of George Romero take on The Full Monty. As the sound of light saber battles and bleeping droids rolls on behind my laptop screen, I can't help but wonder, Just what is "Junk"? Are there different degrees of junk ranging from good junk to bad junk?
I've admittedly watched my fare share of junk recently having slogged my way through Wolf Creek, Saw 2, Hostel, Three...Extremes, Just Before Dawn, Oldboy, the pathetic remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc. And then, interspersed throughout, were the odd gems The Iron Giant, Donnie Darko, and even the Kill Bills, I and II. And while they may very well have stirred a positive response in me, they quite likely have and will continue to wind up on someone's list of all-time worst movies. Ultimately, I guess, to each his/her own.
Star Wars Episode 3 bores me with its cutting edge technology. It's blue screen marvels and CGI wizardry can't hide horrendous acting and humourless storytelling. Godzilla vs. Megalon is downright exhilirating in its incompetence. The fight sequences are comparable only to the inevitable collisions of all four Teletubbies on any viewing of the that spectacular work of art.
Megalon is a giant beetle released from Seatopia to avenge mankind's atomic weapon's testing in the Pacific. Jet Jaguar is a pre-Power Ranger robot built for good but winding up under the control of the Seatopians. Gigan is enlisted by the baddies once Jet Jaguar a) reestablishes a positive working relationship with the good guys and b) he quadruples in size at the mere push of a button. Godzilla, well, that's another story. Apparently, this movie introduced a new rubber suit and, gosh darn it, this has to be the cutest Godzilla of the entire Showa series.
It's crap. Pure, unadulerated trash. But it didn't cost a gazillion dollars to make like any one of the Star Wars franchise entries did. And they are, IMHO, pure, unadulterated trash. Junk. I guess we all pick our poisons, don't we? Ultimately? I just happen to enjoy mine with a dash of humility. In the time that it takes Star Wars Episode 3's final credits to roll, I could have listened to the awesome "Jet Jaguar Theme" a dozen times. It will wind up on my next CD. Oh yes...it will. Meanwhile, Chuck would roll his eyes and suddenly the conversation would have returned to Melville.
Well here we very well are now, aren't we?
Directed by Jun Fukuda, I give this very serious cinematic essay on the foibles of man's attempt to harness and control the giant monsters and robots of the earth a very strong blast of atomic breath right up Mr. Lucas' butt.
Which brings me of course to this discussion of Jun Fukada's arguable masterpiece Godzilla vs. Megalon. As I'm writing this, my wife is dozing gently having opted to watch Star Wars Episode 3 over my suggestion of Shaun of the Dead, a sort of George Romero take on The Full Monty. As the sound of light saber battles and bleeping droids rolls on behind my laptop screen, I can't help but wonder, Just what is "Junk"? Are there different degrees of junk ranging from good junk to bad junk?
I've admittedly watched my fare share of junk recently having slogged my way through Wolf Creek, Saw 2, Hostel, Three...Extremes, Just Before Dawn, Oldboy, the pathetic remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc. And then, interspersed throughout, were the odd gems The Iron Giant, Donnie Darko, and even the Kill Bills, I and II. And while they may very well have stirred a positive response in me, they quite likely have and will continue to wind up on someone's list of all-time worst movies. Ultimately, I guess, to each his/her own.
Star Wars Episode 3 bores me with its cutting edge technology. It's blue screen marvels and CGI wizardry can't hide horrendous acting and humourless storytelling. Godzilla vs. Megalon is downright exhilirating in its incompetence. The fight sequences are comparable only to the inevitable collisions of all four Teletubbies on any viewing of the that spectacular work of art.
Megalon is a giant beetle released from Seatopia to avenge mankind's atomic weapon's testing in the Pacific. Jet Jaguar is a pre-Power Ranger robot built for good but winding up under the control of the Seatopians. Gigan is enlisted by the baddies once Jet Jaguar a) reestablishes a positive working relationship with the good guys and b) he quadruples in size at the mere push of a button. Godzilla, well, that's another story. Apparently, this movie introduced a new rubber suit and, gosh darn it, this has to be the cutest Godzilla of the entire Showa series.
It's crap. Pure, unadulerated trash. But it didn't cost a gazillion dollars to make like any one of the Star Wars franchise entries did. And they are, IMHO, pure, unadulterated trash. Junk. I guess we all pick our poisons, don't we? Ultimately? I just happen to enjoy mine with a dash of humility. In the time that it takes Star Wars Episode 3's final credits to roll, I could have listened to the awesome "Jet Jaguar Theme" a dozen times. It will wind up on my next CD. Oh yes...it will. Meanwhile, Chuck would roll his eyes and suddenly the conversation would have returned to Melville.
Well here we very well are now, aren't we?
Directed by Jun Fukuda, I give this very serious cinematic essay on the foibles of man's attempt to harness and control the giant monsters and robots of the earth a very strong blast of atomic breath right up Mr. Lucas' butt.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
