Dylan Dog: Dead Of Night (2010)

APRIL 30, 2011

GENRE: COMIC BOOK

SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

Right around this time last year, the movie Black Waters Of Echo's Pond, an endlessly delayed low budget horror film, got a surprising theatrical release that was met with mostly indifference. And now we have a similar situation with Dylan Dog: Dead Of Night, which was shot over two years ago and was inexplicably dumped on nearly one thousand screens, with nearly no advertising to back it up. Note to indie distributors: focus on marketing over obtaining the highest number of screens possible. If this just opened in a few key markets, with some money pumped into actually advertising it beyond annoying internet flash ads, it might have sold more than 90-100 tickets per screen for the ENTIRE WEEKEND.

Because it's really not too terrible, it's just misguided on several levels and presented in the wrong medium. There is nothing particularly "big-screen" about it; the monsters aren't particularly impressive, the action is PG-13 friendly (which is to say, really brief and unsatisfying), and the whole "based on the comic book" angle doesn't really do the movie any favors when it's being released a week before this summer's big Marvel event. It could have been a slightly above average DTV title, but it just doesn't have what it takes to work in an already crowded marketplace, at a time when even the REAL big screen movies are being treated with a "I'll wait for Netflix" attitude (irony: technical competition Fast Five is an exception. Good timing, Mr. Dog!).

But really, it should be a TV show; something the CW would put together as a companion for Supernatural now that Smallville is finally being put out of its misery (and if they kept Brandon Routh in the title role, that would be even more fitting). As it is (very loosely, from what I understand) based on a monthly comic that is huge in Italy but not really well known in the US, a weekly show would have a wealth of material to draw from and yet not be put up to the same scrutiny as Smallville or other comic-based TV shows that stem from far more popular properties - they can change whatever they want and most of the annoying fan rage would be in Italian!

Kidding aside, I really do think a TV show would be better for this particular property. An hour long detective show with different monsters each week, with some sort of season long arc about a REALLY BAD monster - just like Buffy or Supernatural - would be a lot more fun than a 105 minute overstuffed movie without the budget to back up all of its ideas. I mean, Christ, in this one movie we get vampires, werewolves, zombies, supernatural artifacts, plus a human villain. Oh, and there are different clans of werewolves, just to make matters more baffling. It's just too much for ANY movie, let alone one with only about 20 million to work with. Some characters disappear while others never really factor into the plot, and the motivations for the villains don't always seem to make sense - it seems like there was about 30 pages of the script that they never got to film (unless the film's bloated length was even longer at one point). Not helping matters is the inordinate amount of time spent with the "funny" business of Dylan's partner, Marcus, who has been turned into a zombie. While the American Werewolf In London homage is all well and good, the simple fact remains that it simply isn't amusing in the slightest (beyond a pretty funny slam on hot dogs that would take too much effort to explain here), and the time spent on it is time that could have been spent further developing the villains, Dylan, or simply having ANYTHING besides an endless number of scenes in which Dylan answers someone's questions.

Seriously, I'd say half the movie is Dylan explaining things: how zombies function, what vampire blood is used for, how werewolves have different hair ("You know what they say about werewolf hair - it doesn't lie."), what this artifact does, who killed who back then and why, etc, etc, etc... variations on the questions "What is that?" or "How does it work?" pop up with alarming frequency, with Dylan always having the answer right off hand. And this is one of my biggest problems with the film - not only does it reduce it to an endless Q&A session, it also gives us no point of entry. We're asked to believe in this world where all these monsters co-exist with something resembling harmony, and the humans either don't notice or don't care, and there are all of these rules and factions and such, but it's all old hat to our hero. Part of what makes a detective story work is learning things along with the hero, but here it's like he's always a step or two ahead of us, and the only things he learns just amounts to more gobbledygook that doesn't really sound any different than the stuff he himself was just explaining to Marcus or his client, a blond woman played by an Icelandic actress who isn't always successful trying to mask her accent. But neither of them count as heroes, so you can't latch onto them either. It's an odd example to use, but think of Fletch - he's a smart guy and knows a lot of stuff, but not specifically about the case he's working on. The people he goes to see aren't old friends; he's meeting them for the first time, just as we are. So it's a lot easier to follow the (fairly complicated for a comedy) mystery, because we're learning about it along with our hero. Here it's like we're stepping in halfway through, as everyone that Dylan goes to see is an old friend (or enemy) and they talk about their history as if the movie was a sequel and they were just offering a quick recap so we, the returning audience, could get our bearings.

So basically, it's just sort of impenetrable on a story/character level, and (unsurprisingly) the action isn't exciting enough to make up for it. There's a fairly fun fight between Dylan, Marcus, and a bunch of zombies, but it feels more like the product of a producer noting that they could really use an action beat here more than something that has grown organically out of the story. The climactic battle is shockingly dull; not only is it weighed down by borderline incoherent "twists" in terms of who is working with who and why, but it's just plain lackluster, amounting to a giant demon tossing Dylan around a deserted stadium, with no living humans at stake. Think of Ghostbusters (either of them) - their big villains were putting lots of New Yorkers in danger once it came time for the big showdown. Who is at stake here? Marcus the already dead zombie? Christ, even a random homeless guy living under the broken bleachers would have been better than nothing. Everything else in the movie is too quick; someone gets tossed through a window or something, the villain runs off, and then it's back to more explaining.

Interestingly (tellingly?), the writers (Thomas Dean Donnelly & Joshua Oppenheimer) are also responsible for A Sound Of Thunder, another long-delayed movie based on pre-existing material that was largely ignored. It's also a terrible film and one of the biggest bombs of all time, grossing less than 2 million domestically on an 80 million budget. They also wrote Sahara, which seems to have come out when it was supposed to, but its failure to make any money is literally the stuff of legend (and the author of the original books it was based on has sued the production essentially for fucking it up so much). Yet they have four movies on the way, all of which are adaptations. Do they write for free, or what? Or do the respective producers of these movies actually seek out a pair of screenwriters that can botch the job? I have enough writer friends to know that the script isn't always to blame for a bad movie, but there's only so many times the same guys can be behind movies with the same problems before I just have to assume that they're not very good at their job.

On the positive side of things, Routh is fairly charming, and definitely has an early Tom Cruise thing going on, particularly in the earlier scenes where's he's sticking to "normal" cases instead of getting mixed up in monster plots (he left that world behind when his girlfriend died, but then of course jumps right back in when his friend dies). I don't know why he hasn't been able to secure a more prolific career post-Superman (he was the least of the movie's problems, and regardless of its critical success, he was the star of a movie that made a lot of money), and sadly this probably won't help matters. And it's fine on a technical level; they thankfully used real monsters/makeup for just about everything, and got a lot of good use of the New Orleans locale, with lots of locations (interior and exterior) and just enough local color to keep it from being generic but without becoming a travelogue. It's also pretty colorful to look at, and there are brief turns by Taye Diggs and Peter Stormare, who are always welcome (and are the only ones having fun). And the CONCEPT is actually really cool; I might take the time to check out the comic (I assume it's been translated into English, somewhere?), which is almost assuredly better, with focused stories and time given to gradually deliver explanations and exposition instead of dishing it out in scene after scene of supernatural mumbo jumbo. I'm sure the filmmakers were hoping to turn this into a franchise, but at the same time, it's like they were afraid they wouldn't get the chance and thus crammed every single thing they could think of into this one.

What say you?

Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973)

APRIL 29, 2011

GENRE: VAMPIRE

SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Blacula, and thus I was looking forward to seeing its sequel. But while it's perfectly entertaining, Scream, Blacula, Scream doesn't quite live up to the first film - the romance is limited, the Van Helsing type foil isn't as interesting, and it hits too many of the same beats, complete with a climax where Blacula and his minions lay waste to a bunch of anonymous cops.

In fact I was being reminded of other movies I've seen for most of its running time. It's directed by Bob Kelljan, who directed the Yorga movies, and he brings along Craig T. Nelson's sergeant character for the ride (whether it was SUPPOSED to be the same character or not, I don't know - I liked to think that it was), and there's a touch of Sugar Hill in there as well, with a power struggle between a Pam Grier-esque lady (played by the actual Grier this time though) and some angry dude setting off the voodoo tinged plot. To be fair, this came before Sugar Hill, but the point remains that there was nothing really setting this one apart; even if Hill was actually copying those elements from this one, the rest of the movie was pretty different. Here, it just recycles too much from its predecessor, which most certainly ISN'T a coincidence. Photographs where cops notice Mamuwalde is missing, check. Mamuwalde having a fun little face-off with the guy who is trying to expose him, check. Mamuwalde turning a few folks to be his minions and ignoring the irony of the fact that he was against slaving and now makes his fellow "brothers and sisters" into his own unwilling slaves, check.

Also, did he sound this much like Christopher Lee in the first movie? If so I found it far more distracting here, and it just sort of kept reminding me of Lee's own series' ever-diminishing appeal. Part of the problem with doing a Dracula sequel is coming up with a reason not only to bring him back, but also giving him something new to do, and they really only worried about the first part of it - the bad guy revives him using voodoo, hoping to have him do his bidding and take down Grier's rival voodoo priestess. And that could have been a cool plot, but that's not what happens; Blacula rises and immediately turns the guy into HIS slave, which is kind of funny in a "so much for your plan" way, but then the movie just treads water for far too long, until Blacula decides he wants to be just plain ol' Mamuwalde again and asks Grier to help remove his vampire curse. There's just no real drive, and the guy who revived him never really becomes a rival to EITHER of their characters (hence why I can't even remember his name - he's just far too underused).

And the ending didn't have quite the same punch to it. The first film's tragic ending was actually kind of sad, but this one's is just a traditional vampire movie ending, with the love interest and "Van Helsing" (a cop named Willis) taking him down. It would have been cool if Grier actually managed to end his curse and then Willis burst in and killed him without realizing what had just happened, as it would retain the tragic element and add some irony for good measure, but he's just a generic vampire villain in his final scenes, gnashing his teeth and raising his arms up to strike and what not.

But while it lacks a compelling new storyline, it's still fun to watch. William Marshall is endlessly entertaining to watch, particularly in the stand-alone scenes that don't involve the plot, such as when he is approached by the most conservatively dressed hooker of all time and then accosted by her pimps after rejecting her offer. Grier is of course a total knockout, and it's actually kind of fun to see her in a more typical female horror role instead of the badasses she usually plays (at least in the movies I've seen her in). And they do use the LA scenery a bit more this time around (the aforementioned hooker scene is at least set up as being on Hollywood Blvd), so that's always a trip, seeing the places I drive/walk by every day as they looked 40 years before.

I also dug the "zombie" like minions that he amasses over the course of the movie. Even though it's the same damn thing as the original, it's kind of a creepy image when the cops arrive in order to take down Blacula and are met by a dozen undead. The action is a bit more exciting than the original's too; I particularly liked the one guy who sort of flew up behind one poor bastard and took him down without the guy ever realizing he was in danger. And even though he scoffed at the idea of vampires (his reaction to the photos is amazing, he suggests "maybe the film was faulty" as a theory for why there's a photo of two paramedics putting nothing onto a stretcher), the chief changes his mind pretty quickly and gets in a great staking scene.

While on the subject, I liked that the white chief may not have believed his black officer's claims, he backed his man up and went along with it instead of being a cartoonish (read: racist) "whitey". In fact, the film as a whole is a lot less racially driven than the original. No use of the N-word that I can recall, and the plot doesn't seem as racially charged (it's essentially blacks against blacks; the chief is pretty much the only significant white character in the movie). There are two ways to look at this; one is that the movie is less dated, because you won't be distracted by as much "I can't believe they used to talk like this without anyone batting an eye!" feeling, but the other is that they stripped it of its personality to make it an easier sell for a wider audience. I can't remember what movie it was, but there was one of these where the white cops had no respect for the black ones, and I'm glad that they were all working as a unit here instead of being hateful for no reason. Blacula does kill a guy for calling him a "faggot" though, so there's something.

The wikipedia page for this movie points out that "as of 2010, it is the only sequel", as if part 3 is just in development hell like Ghostbusters III or something. Marshall is no longer with us, and I don't think an audience would accept a new guy in the role anyway (even if there WAS an audience for a direct sequel). There's always a chance of a remake, but with the title sounding like something Tracy Jordan might star in (it would make a good double feature with Blaffair To Rememblack), I doubt the movie would be taken (or even produced) seriously. Still, vampire movies traditionally have the least amount of social commentary in their films compared to zombies or werewolves, so if someone smarter than me/Hollywood could come up with a fresh way to make a more serious minded Blacula film with an eye toward current social issues, I'd be all for it. Long as he kept that bitchin' cape.

What say you?

There can be only one

Not only one Fast & Furious. Apparently, there can be at least five Fast & Furiouses. (Fast & Furii?)

No, I'm talking about the epic grudge match between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson in Fast Five, which comes out today. The grudge match I imagine in my mind, anyway.

I have long considered Diesel and Johnson to serve more or less the same capacity in the movie biz. They are both biracial, they are both action stars, they are both usually bald, and they are both ripped.

Except the demographic they represent and cater to is where the comparison ends. Johnson also does comedy and generally makes smart choices. Diesel takes himself too seriously and generally makes dumb choices.

Essentially, the erstwhile The Rock is having the career Diesel should have had.

No sooner did Vin Diesel become famous than we started hearing about all the roles he didn't want to do. The main reason Diesel has only been in the first and most recent two installments of the Fast/Furious movies (and skipped out on the sequel to XXX) is that he thought he was going to do more "serious" and "worthwhile" projects (such as, um, The Chronicles of Riddick). I'm not saying a measure of an actor's career intelligence is how many half-baked sequels he makes. The problem with Diesel -- at least this is the impression I got from an interview I read -- is that he looked down his nose on the projects that made him famous, suffering from an instant case of "I'm better than that" syndrome. There's a healthy balance between challenging yourself and understanding where your bread is buttered, and the main reason Diesel basically disappeared for five to seven years is that he was so spectacularly untalented at finding that balance. (However, one can see how some early casting luck would have tempted him into making better movies -- before the clock even struck 2000, Diesel had appeared in both Saving Private Ryan and The Iron Giant.)

Filling the Diesel void was Dwayne Johnson, known previously to wrestling fans (and most of the rest of us) as The Rock. It was almost like there was an actual baton passing. The year 2002 was when both XXX came out, marking the last time Diesel wanted to be associated with such mindless action drivel, and The Scorpion King came out, marking the beginning of Johnson's rapid ascension toward the A list. (Or at least the B+ list.) Johnson could have easily gone from one role to the next to the next that required only his physique, but he smartly started to mix humor into his roles, such as The Rundown and Get Smart. Okay, I haven't seen The Rundown and I hated Get Smart. So maybe I'm really thinking of his appearance on Saturday Night Live, where he showed such a fitness for comedy. Meanwhile, having struck out with A Man Apart and Chronicles of Riddick, Diesel tried to make a course correction of sorts into comedy with the children's movie The Pacifier. It was a disaster, precisely because Diesel isn't funny.

Johnson smartly followed in Ice Cube's footsteps toward more family-friend fare, starring in The Game Plan, Race to Witch Mountain, Planet 51 and Tooth Fairy. He may have overdone it, in fact, because when he appeared in a straightforward action movie last fall -- Faster -- it caught a lot of us by surprise. You may have had a different take, but to me, it seemed that Johnson had become too good for marginal vigilante schlock like this. (I understand some people liked it. I haven't seen it.)

Meanwhile, after a second sci-fi misfire (Babylon A.D.), Diesel has been racing back to his roots like a cheating husband desperate for forgiveness. Not only has he jumped back into the Fast/Furious movies with both feet, I understand he's also filming the third XXX, subtitled The Return of Xander Cage. Funny, speaking of Ice Cube, Cube was actually Diesel's successor in XXX: State of the Nation. So if Cube was following in Diesel's footsepts, and Johnson was following in Cube's footsteps, but Diesel is generally seen as a failure, how is Johnson possibly the most successful of the three of them? I'm confused.

I do think there is something intentionally cheeky about pitting Johnson and Diesel against each other in Fast Five. It's like the famous first tete-a-tete on film between Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann's Heat, only on a much smaller and more poorly acted scale. And from what the trailers tell me, they're definitely on opposite sides of the law. So I can see the same kind of semi-civilized sit-down conversation, pregnant with veiled threats, transpiring between these two cinematic luminaries as well. Perhaps it would go something like this:

Johnson: You're going down, Diesel.
Diesel: I've been down. What else ya got?
Johnson: Oh you think you're a real comedian.
Diesel: No, isn't that your job, Mr. Saturday Night?
Johnson: It was one time! I only hosted once!
Diesel: Yeah, you were pretty menacing in your hula skirt. Me, I invented menacing.
Johnson: Menacing like Find Me Guilty? When you wore a bad wig and played a goofball mobster defending himself?
Diesel: Shut up. The great Sidney Lumet directed that film, may he rest in peace.
Johnson: And the great Richard Kelly directed Southland Tales.
Diesel: Um, yeah.
Johnson: Shut up.
Diesel: Face it -- you wish you were me.
Johnson: I am you -- only better. I've had two full careers. So, I've had one-and-a-half more careers than you.
Diesel: But were you ever in a movie nominated for best picture? Hello, I was one of those dudes saving private Ryan.
Johnson: Wasn't Be Cool nominated for best picture?
Diesel: No.
Johnson: Wait, how are you winning this argument? I'm much more successful than you are by any standard. Plus, I actually know how to fight.
Diesel: Please. Professional wrestling is fa--
Johnson: DON'T. YOU. DARE.
Diesel: Alright, listen dude, can we just agree to disagree? I'm always going to have that cool, laid-back thing you have to work so hard at. Which means I'm never going to lose an argument.
Johnson: Okay, but you gotta give me that The Pacifier sucked, and you only did it because you panicked and you didn't know what you were doing.
Diesel: I never panic.
Johnson: (silence)
Diesel: But yeah, The Pacifier sucked.

Mutants (2009)

APRIL 28, 2011

GENRE: FRENCH, ZOMBIE

SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX INSTANT)

Someone on Twitter told me that Mutants was good but not a typical zombie movie, which just got me more excited to watch it. I think I can go the rest of my life without seeing another zombie movie where strangers hole up together and argue incessantly while fending off waves of the undead who are always nice enough to give them a break every now and then so they can argue some more. And I CERTAINLY don’t need another zom-com anytime soon. But since this was a French horror movie, I wasn’t too worried about humor.

In fact, it’s only when the movie dips into familiar territory that it starts to waver a bit, particularly when the obligatory evil humans show up. The characters didn’t annoy me as much as usual, but the pacing of the film suddenly seemed off. One of the bad guys doesn’t even get a proper introduction, he just sort of appears in a scene as if he was always there, and there are some other moments involving their antagonistic relationship with our heroine that seemed rushed through. I wasn’t even entirely clear why they were at odds with her – the building she’s in doesn’t seem particularly desirable (unlike the mall in Dawn of the Dead, for example), she has no supplies or weapons worth a damn, and the only thing they seem to want is her ambulance, which has run out of gas (and she’s made no attempts to locate some for it). But they don’t tie her up or anything either, so it doesn’t seem like they plan to kill her. Just seems like they added the conflict in order to add some tension, but didn’t really flesh out the motives on either side.

But I liked how low-key it was, largely focusing on our heroine and her boyfriend, who gets infected early on, but due to the method (swallowing some blood instead of being bitten), he is turning much slower than the others. So we get a pretty detailed account of him turning into a monster, complete with a horrifying “he’s losing his teeth” scene, which is topped by an even more horrifying scene where he pisses insane amounts of blood. I’m not sure what was going on there – was his dick falling off too? Either way I was mortified. If the movie had heroine usage it would complete the trifecta of the only things I legitimately get uncomfortable watching.

Another cool thing was that it was largely a single location movie but they didn’t try to make the building its own character. Everything stayed focused on the humans and their plight, instead of wasting time showing off the various rooms in the deserted hospital and what it did or didn’t have (on the other hand, I quite enjoyed the occasional snowy exteriors - not enough horror movies set in the snow, dammit!). Nor was it a siege movie; the zombie action is pretty much saved for the end (shades of Day of the Dead), which allowed for enough time spent with our protagonists to genuinely care about their survival.

It may have been a bit TOO slight though; it’s only 89 minutes long and that includes credits (plus it’s a foreign film so there’s like two full minutes of “with the participation of” title cards). Since the tragic love story is sort of the backbone of the thing, I wouldn’t have minded a few scenes of the two of them in relationship mode; there’s very little evidence of their love before he gets bit. Zombie Honeymoon did this sort of thing better (though that film had other issues – not saying it’s a better film overall, but in this particular area I think ZH was more successful).

The makeup/wardrobe team should have worked to make the doomed hero more distinguishable from the other zombies once he turned. It was hard to tell him from at least two other zombies (at one point I thought the heroine had casually dispatched him, but it was just some anonymous zombie that looked nearly identical). Give him a white shirt or cool scar or something! Otherwise, the makeup is pretty cool; again, we don’t see a lot of zombies, but their grayish, dirty look blended well with the film’s high contrast, blue-toned cinematography. And there’s some healthy use of the red stuff, particularly on/around our turning hero, who at one point is covered with it from head to toe after a botched transfusion attempt (there’s also an obscene amount during his self-root canal).

However, I was kind of hoping they would be a little more “mutant” like, given the name and all. They don’t sport new body parts or grow in any significant way, and I didn’t even see “monster” teeth or anything that would back up the “old teeth falling out” (though as the movie was subtitled it’s possible I was looking at a “Nooo!” or something at the bottom of the screen instead of focusing on the zombies’ dental state). They just lose their hair and the ability to speak, and then pretty much just act like your every day zombie. It’s a unique take on the genre, but sadly saddled with a generic title (there’s also a DTV Michael Ironside movie with the same name – I rest my case).

So it’s not perfect, but as my Twitter pal said, it’s not a typical zombie movie, and we can always use more of those (and no, mashing it up with some literary classic doesn’t count). I’m always happier to see a flawed fresh take than a technically perfect rehash where I know exactly where a movie is going right from the start.

What say you?

Subtract two dimensions

I am a big Hoodwinked supporter. I'd even go so far as to say I have a special place in my heart for it. My wife and I saw it together when we were still only dating, and we thought it was cute. Plus, I remember it a bit better than some other movies we saw because it was the only movie we ever saw together in Glendale. (For those of you outside Southern California, there's nothing special about Glendale. I just remember it because it's the only movie we ever saw there.)

In fact, for awhile, I held up Hoodwinked as some kind of example of how you didn't need Disney's or Dreamworks' millions to make a good animated movie. All you needed was a good script, and animation passable enough not to stand out. Hoodwinked had a pretty easy time meeting the former standard, and just barely met the latter.

If the animation was what kept it seeming kind of scruffy back in 2006, you'd figure that would be the easiest way to step forward if the movie is a hit and you make a sequel. I don't know that Hoodwinked was a hit hit, but it was close enough that they thought there would be money in a sequel.

Were they confident enough to put more money into the animation?

Not quite.

In fact, not only is it not a step forward from the original, it may actually be a step backward. The quality of animation you'd see on a movie released straight to DVD.

Perhaps the third dimension will make it better.

That's right, like everything else, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (ugh, don't get me started on that title) is coming out in 3D. If it's changing a dimension from 2D, though, it looks better suited to going down one than up one.

Really, doesn't it look terrible? It's like you can see the program they used to make it on their home computers. "Move Character A through Environment B." I mean, that is what they do a lot of the time -- they create a character and then they animate his or her movements against different backgrounds. But it's supposed to seem seamless -- it's not supposed to look like one computerized image moving in its own plane, against another plane that contains the background. Except that is exactly what it looks like.

I mean, just look at that poster. Even the fonts are low-rent.

I hate to poop on Kanbar Entertainment. I mean, they're the consummate little guy trying to play the same game as the consummate big guys.

But it's kind of strange to get a taste of success, and then botch the follow-through. Even with another good script, the animation in this movie looks like it could alienate today's viewers. What earned an A for effort back in 2006 has seen the passage of five years without a significant upgrade. If they'd been able to make Hoodwinked Too the same amount worse than the 2011 industry leaders as Hoodwinked was worse than the 2006 industry leaders, that would be one thing. But a pale, clunky version of 2006 animation in 2011? I don't think it's going to fly.

Which is a shame, because I really have confidence in Cory and Todd Edwards, the brother who are basically the heart and soul of Kanbar. They wrote the script for Hoodwinked, but they also directed it and even provided some character voices. They are DIY at its best, and they wrote a clever movie. They've probably written a clever movie this time, too.

But 2011 kids are already a lot more advanced than 2006 kids. Will they go for the Kanbar animation when they can get better-looking animation in their ipad apps?

We'll see starting tomorrow.

Sweet Insanity (2006)

APRIL 27, 2011

GENRE: SLASHER

SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I know I’ve said before that I’ve seen enough movies featuring a particular twist that I can detect the tell-tale signs almost instantly, but you wouldn’t even need this particularly useless (if anything, kind of annoying) superpower for Sweet Insanity, because I’m not even sure if they were TRYING to hide the fact that a certain character was a figment of our heroine’s imagination. But in a way it sort of helped, because it allowed me to focus on the movie, which was kind of fun, and also actually miss another twist. Twist misdirection!

So, yeah, the hot brunette girl played by Mackenzie Firgens isn’t really there. You don’t need overexposure to these sort of movies to realize this, as she literally disappears in the middle of a street in front of two other girls at a fairly early point in the movie, and not only converses exclusively with our heroine, but does so in an awkward fashion. At one point she “stops by” the main girl’s house during a party and still manages to avoid actually talking to or even sharing a camera shot with any of the others. It’s just too awkward, and despite the Sixth Sense name-checking on the commentary, I don’t think there’s a single moment where her non-existence was in doubt. Sense had the clever “angry” wife scene at the restaurant and Cole arriving home as (we think) Malcolm is finishing up a chat with the mother to misdirect us, but Insanity offers none of that. And that title (changed from Stranger, which was a bad call) certainly doesn’t try to hide the true nature of what’s going on.

But again, this sort of helped. Knowing what was up, I was able to ignore the half-hearted attempts to mislead us and just focus on the slasher story. And that story was largely inspired by Slumber Party Massacre (complete with creepy neighbor and prank-pulling male characters), which I found quite delightful. The need to hide the identity of the killer without getting too High Tension-y (read: cheating, though there is some anyway) means that the kill scenes aren’t too exciting, but there are a couple that are memorable, such as the drill kill (another tip of the hat to SPM), as the victim was the one girl in the movie who I thought might survive. I also liked the weed-whacker kill of the movie’s most insufferable character, both in execution and in the fact that it’s the only one with any real splatter.

And in addition to Slumber, the writer and/or director clearly knew his Halloween. There’s a scene of our two leads walking home after school (which would take about 14 hours if one of them didn’t get picked up by a friend with a car, since they are literally walking about 1 mph – guessing they didn’t have dolly track and the camera operator was too afraid to walk backwards), and even though you’re probably focused on them, if you look you’ll see “the killer” following them in the background, out of focus and unaccompanied by any sort of stings or anything like that to draw our attention to him. It’s funny, I was actually thinking a couple days ago (I forget what spurned it on) that when people rip off Halloween, it’s usually the “now you see him now you don’t” type stuff, but few ever do that creepy following thing that Michael does. There’s actually an even better example in Halloween 5, when he’s just sort of hanging out in the background while Tina and Tammy talk about sheets – I love that! Too many horror movies make sure you see each and every scare; it’s nice to have some that you might not even notice until a second viewing.

However, the real appeal for me was that it was the rare slasher film in which one of the male characters (not counting the heroine’s boyfriend) actually survived... but that’s not even half of it. His name is Brian, so of course throughout the movie whenever someone would call for him or ask him a direct question, I’d answer as if they were talking to me (my wife was sitting with me – it was to amuse her just as much as myself, thank you), only to find out in the final scene that his name was actually Brian Collins! THAT’S MY NAME! I even rewound it and put on the (Spanish) subtitles to make sure I heard it right. I was so happy – I am pretty sure it’s the first Brian Collins I’ve ever seen in a movie at all, let alone a slasher movie, LET ALONE a slasher movie where that character actually survived. Of course, the character was a fucking clueless moron and the only reason he didn’t die was because he went home after pissing his pants instead of going back to the party, but still – awesome.

There are two big blunders that kept it from being a slam dunk though. One is the ultimate conclusion, which comes a bit abruptly and isn’t entirely coherent. If I hadn’t seen the movie Identity I might not have understood it at all, and you never want to be in a situation where seeing the movie Identity is beneficial to you. I liked the idea, and again, the obvious “she’s not really there” twist kept me from noticing the other twist, but it wasn’t really executed all that well.

The other, far more problematic issue is that the bulk of the actors are way too old to be high school seniors. I actually thought they were playing college students at first, and even that they looked too old but I was willing to accept that – some folks take longer to graduate college. So when they showed up in high school classes I laughed out loud; the lead girl in particular looks at LEAST 28 years old (I couldn’t find her exact age but she played an “Office Assistant” in Runaway Bride, and that movie was 6-7 years older than this one), and the girl playing her best friend had to be 24 or 25 as well. And it wouldn’t even be a problem, but the extras playing anonymous students in the halls look around the right age, so they just stick out like sore thumbs. Worse, the lead actress is also the weakest in the bunch, and has a very awkward delivery. Considering the weight she had to pull at the end of the movie, when all the answers start coming together - they really ought to have hired a better, younger actress.

The casting decision is not explained on the commentary by first/last time director Daniel Hess, whose bio on the DVD alludes to having worked on a lot of productions but doesn’t name any of them (this film is his only credit on IMDb), nor is much of anything else in terms of the production. I may have enjoyed the movie, but the commentary is the absolute pits, as Hess just sort of narrates the movie while adding in small, worthless bits about the actors being “a lot of fun” or improvising a certain line or action. Most of the time he is speaking as the film’s writer (actually co-writer, the script is also attributed to Adam Weis, who wrote The Hamiltons, which features both of the two lead actresses), not as its director, offering next to nothing about shooting in a practical house, staging the kill scenes, etc. He also utters this howler: “We had a lot of fun with oatmeal on the set, there’s no doubt about it”, which pretty much sums up the entire track: a guy who thinks oatmeal is fun is not a guy you want to listen for 80 minutes. There are also “deleted scenes” but it’s just an outtake reel that appears at the end of the movie anyway, so not only are the extras skimpy, they’re also worthless.

As with Frayed and (to a lesser extent) Shattered Lives, I don’t expect a lot of folks to enjoy this one, and I won’t be endlessly pimping it like Cathy’s Curse* or whatever. But as a slasher fan, I found a lot to like here, and I admired their intentions. Certainly not the crappy, generic slasher movie I’ve come to expect from these sort of things, and even though I’m a bit puzzled how I never noticed it on the shelf at my Blockbuster store before (as it’s been there for years and I’ve scoured those shelves several dozen times), I’m almost sort of glad – a lot of shitty slasher movies in the past 4 years has allowed me to appreciate the ones with a little bit of creativity and respectable tributes to the old school classics without outright ripping them off.

What say you?

*As Cathy’s Curse is sometimes sold with a slutty girl on the cover that has nothing to do with the movie, I found this alternate approach to this movie, using the original title, to be deeply hilarious:

Note – there is no doll of any sort in this film, let alone a killer one who could be considered a “soul mate of Chucky”. Amazing. Flipside: I bet whoever bought the movie with this cover will never see either twist coming - they’ll be too busy looking for the killer doll the entire movie. Also worth noting, the girl on the cover of our version isn’t in the movie either. Does ANY country get a DVD cover for this movie that honestly reflects the actual film?

10 posters that arouse our horror loins....

Whether pure movie buzz or by poster art alone, this is what has us talking lately here at THC...

You had us at "naked in the water."

We've been waiting for this one for a loooooong time...

This is most likely gonna suck, but it has Tori Black in it, so we're there. She sucks too. Google her. True story.

We're dying to see what Ti West does as a follow up to House of the Devil. Cabin Fever 2 does NOT count.

This crazy Russian movie know as The Edge in the English speaking world looks interesting... and greasy.

Little Known fact: I was the first person to ever make Kevin Smith laugh on Twitter. True Story. I screen-shot the tweet. Awesome, right? It's all I've got, so please let me have it. Anyway, Kevin Smith is a fave of ours, so he gets our automatic attention when he delves into horror territory.

Estella Warren. That is all.

It took us 7 minutes of constant staring to notice there was a severed head in this poster.

Adrien Brody's 535th horror movie since 2009... and it looks pretty good.

This looks great, and it's finally coming out in June.

...and 10 posters that don't.

What feelings do these posters inspire in us, by the art and taglines alone? Fear and disdain, mostly.


I'm all for the nice ass and the bloody blade, but the Mafia hit squad in the back.. makes me think I'll just forgetaboutit. Capice?

Shit in the woods. or Un-bear-able. I like 'em both.

David Decoteau is the gay Uwe Boll. There, I said it.

You spelled "bleeding" wrong.

Shitted.

I was going to use "Good Will Cunting", but that's a harsh word to use, even in jest. Let's just say, "it does not look like it is a good movie."

Something tells me, this movie didn't find him...

Finally, a movie for Twilight fans to rip on!

You just know that the T&A is not going to be there.

I'm pretty sure that nothing appeals to gay dudes other than rock hard abs and pouty twinks. And no, it's not the same as me watching a movie based on boobs alone... boobs are artistic, and add context to the average film. So nah!

The Thirsty Dead (1974)

APRIL 26, 2011

GENRE: CULT

SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

There are always a couple movies in the horror budget packs that stretch the limits of what can be considered a horror movie, and I hope that The Thirsty Dead represents the most extreme example from the Pure Terror pack. If this movie was any less “horror” I’d have to watch something else for the day. More often than not it just resembles a particularly dull episode of Star Trek, except without Shatner or Nimoy around to bring the fun.

You know those episodes where the Trek crew would land on a planet, come across some folks, find out their way of living didn’t jive with theirs, and then either kill or reform them? This movie is basically about one of those planets, except before the crew ever found them. You have this cult kidnapping women and draining them of their blood to live forever, and nothing happens to them - they're not stopped, or even given a fine for their actions. One of their higher-ups dies, but he’s sort of the obligatory sympathetic one who will turn against the folks he has been living/working with for a long time in order to help someone he just met. The rest of the cult folks, including the evil female leader, are left alive at the end, and will presumably resume kidnapping women and taking their blood as soon as the coast is clear.

And if you’re wondering why I thought of Star Trek, just take a look at these screenshots:

Yeah, doesn’t exactly scream horror, does it? The score is pretty Trek-like too, which doesn't help. There are really only two sequences in the movie where I knew I was watching a horror flick. One was early on, as our heroine is trapped in a sewer and trying to avoid being taken (spoiler: she fails). Obviously we know how it will play out or else there’s no movie, but it’s still a decent little chase scene, and makes good use of the sewer locale (read: she gets scared by rats). The other is near the end, when the shriveled, zombie-like women who have been drained of blood start striking back at the cult, crawling out of their cages and swarming the place. And this occurs with about 20 minutes to go, so I was excited about a Day of the Dead type finale, with the audience cheering on the zombies as they tore apart the evil humans. But there’s no such luck here – the “zombies” cease attacking and actually run away at the first real sign of opposition (a guy waving a torch), and their entire “mutiny” ends seconds later. Lame.

And that’s the whole problem with the movie: there’s no tension or danger. Our four kidnapped heroines never really seem upset with their predicament (one almost seems to welcome it), and the cult doesn’t “make an example” and kill one of them early on in order to raise the stakes. In fact, they don’t kill ANY of them; only one of the four dies and it’s more or less her own fault, falling off a ledge as she fights with the main girl. And the cult dude is way too pleasant and flowery to be menacing even BEFORE he “turns” (plus he looks like the dark haired dude from Air Supply, which meant I spent the entire movie hoping he’d bust out “Sweet Dreams” or something).

Plus the ending is just a total anti-climax; the girls escape thanks to a guy in a jeep that happened to be driving by (the sight of a car after an hour of Trek-y looking costumes and such actually disoriented me a bit), and then they try to bring authorities to the cult’s lair, but can’t find them. That’s it. No fight, not even a minor victory. It’s fine to have the evil folks get away at the end, but you have to offer some kind of triumphant moment for the heroines (and no, simply escaping doesn’t count, since most of the cult members weren’t even trying to chase them). Take Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning – as it is a prequel, they can’t really kill anyone, but they at least have the Jordana Brewster character cause some serious injuries to them, offering the audience a bit of a crowd-pleasing moment. And then she dies, which also would have been acceptable here. At least if the cult killed them all, I could be like “Wow, grim ending.” But this isn’t grim OR satisfactory, it just sort of stops.

It’s also way too melodramatic. The girls argue like they’re in a soap opera, the main girl and the cult dude talk about their feelings and such... even the cult member squabbles seem like they were taken from Dynasty or something. For a group of people who need blood to survive, you’d think they’d cause bodily harm more often instead of just yammering on and on or making angry eyes at someone (and then yammering on and on). Who the hell was the audience for this movie? My only guess would be that it worked as a nice transitional piece for Trek fans who were moving on to Guiding Light.

Oddly, this is like the best transfer I've seen from the Creek in ages; letterboxed transfer, crystal clear image, clear sound... the type of thing I wish I saw all the time on here. So why couldn't it be for a movie I actually like? When I really like the movie, it looks like mush (i.e. Cathy's Curse). I can't win.

What say you?

Completing the Trollogy

I know I did not need to see Troll in order to see Troll 2. The two most famous things about Troll 2 are 1) it doesn't have any trolls in it, and 2) it doesn't have anything to do with the original Troll.

But I thought it would be funny to launch the experience of watching Troll 2 and Best Worst Movie, last year's documentary about the cult phenomenon of Troll 2, by giving the first Troll a whirl. With a few notable exceptions, I like to try to see movies in a "franchise" in the sequence they were released, and besides, seeing Troll would allow me to appreciate just how little it has to do with Troll 2 -- even though "nothing" is as little as one movie can have to do with another.

Boy oh boy.

You can imagine my shock when I thought Troll was easily among the bottom five percent of movies I've seen. How much worse could Troll 2 actually be?

Boy oh boy.

But keeping with my general philosophy, let's tackle these babies in order.

Troll (1985, John Carl Buechler). Watched: Monday, March 7th

I was laughing out loud from the start. Actually, the expulsions of involuntary noise from my mouth alternated between laughter and cries of "What?!"

The story is basically that a family moves into a new apartment, and their daughter, playing in the laundry room, is immediately possessed by a troll. The troll looked so absolutely ridiculous that I couldn't imagine for a moment being "scared" by it. (I believe this was the first time I yelled "What?!") Oh, and the troll has a magic crystal green ring that gives off cheesy sparkles from time to time.

From here the girl begins to act "weird" -- but because the poor little actress is so untalented, her version of "weird" could not help but be absurd. But that's just the beginning of the absurdity. This family (led by paterfamilias Michael Moriarity) lives upstairs from a goofy swinger played by Sonny Bono. Bono gets mad at the family because they make too much noise, and it affects his ability to woo his women. Then Julia Louis Dreyfus is in it as well. I think she is mostly seen in exercise gear.

The girl's brother ends up meeting a woman in the building (June Lockhart) who reveals to him that she's a witch. (A good witch, like in The Wizard of Oz.) Then there's something about the troll world starting to break through into the human world, which involves all the tenants of the building being transformed into mythical creatures, their apartments turning into lush green forests, and a lot of singing and chanting by really cheap-ass-looking trolls. The big finale involves a giant bat creature. The end.

The best thing about Troll is that the main character is named ... wait for it ... Harry Potter. Actually, there's Harry Potter Sr. (Moriarity) and Harry Potter Jr. (Noah Hathaway, the boy). How great is that? There have always been accusations that J.K. Rowling stole the Harry Potter character from someone else, but this is ridiculous.

Troll 2 (1990, Drake Floyd). Watched: Saturday, March 19th

Troll 2 was so bad that I had to start taking notes about ten minutes in, just so I could remember it all. As luck would have it, I forgot those notes at home. That's probably just as well, as I hope that some of you have already seen it, and that those of you who haven't will want to come in with a pristine mind, ready for the awfulness to hit you in a fresh wave.

Then there will be those of you who saw Best Worst Movie but not Troll 2, and will have seen some of the choicest nuggets there. However, I thought Best Worst Movie missed some of the best parts, so I'll mention a couple of those here.

First things first with a little plot synopsis. As we said previously, the movie has nothing to do with trolls. While that's a pretty good single-sentence condemnation of the movie -- "It's called Troll 2, but it doesn't have any trolls!" -- it doesn't represent a complete picture of what was going on here. The makers of Troll 2 -- director Claudio Fragasso (using the "super American" pseudonym "Drake Floyd") and screenwriter Rossella Drudi -- set out to make a movie called Goblin, and there are, indeed, plenty of goblins in the movie. The movie was later associated with Troll merely as an attempt to capitalize on an existing brand (and that explains why the credits look so incredibly shoddy as well).

Okay, so this family goes to do a "house exchange" from "the city" (the city is never named, but it's talked around in hilarious ways) to the country town of Nilbog (It's "goblin" spelled backwards! But I'm getting ahead of myself). When they arrive, it's clear that the townspeople are very strange, starting with the fact that they do a lot of staring and offering of green-colored food. It turns out the town is populated by goblins temporarily assuming human form, who are vegetarians, and want to turn this family (and other humans who stray into the area) into plants in order to eat them. Only the plot is so much more convoluted than that brief description.

What makes Troll 2 so bad is the unique combination of horrible acting, directing, screenwriting, cinematography, special effects, costumes and sets. Everything about this movie is bad and illogical, even down to details that you'd think would be simple. For example, when the family first arrives in town, and there's no one to be found wherever they look, the father surmises that "Everyone must be sleeping at this time of night," or something to that effect. Only it's so bright outside, the actors must actually squint. Night? Indeed.

Think that dialogue is bad? How about when the father (played by George Hardy) continues to try to sell the virtues of "our city" (which is how he refers to it repeatedly), saying that about their house, "It's got a microwave and video, all the other appliances. A refrigerator? Bar?" I may never have taken Real Estate 101, but you don't usually try to promote the fact that a house has a refrigerator to get people interested in it.

A couple other funny bits that I want to mention:

The young boy in the family keeps on being helped out by his dead Grandpa Seth, who appears in mirrors and other locations, as well as sometimes in the flesh. Near the end, Grandpa Seth helps him make a Molotov cocktail to try to use as a weapon against the goblins. Awesome.

At one point, Grandpa Seth tells the boy that he has only 30 seconds to stop his family from eating a bunch of green food that's been laid out for them to eat as a form of hospitality. Time is frozen as each family member has a glass of green juice or a slice of green cake poised just in front of their lips. The 30-second timeframe is entirely blown out of the water when the kid then spends (I kid you not) the next 90 seconds of screen time slowly moving around the dinner table where his family is seated, looking at each one as he supposedly comes up with his idea. It's so ridiculously elongated that you wonder why 30 seconds was given as the timeframe in the first place.

Wait, I found my notes. Sweet. They were in my email.

I'll try to limit myself, but I do want to give you a few more great parts:

The mother discovers what appears to be milk in the refrigerator, but it comes out in gelatinous chunks. She says "It must be a week old!"

"Daddy, they're goblins! Monstrous beings!"

Father, to his daughter's boyfriend: "You give me a bad impression!"

Mother: "Sing that song I love!"
Son: "Row row row your boat, gently down the stream ..."

The father loosens his belt. The son, who has just pissed on the food they were going to eat (his way of preventing them from eating it -- pretty smart actually), naturally feels he is going to be whipped by the belt. Son: "Dad, what're you going to do?" Father: "Tighten my belt one loop so I won't feel hunger pains. And your mother and sister will have to do the same!"

I could go on with the individual moments. But one of the oddest structural things about the movie is that an inordinate amount of time is spent on the adventures of very secondary characters. The daughter in the family has a boyfriend who tags along on the trip in his Winnebago, with three of his friends -- it's a source of constant conflict that he won't make the choice of her over his friends. As it turns out, at least two of these friends go off on long adventures on their own, during which none of the central family is seen for long periods of time. And the one of these friends who stays behind in the Winnebago is seduced by the lead goblin, in the human form of a gothic witch type (the best overacting you've ever seen is by actress Deborah Reed in this role). Her method of seduction? She comes on to him with an ear of corn, and the Winnebago fills with popcorn as they bump and grind. Incidentally, this is the last his character is heard from, even though nothing apparently happens to him during the popcorn incident.

The finale involves a lot of fake -- like, really, really fake -- lightning bolts, a lot of exploding goblins, some kind of magical stone, and a bologna sandwich. I think.

Best Worst Movie (2010, Michael Paul Stephenson). Watched: Sunday, April 24th

We would have watched Best Worst Movie about two weeks earlier if it had still been available on Netflix streaming. In fact, we were all lined up to watch it, then it wasn't there. So we acquired it on DVD and lined it up for this past Sunday night.

Best Worst Movie should be on your radar, but if it isn't, it's a documentary made by the boy who stars in Troll 2, Michael Paul Stephenson. The most featured character in the doc is George Hardy, who played his father, and who has had a successful dental practice in Alabama for 20 years now since the movie came out. The movie is basically about how Hardy and the other actors in the movie (even the bit parts) come to recognize that Troll 2 is considered the worst movie ever made, which means it has legions of devoted fans who love it, throwing watching parties and even putting together sold-out screenings where the cast is revered like rock stars. The movie does a little bit of examining how Troll 2 became such a disaster, and a lot of following of the actors as they negotiate their newfound semi-fame.

There are a lot of interesting things to be gleaned from Best Worst Movie, and if it hadn't existed, I probably would have never known to see Troll 2. However, I have to say that it did not deliver quite the punch I was hoping. For starters, the director, Stephenson, is more a fly-on-the-wall (stealing an observation from the guy who reviewed it for my site) in this movie -- he directs, narrates a bit and appears a number of times, but he doesn't seem to bring that much of himself to the project. In other words, the movie might just as well have been made by someone not associated with Troll 2 as by him, without there being much of a difference.

He's right that the affable dentist is his most colorful character, and it's fun to watch Hardy temporarily trade in small-town dentistry for the cult circuit in which he is cheered and constantly asked to repeat his most famous line from the movie ("You can't piss on hospitality! I won't allow it!"). The movie also contains some interesting info about the life of the movie, which never played in theaters, instead premiering on VHS and HBO -- in fact, many of the actors didn't even know it had been finished. There's also priceless stuff with the crazy Italian director, Claudio Fragasso, who stubbornly insists that Troll 2 is good, not so bad it's good. He appears at many of these Troll 2-related events and shouts down the actors who are trying to go with the commonly accepted narrative about the film, which is that it's only great because it's awful.

Stephenson also gets several third-party observers to make interesting comments about what makes a good or a bad movie. For example, if people want to repeatedly watch Troll 2 -- and the rabid cult following features fans who have watched it dozens of times -- then does it turn our whole idea of what's good and what's bad on its head? Is it really "bad" if it brings so much joy to people? Another interesting observations is that there is no cynicism apparent in the making of Troll 2. One film scholar talks about having seen lots of terrible movies that were thrown together shoddily because the filmmakers were cynical and just didn't care. Only by trying to make a good movie and failing so spectacularly does a film like Troll 2 become possible.

One thing that bummed me out, and I still can't find a satisfactory answer, is why the goblin queen, Deborah Reed, makes no appearance in this movie. Not only does she not appear, but barely any footage of her outrageous acting is sampled in the movie. What's even stranger is that the cast, in trying to reach the recluse Margo Prey (who plays the mother and is arguably the worst actor in the movie), tells her that she (Margo) will be the only cast member who won't be present for a particular screening of the movie, when clearly Reed will also be absent. I would have loved to have heard more about Reed -- even if she had a legal dispute of some sort that led to her not appearing or in fact trying to block footage of herself from the film, I'd have liked the movie to touch on that in some way, instead of just leaving the glaring omission.

Okay, I think I'm all talked out about this Trollogy.

However, I can't leave you without acknowledging that there is, in fact, a Troll 3, which would perhaps make the true third installment in my Trollogy. I just learned about the existence of this movie yesterday. Apparently, it also is directed by Italians, and it also has nothing to do with either Troll or Troll 2. Seeming perfectly true to form, it is also known by other titles -- several, in fact: Creepers, Contamination .7, Troll III: Contamination Point 7 and The Crawlers. I suspect it is not nearly so bad -- so good? -- as Troll or Troll 2, which is why we don't know anything about it. In fact, Best Worst Movie basically does not even acknowledge it exists, as one of the last things Stephenson asks Hardy is if he would star in Troll 3. (He says he would.) In fact, Troll 3, such as it is, was made way back in 1993.

And it's available for instant streaming on Netflix.

Perhaps my troll in the hay isn't complete yet after all.