tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24916997603102019742024-02-06T22:22:41.983-08:00House of HauntsDave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.comBlogger69125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-42964171030788267912013-04-05T07:57:00.001-07:002013-04-05T07:57:23.430-07:00EVIL DEAD (2013)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2X8NA5N1vFuQzNPSNq5uBQvH2SvkbXGMQo2yTbJetWzCTO20Z4lKcNfyNcUWQEK4grO380Z8yIXpNZMWV-VMJ3TjQ4Gz0i0JAad3KkfNlmdKag8jIA9t60lOn7Y8D7XGRpBsOf9LDJQM/s1600/ED2013poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2X8NA5N1vFuQzNPSNq5uBQvH2SvkbXGMQo2yTbJetWzCTO20Z4lKcNfyNcUWQEK4grO380Z8yIXpNZMWV-VMJ3TjQ4Gz0i0JAad3KkfNlmdKag8jIA9t60lOn7Y8D7XGRpBsOf9LDJQM/s320/ED2013poster.jpg" /></a>
Fede Alvarez’s 2013 <i>Evil Dead</i> is probably closest to Zack Snyder’s 2004 <i>Dawn Of The Dead</i> remake in style and execution. Both films take a cherished low-budget classic and, while sticking fairly close to the setups of their predecessors, they cycle in new characters and ramp up the action/blood/intensity for a faster, meanier, gorier approach. In our current heyday of PG-13 horror and toothless, unimaginative spook-em-ups, the commitment these filmmakers show to bloody mayhem is welcome, but the new model <i>Evil Dead</i>, like Snyder’s <i>Dawn</i> before it, still only manages to be occasionally diverting, but ultimately disposable. In both cases, there’s no substitute for the cheapo charm of the original.
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<i>Evil Dead</i> 2013 (which was produced by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell) starts off with an intriguing but confusing prologue—intriguing, because it hints at a broader mythology for this version of the story, but confusing because it never bothers to deliver on it. We see the fiery conclusion of one girl’s demonic possession, taking place in the basement of the series’ now-familiar cabin in the woods. Then, some time later, a group of five friends arrive at the cabin—not for a weekend of hard partying in the usual horror-film tradition, but so that drug-addicted Mia (Jane Levy) can dry out in the company of her concerned pals. The gang decides that, no matter what she says or does, Mia will not be allowed to leave the woods until the weekend is over and she’s gone completely cold turkey. This promising angle, which ensures that the kids actually have a good reason to stay in the cabin when things get weird, is ditched all too quickly since Mia is the first to fall under the spell of what lurks within the woods (an evil unleashed when one of the gang finds a creepy book bound up in barb wire and, of course, proceeds to read from it). At first, Mia’s increasingly crazed behaviour is dismissed as symptoms of drug withdrawal, but it isn’t long before the demonic infection spreads to the others, leading to an outbreak of self-mutilation, trash-talking, and all manner of goo and glop spewing out of character’s faces.
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You have to admire how the new <i>Evil Dead</i> gleefully goes for the gross-out (largely achieved through practical effects rather than CGI, always a plus. Apparently several cuts were made to ensure an R rating, but even so, this has got to be the bloodiest horror flick to get a wide release in quite some time. That being said, beyond the troubled family history between Mia and her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez), the characters are so thinly drawn that it’s hard to get emotionally involved when they all start cutting each other into bloody chunks. I kept forgetting that one character, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), was even <i>in</i> the movie. I can’t imagine that her character had much description in the screenplay beyond “blonde hair/David’s girlfriend”, if her total lack of personality traits of any kind is any indication. The standout in the cast, by way of default, is Lou Taylor Pucci’s Eric, if only because hipster fashion has come around again to the point that his now-weirdly-contemporary plaid shirt, long hair, and Chief Brody-sized eyeglasses make him look like…the victim in an early 1980s horror movie, appropriately enough.
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But beyond the rehab angle and the demonic, candle-headed boss beast in the demonic tome (who, sadly, never appears beyond the blood-printed page), <i>Evil Dead</i> doesn’t bring enough new to the table. The evil spirits are given a face this time, in the form of the ghoulish girl from the prologue, but this has the weird effect of making the threat seem smaller rather than bigger (if you can defeat the evil by chopping it into pieces with a chainsaw, it’s really not all that insurmountable, is it?). One can only assume that the mythology teased out by screenwriters Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues, and Diablo Cody is dropped in to tantalize viewers back for an inevitable sequel, which is exactly the kind of breadcrumb-dropping storytelling cheat that made <i>Prometheus</i> such a stinker last year. Far too much of genre filmmaking these days is about luring viewers in with the promise of something new, and then, in the wake of a pile of unanswered questions, winkingly suggesting that you hang in there for Part II. Commendable for its carnage, but forgettable due to its flimsiness, <i>Evil Dead</i> 2013 feels regrettably incomplete and, as such, as unnecessary as most other horror remakes. Give me Sam Raimi chasing Bruce Campbell around the forest with a camera any day of the week.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-62910099578280014882013-04-01T11:47:00.001-07:002013-04-01T11:47:57.207-07:00Curse Of The Werewolf-Themed 45s!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitnUSAs_nk_DhPYwm-pwMl75-SE08hwOGrAW5avcVP2gEfw4acnd4fJepKUm5qNaxiDdUcNRC7Y67RS7Mm3cB7z-gd_FlEZxM55X8PwcVD8q90phlXyeSUTIojw6aDm4pxV549SUTrDk0/s1600/wwbn.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitnUSAs_nk_DhPYwm-pwMl75-SE08hwOGrAW5avcVP2gEfw4acnd4fJepKUm5qNaxiDdUcNRC7Y67RS7Mm3cB7z-gd_FlEZxM55X8PwcVD8q90phlXyeSUTIojw6aDm4pxV549SUTrDk0/s320/wwbn.jpg" /></a>
My folks had my girlfriend Hillary and I out for Easter dinner yesterday, and they graciously allowed me to rummage through their old collection of 45 RPM records and take whichever ones caught my eye. Y'see, they don't have a working record player anymore, and we're reasonably new to <a href="http://houseofhaunts.blogspot.ca/2013/01/death-waltz-recording-company.html">the whole vinyl collecting craze</a>, so I guess they figured all these singles would have a better home with us than where they were--in a big pile underneath the china hutch. Needless to say, it was a real treasure trove of campy singles that probably hadn't been spun in about thirty years, like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Q3orQhEcA">the theme to <i>The Greatest American Hero</i></a> (or, if you prefer, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ria37d9mInY">George Costanza's answering machine greeting</a>), and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD7XkD5scTI">"General Hospi-tale"</a>, a late disco/early rap novelty song designed to cash in on the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzU2UYtGKMA">Luke & Laura-era</a> <i>General Hospital</i> craze of 1981. There were also some cool finds that didn't mean much to me as a kid but are favourites now, like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKvo_NyeTcs">Helen Reddy's "Delta Dawn"</a> (AKA the song that plays at the end of the little-seen but terrific Patton Oswalt movie <i>Big Fan</i>), and The Monkees' <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnzrGr78Mws">"Goin' Down"</a> (which was featured in a great meth-making montage on the last season of <i>Breaking Bad</i>). But strangest of all, there seemed to be a recurring strain of lycanthropy-themed cuts in there too...or maybe that's just my <a href="http://houseofhaunts.blogspot.ca/2011/09/wolfen.html">werewolf-obsessed brain</a> connecting the dots. You be the judge.
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgql69QrB48icOt6wtjv8Uj0ZwZF4IcCSc3VPqvpA4WPNztKjWfDwROR_rT6xTnWxCSqYTvN0wXy15LFnJiI3JcTGegl9kKS-yiTOKwshyphenhyphenbuXUboISMo3vXyJXFJd4HeTCvaPoSm5eaAzc/s1600/werewolf45.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgql69QrB48icOt6wtjv8Uj0ZwZF4IcCSc3VPqvpA4WPNztKjWfDwROR_rT6xTnWxCSqYTvN0wXy15LFnJiI3JcTGegl9kKS-yiTOKwshyphenhyphenbuXUboISMo3vXyJXFJd4HeTCvaPoSm5eaAzc/s320/werewolf45.jpg" /></a>
First of all, there was the above number. Most people know the Five Man Electrical Band as the act behind the counterculture anthem <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYsBDmqJfjQ">"Signs"</a>, but to me, they will always be the guys who, for whatever reason, recorded <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHTc5n8aY-g">this chilling tale of shapeshifting and sheep slaughter</a>. Okay, maybe not <i>quite </i>chilling, but as a kid, I was pretty fascinated with the idea that anyone would record a pop song about such a terrifying subject. From the ominous opening ("Mama said/there's something weird 'bout Billy...") to the shrill, screamy chorus ("Is it any wonder we hate to see the sun go dooooown..."), the song is like a cool little horror movie in miniature. For the record, I still like it better than "Signs".
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And then there was this. It's no secret that <a href="http://houseofhaunts.blogspot.ca/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2012-10-25T05:27:00-07:00&max-results=31&start=13&by-date=false"><i>An American Werewolf In London</i></a> is one of my all-time favourite horror flicks, and I'm sure that at some point I must have become aware that its star, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQPN3UKQM-U">David Naughton</a>, was a pop singer. But I must have repressed that memory, because this sure came as a shock to me. It's a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F47AfASOnA8">pretty silly, but not entirely un-catchy, disco number</a>, but I feel like the future David Kessler must have known that pop stardom wasn't in the cards. Considering that the B-side is the forgettable reprise "Still Makin' It", I think he had a pretty good idea of his inevitable one-hit wonder status.
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And finally, not really a werewolf song, but its inclusion in <i>An American Werewolf In London</i> makes for a nice little trilogy here. Nearly twenty years ago, I created a minicomic about a werewolf that took its name from this song, and, my love for CCR aside, I'll always have a soft spot for this song because of it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go fire up the record player and listen to Jeannie C. Riley sing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOZPBUu7Fro">"Harper Valley PTA"</a> one more time.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-56248991526241012792013-03-06T15:51:00.001-08:002013-03-06T15:51:50.414-08:00The Last Exorcism And Then Some, Apparently<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgelufJj15o9-fevR9pSkaJt-7_pIDeXJoWkIHev01igzaHlz5M6CorNvpLRRJXe1N3O21XAyZ8hbxZA9TlElhR9_8dujSIEGQ_S4Hc05EoodS48851j7URBPFh-tunZDtWLtJ41spqeOw/s1600/lastex2.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgelufJj15o9-fevR9pSkaJt-7_pIDeXJoWkIHev01igzaHlz5M6CorNvpLRRJXe1N3O21XAyZ8hbxZA9TlElhR9_8dujSIEGQ_S4Hc05EoodS48851j7URBPFh-tunZDtWLtJ41spqeOw/s320/lastex2.jpg" /></a>
The current found-footage horror craze began in 1999 with the still-effective <i>The Blair Witch Project</i>, a movie that ditched its videotaped format for a more traditional narrative with its first (and mercifully, only) sequel, the dreadful <i>Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2</i>. One of the more moderately successful found-footage knockoffs, 2010's <i>The Last Exorcism</i>, loses the shaky, handheld camera for its sequel as well. The cinematic conceit of a camera crew capturing an exorcism as it's being performed on a naive, demon-possessed farm girl was the chief obstacle to the original <i>Last Exorcism</i> being a better film, I thought. A potentially interesting third-act twist gave way to a hasty, unfulfilling wrap-up, since the story reached a point where no one in their right mind would still be holding a camera or a boom mike--they'd be running for their lives instead. <i>The Last Exorcism Part II </i>(a title only slightly less laughable than, say, <i>I Still Know What You Did Last Summer</i>) may have jettisoned one overused trend, but it replaces it with an even more annoying one. Like last month's <a href="http://houseofhaunts.blogspot.ca/2013/03/dark-skies-2013.html"><i>Dark Skies</i></a>, this is another movie that features eighty or so minutes of frustratingly vague buildup, followed by ten minutes of confusing, mostly offscreen mayhem, followed quickly by the end credits...and, presumably, another installment to come.
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdV43GDYKMdvCxIMSDAbxi9Cwjexb0rhS586aP4bT4v5bjZ5olH272KWqfVZOywR77VGyFE1qm_ZpgvcdTmAotNw_x3-XqLkt2odirEiRVGwrniKS-qE3GAvC1-LcPjRIAe5POhNhij50/s1600/Ashley-Bell-in-The-Last-Exorcism-2-2013-Movie-Image.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdV43GDYKMdvCxIMSDAbxi9Cwjexb0rhS586aP4bT4v5bjZ5olH272KWqfVZOywR77VGyFE1qm_ZpgvcdTmAotNw_x3-XqLkt2odirEiRVGwrniKS-qE3GAvC1-LcPjRIAe5POhNhij50/s320/Ashley-Bell-in-The-Last-Exorcism-2-2013-Movie-Image.jpg" /></a>
The movie opens somewhat promisingly as Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell) mysteriously appears in a New Orleans couple's home, dirty, dishevelled, and with no memory of what happened to her in the first film. I can relate--I haven't seen it since it was first released, and other than a <i>Rosemary's Baby</i>-style twist about a cult that wanted the baby she had inside her, it's kind of a blur, and the new film doesn't do a lot to explain it either. Anyway, Nell winds up in a home for troubled girls, where she is set up with a job cleaning rooms in a hotel. The shy, repressed young girl begins to open up and make friends, first with the other girls in the home and later with a co-worker (Spencer Treat Clark--Bruce Willis' kid from <i>Unbreakable</i>, all grown up). However, it's not long before Nell starts being tormented by weird phone calls, the ghost of her father, and out-of-focus figures lurking in the background, and her new life starts to unravel when clips of her exorcism are found by her housemates on YouTube (begging the annoyingly unanswered question--who exactly uploaded the footage?). The demon Abalam is not done with her yet, it seems, and a mysterious (and frankly, pretty incompetent) organization of do-gooders takes one last stab at purging Nell of her infernal suitor.
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William Friedkin's classic original <i>The Exorcist</i> turns 40 this year, and the fact that people are still ripping it off today is a testament to that film's power. Even though the idea of a loved one suddenly acting like a hostile, dangerous stranger is a scary idea, none of the annual knockoffs really ever seem to bring much new to the table. The original <i>Last Exorcism</i> at least tried to meld it with the found-footage trend, but the sequel doesn't even have that going for it. Ashley Bell, with her strangely old/young features, is effective and sympathetic, but the first film also had Patrick Fabian as the charming, funny priest who tries to save her. No one else in this film leaves much of an impression, and Bell can only do so much on her own. Director Ed Gass-Donnelly gives it his best shot, with lots of attempts to convey a creepy, paranoiac atmosphere during brightly-lit afternoon scenes, but he falls back too much on the ol' "made ya jump" combination of two or three frames of something scary undercut by a loud noise. As in the first movie, Nell has a weird fondness for red <a href="http://www.dmusastore.com/?gclid=CIjngIij6bUCFdFT4AodISoAKQ">Doc Martens</a>, but I'm not quite sure what they're supposed to be a symbol for. Tempation? Materialism? An out-of-place reference to <i>The Wizard Of Oz</i>? Once again, producer Eli Roth proves himself to be a canny capitalist, making this movie on the cheap for a quick turnaround on his investment (the movie already made its budget back on a still-lackluster opening weekend of $7 million), but too many mediocre movies like this with his name on them can only hurt his legacy as a horror icon. I've still got high hopes for Roth's upcoming <a href="https://signup.netflix.com/">Netflix</a> series <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjLVD1G6Gd8"><i>Hemlock Grove</i></a> (debuting this April), but I hope and pray that this <i>Exorcism </i>truly is his last.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-49634457581689632842013-03-05T07:31:00.002-08:002013-03-05T07:31:33.305-08:00Dark Skies (2013)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilaySK1U5qTaETKyMQC7k7ZWqP-VUWEenRWuV8qHgUi6JvnxDRVSkA0d5hihtaj8Nt44NqKvhzlktSKKBmtjhvSmcBqZZOF9TsqfBT4ONNX8vpl-VGous5LGUV86RJg9A_xzVlMBaId2M/s1600/dark-skies-poster-535x792.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilaySK1U5qTaETKyMQC7k7ZWqP-VUWEenRWuV8qHgUi6JvnxDRVSkA0d5hihtaj8Nt44NqKvhzlktSKKBmtjhvSmcBqZZOF9TsqfBT4ONNX8vpl-VGous5LGUV86RJg9A_xzVlMBaId2M/s320/dark-skies-poster-535x792.jpg" /></a>
In the sleepy slump period between the end of Oscar Season and the beginning of Summer Blockbuster Season, you can always count on at least <i>one</i> demon possession thriller hitting the multiplexes. March already has one such release--the Eli Roth-produced <i>Last Exorcism Part II</i>--but writer-director Scott Stewart's new alien abduction flick <i>Dark Skies</i> could just as easily fall into this same category. The sinister alien invaders who torment the film's family might as well just be demons from hell, given their penchant for ominous tomfoolery and nightly visitations. The result is a fairly shameless cross between <i>Poltergeist</i> and <i>Signs</i> (<i>PolterSigns</i>?) with a healthy dash of the <i>Paranormal Activity</i> franchise thrown in for good measure.
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The Barrett family--realtor mom Lacy (Keri Russell), out-of-work architect dad Daniel (Josh Hamilton), teenaged Jesse (Dakota Goyo), and youngest son Sam (Kadan Rockett)--are an average family that finds itself at the mercy of all sorts of creepy goings-on, both in the daytime and after dark. Sam starts spacing out weirdly, shrieking in a high-pitched squeal, publicly wetting himself, and exhibiting weird bruises on his body. Lacy witnesses a mass avian suicide of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE5dJDgZ644"><i>Birdemic</i></a> proportions and starts smacking her head into a window. Daniel sleepwalks out into the yard in the middle of the night, and Lacy finds him making an "O" face while staring off into nothing. And Jesse experiences strange electrical disturbances, like streetlights inexplicably going out one by one as he bikes home. Objects are piled up mysteriously in the kitchen <i>Poltergeist</i>-style, and all the family photos in the living room go missing. While Daniel sets up an expensive new home-security system (that keeps being mysteriously triggered by nobody, seemingly) and a series of surveillance cameras that go all staticky whenever anything spooky happens, Lacy becomes obsessed with online accounts of alien visitations. She and Daniel meet with a UFO conspiracy nut (J.K. Simmons) who tells them that their youngest son may be targeted for abduction. The Barretts batten down the hatches for a final showdown, not realizing that the alien invaders may in fact have a different target in mind.
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<i>Dark Skies</i> does its best to tap into certain societal anxieties that would provide an interesting spine to a better story; the family's money woes and Daniel's job search take up a lot of screen time, as does a subplot about the bad influence of an older boy Jesse hangs out with, not to mention the fact that the suspicious bruises on Sam's torso make the Barrett parents into neighbourhood pariahs. However, all these subplots <i>really</i> do is try and divert attention away from the fact that <i>Dark Skies</i> doesn't have an original idea in its head. Why else would the filmmakers spend so much screen time on Daniel's largely unsuccessful job hunt, only to have him find employment late in the second act and never bring it up again? Why devote so many scenes to Jesse and his oafish pal getting into trouble when they ultimately have no real bearing on the larger plot? Former VFX artist Scott Stewart sets the scene nicely--<i>Dark Skies</i> is a well-shot, confidently directed film--but most of the running time is devoted to trying to make us care about the characters, all of which is worthless without a satisfactory predicament to put them in. The film's Big Twist is incredibly obvious, and a brief postscript shows the remaining family members putting the pieces together three months too late to do anything about it. <i>Dark Skies</i> wants you to look to the skies in fear, but it'll most likely have you looking at your watch.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-29253016366246995732013-02-04T08:28:00.001-08:002013-02-04T08:28:19.502-08:00Every Witch Way But Loose: HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When the logo for Will Ferrell and Adam MacKay’s Gary Sanchez Productions comes up before the opening sequence of <i>Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters</i>, it’s easy to believe you’re about to see a new high-concept comedy. After all, why would the creators of <i>Anchorman</i> and <i>Talladega Nights</i> be dipping their toes into the current fairy-tale craze, if not to spoof it? The elements of humour that do creep into the next ninety or so minutes are the most successful, as it turns out. But when this horror/steampunk/action mashup slides into familiar summer blockbuster territory, the going gets tedious and you start wishing that more of the movie was played for laughs.
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In a prologue, we are shown the familiar origin of fairytale foundlings Hansel and Gretel. At the urging of their mother, the two tykes are led into the deep, dark forest and abandoned by their dad. Wandering through the woods, the kids soon find a house made out of candy, and are abducted by the carnivorous witch within. A daring, nick-of-time breakout ensues, in which we learn that Gretel is mysteriously immune to the witch’s dark magic, and the children free themselves by stuffing their captor inside her own stove and burning her alive. Having developed a taste for witch-snuffing, the two grow up to become bounty hunters played by Jeremy Renner (<i>The Avengers</i>, <i>The Bourne Legacy</i>) and Gemma Arterton (<i>Quantum Of Solace</i>, <i>Clash Of The Titans</i>) with a massive arsenal and a specialty in dispatching spell-casting, broom-riding uglies (the opening credits montage shows their development in the form of woodcut-newspaper headlines, the first of many anachronistic touches). Asked to help find the witches responsible for a rash of child abductions—represented by woodcut illustrations attached to the sides of milk bottles!—the siblings run afoul of a slinky sorceress (Famke Janssen) with a plan to make her kind indestructible by sacrificing a dozen kids and ushering in a new age of darkness. Along the way, H and G make friends with a nice witch (Ingrid Bolso Berdal), make enemies with a local sheriff (<i>Fargo</i>’s Peter Stormare), and make use of crossbows, a gatling gun, and a couple of new allies, in the form of a medieval fanboy (Thomas Mann) and a hulking troll named Edward.
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<i>Dead Snow </i>director Tommy Wirkola, who also wrote the script, doesn’t skimp on the gore or the profanity here, but his action scenes are an impossible-to-follow barrage of quick cuts and CGI effects. The tone is all over the place, bouncing from a welcome comedic feel to straight-faced badassery without skipping a beat. The recent obsession with fairy tale-themed stories—no doubt due to their household-name familiarity and their public-domain status—is well overdue for a tweaking, but Wirkola never fully commits to it. <i>Hansel & Gretel</i>’s release was delayed for several months, possibly as a result of frantic re-editing to find a proper tone, and the final result is, perhaps inevitably, schizophrenic. Renner and Arterton are adequate, but neither of them brings anything particularly memorable to the movie, and why would they? Despite a yearning for their true origins, and a pointless subplot about Renner’s proto-Diabetes (caused by his witchy abductor making him eat too much candy—seriously!), their characters are barely sketched in. The movie earns points for its refreshing violence and profanity, and the sheer craziness of its finale, which reenacts the closing gatling-gun massacre of <i>The Wild Bunch</i> (only with a bunch of stuntwomen in monster makeup instead of Mexicans), but it’s not enough. The movie contains one startlingly cool special effect in the form of the troll Edward—portrayed by Derek Mears (Jason Voorhees in <i>Freddy Vs. Jason</i>), the lumbering behemoth is achieved through a combination of an oversized prosthetic costume and an animatronic face that conveys a lot more emotion than you’d expect. It’s the kind of old-fashioned practical effect that movies like <i>Hansel & Gretel</i> could use more of. Sadly, though, most of the movies skews towards generic CGI and even more generic action, which leaves the film’s end-credits promise of a continuing franchise about as appealing a proposition as a mouldering, rancid gingerbread house.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-19351618249443033042013-01-18T06:39:00.000-08:002013-01-18T07:06:45.831-08:00MAMA Said Knock You Out<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The films of Guillermo Del Toro trade in a very specific type of fairytale dread. Whether it’s the insectile horror of <i>Cronos</i> and <i>Mimic</i>, the wartime fantasia of <i>The Devil’s Backbone</i> and <i>Pan’s Labyrinth</i>, or the heroic monsters of <i>Hellboy</i> and its sequel, <i>The Golden Army</i>, Del Toro takes a weirdly childlike approach to things that go bump in the night. And even though he only produced <i>Mama</i>—it was directed by Andres Muschietti, who co-wrote it with his sister Barbara—the film has Del Toro’s stamp all over it, even beginning with a title card that reads “Once Upon A Time”.
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In a prologue, an investment banker (<i>Game Of Thrones</i>’ Nicolaj Coster-Waldau) murders his colleagues and his wife, then flees with his young daughters Lilly and Victoria down a snowy mountain highway. The car crashes, and, wandering through the forest, the family finds a creepy, deserted shack. A murder-suicide seems imminent, but is prevented by the arrival of an out-of-focus <i>something</i> that dispatches dad and befriends the girls. Fast forward five years later, where we learn the banker’s twin brother Lucas has never given up the search for his nieces. A pair of hunters find the girls living like animals in the wilderness. The girls claim that they survived with the help of a supernatural guardian they call “Mama”, and a psychiatrist allows their uncle to take them home. Lucas’ wife Annabel (Jessica Chastain, nearly unrecognizable with close-cropped hair, tattoos, and heavy eye makeup), has no interest in raising a pair of feral girls…particularly once it becomes apparent that their not-quite-imaginary friend has followed them home.
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<i>Mama</i> was adapted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRqS6pBC42w">from a short film</a> by the Muschiettis, and the strain in adapting a two-and-a-half minute short to feature length is visible. It’s a slow-moving film, with plenty of lingering shots of half-open doors and lonely hallways. Sometimes, this approach works; <i>Mama</i> is one of those rare films that can find the quiet eeriness in a big house in the middle of the afternoon. There’s a scene early on where the girls’ bedroom is visible in the foreground, and Annabel can be seen doing laundry at the end of the hall. It looks as though the girls are playing with each other—Lilly is seen tugging at one end of a blanket—but then, Victoria appears at the end of the hall near the laundry room. <i>Who is tugging on the other end of that blanket?</i> we wonder, as Annabel unknowingly goes about her business. But any momentum gained by these early scenes is slowed down by a dull subplot where the psychiatrist (Daniel Kash, a dead ringer for Tony Shalhoub) tries to piece together the backstory behind the mysterious ghostly figure. When “Mama" does finally make her startling full appearance, it’s a hackles-raising <i>tour de force</i>—the spectral, spider-limbed hag has a head full of hair that always appears to be floating as though in water, and can race across a room like a sped-up video image (the unbroken shot that precedes her entrance is impressive; the entire scene is pretty much a remake of the original short film). But the movie quickly falls apart in the third act, as it becomes worn down by a series of unlikely coincidences and sloppy last-second voiceovers designed to smooth over the bumpy plot. The PG-13 rated film opts for chills over gore, which is fine, but after awhile the logy pacing will make you sleepy. Strong performances from Chastain, Coster-Waldau, and especially Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse (as Victoria and Lilly, respectively), combined with a handful of effective scares keep <i>Mama</i> from becoming a complete snooze, but that kind of faint praise is probably not the fairytale outcome Del Toro and the Muschiettis were hoping for.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-6674319207479304132013-01-15T05:18:00.000-08:002013-01-15T05:18:52.885-08:00Zombies Need Love Too, Apparently: WARM BODIES Advance Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of the reasons I quit watching AMC’s <i>The Walking Dead</i>—other than the fact that it was terrible and I hated about 95 % of the characters—was that it was so damn depressing. I don’t think anybody on the show or watching the show ever has any delusions that the series’ zombie epidemic is ever going to end or be cured, so the protagonists simply muddle through from one possible safehouse to the next, losing more and more series regulars along the way to increasingly gruesome fates. Making things worse, unlike a zombie movie where, no matter how bad things get, it’ll all be over in about two hours or less, <i>The Walking Dead</i> has the potential to run for <i>years</i> (and with its blockbuster ratings, it probably will). Granted, the zombie genre is not exactly the most hopeful or uplifting category of movie anyway, which is why the new teen-oriented romantic horror-comedy <i>Warm Bodies</i> is such a pleasant surprise; it may be the most optimistic movie ever made about a zombie apocalypse.
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When the movie begins, civilization has already collapsed under the endless assault of flesh-eating ghouls. The surviving humans have walled themselves up inside heavily armed compounds, where they desperately seek a cure for the epidemic. Outside the walls, the zombies shuffle through their un-lives, seeking live flesh and brains to feed on. We are treated to the inner monologue—who knew zombies <i>had</i> such a thing?—of one such zombie, a young, hoodie-wearing slacker named R (<i>About A Boy</i>’s Nicholas Hoult, whose spiky black hair and angular features make him look like an anime character come to life). Shuffling around an airport all day, every day, R (the only letter he still remembers of his real name) fills us in on the details of zombie existence. He and all the other relatively fresh corpses, like his best friend M (Rob Corddry), all seem to have faint memories of their actual lives, but are trapped in a gruesomely monotonous existence. Some of them continue to reenact their old day jobs as though they were malfunctioning robots. Others give up any pretense of their old humanity and become “boneys”--skinless, eyeless ghouls possessed of a relentless hunger. One day, R and his zombie pals come across a group of human survivors raiding a pharmacy, and he finds himself strangely drawn to one of them, Julie (Teresa Palmer). The fact that R has just munched on the brains of her boyfriend (<i>21 Jump Street</i>’s Dave Franco, little brother of James) might have something to do with it; we’re told that eating brains gives zombies a taste of the victims’ life, thoughts, and feelings, and is the closest the living dead get to experiencing actual life again. Whatever the reason, R feels compelled to rescue Julie, helping her to pose as a zombie to escape the massacre, and taking her back to his lair inside an airplane wreck. As the two grow closer, R feels his heart actually beginning to beat again, a contagious phenomenon that eventually spreads to M and the other airport-dwelling zombies. Unfortunately, Julie’s dad is the hard-charging leader of the human resistance (John Malkovich, either reining it in or phoning it in, you decide), and he’s determined to wipe out all the zombies whether they have skin or heartbeats or not.
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<i>Warm Bodies </i>actually manages to, pardon the term, lend some rejuvenation to a rapidly-decaying genre. It mixes and matches elements from various existing zombie movies (these guys eat both flesh <i>and</i> brains, not exclusively one or the other), while coming up with some new tropes of its own. It may also be the first zombie movie yet where, not only does a human have to pose as a zombie (as in <i>Shaun Of The Dead</i>, probably the closest other film in tone to <i>Warm Bodies</i>), but where a zombie is forced to try and pass for a <i>human</i>. There’s a suggestion early on in the film that the zombie apocalypse came about when people stopped having any kind of meaningful interaction with each other (R briefly remembers a world of the living where everyone always had their eyes cast downward towards their mobile devices, laptops, and tablets), which is a fun, original idea. <i>Warm Bodies</i> further posits that the epidemic might be reversed if both the humans <i>and</i> the zombies can learn to feel again. Based on the book by Isaac Marion and directed by Jonathan Levine (<i>50/50</i>, <i>The Wackness</i>), <i>Warm Bodies</i> is probably most ideally suited to fourteen-or-fifteen-year-olds (Hoult is, after all, the dreamiest walking corpse ever to hit the screen, and Palmer bears a striking and probably-not-accidental resemblance to a blonde Kristen Stewart), but feels far less like a cynical <i>Hey Kids, Zombies!</i> cash grab than that might suggest. It could maybe stand to be a bit funnier, but <i>Warm Bodies</i> has a lot more heart and brains than you might expect.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-34300408755949512382013-01-06T10:05:00.002-08:002013-01-06T10:05:33.739-08:00Been There, 'Saw That: TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's a special pleasure to be had in seeing a 3D horror film in the theatres, waiting for implements of destruction and severed body parts to be thrust in your face like something out of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m2gl51J6lo">an old SCTV sketch</a>. Too many lopped-off limbs flying towards the audience are not <i>enough</i>, I say, and <i>Texas Chainsaw 3D</i> honestly needs all the help it can get.
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The newest Leatherface outing starts off with a promisingly bold maneuver, skipping the three original sequels <i>and</i> the charmless, glossy, Michael Bay-produced remake (and its prequel). A highlights-reel of footage from the 1974 original plays over the opening credits, bringing us up to speed and picking up directly where that movie left off. The shotgun-wielding kinfolk of the first movie's family of hillbilly cannibals shows up to defend the homestead, including, inexplicably, a young mother and her baby daughter. Not to be outdone, an angry mob of locals shows up with even <i>more</i> firepower and molotov cocktails, and the demented clan gets blasted & roasted, in that order, with (seemingly) only one survivor--the baby girl, who is secretly adopted by a married couple among the mob. Fast-forward several years to a young goth girl named Heather (Alexandra Daddario) who receives a will saying that the grandmother she never knew she had has passed away, and that she now owns the old lady's palatial estate. The only sane response, of course, is for Heather to call up her pals and have a party there--what better way to get over finding out that your parents aren't who they said they were your whole life?--bringing along a predictable bunch of slasher fodder like the Slutty Best Friend, the Token Black Guy, and the Hunky Hitchhiker. Of course, the will says nothing about the secret door in the basement that hides the home of the <i>other</i> survivor of the family massacre (one wonders how easy it was to hide, for decades even, a hulking, brain-damaged cannibal who wears a face made out of human skin). Soon, the titular chainsaw roars back to life, taking down Heather's friends and several of the locals alike (many of whom participated in the opening mob scene, and are now in various positions of authority around town). As Heather slowly (very slowly--the 92-minute film does a lot of stalling for time) learns the truth about her real family heritage, the townspeople are shown to be the <i>real</i> monsters for committing such a heinous act of vigilantism and then covering it up. At least, that's the idea.
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<i>Texas Chainsaw 3D</i> isn't clever or daring enough to inspire much excitement among fans of Tobe Hooper's original film (Hooper returned to produce the 2013 model--there's also a brief cameo by original Leatherface Gunnar Hansen in the opening minutes), but in its defense, there's also not enough of much else to inspire outrage, either. For the most part, it's a pretty by-the-numbers affair that owes more to <i>Halloween IV: The Return Of Michael Myers</i> than anything else, what with its young heroine learning of her familial connection to a legendary maniac. There are a few flashes of humour that, frankly, the movie could have used more of, like Leatherface pausing to put on his tie before the final showdown (I always loved how he dresses up nicely for the climactic dinner scene in the original), the reveal that Leatherface's last name is <i>Sawyer</i> (get it?), and a goofy after-the-credits stinger that provides a cheap punchline for Heather's identity crisis. But there's not enough of this stuff to justify the film's existence--even Hooper's own 1986 follow-up had the good sense to play the idea for laughs.
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Which brings me to the biggest stumbling block in any attempt to build on the world of the original 1974 film. That groundbreaking terror flick seems to almost exist outside of any recognizable reality, creating instead an impressionistic vision of a world slowly going mad. It's filled with strange omens (is the solar flare activity discussed in the early scenes responsible for the chaos that follows? Does the creepy hitchhiker somehow mark the leads for death when he smears his own blood all over their van?) and ambient sound design (that weird, high-pitched noise that plays over the opening sequence, the buzzing of the chainsaw, Marilyn Burns' nonstop screaming for the last twenty minutes). Logically following from the nightmarish events of the first film is a nearly insurmountable struggle, on par with the challenge Peter Hyams faced when sequelizing <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>--it's like having to create a sequel to a feeling or an emotion rather than a story (for the record, I like Hyams' <i>2010</i>, but I don't envy him his task). But it's a bit much to expect from a money-driven slasher reboot by a hired gun director (prior to this, John Luessenhop directed the 2010 caper flick <i>Takers</i>) to take artistic chances or even have much of a sense of humour about itself, so <i>Texas Chainsaw 3D</i> plays it predictably safe. The only added dimensions a movie like this can realistically allow itself, after all, are the ones that enable blood and blades to fly towards filmgoers.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-47683192707775598532013-01-04T07:00:00.000-08:002013-01-04T07:00:19.044-08:00Death Waltz Recording Company<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the last few years, I’ve become a reluctant vinyl enthusiast—reluctant because the last thing I need is another thing to obsessively collect. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone who knows me, seeing as how I have pretty retro leanings on a lot of stuff, but once I got a record player I had to agree with the general consensus of audiophiles everywhere—music just sounds better on vinyl. In a fairly short amount of time, I’ve amassed a decent pile of records from various sources new and used, with a heavy emphasis on soundtrack albums. Any horror vinyl I can find is particularly prized, but usually pretty hard to come by (a recent Christmas gift of the soundtrack to <i>The Exorcist</i>, a gift from my screenwriter pal <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4PFz9gIKKM">Mark Palermo</a>, holds a special place in my collection). So when a company like <a href="http://www.deathwaltzrecordingcompany.com/">Death Waltz Recording Company</a> comes along, offering reissues of classic horror scores on vinyl, how could they not become my new favourite label?
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Based out of the UK, Death Waltz offers a catalogue of cool soundtracks—with, so far, a heavy emphasis on the John Carpenter collaborations of Alan Howarth—packaged with eye-catching new artwork by notable graphic designers (these are included as mini-posters inside the record sleeves as well!). Their releases so far include <i>Zombi</i>, <i>Halloween II</i> and <i>III</i>, <i>Escape From New York</i>, <i>Donnie Darko</i>, <i>Prince Of Darkness</i>, <i>The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue</i>, and <i>Let The Right One In</i>, with more presumably on the way. They offer limited edition coloured vinyl releases on a few titles, and a flexidisc version of Howarth’s <i>Halloween III</i> score. Each release also includes liner notes by both the composer and the cover artist. There’s also a nerdy touch that I really appreciate—the spines don’t tell you the name of the movie or the composer, instead offering a choice quote from the film in question.
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So far I’ve only gotten my hands on <i>Halloween II</i> and <i>Prince Of Darkness</i>, both given to me as Christmas gifts from in-the-know pals this past year, but I’m looking forward to expanding my collection. It’s a real treat to hear the eerie synthesizer stylings of Alan Howarth bouncing around my living room in that rich, warm sound that only vinyl is capable of delivering. Locally (in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that is), you can pick up Death Waltz titles at <a href="http://www.obsoleterecords.ca/">Obsolete Records</a>, and if you’re elsewhere visit <a href="http://www.deathwaltzrecordingcompany.com/shop/">the official Death Waltz site</a> for mail-order info. Your straining record shelves may protest, but your ears will thank you.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-8576894000984812792012-12-24T14:47:00.000-08:002012-12-24T14:47:45.541-08:00Silent Night<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Having never seen the original <i>Silent Night, Deadly Night </i>from 1984, I don't have the proper context to be outraged by the 2012 version--whose title has been shortened to simply <i>Silent Night</i>. However, I've been told that the Winnipeg-filmed update has little to do with that notoriously seasonal slasher flick, beyond both of them having a killer Santa in them, so I can safely hold onto my remake rage for January's <i>Texas Chainsaw 3D</i>.
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<i>Silent Night</i> follows the trail of carnage left by a less-than-jolly Saint Nick, one who punishes the naughty by way of stabbing, impaling, and immolation by flamethrower. Those who are nice are rewarded with, well, not being on the receiving end of any of those. A recently-widowed deputy (Jamie King) has been tasked by her sheriff (a weirdly-cast but nicely tongue-in-cheek Malcolm McDowell) with ending the string of ho-ho-homicides. The investigation is further complicated by the fact that the town holds an annual Santa parade, so the streets are already running red with possible perps.
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The original <i>Silent Night, Deadly Night</i> provoked outrage upon its release, prompting some parents to issue death threats to the filmmakers for daring to depict Santa as an axe-wielding maniac. I can't imagine it'd be much comfort to them to know that the '12 model is a more comedic take on a similar idea. Jayson Rothwell's screenplay is a lot sharper and wittier than you might expect; the once-picturesque Midwestern town the film takes place in is suffering from economic decline, and has accordingly surrendered to the more fruitful industries of drugs, prostitution, and pornography (meaning that there's no shortage of potential victims for Santa). Comedy aside, though, this is still one bloody movie. A bratty little girl gets skewered, a philandering cop gets barbecued, and a porn actress is stuffed feet-first into a woodchipper. With its unspeaking Santa viciously doling out punishment to local nogoodniks, <i>Silent Night</i> is really more of a vigilante tale than a slasher movie. Director Steven C. Miller creates a world of exaggerated cartoon violence, bathed in appropriately garish colour schemes. The supporting cast (particularly McDowell's eccentric lawman and Donal Logue's drug-dealing Santa) is great, and King is game and determined as the film's heroine, even if the model-turned-actress looks a bit too glammy for a small-town deputy. It may earn everyone involved a lump of coal, but <i>Silent Night</i> is a sick, slick little stocking stuffer.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-67226965298790165222012-12-13T09:07:00.000-08:002012-12-13T09:08:17.794-08:00Joe Dante Tears You A New HOLEWhen I watched the superb 1987 Canadian horror flick <i>The Gate</i> two Halloweens back with some pals, we all lamented the fact that nobody really makes horror movies for kids anymore. I don’t know if it’s just that there isn’t really an audience out there for such a beast, or if filmmakers and studios are just squeamish about upsetting children and, by extension, their parents (this latter seems the more likely of the two to me). It’s kind of a shame, really—obviously there was a bit of forbidden-fruit factor to watching movies I wasn’t allowed to see when I was a kid, but there was also something undeniably cool about movies like <i>The Monster Squad</i> and <i>Gremlins </i>that spoke to youthful fright fans on their level. Unsurprisingly, one of the few modern entries in this all-but-vanished genre comes courtesy of <i>Gremlins</i> director Joe Dante, whose long-delayed, PG-13 rated movie <i>The Hole</i> recently came to DVD and Blu-Ray.
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<i>The Hole</i> concerns a family of three—teenaged Dane (Chris Massoglia), younger brother Lucas (Nathan Gamble), and their mom (Teri Polo)—who move out of the big city to the ‘burbs (sadly, not the ones in Dante’s underrated 1988 movie—no Tom Hanks or Corey Feldman in sight, although that film’s crazed Vietnam vet, Bruce Dern, has a fun cameo). Fooling around in the basement, the boys (and Julie, the cute girl next door, played by Haley Bennett) find a padlocked trapdoor in the floor that leads…nowhere? The pit underneath the door is seemingly bottomless, but opening it appears to have unleashed a great evil on the world, and it’s not long before the trio find themselves menaced by apparitions of their worst fears—Lucas is pursued by a creepy toy clown, Julie sees a ghostly little girl from her past, and Dane must face a spectral doppelganger of his abusive father. The kids learn that the only way to send the evil back into the hole is to conquer their fears forever. It’s a nice message of youthful empowerment (reminiscent in some ways of the institutionalized kids in <a href="http://flawintheiris.blogspot.ca/2010/10/31-days-of-horror-movies-part-i.html"><i>Nightmare On Elm Street Part 3</i></a>), one that reinforces the very need for children’s horror movies.
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<i>The Hole</i> was filmed in 2009 and received a brief theatrical run earlier this year before arriving on DVD and Blu-Ray in October. The theatrical release played in 3D in some markets, and certain scenes are a dead giveaway for the format’s use, particularly in early scenes where objects always seem to be flying at the camera. The movie’s edgy approach to youthful adventure has always been Joe Dante’s stock in trade (in addition to <i>Gremlins</i> and its sequel, Dante directed <i>Explorers</i>, <i>Small Soldiers</i>, and one of the better segments in <i>Twilight Zone: The Movie</i>), and it’s a treat to see the underrated helmer back on familiar ground. Unfortunately, Dante hasn’t had a hit film in a while—his more recent output has been on the small screen, with episodes of <i>CSI</i> and <i>Hawaii 5-0</i>—so he can’t really get his hands on the kind of funds that would allow him to best realize his vision anymore. As a result, <i>The Hole</i> is pretty visibly threadbare in the budget department. Dante does his best with what he has, and it’s better than you might expect; the grinning, evil clown puppet is a standout visual, as is the twisted funhouse version of the real world where Dane faces off against his dad’s monstrous doppelganger. But for the most part, the production design and performances bring to mind a better-than-average episode of a TV show. In fact, the story itself (written by Mark L. Smith), feels mostly like an extended episode of <i>Goosebumps</i> or, more appropriately, <i>Eerie, Indiana</i> (the short-lived series Dante created for Fox in the 1990s)—not egregiously overlong, but a bit on the threadbare side. Joe Dante is a gifted filmmaker who deserves a comeback, and I don’t think <i>The Hole</i> is going to provide it—for either the director or the sadly bygone genre of horror movies for kids--but it’s still a step in the right direction.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-38677532934684081822012-11-30T07:04:00.000-08:002012-11-30T07:04:00.620-08:00The Night Has Its Price: NEAR DARK RevisitedI was thrilled when I found <i>Near Dark </i>on Blu-ray for ten bucks at the grocery store a few weeks back. Thrilled, because it's an underrated little gem of '80s horror, but also a bit grossed out because it came packaged inside this fugly little bit of <i>Twilight</i>-bait cover art.
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I think any hapless Twihard who picked this movie up based on the cover would be pretty disappointed. If anything, <i>Near Dark</i> is kind of the anti-<i>Twilight</i>. It's a vampire movie for people who don't like vampire movies. The word "vampire" never once shows up in it, and there's not a single fanged mouth to be found. It's also a stylish early feature from A-lister Kathryn Bigelow, whose <i>The Hurt Locker</i> nabbed her a few Oscars, and whose upcoming <i>Zero Dark Thirty </i>looks set to do likewise.
<i>Near Dark</i> opens as a Texas kid named Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) meets Mae (Jenny Wright), an alluring young girl with cold skin and a taste for blood. When Caleb gets bitten, he finds himself abducted by Mae's bloodsucking kinfolk--gravel-voiced Jesse (Lance Henriksen), bleach-blonde Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein), stone-cold psycho Severen (a scene-stealing Bill Paxton), and embittered eternal youth Homer (Joshua Miller). While Caleb's frantic father (Tim Thomerson) searches for him, the family of vamps is busy inducting the kid into their world of nightly mayhem--feeding on long-haul truckers and whole honkytonk bars full of unlucky rednecks.
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The script, by Bigelow and Eric Red (who also wrote <i>The Hitcher</i>--the guy definitely had a thing for scary desert highways), plays more like a gritty western than a brooding vampire flick. There are some great throwaway lines alluding to Jesse and Severen's extended lifespan ("Hey, Jesse, remember that fire we started in Chicago?", "I fought for the South. We lost."), and the cast is terrific all across the board. Bigelow was married to James Cameron at the time, and she makes the most out of her then-husband's <i>Aliens </i>cast members (a movie theatre has the 1986 sequel listed on its marquee in the background of one shot). Shot by <i>Terminator 2</i> cinematographer Adam Greenberg, the film looks gorgeous, particularly in high definition--the combination of dusty highways and slick neon gives the film a look unlike any other. And I don't know if Garth Ennis or Steve Dillon have ever acknowledged it, but their still-classic <i>Preacher</i> comic series owes it a debt, particularly when it comes to their portrayal of blood-drinking Irish rogue Cassidy.
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And man, wouldn't Lance Henriksen make a great Saint Of Killers?
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Come to think of it, Jenny Wright would have a made a swell Tulip, too.
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25 years later, <i>Near Dark</i> has aged just as well as its undead heavies. We'll just have to wait and see if <i>Twilight</i> and its pasty-faced kin can say the same in 2037.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-43284122144485254422012-11-26T10:41:00.000-08:002012-11-26T10:41:32.452-08:00Do Not Disturb: Decoding Kubrick's THE SHINING In ROOM 237<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King’s <i>The Shining</i>, which doesn’t stick very closely to the source novel, has more than its fair share of detractors (King himself among them). But those who like it like it a lot, and some of those who like it have taken it several steps further than the rest of us—reading a variety of coded messages in Kubrick’s detail-packed production design and carefully composed shots. Five such fans, and their various interpretations of the movie’s deeper meanings, are our guides through the new documentary <i>Room 237</i>. These individuals have become lost in the maze of the Overlook Hotel, so to speak, and their obsessive quest to determine the true significance behind every single shot of the film makes for fascinating, if at times laughable, viewing.
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The five unseen narrators—mostly writers and indie filmmakers—walk us through their own readings of what they each believe <i>The Shining</i> is really about. One narrator claims that the movie is a subtle indictment of the genocide of Native Americans, pointing to the mention of the Overlook being built on an Indian burial ground, as well as the various Native American artwork and designs throughout the hotel (he ascribes particular significance to a well-placed can of Calumet baking soda, featuring the silhouette of an Indian chief, in the pantry). Another insists that the movie’s famous hedge maze alludes to larger mythological underpinnings, even going so far as to insist that a backlit portrait of a skier in the Overlook's game room is meant to suggest the form of a minotaur (it’s a bit of a stretch, to say the least). Another still is convinced that the film is a commentary on the Holocaust, taking care to point out multiple appearances of the number 42 (the year Hitler implemented his “Final Solution”) and the German-made typewriter used by Jack Torrance. Most absurdly, one narrator, filmmaker Jay Weidner, is absolutely certain that Kubrick used <i>The Shining</i> to admit his compliance in helping NASA fake the moon landing on a sound stage. Details like Danny Torrance’s “Apollo 11” sweater, Weidner insists, are impossible-to-miss signposts of the director’s compliance in the conspiracy. Weidner, who documented the alleged fakery in his 2011 film <i>Kubrick’s Odyssey</i>, concludes that Kubrick was so torn up with guilt over what he’d done that he inserted hidden messages admitting his involvement in the film’s design and, more overtly, within Jack and Wendy’s marital strife (Weidner says that Kubrick scripted these scenes as a way of dealing with his inability to come clean with his own wife over what he’d done). Kubrick, who died in 1999, is conveniently not around to confirm or deny any of the claims made by <i>Room 237</i>'s narrators.
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Most of these theories are pretty ridiculous, and are clearly the result of watching the movie far too many times. That’s not to say that all of the ideas espoused in <i>Room 237</i> are completely half-baked, though. Some of the observations are thought-provoking, namely the ones that suggest Kubrick’s narrative is concerned about dealing with our inability to cope with past trauma and societal guilt over unthinkable atrocities. This may or may not actually have been Kubrick’s intent, but it’s an interesting way of looking at his work. Another section deals with alternative methods of viewing <i>The Shining</i>, walking us through a one-time theatrical screening where the film was projected over itself in reverse—playing forwards and backwards at the same time. A number of strange visuals result when watching the movie in this fashion, like Jack Torrance’s face appearing over the two murdered little girls (the combination of visual elements gives Jack a weirdly clownlike visage). Again, there’s no way Kubrick could have anticipated such results, but it’s kind of cool nonetheless. However, for every thought-provoking aside in <i>Room 237</i>, there’s another snicker-inducing observation from the narrating fans, like the aforementioned minotaur, or the massive erection Weidner insists appears onscreen in the form of desk clutter when the Overlook’s manager, Mr. Ullman, meets Jack Torrance in his office for the first time.
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Directed by Rodney Ascher, <i>Room 237</i> could have easily become a dry treatise on film study, and does threaten to do so on a few occasions (such as some of the play-by-play sequences where the audience is invited to watch a super-slowed-down scene from the film, all in the hopes of catching a tiny detail that isn’t really there to begin with). But the film is kept visually interesting through the use of clips from Kubrick’s other work (<i>Eyes Wide Shut</i> and <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i> turn up a lot), as well as some other, less-obvious, non-Kubrick choices (like <i>An American Werewolf In London</i> and the 1985 <i>giallo</i> flick <i>Demons</i>). A synthesizer score by William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes keeps the mood appropriately cerebral, with a hint of the macabre. Many of the theories touted by <i>Shining</i> superfans in <i>Room 237</i> may be as rail-thin as Shelley Duvall, but the documentary gives you a new appreciation for <i>The Shining </i>itself—a fascinating, maddening puzzle-box of a movie that has as many possible interpretations as the Overlook Hotel has rooms.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-64029633130176992002012-11-23T07:36:00.000-08:002012-11-23T07:36:22.106-08:00A Bad Case Of Crabs: Barry Levinson's THE BAY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When you think of the found-footage horror genre, a name like Barry Levinson doesn’t usually spring to mind. After all, what possible interest could the Oscar-winning director behind <i>Rain Man</i> and <i>Good Morning Vietnam</i> have in the format? But the Baltimore-based filmmaker has an ecological agenda to explore in <i>The Bay </i>(produced by <i>Paranormal Activity</i>’s Oren Peli), which raises real concerns about the effects of pollution in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. It does so through the device of a terror flick about murderous, mutated crustaceans, but anything that helps to get the word out will do, I suppose.
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<i>The Bay</i> recounts the events of one serious bummer of a Fourth Of July celebration, as seen through the lenses of various video devices utilized by the citizens of Claridge, Maryland. Variously, we follow the action through footage taken by a local news crew, police surveillance cameras, a young girl’s FaceTime conversation, and more. Right around the time of the big crab-eating competition, a mysterious plague seems to sweep through the entire town, afflicting the locals with horrifying boils and causing them to spit up blood. As the emergency room fills up with frantic, seemingly diseased townspeople, we hear tell of a pair of ecology-minded scuba divers whose bodies were recently discovered floating in the Bay. The duo was chewed up as though a bull shark had gotten at them, but as we learn more and more about the town’s corrupt Mayor and the variety of pollutants being dumped into the Bay—chicken crap from the local poultry mill, waste from a nearby nuclear plant—it becomes apparent that something nastier is taking place. We are told that the Bay is now 40 % lifeless (a true statistic, as it turns out), and what life <i>does </i>still exist there is being preyed upon by isopods—normally tiny crustacean lifeforms that have been growing to unusual size thanks to pollution. The entire water supply of Claridge has been tainted with isopod larvae, and both the marine life and the townspeople are being eaten alive from the inside-out by the nasty bugs…who have a particular taste for tongues.
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With its Fourth Of July setting, corrupt city officials, and what appears at first to be a flesh-eating virus, <i>The Bay </i>sometimes feels like <i>Jaws</i> meets <i>Cabin Fever</i>. It takes awhile for the real threat to emerge, and at times it seems like the film is piling on too many potential explanations for the chaos. A good deal of the action is documented by a young intern from the local TV station (Kether Donohue), and her running commentary—particularly with regards to the impending arrival by boat of an unsuspecting young couple and their baby—is a bit silly. There’s also never really any explanation why some people remain unaffected by the isopod massacre, considering that nearly the entire town is wiped out by it. That said, the idea of oversized bugs munching their way out of your body is pretty horrific, and the many scenes of bloody, tongueless townspeople are suitably disgusting. CGI bugs are exactly the kind of special effects that don’t usually translate well to the found-footage format, but the ones seen here are used sparingly and effectively. You probably won’t go to bed afraid that isopods are going to get you after watching <i>The Bay</i>, but you’ll probably want to skip the crab legs next time you eat seafood.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-30025254425697194362012-11-22T07:58:00.000-08:002012-11-22T07:58:52.970-08:00I Survived The GORETORIUM!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When I visited Las Vegas with a group of friends for a wedding last weekend, there were a few things I knew I had to do before I left—see the desert, lose some money at the slot machines—but as a horror devotee, my top priority was to make a trip to Eli Roth’s new <a href="http://goretorium.com/">Goretorium</a> attraction. I’d been following its progress since the release of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO7ULu5Fpko">this bloody teaser</a> some months back, and there was no way I was missing out. My girlfriend Hillary is far too easily scared for such things (“I don’t like it when things jump out!” is a common reason why she won’t watch a lot of horror movies with me), but thankfully my pal Jess Smallwood was also in town for the wedding. Hillary refers to Jess as my “Horror Wife”, since she loves horror movies as much as I do, if not moreso. Jess is so committed, in fact, that she’s trying to watch a whopping <i>365</i> horror movies this year, which makes <a href="http://houseofhaunts.blogspot.ca/2012/11/31-days-of-horror-2012part-thirteen.html">my paltry 31-film October attempt</a> look pretty lame by comparison. In any event, Jess was going to visit the Goretorium even if she had to go it alone, but we partnered up to see the place for ourselves.
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Located at the corner of Harmon and Las Vegas Blvd., the Goretorium is fronted by a bar and some suitably grotesque wall art, not to mention a chandelier constructed from skeletal remains and blood-filled hypodermic needles. There’s also a projection system that makes it look as though there are bugs crawling all over the floor, and an electric chair that you can have your picture taken in. The armrests actually deliver a mild electric shock—one that apparently doesn’t work as a deterrent, because I kept stupidly putting my hands on them. It took me about three zaps before I clued in to keep my hands up.
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After a fairly long wait to get in to the actual attraction, followed by an even longer wait within the entrance, the fun began in earnest. While waiting, guests are treated to a history of the Goretorium’s location—the attraction is located on the site of the fictitious Delmont Hotel and Casino, founded in the 1960s by a deranged family of psychos and cannibals. According to the placards in the lobby and the accompanying news footage that plays on a loop in the waiting area, the police raided the Delmont and found the bodies of hundreds of unlucky guests in the basement. The murderous family members either killed themselves or were apprehended, with the exception of young Victor Delmont, who is said to have disappeared into the desert.
Upon finally entering the attraction, we quickly learned what happens to any individual foolish enough to have his or her cellphone out. Our elevator, instead of lifting us up to view the Strip from the Hotel’s upper floors, plunged us into the hellish depths of the Delmont, where we were chased through a series of increasingly gory torture dens. We visited a cannibal’s kitchen, a twisted beauty salon, and an infernal wedding chapel. There was even a walkway that led us through a rotating cylinder that appeared to be made entirely of gristle and bone. All of the various rooms are decorated with gruesome props like severed limbs and the decaying relics of the Casino, and each area is inhabited by actors portraying both the twisted inhabitants of the Delmont and their unlucky victims. I don’t really want to give away too much of what’s in store for you if you visit the attraction—the less you know about what’s coming, the more fun it is. Truthfully, though, I probably couldn’t spoil it even if I wanted to. Our trip through the Goretorium lasted only about 15 minutes, but there was so much detail in the various sets and props that it’s pretty tough to take it all in. I can’t help but hope that someday the tour is documented on DVD or something so guests can fully appreciate all the hard work that clearly went in to making it such a wild experience. I especially don’t want to give away the final moments of the tour, where you are chased into an increasingly narrow tunnel that opens you out onto…never mind, it’s best if you see it for yourself.
For a couple of horror nuts like Jess and myself, it was bliss. Our nerves were on edge waiting for a crazy butcher or mad doctor to jump out and leer at us or hiss threats, while we tried to drink in all the details of the place. I know that I jumped and screamed on at least one occasion. We even hit the gift shop afterwards, where Jess picked up a hoodie and I bought a t-shirt. We also were able to buy a cool photo souvenir of our trip through the nightmarish corridors of the Delmont Hotel.
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As for Hillary? She rode the outdoor roller coaster at the New York, New York Casino, while I held her purse for her. I was too scared for that ride. I have a taste for terror, but even I have my limits.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-46256739360321109092012-11-11T09:28:00.002-08:002012-11-11T09:28:45.447-08:00"He Has His Father's Eyes." ROSEMARY'S BABY Criterion Blu-Ray Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Released in 1968, <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i> set off a cinematic Satanic panic that would continue to reverberate at the box office throughout the following decades. <i>The Exorcist</i> and <i>The Omen</i> both owe it a debt for popularizing demon-spawn, <i>Ghostbusters</i> borrowed its central idea of a devil cult setting up shop in a swank Manhattan apartment building, and Satanic thrillers like <i>The Devil Inside</i> and <i>The Last Exorcism</i> continue to dominate the multiplexes to this day. Not only did Roman Polanski’s breakthrough blockbuster foster a fear of modern-day devil-worshippers lurking around every corner, it also tapped into a common terror of generational warfare. For Rosemary Woodhouse (pixie-like Mia Farrow, in her star-making performance), not only are the kindly old neighbours against her, but even the child in her belly might be an enemy. At a time when the generation gap was never wider, <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i> triggered alarms across the psyches of the entire Baby Boom generation. Not only can you not trust your elders, it told them, but even your own children might be the spawn of the Devil himself.
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Rosemary and her husband, struggling actor Guy (John Cassavetes), take an apartment in the lush Bramford building in Manhattan despite rumours of turn-of-the-century devil worshippers having lived there. The kindly but annoying senior citizens who reside at the Bramford seem harmless enough at first, but Rosemary comes to question their motives, particularly when her sudden pregnancy—accompanied by a surreal dream sequence of demonic rape witnessed by the naked, chanting neighbours—coincides with Guy’s big break as an actor (a rival for a key role is mysteriously stricken blind). Strange chanting and flute-playing can be heard through the walls, and the busybody neighbours keep giving Rosemary weird herb-derived smoothies to drink. The increasingly gaunt and paranoid Rosemary comes to suspect that the irritating oldsters are, in fact, witches who want to use her unborn child in some sort of ritual. The truth, it turns out, is much worse.
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I first saw <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i> when I was in high school, and I didn’t get what the big deal was. I was waiting for big scares and monster makeups, neither of which were the point, but try telling that to a teenager reared on <i>The Evil Dead</i> and <i>Poltergeist</i>. I revisited it a decade or so later, and I finally understood that Polanski was going for a more adult form of horror, combining parental anxieties with urban paranoia. The film, based on Ira Levin’s novel, posits a world where God might very well be dead, and His opposite number’s bidding is done by smiling senior citizens. Polanski’s direction puts you right inside Rosemary’s head, making you question the motives of her husband and neighbours while you simultaneously question her sanity.
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Just issued in a sparkling new transfer from the Criterion Collection, <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i> has never looked better. The cavernous-yet-claustrophobic hallways of the “Black Bramford” (in real life, the Dakota Hotel, on whose steps John Lennon met his untimely end), the garish, tacky outfits worn by the neighbouring Castavets (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), the pale, skull-like face of the increasingly paranoid Rosemary—everything pops on the stunning new Blu-ray release. An anecdote-filled documentary featuring Farrow, Polanski, and producer Robert Evans (who turned Paramount Pictures’ fortunes around with the risky film’s runaway success) is bursting with fascinating historical details. Farrow received divorce papers mid-scene from then-husband Frank Sinatra, when she refused to walk out on the behind-schedule production to appear in his competing movie <i>The Detective</i> (the films opened on the same weekend, and <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i> crushed its competition). Sidney Blackmer was convinced his character’s joyous cries of “God is dead! Satan lives!” in the film’s climax would lead to his own eternal damnation. Producer William Castle, known for schlock-gimmick flicks like <i>The Tingler</i> and <i>The House On Haunted Hill</i>, was desperate to direct <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i>, seeing it as his shot at respectability (Evans wisely edged him out, giving him a cameo role instead). And Roman Polanski clashed often with John Cassavetes, himself then a director of early art-house fare like <i>Faces</i> and <i>Shadows</i>, over Polanski’s rigidly controlled approach (Cassavetes preferred a more improvisational approach, but Polanski wouldn’t allow it). No matter which baby-daddy you want to give credit to—Polanski, Evans, or Satan himself—the 44-year old <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i> hasn’t aged a day.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-35219769407911713522012-11-07T05:15:00.000-08:002012-11-07T05:26:59.725-08:00"It Belongs In A Museum!" Dusting Off THE RELIC (1997)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>The Relic</i> feels like a movie that should have come out twenty years earlier than it did. It has the distinct flavour of Seventies big-studio horror, for a number of reasons. It was based on a best-selling novel (by Douglas J. Preston and Lincoln Child). It has a cast full of mid-level famous leads, venerable character actors in supporting roles, and lots of "Hey, it's that guy!" guys (the janitor from <i>The Breakfast Club</i>! The "fists with your toes" guy from <i>Die Hard</i>!). It looks like it cost way more than it should have, a sure sign that Paramount threw more & more money at the movie rather than trying to fix its script problems. And it's directed by a filmmaker who doesn't have the firmest grasp of the genre.
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The plot might have made more sense if I had read the New York Times-best selling source novel. Or not, who knows? A prologue shows us an archaeologist in a Brazilian jungle witnessing a tribal ritual of some kind, then drinking a concoction offered to him by the tribespeople. He has a bad reaction to it, then stows away on a ship bound for America to try and prevent some mysterious shipment of his from reaching civilization. Cut to Chicago several weeks later, when the ship has been found floating at sea, filled with decapitated crewmen. The baffled lead homicide detective, played by Tom Sizemore, is one of those delightfully eccentric cops who only exist in the movies--he's recently divorced (naturally), and has lost his beloved dog in the settlement. He's also obsessively superstitious, avoiding black cats and taking care not to step over dead bodies but around them. Meanwhile, at the nearby Natural History Museum, a plucky young evolutionary biologist played by Penelope Ann Miller is confounded by the arrival of a crate addressed to Dr. John Whitney--the guy we saw in the prologue--that contains a stone relic of a tribal protector/scary monster called the Kothoga, and a bunch of leaves covered in a weird orange fungus. It isn't long before security guards start turning up without their heads, and a bug that gets into the fungus samples is mutated into an oversized monstrosity (one that Miller's ever-curious scientist immediately squashes). None of this stops the museum from having a big gala opening of its new latest exhibition, though, and before you can say "We've got to close the beaches!", the rampaging Kothoga beast--kind of a cross between a Komodo dragon and a sabretooth tiger, I guess?--is making short work of well-dressed gala guests.
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The biggest problem with <i>The Relic</i> is that the origin of the Kothoga monster is extremely confusing. If I understand it correctly, the tribe periodically uses the fungus to transform its warriors into a Kothoga when they are threatened, and the stuff Whitney drinks in the prologue turns him into the very monster that goes buck wild in the museum. I'm not sure why he wanted to stop the shipment of his stuff to Chicago--it's explained that it was mistakenly sent by air instead of sea--and I'm not clear how he/it got to the museum from the boat (there's a sewer chase at one point, so I guess that might be how he got around), or why he headed there at all. All of this might have been explained in a perfectly satisfactory fashion, but the first half of the movie is so plodding, my attention was constantly wandering away. Not even distinguished thespians like Linda Hunt and James Whitmore can make the dull first hour interesting. Director Peter Hyams is better known for his sci-fi efforts like <i>Outland</i>, <i>Time Cop</i>, and the underrated <i>2010</i>, but other than his producing gig on my beloved <i>Monster Squad</i>, he doesn't have a lot of experience generating fright. Acting as his own cinematographer, Hyams makes <i>The Relic</i> look like a nice bit of classy, big-budget horror, but the scares just aren't there. The Kothoga, designed by Stan Winston and realized through a combination of animatronics and perfectly serviceable CGI, is an admittedly impressive creation, and that rarest of beasts--a new movie monster. When it rips into an unsuspecting SWAT team, the movie finally comes alive for the first time. But with such a convoluted origin story and uninteresting first half to contend with, it's too little, too late, and the movie's near-forgotten status today reflects these shortcomings. Sandwiched as it was between the twin terror phenomenons of <i>Scream</i>'s postmodern slasher hijinks in 1996 and the birth of the found-footage horror genre with <i>The Blair Witch Project</i> in 1999, <i>The Relic</i> certainly does seem like the product of a bygone era.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-90847972637160854102012-11-04T13:01:00.000-08:002012-11-04T13:01:52.521-08:0010 Horror Remakes That Are Actually Worth Your Time & MoneyThis past Halloween, my friends Jess, Kate, and Lor had a costume party (I went as Chief Brody from <i>Jaws</i>, in case you're wondering). At one point in the evening, Jess decided to throw a horror movie on in the background, settling on <i>The Texas Chain Saw Massacre</i>. However, when I noticed that she was talking about the 2003 remake, I badgered her into not putting it on, and in the fallout, no one could settle on an appropriate movie. This says two things. 1) I am not much of a party guest. And, 2) my reputation as a remake hater precedes me. Granted, I do generally roll my eyes at the thought of an idea-starved Hollywood throwing more and more of my childhood favourites into the Platinum Dunes meat grinder. But, that being said, there are a number of horror remakes that I <i>do</i> enjoy, and some that I downright adore, even more than the originals that inspired them. I even find myself looking forward to 2013's remakes of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaHzUMq8iaM"><i>Carrie</i></a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceBXUyuv4Q0"><i>The Evil Dead</i></a>--the former because of the talent involved, the latter because of the back-to-basics approach and wild gore seen in the film's red-band trailer. So, in the interest of proving that I'm not just a snobby old-school purist, here are ten horror remakes that I would happily recommend, in no particular order.
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<i>DAWN OF THE DEAD</i> (2004): Zack Snyder's ultra-grim, fast-moving variant on George Romero's 1978 masterpiece ditches the original's biting consumerist satire, and is most definitely the poorer for it. But this update switches out social commentary for new spins on the zombie apocalypse setting, like the friendly game of "Spot-The-Celebrity-Zombie-Lookalike" and the much-maligned, but frankly scarier, running ghouls. Snyder's spin on the material lacks the dramatic weight of the original, but it's still a gory, hair-raising crowd pleaser.
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<i>FRIGHT NIGHT </i>(2011): I still prefer the 1985 original with William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowall, and Chris Sarandon, but that doesn't mean I didn't get a kick out of Anton Yelchin, David Tennant, and Colin Ferrell in this Las Vegas-set revamp (ouch!). The sharp script by <i>Buffy</i> vet Marti Noxon wisely maintains the original's tongue-in-cheek tone, and the 3D in the theatrical release was surprisingly effective. The '11 version loses points for its reliance on CGI over practical effects, but gains them for Ferrell's sly turn as a himbo bloodsucker named, of all things, Jerry.
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<i>THE THING</i> (1982): What modern-day horror fan doesn't love John Carpenter's gooey, apocalyptic update of the Cold War classic? Besides featuring Rob Bottin's most accomplished effects work, the '82 model also features a bearded Kurt Russell at his most badass, and has one of the cinema's great bleak endings. You could argue that this is merely a new, more faithful adaptation of the short story "Who Goes There?" By John Campbell, which inspired the 1951 version as well, but as long as we all agree to skip the unfortunate 2011 version, we'll all get along just fine.
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<i>DRACULA</i> (1979): As I said about <i>The Thing</i> above, John Badham's romanticized take on the classic chiller is also a new adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel more than it's a remake (well, technically, it's an adaptation of the stage play version, as was the 1931 Lugosi film). It's also the first version of the Dracula story I ever saw on screen, when CTV debuted it during prime time in the early Eighties, and it remains my favourite take on the material. Frank Langella, magnetic in the role of the legendary Count, headlines an impressive cast that features Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasance, and Kate Nelligan, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEDN0sMgrCM">John Williams' elegant score</a> is one of his unsung masterpieces.
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<i>INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS </i>(1978): The 1956 original Don Siegel film is still a white-knuckle classic of Cold War paranoia, but Phillip Kaufman's reimagining of the Jack Finney novel remains one of the scariest tales of alien terror ever made. Kaufman's film stars Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, a very young Jeff Goldblum, and perpetual extraterrestrial hysteric Veronica Cartwright. Substituting Communist hysteria with New Age psychobabble, the '78 version unfolds with an air of inescapable dread, ending with one of the most downbeat final images of the genre. And no, I'm not just talking about Sutherland's perm-and-moustache combo, either.
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<i>LET ME IN</i> (2010): The only movie more doomed to fan derision than a remake of a beloved horror movie is a remake of a beloved <i>foreign-language</i> horror movie. The Swedish original, 2008's <i>Let The Right One In</i>, is a deeply affecting tale of doomed adolescent love, but I think I prefer Matt Reeves' Americanized redo just a bit more. Chloe Grace-Moretz is commanding as the forever-young vampire, and the always-great Richard Jenkins is heartbreaking as her past-his-prime human protector. The New Mexico setting adds an interesting layer of guilty history to the story (this is, after all, where the atomic bomb was built), and the crash filmed from the inside of the car is a show-stopping sequence.
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<i>THE HILLS HAVE EYES</i> (2006): I've never been much of a fan of Wes Craven's 1977 original, which sees an extended family battling their cracked-mirror reflections in the form of a hillbilly clan mutated by atomic testing in the desert. But Alexandre Aja's supersick update is leaner, meaner, and much scarier. By the time this movie hit theatres, deformed white-trash villains were becoming more than a little cliche, but Aja uses the remote setting to make them terrifying all over again. And the final showdown, set in a 1950s-style, mannequin-inhabited mock neighbourhood built to be nuked, is inspired.
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<i>THE BLOB</i> (1988): The scariest thing about the 1958 original might be <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzHDvzGmmw0">the theme song by Burt Bacharach</a>, so writer Frank Darabont and director Chuck Russell had their work cut out for them. The '88 <i>Blob</i> goes the '82 <i>Thing</i> route, filling its running time with scene after scene of highly imaginative gore. The new-model alien glop doesn't just consume its victims, it <i>corrodes</i> them, and will stop at nothing to continue feeding--pulling victims through drains, manholes, walls, even crushing them inside phone booths. There's also a cool new government-paranoia-inspired twist on the Blob's origins, and a nifty final scene that sets up a sequel which, sadly, never happened.
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<i>PIRANHA</i> (2010): Calling Alexandre Aja's (him again!) gleefully gory 3D offering a remake of Joe Dante's 1978 drive-in favourite might be a bit charitable. Other than the toothsome antagonists, the two films have very little in common. Whereas Dante's Roger Corman-produced original unleashed the title carnivores (the product of genetic weapons research conducted for river warfare in Vietnam) on a summer camp full of unsuspecting children, Aja's film lets the evil little fishies (here, prehistoric creatures released from an underwater fissure) loose on a phalanx of bikini-clad Spring Breakers. As a result, the refreshingly R-rated movie has boobs and blood in equal measure, plus an Eighties-friendly cast that includes Elizabeth Shue, Christopher Lloyd, and Richard Dreyfuss in a cameo nod to his iconic <i>Jaws</i> role.
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<i>THE FLY</i> (1986): I actually haven't watched David Cronenberg's remake of the 1958 sci-fi classic in years, and I'm a little afraid to--I've seen a lot of disgusting movies in my day, but none are as quite as stomach-churning as this one is. Part tragic romance between winning leads Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, part STD-allegory (Cronenberg's film landed during the early years of the AIDS crisis), all flesh-crawling body horror, <i>The Fly</i> set a new standard for animatronics, gore effects and the science of accidentally turning lab monkeys inside out. The 1989 sequel starring Eric Stoltz and Daphne Zuniga may have even been more gory, but it lacks the heartbreaking human drama at the centre of Cronenberg's original.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-70523002808286464352012-11-01T19:27:00.001-07:002012-11-01T19:27:44.448-07:0031 Days Of Horror 2012...PART THIRTEEN! The Final Chapter!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZuNueR1-GzoNFrlOg3uruU4-x4xtF5Tl55Ut7qb5N7Q6eXYDsUWqSTpJZhY2tGeHH2QgtRLcmrRgsp7BkKa2VKLxZgG0FzzbbTSIeBUjgk0BRsjXxJeYBJ2NcSDC67fpzgN3tzOWZ0ps/s1600/carrie-movie-poster-1976-1020679982.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="312" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZuNueR1-GzoNFrlOg3uruU4-x4xtF5Tl55Ut7qb5N7Q6eXYDsUWqSTpJZhY2tGeHH2QgtRLcmrRgsp7BkKa2VKLxZgG0FzzbbTSIeBUjgk0BRsjXxJeYBJ2NcSDC67fpzgN3tzOWZ0ps/s400/carrie-movie-poster-1976-1020679982.jpg" /></a></div>
CARRIE (1976):
The shadow of <i>Carrie </i>loomed large over several of the movies in my lineup this year. Obviously, <i>Prom Night</i>, with its prom-themed massacre and its teaming up of a bitch queen and a clueless bully thug owes a debt to it, as does <i>Trick Or Treat</i>, which features a similar scene of high school tormentors getting their supernatural comeuppance (only at a Halloween dance instead of the prom). In a way, it even seems that <i>We Need To Talk About Kevin</i> sort of begins where <i>Carrie</i> ends (taking into account Kevin's time-shuffled structure, that is), with a small town full of angry, grieving parents dealing with the aftermath of a high school massacre; it's easy to draw a line from the empty lot emblazoned with the legend "CARRIE WHITE BURNS IN HELL" to the red paint-splattered house Tilda Swinton's pariah protagonist lives in. I hadn't seen Brian DePalma's breakthrough adaptation of Stephen King's blockbuster first novel in over a decade, and I was pleased to find that it only gets better with age. Sissy Spacek is heartbreaking as the telekinetic teen, and her performance is nothing short of remarkable--she sells her character's transformation from wallflower to prom queen to, tragically, angel of vengeance, with no visible effort. DePalma's visuals are pure eye candy as well. Each beautifully-composed shot is packed with detail and teeming with vibrant colour. The tone of <i>Carrie</i> always struck me as a bit odd, but the way it transitions from high school soap opera into supernatural horror heightens the story's ultimate tragedy--you can't help but get lulled into the fairy tale myth of Carrie's transformation into a prom queen, just in time to get sucker-punched by the cruelty of her classmates. <i>Carrie</i> is also a strange sort of female empowerment movie, and not just in reference to the title character's burgeoning psychic abilities, either. The women are unquestionably in charge here, whether it's Chris (Nancy Allen, never better or bitchier) using fellatio to convince Billy (John Travolta) to slaughter a pig for her, or Sue (Amy Irving) convincing Tommy (William Katt) to take Carrie to the prom. Watching it again, I also realized that Frank Darabont's new, much bleaker ending for his adaptation of King's <i>The Mist</i> wisely brings his film into line with <i>Carrie</i>'s ultimately horrible truth--the worst, scariest thing in the world would be if the religious wackos in both stories were right, and they sort of are. Sacrificing your kid <i>will</i> make the monsters go away, and if you go to the prom with Tommy Ross, they <i>are</i> all gonna laugh at you.
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MANIAC (1980):
Character actor Joe Spinnell (<i>The Godfather</i>, <i>Rocky</i>) scripted the role of Frank Zito in <i>Maniac</i> for himself to play, which I guess makes this grindhouse favourite the <i>Good Will Hunting</i> of slasher-trash cinema. Gene Siskel famously walked out of the movie theatre a half-hour into William Lustig's depraved bloodbath, and he probably wasn't the only one. This intimate portrait of a lonely psychopath who murders women and takes their scalps to adorn his mannequin collection is one grimy, unpleasant little movie. <i>Maniac</i> unfolds mostly in slight variations on three scenes: 1. Spinnell's Zito stalks a woman (or a couple) around for awhile, breathing labouriously in some of the cinema's most enthusiastic foley work. 2. Zito then murders the woman (or couple) in spectacularly gory fashion. 3. Zito returns to his crummy apartment to attach the fresh scalp to one of his mannequins, then talk to himself, the mannequins, and the spectre of his dead mother until he throws a fit and breaks down crying. The pattern breaks when Zito meets a sultry photographer (former Bond girl Caroline Munro), and improbably enough, starts dating her. But old habits die hard, and Zito's return to his murderous ways lead to a freaky climax/dream sequence complete with the killer's decomposed mother busting out of her grave, not to mention the murdered women returning from the dead for revenge. The effects by Tom Savini are pretty impressive despite the shoestring budget--particularly a super-graphic exploding head (the one belonging to the character Savini also plays, no less!). You almost get the sense that Spinnell and Zito didn't really think they were making a horror movie, but instead were capturing an intimate yet gritty character study on film, not unlike <i>Taxi Driver</i> (which Spinnell also had a small part in). Borderline inept at times (the film is unbelievably murky, with awkward editing and occasionally incomprehensible audio), but weirdly effective at others, <i>Maniac</i> is most assuredly a memorable experience--just not one everyone will be up for.
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DRAG ME TO HELL (2009):
I remember being bummed out that <i>Drag Me To Hell</i> didn't perform better at the box office when it was released in 2009, but upon revisiting it this year I can kind of see why it didn't set the box office ablaze. As a big fan of Raimi's <i>Evil Dead</i> films, particularly the gonzo, Three Stooges-inspired second instalment, I immediately responded to the haphazard outbursts of humour in Raimi's return to horror. However, to a new generation of thrillseeking moviegoers, the tone of this movie must have been fairly strange (<i>Drag Me To Hell</i> is rated PG-13, to give you an idea of who it was aimed at). This tale of an ambitious bank employee (Alison Lohman) cursed by an old gypsy woman is jam-packed with Raimi's pet obsessions--broad physical comedy, gleefully evil demonic spirits, and slimy bodily fluids spewing out of people and into the faces of other people. It's pretty light stuff, for the most part. A lot of the shenanigans that bedevil the protagonist are of the social-awkwardness variety--the demonic torments that Lohman's Christine suffers threaten the promotion she's seeking at work, or the opinion of her potential in-laws. In a weird bit of coincidence (or homage on Raimi's part?), the final scene echoes the finale of one of the earlier films on my list, <i>Curse Of The Demo</i>n, as both films feature a character on a railroad track beset upon by a demonic apparition. I'd only really recommend this one for diehard fans of classic, pre-<i>Spider-Man</i> Sam Raimi, or younger horror fans looking for a lightweight scare fix.
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THEY LIVE (1988):
I had planned to finish off my 31 horror films with a screening of the <a href="http://www.criterion.com/">Criterion Collection</a>'s new <i>Rosemary's Baby</i> blu ray on Halloween Night, but my copy didn't arrive on time. Thankfully, I got my hands on an advance copy of <a href="http://www.shoutfactory.com/?q=screamfactory">Scream Factory</a>'s new hi-def release of John Carpenter's 1988 classic, <i>They Live</i>, so that helped ease the sting. <i>They Live</i> isn't really a horror movie--I'd file it more under science fiction or action (with a touch of comedy), but it always seemed to end up in the scary section of the video store when I was a teen, so I feel like I can get away with including it. The story of a construction worker (none other than the legendary Rowdy Roddy Piper himself!) who finds a pair of special glasses that allow him to see the skull-faced, silver-eyed aliens pulling humanity's strings continues to be relevant today. In Carpenter's America, the 99 % are enslaved by an extradimensional 1% who maintain order with subliminal messages in the media, coding billboards and magazines with slogans like CONFORM, STAY ASLEEP, and MARRY AND REPRODUCE (even dollar bills are emblazoned with the legend THIS IS YOUR GOD). Of course, since the movie's star is a bona fide WWF superstar, the only way to free mankind from unknowing enslavement is to resort to brutal violence and cartoonish smack-talk (hence Piper's immortal pronouncement "I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum...<i>and I'm all outta bubblegum</i>" right before he empties a shotgun into a bank full of the invaders). Carpenter regulars like Keith David and Peter Jason (I guess JC enjoyed working with guys who have two first names and no last names) fill out the cast, along with Meg Foster (<i>Leviathan</i>) and her creepy blue eyes. Scream Factory's new disc features a crazy new cover by <a href="http://thedudedesigns.blogspot.ca/">Tom "The Dude" Hodge</a> (designer of the theatrical poster for <i>Hobo With A Shotgun</i>), but also thankfully preserves the original, iconic poster art on a reversible sleeve.
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There's also a commentary by Carpenter and Piper, which I believe was recorded for the Region 2 DVD but makes its official North American debut here. Come for the message about the disappearing middle class and the rich feeding on the poor. Stay for the one-liners, the cool aliens, and that incredibly overlong alleyway fight scene between Roddy Piper and Keith David.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-5881679747311752902012-10-30T05:09:00.000-07:002012-10-30T05:09:23.808-07:0031 Days Of Horror 2012 (Part 12)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (1976):
The opening credits of <i>Who Can Kill A Child?</i> play over a montage of documentary footage that chronicles how some of the most unimaginable tragedies of the last century--the Holocaust, the Korean conflict, the Vietnam war--have been hardest on the children of the countries involved. This lengthy sequence (one that surely rivals <i>Once Upon A Time In The West</i> for the title of Longest Opening Credits Sequence In Cinema History), which combines footage of real-life corpses and atrocities with the sound of kids laughing and singing, is meant to set up the film's central idea--the murderous children in the movie are theorized by the hero to have taken some sort of evolutionary leap, and are ensuring their own future survival by killing every adult they see. It's a bit of a jump to make to come to this conclusion; one imagines that the protagonist must have watched the same opening credits sequence as the audience in order to reach that hypothesis. There may have been more to it than that--the version of the film I watched had no English dialogue other than the opening voiceover and the dialogue spoken by the two leads, who are thankfully British (and one of them doesn't speak Spanish, so her husband needs to translate for her). But I digress. <i>Who Can Kill A Child?</i> opens as a married couple, pregnant Evelyn and moustachioed Tom, vacationing on the Spanish coast, decide to visit a tiny island with a population of just a few hundred people. They arrive to find the place mostly deserted, except for the occasional smiling child or two. Those children are smiling because a kind of contagious madness has come to the island--one that only affects the preteen set. The grownups are all missing because the happy-go-lucky tykes have happily slaughtered them all, and Tom and Evelyn are next. The movie's title comes from the central dilemma posed to Tom and Evelyn--can you justify killing a child, much less a small army of them, if they're hellbent on killing you first? Tom is pushed to that limit out of self-preservation, but Evelyn is hesitant because of the child in her belly (an enemy in their midst, as it turns out). At nearly two hours, <i>Who Can Kill A Child?</i> is a bit of a slow burn, but it really ramps up in the last half hour. The minimal use of music adds a spooky atmosphere, and the smiling, giggling children are definitely unsettling--they're a bit like the avian killers in <i>The Birds</i> in that you'll see one or two, then dozens surrounding the hapless adults. The final waterfront showdown is brutal, and the ending is a classic downer in the mold of the original <i>Night Of The Living Dead</i>. Highly recommended, but not if the content implied by the movie's title makes you at all uneasy.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-29353542435127017132012-10-29T08:58:00.000-07:002012-10-30T04:52:25.047-07:0031 Days Of Horror 2012 (Part 11)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943):
The word "atmospheric" gets thrown around in discussions of director Jacques Tourneur's work almost as much as the word "adorkable" is used to describe Zooey Deschanel. But it's certainly apt. Maybe even more so than the director's <i>Cat People</i> and <i>Curse Of The Demon</i>, <i>I Walked With A Zombie</i> goes for an overall mood of gorgeously-shot eeriness rather than big, spectacular scares. A Canadian nurse (Frances Dee) is hired to look after the brain-damaged wife of a plantation manager (Tom Conway) in the West Indies, and her curiosity about the woman's mysterious ailment leads her to investigate alternative treatments--like the ones practiced in voodoo rituals by the local plantation workers. We learn of a love triangle between Paul, his wife Jessica, and Paul's brother Wesley, which may have led to her condition. The possibility arises that Jessica has fallen under a voodoo curse, and that she may not even be technically alive at all anymore. But who cursed her, and why? The film keeps you guessing as to whether or not supernatural forces really are at work, or if it's all the result of jealousy, forbidden love, and mental illness. Viewers drawn to the title looking for a Romeroesque apocalypse of walking corpses will be pretty disappointed--<i>I Walked With A Zombie</i> is much more of a romantic melodrama with supernatural undertones than anything else. But it remains a sterling example of classy studio horror of the era. And even nearly 70 years later, the image of the giant, pop-eyed voodoo enforcer Carrefour is still pretty startling.
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REC (2007) and REC 2 (2009):
If you wanna make me roll my eyes at you, recommend I watch a) another goddamned zombie movie, b) another goddamned found-footage movie, or c) a goddamned found-footage zombie movie. But the first two installments in the Spanish-language <i>REC</i> movie series make these tired horror cliches fresh, exciting, and terrifying all over again. The key to the series' success so far (a third film has been released in Spain, but I have no idea when it'll arrive in North America) has been its inventive use of the you-are-there immediacy of the found footage format (courtesy of co-directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza), and a fascinating mythology that blurs the line between the supernatural and the scientific. In the 2007 kickoff to the franchise, we follow a TV crew recording a show called <i>While You're Asleep</i> as they follow a group of firemen on their nightly duties. When the firemen are summoned to a nearby apartment building on a mysterious emergency call, they find themselves--along with the terrified cameraman and TV host (Manuela Velasco)--trapped inside the now-quarantined building with its hapless residents as a strange virus, transmitted through blood and saliva, turns its victims into the spazziest ghouls this side of <i>Return Of The Living Dead</i>. As the story progresses, we learn that the building's penthouse has been home to a mysterious old priest who has been performing strange experiments on a young girl. The hair-raising final moments of <i>REC</i> take us inside the penthouse as the remainder of the building is overtaken by the lunatic zombies, who are not undead at all but are instead victims of a particularly contagious strain of demonic possession. The priest who lived there had been trying to find a scientific cure for the strain, but to no avail...and his unbelievably gross Patient Zero is still lurking about! 2009's <i>REC 2</i> picks up mere moments later, as a SWAT team enters the still-quarantined building with a health official (Jonathan D. Mellor) who is not what he seems. The sequel keeps things fresh with a whole new bag of cinematic tricks--things veer into <i>Aliens</i> territory, not to mention first-person-shooter video game territory, when the SWAT guys activate their helmet-cams, and the perspective shifts in Act Two to a group of young video pranksters who sneak into the building hoping to sell footage to the nightly news. <i>REC 2</i> throws a number of crazy surprises at you, like the reveal that kicks off Act Three, and the movie's stomach-churning final twist. Some story points don't hold up upon consideration--for instance, why would anyone conduct such risky experiments with a dangerous contagion inside an apartment building full of innocent civilians? Wouldn't a concrete bunker in the desert be more appropriate? But you'll be too busy being scared out of your wits to dwell on such questions for long. Reviews on the third film in the series, which sounds like it deviates from the original story by taking place at a wedding (?), have not been promising, but in any event I'm glad the filmmakers kept the cameras rolling for the first two outstanding installments. Watch these at night with the lights out if you think you've got the guts, but I watched the second one for the first time this very morning and, even in broad daylight, it still freaked me out.
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Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-63561605798037806412012-10-25T05:27:00.000-07:002012-10-25T05:27:02.510-07:0031 Days Of Horror Movies 2012 (Part 10)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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PHOBIA (1980):
When people discuss the directing career of Hollywood legend John Huston, they usually talk about <i>The Maltese Falcon</i> or <i>The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre</i>. They don't often bring up his 1980 suspense flick <i>Phobia</i>, which stars Paul Michael Glaser (he was either Starsky or Hutch--I can never quite remember). There's a reason for this--it isn't very good. <i>Phobia</i>, which was filmed in Toronto, stars Glaser as a psychiatrist with a radical new method for confronting phobias--it seems to mostly consist of making his patients, all of whom are convicted felons, stare at large video screens showing depictions of their paralyzing fears (snakes, heights, etc.). His treatment becomes the subject of controversy, particularly when his patients begin falling victim to a serial killer who takes them out in ways that correspond with their specific phobias. Or not, in some cases--for instance, an agoraphobic woman is blown to bits, while another woman who lives in mortal fear of being raped is drowned in a bathtub. The whodunit aspects of the plot, mostly embodied by a pair of bullying detectives played by John Colicos and a very young Kenneth Welsh, aren't very well developed, and the story moves ahead in weird little fits and starts until it's suddenly over without much fanfare. <i>Alien</i> co-writer Ronald Shusett and Hammer legend Jimmy Sangster both worked on the screenplay, but you'd never know it. Huston must have sleepwalked his way through this one--overall, it has the feeling of a strange little Canadian melodrama more than anything else. The only scenes that really pop are the therapy sessions, which have a more ominous tone than anything else in the movie. I first saw, and was fairly creeped out by, <i>Phobia</i> on the Canadian cable channel <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njebOH1cXJw&feature=fvsr">First Choice</a> when I would have been 7 or 8, and I've always wanted to revisit it--which is why I shelled out fourteen bucks for a bootleg copy at this summer's Fan Expo convention in Toronto. In retrospect, I probably would have been happier <i>with</i> the fourteen bucks, but sometimes you just have to confront your fears, no matter the cost.
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THE FUNHOUSE (1981):
Poor Tobe Hooper. The director of the original <i>Texas Chain Saw Massacre</i> doesn't get a lot of respect--the only other film of his to garner much of a following is <i>Poltergeist</i>, and much of that film's success has been attributed to producer Steven Spielberg, who is said to have directed much of that 1982 blockbuster. Most people consider Hooper's breakthrough gig on <i>TCM</i> to be some kind of fluke, one which he's never quite been able to duplicate. That's a shame, since his 1980 offering, <i>The Funhouse</i>, isn't half bad. This candy-coloured freakshow flick could, at times, almost be the lost Brian DePalma movie--there's voyeurism aplenty in this tale of four teens who hit a travelling carnival and decide to spend the night in the funhouse, getting high and making out. The bratty little brother of one of the girls sneaks along as well, after scaring his sister in an opening sequence that parodies/pays homage to <i>Halloween</i>'s famous POV opening and <i>Psycho</i>'s legendary shower scene. After ogling the barnyard oddities on display in the carnival's freakshow, the teens end up spying on a Frankenstein-masked carny as he commits a crime of passion, murdering the show's resident fortune teller/prostitute. That mask, it turns out, hides the carny's hideous true face, and the kids are soon being stalked and killed by the monstrous man-child and his abusive carnival barker father. <i>The Funhouse</i> is far from perfect--things don't really get going until about an hour into the ninety-five minute movie, and the four lead kids are pretty much interchangeable--but the score by John Beal is terrific, the mutant maniac is suitably nightmarish, and the funhouse setting is used to garish, ghoulish, effect. <a href="http://www.shoutfactory.com/?q=screamfactory">Scream Factory</a>'s new collector's edition Blu-ray makes particularly effective use of the 5.1 Surround mix, especially during the funhouse ride sequences. It's easy to imagine <i>The Funhouse</i> being a cool, creepy night at the drive-in back in 1980, one that likely put many a fright fan off going to the carnival for good.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-30639380920954724152012-10-23T05:13:00.000-07:002012-10-23T05:14:31.740-07:0031 Days Of Horror Movies 2012 (Part 9)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981):
Has there ever been a stranger combination of humour and horror as <i>An American Werewolf In London</i>? Sure, the 1981 cult favourite is best known for Rick Baker's groundbreaking, Academy-Award winning transformation effects (amongst lycanthropy enthusiasts, the question of which werewolf movie--<i>American Werewolf</i> or <i>The Howling</i>--had the coolest shapeshifting effects is the equivalent of the Beatles vs. the Rolling Stones argument among music nerds). But this movie, written & directed by comedy juggernaut John Landis, hot off the blockbuster success of <i>Animal House</i> and <i>The Blues Brothers</i>, is equally memorable for its uniquely scattershot approach to evoking both laughs and scares. At times it's an incredibly gory monster movie, at others it's a doomed love story, and at other times still it's a fish-out-of-water farce. Despite a wildly uneven tone, though, <i>AAWIL</i> succeeds as both a horror movie and a comedy, largely due to the chemistry between David Naughton and Griffin Dunne as two unlucky college students backpacking across the British countryside. The chemistry continues working even after Naughton's David Kessler has succumbed to the werewolf's curse, and Dunne's Jack has returned from the grave as a surprisingly good-humoured walking corpse. The romance between David and his lovestruck nurse Alex (Jenny Agutter) is sweet and ultimately tragic, and the soundtrack is loaded with pop songs about the moon (like Van Morrison's "Moondance", CCR's "Bad Moon Rising", and versions of "Blue Moon" performed by Bobby Vinton, Sam Cooke, and The Marcels). And, of course, there are those much talked-about special effects, which hold up to this day--the gradually decaying Jack is every bit as memorable as the famous werewolf transformation. Thirty-one years later, <i>An American Werewolf In London</i> is still scarier than most horror films of its day, and still funnier than most comedies.
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THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS (1980):
There's a legend among horror fans of a certain age that the original ending of <i>The Watcher In The Woods</i> was so scary, Disney ordered it changed and buried the existing footage, not even allowing it to be used on retrospective DVDs. The truth is a lot more mundane--the visual effects for the original ending weren't completed in time, and in its place, a new abridged ending sums up the plot in a quick dialogue wrap-up. That's a shame, because this film could use all the help it can get, and both alternate endings included on the DVD release (neither of which is allegedly director John Hough's preferred ending) are more interesting than the one Disney went with. A rare foray into horror for the Mouse House, <i>The Watcher In The Woods</i> begins as a family moves into a creepy old house owned by a mysterious woman (Bette Davis). The eldest daughter, teenaged Jan (played by a perpetually wide-eyed Lynn Holly Johnson) almost immediately begins seeing strange apparitions, like ghostly blue circles of energy and a blindfolded girl calling for help from the mirror. She senses a sinister force in the nearby woods, and she eventually learns of the disappearance of a young girl named Karen during a seance thirty years ago. Jan resolves to learn what happened to Karen, even as the incidents increase in intensity and power. Both alternate endings reveal the Watcher of the movie's title--a kind of insectile apparition--as an extradimensional visitor who accidentally traded places with Karen during the seance, and who is unable to return home until the ceremony is recreated. The Watcher is a pretty cool animatronic puppet, who enfolds Jan in its wings and briefly takes her back to his home dimension before safely returning both her and Karen home. The hurried explanation that takes the place of this effect in the released version is a lot more unsatisfying, especially after you've just sat through ninety or so minutes of harmless, sanitized Disney-approved supernatural shenanigans.
Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-22310848961283933762012-10-22T10:16:00.000-07:002012-10-22T10:16:14.527-07:0031 Days Of Horror Movies 2012 (Part 8)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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TERROR TRAIN (1980):
This was the second Jamie Lee Curtis slasher movie I watched this year that began with a prank gone wrong, resulting in a killing spree. <i>Terror Train</i> opens with the scream queen playing the bait in a hazing stunt that goes too far-- a hapless weirdo named Kenny is lured into climbing in bed with a pilfered cadaver by a group of cruel med students. He then suffers one of cinema's most memorable spaz attacks, spinning around & getting caught up in the bed sheets while shrieking girlishly (as the credits begin, the footage goes to slow-motion and his screams become a slowed-down moan). Cut to several years later, and the med students are having a costume party on a train to celebrate New Years' Eve...however, a masked killer has other ideas about what constitutes a good time. <i>Terror Train</i> is a somewhat better-than-average entry in the deluge of post-<i>Halloween</i> slasher fare, mostly due to the nowhere-to-run setting and the killer's cool gimmick of shedding his disguise in favour of the one worn by his last victim. The cast is decent--along with Curtis, there's Ben Johnson (<i>The Wild Bunch</i>) as the train's conductor, a pre-<i>Die Hard</i> Hart Bochner as the sleazeball ringleader of the prank-happy pre-meds, and David Copperfield as an intense illusionist who is something of a forerunner to <i>Arrested Development</i>'s Gob Bluth. The biggest problem with the film is that there's never really any doubt as to who the killer is, despite the efforts of director Roger Spottiswoode (who would later direct <i>Tomorrow Never Dies</i>, <i>The Sixth Day</i>, and... <i>Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot</i>!?!) to package the proceedings as a whodunit. The reveal of the killer will surprise no one, but the revelation of how he got on the train in the first place is a neat twist. <i>Terror Train</i> is another of the retro horror titles newly available on Blu-Ray for the first time courtesy of <a href="http://www.shoutfactory.com/?q=screamfactory">Scream Factory,</a> complete with a shiny new transfer an and eye-catching illustrated cover (the also-memorable original box art is featured on a reversible sleeve). It's no <i>Halloween</i>, but <i>Terror Train</i> is a cut (slightly) above most of its peers.
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THE PACK (1977):
More evil dogs, and this time, only Joe Don Baker can stop them! <i>The Pack</i> takes place on a resort island where summer families have an unpleasant habit of buying dogs for their kids to play with all season, then leaving them behind when it's time to go home. The forsaken dogs, mad with hunger, band together into a pack of ferocious killers, intent on turning the island's remaining inhabitants into puppy chow. <i>The Pack</i> was directed by Robert Clouse, who helmed <i>Enter The Dragon</i> four years earlier. Sadly, he's incapable of doing for roving packs of dogs what he did for martial arts battles--the dog attacks are pretty vicious, but they're mostly preceded by endless slow-motion montages of the killer pooches running happily through the forest. The cast, headed by the aforementioned Baker, also features some other folks who keep turning up in this year's <i>31 Days Of Horror</i> lineup--Bibi Besch and R.G. Armstrong appear, both of whom would later star in <i>The Beast Within</i>, and Armstrong also starred in <i>Devil Dog: Hound Of Hell</i> (making this the second evil dog movie I've seen him in this year). Watch for Paul Wilson, best known as Paul on the later seasons of <i>Cheers</i>, as a cowardly nerd who gets what's coming to him. <i>The Pack</i> is a middling entry in the subgenre of 1970s nature-run-amok horror films, and it probably won't do much to convert anyone who isn't already a fan of that type of film.
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THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935):
"The human heart is more complex than any other part of the body", says Dr. Pretorius in <i>The Bride Of Frankenstein</i>, which may be why the assembled Bride screams in terror when she meets her monstrous groom. What's her problem, anyway? After all, they were made for each other. Hollywood's first sequel (and still one of the best), James Whale's follow-up to the legendary 1931 original improves upon the mad doctor's tale in pretty much every way. Boris Karloff's performance as the tragic, now-speaking monster is even more tortured, inhuman, and ultimately sympathetic than it was the first time around. Franz Waxman's rousing score lends a fairy-tale quality to the story of weird science and doomed romance. Ernest Thesiger's wickedly campy turn as Frankenstein's mentor, Dr. Pretorius, lightens the tone while amping up the blasphemous elements of their experiments ("Sometimes I have wondered whether life wouldn't be much more amusing if we were all devils, no nonsense about angels and being good", says the doctor at one point). And Elsa Lanchester (who does double duty here, also appearing as Mary Shelley in a prologue sequence), even with her limited screen time as the monster's intended mate, is unforgettable in both design and performance.
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John P. Fulton's visual effects still pack a how'd-they-do-that punch to this day, in a memorable sequence where Dr. Pretorius showcases his attempts to create life in the form of tiny homunculi displayed in jars. Probably still the best of the classic Universal Monster Movies, <i>The Bride Of Frankenstein</i> remains a potent combination of atmospheric thrills and gallows humour.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2491699760310201974.post-91582564484628642902012-10-18T19:27:00.000-07:002012-10-18T19:27:00.456-07:0031 Days of Horror Movies 2012 (Part Seven)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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DEVIL DOG: HOUND OF HELL (1978): This movie is what happens when someone wants to rip off <i>The Omen</i>, but decides to ditch Damian and focus on his canine protector instead. <i>Devil Dog</i> opens with a bunch of Satanists, led by former Bond girl Martine Beswicke (<i>Thunderball</i>) and R.G. Armstrong (<a href="http://houseofhaunts.blogspot.ca/">him again</a>, from <i>The Beast Within</i>) buying a German Shepherd and performing a ceremony to have it impregnated offscreen (doggy style, presumably) by Old Scratch. Later, Richard Crenna and Yvette Mimieux appear as a suburban couple whose ten-year old daughter (Kim Richards) is heartbroken when her beloved pooch is run over by a mysterious black station wagon. On her birthday, no less! Soon after, Armstrong shows up posing as a kindly ol’ vegetable salesman who just so happens to have a litter of adorable Shepherd pups in his truck, and he just can’t wait to give them away. At the urging of her older brother (Ike Eisenmann, a dead ringer for a young Davy Jones), the girl adopts the pup and names him Lucky. The next door neighbour’s Great Dane and the family’s lovable Latino housekeeper stereotype are the first to suspect the cute widdle puppy’s sinister nature, and they both meet unpleasant ends. Director Curtis Harrington tries his level best to make the puppy look sinister, aided by spooky music and glowing eyes, but it’s no good—the little guy’s just as cute as a button.
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As Lucky grows, he exerts an evil influence over the children and their mother, turning them all into ill-tempered creeps who may themselves now be mixed up in Satanic goings-on. Crenna suspects something weird is happening, and as the bodies of concerned guidance counselors and nosy neighbours start piling up, he begins to realize that the titular hellhound is behind it all. At one point, when Crenna is beginning to question his sanity, a news item on TV makes mention of a Son of Sam-style psycho who goes on a rampage at the bidding of his neighbour’s dog. This seems to tantalizingly hint at a pretty dark, and potentially more interesting, ending—I imagined that Crenna was going to murder his Satan-seduced family and say the dog made him do it—but no, that throwaway bit was probably mostly just inspired by current events than anything else (<i>Devil Dog </i>was released in 1978, which means it was most likely being made while the Son of Sam killings were taking place in New York). Instead, Crenna takes off to Ecuador to confer with a holy man, returning with a mystical symbol on his hand to confront the beast and, hopefully, win his family back from its mind-control mojo. There’s a wacky showdown in a factory, with Lucky transforming into a giant hellbeast (AKA, a regular dog with a bunch of horns and other crap stuck to it, made to look enormous by shaky special effects), and Crenna sporting a glowing hand to ward it off with.
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I’m a fan of the strange little subgenre of ‘70s animal-attack horror films; <i>Devil Dog</i> came in a box set called <i>Evil Animals</i>, which also featured two nostalgic favourites of mine, <i>Day Of The Animals</i> and <i>Grizzly</i>. I’ve watched those two several times, but I had never cracked <i>Devil Dog</i> open until now. I had a good time with it despite the silly script and TV-movie level of filmmaking quality, but I don’t know that most people would get past the first twenty minutes. Stick with <i>The Omen</i> instead, or at the very least, <i>Cujo</i>.Dave Howletthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04592290134026596566noreply@blogger.com0